001Um, our pledge of allegiance, and I would ask uh Trustee Palazzolo to please lead us. 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. So, emergency exits, please notice the ones at the back of the auditorium, as well as the side. In case of an emergency, please proceed quickly and safely to the outside. This is a smoke-free campus. No smoking, no vaping anywhere on school grounds or in the buildings. Similarly, it's a hate-free and bully-free school district. There's um a motion an anticipated motion. Um Resolved that the Board of Education hereby suspends Board Policy 1511 for the April 15, 2026 meeting of the Board of Education, and will use, for this meeting only,
002the following agenda format. First, our items for discussion action will be a budget presentation. Next, a board consent agenda for personnel, and a board consent agenda for business. And then, a budget forum, and then meet meeting closing. Is there a motion to suspend board policy 1511 for the purposes stated. Trustee Calderon, second, Trustee Laws. All in favor? It's unanimous unanimously approved. So, let me first thank everyone who is here in person and um who may be watching via live stream to join us for our board meeting and our budget forum this evening. Board meetings are meetings of the board with the superintendent. They're held in public so that the public can watch the meeting and hear the deliberations. It is not a meeting with the public. Our meeting tonight's going to consist of two parts.
003First, the workshop meeting which is for the purpose of the budget presentation and two business items. And the second part is a forum for public participation. Normally, when we have public participation, it's a limited to comments from the public with no response and no interaction. The forum will be an opportunity um for the public to ask questions with regard to the budget presentation that we're having tonight. The budget presentation itself, which is in the first part of the meeting, is for the board to question uh the business official and the superintendent with regard to the information being provided. So, during the forum, um we're we're hoping that people will have the opportunity to ask their questions about what they hear in the budget presentation. And um those questions will be limited to this year's budget
004and the challenges faced in during this budget process. I will remind when we get to that portion, I will go over again with the public the fact that questions will be related to this year's budget and to the options being presented tonight. Any questions concerning individuals will not be considered. And that applies to both critical comments as well as to expressions of gratitude. Um and the questions about prior events that may have contributed to the district's current challenges will not be discussed this evening. Those issues are detailed in the report by the office of state controller and posted on the district's website. Tonight is about the proposed budget and questions should remain focused on aspects of the budget, options for the district, and tax impacts of the different options presented. Inflammatory language will not be
005tolerated. Anyone engaging in this behavior will be asked to leave, but we do expect everyone to conduct themselves with civility and respect for others. Each individual wishing to ask a question or offer a comment will have 3 minutes to do so. Please fill out a card that's available from my district clerk. And we encourage you to use your 3-minutes to ask the questions um so that we can also maximize the number of people who can be heard tonight. That takes us now to um our budget presentation. Thank you, President Hayes. Thank you, Board of Education. First, I want to begin by thanking everyone who's come out tonight. And for those of you who are watching our live stream, I know this is a difficult moment for our community, and I understand there's a great deal
006of frustration, anger, and concern in this room and at home. People care deeply about our schools, and that's very clear. Emotions are high because there's a great deal at stake. While we may not agree on every point, I hope we can move through this conversation in a way that's respectful, grounded in fact, and reflective of the kind of example we want to set for the 3,600 students we serve. In moments like this, we have to rise above the noise, stay focused on the work in front of us, and keep our attention on matters most, securing the future of our school community. I want to begin by first addressing the concern about transparency. We've been sharing information as it becomes available. The reality is that much of this work has been happening in real time and
007at an incredibly intense level. The recent release of the controller's report reflects the level of scrutiny surrounding this work and in many ways reinforces what we've already been communicating. Our engagement with the office of the state controller alone involved seven auditors working closely with our team and I want to express our sincere appreciation for their time, their expertise, and their partnership. To that end, the information we provided and the information we'll be providing tonight has been carefully reviewed and vetted. Needless to say, that work, combined with our communications with the state education department, our elected officials, the BTA in coordination with NYSED, bond counsel, financial advisors, and other stakeholders has been all-consuming. More than that, it needs to be acknowledged that this process has not been linear. There have been many circumstances that shifted our
008direction during the budget development process. That includes our ongoing collaboration again with the state education department, our elected officials, BTA leadership including Pat Brady who's been advocating on our behalf, on behalf of the district and certainly some of the liaison with NYSED, bond counsel, and other key stakeholders. Each of those conversations has informed our work and at times has required us to adjust course as new information and new realities emerged. This moment has also required us to look inward as an organization. We've made changes within the business office, not just in practice, but in leadership. We recruited John Pollicino to bring his experience and expertise in school finance to this work. Those steps were necessary to ensure that we're building a more accurate, accountable, and responsive financial system moving forward, and we've done that. It's
009important to remember that the budget development is a process. We've represented draft budgets every step of the way, draft one, draft two, draft three, and tonight draft four, not because we're uncertain, but because we're working in real time to respond to evolving information, external guidance, and the magnitude of the challenge in front of us. At the same time, it's been our responsibility to step back and fully understand how we got here. As outlined in our message and in the controller's report, this situation didn't happen overnight. It's the result of years of compounding factors, structural imbalances tied to capital projects, decisions around tax levy limits, the use of one-time funding to support ongoing expenses, and cost pressures that weren't fully aligned with budget assumptions. And yes, the significant increases in the cost of operating school districts,
010particularly in the areas of employee benefits, specifically health care, transportation, and special education. Those conditions converged in the 2024-2025 fiscal year, resulting in a deficit that was identified after the close of that year, limiting our ability to take corrective action at that moment. Both the external audit and the controller's report make clear that there were weaknesses in budgeting practices, forecasting, and monitoring that contributed to where we are today. That realization required us to make necessary changes in the how the work is led and supported, including again the change in the leadership within the business office, and the recruitment of John Balmonte, whose experience has been critical in helping guide our recovery efforts. But just as important as understanding how we got here is what we're doing about it. That ultimately is what tonight is about.
011It's about the job at hand. And simply stated, it's about preserving our programs that best support our school community. We've taken significant steps to stabilize the district. We've implemented spending controls, made difficult staffing reductions, strengthened financial oversight, and partnered closely with the State Education Department and Control Office to improve our processes and internal controls. The recommendations outlined in the Control Office report aren't theoretical. They're already being implemented and are reflected in the budget you're seeing tonight. Staff reductions are especially difficult, and we don't take them for granted. Our teachers in particular have been significantly impacted. Over the last year and in the proposed budget, we're talking about a reduction of approximately 18% of our teaching staff, and that is not taken lightly. First consideration is always be given to the very human impacts, not only
012on the individuals affected, but on the many lives touched, influenced, and inspired. These are people who have given up themselves to our students and our schools. At the same time, these reductions were approached in a way that sought to preserve our programs to the greatest extent possible, even in the face of extraordinary pressure. The same is true for our administrators. Much of their work is unseen by the public, but is essential to the daily functioning and long-term improvement of the school district. They're responsible for helping move our instructional program forward, ensuring compliance with state mandates, addressing the needs of English language learners who make up 22% of our student population, supporting our students with disabilities who make up 23% of our student population, maximizing opportunities for students, overseeing the grant work and compliance structure that
013help bring critical funding into the districts. Even with the significant decline in enrollment, the complexity and work associated with operating school district has only grown. And yet, we've reduced our administrative unit by 25% leaving 18 administrators, 12 of whom are building administrators, to help lead the district of more than 700 employees and 3,600 students. Again, these decisions aren't easy, and they have a real impact across our school community. I thank you Mr. Burnett and many other valuable staff members who work tirelessly to promote growth and help foster a positive environment for our school community. Our cabinet, support staff, teaching assistants, clerical aides, monitors, custodial maintenance crews, and of course the safety officers, all of whom are also impacted. We have made truly difficult decisions in the midst of incredible pressure. Even with the staff reductions,
014the proposed reductions in multiple areas, we are still facing critical decision points. We requested special act legislation that would allow us to finance this deficit over time over strict oversight and accountability. If that legislation is approved, it provides a pathway forward, a way to stabilize the district while making responsible, measured adjustments over time. As of April 10th, less than a week ago, we were informed that there's a possibility that this legislation may not be approved not only for the '26-'27 school year, but for the current fiscal year as well. That's a serious implication to which Mr. Lombardi will speak to more directly tonight. It means that we must plan for the '26-'27 budget under the assumption that the state may not come through, and that deficit financing may not be available. To be clear, deficit
015financing doesn't solve the budget deficit. It would simply allow the district to continue working toward resolving it in a less abrupt and disruptive manner. The next focus has to be on the proposed budget for 2026-2027. If deficit financing is not approved for that year, which again seems the likely outcome, we'd be required to identify more than $5.9 million in additional reductions on top of the $8.2 million already proposed. At that point, we're no longer talking about efficiencies. We're talking about decisions that will fundamentally and permanently change what our schools can offer. That could mean potentially larger classes, fewer teachers, fewer programs, fewer opportunities for students, and those aren't changes that are easily undone. So, the choices in front of us are difficult, more difficult than they've ever been. They involve balancing reductions with the potential
016for additional revenue, including the possibility of exceeding the tax levy cap in order to preserve core programs and services. None of these decisions are taken lightly. Every conversation we have, every scenario we run, comes back to one central focus: the 3,600 students we serve and the more than 700 employees who support support them each and every day. Our work is about restoring the district, stabilizing it, strengthening it, and ensuring that it continues to provide the level of education our community expects and our students deserve. And that work continues. As much as we understand the community's need to see projections and possibilities, our immediate focus has to be on getting through the current fiscal year and planning responsibly for the next. Once we're were grounded in that work, we could continue looking at what reductions may
017be possible through attrition and other programmatic changes with minimal impact on our students, the potential for restructuring the district, which requires thoughtful and comprehensive work, and the possibility of generating additional resources and revenue. All of that will happen while we continue supporting our students and staff so that we don't lose the progress we made over the last few years. Tonight, we're here to be responsive to you. We want to be responsive to your questions and to your input. Now, while I got to explain to you that we're in April and it feels like the 11th hour, I understand the frustration, but I want to be equally clear. The timeline reflects the complexity of the work, the level of scrutiny involved, and the constant evolution of information at work with the state, the controller's office, the
018BTA, NYSED, and other stakeholders. We're asking our community to engage, to ask questions, to provide input, and I'd ask that you do so with the same sense of decorum and respect we'd want modeled for our students. Because the path ahead isn't something we can navigate alone. It requires all of us working together with a shared understanding of both the challenges and what's at stake. At the end of the day, this isn't about numbers on a page. It's about who we are as a school community. What we're willing to protect, what we're willing to become moving forward. As I mentioned, we have taken multiple corrective measures to best navigate the challenges ahead with the belief that yes, we can get through this. We have to be forward looking. This has to be framed not as a
019calamity, but as an opportunity. An opportunity to rise up as a community for the sake of our children. At this time, I'd like to introduce Mr. Belmonte, who will bring the board and the community up-to-speed with regard to the special act legislation, present our forward budget, and discuss options moving forward. Mr. Belmonte. Thank you. Good evening. As a member of the Board of Education in the community, uh it's my pleasure to present this evening some critical information. Uh the district is at what we consider a critical crossroads in making some decisions on moving the district forward and being able to complete the '26-'27 budget that we can present to the community in May. Thank you. So, what I'd like to begin because there's been a lot of um confusing issues, I'd like to try to
020simplify and define the issues in very simple terms and what the problem is that this school district, if you concur, beginning in '24-'25 and carrying through '25-'26 and into 2026-2027. Basically, when we talk about what happened in 2024, when the district court expended the voter approved budget, did we really over expend the voter approved budget or there was not sufficient revenues to fund that budget? So, the situation that we're in now is we have programs and we have costs and that we do not have revenues to pay for those programs. So, very simply, that is crux of the issue that we wrestled with going forward. And that's what we have been looking to remedy as we've gone through this process and making adjustments to the current school year. So, basically, the district through last year
021relied on an excessive amount of savings to cover the shortfall. And when you do this, it's definitely not sustainable. And the bottom line is the budget and the revenues did not match the true cost of running our schools. So, we're trying to align those two things. One of the things I put together that I thought would be helpful to make the point that we just talked about, I did a 11-year analysis between the budgets, the voter approved budgets, the fund balance used over those particular years, as well as the tax rates that were set and the annual percentage increase in those tax rates. And what this shows is Okay. So, what this basically shows us in that the years that go back to the beginning of 2015-16, you have a situation with rising costs when
022you look at the top of the blue budget line. The yellow line represents your tax rate increases. Okay? And you can see that at the time where costs are increasing, your taxes have been decreased considerably. And then that trend continues over several years, even when you get up to the 2022 year. When you look at that bottom line of the data and you see the actual increase in the tax rate over the years, you're looking at tax rates 0.73 1. 1.21 2.41 And then in one year, 2023 20 about five 2022-23, I'm sorry, we actually had a tax decrease of minus 0.24%. So, one could say that the community has benefited from a very low tax rate over this period of time. At a time where your budget costs have been rising significantly. So, that
023leads us somewhat to the problem that we're facing and we're trying to rectify. So, hopefully that gives a little bit of framework as to um some of the things that are driving this issue. Now, special act legislation We know that we have the knowns. This current school year, 2025-26, 2026-27, we have known deficits. And the special act legislation, the intent uh as the superintendent indicated, was to find a pathway to stabilize the district's finances over a multi-year approach and preserving as much of the core program as possible. And we can only achieve this with legislative authority. If the district If the district did not get this legislative authority, we would have to make some very critical decisions, which we're going to talk about shortly. Um The special act legislation would have allowed us to address
024the structural deficit over a period of time. Not over 1 year, not over 2 years, okay? But to spread that out and to maintain the integrity of our programs going forward. So the the efforts that the district has put in over the last couple of months, you've heard several times, you heard the superintendent talk about this. Um we put together a fiscal stabilization plan and legislative request in on the current fiscal condition and a multi-year recovery strategy that we shared with all the stakeholders throughout New York State. It was SED, the governor's office, the OSC, and NYSED along with the DTA. All of the the stakeholders that matter, um they knew what the district's situation is and what we were trying to do to rectify it. So and this was part of our long-term um
025strategy is to resolve this particular issue. This particular slide defines what This is a blueprint of 25-26 and 26-27 of what the established deficits are today. So we know, as we talked about 25-26, we have an $8.7 million deficit. 26-27, we have a $5.9 million dollar Now, our recovery plan we originally asked for $15 million to carry us through the period June 30th, 2027. Okay, if this plan would have been enacted, we would have had the ability to borrow deficit dollars and spread it out over a period of time and resolve the deficit. And that would have resolved the problem. We would have had to pay the debt back, yes, but again, we could have done it over a period of time. And as the superintendent also indicated in the meeting that we had on
026last Friday, it was almost like the bottom dropped out because uh our legislators indicated that their discussions up in Albany have not been positive and were not fruitful. And originally, the state had indicated that there would be little or no interest in giving us support in what they call the out year, which is 26-27. As we're building the 26-27 budget. However, we were still hopeful that there would be support for 25-26. We found out that on that Friday, that there may not be support going forward. And why is this problem now? Cuz we were focusing on the 26-27 budget. So now we have to go back 25-26. We have a month and a half left before the year closes. Without special act legislation, we have to do something to close that 8.7 million dollar gap
027that we see on this enrollment. Okay? Real challenge. So that has turned us from our mission a little bit. So, we spent we spent many hours on the phone with bond counsel and fiscal advisors asking, "Okay, let's go back 25 26. Let's see what we can possibly do." Okay? And basically, the state was telling us and our legislators that the district needs to plan accordingly. Okay? So, what does that mean? So, we have the choice of adopting a budget in next Wednesday. That was the plan of the board for 26 27. And now for 25 26, we have a month and a half to go before the school year ends. And our projections indicate that by the third week in May, the district will run out of money for themselves. Okay? Um those are the
028issues. Those are the facts. Those are the things that we are dealing with on a daily basis. Okay? Can't be discounted, can't be twisted, can't be spun. Those are the facts. So, the only remedy for us in 25 25 26 is to look at short-term borrowing. Now, short-term borrowing is just that. It allows you to borrow for a year. And unfortunately, in the second year, you have to pay it back. Okay? So, think about what borrowing on a short-term basis $8.7 million will do. And then the following year, we have to put it on on the budget and increase the subsequent year's subsidy. A real dilemma, a real fiscal dilemma. So, this is how this works out. And thankful with our bond counsel, legal advisors, and a lot of hours of um strategizing what short-term
029borrowing means for 25-26. And I don't mean to digress too much into 25-26, but it kind of came into the mix in the last minute. It has to be addressed. So, the district has the option we can borrow a budget note up to 5% of the budget, and we can borrow a deficit note up to 5%. Okay? And the only reason we can legally do this is because it's what's intended as in-year shortfall. So, 25-26, we know we have a deficit. We're in the year now. We can borrow short-term. That's great. Problem not solved. So, if on the timing, if we borrow after the adoption of the 26-27 budget, we're able to push the payment of the short-term debt to the end of the second year. So, that may sound What What it does Hey.
030>> Better? Better? Better? So, what it does is is it takes that $8.7 million deficit that we have in 25-26, and in 26-27, we would only have to pay a little bit of interest on it, keeping in mind that we still have a 26-27 deficit to deal with, and it would move that 8.7 to 27-28 school year. It would kick the can down the road. Not the best fiscal position to be in, but lacking special act legislation, these will be the cards that the district is dealt. Okay? It's not to say that we shouldn't actively lobby our legislators for this special act legislation. There is a possibility we can still get it at the end of the year, even if we put these holes in motion for short-term borrowing. And if we do, we just
031pay off the short-term borrowing and we move into long-term. So again, this is a significant piece because when you think about the original plan, the borrowing that would have covered 2 years as a result of deficits, and we would have been on the way to cleaning up the '27 '28 school year and really beginning to build the budget back up where it should be. So that brings us That's the dilemma for '25 '26. So now I want to bring everybody up to speed where we are in the '26 '27 budget. Uh we spent a lot of time looking at this particular budget, analyzing many different aspects, and making reductions throughout. This draft four budget that we're presenting this evening as of April 12th carries a is a $150.7 million budget. There's a $3.5 million spending
032increase and it's a at 2.43%. And you can see the areas where we have achieved significant savings. The area of salaries, again, because of the number of staff that we are reducing going forward. We have gone in and we have trimmed as much in supplies as we possibly could. Just follow $750,000 in the area of supplies. And our textbook books went down about $200,000. And some other uh decreases across the board as well. So we're going to take a little bit of a deeper dive, but I just want to go back because uh there's There's a lot of conversation in that the bishop's only looking at staffing and that's not that's not true. We are looking at everything both on the expenditure side and both on the revenue side. So, what we presented early on
033enhancing the process controls and the oversight and monitoring, that is continuing. That is in place. We are putting those controls in place that is required to monitor the finances, to make sure that the budgets are not overspent, to make sure we're aware what the what the critical areas are. We have identified those particular items. And I think with the I'm confident to say that with the conclusions that I have reached in my analysis coupled with the support of the controller's office, coupled with the support of our external auditors, we're all on the same page. There's no surprises. We know where the problems are. We know what the issues are. We just now have to solve and resolve them as a community because keep in mind is what we're trying to put back together is the
034fiscal foundation that supports the educational programs here at South Bend schools. And without a solid I've said this before and this is absolutely true. Without a solid fiscal foundation you don't have the structural program. There's nothing to support. So, this particular process when this put forward is critical. Uh we've implemented media reductions. We've taken the steps. We've reduced administrators. We've reduced costs. We've identified opportunities to enhance revenues. Some of the things that we have done uh we've identified in the business office. There were several capital projects that have not been finalized with the state. Okay? Once a capital project is finalized, you need to fill out from a closeout report. And what that does, it starts the process to generate building aid. Something that the that the district needs because we have to build our
035revenue side. So, by filing those projects early, it was about $475,000 of building aid that started the clock ticking that we were able to begin increase some of our revenues this year with the state. Okay? There were summer school transportation claims that we filed that brought transportation revenue in. So, it is a lot of oversight and things that happened in not only looking to reduce costs, but to enhance the revenue side as well. Um The outreach to strategic partners, we talked about this before. Our partners have been very supportive from the perspective of some of them deciding not to bill us this year. Instead of sheer courtesy. Others have postponed or froze their rates and didn't give us any increases. Um we had we had uh vendors, uh professional vendors, that have picked up the
036cost of some of the soft cost of our projects that the district didn't have to incur when the contract was written. So, these efforts do not go in vain. They all add to the big picture of helping to resolve this problem. Okay? And again, just three-year fiscal plan and coordinating with special act legislation, as we have found out, it's probably as good as the last time you talked to any of the legislators because things have been changing. Yeah, they've been changing weekly and we're trying to stay in front of it without getting run over by the bus, if you will. So, one of the things that I want to just just refresh everyone's memory of the things that we've done over the years and and the reductions at the March 25th meeting we presented in
037the budget we reduced additional staffing, another administrative position, and a social studies position. We made reductions in BOCES. We've taken on the painstaking review of hundreds of BOCES courses and we identified approximately $160,000 in costs that we could reduce. We didn't want to take that from the budget. We wanted to reapply those savings to the special ed area because the special ed area is one of the areas that we're seeing significant cost increases because of the number of kids and students that are coming into our program. Keep in mind, these are mandated programs. When they come into our program, we have no choice. We cannot say no. We have to pay for these program costs. Okay? So, back in back in the beginning of May, there was $577,000 that we reduced and then at the
038April 1st budget, we provided another listing of the things that were done across the board and overall there was about $8.3 million that was made and we noted at the time there was still a $6 million deficit even after when these reductions were made. You could see the largest reductions were made in the area of staffing, 55.5 FTEs. Those are significant amount of individuals. And again, we have on the bottom there the transportation policy. We didn't include that in the segments. Again, that doesn't require voter approval, but if approved by the voters, that would help reduce our costs another $100,000. So, where are we with draft four? You know, I've I've been talking a lot, so now we're bringing you up to speed on draft four. The last draft we started out was $151.9 million,
039okay? Over the last couple of weeks, we made about reductions. And that was net reductions. There were items that we added back into the budget. One of the items, the first one, and I just like to briefly go through that so that everyone knows what's in this particular draft. We made an adjustment to debt service. We adjusted the tax cap calculation. We had our debt service was overstated because of our EDC project. So, we had to remove $775,000 from our debt service line. And our cap percentage went from 6.51 to 5.52. However, conversely with that, when we did that, the $775,000 came out of the budget and reduced our expenses. Okay? So, it was a It was not a negative, it was a positive. Um, district wide supplies, we reduced district wide supplies another $446,000.
040We still have probably over a million dollars in the supply lines district wide, and buildings are just going to have to look at what they have in inventory. Maybe we need to share a little bit if districts need things, but um we We that we have enough in our supply budget to make these particular adjustments that will help us through this particular crisis. Uh we did also talk about at the last meeting we eliminated the 2:30 late buses we said at the high school. This particular proposal takes out the rest of the late buses for a another budget reduction of $192,000. Okay and all field trips we're taking out. And uh it doesn't mean that the students won't go on field trips. It just means that we're going to find an alternate means to fund
041those trips for the students. Whether it be through the educational foundations, whether it be through fundraising, um there are other ways to do that. Uh as far as our equipment goes, what we did is we reduced that another $254,000. But we did leave $100,000 for health and safety items and things that it's needed or could be needed during the school year. Um we had some co-curricular activities minus $2,000. And then we had some add backs to the budget which you can't just have subtractions. We know where we're going with this budget. It could be a possibility that we're looking at a second budget vote. So we added $25,000 for the possibility of the second budget vote. Um you heard me talk about special ed. Uh special ed has been a area where we have seen
042costs rise significantly. If you look at our overall special ed costs a few years ago we were around maybe just over 4 million. We're up where it's over 9 million at this particular point. We have a tremendous influx of special ed students within the district. Um In that and we also reassessed our uh contractual costs for our teaching retirement system, TRS we call And that's because that we have we have teacher salaries that get paid in both the federal funds as well as teachers that work in the cafeteria fund and supervision. So, we also have to make a provision for their retirement benefits. So, you can see that from the changes that we made, we brought the draft budget down to 150 million 738,000. So, as of this point, the purpose of of this discussion,
043this is our baseline. This is where we're starting this discussion and what some of the options are next. So, you have all the background and the biggest challenge that we have is focus on 2026-27. Right now, we're sitting with a $5.8 million deficit. Now, the board can't adopt a budget next Wednesday because that budget has a hold. And the board cannot adopt a budget that's in a balance. So, we have to do something. Okay? And we have representing three options. Okay? We talked about this extensively and these are options for consideration. Some of them are difficult options. Other options get us to where we need to be without further cuts and damage to our programs and to our school system. So, having said that, the first option we have on the table, we can take
044that $5.8 million $5.8 million deficit and the board can turn around and tell us cut that $5.8 million, we want to present a budget to the community at the cap at 5.52%. That would involve us going back and cutting an additional $5.8 million in addition to the 9 million that we've already cut. Okay? You begin to see what the impact is going to be for the budget or what the impact on the programs would be. A second alternative is to, since we already reduced the budget by the 9.1 million, and maybe the board and maybe the city would say, "We want to stop the bleeding. We don't want any more cuts to our football program. Take this 5.8 million, put it on the tax levy, fund it, and be done with the deficit." Okay? That
045carries a very big impact. Upwards of 15.9% on the tax levy. Okay? Nonetheless, something that you have to talk about because you have to present it. Okay? Or there's maybe a intermediate option where you're still considering piercing the cap, but you bring that percentage down to something that may be a little bit more palatable to the taxpayer. So, we have three options. I'm going to go through these slowly and then at the end I'm going to recap again because I want to make sure that I don't just glaze people over and they understand what the options are. So, the first option that we talked about is bringing the budget down to the cap at 5.52%. And we talked about that would mean cutting the budget another 5.9 million. Okay? What that would mean to the
046taxpayer is that it would be an indication after taking another 5.8 5.9 million dollars out of the budget, be approximately $341 a year or $28 a month. Scenario Okay, again, taking the deficit and cutting it down to the cap. And we have the numbers Let's talk about scenario number two. What scenario number two does, it we keep the $150 million budget. We make no further reductions. We take that deficit and we put it on the tax levy. It brings our tax levy up to 81.3 million. Still at a 2.4% spending increase. Very reasonable. And the percentage on the tax levy would be 13.76. Significant. No doubt, significant. And the impact to the taxpayer would be just under $1,200 a year or $100 a month. But what that would What that would allow is for the
047district to maintain remaining staffing and programs with no further cuts. Cuz we're funding the deficit. Again, keep in mind, we're funding the deficit because we were unable to get special act legislation in time, so the district has to make a decision going forward. Okay? It's an option. I see people shaking their heads, but just It's an option. It's all up for discussion. So, scenario number three takes a little bit of a more conservative approach, if you will. Tries to find a happy medium between the 5.52 and the 13.7 is we look at a scenario, if we went in and reduced the budget another $3 million, still reducing program $3 million. And what that would do, it would bring our budget budget increase down to 0.39%, very low. But the tax levy cap percentage would be
048at 9.57. It would be under cap. And what would that mean for the taxpayer? It would mean that the cost of the approximate $75 would be $75 a year or $6.20 a month. Okay? And again, as we see at the bottom, piercing the cap, we still have to reduce the budget another $3 million to further lower what we saw in scenario two, the 13.7%. I know it's a lot of information, so maybe this slide would help in summarizing it again. And I'll quickly run through the scenarios. Sometimes it's better to say it a few times so people really get to understand it or formulate a question on it. So the first scenario that we talked about, we have that $5.8 million deficit. We can go in and we can cut the budget right into the
049cap and present the budget at 5.52% to the community. The second option was to take that deficit and fund it on the cash. Not making more cuts, just move on with our programs and our budgets and begin to rebuild the school district. Again, the impact to the tax levy, 13.7%. And the third option was more of a compromise position, someplace in the middle, where we go back, have to put another $3 million, not the most optimistic way to try to resolve this and present a budget to the community at 9.57%. Now, those two options that we talked about here in the cabinet, the community probably knows it requires a 60% approval by the community. It's what's called a supermajority. Just moving to the cap all under only requires a 50% approval rate by the community.
050So, as you can see, these are these are very difficult decisions that the district has to make in a very short period of time. Again, we go to the rationale here is next Wednesday, Board of Education has to adopt a budget. So, people are probably saying, "Okay, so if you have to go back in and reduce spending, what would we be looking at?" So, what this slide does, it basically breaks down four categories: operations, programs, instructional and non-instructional, and administration. And it it puts on paper the items that we have been looking at. Okay? And just to go through them, the ones that we have already taken out of the budget, I put a little notation, like all field trips. All field trips came out in draft four of the budget that we just reviewed.
051So, that's off the table. Equipment, uh we reduced that and we left $100,000 in the budget. Supplies, we reduced that by a 400-and-some-odd thousand. There's still about a million dollars worth of supplies left within the budget. Use of facilities, uh use of facilities, you have custodial costs, you have security costs. Those are those are things that you always look at because keep in mind, these things may not be popular, but in reality, if the district ends up on a contingency budget, all bets are off because these are the things that normally come out of the budget. I'll get to that a little bit towards the end to put this into a little bit more context so everyone has a good idea of what the ramifications will be each step of the way. So, when we
052look at transportation, we had discussions possibility of being put on another referendum and reducing transportation back to the state minimum of 2 to 3 miles to the walk. Do we like this recommendation? Absolutely not. It probably impacts over 50% of students that wouldn't be able to have transportation back and forth to school. But nonetheless, it's one of the things that we talked about. Security. We have a very well-run security system. We want our schools to be safe. Nonetheless, is that an area that we can scale back? Teacher coverage with substitutes. These are These are costs that are basically needed. Uh we put additional administration costs on there. You heard the superintendent uh number of administrators that were reduced. We also have possibility to reduce um assistant director special ed, EML, guidance, and technology. And reduce
053four more admin positions. When you get the program, we have about 20 uh TAs that are in our instructional classes. Can we look at that? Uh Can we look at our 23 athletic clubs and bureaus and middle school and high school athletics? Can we look at our driver's ed? Can we look at our late buses walk home to um in dress walk? Can we look at our athletic training? Uh for instructional impact, do we eliminate band courses and vocal stream? Under your contingency budget, you probably will. Do you look at uh art electives? Do you look at family and consumer science? Do you look at AP courses? How about world language? Is college Spanish and literacy coordinator and math intervention? Do we increase class size? You take it one step further. Okay? These are all
054real discussions. They may not be right. They're difficult to get. They are discussions that have to happen if we're going to navigate through a certain point to present the '26-'27 budget to the community. So, in instructional impact, we probably have 20 FTE on the table. All right. And the one thing I just want to mention because you have these scenarios. So, this way of doing this budget work, you get one bite at the apple in the third week of May. The voters won't approve it. You could get a second bite at the apple if the board authorizes it in the third week of June. If that budget is voted down by the community, you go on austerity. You go on contingency on austerity. You go on contingency. And what does contingency mean? Contingency takes us
055back to this current tax levy of $71.4 million. There is no negotiating. There is no discussion. There is no exemptions. You just have to do it. Okay? That is a very hard reset. One that will impact your district greatly. You need to know that. This is not a fear factor. This is a fact that you need to make some difficult decisions, but let's make an educated decision because we are talking about the students and the students' future here at South Country. So, I said it's been a very long So, So, for 26-27, I have to ask the question because it's my role. What is the decision in the final 26-27 proposed budget draft that the Board of Education will need to adopt on April 22nd, or maybe a week from tonight? We went through the
056three options. Do we cut another 5 million? Do we bring it down to the cap 5.52? Do we cut only 3 million? Pierce the cap and present a budget at 91.57. Or do we fund the deficit and pierce the cap and set forth a tax levy of 13.77. The bottom piece I want everyone to really pay attention to because that really drives it home. So, whatever decision happens in May, whatever decision happens in June, this could be reality if both budgets fail. And if the community says all bets are off, all bets are off, we go to contingency. Again, two budgets fail, you're on contingency. Go back to 25-26 tax levy, 71.28. Okay? Considering where we are right now in draft four, whatever happens in option one or two or three, if let's say the
057budget fails twice, we're going to be sitting and looking at it to make a additional reductions of a total of 9.8 million dollars above what we originally had made. Because that, ladies and gentlemen, is what needs to be done to get us to a contingency budget. Okay? So, what would your contingency budget look like? It would be 140.9 million dollars. You would have achieved a spending decrease of 4.26% or 6.2 million dollars. You would have a tax levy change of zero. Which really needs you to ask yourself, when you make those 9.8 million dollar reductions to the program, what is your program going to look like? Okay? That's a big number considering the number of staff that we've already dealt with. So, I think it's so That's all I got. I know it's a lot.
058Please don't shoot the messenger. Um I don't I I'm here and my goal and my objective is to help you guys navigate and fix this. And if you think it's fixable, but it really is up to the community. Um you have the options. You know what the implications are. So, now with that, I'll shut up and then I'll open it up for discussion. Thank you. We're still in the portion that is board only. Um so, we'll take questions from the board for you, Mr. Belmonte. And I'd like to start off because I need you to clarify something for me. Um with regard to the option of that very high tax levy of 13.9%. Yes. That would eliminate the deficit completely. There would be no further talk or necessity of having to borrow money. Is that
059correct? For that particular school year, yes. '26-'27, that would resolve the deficit issue in that school year. And doing the drastic further reductions to bring us down to the tax cap this year of 5.5% Does that take care of the deficit in any way? Yes, essentially it eliminates it because we're reducing the budget by another 5.8 million dollars. So, you do it one of two ways. You either fund the deficit or you reduce the program to that amount. You need to close that hole. Those are your two options. Unfortunately, it wasn't ideal for the district administration, but knowing what we know today, we need to plan accordingly. But your middle option would involve would involve some short-term borrowing. And there would be a cost to that, wouldn't there? No. No, the middle option that we
060suggested to reduce another 3 million dollars on the budget would still leave the deficit of about 2.9 million. We would fund that on the tax levy, and that's what would bring the tax levy up to the 9.7%. So, in that option, we would be funding a smaller piece of the deficit. All right, but it But nonetheless, we still would be funding it. We would be funding it through the tax levy. So, at the end of that year, we would be deficit free. That's right. So, any option that we choose, for 26 27, would have to either absorb the deficit or put it on the tax rate or make reductions. And 26 27 would be deficit free at that point. I just want to emphasize that the things that we're talking about 26 27 deficit, we're
061not talking about the deficit in the current year. So, those are two different scenarios. The deficit in the current year is $800 million that we get special act legislation, we'd be able to finance over several years to sort of allow us some time to uh to make decisions to sort of address that deficit. If we don't get it, we'd have to engage in historical lottery sharing. We need one of the slides earlier today, we'd have to do short-term borrowing, uh because of the bond note or the deficit note, uh which would require us to pay back in the 27 28 school year. The 26 27 school year, we pay only interest, but that full amount would be due in the 27 28 school year. So, that's essentially kicking the can down the road. So, obviously,
062we're still lobbying for the special act legislation, which will allow us to raise more money to navigate the budget deficit. But, tonight, really, the emphasis, uh like I said, we're still lobbying the state legislature, but much later, we heard that with the potential that the governor's budget will be delayed even more. We may not even know the possibility in a few weeks. So, that's what we have to plan for in the event that it's not happening, both in the current year and in the next. But, we really want to focus our discussion tonight because in terms of the current school year, there is no option other than short-term borrowing That That's what's on the table unless special act legislation We get word from the state legislature that our special act legislation and the governor's budget
063will be able to get done. The 26 '27, we have different options. Again, option one, go down to the cap, which requires another 5.8 or 5.9 million dollars in reductions, go all the way up to 13.7, where we fund the entire deficit through the tax levy, or a compromise between, which will call for additional 3 million dollars in cuts, and a tax levy that still pierces the cap, instead of 13.7% at 9.7%. I think what I was trying to get at is for the short-term borrowing that we're probably going to have to do if we don't get special legislation. That's That cost is built into the budget that you're presenting for '26 '27. Yes, there is interest cost that was originally built in in anticipation of interest on special act that's in the legislation. We
064can do that at the end of the discussion. Um so, for board members, who wants to start? If nobody wants to start, I'll begin. I didn't know we'd be so close with these questions. I don't know if that I can do that. Um but it's not directed at you personally. Um to know where we're going, I think we have to know where we've been. And um some of the some of the difficulties in building a budget um happens when you don't get all the information that you are asking for. For those who don't know me, my name is Cheryl Felice. I've been on the board for 9 years. I'll be leaving the board come June 30th. So, a lot of the reasons for my questioning is because I won't be here next year. And I
065wanted to make sure that some of the mishaps that happened in building the budget last year and going forward for this year are shared with the board members that are going to remain on the board and some of you who are running this year and will win your elections this year will know going forward. So, we were very fortunate to get the talents of Mr. Belmonte to join us to help us navigate this budget process. And so, one of the uh some of my some of my questions are not going to be questions, they're going to be statements. But, it was very difficult last year in noticing where there were red flags with the treasurer's reports. And so, question when when treasurer's reports and you and I had these conversations in public portion about deficits
066in treasurer's reports. And then those were red flags that there was deficits beginning to raise red flags. And that deficits should not be in treasurer's reports. And so, when we finally got to the conclusion that they shouldn't be there and I'll get to the some of the memos that I have. But, back in March 20th of when I started to notice these deficits were in the salary lines. And when it was clear that the we were going to have to look at layoffs for the 2020 25 26 school year budget. I had asked for a list of every personnel, every single job, every single title, and everybody in the in those positions. I never got that list. It was asked for again this year. We still have not got that list. And now we have
067the scenario in front of us. Being asked to choose between one, two, and three. We have layoffs that we're being asked to approve tonight. I still for 2 years running we don't this board has not seen an entire list of every personnel that is in this district. And yet we're being asked to lay off 32 33 people tonight and more possibly before the end of the year. And so I will say again as I did in previous board meetings to board of education members, don't take no for an answer. Because this information is critical. It's the right of the board of education to have it. And constant denials end up in situations like this. I'm told we're getting the information tomorrow. It is great. It's too little, too late. So that's just one piece of
068information I wanted to share. And um and this and this man has to give us the reports because he's in a position to generate those reports. But we couldn't get it before 2 years running. So that's just one of the situations that we're facing. A year ago in this very room on April 2nd and I remember that day distinctly because I sat in this in this uh in this very auditorium. It was my birthday. But we sat here and one of our members who was facing um excess at that time asked the superintendent to put down the camera and pick up a mirror. And for the very same reason, we were facing the very same situation, and here we are again in in the same situation. And here we are again because we have information,
069we were looking at the same treasurer's reports, and I was being told that it that the treasurer's reports were not real numbers. They're just a budgetary tool. And over and over again as I pointed pointed out these deficits, I I had other other board members telling me that I was confusing numbers this year with numbers of next year. I knew exactly what I was looking at. And that the negative numbers didn't represent banking numbers. I knew exactly what I was looking at. And again, I tried to >> Madam President, can I have a point of order, please? In the world in the world that I went to, Point of order, please. Point of order. What's the vote? What's your point? We're addressing the budget. It was my point of order. The question was were the
070circumstances were open for questions for the 2016-2017 budget for the matter going forward, not for us to make statements about things that have happened in the past. What was it to find out what questions were asked last year about last year's budget? So, in part She does not have the floor. There is a point of order. She has the floor. Mr. Trent, why don't you step outside? If you have public comments, you can take them when the questions go up. However, you are not up here. There's been a point of order made. This is supposed to be limited to questions about the budget right now. The point and the point and I just need to make a comment because um some of the things that you say I understand it's your perspective, but I have
071a different experience and some of the language that you're using I think you're transposing deficit with the overspending of budget lines, but I'm putting that aside for now in order to have you get back to asking questions about the budget that's presented to us now so that we can go ahead with this workshop meeting and get the information that we need. Thank Thank you, Madam President. The point I'm trying to make about the budget is that when these questions came up and they weren't verified we had an additional problem because spending continued and we ended up with a bigger bigger deficit. So, I'll just go briefly through the through the memo. So, I asked for information about the cost of a pickup truck a brand new pickup truck that I saw. A brand new pickup
072truck with a plow on it. I asked for the cost of that. I asked for the cost of all the sweep that we had in the district. And I asked for the cost of a new courtyard that was built. I asked for the cost of all the overtime that was spent in the 24 25 budget. I asked for the cost of all the overtime in this year's budget and in the 25 26 and it wasn't provided to us. Yet, we had identified cost overruns in the in the state controller's budget. I asked for a special meeting on the treasurer's report that was supposed to be provided for the new trustees in August of last year. That was never provided. Again, then I asked for if we were spending our money wisely on the energy performance
073contract which is $8 million and the legal fees that was cost that was associated with that. Never got that information either. My point is we kept spending and spending and spending and now we have this budget that we have here. When Mr. Belmonte got here on October 22nd is when he finally verified that negative balances never should have been in the treasurer's report. And now here we are today. Exactly. Here we are today and that's why we need to address the budget. >> is we've never we're being asked to lay off again tonight and we still don't have this board has never seen the full compliment of of our personnel in this district and we're being asked to lay off again. And now we're being asked to to decide between a budget in in less
074than a week in in exactly a week on what we're supposed to hand it hand out to this public on what is going to be best for this district. So the the personnel list that we're being promised for for tomorrow, I hope he can get it to us. I hope he has the time to get it to us. Well, let me let me make a comment. Every every employee of this district's salary is online and available to the public in We shouldn't have to do that. Okay. We're at The point was for this meeting so everybody understands, the point of this meeting was to hear from you. And I think that's what my frustration is. I don't think that you have to say that. Please speak into the microphone. Thank you. Okay. I We're The
075point of this meeting was to hear from you. No. That's all I'm getting. That's my frustration. Everything that's here has been discussed. We've seen we've talked about. It's time to hear from you. So, I don't Wait, hello. Well, it will It's just an opportunity for the board to ask questions about the presentation. Okay. So, I just want to make one quick comment about it. So, basically, we need to see individuals' names and salaries, but we provide them with the total amount of collective bargaining unit and what that amount would determine the budget and how much needs to be When we reduce staff, reductions are made based on seniority. So, the names, aside from the value that those people have, become consequential in terms of the weight of deductions and what they So, we did provide
076the total cost of each collective bargaining unit in terms of each salary expenditures. We didn't provide specific names associated with those salaries, but I will say that I believe three board members know we provided unless the board or everyone who was going to be you guys That particular information was provided to the board. In terms of the appropriations and the treasurer's reports from last year, then one response, I got the same information. So, basically, you look at a treasurer's report and it has hundreds of appropriations and what we're told, and again, I learned from John Monti, a better way or a better mechanism to get the information is there could be negative values in certain appropriation lines, but when there are multiple positive values in other appropriation lines, those are transferable and you can kind
077of correct them. What we learned this year, our biggest learning lesson working with the controller's office is those correct- corrections need to happen live. There should never be any negative appropriations in the treasurer's reports because, basically, you could give a false indication that things are in the certain place than where they're actually at. So, that there's some level of truth to that because the understanding was with so many positive appropriations, the negative appropriations obviously will be corrected. That will obviously be correct. Um the salary schedules with individual names again, it's not the total amount of salaries in terms of our budget, but the need to reduce. So we're If we have to reduce salaries by X percent, that's the number that matters. Um and then ultimately you go with seniority. And obviously when I say
078that's the number that matters, I don't want to again say anything that's disrespectful. It's more effective. This is just a matter of how the system is made based on seniority. The last hired are the first to go. This is not about individuals, it's literally your tenure and employment area. The same is true for administrators. Um in terms of the pickup truck, we purchased one pickup truck in the last year. We did provide the cost of $17,000. The current pickup truck we have in our fleet, the floorboard is missing and you can actually see the street beneath it. The rest of our fleet is not new. We have pretty old equipment that that our maintenance crew uses and purchases. Um so those are representing new costs, but we have basically the equipment minimum required to operate
079the school district and to respond to snow and all the other things that have been happening. Um so in that request is made yesterday in terms of fleet. Um but again, when we look at preliminary reports, one of the things we've learned in cleaning, there are a lot of implications and we want to get people on the checklist so that we can be ahead of it. Then we're not surprised at the end of the year um by information being collected. I just wanted to make a comment though so that there's no misunderstanding about the board's role with regard particularly um to layoffs. I Your explanation is it's done solely in reverse order of hiring. So it's not up to the board to go through a list of employees to determine which ones would add up
080to the amount of money that need to be cut. It's done exactly the way it was done through our HR department to evaluate everybody that was fell in the category of um being subject to being excessed. And while that's a very unfortunate situation for us to be in, that is not something that the board can change. The only thing that we can do is, if you want to go out for a budget with a 13.9% tax increase and cover everything and stop the bleeding, then that's an advocacy position that individual board members can take. Correct. And I want to say we have to say just to be in terms of staff reductions were to cause minimal impact on programs. We looked at our initial draft and they seemed they seemed monumental. We looked at the
081online class sizes and programs and I'm sorry. I apologize. So, we just one more note about reductions because no district wants to do such that. And there are multiple districts that are engaged in that practice now. We talk to each other because it's extremely extremely difficult. Our mindset in terms of making smart decisions was to maintain our academic programs to the greatest extent possible. And that had a monumental effect on classes. With the exception of the discontinuation of French, we've been able to maintain the majority of our academic programs, save electives and our money because of the enrollment. Our class sizes are being increased by two, three students at the elementary school level. Same similarly in the high school levels. So, that was our mindset going in. It's not so much a callous approach looking
082at numbers and saying, "Hey, we have to reduce X." So, we we presented it in different sort of stages. The first presentation gave a total number and the reductions. The following presentation by Mr. Hudson broke it down by building, by department, and by area impact. So, again, that information was provided weeks in advance. Uh the names of those affected staff members were provided to the board. Um and they're, you know, again, these decisions are difficult. There's only one mechanism by which we produce that, which is workforce reduction. Does any other board member have questions for Mr. Belmonte? Yes, I do. Um I don't know if you can pull back up the one slide, the total areas of additional budget reductions, if that's possible to pull up. Uh not so first, I want to say thank
083you so much for the time and effort and the money for the presentations. Uh but I want to kind of hopefully simplify this for people that may not be familiar. Um and just how I understand it as well. Yeah, that would be possible. So, my understanding is if we go out at the 13.76, this list does not get touched at all. If we Is that correct? That is correct. So, if we go out at the 9.52, this will kind of serve as an a la carte list of items that could be part of that $3 million cut. That is correct. If we go down to the 5.52, would it be safe to say that probably the majority of this list would be gone? A significant portion, yes, to reach the 5.9 million. And if we
084go to the contingency, this list is gone. Uh this list would not even be enough to get us to 3.5. Okay. So, that's just the impact of what the ordered of levels that we could be at from nothing, all the list, some of the list, to majority, to everything plus some. That is correct. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? No questions. So, we're um We'll move on to the second part of our meeting, which will be the public participation part. I'm sorry. We're going down now to um We've got um business consent agenda. We have two We have two consent items that we have to do. Business consent agenda D D is personnel, not business. So, we're breaking that down into two sections. Right. And we're board consent agenda for personnel. Okay. First, um you'll
085you'll make the recommendation to take care of that. The administration recommends approval of personnel items for collective schedule D1 through D14. Is there a motion to approve D1 through D14? Is there a motion? Um Trustee Ross. Trustee Buchanan second. All in favor? Um let's see. That looks like six in favor. Is there a no vote? One no. Okay. Motion carried. The administration recommends approval of personnel items for collective schedule D15 through D18. Wait, hold on. The 15 to the personnel agenda. Um I know, but I just had to refresh it. Um We did D. There's two sections. There's a There's a Boston positions and then there's a personnel agenda. You said 15 and 17 were one. Um you said no. Well, then it would just be um D 14, right? D 15. We did the
086abolish and then the positions. Right. D >> we need to do the personnel agenda. If you open up the attachment, D just means All right, so through the 18. So, you're asking for approval of I don't have that. We have D 15 only. Okay. We'll table that. Okay. All right. So, do you want to go down now to E, which is the work consent agenda for business? Yes, the administration recommends approval of the contract schedules E1. Is there a motion to approve item E1? No, there's a motion. Mo- motion for questions. I'll make a motion, second, and then open for questions. Are you asking for a motion to approve? Yes. Yeah. Motion to approve and a a and then it's open for questions. Now, I'm I'm not looking to approve it. I'm looking to table
087it. From that standpoint, I'm not going to approve it before I question it. So, wouldn't the motion to A motion No, the motion but the vote is not taken on it until after the questioning. You need a motion first. So, is there a motion to approve uh E 1? Vice President Delilah second. Trustee Piccininni. Now, your question. So, I will The question is that based on these were bids and pieces that were received with regard to construction, which is capital improvement. It does not affect the current budget. However, there appears to be only one contractor, a contractor that we've already raised questions on about doing these projects and bringing change orders for additional cost to us at another time. So, at that point, unless I have the contracts, which we have not seen individually before
088this, I'm going to ask that I'd suggest we table it so that it can be reviewed. We had asked a question with regard to Arrow and its work on other projects. There's also the other issues that are brought up for site work, and then given the disparity between some of the other project cost numbers. Um it raises some questions. So, I'd like to see the the the submitted bids before consenting to approval. Specifically with regard to some of the site work, where the lowest bidder is coming in competitively for their initial work, the subsequent work, which if they're approved, I'm assuming they would continue to do the second work. Those numbers are specifically disparately different from the other vendors, so there's questions as to the the differences. So, my my question is today at this
089point is does anybody have an objection to the meeting? The bid results are in the packet. No, I understand the bid results are there. And the bid results are for the window deal with the Arrow Steel windows. Were Arrow Steel windows the only winner on the bid because unknowns, based on what we've been provided I think they're provided by the architect, it just says that the base one bid has been removed, therefore Arrow is the only one. I have a concern there because Arrow, who was the vendor who has previously provided window services to us, there was questions raised about them asking for additional money. Specifically towards asbestos with regard to our buildings and how that was unusual given the age of our buildings. At this point without the supporting material, I would ask to
090see their bid contract and what what's involved in that. They came back to us on other times and asking us for additional funds for circumstances we believe they should have been aware of. I'm now airing out and I'm going down a whole list of items. I understand what's been recommended, however, they're the only ones left standing. I don't want to be holding another bill which I believe last time was in excess of a hundred thousand dollars for asbestos. Um, I I understand your concern. Um, when these bids were received, we did have two vendors, but the district does their due diligence to evaluate the particular vendors. The first vendor, based on our due diligence, did not submit a complete bid. There were items that were left out of the bid. So, the process is that
091we always sit with the low bidder, we review their submittal, and we give the vendor the opportunity to acknowledge the fact that to make sure that they bid what was in the best interest. This particular vendor did not, and they submitted a letter to appropriately withdraw their bid. So, then I may have So, so we're left with the We go to the second vendor that submitted a bid and then asked to be out. So, and then I may have asked the question before, our previously successfully bid to do the windows at our various buildings, and I believe Kramer Street was the last or the most recent building. Gribbs was the most recent building. Those of us who live in the district, it is clearly known that the building was built prior to 1975 and it's
092been here for some time. That same vendor came back to us and told us they discovered asbestos material when they were changing the windows. My basic knowledge says they should have been aware of the asbestos when they did the change. I don't know what the spec pieces were. We questioned it. They asked for a $100,000 change order in order to effectuate the installation of the windows. That project was allowed to go forward. As we're sitting here cutting people or cutting things that $100,000, even if it's a capital project, it's not going to ultimately end up on an employment role. I think it's reasonable to request to look at that contract. We had an issue with that last I'm not going to see even if I had the contract here tonight to review, I'm not going
093to sit here and do it in the days, but this is the first time that I'm seeing the award letter with regard to our They are the only successful bidder, but it is not unreasonable to look at the terms and make sure they're consistent, especially since they are the ones that have done the work on the remaining building the buildings that are in the district. All right. If I could just provide some additional information hopefully to clarify. The way the process works is after the uh board approves the bid recommendation of the quality architect in the district, then there is a formal contract that's drawn up between the district and between the contractor by the It's called the AIA contract. And in that contract is the specifications for the plans and specs that the contractor
094is responsible for. Uh I would like to comment about the previous project because upon uh further investigation, you're absolutely right. The contractor did ask for a change order. As with any construction project, if you run into a unforeseen condition that is not part of the specifications, the contractor does have a right to ask for a change order. Now, having said that, the research that was done on that project that was several years ago, maybe more than several, but maybe seven to eight years earlier, the windows were changed in that building. Okay? And apparently, when the frames were taken out, there were the old frames that were kept with the And the asbestos was never removed by the first contractor. Whether that was not part of the original contract, I have no way of knowing because
095it was many years ago. But in that particular situation, when the contractor clearly removes the frames as they were supposed to, and it was thought that the first contractor it supposed to do, and it turned out to be a specialist. Walker was a specialist. Okay? They have additional scope to their work. So, you know, we can go back and we said we're saying about the age of the building, knowing that the first thing we check, lots of times there are allowances that are put into the contract for these type of contingencies that happen. Because as with any project, there are unforeseen things that happen. You can open up a book wall, you can open up a ceiling, and it could be asbestos on the corners of the pipes. And the district, in order to perform
096the contract appropriately, we have to take corrective action. So, every construction contract that I've been involved with over the past so many years, they all have either a contingency or an allowance that's built into the contract. That's how it works. If at the end of the contract, that that allowance or contingency is not used, that contract then gives a credit back to the district. And we take a contract reduction credit back to the board to be approved, and that credit gets reduced from the contract amount. And so I like >> So, so that's the that's Again, just additional information. And I I appreciate the additional information. However, the term the key legal term for the several hundred contracts that I've been involved with, the unforeseen piece is where I throw the issue here. The contractor
097has done the projects. They've done Primary School, they've done the Middle School. They actually have hands-on experience inside of our district. For them to bid or do what they did, I have questions. From that standpoint, before we spend the money as we're talking about saving dollars and working efficiently, it's It's unreasonable for us to take a look, especially in the state of for that matter take multiple looks. If we look now, maybe we correct the comment or or an issue that goes with the contract being created at the legal meeting. From that standpoint, and I understand while practice was was done before, status quo isn't it isn't acceptable to not look at it simply because status quo is what we carry forward. We're going to keep doing the same thing. So, I'm looking at the
098numbers, I'm at least raising the question thinking it's reasonable to take at least 7 days to take a look at that. From that end, if I'm alone, I'm alone, but I'm going to raise my voice. From that standpoint, I'm asking to or suggesting to the board that that can be done. What would you like to see? I I just have one question. This is capital projects money. We can't pull this into general fund for teachers, right? That is absolutely correct. It's unfortunate cuz I'd like to see us be able to do that. But, since we can't, I'd like to move the motion and just take the vote on the on the project. Thank you. All right. The motion was made and seconded. I I My motion was to table was to table >> So, you've
099got a motion to table it. I just I just question this this one. Is there an emergency to to vote tonight to table for 7 days next week? Um I don't think that's reasonable to The way that the issue we have with these projects is lead time. We're running into the getting close to summer. I'm trying to get all their work scheduled over the summer months when school is not in session. Um again, I would raise this issue with the lead time. And any delays with that would be involved in the ordering of the materials. It could be modified on the road. But, I I just need clarification what you would like to see because as I indicated at this point without a approval from the board all of the architectural firms cannot draft a
100new any suggestions that you'd like to see a draft A&E No, at this point I'm asking to see the the RFP as well as their submitted submitted bids and their submitted bids. Okay, so your motion is to table. Yeah. Is there a second? That motion fails. We're back to the main motion to approve um approve the item. It was motion made, seconded. All in favor? Six in favor, any opposed? One opposition. The motion carries. And now I think we can go back Can everybody refresh? Go back on the personnel items. And look at item uh four uh item 15. It opens up go to joint That shows um item it says 15. All right, so we have to correct that. from D18. Right, that was what I was getting to. But the the first motion
101was for nothing. It was nothing in those numbers. There is no nothing on the agenda. Actually, there was. There was. Because if So, if you look at the agenda and under D, Board Consent Agenda, Personnel, 1 through 14 is the abolishment of positions per department. That's what we voted on. There's two things that need to happen. First, you abolish the positions and then you excess the staff. Okay. So, item 15, Personnel Agenda, when you open it up, that group's number is 15 um through 18. I need an addition to this. No, absolutely not. It's two-step process. It's procedural. Abolishing the positions and then the excessing of the staff. >> just clarify the numbers that we voted on first, please? D 1 through 14. If you look at your agenda, it says abolishment of positions, art,
102elementary, etc. So, now we're down to D15. No, there's also D16, 17, There's an attachment on D15. But your recommendation is for all of those. D15 equals two And these are two separate Yeah. So, we need D15. We need a motion. We need a motion for D15. Correct. So, is there a motion to approve item 15? Please use the mic. I see you. >> Just leave it at 15. We'll table that for next week since it's not a reflection of what we're doing. Can you actually hear me without this? We're starting with the the budget forum. Anyone who wants to ask a question, please be sure you've gotten submitted a card to our district clerk. Um the questions must relate directly to the 2026-2027 budget and the options that were presented tonight. There will be
103no questions regarding individuals and the questions um we're going to require and and expect civility and um good conduct, the kind of conduct that we would like to see in our classrooms as well. So, anybody that needs to fill out a card, please do it. I think our district clerk will be called You'll be calling up the speakers. Um you'll have 3 minutes to ask your questions. And then um we will have an opportunity to respond to those. So, can you start by calling Mark Foral. There's a microphone over here on the uh to your left. That over here is on the back. All right, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Um so, Mr. Dawson, you actually asked the question that I wanted to ask. Um I saw some pretty difficult things to digest on
104that list. And you know, from my feelings of just looking at what's on social media, seeing what people are talking about in public, I don't have any a good feeling about any budget passing. Um so, what I'm thinking is you know, we're going to see all those things or most of those things being cut. Uh my question is is there a hierarchy as in terms of what is going to get cut first? Cuz I see like positions on there, like directors and things like that. Then I see things like EP classes and music programs, pretty much everything that makes up the school. Um is there a hierarchy in terms of what gets cut first? Um and it wasn't on there, I guess that um I'll revisit the administrative positions, the directors. What would that save
105us? If we did cut those directors, what is the savings? And what could we save then on the music student end? Could we save the music program if we cut the right programs. Thank you. Okay, so basically we don't know right now what what's going to happen after we get directions from the board in terms of what scenario we're going to be looking at. We're going to have a real hard task in the final break. What is going to be cut in the next round? Basically, some of the questions that come tonight will help us to form that decision. Um in terms of the salaries, you know, they're all combined. Um the salaries are around 200,000. $300,000. Um you have to keep in mind that, you know, when you look at all the salaries combined
106and the functions that these people serve, there is also some unintended costs associated with that, too. But ultimately, um you have to look at all the different sort of things and the way I see it, you got to try to preserve programs as much as possible. And sort of bizarre going backwards, the things that have minimal impact um instruction, first and foremost. Um but none of those things are easy to cut. I'm going to say that with, you know, sincerity. All of those things I have on this list have minimal um from our administrators to athletics coordinators to our extracurricular activities, to athletics, to music. And one of the most difficult tasks that we have is depending on what your experience is with your children, it's going to be difficult for you to say, "Well,
107I'd rather not have a music program because my child is a three-season athlete." And vice versa, if your child has benefited from the music program, it's going to be wonderful to say, "Well, maybe we've got one of the sort of elements in athletics." So, it's it's really going to be like really difficult to go through this and you're qualified on this sort of team. So, we're going to just kind of go over this because we have to make these decisions fairly quickly. There is no priority. It's basically what it costs um minimal impact on the district. What I mean by minimal impact is obviously not minimal impact on those above it. Because again, if your student and you're in the music program and you decide to cut the music program to any level, then it's
108just freshman on, middle school, or even high school, uh it's going to impact all those kids who participate. If we cut any level of athletics, whether it's at the middle school, just JV sports, for example, it's going to impact all those kids who participate. So, it's really difficult. And that's why we wanted to propose the different scenarios. Uh because $3 million cut is different than obviously $6 million cut. And contingency just sort of eliminate most of the programs. I don't know what I'm adding to the one. Xavier Solano, and Mr. Kenneth Sims up there. Um it's kind of ridiculous. These these rhetorical uh so, it's generalizations, minimal impact. But we shouldn't have to choose between sports and music. Right. Um So, you know, I I a few I have a lot of questions and I
109I have some reflections on the recent news day um that just came out. So, are kids worthy of an education? Of happiness? Of success? Of a future? We are the lowest and and I'm just This is a reminder. We've heard this before many times. We're the lowest performing district on Long Island. We are in need of more help, more opportunity, more investment, not less. So, anything less than that is not enough and it's not a solution. I'm going to state some obvious things because the obvious continues to elude this administration. Our teachers, and by extension our children are not means to an end. They are not expendable line items to balance your budget. The budget exists for them. They are ends in themselves. The budget is the means. Our educators are the mission. And yet,
110through no fault of their own, our teachers and our children are the ones now suffering. Newsday reported this morning that the state comptroller's office found this district repeatedly underestimated its its expenses. Relied on more than $8 million in non-recurring pandemic relief to pay for recurring programming and staffing costs, and overspent its 2024-25 budget by 3 and 1/2 million dollars. It's actually a lot more than that, 16 million, because we took 13 million out of our reserves, which is absolutely ridiculous. Uh that is a failure of the administration, not of classroom teachers, not of arts programs, not the children sitting in those seats. So, stop disingenuously telling us that these cuts don't further disadvantage our children. The damage is not abstract. It is specific. It is personal. My son was in the recent Moana production in
111this very school, that very stage right behind you. It is customary, it is always been customary, that the elementary schools, the three that we have, bus in to see the show, to be inspired by their older peers, to plant a seed. My daughter is 6 years old at Brookhaven Elementary, a few miles down the road from here. She should have been in that audience. She wasn't. It was this district that afforded the bus. That's pathetic. HOW MANY CHILDREN IN those elementary schools would have been ignited by that experience and chosen to get involved in theater when they when they got older. We will never know. You took that from them. And with these cuts, there won't even be a theater programming, period, full stop, gamma. These are not line items, these are moments, and once
112they're gone, they do not come back. This is a moral imposition, and frankly, it is a contractual one, too. It is the superintendent and his administration's job to balance this budget. It is the board's job to hold the administration accountable to that task, or find another solution. So far, your presentations to this community have been pervaded by what Voltaire might have called the mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well. Tonight, it is not well. Tonight, it was all is not well, and it's not our fault. Too little, too late indeed, Joe. You're right. This is not the best of all possible worlds, but we are here tonight, rightly fighting for it. Our trust in this administration has been shattered, but our conviction in this community, in our teachers,
113in our children, is steadfast. We must cultivate our garden, not rip it out by the roots. You have proven you cannot solve this problem in a reasonable way. So, who will? So, strongly I think a lot of what Mr. Sprague said is correct. I don't think at one any moment we said anything for a whole while. It's not. So, so basically, what we learned from what happened, we've been making corrective measures. I want to emphasize something that comes from my heart, is that absolutely our main focus is our kids. So, in terms of the decisions that we're sort of presented with, it's not about choices, it's about the fact that we don't have enough revenue to support these programs. That can't be unchanged. If there is any other mechanism by which we can find revenue
114and restore these programs and bring people back, by all means we would do it. We've been very honest about the inefficiencies in our budgeting practices in the past, as outlined in the controller's report. Very frankly, we let go. We've said we repeated it this year. We were all presented with the same information in previous years, that's what we're responding to. And of course, hindsight is an amazing thing. But what we're presented today is it's a real it's a real situation. It's not a choice that we're making between preserving staff or making other sort of choices. It's all of it sort of it encompasses what we need to do to get the district solvent. That's why we sort of presented our opportunity to the taxpayers to restore or to keep as much as possible. This is
115about revenue. Again, every program, to your point, I've been at every performance, every concert. I cherish my times with the students here. Not because I want to take a selfie, that is because of the students, they enjoy it. Because of my love for all of our students and our staff. This is incredibly difficult. So, make no mistake, it's not about devaluing our theater arts program. I'm a theater arts kid, Mr. O'Leary, it was fantastic. I've always celebrated our accomplishments of our children at every concert. I give them their props. And because this is why I chose this profession, I've spent years in this profession, and this is the biggest job I've ever had. It's heartbreaking. But we're attempting to resolve it, and resolving it involves or or takes really difficult decisions. But we just don't
116have the revenue, we have a deficit. That's real. Regardless of how we got here, we're here. We've made changes. We worked with the controller's office. We have been transparent. At no point today did I say that things were okay. In fact, I said this is basically a climate. But we have to sort of reframe it and see this as an opportunity to rise up and try to resolve it. We've made the changes in the business office. We've made changes in procedures. We're doing our best to educate the board in terms of how we can sort of back check budget reports and other sort of financial internal controls. But we value our teachers. We value our administrators. We value our students especially. This is why we do what we do. It's not about that. It's not
117about making choices with the easy answers. This is That's that. That's not the difficult answer. And there is superfluous things in our budget that we need to easily eliminate without impacting kids, they would be the first to go. The last to go are teachers, educators, administrators, support staff, cuz they're the ones who have the day-to-day contact with students. Unfortunately, people, staff, represent over 80% of our budget. So it almost makes it impossible to avoid that situation. When I say our firm and my commitment to this community and our students, most of whom I know and have relationships with, this is heartbreaking. So this is why we presented these different scenarios that are difficult, but the idea is how do we preserve those experiences that we so dearly talked about? It's heartbreaking to bring elementary school
118kids to the middle school to see the wonderful production this year with a lot of them. But we still pay $6,000 for your car. So Let's talk about it. Uh this audience participation is by putting in a card and having 3 minutes at the microphone, not from calling out from the audience. The civility requirement among the audience needs to be maintained. That would All right, you've been asked to leave. Can we just go back to hearing from the from the folks? Yes, the next card, please. Good evening. My name is Matthew Pinickson. I'm a teacher in the district. This is my 30th year. I'm retiring in June. And my heart is broken for them leaving on it on such horrible conditions for a district that I have loved for 30 years. I invested here. I
119lived here for 20 of my 30 and that's a little bit more. Children of mine gone through the district. I am devastated by what's happened and I have seen it all in my 30 years here. I've never seen it worse than this. I am not going to use my 2 minutes and 30 seconds to keep waiting because I would need much more than 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Having said that, I want to ask a few questions. You talk about the transparency, accountability. I don't believe there's been real accountability. What I saw was a resignation of a business person but no accountability. Nobody is taking ownership. We teach that to the students when they do something wrong to own what they do wrong. And I haven't heard anyone own it. You say it but I
120haven't seen anyone own it. I would really like someone to own it. I don't know who it is tonight but someone needs to own it. Just saying they're in bad shape isn't enough. This is people's lives. The other thing I want to talk about and this is painful and I'm probably going to make a lot of enemies when I'm done and I have to work about 50 more days. I want to talk about the administrator cuts. Yes, thank you. I worked here in the district when we had department chairs. They're teachers that get a stipend, a very nominal amount of money. These are teachers that are in the trenches with the teachers. I wish I could tell you that I see the directors. In my job the last few years as an instructional coach at
121Bell Fork Middle School, I'm all around the building. I am not tied to a classroom. We took space to give an office to the directors at their insistence that they needed an office, and we took space from our teachers. Maybe three times that office was used this year. One of them not by a director, but the assistant superintendent of curriculum who's in my building more than your directors. If you're going to have to sit and make cuts, and I don't know how much these cuts equal, and I don't think it's going to be enough, but I hear the director cuts are This is the last, you know, we have to do it. We have to do it. This should have been done at the same time that you have destroyed the front LINE OF EDUCATION.
122WE HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT WE HAVE TO WORK WITH LESS. I have teachers that have a $10 copy allowance per week to make copies for their students. More with less than your central office can do more with less. Miss O'Grady can do more with less. I'm almost done, I promise. Miss Donahue can do more with less. And yes, Mr. Santana, you can do more with less. In a perfect world, you would keep all of these directors, and you would keep all these teachers. Your bell rang. I need two more seconds to finish. One and a half minutes. Your directors have no direct impact on students. They are not in the trench. And no army has won a war with just generals. It is time to get rid of your generals and go back to the
123grunts. Myself and the other people IN THIS ROOM I JUST WANT TO SAY HAVING THIS MEETING AT 9:30 of Q&A is completely unacceptable. Other communities have Q&A's town halls on the budget on Saturdays 11:00 to 1:00, multiple times 6:00 p.m. This is ridiculous, all right? I also want to say these discussions about transparency are complete jokes. I submitted questions to FAQ last month. There's no update with them. So, I'm just going to read I have a whole speech planned. I'm I'm just going to read the questions that I sent you last month. So, you you knew about them and you should be able to respond in full. Why did the district cancel and refuse to reschedule the district's budget advisory committee? Why hasn't this committee met since January? I thought we're all hands on deck.
124Why aren't committee members given notice regarding the status of this committee they volunteered their time for? It's completely unacceptable. Another question. Why did the number of FTE being cut this year uh increase from 20 FTE in January presentation of the district 3-year fiscal recovery plan to 60 FTE in mid-March? What changed? Where is the link to the updated 3-year fiscal recovery concepts of a plan? And why don't we have a multi-year financial plan AT THIS POINT? IF YOU GOT THE DEFICIT FINANCING APPROVED, you would have to submit that to the controller anyway. And this is not news to you, Mr. Bellamy. I've been I this multiple times, and that's when you stopped having these meetings. On March 11th, Mr. Belmonte showed the financial impact of proposition as one, reducing bus expenses by 900,000, two, reducing
125the tax increase by 900,000. The net cost of this busing everyone agrees with is 390,000. That's the 900,000 minus the 510,000 of transportation aid using the district's 56.7% aid ratio. How How can reducing revenue by 900,000 dollars save a net transportation save a net transportation cost of 390,000 dollars save seven to nine teachers jobs at an average teacher cost of 100,000 dollars as Mr. Belmonte claimed. I ask you to please clearly show the calculations used to justify how this proposition saves seven to nine teachers jobs. I previously sent a spreadsheet showing this proposition is a net loss for our district of 2 million dollars over the next five years. Since we are all projected to lose 900,000 dollars in tax revenue to save a net expense of 390,000 dollars. I don't know how many times
126I have to ask this. And the last time Mr. Santana said that Mr. Belmonte spoke with Arnie Franklin who approved all this. I contacted the controller's office. They have not said that. I also had had last month there was a discussion about cutting AP classes, high school classes. They're putting thresholds for the those classes at 15 or 20 students. I asked to understand the impact on high school program changes. What was the class sizes in the past for these electives, AP classes, the college level courses. I've asked Mr. Hutzman three times. You don't even have the decency to say I got my email. So, you talk about transparency. We don't even know what the impact is of the things that you say you're cutting. That's not transparency. THAT'S GASLIGHTING THE PUBLIC. AREN'T YOU GOING ANSWER
127MY QUESTIONS? NO. SO, there are a lot of questions to ask. So, in so in terms of these Hold on. Okay. In terms of the presentation presentation proposition the $900,000 expenditure is a $900,000 expenditure. So, when you reduce that expenditure, it does represent a cost savings. One of the things that is not in the budget process is the budget for the net expense. The rebates that come up on the other side of it is not factored into the expenditure. A budget needs to be balanced. So, we have a $900,000 Let me answer your question. Hold on a second. If I budget for a $900,000 expenditure and I remove it from the budget I have to balance the budget, which means on the revenue side, I have to reduce. You can't have the revenue without the
128expenditure. I'm going to repeat that. You can't have the revenue without the expenditure. So, I'm going to really simplify it so that I hope, you know, and again, I'm really simplifying it because again, there was some confusion because the truth is, yeah, on the revenue side, you had a decrease of $900,000. But again, I'm going to emphasize that expenditure is not there. But wait a second. You get a So, let's make it simple numbers. If we have an expenditure for $100 I need $100 to pay it. In the second year, I get a $50 rebate. There's a $50 cost uh for that expenditure. But on my budget I still have to spend $100 regardless of the $50 reduction. The reduction of the expenditure is what it is. It's a reduction of $900,000. You can't look
129at it based on the rebate you get. That's what causes under budgeting. If we start budgeting for net expenses you can argue that every reduction you make is a reduction in revenue. But when We're not going to have half a million dollars lost because we still have the $900,000 expense. So if I reduce, for example, both these programs, just an example, if both these programs cost $100 I didn't interrupt you, doctor, respectfully. I am answering your question. You're just refusing to accept the answer. And I I I just asked the question several I I answered the question. I just finished explaining it. If we have a Bosey's program that costs $100 and we remove that from our budget, we have to balance the budget, which means on revenue side we have a reduction of $100.
130It's still a savings to the district because that revenue would be used or targeted for that $100. We cannot budget on rebates or aid received. That's one of the things we discovered. That's one of the corrections we have to make. We have to budget for the gross expense, meaning the total expense that's in the budget. That's my answer. I think No, I'm sorry, but your time your time is eating into your time is eating into other speakers. No. I'll I'll say one more thing. Over five years you don't you don't have No. You You have your three minutes. You've had had your three minutes. It's time to go on to the next question. Next question. So look up. The transportation question answered in queue. She'll repeat it in half a second. She'll repeat it. Victoria
131Victoria Carbone I said Carbone. For a moment. Um I'm a proud parent of a Belfort middle school student as well as a sophomore at St. John the Baptist. I've seen firsthand the passion and drive behind the teachers in the South Windsor school district. I've seen teachers going above and beyond to create a safe and learning environment for our children of Belfort. Personally, I can say that my son has flourished in the district because of the dedication of his teachers. The talents you have in your classrooms are admirable. They should be honored in that town. Watching some of my son's teachers and his coaches lose their job while the administrative staff receive raises is a slap in the face. The cuts need to start at the top, not at your front line. As it pertains to
132private school bussing, most people don't know that this year there was a cut to private school bussing already. As parents, we received a phone call from the bus company the week before the school year started letting us know that there was a cut. We received this phone call, we took it, we said we're going to do the best we can with it. We adjusted our schedules and moved schools without a financial burden. We did so without asking questions. How much did you save with these cuts? What did you do with that money? Now we're facing the fact that you're cutting the buses on full for private school with no regard. Are you doing this because we didn't make a fuss last year? Please know you'll hear us now because we have enough We've had enough
133and we're going to make a fuss. I understand that many of the private school students work hard to receive scholarships for public high school. They worked hard for years to get into their high schools and now you're pulling this away from them like it's nothing. Most of us are working two to three jobs and we're not able to drive our kids to and from school every single day. The loss of bussing will result in moving our school children from our high schools and abandoning abandoning their scholarships right before they start applying to college. Frankly, you're messing with our child. Explain to them that the district made poor financial and the students are the ones who pay. You gave raises to your own staff, contracted landscapers to high bidders for basically screwing up your tax dollars
134for many years, and now you're punishing our students because of your mistakes. Please look at your administrative lines instead of taking away from our students. Thank you. Samuel White Hi, my name is Sam. I'm the father of a 6-year-old at one of the school district schools. And I want to talk about something specific for the 12 6 2017 budget and then bring it back to a school specific question. But just in general terms to start with, the controller's report is a damning account of incompetence. Let's face it. And I'm sure that most people are wondering now, how did these cost overruns, budget overruns happen? And who was sleeping on the books? So the specific question I have is in regards to the overtime overspending for admin and security of half a million dollars. If I
135was a teacher in this school district and I just lost my job, I'd read that report, controller's report, and I'd be thinking, part of my job was lost because we overspent on overtime and no one was watching the books. So the question is first off the board, uh commit to freezing administrative salaries and mandating zero overtime policy for the rest of this year and the next year. And secondly, can we get some kind of guidance on how such levels of incompetence accounting will not happen going forward. Before you approve another budget, we want to know that it's actually going to be satisfactorily managed. Maybe I can address some of those points and by talking about what we have have done since uh I I came to the district. You're absolutely right about what was in
136the controller's report. And as I mentioned earlier, it was items that we identified even before the controller started their review of the district. Um well, before that, we began implementing controls and budget management. And by that, I mean fixing uh oversight, how the budget is managed, make sure that we're addressing When we when we look at the deficit that we had not only what happened in 24-25, but how those issues continually rolled into 25-26 and also 26-27. Um the accounting practices have changed. The oversight has changed. The overtime issues have been addressed. Okay? And the development of the 26-27 budget, the reason why it is where it is is because it reflects your current program costs. So, that's the comments that were made in prior years about under-budgeting, lack of revenues, we are addressing that.
137We have addressed that. We tried to resolve that. And the 2026-2027 budget is reflective of that. So, when you look at the the overtime budget in specific areas, when we budget this specifically, we looked back and looked at expenditure trends. We did not budget with our eyes closed. We budgeted based on the needs of the districts and programs. And that's how we built that budget. And then, when we put the revenue side together, it just wasn't enough revenue to fund where we were. I.E., that's why we have that $5.9 million deficit gap and lack of revenues. So, the option is we need to align those costs with our available revenues. We simply do not have the revenues to pay for that level of program. So, the specific question is, will the board agree to administrative
138salary freezes and mandate and mandate a zero overtime policy in order to recuperate some funds that may be then appropriated towards saving some positions that otherwise would be cut? Okay. Let me explain. From a budget standpoint, how the 2026-2027 budget was built, there were no increases that were put in for administration other than what existed in contracts for teachers, for the clerical staff, they get what's called a step and more. If there's a step increase they're entitled to under the law. We what we budgeted for that. But we budgeted the salaries for those people that do not have contractual increases in place with zeros. And that's how the 2016 budget 2016-2017 budget was built. I'm not convinced that the contracts don't have any clauses that would allow for this some modifications to be made to
139save uh positions on the front line. Regardless, you still haven't confirmed whether you would mandate a zero hour zero hour overtime I'll answer for the portion of the board. From the first standpoint, there are multiple people and I'm just using this as an example. Everybody in this room knows Mr. Belmonte is the he's an interim employee. We're looking to hire somebody who who still would got it's not appropriate. No, it's not appropriate. So you got to form a committee and sit down. Thank you. So for us So for us to promise, sir, to answer your question, the promise to a freeze for administrative people, us as the board, not the administrators, there's we have to find a new business person. So I can't say there's going to be a zero there. The other part of
140your So to make that promise to you would be false. The same the same way others in the room have asked for a new superintendent. I'm not ask I'm not asking about that, but someone else someone else might ask about that. But can I just No, no, I'm just using that as the example. So hence, I can't make the promise, but I get Mr. Belmonte has answered my question quite adequately in regards to the administrative salary freezes, but what I still haven't heard is a mandate on zero overtime hours so we don't see a large half a million dollar budget overrun on overtime for our men in security. It's a very It's a question. You can ask me anything, but but it's not a simple It's not a simple answer. So, basically, you can look
141at it two ways, and it becomes like semantics. One way is that we overspent overtime, or that we under-budgeted. So, you got to understand that anytime there's snowstorms, anytime there's calamities in our district, they may require overtime. So, to say that we would put a a hard freeze on overtime would be disingenuous. However, what we've done is we changed the way the approval process for this department works. There are certain events that require people to come in at off hours. But, there has to be better oversight in that regard. And one of the things I want to talk in terms of, you know, what we've said is that we do understand your frustration and your anger. Um and we share that frustration, too. You know, in terms of accountability, you know, it's there's a been
142a change in the leadership. John Belmonte has come in because he has all that expertise to sort of help navigate us out of this fiscal situation that we're in. But, we can't change the fact that we're in it already. We just have to do something about it. Um and that's what we're sort of committed to doing. Overtime, when I look back at the comptroller's report, what I've learned from talking to the assistant comptroller in our in our office, is that this is grossly under-budgeted. Um because there is overtime that happens within the operation of the school district that has overtime. This year's specialty, when we had the blizzards and the snow removal, um somebody brought in, for example, our grounds maintenance. Our grounds maintenance has a total cost of about $300,000 a year. And that's
143soup to nuts. It covers the landscaping, mulching, everything. Having like internal maintenance crews and equipment that we would have to purchase far surpasses that expense. So, we are very conscientious of these things. But, to say we would have a hard freeze uh overtime is disingenuous. In terms of capital improvement positions, to the box's point, there is a freeze. We're also going to be contributing more to our health care. In effect, it's a sort of reduction in our salaries. So, that's our reduction. All of our increases, whether it's BCA, SCA, or administrators, or CSEA, are contractual. And there is no provision in the contract that allows us to change the collective bargaining collective bargaining. Yes, no one's advocating for removal of maintenance departments, and you mentioned emergency overtime, of course, that needs to stay. The freeze
144would be on non-emergency events, and I still haven't heard an answer to the question to to the question, really, which is, in essence, how do you convince this audience that such um budget overruns will not occur in the future? You You want to You want us to vote on three options here, two two which involve raising taxes, yet um I think there's quite a lot of um concern about the competency of the um administration that we're voting for. This scenario is overruns and overtime and other overruns and whatever else, um uh funds that were one-time funds that were used for uh recurring budgets, but of course the money didn't exist, but somehow was being allocated. Um these things are issues, and we we need to know that it's not going to happen again before we
145agree to spend more money on taxes to fund um an a an an incompetent accounting uh And our current budget, yet I remember three budgets was scrutinized by the controller's office. Three years, including our budget proposal for next year, suggested made for that budget, 2016-2017, that we've already implemented based on the controller's controller's of So, that's a dub. You know, and so And then I can go back to saying if there's been a change in leadership with the the guardian of sort of the budgetary practices that are not individuals in the business office who take care of payroll or accounts receivable or employee benefits, their jobs are done very well. But, we needed to bring someone in with some expertise to change some of those practices in terms of the budget going forward. That's definitely
146done. Could you comment about the change that you've made in the business office with regard to the overtime, particularly with regard to the facilities? I think that's what our speaker was asking about. And now there's more control of the super of the supervisor over that now. Haven't you made some changes in that? Yes, we've made changes across the board. Every supervisor that's in charge of a particular department that involves overtime now has full access to their budget to know what their budget is in concert with the decisions that they're making in approving services. So, we have as we talked about, we consider that an internal control management. What we are doing is we are re-educating from the administrative level down to the board level, giving the board tools to better have fiscal oversight and management
147over the budget as well as central office administration. So, my Our is not only to try to correct the fiscal deficiencies, but we're also from a procedural and administrative piece, we are mentoring those particular individuals and departments to implement best practices. And I can only hope that that process will continue. Okay? And the business position is a very important position within the district, and it should never be minimized for the simple reason that I stated before. I've been doing it 35 years. I have seen just about everything. But the one thing that I can say with great certainty, and I mean this, is that if you don't maintain a solid fiscal foundation, you will never be able to build a good instructional program that you can sustain going into the future. That's the piece here,
148unfortunately, that was lacking. Those are the things that we identified and we are correcting as we move forward. That process should never stop. That process should continue. Because you can only get better and improve on what you have. And that's how you ensure that this particular problem doesn't happen again. You work differently. The business person has to work differently with the board. The business person has to work differently with district administrators. They have to work differently with their auditors. To make sure the questions are being asked. The one thing that I believe I impart based on corrective actions that we have taken is very simple. Trust but verify. And we've heard time and time again from board members as well as administration that this is what we were told. Okay? The fiscal um acumen, if
149you will, has to be raised. It has to be more of a awareness of the fiscal operations, not only in the business office. It has to extend upwards and downwards so everyone understands their role and the importance of accountability. If you're not maintaining and looking at what's happening in the business office and what's being spent and how it's being spent, you're going to run into problems. We are changing that. And I can only hope that my successor will continue those efforts going forward. My next speaker Corey Santa Claus is up there. How come my questions weren't answered? Oh, they weren't? What about the You don't want to hear the answers. What about the other three? You don't want to hear the answers. Hold down, please. And how are you making my life worse? I need
150I need the audience to please not interfere with calling the next person. You don't want the answers. Yes, you're up. You're You're up, number one. Okay, got it. Can you restart that for me? I apologize. I haven't practiced. I had no idea that I'd be speaking for 3 minutes. I'll do my best. Uh my name is Corey Eamon. I'm the mother of two graduates, one graduating senior and a seventh grader. I've been in this district for 30 years. Uh although I did not come from here, I chose to raise my children here and I do love it very much. I love the diversity. I love the area. I love everything about this place. I also teach in a highly underfunded district. I teach in Brentwood High School have a graduating class of 1,400 and I'm
151in my 26th year of education. So, I've seen a lot there. I have my administrative degree and I've seen board members and board meetings from all over Long Island. I'd like to know if we are considering and if it's a possibility to consider in-house staffing for intensive special needs programs so that we can keep the costs in-house. Right? I would like us to be able to service our special ed population if it's possible without having to outhouse them to other programs. I know it's not always possible. There could be 24-hour care involved and needing for some of our children and long distance uh transportation. Is that possible? Um where are the grant writers? Do we have grant writers? In Brentwood, we have a lot of grant writers. A lot of support for our students that
152can't come from local. Um our businesses are dwindling in Brentwood so we rely a lot on grants. Is that a possibility greater than what we have right now? Um does this and tiny little question, does removing the late buses from the high school mean that our future students won't be able to stay after freshman year? Yes, we'll get into details when we get back to that but I'm going to stick into my one minute mark. On the revenue side, now this is coming from board meetings from long ago. Please correct me if I'm thinking of a long time. Cheryl, you've been here longer a long time. We used to ask and attend more meetings with the town on paying their taxes to us. And on the board asking for more taxes of local businesses and
153business development. For example, here LIE and some of the others. Are we holding up our end? Are we asking for our due from the town? Are we demanding if we are We're not really a very big business community here in the village. It's tiny, East Patchogue. We're not collecting a lot of taxes. Are we getting enough? Are we entitled to more from the revenue side of things? And lastly, in the spirit of solidarity, I have been taking freezes for years. That is just a thing that periodically our admin has to do. Is our administrative team out of their love and support of Clippers, are they willing to take a freeze? I'm being only a little mischievous here. And lastly, I know that these are very difficult and contentious times. None of this is easy. Not
154as a parent, not as a teacher, not as a union delegate, not as an admin or as a friend. So, I know that these are contentious times. Please seize the day. And I know that also this did not start now. This started years ago when we were asked to potentially pierce the tax cap at 6.7% under our previous admin. Everybody built by them. And people were pissed. And I was getting my admin degree at the time. This problem did not start now. And we know that. We know that. Although we don't like it, we we know that we've always wanted to keep our taxes as small as possible. And that's why we're suffering from a lot of this problem that we currently have. And thank you for the board for serving in your positions because
155you are our friends and neighbors. And we do appreciate your efforts. Thank you. So, the job of the district is first of all bringing more special education programs in. And as we've been doing that over the last year, we've been curiously seeing a number of self-contained classes at our elementary schools. By the time we roll around, we want to continue doing that work. Uh, to your point, there are some of the children that attend programs outside of the district that need the funds to buy school walkers. But that's certainly an important conversation because as I mentioned before, you know, addressing the deficit from from next year doesn't end the process. We still have to look at means by which we can reduce expenditures. One of which is bringing kids back in district. And I'm a
156big proponent of that because they are members of our community. And I think when kids get exposed to all different types of kids, it creates a more of a sense of acceptance. >> You would also bring out more special adjustments in the district too. Well, correct. Well, that's right. And and again, if we're able to provide the support services, PT, OT, all those things are There is a financial benefit to having programs in house. And that's something that we're going to have to pursue. Um And I just wanted to speak to that part. If you want to add to that Relative to the late buses, uh, the answer is yes, all all the late buses will be remote daily and all late buses for after school. And going back to how that decision was made
157and why that decision was made When we look at going deeper into the core instructional program, where we're removing those transportation services, we felt that it was less intrusive on the core instructional program for the kids. I mean As a teacher in the primary school, as a teacher, what I'm hearing is or what I'm predicting is I have students stay after school all the time. We we could be performing better, right across all areas um of our curriculum and our achievement. If we take away those extra credit opportunities to stay after, to understand, to learn, to pursue, to ask questions, um because we had to cut the buses, we also now lower our future grades. And that lowers our testing scores and that lowers our state aid. So, I would ask that we in any
158way possible try to keep those late buses. Not just extra credit those, but we need the actual We need the increase and focus on literacy and our students to be able to stay after. So, that that's the one thing I would say to please consider adjusting and I say that as an educator, not just a taxpayer. Yes, you have more time also. I you bring up a great point about the late buses, but I've had many thoughts on it, so I appreciate it. And I guess as a side note, I'll say I appreciate your approach and your tenor and comments on social media and here tonight. Um we are your neighbors and we're not happy about this either. Believe me, when I signed up to do this 15 years, this is not how I thought
159the end of my time would go. Okay? We've put a lot of time and effort into a lot of different things and I'd like to think I helped a lot of people and I did a lot of good here. So, it's a shame that it comes down to this. And but you are right, there have been structural or fundamental issues with our finances for a number of years and and I was quoted in the media today about it as well. As a board member who's been here that long, you know, you don't see it because we pass every state audit. We every every controller's audit is fine. Our Our everything is there. And school districts don't lay off teachers when you have money. That That's the That's the truth of the matter. Go pre-COVID, people
160You just It It it doesn't happen, right? How many districts were in a financial situation just laid off because enrollment dropped? It doesn't happen anywhere. And that was the problem and that's wrong. The problem is post COVID and in in a tax cap era, costs are rising faster than the tax cap can keep up, right? Now, that's not the whole issue here, but you're seeing it Bay Shore to Point, Green Board, Rockville Centre, Uniondale. There's multiple districts. I think we're up to six districts that are here with the cap this year. I don't have a confirmed number. I think the number of districts laying off staff is in the double digits, but I I heard the number the other day and I I don't have it so I won't quote it. Um, the problem is
161this all converging really really quickly. The issues of debt service payments and declining enrollment, we knew about at least the debt service payments in the last four years. Why we didn't know about that prior is is a long debate that we don't need to really rehash now. Um, it's all converging at once at a time and then we had the issue with transition of business officials and how to code funds. This board asked that question about reoccurring costs and COVID money until we blew in the face. And both of the last two business officials, not including Mr. Balmonte, um, assured the board that wasn't going to happen. Any any COVID money that we used for salaries should have been transitioned out when COVID money stopped. I can tell you right now on the very first
162um, budget cycle of the new administration, I asked that very question. What happened? The bond mismatch was supposed to be catastrophic. We have declining enrollment. The COVID funds are going away. And I was given an answer in public that's probably still on YouTube that we have the revenue. Everything was, you know, you know, what whatever, you know, you got your hair on fire before, okay? We have no choice but to take We're not I'm not a finance guy. I'm not an accountant, not a CPA. I don't claim to be. That's the information we got. And that's what we relied on. So, this board And And for the all the people I've served with over the course of 14 years, whether I liked them didn't like them, agreed with didn't agree with, nobody did this maliciously.
163Nobody No And And And I I really find it hard to believe that anybody else sitting in our shoes would have made any different decisions. And And And that's the And that's the part because you're all invited to the process. It all happens in public. If anybody else had an issue, you could have you know like like that. So, How do we not let you? You haven't stopped talking this whole meeting. Somebody else has the floor. It's not you. And And don't tell me I'm not being truthful. How do you know? Maybe you're not being truthful. I mean, how much more of a meeting do we have to dedicate to banter with you because you can't behave? I mean, like it's I mean, you laugh all you want. I mean, it's a joke. I don't
164even think I'm trying to say. There are issues here. It You know, like I said, nobody in the in a million years would have thought that the business official, you know, you know, would have mismanaged the the budget at any point. Nobody would have thought of any any different. And listen, as we look through this and we have something like Mr. Bommarito here, we're seeing some structural changes that go back 10 years that nobody out of school district finance would have picked up on. So, the problem that's hard to sit here and listen to everybody dump everything on this current administration and this current board. I've served a lot of different board members for 14 years. There's a lot of blame to go around if you want to blame if you just want to blame
165board members. This isn't just an issue that happened a couple of years ago. It's not. The problem is the recovery If it was the only issue, the recovery would be much easier to handle. We're dealing with three or four different variables that are creating just too much that we first have to overcome at a time where we are limited as to how we can raise taxes or raise revenue. Can I just go back for a moment? >> Yeah, sure. Um and Mr. Monteandro, you're kind of new here, you may not know what I'm referring to. Do any of you recall when we were asking the town for more revenue? So So you brought that up and I'm going to try to get through that. I'm sorry. I know Mr. O'Connor is going to interrupt you.
166I'm So Yeah, no. I I I'll be really quick. When I first came on the board, I was the board's representative to the town IDA to discuss the tax abatements of the town. Myself and the former business official, we went to the the hearings when we got the notice. I can remember very vividly my first one. They had to move file boxes out of the conference room because nobody's ever showed up before ever. On a snowy day, they were scrambling. They had no idea we we just showed up. I can tell you we've been doing it for years. We're not the ones you have to convince. We can lobby the town IDA all we want. They are going to accept business into our into our community and they're going to give them tax breaks. I
167don't like it, but it's going to happen. I can't stop them. We can lobby and we can complain all we want. There are also some intricacies to those um pilot payments that somebody else that's a school official like Mr. Balmonte can answer better than me as to the benefit the plusses and minuses of it. Where I drew an issue with the IDA is when those abatements run out and they're extended. I have brought up in this room many many times. Quality King is a perfect example. It's a large $3.5 million perfume distributor in uh in uh Yaphank on Dock Road. They got a tax abatement for 10 years. When it came up to year nine, they extended it another five years. It's a $3.5 million company. When I first got on the board, they were
168paying, I think it was less than $100,000 a year in property tax. Those are problems. I I I get it, but I want to say that in public because I want it on record and I want our community to know that we are entitled to more payments from business in the town. It's not just out of our own personal pockets, it's probably on this so I I wanted that on the record. Yeah, and and just so you know, and and and to that point, one of the one pieces that the one big one is payments and there is an there is an end and it's I think two budget cycles away. We have been told whether if that happens or not, we have been told by the head of the IDA that they will go
169back on the tax roll. That should be an exceptional amount of money when that happens. So cuz when we look through all of this and and and you look at what's coming, there is a in my opinion, there is light at the end of the tunnel if we get through this and how we get through this. There are things that are being changed now that will have long-lasting impacts that I believe will hopefully change the financial outcome of our district. And it's it's going to take it's going to be new people sitting up here, it's going to take a lot of discipline, it's going to take a lot of hard work. Um and and and hopefully some of what we've gone through will will learn from it. So I hope I answered everything cuz I
170didn't answer everything. Sorry. That's my fault. I didn't answer everything. Sorry. That's my fault. I didn't answer everything. Sorry. That's my fault. I didn't answer everything. Sorry. That's my fault. I didn't answer everything. Sorry. That's my fault. I didn't answer everything. Sorry. That's my fault. I didn't answer everything. Sorry. That's my fault. I didn't answer Um IDAs Um yes, it's beneficial if they go back on the tax roll. However, I advise the district about how that process happens and the district and the community needs to be aware. When a particular company finishes the IDA contract and is supposed to go back on the tax roll, 90% of the time, there's a timing difference for when the town roll closes and that company's supposed to be able to come on back on the tax roll. So
171what happens is in that one particular transition year, that value of the company may not make it into the district's assessed valuation. So, what the town will do is bill double in the subsequent year, and the company will pay double its taxes. The problem for the district is we budget our pilot payments on the revenue side to fund our budget. So, when you're talking about some of those big pilots that may be expiring in 2 years, you got to be very cognizant of the planning and the potential loss of revenue for 1 year until those uh those companies get back on the tax roll. So, I just I just throw that out for information purposes. Thank you. I just want to add one quick thing, too. I apologize, I forgot this. I meant to say
172too. I will say too, though, it is important that we mindful of what happens in the news right now because when it comes to residences, that's when it becomes catastrophic. And I don't know where it is, but there was a for example, there was a state program that looked into putting I think it was 96 apartments uh it was part of the the revitalization of the of Mastic Shirley Station Road North Bellport area. They're calling for two and three bedroom apartments, and they're looking at tax abatements. So, that means we'll get kids, which means expense without the revenue. So, that is the place where when you can talk about IDA nearby tax abatements in these new uh construction projects, when it's around residences, please pay attention. When they talk about tax breaks, that's a tax
173break for a wealthy company and a and and and a corporation that's going to be on the backs of uh taxpayers in the community, and it's going to negatively impact um our revenue here in the district. So, I just uh And then very quickly, um thank you again for your comments, but one of the things also that affects us adversely affects us is the fact that we're Totally. So, we're we are people whose needs are very high. We have a very high needs population of students in our district. But, we also have a lot of property wealth in our district, which affects uh how we get aid. So, we're on save-harmless. Save-harmless, regardless of what modifications they make to the foundation aid, is a flat amount that we get year after year. Uh for 2
174years, we got 1% as opposed to state aid increase. And then our aid sort of uh less than 40 less than 50% of our total budget. Uh but there was 1 year it was a zero. It was a flat. When you look at the cost of operating expenses skyrocketing, this is why so many districts This is notwithstanding the impact of budgeting which we're putting sort of putting that aside. But, the reason some of these districts are being forced to make these monumental, difficult decisions is all these costs, and this is one of the reasons our legislators are saying, "Why should we do special education legislation?" for some of the I think some of the districts are in a predicament. The issue is that health care, transportation, and special education costs just rising. Uh the the
175amount of students who need special education services is also rising. And I don't say that to demonize these kids. We love those kids. But, that's the reality. You know, again, in my first year um we um you know, we were at 4,200 students in the district. We're currently at 2,500 students. Our special ed costs have grown as the district My first year our special ed costs, I would say a lot of money to to was about $4 million a year. It's approaching $10 million next year. This is 3 and 1/2 years. Not to mention health care. Not to mention. So, yes, your point you want to bring more programs in house. Um but again, our ability to raise revenue through our tax levies and through the gap that's hit becomes hindered. And so, that's one
176of the things we also I think we all have to agree is are is the state adequately funding the districts? And I think that's something that's all converging now and coming to a head, and that's what we're taking so many different um approaches. Thank you, Mr. Harrington. William Blue and Carrie Parsons from the W. Good evening, everyone. My name is William Blue. I've been working in the district since 2009. I am currently the business manager and secretary-treasurer of Laborers' Union Local 66, an 87-year-old labor organization that historically built every school in the area, but not so much anymore. Um I'd like to uh stand here in support today of Mr. Ross's request and Mr. Balmantia of the uh information regarding the um change of order on the asbestos. Um I requested the same thing in
177the district department on January 8th to uh no avail. I have no response. I asked the same questions. And when he asked you the same questions, he was back to him about getting the So I don't know if there's something there that you don't want me to get a hold of, but I appreciate getting that information. I was following the request back to me. You also somewhat endearingly referenced a few vendors that were going to absorb costs or maybe not charge for this current year, and I'd like to know if you'd like to elaborate on that. Um and one last one, I I I I I I I thank you for your remarks on that rubber stamp process that the IDA is. Um if the public knew actually what's going on with these ID IDAs,
178you'd be outraged. Outraged is what's going on with the IDAs. All right? So I I I appreciate it if you'd like to elaborate. Thank you. Um yes. I would. Um to the best of my knowledge, and every FOIL request that was provided uh or requested in that project has been provided. So I can only say to you that if you haven't received it, I will go back and I look at it, one, because the records are clear. We have a change order, we will send it. If we don't have a change order, there's nothing to send. Okay? And hopefully You have about seven items on the oil line. You certainly will. I will go back and look at that tomorrow. It's my understanding that everything that was requested was sent. Okay, you know this is
179the first I'm hearing but I will certainly look into that. And then what about the vendors that were absorbing costs and so on? Those were uh those were professional vendors. That was those were vendors as bond counsel. That was vendors as um ESG who's doing our energy performance contract that has agreed to pick up the soft costs. Our engineering firm That was Green Restoration. Excuse me? Green Restoration didn't do the EPC? Absolutely not. They're not in it. No. They're not in that contract. Thank you very much. I I just like to say it's incredibly disappointing that not one of you would second the motion that Mr. Ross brought to the table to take another look at a $100,000 change order. It's not a lot of money but when we're talking about running TAs and buses
180and all this stuff, to not put it on pause for a week to take a look at that is incredibly disappointing and we will reconcile on election day. If I could just clarify just one more point, what the request was was the request for the RFP, not for a request on the change order. There is no change order. This is a new contract that Mr. Ross would like to see the original RFP and the bid results from the contractor. And I have no problem providing the board that information even though they approved it today. They're still entitled to see that information and they will be and they will be provided that information. Can I close the door? Owen Germany is on deck. My name is Carrie Carson. I come before you not only as an
181administrator, but as the president of the administrative association. There's no denying this year's fiscal financial situation we are facing. It is difficult, it is uncomfortable, and it carries real consequences for people and programs. If we reduce our human infrastructure too deeply, we're not just cutting positions, we're cutting the very capacity required to lead, to support, and to rebuild. The impact will not be theoretical, it will be operational. We We risk creating gaps that will directly affect students, staff, and the overall function of our schools. And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring to your response to the statement made about the directors, that they should go first because they are not seen. Respectfully, not being seen does not mean not working. The reality is quite the opposite. Many of our administrators work behind
182the scenes, in offices, in meetings, in constant problem-solving, navigating compliance, supporting staff, addressing student needs, coordinating services, and holding together the systems that allow our schools to function every day. The work may not always be visible, but it is constant, it is complex, and it is critical. And this administration, we are We're absent, we are inundated. This is not about preserving positions for the sake of positions. This is about preserving the ability of this district to function, to recover, and to move forward with purpose. Because at the end of the day, the work does not go away. The responsibilities do not disappear. The needs of our students, our staff, and our community remain. So, my question is this. If the structure is reduced, if the support is stripped away, if the capacity to lead is
183diminished, who is going to do the work? The teachers. They always do. And by the way, I don't appreciate being addressed by a civilian at all your meetings. Hang on. Stand. Stand. This is not the place for this. You had your 3 minutes. Go. No one has said anyone's name. Hold on. You want me to start naming names? I've been named, Captain Kirk. Hold on. I've been very civil at these meetings. Yeah, so my integrity was just impugned by her. I did not do that to anyone in this room. But in response to your question, so we eliminated Shame on you. We're already elim- eliminated some director positions. Currently, there's seven, which really is going to be a department of staff to sort of get through. To that end, we have also in our budget
184allocated four chairs. One chair for each content area. That's to be a teacher chair, as suggested by the PTA. It's a district level position. That'd be a chair for ELA, social studies, science, and math. In terms of the work, to be honest, once we reduce work and change working conditions for administrators, we have to engage in impact bargaining. So, that's what we need to do, is to redistribute work. We'll take a look at the case of these job descriptions. This is what we call an impact bargain. So, we have to meet and really talk about the impact of losing this position. Again, I want to emphasize that we cut the administrative unit by 25%. We didn't have a lot of administrators for this district of our size. It's already at 24 last year. At the
185end of this process, we're going down to 18 total. Well, once again, our building administrators were our buildings rather than dealing with just the buildings, but the students, etc. That leaves us with uh about 18. That leaves us with six administrators to do all the other work. Uh so, you have the grant writing. A lot of a lot of our directors engage in grant writing. Uh we have two schools that are being uh that involve the SIG grants and the decent grants. Our administrators are in charge of drafting those grants. Um and we also have to deal with the compliance of the federal and state government to ensure that we get grant funding. Uh the reports that we submit to the state are ongoing. They they include a lot of work. And this is part
186of the things I mean earlier, a lot of the work is unseen. A lot of the work is unseen. And we are we don't have a big administrative department in this district. Again, you reduced it already by 25%. Um so, really we don't know what will be forward. We look at the structure of the district. That is uh different responsibilities, uh perhaps using a PPS person, that's people from pupil services that have come to this board. Those are all considerations we have to make. But again, we've already reduced our administrative staff by 25%. Um in terms of redistributing work, that would have to uh involve the half fund. Is Owen Journey here? Owen Journey blessing first. It's Owen Journey. Okay. I'm saying it over the same my half first. Yeah. right. Good evening. Can't hear
187you. Um Anyway, um I I'm hearing a lot. First of all, I am absolutely blown away by the Um I appreciate the presentation, but basically what you're saying is that the district's not there. It's what the controller is recommending that the district should be doing. Well, well. And what's going to be required Things like rising costs of health care costs. These are things that are going up everywhere and every time. Yet, our district is seems to be the district that's having trouble managing, figuring out how to handle those types of costs. So, I don't want to get too too too in the weeds and things. We could have done a lot better, but I I just I don't understand. It doesn't make sense to me. Um every school board member goes to New York State
188School Board Association finance classes. Is that Is that every school board member? Yeah. Since WASC, this is like the worst thing I've seen since WASC. So, WASC is the reason why you have to go to those classes and you may not be an accountant. I wasn't an accountant, but I was in those classes. I had to learn basic budgeting. And yet, it's your revenues are not keeping up with your expenses. That's you're out of balance. That's not That's not a hard thing to understand for anyone. So, my question is I haven't heard this talked about in detail at all, contractual agreements that we have with the labor. Has there been any discussion to in terms of opening up and renegotiating labor freezes, land tables, and then salary like no things that other municipalities have done
189to address those imbalances. And I mean I'm just I'm just leaving that out there as far as administrators and superintendents opening up meeting, taking zero meeting, doing something like that, if that's possible to share the because we're laying people off first in, first hired, but first last hired, first fired, right? Yeah, actually, but what can we do to spread that pain around? Because really the pain is it's I might as well our school system. I have a nephew who goes to middle school. So, has there been any discussion? That's not one thing I have heard. Is Is looking at all the contractual agreements, not just one group but just work with all the groups. What can you do on this situation to spread that work to like the revenue Just two responses to that. Yes,
190we have looked at those issues. We have um We have met with various unions. Several of the union contracts have expired and will expire a few in this year, and we're in discussion with some of those groups down there. Yes, we're we are going to we met with units in Manhattan and discussed it. We are ordering messenger with sound and illumination. I think our whole discussion that you just discussed does that affect the deal with the community at all? Hopefully. In terms of the discussion with the units, we can't talk publicly about collective bargaining. That's not a rule I'm making up, so uh All right. My next question is we are trying to keep flying with the doctrine. Is there a flight doctrine approach to the view? Is there a new procedure in place to
191ensure us that the future won't continue to show deficits? If we put our taxpayers' money into this, we want to know where it's going. Thank you. If the services teaching like you mentioned, does that happen? It's okay I'm just repeating questions. Sorry. I It looks to me like we need the services and teaching. You mentioned something about mentoring and providing that, but again it was the word hope. I'd like to see classes happening, happening, procedures in place, locked in, knowing that it will happen. Well, you're absolutely right. We have to put together some corrective measures. Right now it's we've been doing it. The multi certainly you can see it heights and the martial arts and the violin that goes on. year for a couple of minutes. Um, so, yes, we're putting in the correct measures.
192We can still compile reports for our capturers of the checklist that the board members as well as the cabinet level administrators, and any administrator who is in charge of a budget line of school worlds and we can um to report and make sure that you don't start creating new deficits going forward. Um, but you know, even things are simple. I'll give you a couple of for instance. Um, you know, one of the things we changed in current practice is creating encumbrances for certain appropriation lines at the end of the year. For example, you have salary lines in our budget, we can cover those expenses all the way through June 30th to see where we land and make other plans earlier in the year. You know what to do there? Because that's going to give you
193some clarification of where you can be at in the year. You know, I mentioned how we have to re-address our treasurer's reports. It's another sort of bright idea. Treasurer's reports are now presented to the board so you have no way to make a balance in any of the appropriations together. Um, giving access to stakeholders in the organization that have budgets um, to their budgets early on in the process, they have periodic meetings so they can see where they're at and then they can correct them. Um, and then if this goes through, then you're out. Well, there has to be sort of a transition. Obviously, whoever Yeah. Correct. Correct. Send it back. Yes. I have to you know, I appreciate the question and I appreciate you for your response. Understood. So, let's get to the other
194part of the other answer or the other half of the the other the answer to the other half of your question is you have to keep asking questions. Whether it's board members or people are changing, the board south, the the docs, those things that are available, go to the meetings and ask for those questions. You know I am. Well, Oduguwa, she's asking the question, Dr. Oduguwa. Don't don't pat yourself on the back for it. I sit on the When you man, so so I've been on the board since July. From that standpoint, as things have come in, I come I do not come from an educational background, right? I'm a trial attorney, I run my own business, I have those things, you know, for lack of a better phrase, I clean up the, you know,
195on the floor, put out the fires. So, some of the practices that we're seeing that were not done before, I am now seeing, although I would have expected them before, Mr. Valmonti and those people that came in have changed things tremendously. So, don't mistake the answer. There's no like creed document, right? Education in the classes are going on every day. So, this thing to turn this around, the practices and the poor things that were going on before are going to continue to develop and you should expect them to continue to develop. Solving the budget matter is like step one, right? We we have a whole line of things that need to be changed around. So, we need you need to keep asking questions. There's nobody that sits up here that's permanent in any way and
196let you look like in some secret back door that says, "Oh my god, this is perfect. It's not changing." But keep asking the questions, right? There are some rational things. I mean, I got I got sucked into it with three kids in the district when we started getting answers for things that were wrong, for getting services where I was getting concerned administrators, none of whom are in this room, but the answer that the screw up that was caused to my kid, well, that's the way it's always been done. That wasn't an acceptable answer. And some of those things have changed. Some of those things have changed in the classroom. We see some of the grades going in the the trends is in the right direction. The finances and the pieces as Trustee Piccini said, it's
197changing across the island. There are a lot of things that we we unfortunately are in the forefront of where that's changing. But So So there's a whole host of things. You can go down the rabbit hole as I asked for those things. We can see I'll continue to do that as a board member and look at those things. But you guys need to ask questions, too. You see us in public, ask us to ask those questions. You know, the whole transparency or the idea Again, there's no glass window to go off and look at from that standpoint. But all of the budget things they're they're there. They're not in obvious places. Nobody's plastering them on a billboard. And and so be more cognizant. But ask those questions. We we don't all you know, don't know
198everything. But for the trustees that are up here, the time that we volunteer, everybody brings a different level of expertise to the table and sees different things in different lights. So that part of this is something that you guys should expect. You know, I grew up here. Some of the things haven't changed yet. We changed with some of the bus routes and things haven't changed that last time I took a bus was 38 years ago, I think. Right? But some of them are just the same. Some of us like that comfort. Other things they get turned up. It all makes us uncomfortable. So yes, there is there's no perfect answer there and yes, we are asking you to think aggressive. And for those that are the trustees, we're we're taking the same risk. Our kids
199are here. Our lives are here. Our taxpayer dollars are here. There are things that we're learning. But everything you guys got tonight, these are decisions that are inside our control. Things like you've heard deficit spending, notes, there's things that are outside of our control. So from that standpoint, we have to give you the picture and I don't think that that's it's not pleasant. There's no part of it that's good. So, yes, some of us get confrontational up here or get mad, you know, cuz old guy drives me nuts cuz he asks questions in the middle of things, but he's right. He asks questions. I I can't knock him for that. Sometimes I wish he would do it a little bit better, but he's right to ask the questions. You have to go through that. So,
200the other part of your question, which I think is fair and I heard it from others, is keep asking questions and keep come to the board meeting. Don't just show up when, you know, all of a sudden it's kind of getting crazy. Um keep asking it because that steady race, you know, things are nice and comfortable, keep moving along. You know, when all of a sudden it's in we're in crisis mode and we're trying to manage what's there. I I I truly can see a phoenix rise from the ashes, but that is 5, 6 years down the road. From that standpoint, that doesn't mean that we have to lose our educational purposes here and just throw it out the window. There are people that are on the far right that are saying education, all teachers,
201all people, everybody. There are other people that are saying no tax dollars, no tax dollars. Listen, the reality is, like most settlements or pieces, it's going to be somewhere in the middle and everybody is going to be unhappy with some part of it. Part of what tonight was, we want those questions, that feedback from you, so we can kind of figure that out. There's no perfect thing, right? This is a game of whack-a-mole. I we hit that one side So, I hope everybody realizes that, but keep asking the questions. There's no perfect answers. We have No answer. Let's get back to responding to the questions. You heard You heard no Sorry. You heard no answer, but I said there's no perfect answer. >> Mayor Belmonte, you have a minute. There's no answer coming from your
202question. Um in the in in the spirit of trying to move the meeting along, I really really appreciate the feedback and the passion that the community has for the educational program. But I still would like to ask the question of the community as to what was presented this evening. We have some very difficult choices to make. We all know we're very passionate about the program. That is loud and clear. However, next week when we speak with the board on reducing the gap at 13%. Do we hear Do we take a middle position? Or do we go and take the extreme position cutting another 5.8 million to get down to the gap. So, these are These are choices that have to be made and we we understand the issues. We understand the passion. Okay? But, what
203other options do we have at this time? How can you give me that feedback? You say you want our feedback. How do we have it? You say you want our feedback through emails. How do How do you want us to tell you what we want? I think the question that was being raised by Mr. Belmonte is would the community support a tax increase of of that 13.9% in order to maintain everything that we have right now? Or would would the community want to see something uh less in terms of taxes, but it would entail more cuts? Or does the community want us to stick to the tax cap, which would require devastating cuts. That's I think what you were trying to get a reading on. Is that accurate? I hear you in the back section
204and I see your arms waving. Um, I was just saying that maybe we should go back to the courts and people who have an opinion on that can be heard on the microphone. You are so welcome. Good evening. I actually had no intention of speaking tonight, but as you guys were going through your questioning on the report, Mr. Falcetta asked a question and then that sort of started a follow-up questions in my mind. Um, but you asked uh the clarifying questions to Mr. Belmonte indicating to me that you guys have no idea what cuts you're going to make when the time comes to make your tier A, tier B, tier C uh budget and that's very daunting to me. Um, I do believe that hoping that tonight we were going to be presented with this
205is option A, this is option B, this is option C and that we as a community were going to be speaking to you tonight. I do commend Trustee Ross because I I saw on Facebook community goals you had solicited the advice for uh some of the community members. I understand Passover threw us all off and this meeting had to get rescheduled, so I get that. But now I just want to remind you we have two bites at this apple. The first, if it doesn't pass, we're at the tax cap and then if that doesn't pass we're on contingency, I think you need more input from the community. We need to be hearing what the community values because, you're right, there's going to be cuts. It's inevitable. I get it. There's going to be cuts. And
206as we've heard, there's no way we're passing a 13% plus budget. So, there's got to be cuts. I'm not naive to that. But, we need to present something to the community that the community can buy into. And I don't think that we've heard from the community what it is that they're willing to put forward. And so, I Neither as it is here, I'm hoping that maybe we can get one more forum in prior to the adoption or adopting a budget from today. Is that correct? An adoption and a proposal. It's all for both. Okay. Right. So, we vote on it and put up by the board as the budget. We are still free or you are still free. We are all still free to choose and discuss it as a community between April 22nd and
207when we go to when we go to the to the vote. Vote and we Wait a minute. Wait. We have next Wednesday, we have to approve a budget that will go on the ballot straight to the May 19th election. And if you're talking about I just We're not I'm not We're not voting on anything. So, I've been in education for 15 years. I've been in this district for 12. And all I've heard for the last 15 years in this district and beyond is involve all the stakeholders. Involve all the stakeholders. And right now, I just heard that the stakeholders have been involved. I'm asking you and we doing this forum is not going to be the answer. But, perhaps we can send out some form of survey in which people can do a straw poll
208and vote on what it is that they would like in or out. I just think we need more input. So Is there any Yeah, so Mr. Poole, I appreciate your comments. So, one of the difficult things that task is there's so many different social groups in our school district. So, you're going to get a mixed bag. What's important is that. So, ultimately a decision have to be made. Uh we have got input, but uh we got that input it's not a official poll. So, people reached out and talked about the idea that they don't So, um even if you do a straw poll, you know the likelihood of things coming out pretty split uh is very likely. And again, all the things that were on the list, like I mentioned, we have got that All
209the things that were on that list said that out. So, we have to consider the input we received and the impact on the students. Uh but I appreciate the point. Especially with the But you just have uh two other things. Uh uh For the last decade, I have brought up concerns particularly about staffing, especially in my own department. I've met with almost every administrator here. And I've been told by multiple administrators, I can only think about the year ahead. I can't get that far ahead. So, now this question's for Mr. Villani. Mr. Villani, should we not be hiring and staffing with long-term planning in mind? Or am I off base? Are we only supposed to be looking at one year ahead ahead at a time? I feel like I'm missing something, but I feel like
210that's also how we got here. If I can yeah, again Mr. Poole, I appreciate your comments. Obviously, when you fire, you want to hire uh position based on data. Um but, you know, I think when you look at all the districts, again, I'm not minimizing what happened here, there are workforce staff reductions. And in fact, when we work together, uh as a assistant principal, you would have my teachers that are in excess. So, it's a little ironic. Things evolve. Things evolve. Um, who would have thought many years together. Not many Not many years together, but many years ago. Um, so you know, sometimes there are unfortunate things that happen. And then sometimes we have to make really uh difficult decisions. Surely anybody that was in the place, you know, when you look at the total
211operating in the district, it did increase by that monumental amount in the last couple of years. But you know, I'm going to say this from the mental hindsight. You know, when you look at even the uh 21-22 school year when I think this the annual reference the 776 tax levy cap, that was a cap that you know, we kind of reacted to. Um, I mean that year, you know, we used some of those federal funds that outlined um, controller's report for salaries. You know, that's probably when staffing reductions started happening. Um, I mean you can give it a different name, but it's not It's not for a graceful fashion. Um, but ultimately when we look at the declining enrollment, the process may be different, but we would have landed in the same place. It's what,
212you know, I can't emphasize enough. Yeah, the manner in which it's been abrupt in the last few years obviously is heartbreaking. Surely having the deficit uh toward the couple of years toward the end of last year is devastating. But the truth is that we would have have to ultimately land in the same place because of the enrollment. You know, since I've been here since I've been here, uh we've lost Again, when I started with 4,200 students, we're down to 3,600 students. So, that's 600 students. So, the fact that, you know, there wasn't a response that tracked to that. You know, it should have happened probably slower, but again, from the mental hindsight, it's not just our are enrollment, you know, because again, there's eight times that. It's also these extraordinary expenditures that are going up.
213But that's what's creating the perfect storm, not just for us. Again, I'm not minimizing the budgeting practices uh that came out of the business office. Uh but on top of that is the fact that number one, we didn't we're slow to respond to the staff reduction. I'm sorry, to the declining enrollment. And number two is extraordinary expenses. That's just a point of uh clarification. I think the technology is trying to tell us this is too late. Um on slide 19 of the district marketing presentation, you did talk about world language and so forth. You talked about almost like world language is and then how it's spent. So, when you talk about world language, is it's up to that semantics or are you talking about across the board we're talking about programs like world language versus
214the economy of those other standards. How are you using the schedule to stop it? It all depends. So, if like certainly we don't want to reduce the schedule. Uh we're making some minor programmatic uh changes based on the enrollment. There's certain value in those four or four language teachers that don't want to change their signs. Um these are So, and that's what we have to look at. So, you know, again, the idea The idea of reducing world language is is something that we we don't want to complicate, but maybe it warrants that. That's what we're trying to do. Thank you. Okay, can you tell us what grade is that in? Uh this one. Uh what grade is that in the middle of the week? I just need you to believe me. I can hear you
215but not everybody else. Yeah, this one. Uh what grade is that in the middle of the uh You know, like I said in the meeting that I would like all I have to say an observation I made while I was listening. Uh Cheryl has brought up some things that I thought was very interesting. And one of the things that she brought up and Mrs. Santini made a comment. One of the things she brought up is about a new truck. About a new truck. And you made a comment that the engine blew so it was gone so you needed to fix it. The question is was it part of the budget? If it was part of the budget Yes, it was. No problem then. If it wasn't part of the budget then it would have been
216over. And the next thing is Belmont. I found the your statement on the budget very interesting. You said we know we did not overspend. Because of the budget we overspent. And I I find that very interesting. To clarify when the budget is overspent essentially what there is is a lack of revenue to pay for the excess costs. That's what I said. So that was what I was referring to. I understand that but the reason why you have a budget is so that you can stay within the budget. Well, that is that is correct. And that's where the budget management and oversight was lacking and should have been in place. Right. That's what I have a problem with. As far as the cap is concerned. What do you guys have to say about the cap is
217concerned? Coming coming off of I don't know. Two years. I think it's probably the next two or three years. What do you say about the next two or three years? We we talked about it in 2016-2017. What is it 2017-2018? I think it's 2018-2019. 2018-2019 school year. So so they're back at 2018. So what are you looking at there? You don't know? Say again? What are you looking at there? The side of the We don't know. I mean that's something that the town would have to tell us and they've got to they have to follow What do you get right now? What do you get in return for that? It's supposed to be a million dollars off coming from the school The the pilot payment cases. >> Yeah. No, pilot payment cases is roughly $6
218million. It it's fluctuated over the years. >> Yeah. All right. Some years it was as high as nine. I think right now it's somewhere around the six to seven. So, it's somewhere in that range. All right. That's all right. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm President Hayes of the Board of Education. I would like to say a few words tonight. I wasn't going to speak tonight. I have a few things to do. One, President Hayes, my fellow member of the school got violated by name. That should have been stopped immediately. At no point should any of my members be called out by name. Okay. In your own statement that you read, neither the South Country Board of Education nor the Superintendent of Schools will entertain public comment related to any individual. Call that back. It's
219Tirey or Superintendent Tirey. I think he's doing a pretty good job in this district. Get up. Second thing, the question was who's going to do the work? We'll do the work. If you look at the history of South Country there's a reason on our emblem or our logo that it says backbone. Cuz we, BTA, are the backbone. We have in our ranks doctors. We have nationally board certified teachers. We have administrators. We've done all those jobs before. If it wasn't for APBR, we wouldn't have so many directors. That's the reason they're here. APBR brought directors here. I don't think I think it's 15 16 was the number of the number of directors. It all want us. We will do the work. Whose work will do it? The other part that we're missing is last year
220I stood up here and I had 433 DTA members. For next year, I'm asking Jay Burmeister, my treasurer, to create a budget based on 360 members. Those are numbers. Those are peoples. Those are lives all of a sudden. The district needs to do better by us cuz we continue to do better by the district. And that includes what the BTA, who is NYSED, is doing to get the special act legislation passed. So, take care of one another's words. Please. And I think Matt deserves an apology. You guys are troopers. Everyone is a trooper in this room. And to your point, saying keep asking the questions, how do you expect us to show up for this? This is the middle of the night. And we all want one thing. This is crazy. We are in working
221class neighborhoods apart. I work two jobs and so many people in this room do. We are exhausted and you're asking more of us financially. We can't. Like, and so I would love to be more involved with this. My daughter's only six. I've only been in this district for two years. I'm going to be in the minority in this room that I have no loyalty to this district. I'm not from here. I don't have these amazing memories of these olden days that I've heard about and have no So, my question is when I look at my options that are being put in front of me for this upcoming budget and you're asking us to make a decision. Why would I stay here? You talk about enrollment, right? Enrollment is down. Enrollment is down. So, why would
222anyone enroll in this district? Why would anyone buy my house now? You To say our futures are destroyed is minimizing what has happened. So, please tell me why should I stay here? My kids are I feel nothing. I've been safe. And I wanted to move out here because I wanted these amazing Long Island school districts, right? So, where is that? That's not here because my taxes are still 10k. So, I I just very confused how this ended up on our backs. I just I just don't understand how you think enrollment will get better. And what is the long-term trajectory for that? I work in a nonprofit, and part of my responsibility is to think about not next year's budget, but the next 5 years' budget. And so, someone did ask that. It wasn't answered. It's
223sort of where are we going from there? Assuming that we survive the next 2 years, then what happens? for us. Like, how do we how do we get out of this? So, to sum up, what happens next if we pass any of this? And two, like, how do you think enrollment's going to get better? How are we going to get revenue? What's the plan on that one? Because I haven't heard anybody mention that. My first response to the question about enrollment, enrollment's declining in Long Island across the board. Our enrollment will bottom out probably at 200, 300 students. We actually engaged in a demographic study. We looked at the results. We have preliminary results that show that in the next 10 years we're looking at another drop in the number of our students. This is
224a trend that's happening When I worked in the district that Foreman and I worked on together, for instance, which is a three-village school district, North Bellmore had over 2,000 students high school. They're down to just over a little over a thousand. So, this is again systemic across the island. In terms of what happens next, the work continues. We're sort of steadfast in trying to resolve the current situation in the current year. Like I said in my opening remarks, it's very difficult to sort of plan or project if we don't know where our base is or where we're standing now. So, we need to resolve our current deficit this year and our deficit next year before we make those projections. We're also going to be looking at the structure of our district to see if there's
225potential, again, for restructuring. What that means is our elementary schools, we have community elementary schools that for some schools we only have two sections per grade. First grade is only two classes. That makes it incredibly difficult to balance classes out. So, we really have to look at the structure of the district, which may mean closure of a building. And I'm not going to sit here and speculate which building would be closed because we'd really need a comprehensive study and look at the transportation impact and how we can service the students. Well, that was actually going to be another question Yes, so closures because I think everyone in this room is very concerned about the district or the town as a whole and the play about trying to keep logging in some existence at this point.
226Um, so I think why isn't that part of the procedure? Because like I've heard it get mentioned, I think when you put your Yes, so But I I haven't seen any That's part Yes, so that's part of the long-term plan. Again, we have to engage in a study to see really how we can sort of service the kids in the best structure possible. So, obviously I get your point. You know, there's a lot of speculation and about where they belong, but that not might not be the ideal building to shut down in terms of our population and the support put into the building. So, you know, we don't want to make that decision in the absence of actual data. But part of, you know, moving forward, you know, again, managing the current deficit and then
227looking at our programs, seeing how we can preserve our programs, perhaps bring some programs back into the district to save on expenditures. And also shutting the building down an avenue to go with in the future. At least you can cut programs and doses. Uh, but we really have to get through the first year starting here in the next year first. Uh, but again, that's part of the long-term plans. But in terms of enrollment, I'm going to be very factual with you. Enrollment across the island decreased. Where do the students go then? It's not that they're going because the subsequent classes are smaller. So, we used to have classes of over 300 kids. My classes used to go up to like Like what? Yeah. And so, those are being phased out. Every year we graduate a
228senior class, we reduce the district enrollment by 50 kids. So, we had classes as high as 330, 340 kids. We're going to level out at about 250, 260. I still don't understand where those students go. Like why They're just not here. Their families are not So, we did a We did a demographic study Well, underperforming and top 1/5 of our teachers. How many of them are exceptional? Right. We got it. But but data They're not connected. Students Students aren't leaving There was a demographic study. All right. There was a demographic study done about 10 years ago that predicted our current enrollment for this year. That's 10 years ago. I discovered this I don't know if it was 2016 or 18 the study was done. But when you at the projected enrollment numbers for the current
229year, the projection is going to be somewhere where we're at. Nearly significant corporate and the cost of living, all those things. That happened long before Kids aren't leaving our district in droves. Our our economy is Our population is static. Uh and we have also a transient population that comes in and out. But if you look at our classes, except for the high school classes, like I said, our current primary class, I believe it's like 300 330 340 kids. The supplemental classes are much smaller. You say you say the study that came out earlier in the year All all districts across the island maybe three or four where enrollment was actually going up. The rest of the districts were all experiencing a decline. Great Neck, Port Washington, Half Hollow, Manhasset, all of them had a It
230The demographics of starting families on the island, they're not you know, starting later, not having families and starting here and going to other places. It's not affecting specifically in Massapequa. Same enrollment Sure. But we're doing worse. So, you can see why more people don't want to come to this school. Cuz my And like why Why why would they And and why would they stay? The first thing that comes up when you look at Zillow to find a house, I mean Yeah. The idea that this is the You don't look at the school district, but you look at where the It's so out of touch with reality that it's awful. Yeah, and so What what do you mean? This is this is this is a major thing that's going to affect people probably not coming to
231the budget. Cuz if you don't get anything anything out of this, there's no You haven't given us any hope. You haven't given us anything to look forward to. Basically, you just raise our taxes, lower our property values, and Fire 20% of and and frankly ruined a lot of people's lives. So. Is there David Goldfarb in here? They left. Well, we're just making sure, right? It was in there. It's the respectful thing to do, right? You're not part of the meeting. So, she didn't please let our clerk call the names. Are you learning from the last speaker? Oh, yeah. We are learning. Cuz you're like this is range time. You're not allowed to participate in this meeting. So, he's talking to the house. So, what? You got your 25 minutes of professional time. >> That's what
232I've been yelling for years. Okay, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. I'd like to have my speaker. If you can talk over this, I can Oh. Oh. Oh. I have something to say. I have any intention of speaking tonight. Um Can't take the microphone out. Um I was talking. Um It the three tiers of um not so good options that we've seen tonight of eliminations of programs, uh there was one that was extremely jarring. And um This feels personal for me since I'm in the marching band program. Um the elimination of band or band or orchestra. Um I'm imploring the board um to take that out as an option. Um I have twin girls that graduated from Baldwin High School this past June, which is almost a year ago, uh class of '25. Um One struggled
233with some various issues throughout the years. Um I can tell you hands down, without a doubt, since you graduated last year was because of band, music, and orchestra. And I am again I'm just so blown away that that was one of the options to be eliminated. Um so I guess I'll throw my voice down because I'm a Fredonian as a music educator. major Um so I'm speaking for her, for I mean So if you could please think about moving forward again. I really do care about it. Thank you. I appreciate your comments and thank you. Any no more cards? I'm going to make this the final comment. This is in response to Mrs. Brady's comments. Can you Can you see the mic? It's a hot mic. You can't hear anything you say. All right. I
234think that's a little better. So just in response to Mrs. Brady's comments, uh you know I think uh what I want to say is that you know I can appreciate Mrs. Carlson's response. I get that a name should not be used. Uh certainly I've been the target of many comments, but I'm a superintendent, so I sort of have to take it. Um but again, to to to to sort of move forward, I'll offer you an apology if you can accept, but I also want to say that you know sometimes some of the words used directed at directors is only four directors in our district, so you know, by sort of um default, you know, it's like naming personal people. So I appreciate why Terry wanted to respond because we're down to just like four directors
235in our district, so um to make such allegations about their work performance uh was a lot, and I appreciate why Mrs. Carlson had to speak, uh but Mrs. Brady is right, names should not be used, so I'm going to apologize. I would have preferred no apology because that was not an apology. Thank you. Uh it is an apology, Mrs. Brady. Thank you for your attempt. When are you going to apologize for your failure to push your responsibility for our district. I emailed this board asking for building aid schedule in 2024. You guys didn't do it. Didn't do long range planning. And now here we are. Do we have a motion to return? Sorry. A motion to Yeah, basically we're adjourning this and we're going back into executive session. A motion. A motion to allow a
236second. Trustee Kelber Brown and all those in favor Yeah. 6 in favor. No. 4 in the vote. The motion passes.