001Mr. Joseph Obaika Jr. Here. Mrs. Danielle Hajula. Mr. Donald Oz. Here. Mrs. Tenille New. Here. Mr. James Paul. Is this you? Mr. Jason Cooper. Is this you? Mr. Braden Anna. Here. Okay. I'm going to take the agenda a little bit out of order. We have some resolutions that are up for adoption. The first one is where is an appeal of the decision of the superintendent of schools regarding student discipline was made to the Board of Education in accordance with section 3214 of the New York Education Law dated April 15, 2026. And whereas the Board of Education duly considered the arguments made in support of the appeal and fully reviewed the record of the matter in light of said arguments. Now therefore it is hereby resolved that the disciplinary action imposed by the superintendent is overturned.
002The board finds there was insufficient evidence in the record to establish that the student engaged in the charge makes misconduct. The board directs the superintendent to expunge the suspension from the student disciplinary record. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 4-0. Whereas an appeal of decision of the superintendent of school regarding student discipline was made to the Board of Education in accordance with Section 3214 of the New York Education Law dated April 15, 2026. And whereas the Board of Education duly considered the arguments made in support of the appeal and fully reviewed the record of the matter in light of said arguments. Now therefore it is hereby resolved that the disciplinary action imposed by the superintendent of schools is upheld The board finds competent substantial evidence the student engaged in the charge misconduct and
003deems the penalty imposed Appropriate given the nature of the misconduct and the anecdotal evidence in the record all those in favor opposed motion carries there's a resolution whereas an appeal of decision of the superintendent of schools regarding student discipline was made to the board of education in accordance with section 3214 of the new york education law dated march 17 2026 whereas the Board of Education duly considered the arguments made in support of the appeal and fully reviewed the record of the matter and lightest said arguments now therefore it is hereby resolved that the disciplinary action imposed by the superintendent of schools is upheld the board finds competent substantial evidence the student engaged in the charge misconduct and deems the penalty imposed appropriate given the nature of the misconduct and the anecdotal evidence in the record
004all in favor opposed motion carries resolution whereas an appeal of decision of the superintendent of schools regarding student discipline was made to the Board of Education in accordance with section 32 14 of the new york education law dated march 30 2026 and whereas the board of education duly considered the arguments made in support of the appeal and fully reviewed the record of the matter in light of said arguments now therefore it is hereby resolved that the disciplinary action imposed by the superintendent of schools is upheld the board finds competent substantial evidence that the student engaged in the charge misconduct and deems the penalty imposed appropriate given the nature of the conduct and the anecdotal evidence in the record all in favor aye opposed none all four resolutions have been adopted with regard to student discipline
005up next the Utica City School District 2026-27 budget hearing and I believe if you do have any questions you are welcome to ask them in an orderly manner All right, good evening to the board and the viewing audience at home. Today we're here to discuss the budget hearing and to really talk about any particulars that relate to this budget. So we'll get straight into it. So again... you'll notice the consistent theme that all of the work that we do is rooted in our mission and vision and so too is the budget that we've constructed in this process. It's really based on our ability to force an organization that's rooted in continuous improvement and incremental and sustainable growth over time. So again, we're talking about a very large, complex. organization that has so many different moving
006parts and we are working to develop a budget that's going to allow us to develop sustained and incremental growth over time and you'll see that aligned with our priorities that we have proposed and initiatives that we propose to fund for the 26-27 year so again rome wasn't built in a day our mission is always to be better next year than we were the preceding year and so we look at this work as a larger transformative process that will take uh the shape over time as we are molding the organization into a model district urban transformation so again i always point to continuous improvement because it's something that we are engaged in again this is our our vision everything is aligned to our mission and vision And then also our instructional priorities. Working in collaboration with
007the broader instructional council, we developed instructional goals for the year that would guide system performance as well guide the benchmarks that we are looking at to determine whether the system has been effective this year. We will build upon those goals working with our broader administrative council to revisit the areas in which we were successful and also set new benchmarks for the 26 and 27 year. But the reason why I highlight this is to show that mission, vision, district goals, there's a coherence that shapes our budget priorities. And this is all aligned. And it's a very important distinction to note. And so one of the things that we have worked to do is we've of course developed our award-winning Raiders Extended Day Program and we want to continue that. So we are looking to continue that
008program because we believe that that investment in our students' academic and social emotional skills will pay dividends not only now but later on. Again, if we are prioritizing extended day learning opportunities for students now, we would imagine... any science would tell you that those students should be better or differentially academically positioned than students who did not engage in that program. So it's an investment and as those students leave the elementary and traverse through the system, we're going to track how was the experience shaped by their attendance in this program. It's one of the things we're looking at. Again, our new career and technical education program, we are introducing 300 temporary students to over 12 career pathways. Again, that helps us with educational attainment, giving students a variety of ways to access the education and credentials,
009as well as improving their post-secondary outcomes, meaning we want students not only to leave here with the content, knowledge, and skills to be successful, but also to be immediately employable in our local community here. We're going to again continue a continuation of our summer enrichment programming. We're working to strengthen school leadership. So one of the things that we noticed just in the feedback that we've gotten from our administrators, even our teachers, is really strengthening the building level supports. So we are offering or prioritizing an investment in additional administrators to help really support the instructional capacity of our buildings. We want all of our building principals not only to be operational leaders, but to also have the capacity to be instructional leaders in their work because they have that support. And another function of this is
010not only to focus on just our school leadership from the instructional side, but it's also capacity building for our organization. We want to make sure that we are creating advancement opportunities and really creating a pipeline as we're looking to grow leaders and further succession planning throughout the organization. Professional development, again, we're prioritizing this. In a globally interconnected world, isolationism doesn't work from a country standpoint, nor does it work for a school district. The schools and our leaders and our teachers and our faculty and staff at varying levels of the organization must have the ability to meet with... others in the field that are on the edge of cutting new practices to stay abreast of best practices in the field and they need to be able to speak and to really communicate within a broader field
011so that they can bring that knowledge back to Utica in the local context and help inform the things that we're doing. And so that work doesn't happen in silos, it happens by really connecting with professionals in our industry so that we can get better and that we can learn and grow and to some extent so that we can teach and offer the things that are working well in Utica to the field as well and position ourselves as leaders and the things that we do well. So this is very important. We want to focus on leadership development, capacity building across the organization to make sure that not only do we have a strong succession pipeline, but we also have people that are developing the habits and minds, content, knowledge, and skill set to be effective in
012their work because the organization and the industry is ever evolving as to are the challenges associated with urban education and transformation. So that's a very big initiative that we're proud to invest in and we appreciate the support and then again we have the ongoing technology upgrades to make sure that our students have the most ready tools to support student learning. And so today, we're joined today for the budget hearing, and our purpose really is to educate voters, really justify our fiscal decisions, clarify our tax impact, which is easy because we're going zero on the levy, and then help to prepare the community for the upcoming vote. And so that's really what the purpose of today is. We've had a good, strong, collaborative process in building this budget. And we'll talk about that. So again, we're
013planning out months in advance. We are making projections based on what we think future organizational needs will be based on the information we have at our disposal at any given time. And we really work this year collaboratively as an organization, as a central office administration, to really gain feedback and insight from different vantage points within the system to help inform this budget process. And we've done this work together. collaboratively with board input and the board has directed some changes in the budget and we appreciate that input working with the board and working with the administrators and this is the final project and we're proud for that. I'm proud to have been a part of this process. It's been a very good process this year. And so we will discuss the three-part budget. Again, we are
014proposing a budget that consists of $310,427,947 with a 0% tax increase on the levy, which will remain at the $30 million mark. Again, when you look at the proportion of the way the budget is proportioned in regards to how much of the budget is programming, you'll see that that's consistent from where we were in the 25-26 to the proposed 26-27 year. Contrary to popular belief, not much changes. We are not... cutting programs we are not laying off people so there's not much that changes with the budget over here over here their contractual obligations health care costs and the amount of the budget that we actually have at our disposal to move around is not as much as people would like to think i just have to clarify that And so for you'll see our administrative
015budget here. This has been again presented before. This really just articulates our thinking in regards to this function of the budget. You'll see an increase of about roughly around $2.5 million. Is there anything else we want to say about this? Dr. Spence requested that we take a look at the administrative percentage and what part of the budget. And right now, of next year's budget, it's about 7.78%. He wanted us to know, is that more or less than what other school districts similar in size, either around in our community or around the state, are we having more administrative costs, less administrative costs, or about the same? And what we found was we were far below. Far below. Terribly far below. We knew that last year, starting last year, when we got the annual state, what they
016call ESSA report, a transparency report, and we actually were flagged. And the flag was, why are your administrative costs so much lesser than other school districts around the state? So when we did this research project and taking a look at other school districts similar to our size, we found that we indeed were so far above. below up to about two and a half million dollars. When we looked at another district that was comparable in several districts comparable in size, the lowest amount that we were below was two and a half. is almost summer up to five million so we're pretty proud of where we are administratively wise um dr spence you know has always been promoting trying to make sure that we have enough staff to get the work done um but i just want
017to also mention something is that this is budget over budget so when you look at these numbers sometimes it gets a little confusing because you're going to say well we spent in 25 26 that isn't accurate Okay, and again, you look at the bulk of the budget, it's programming. You know, it's the people that are really driving the work to help support our students. And you'll see that there is a $17.1 million increase. And I have the view, again, in a similar fashion when we speak to program aspect of the budget. There again, when we took a look at programmatic, we found that we were pretty far high up in the amount of dollars that we spend percentage-wise. We weren't the top. But we were right up there with the majority of other districts. So
018we're very proud of that. What's the flip side? You'll see that in capital. I think that's because we've invested so much in our buildings, in efficiencies, whether it be lighting, air, all kinds of those things. And those things are paying off as it relates to costs associated to electric and gas. I just want to point out a couple of other things real quickly here. Let's see. Some time ago the press reported that we were cutting jobs, a particular press service. We're not cutting any jobs. There was some extra contingency in different places, and Dr. Spence really wanted to see that money being worked on our behalf of our students. And so there are no positions being cut, but if there were a little bit of extra money in there that could be used somewhere else
019for the betterment of our students, that's what he asked us to do. I call that the strategic reallocation of resources. But I think just for, no wait, before you go on, just for their thinking, you were very diligent in really looking at what was actually expensed in making those projections. Could you just talk a little bit about that? Because to a degree, you've right-sized this to make sure that it fits based on our assumptions today, knowing that these things could change. So as I've provided the board on several occasions over the past couple of months, we took a look at every line over a three-year history. We took a look, what was expensed there? Was it supposed to be expensed there? Did it make sense? And where could it be placed, if so, that would
020be more transparent? Because that was our goal, making sure things were in the correct lines and transparent. Didn't have to do too much, but what we did, what we... did was we learned more about the process where things should be so it is transparent and we did this over a period of three or four months this budget process doesn't start two months ago it started in the fall when school started to make sure that that we had enough allocation and resources to implement where dr spence was leading the district and so we're we're very excited by this budget one other thing i do want to just point you see down to transfer to other funds the The majority of that money is for our school lunch program because we do subsidize it because we provide
021free lunches to our students. And so the past couple of years, you've done a big transfer for that. And Dr. Spence wanted to make sure that that was properly funded this year. Yes. As we're involved in ongoing negotiations regarding particular MOA that's contributed to that. And so just I'm going to say it here, should we have to revisit this next year, Heather, right, is that. There may be transfers. We have predict we're doing this based on assumption today So as any good business model, we will make adjustments within a year depending on what occurs But this is based on our assumption as we know it today how we Plan to expense the money now know depending on what happens we may say we need to transfer funds here to allocate resources there to make sure
022that we are um fulfilling our mission and vision but i just want to say that here and we've done our best to project those things could i just ask a question about that yep So it's not against the law to transfer money that's in the budget, right, in one line to another? No, not at all. Heather, would you mind if Heather just got, can you just explain what that's about so that the people listening at home understand what it is that you guys are doing and what we're overseeing? So a budget is a footprint of where you want to be. Sometimes that footprint doesn't materialize. because of a number of factors. So you have to be able to pivot. You have to be able to move on behalf of your students. If you have a
023new program in the middle of the year, you look to find those account lines that might have contingency built in or certain things that may not come to fruition, and you move that money. The goal is to be as accurate as we can be. They're all estimates, and that's really the important thing to remember, are estimates. So does it happen in governmental, you know, the operation of government or school districts where money may be placed in the budget and then you find that you have to transfer it somewhere else in order because something changed that required you to do that? So how does that work? So a lot of local governments like the city of Utica, they do it weekly. They have a board of estimate apportionment and they've approved budget transfers weekly and at
024their common council meetings. School districts, one of two ways, either they do it the way that we are now doing it. And up until three years ago, you weren't approving budget transfers. They were just happening. And that was one of the first things that we did. You as a board decided that you wanted to do budget transfers as soon as we knew them. And that's something that we've been coming to you with. The other way, which is what a lot of school districts do, they wait until the end of June, into July. They're getting ready for their audit. And that's when they come through and do huge transfers. We've done a little bit of both, but we've really been very active and progressive in trying to get those budget transfers to you when we know
025they're going to take place. Thank you. Again, we call that strategic resource allocation. And I just want to talk about this point. In any other sector. You would expect the CEO to do that in any other sector you will respond to the market immediately based on market factors market conditions So as an organization we want to get better at doing that because if we understand that there's a problem that we can maybe develop Programs or things that we could fund and we can do it in real time We want to do it in real time rather than wait to the next year. So that is actually a Strong financial management if you can do that And again, the things that you can predict that you know of ahead of time you'd like to plan for.
026But again, I couldn't have said it any better. Thank you very much. So just a question, because I know I've asked about it before. And I think it's worth clarifying again. In terms of the large decreases that we see in three of the areas of the budget, and I know I've asked about two of these in the past, just to clarify for everyone. We're not cutting services is my understanding of this. It's that there's two, correct me if I'm wrong, I think that there's two things going on. One, there was over budgeting in the past in a couple of those areas. And more largely, I believe, the guidance and psychological services. those some of those are being re-coded to BOCES account items right which is why we see the decrease there but not actually a
027decrease in services. Yes and and then just for the for the viewing public when they when they vote all of this is just accounting this is just cost accounting practices the board and the public will approve a pot of money. And within the money, this is how we intend to spend that money. So to your point, you're right on. No, we're not reducing staff. We're not reducing services. But we're really just providing greater tight management in regards to where things should be placed within these codes and within these lines. And we're right-sizing it. There was some contingency in some of these lines, and we worked to right-size that to ensure greater fiscal management. And if I've, did I take a lot down? Well, thank you. Thank you. See my specifically with guidance and psychological services,
028those were being recoded to. COSRs under BOCES, right? Two different situations. Under psychological services, there was more money budgeted. When you looked at a three-year history, it wasn't being utilized. There's still a little bit of contingency in there if we need to pivot at any point, but we wanted to reduce it, not keep having the over-budgeting in that particular line item. When it comes to guidance services, that was a reallocation of a BOCES COSR. between several other lines. So we're not reducing guidance services and presently there is no guidance services that BOCES is providing us. Thank you. And then I just, I guess I got to say this again because I, you know, sometimes you hear in the rumor mill that we're cutting the attendance teachers. I know we're not cutting the attendance teachers just
029for the public that might believe that, you know, so we just got to make, just be strong in our position. We're not cutting people. We're not cutting positions. We are also working to expand, uh, services in some areas. And so we'll move to, to capital and I want to come back up just to talk about capital. So you see a little bit of a decrease as it relates to the operation of plant there again. Worked really closely with our director, our chief of our facilities and plant operation, Mike Ferraro, who really watches these numbers pretty closely. just reduced some of the contingency there. As it relates to maintenance of plant, the extra $231,000 is repairs for air circulation and our parking lot sidewalk improvements. It took a real beating this year. As it relates to
030judgment claims, there's not much there. And employee benefits, you know, we've seen an increase there. And employee benefits is across in each of the... the sections it's under programmatic and administrative but overall there's about a seven percent and total increase to employee benefits most of which is health insurance. Okay, and again, we just show just utilize this pie chart to sort of show the proportion of particular objects within the budget and you know, they're really proportionate. Again, most of the budget is fixed through contractual obligations because most of our budget is people and you know contracts, so you won't see much fluctuation here. And now we'll turn to talk about the revenues. So on the revenue side of the budget, much like the expenditure side, we continually work together to project revenues throughout the year.
031It should be noted that this year that's, of course, as important as ever. We don't have a state budget yet for state aid, but we're very confident in the work we've done to project and prepare the revenue side of the budget. You see the revenues laid out there. As you know, we're a highly state aid dependent district of our approximately $20.3 million increase in total revenue. That's driven by approximately $19 million of state aid. You can see the other smaller differences. And one, one reason you see almost a difference in every line is similar to expenditures. We did quite a review of the revenue lines. to really project out what we were anticipating and what makes sense for each of the individual lines. On the appropriated fund balance side, the net of our appropriated equity
032accounts, we have a slight reduction. That's important as we look to rely more on reoccurring revenue and slightly less on fund balance and reserves. And again, we just show you the proportion of revenues being highly the state aid dependent district. And so again, we try to make sure that our expenses and revenues balance out so that we're not creating any structural deficits within the budget. And then these are our propositions that will be on the ballot. Anyone want to take a ballot? May 19th is our annual voting day, our public vote. We're pretty excited by that. We have one opening on our board. These are all the different polling locations. We'll be there from 12 to 9. Immediately after, we'll be reconvening here in the boardroom where we'll be canvassing the vote as a group.
033And then I believe the next day, May 20th, there is a board meeting that will be approving those results. Thank you. Thank you very much. Again, this is the total budget amount and we are zero on the levy. We are not cutting any positions. We are not cutting programs and we are looking to build upon the work that we have done. Again, this work is... This budget provides us with the resources and tools to continue the momentum that we have established and gained together. We'd like to again thank the board for providing us with the tools and the resources. The board and the administration together we have collaboratively been able to accomplish a lot. Most notably the market increases in student achievement, most notably the award-winning REDD program, as well as the close and completion
034of our CTE project. So through this collaboration and strong partnership we're able to continue to lead this district and advance upon this momentum so again this is the budget it's been a great process and thank you all for your partnership anybody else have any questions no okay i need a motion to adjourn all in favor we're adjourned