001you're live okay all right great welcome everyone thank you for being here tonight this is the regular meeting of the suffer Central School District Board of Education for Tuesday March 4th 2025 uh we're going to recall to order right now to the regular meeting May the record reflect that all board members are present except for Mr Matt turn and Mrs Jennifer hodj at this time everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance plge 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 okay that brings us to our student report good evening [Music] toah yeah I know like you haven't been running up and down the court enough lately hi everybody I'm tah there's a lot
002more people here than usual but it's okay you know ready that I once um so I just have a couple updates um I'm gonna start with sports because why not um so I'm gonna do myself last though but so for hockey I over the weekend they just won um I don't I think it was semi-finals and if they win the next game then they go to Buffalo for states which is really cool uh for track there's a couple accomplishments too we have a couple record-breaking things happening um I believe there's a record broken in PV volt 600 meter dash and the 4x4 the re Rel for girls also girls basketball if you haven't heard already um the girls IED yeah um the girls basketball team has um now made it to the semi-finals at Westchester
003County Center which has never happened before in suffer in history so this the first time which is really really cool and our game's tomorrow so it's up in Westchester thank you hopefully thank you um well back to now I got done with sports a couple things going on um Thursday there's a districtwide art show um for K through 12 at the high school and the art being presented there will be up during the weekend where families can come see the art that's being made throughout all great levels and suffron which is pretty cool um the spring musical which is Hello Dolly is having a concert uh a cast concert Monday March 17th in the high school in the auditorium and the actual dates for the for the musical are the 20th 21st and 22nd of
004March which is super soon which is really fun I plan on going as well um March is also youth art youth art month and there's activities at unit lunch and activities all over District in elementary schools and middle schools uh to like make kids interactive with art and uh yeah that's all I have there's a lot of sports things going on so wish us luck tomorrow as we go to Westchester and yeah that's all I have for this week thanks all right that's wonderful thank you so much and good luck hope there won't be too many board members getting too noisy at the games sometimes we do okay moving on to the minutes of the regular meeting of February 19th 2025 has everyone had an opportunity to review the minutes okay good do I have
005a motion to approve the minutes Mr Frasier second Dr Nick Pon all in favor signify by saying I I anyone opposed any extensions yes I okay all right abstentions from Mr Dr Shiro and Mr Shiro Dr Nick Pon and Mr Shiro okay superintendent comments thank you very much before we welcome up our Middle School thespians up to the up to the front of the room here to do a quick performance for us I do need to read a statement about the suffrin Central School District budget and candidate vote that candidate and budget vote will take place on Tuesday May 20th if any Resident of the school district is interested in running for a position on the board of education petitions are now available petition packets may be picked up at the suffron Central School District
006administration building which is this building located 45 Mountain AV Hilburn New York between the hours of 10: a.m. and 4m Monday through Friday on days when school is in session two seats on the board of education are up for election completed petitions must be received by the elections clerk no later than 5:00 p.m. on Monday April 21st 2025 if more information is needed please contact the suffron Central School District elections clerk at write this down very quickly if you're interested 35777 A3 extension 11266 and all that information is in our on our website as well including the phone number and the email address uh if you are interested and now I'm very excited to see our our students from suffer Middle School come on up and present to us um suff middle school 7eventh and
007eth grade students are gearing up for their spring musical The Little Mermaid on Thursday March 13th Friday March 14th and Saturday March 15th all this information also is on our website we are excited to see this Disney classic come to life on the Middle School stage a big thank you to the following staffers who have worked with our students for months to make the upcoming show a success and some of those folks are here this evening along with our student performers Matt Jones director Mr Jones you want to give a little way conon Shear music [Applause] director Julia peard scenery director Paul linowski Tech director Jen Duran choreographer Nicole pagata the assistant director and Donna Gano rehearse accompanist good job and now while our Board of Education members get up and move towards the back
008of the room so we can see your perform we'll ask you to come up to the front the see is always been if somebody else just L you dream about going up there but that is a big mistake just look at the FL the sea the [Music] sea the the the same away the sea all the fish happy is all through the the fish on the happy s they in the fish on the [Music] isy when the hry going be on the pl uhoh Under the Sea The Sea SE the [Music] [Laughter] [Music] seaa we to [Music] the the [Music] the [Applause] [Music] SE the Sea Under the Sea it's noob [Music] and if that doesn't get you excited for the Middle School Musical I don't know what else will I'm going to have that
009song in my head all night long thank you so much for a wonderful job and really getting us excited for the upcoming musical at the middle school thank you very much everyone we're going to take a we'll take a two-minute break so that our students can get back to whatever they need to do and then we'll move on with the meeting in about 2 minutes thank you so much to our students and for all the parents who brought their children to perform this evening thank you e you know what a wonderful performance right great to see uh the enthusiasm great voices um and we thank uh them for coming here and Performing this evening and thus concludes my superintendent report just kidding thank you Miss nickman for making sure that I didn't skip over the
010budget presentation so uh we're welcoming Dr castellan here this evening to provide us with an update on the the budget development for the upcoming school year the 2526 school year uh Dr castellan as his Department along with um our administrative team here in Hilburn have been working for several months on uh next year's budget and Dr castan is here to share with us some of the uh the challenges that he's experiencing we are experiencing as well as um you know sharing some information as we get closer to a finalized budget so Dr castan take it away thank you and uh I feel like I'm always following a great act so uh so now time for the budget so today's presentation is going to focus on Transportation which I talked a little bit uh at the
011last meeting about revenues and next steps in the budgeting process so jumping right into the transportation costs here's a list for the last couple of years on where our transportation costs have been and if you recall in the last budget meeting we talked about looking at some increases with our main contract for next year so if you can see we're pretty much on par for this year looking at about $15.5 million of our budget really is transportation last year I and as you can see I had the transportation state aid r iOS up there or dollar amounts up there so this year we recouped about 6 point just under $6.2 million in that Aid and looking at next year if you recall it's going to be about 7.5 million is what we're looking at so
012when I talk about Transportation as a whole for next year I already spoke about ches Ridge and how they do do not want to renew our contract this basically means that we're going to have to go out for bid so the district reached out just to kind of get a little bit of a better understanding on why what what why are we looking at such significant increases so again negotiations amongst their bargaining units uh the riseing cost of new vehicles that they will have to replace rising cost of replacement parts and the rising Insurance costs so when we look at our steps for a request for proposal the district really needs to kind of look at how we would like to go about it are we going to leave the general contract in intact or
013are we going to begin to part part some of it out if you recall last year we parted a couple of contracts out to our non-public schools so we're looking at that as an option moving forward on a couple different ones and this might also include possibly our activity buses we do we do also um contract with bosis for a lot of our special education courses or education uh students and we we currently in our main contract transport our mckin vento students and when we talk about that those those dollar amounts continue to increase with mckin vento so if we could part that out we might be able to save a little bit there so what are the things that the district is looking to do is if we look at a multi-year contract so
014typically we go out for a one-year contract and we simply renew over time based upon what CPI is so if we look at a multi-year contract our hope is that we could bring that number of possibly a 20% increase for any of the bids that are coming in to possibly down to maybe a 10 or 12 and see increments that we can better plan for as a school district over the next course uh over the next couple years now if we do that we'll include a line item in the budget so everyone voting on the budget will understand that it's going to be a multi-year contract and a couple of other things just kind of looking at our transportation as a whole and why we're going to see continued increase costs is we have already
015received several inquiries to add non-public schools that we currently don't bust to um that our students who live in District are now going to start to attend so I believe the last number I saw was around five or six and we anticipate that to continue to increase and then also the applications which if you recall last month I talked about I showed a little um flip on where a little um slide on where we were over the last 5 years and how significant the increase in applications have been last year I showed this Slide the non-allowable pupil decimal report and basically it's a comprehensive report that is required by New York state to be completed every three years the reason why I just wanted to show put this up there and talk about is really
016since the restructuring now more of our students live in an area that we are able to Capt additional Aid prior to this because we had schools that were people lived a little closer to we weren't able to maximize our transportation Aid so now that we're transporting students to other schools we're able to my belief is we're going to be able to capture a lot more uh Aid so where we see that number next year being around 7.5 million I'm hoping that we can even increase that even more as you know it's a little little difficult for a school district to increase the ways that we can grab Revenue so anyway we can look to conduct a couple extra reports for the state we'll certainly do it Rising costs obviously we have health insurance increases every
017year so we already know what those numbers are going to be for July to December however come next December we do need to include in the budget what those anticipated costs could be we have our general liability insurance while that comes in more towards the um end of the budget process and end of the year we're looking at anywhere from you know I generally say about a six to a 10% so I'm looking at 10% right now as we get a little bit closer I'm hoping that number will come down and I can give a little bit more accurate numbers and then obviously we have our utilities our ERS and our TRS I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slide this is our executive State a proposal and mainly because I
018discussed this slide last time I just wanted to put it up there just as a reference because I am talking about our transportation Aid um I'm going to get into our Bose's Aid as well in just a little bit so when I talk about the projective revenues as I stated there's only so many ways a district can recoup revenues or increase revenues so the three items I have highlighted out there are the ones I really kind of want to point out to the board and to the public so the interest on invest Ms so this year if you recall last year we met one of our financial institutions and we felt $2.4 million was a good number and we are on track to have revenues for $2.4 Million by the end of the year so
019typically interest rates are not that high so we were very fortunate now I have a number in of $2 million in there however over the next 30 days we'll be meeting with our financial institutions so we'll have a better understanding on where they can prod reject the interest rates to go some of their some of their suggestions might be to look to put some of our money when we uh receive our tax money in the fall into possibly three thre month bonds four month bonds so we're really looking at that because what we're seeing right now is a decrease in interest rates so while we are able to capture a lot of money this year that we typically would not have I'm not confident that that $2 million will be there but once I meet
020with the financial institutions I'll have a more concrete number so for right now I want to leave the $2 million in there now the revenues for Pilots the payment and L taxes as we know this is a great way for municipalities to have uh to generate revenue and for new businesses to come in so one of the big uh one of the big factors that we have if you recall last year that number was over $2 million well what we have is Raymore Flanigan is now coming off the pilot list so for the district we are losing $740,000 of Revenue that they were paying us however for the taxpayer they will now join the taxpayers so while that work is all done with the town assessor's office they that's um they will still be paying
021taxes but they'll be now in the General Pool of taxes okay when we talk about the Bose's Aid I have a number of $3.5 million up there now if you recall on my previous slide with the state aid proposal it was about $2.5 million and the reason why I chose to put $3.5 million in there is the state updates that as we move and just to look at it historically to the year to date we've received $1.4 million we're on uh track to receive a total of 3.5 which we uh which we did plan for last year so we'll receive 3.5 by the end of the year the prior year the 23 24 year we received $3.9 million in Bose's Aid and the year before that was $3.4 Million so I'm pretty confident to say
022that we'll receive $3.5 million next year in Bose's Aid as opposed to the 2.5 which is the projected amount in the governers State uh report and now we have the tax levy and we're looking at around $121 million so we'll talk about that on the next slide so historically we have gone to the tax cap and we've been around 1.2 to 1.1% as we conduct the um as we conduct the formula that we submit to the office of State com controller this year we saw a jump to 2.9% well the reason why we're seeing that jump to 2.9% is because we have have Raymore Flanigan falling off that pilot that's the one big factor that that has changed with the formula so when we when we submit that the state is basically saying we understand
023that you have $740,000 less Revenue coming in and you need to recoup that in some capacity right so because of that they're moving our tax cap up to 2.9% when we look at the budget to- budget increase over the next couple uh over the last couple years we see we can see in the in the last column that it was anywhere from 5% 4% 3% and then we see the 5.95% now if you look at the where where it says approved budget obviously we didn't approve that last budget line the 1 174 million but obviously that number is larger than the revenues so what that means is currently meeting with the administrative staff with the projections on transportation and the large increase in transportation we're looking at 174 million so what we need to do
024here on our end is bring that 174 down to approximately the 170 should the board decide to go out for that tax cap so we are going to be looking at those numbers and really looking at certain wish lists that maybe we can put off another year um possibly we get that contract in more in the 10 to 12 uh percent range instead of a 20% range we'll be in good shape so should that occur our budget line would be somewhere in the ra realm of 3.8 to 4% uh budget to- budget increase which would be in line with the previous years again we're seeing that would be in line as opposed to the tax cap mainly because we are losing that pilot and really the transportation piece is hurting us a little bit um
025[Music] absolutely I'm sorry Billy we're losing the uh Raymore Flanigan money but I understand they're coming off the pilot right but when will that money be recouped by the town that would be distributed to us correct down the line so you say we're losing the money and I don't understand now they're being great great question so Raymore Flanigan currently no it it is a very good question though so Raymore Flanigan right anytime we get to the end of the life on a pilot so the pilot in order to draw a new business in we a business might put together a plan they'll meet with attorneys they'll meet with the different municipalities whether it's um the school district the town of rampo and a lot of times the village is suffering right and then between the
026three of them they'll they'll have a conversation there'll be some negotiations and a final presentation will be made and then it's adopted by each of them right so what that does is basically instead of Raymore Flanigan paying taxes from The General let's say when we look up there the tax levy of $121 million instead of them paying within that 121 they're paying the district a certain amount of money they're paying the town a certain amount of money and the village a certain amount of money right so now right so now that they're at the end of their pilot they're not paying the district the town and the village that money anymore but they are going to join the rest of the taxpayers and right and when we talk about the percentages and figures that's really
027all run out of the tax assessor's office um and then and that's how that's distributed thank you Billy D told you a good question any other questions from board members yes sorry so really so we're looking to try and trim it by about 4 million to stay within that typical percentage raise year-to-year budget increase okay that's correct so if anyone wins the lottery a big lottery be a nice wish list we could put together okay but then they can just throw in $4 million and that would be fine okay now we have to buy tickets thanks thank you any other questions from board members no okay thank you thank you so much Dr casteline Dr castelline thank you so much for the for the comprehensive report um I I just want to be clear that
028as Dr castellan said the administrative team is working on how we can make sure that the numbers line up and we have full confidence that that is going to happen so I I know you're being funny about you know if somebody wins the lottery we are not in in Dire Straits here this is an effort to be very transparent to the public to show that this is a work in progress and we are certainly getting there and we will get there and we'll be presenting that at the one of the upcoming board meetings thank you so much okay all right thank you so much uh thank you yes Dr castlin for that comprehensive report thank you so much uh for our students um from suff and middle school for being here tonight and thank you
029for teachers choreographers um directors for joining them um my son is also a part of that production so I know how hard you all have been working and that was that was just great so I can't wait to see it next week um break a leg to everyone um okay we're now going to move on to public participation this is on action items only action items are on our agenda tonight 2.01 through 2.19 is anyone here to speak from the public just on action items okay seeing as there are none we're going to close that portion of the meeting and move on uh um before I request a consent agenda for the action items is there any item that any board member would like to pull no no okay great uh do I have a
030motion for a consent agenda for Action items 2.01 through 2.19 thank you Mr Donnelly second Mr Shapiro uh all in favor signify by saying I I anyone opposed any extensions okay very good then we're going to move on to board member comments uh do any board members have any comments tonight okay thank you Dr dpon I just have a a quick comment uh mainly on a on a personal note I just want to thank the district and thank suff High School for the um blood drive help with the blood drive that we had the emn together blood drive on February 20th it was a amazing success and I just wanted to thank all those involved in organizing it uh uh Dr Adler Scott Kaplan uh Melissa mono Danielle saoba we had a lot of volunteers
031from the USL club uh which helped uh and New York blood center was excellent uh very efficient uh board members and Dr Gunnerson uh donated and commented how efficient it was and uh just a very successful blood drive and we had a a bunch of new donors which is very exciting to us to kind of bring that uh uh spirit of giving uh blood and we raised 98 we collected 98 units this year which was uh very uh substantial and we are thankful for that so thank you thank you Dr Nick pan I'm so glad to see the continued support for the matd Nick Pon Foundation um is there any other board member comments tonight no okay very good um all right then we're going to move on to our second public participation sections is
032on any District related business um if anyone is here to speak from the public um please approach the uh Podium over there uh please uh keep your comments to three minutes um please do not mention anyone in the district whether staff or student or teacher by name and please uh give us your name and your relationship to the district is there anyone who's here to speak from the public okay uh seeing as there are none we have closed that portion of the meeting um are there any closing comments from the superintendent I have no further comments okay uh then our next meeting will be Tuesday March 18th at 7:30 pm. right back here in Hilburn thank you everyone for being here tonight and thank you again to our um Middle School musicians from The Little
033Mermaid and do I have a motion to uh adjourn this meeting thank you Mr Frasier second Mr Donell all in favor signify by saying I I okay anyone opposed no great then we will see everyone back here on March 18th thank you