001come out of executive session for the purpose of discussing contracts and the employment of particular people as they relate to the budget. Move it. Second. I want to thank everybody for their input during the discussion. And... Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Apologize. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Okay, we're back in our special meeting. Now, in terms of the budget, oh, sorry. Okay, now we're going to talk about non-contractual, non-employment-related issues in terms of the budget. And so I'm going to open the floor up for anyone that has... Oh, yes, I think that would be a good idea. Who's going to make a presentation on the latest budget? All right, good evening to the Board, good evening to our viewing audience at home. Before we start this budget presentation, first I would like to thank
002the Board for being thought partners in this in regards to the questions that you sent to help guide us as we're working through this budget. I know it's a work in progress, but we do appreciate that support. Just like everything that we do in the district, everything is centered around our mission and vision. So you'll see this here because this is what guides our budget, which is also a moral document. The highlights that you'll see in this upcoming budget, the proposed budget, is again, we're expanding our student learning and our graduation pathways, the CTE program, which is the crown jewel of our district, which uniquely positions us in a state as having our own in-house CTE program. We will be adding additional teachers, which will also be an added cost to the budget. Along the
003same lines, we are employing a strategic technology replacement plan to make sure our students have the best resources to support learning. And we're happy to structurally invest in our ability to strengthen our community engagement by establishing a family and community engagement department, which will help coordinate programs and better force their connection with our community partners as well as our parents. So another exciting aspect of the work. Dr. Spence, could I just ask you a question about something that you mentioned? Yep. We're doing an invest in an investment in our technology right and that in this year's budget is Does anyone recall the number the amount we're spending? Yeah, for the replacement plan for the technology for the classroom. Yeah. Yeah, it's four four point three million. Okay, and When was the last time we we
004did that? The last time we purchased all that. So when originally, and I want to say 18 or 18, 19 school year, uh, the technology in the classrooms were pretty bad. So we ended up spending, I think $22,000 per classroom and upgraded all the equipment at once because it had to be done. So the cost was huge. We used some COVID money and some other. So this money we're spending this year in the budget or the proposed budget is not to replace everything in the entire district, correct? Right. So we didn't want to put the district in that place again to come up with the money of $20 million. So we're phasing it in? So this is the first phase of a five-year phase in plan to replace the equipment district-wide. Now, this equipment is
005the classroom equipment, or are you also talking about the computers and things like that? So it's everything. It's Chromebooks for the children. For students, it's smart TVs. It's teacher workstations. It's headphones. It's everything that they use to teach in the classroom. So our plan in terms of technology upgrade and replacement is? five-year phased plan? Correct. And in terms of how we're spending money each year is it you know how did that plan get arrived at? So we take the highest use equipment and we start with the replacement plan in that aspect. So let's for example Proctor high school and the middle schools are using Chromebooks every class every period every day when you get into like k2 You know, the the usage is a little lower. So that's how we figure on the replacement cycle
006is really on usage and we can see that on the back end also from on the software side and then you're going to have things that you know break or warranty repairs and things like that that we come into play but that's really how we're going to do the replacement plan we look at you know equipment that needs to be replaced for whatever reason some will be out of warranty and needs to be replaced and others it's it's really on usage Okay. Anyone else have any questions about just on that? Do we also have a surplus of Chromebooks and other things for a student who doesn't return them or breaks them or those things just get phased with the repair? Well, there's a, so what we typically will do is when we get, when we
007replace the Chromebooks with the new replacement, we'll take some of those that are halfway deset, use those for what we call remote Chromebooks. and replenish them that way. Keep a percentage per building and that's how we will recycle those. Because the remote Chromebooks that we're using now were from the last time we did a cycle change all at once. They're due too. Gotcha. So the ones that we have now that are in good shape, those will be put into the reserve. And some of them we do refurbish. There's a repair maintenance agreement through BOCES. take them and we'll make some of them, repair some of them, and make sure we have enough for those remote learners. And then we already have like a percentage of new ones, like a classroom's got probably 32 when there's
008only 25 kids in it. That way, if something goes wrong in the classroom, you couldn't have more than one go down. It's technology, right? They're in there to replace that. So we factor all those things in. Thank you. Thank you. We'll speak a little bit more about that as we go on in the presentation. Thank you. Another thing that you'll see is that we are incorporating our Raiders Extended Day Learning Program into this upcoming budget, which will help not only support our neediest families, but also provide a space for social-emotional learning as well as academic preparation. Additionally, another thing we're excited is the development of the long-range strategic planning. One of the goals for the upcoming year is to coordinate all the activity in the district to within a multi-year plan that will address where
009we're going as well as the process for how we're getting there. And we're really excited to embark on that journey. Again, the goals of the budget is to really ensure that we have the funding to make strategic resource allocation moves within a given year as things come up throughout the year. We want to be responsive and flexible to the system's needs so that we can better support our students. So I just want to elaborate a little bit on this slide. and how our budget for the next school year will support some of these schools just by giving a couple of examples. So right now we're taking a pretty deep dive into our key performance indicators, specifically related to student performance and other performance measures. And this particular budget for the next school year supports our
010budget priorities through these examples. We're expanding educational opportunities at the secondary level through our CTE programming. This budget maintains the investment that the school district made in our systems of care partners, which are designed to better meet the social and emotional needs of our students. This budget also maintains all of the positions that were added since the 2022 school year to support our most needy students and the special education department. It also provides, as Dr. Spence said, funding for the after-school programming, the Raiders Extended Day Learning Program, which focuses on academics, enrichment, and socio-emotional support. And then one other example, this budget also helps in the process of the redesign that we're undergoing right now in our mathematics program. So a lot of our focus was on reading coming out of COVID, but we've... We've
011seen from our student performance data that math is a key area that we need to focus on So with the addition of an elementary director a year ago that department has really undertaken a total revamping of the district's mathematics program And this budget will enable us to continue the math interventionists that were put at each of the buildings at the elementary level and also They're going through a research-based selection for a new mathematics series, which will actually be k12 when we're done with our partnership with the American Institutes for Research. All right, so again, the budget is coordinated in three parts. I'm going to talk a little bit about each aspect of it. So as most of you are aware, we're required to present our budget in three parts. So we will go through that
012this evening. There we go. Okay, so our total budget that we're proposing tonight is $290,141,927. This is supported with a 0% tax levy increase over prior years. So what that means to us as a district is we will not be increasing any money that we're getting in on our tax levy. In regards to how that's impacted for each individual person is based on a number of factors, including their assessed value, star rebates, et cetera. Just to be clear, that's what it means to us is our levy to support our expenses is not increasing next year. Here is a visual example in regards to our budget compared to 24-25 for what we're proposing for 25-26. I apologize, Kim. I just wanted to ask this question. So we're doing a $290 million budget, give or take, right?
013And are we... When will we know the final numbers from the state in terms of because our budget is you know I think it's what is it 30 million dollars and some change from the tax levy correct? Okay, which is enough to pay our health insurance bill a portion of most of it, but so What you know do we have a plan in place? To address for example if there was a Reduction or are we pretty certain that our state aid is coming down to? I think at this point we're pretty certain about the state aid. Obviously the discussion that we've had before is the grant funding. So we do have a backup plan in case something does fall apart with the federal funds going into next year. But really, most people are adopting their
014budget at this point, and there was years before, I'm sure some of you remember, that we were adopting budgets without any information from the state for years, and then we had to pivot in multiple ways at that point. So we make our best projections that we can in regards to our spending plan and our revenues, and then we continue to monitor that as we go through the year. Okay. Anyone have any questions about the tax levy portion or the funding side? Thank you. Okay, so as I mentioned, this is just a visual in regards to the shift that you're going to see from our overall budget going up actually impacts how the percentages look. So this diagram takes a look at the fact that we are more heavy in programming for 25-26, and that has
015reduced the capital. That doesn't mean our capital expenses are going down. It just means that the allocation when we're looking at a pie chart is shifting. So here we start looking at what is in that administrative portion of the budget. So a lot of these lines are pretty stable from one year to the next. There are a couple things that we would like to point out, and I'll have Ms. Mowat speak to one of them. So over the past year, we've talked quite a bit about recoding of salary accounts. And this was kind of a do-a-fold purpose. So under personnel, you can see a dip. And you would say, well, gee, why are we cutting personnel when we really want to hire people and we need that staffing? Under there were parent liaisons. Parent liaisons
016shouldn't be coming under personnel services. I'm not quite sure in the past why it was put under there. But we're taking a look at everything and where it's aligned so that it's properly aligned and why. The other reason is our state reporting. Annually we have to report to the state and the federal government how we're spending our money. And if you don't have it in the right pockets, then those reports are off. So for transparency purposes and accountability purposes, we're not doing any quote-unquote realignment, but what we're taking a look at is what those salary lines are. Our descriptions are and making sure that those people that have those descriptions are in those proper lines And so for the most part if they're in the proper cost centers So if you may recall we came
017to you back in July and August and we asked for some budget transfers or end-of-year budget Transfers the majority of them were in the same cost centers. Not all of them, but for the most part So we're just refining that and that continues until today. So We had a Finance Committee meeting a couple of weeks ago and we talked about the coding issues in the district right and You know, it's been evident that the coding issues have been Plaging that well, they're plaguing us because we're actually focused on them, but They've been in place since it's got to be a long time because there wasn't as much of a focus on them as before. So now we've spent a lot of time addressing the coding issues, but I was under the assumption, based on the
018conversations that we had during the finance committee meeting, that we were going to explore... addressing trying to get a final handle on the coding by you know seeking out the services of a coding team of experienced coders to come in and actually address our our codes to to I mean there were so many codes but to get it to a point where you know whereas complete as we can and it's my understanding that we may be trying to do that this summer. Is that correct? That is correct, but I want to remind you two years ago when I started in May, the budget had already been presented to you and that budget was not line itemed out for personnel. It was just a number. The majority of them didn't have names connected to it, didn't
019have positions connected to it. So over the past year, we've worked tirelessly with a team of people helping us, Morick, BOCES, Patty Service, who you may recall has been assisting us in a consulting relationship for the past couple of years because of her close relationship with the district and understanding what we do. So it continues, and it... It didn't just all of a sudden happen over a period of years. And so it does continue. Is this happening because we've gotten more granular with our approach to the budget? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Is that what you're saying? Yes. So at any point, if you were to look in our software system for our budgeting, you're going to be able to see positions. You're going to know that that particular line in personnel, say it's clerical, you're
020going to see the positions. You're going to see the names. And you can line them up. It is no longer just a nebulous number. It's lined right up. So that's why this keeps popping up because we've gone more granular? More granular, but also it's important to remember some things have changed the past year. We've come off of ESSER funding. We've got a variety of federal funding. Our C4E, the additional state funding that we have, we got much more granular with that. Previously, we had a very small finding, and we wanted to make sure we got rid of that finding. So we've gotten very granular to make sure that it's very transparent and very clear that if any point a board member wanted to come up and said, I would like to see what's in the
021teacher's line at Columbus, you're going to see a series of names, and those names should match the teachers at Columbus. So when a position becomes open, you're going to be able to see it. So it's taking a long time to do that. A lot of people from Steve Felchie and his team to Sarah Klimek and, as I said, Morick and our outside consultant, Patty Service. So it's been a real team effort, but the goal has been, and I think we're pretty much there, that it's at least in the right cost centers. Now it's just moving those people to the right place. Okay, thank you. If I can just add one thing. So years ago, you were not required to report by building. So we've always done the ST3 reporting that breaks buildings out by like
022K3, 4-6, 7-12. That's one set of reporting that we have to do that we have to send into the state to get our state aid back in September. Back in, I want to say maybe 2018, 19, they came out with a transparency report, which then required all of this reporting by building as well. So to what Ms. Mowat was saying, that's what we're working on right now is to make sure that we have, if you're a teacher at Conklin, you're in the Conklin, you'll see on the detail where we started adding those lines now. And what that will allow Dr. Spence to do is to really take a look at where we're allocating those funds by building. specific to the people that are working there, if that makes sense. So, so you're to your point,
023Mr. Hobake, absolutely. The work in the business office has gotten much more granular over the past few years based on the reporting that we have to provide. Okay. Thank you. So we'll move on to the program session section of the budget. Um, in regards to this line, I'll have Mr. Fauci, um, come on up and go through some parts of this and actually, um, Michael step back up again too. Sure. So with respect to the instructional regular day budget line item, you see there's an increase in $7.2 million. The bulk of that is the funding for the extended day RED program that we're looking to expand as we move into next school year. So I'm just going to talk about the increases in a couple of line items, the library, audiovisual, education TV. This really
024comes out of the communications committee and enhancing the media communications and equipment throughout the district. And that's where you're going to see the increase in that. So it's putting studios, smaller studios in the middle schools in Kennedy and Donovan, some equipment that's needed in the high school for replacement and to help the elementary schools with those communications. And then we talked about the computer-assisted instruction. You see that big number is a 5.8. And a portion of that, and I know I said 4.3 million earlier, but it's like 2.9 in the 500,000s for copiers, so it's broken down a little more efficiently. I just wanted to reiterate that to everybody. So that's the increase in that budget line. And then we got... The district transportation line with a 6.137 increase. So that majority increase is really
025focused around student achievement and education, right? The RED program, extended learning in the summer, and route efficiencies, right? We added more routes to get kids to school on time, so they're reaching their bell times. How do you, when you add more routes, you're saying we added more routes. Are we adding more buses? What are we doing when we're adding routes? What does that mean? So yeah, it's it well, yeah, it's really adding a route or run we call it So if a run has either too many kids on it or it's taking too long to get somewhere, it could be because of the traffic or the route that it has to take. Really, there's a time that we really don't want the kids to be on the bus for that long. So we look at
026those weekly to see where the problems are. And I know it seems crazy that we're this far into the year, but we still look at them. And then we assess if it needed to be split in half or we have less kids on one bus, we might move those. kids to another so typically it's it's adding more buses more routes how many routes do we have this year at this point compared to the routes we've had in the past well we we had 120 last year but we were only executing probably with the driver shortage probably 80 something of them and we're combining routes this year we have 144 routes so we are executing all of them So all of our routes are being executed every day. So in order to save some money on
027transportation, if that was something that came up, what alternatives would we have if we wanted to save the money if we got into a situation where we couldn't expend that money? So we would look at transportation more broadly and that would be a conversation with the board as to how we could better make that more efficient. You mean in terms of more efficient routes or are you talking about the number of... Children or students that would be entitled to be bused There's a variety of ways that we could look to reduce the cost of transportation and both of those things are something that we could we would look into Okay, that's just in case we have an issue in terms of There's no intention at this point to do it. Yes, no intention So the
028other thing I want to mention is that the transportation costs for the most part are 90% eatable so Just want to make sure everybody's aware of that. Okay. One second. Will you just go back? Yep. So while we're here on the programmatic side of the budget, I just want to get a little bit more granular on supplies writ large across the district. So I think I understand when we get into accounting lines what cleaning supplies are, what the office supplies that we use around this building are. When we start talking about supplies... that the district has money for in accounts towards the schools themselves whether those are in principal supply lines psychological services supply lines athletic supplies whatever accounts that might be what What things is the district actually buying there to be used in
029the schools? So really all of those supply lines are directly related to what students need, right? So it depends on which line you're referring to. If you're referring to the lines where we allocate those out to the buildings, they could be supply lines like pencils, pens, things in the classroom for the students to use, crayons. It's really up to the principal's discretion in regards to what they find out from their teachers and what needs to be bought. When you move into a line like a... special ed line where you're looking at occupational therapy or physical therapy there could be supplies that are needed specific for a student so we always need to plan for that because we don't know what student may be moving in and what kind of needs those are so it's really
030dependent on what part of the budget you're talking about and what type of supplies would come up during that year so when we think about our overall plan that we're looking at right now we're really planning up to 18 months out and we're trying to do our best job of projecting out what those expenses could be but some of these lines where we don't have any ability to know what students are moving in we have to be prepared to be able to support them in the best way possible for them to be successful and how are we going about determining what what those needs are a yearly basis So that depends on, again, what the line is. I hate to say that, but if you're thinking about a student that has an IEP, that's going
031to be written in there in regards to what we need to provide and what we need to purchase for that student to support them. If you're talking about... Again, back to the buildings, we meet with the building principals. We looked at what they spent last year. Now there was some variability in that, and as we move with technology, hopefully that will help in regards to the requisitions coming in and those items getting out to the buildings. And that's really based on the principal's discretion and how they set up their building with their teachers. So it's long been floated as an idea, and I know it's been long been floated as an idea because I remember campaigning on it five years ago. that the district could set aside specific accounts. for students either at or below
032the poverty level or towards helping with classroom supplies at the teacher level to buy the tissues, to buy notebooks for students who might not otherwise afford them. Is that something that's already currently contemplated by a budget like this? Is something that could be worked into the budget as it is now? Or is something that in future years could be implemented into the budget? I think all of that is accurate, right? So every time we look at a budget and we're building a budget from year to year, there's always different things that we can look up, look at, consider. Those discussions can get more granular with the principals in regards to, you know, is there another need that we need to include in the budget? There are lines when we sat and went through the principals,
033there are lines that were not fully expended last year. So, you know, that's also an educational opportunity to work with our administrators and talk with them and say, you know, some of those things that you're mentioning to build that in one way or another. So then building off that, when you see that there's a line that's not been expended by a principal in the previous year, what is the follow-up on that? What's happening, number one, what's happening with the money that was budgeted that's unused just as an operation of the budget? And two, what's the follow-up to say with that principal or whoever is in charge of the account? What else could be used? What did you spend it on? Do we need that much there next year? So that is one of the things
034right now because we're not using our technology to the fullest of its ability is the principals actually reach out and to the business office and a snapshot of time gets sent back to them in regards to what funds they have available. As we move forward and implement the Envision process for the buildings to use to put in purchase requisitions, they will be able to have that data in real time all the time. They can print out and they can see the drawdown in real time in regards to what funds they have left. So I anticipate, having been in other districts where they start to see that, they will definitely be making those decisions on their own as they move forward. Gotcha. And then... I don't know if you would speak to this or if Mr.
035Feltsch would be more apt to, but when a principal has an account, do we have a district-wide process by which they're meeting with their building staff to determine the needs for that year in advance and... looking at those needs continuously throughout the year or is that on a building by building basis? How does that work? The buildings would do that. The principals with their faculty advisory committees, the department chairs, team leaders at the middle school. I just want to follow up to the previous question. So we encourage teachers to go to their principal to request any items that they need from time to time throughout the school year. We'll get messages like somebody wants to set up a gofundme page because they need workbooks we don't want them doing that we want them to go
036to their principal because over the last couple of years any requests that's come to the district for funding unless it can't be funded through a certain line item and then i would refer that to the business office anything that they request we we honor that nothing is denied at the district level if it's needed by a school and that's down to When we're talking about those types of requests, that's any items of... I know the example I want to go to, because I think it's relatable, is back in the day, you used to have, you know, your school list would come out, two tissue boxes for a student to bring in. That gets expended in January. There's a kid with a really runny nose. Is that something that the teacher can come to the principal
037and say, I need boxes of tissue? They should be able to, yes. Okay. Didn't didn't they they used to have the compassion coalition teacher Resource thing at every school. Yes, we still have that as well. So we can so I mean there's backpacks crayons all kinds of stuff in there Is there access to it? So the form is still active The teachers do the request on the forum and then the compassion coalition fills those requests And that's usually, that process has not changed. And we can get that back out to everybody. It's still the same process that we've used in the past. So Compassion has a website where they fill out your needs, and then it goes to them, and then they usually book that time with the teacher or the requester to fill those
038needs. That's how it's been done previously. Okay, thank you. So this is the, it says capital, but this is really the operation of plants on the maintenance side and the custodial side. So it's an increase and when you say operations of plant that's really the custodial side of it of the house So it's the increase is five four five nine one eight and that is Just percentages of increases and we got CT now with the cleanette portion Stock that area for wood supplies and then the operation of plant you're gonna see a reduction of about one thousand we removed all the trucks that we purchased at one time purchase of last year and that budget's pretty much steady and then you got a hundred thousand dollar increase to capital uh transfer to capital that's the
039capital outlay that we get aid on the next year following year for one-time small projects each year we get a hundred thousand we're going to start utilizing that every year and that's going to be at albany and we're going to do stair treads and baseboards and the stairwells that really they do need it any questions on that Couple of small things and then debt service up there you see judgment and claims that's been We had something unusual in 23-24, but we take a look at this and what we're seeing, and then we do year-end accruals, which will come and we'll explain to you after we speak with legal counsel. Also, with refund of taxes, that has to do with the taxes that we receive, and if an assessment has changed throughout the year from the
040time that you set your warrant to the time that someone pays their tax, and it happened. It happened this year, actually. there is a refund of taxes that we have to give back. It's normally nothing, but you have to have that there so you have the flexibility in case a claim comes up. And then lastly, as it relates to debt service, you see a tick up. As a reminder, 98% is covered by the state in our building aid ratio, but that's why the importance of why we've been coming to you and... talking to you a little bit about capital projects and the importance of keeping that smoothing technique and steady. One of the worst things that can happen in any budget is when that number spikes up or spikes down and then the next year
041it goes the other way. And so we've really worked hard with fiscal advisors and our team to make sure that we try to smooth that a little bit more. Okay, and again, looking at the budget by service, you know, on a year-to-year basis, you know, you don't really see any real drastic increases in any particular portion. This is when we look at the budget by service and looking at the budget by object. And this just gives the visual so you can see comparatively. Revenues. All right, and this will move us on to revenues. So our revenues and expenses always have to tie out together. Mr. Oblake, did you have a question? Well, I was going to ask a question about the revenue side. Go ahead. So we have investments, right, now. What are those investments?
042Can we invest in horses at Pimlico? No, not so can we invest in lottery tickets not so much that's can we buy blue chip mutual funds I'm asked I need to go down the list. Can we buy mutual funds? We have to buy secure we have to invest in secure secure So what what exactly is a secure investment? So a lot of what we have money in and I can let Heather speak to this our CDs Yes, I'd like to just clarify it out there. So it's, but you're sure we can't invest in things like real estate on the coasts of either parts of the country? No? No. They did that in 1928, and the state stepped in after the great crash and not to allow that to happen again. So our policy and OSC's
043policy, the state's policy, is we can only invest in those things or backed. by certain types of assets. So CDs are what they call collateralized, which means if we get a CD at a bank, the bank has to hold other investments in case they were to go bankrupt in which to pay us. So it's not just about FDIC coverage. T-bills are covered by the full faith of the federal government. So primarily we talked a little bit about, and I know Ian's talked about our investments. We really try to have a policy in which that We don't put all our money in one place. We look at different periods of time that we're investing in and when that cash flow, when we're going to need the cash. There are certain times, it's usually December and August
044during the year where our cash flow is a little bit lighter. And so we need to make sure we've got cash available to make our payments. Other times of the year our cash is very high. We've got capital projects going on that we've loaned money. We loan money to our federal funds. So we work really hard to make sure that we have a mixture so that we don't have any great deal of money at one place at one time so that we can be flexible and nimble. Thank you. So if we take a look, the pilots that we list on our revenue side of our budget is the exact number that we have to enter into our tax cap calculation as well. So you'll see that there was a slight change there. Some of the
045other revenues that you're looking at here We just kind of took a look back at what have we have been bringing in to try to make sure that we weren't overestimating those numbers So if you look down through here the one change last year you had some allocated fund balance. We're proposing to do that again The purpose of that is really to try to seed some projects that will be able to be aided in the future. So when Mr. Ferraro is talking about the technology for example, that is a BOCES aided service that we will take advantage of and that aid will come back the following year so you always have to have that to start up and then you can go into the following year so essentially what you're saying is that we're taking
046those funds and turning that into a form of expense driven aid based on how we're using those funds within the budget correct correct correct Do you have any detail in regards to the prior year BOCES refund? I see it's almost a million. So that is a line that we did look at very closely, and that is why that line came down, to make sure that we were booking for what we believed we would be getting in. What does those numbers consist of? Oh, sorry. So there are some things that you pay for with BOCES and you put on an account, and if you don't use them during the year, then they're given back at the end of the year. If you are paying for something that cuts off mid-year, the service stops due to an
047individual's need, a student need, there's different reasons why those dollars come back from BOCES. BOCES cannot hold on to our money, so they have to give that refund back when they're reconciling at the end of the year to the districts. And then the only other thing here I would like to point out is that one thing that we are doing or recommending we're doing this year is to allocate part of our reserves, which would be the employee reserve. And what we would recommend with that for that to be able to come back into our budget, this would also help us with cash flow during the summer. The majority of our cash flow comes in in September. So I know you've heard Ms. Mollett speak before about some concerns in the summer sometimes with cash flow.
048So that's one thing that we can do to assist with that. Um, a little bit, and then you see our state aid is the majority portion of our revenue income coming in. So I would refer to all of these as renewable revenues, other than the ERS and the allocated fund balance, because those are really coming out of the district savings accounts that we're allocating back to the community. And once you use them. You don't have a way to get them back until you can create them versus a tax levy or a state aid, which is always coming in every year. Does that make sense? Just a question on state budget, and I think this is still speculative because I don't think the legislature has decided on this one yet, but I believe in the governor's
049proposed budget, she put forward universal free school. I know all of our students already qualify and receive universal. free school meals. How does that proposal from the governor affect us, if at all? Does that help with some of the... federal government funds go away or so so the first thing I would just say is the cafeteria fund is called the C fund this is called the general fund so it is a different fund now if your cafeteria fund is not able to sustain itself which has been a discussion in this district recently then general fund can help supplement that I think mister Yes, we're actually hoping that that goes through on the governor's side because we also know the instabilities on the federal side of USDA food We've already seen some of those cuts have
050not affected us yet But if there any more were were heavily federally aided on the cafeteria side So any any cuts on that side would be welcomed on the state budget side for sure But so the way that that's proposed right now on the state side, if it were to pass the legislature and there was an offset of federal funds, would that make up the difference, do we know? Well, it depends on the way it's written and what it's going to offset. It might be a percentage of that cost. It depends on what they really pass. Like there's a federal percentage and a state percentage for a lunch meal right now. It's $3.40, let's say, right? A portion of that is the federal money and some of it's state. It really depends on what their
051contribution is going to be for that. So I think the hope in the whole thing was if the state took over that program, we wouldn't have to do all the paperwork that we do every month for the federal reimbursement, which are the claims. It would just be automatic, just enrollment and participation, and that's it. So I think that's the logic behind it all. Again, this is just a comparative analysis, so you can see the adopted budget in 24-25 and the proposed budget in 25-26. Again, most of it's budget year-to-year salary and benefits with very little fluctuation. So this is the proposed capital project for $120 million. And as you see the building aid ratio is 98% some of the improvements that we're going to do Safety and security upgrades the exterior windows and door replacement
052and hardening hardening infrastructure bathrooms floor tile wall tile paint ceiling tile And our data network we need some infrastructure upgrades on the I would say the fiber infrastructure to the switches and then But obviously boiler replacements HVAC upgrades those are going to be in assembly spaces. We're going to try to Air-condition every assembly space in every building which would be the library gym cafeteria so on and so forth and then The exterior There's a lot of Exterior perimeter lighting that we need to upgrade Kennedy is one example on the perimeter of their field drive east. There's no lighting at all We surveyed all those areas exterior signage digital reader boards at every building and then The remainder of the outdoor and living spaces that we aren't captured in the 64 million dollar project that was
053approved last year I don't know if we should get into the nitty-gritty, but it's going to be, I'll just give you an overview, more cameras, more door hardening, more of the upgrades that we need, PA systems to help integrate it with lockdown and things of that nature. Is this district-wide, or are we just targeting certain schools? These are all district-wide. Anything that didn't get any improvements, like we did some in some schools with some ESSER money. We're going to use the capital money to finish the rest of the remainder of the schools for those upgrades. Okay. And then again, you know, just looking at our debt service, we want to make sure that we keep our debt service stable. This is highly aidable at 98% aidable. And then additionally, we want to make sure that
054we're, as we're building out our capital improvement projects, they're aligned with our strategic plan. So we want to make sure that that mirrors that. So here is the proposed propositions for the ballot, the budget, the capital project, which the board adopted at our last meeting, and also the library. The library is actually a pass-through, so we just collect those funds and pass them on to the library. That's the public library. Correct. Thank you. Yep, the public library. So just a brief update. As you may recall, we have a change in two of our election districts. The Reimagined Church had something going on. They've been very busy. So they asked us if we could find another site. We toured Westside Senior Center, found there was enough parking. his ability to get into the building and it
055was it was near where the church is so we thought that was a good fit and number two the shepherd place firehouse is undergoing renovations and gilmore village is close by and we spoke with municipal housing authority and they thought that was a good fit also as a reminder i think at our next meeting We'll be talking a little bit about bold systems, the new system that we're going to be implementing at the polling places. This is basically what you're seeing at all the other types of elections that are out there. You see the little tablets and you sign your name. So we're excited about that. And so the hours will stay the same and we still have 14 districts. And so essentially when we're looking at this budget, we're looking at a 0% local
056tax levy increase. And we're really, again, projecting out what the needs are in 18 months in advance. The organization must be nimble to the extent that we can maneuver our funding source to address student needs. The best evidence of that would be the town halls that the administration conducted, four town halls in each corner of the city. understood the public that there was a need and a want for an extended day learning program we looked at the data and we produced that an unbudget request in this year and so that's the type of ability that we need to be able to the adaptability we need as an organization to meet those needs. Just generally speaking, some of the concerns, of course, whatever is happening with the federal government in regards to the grant funding, that's
057a concern. We're also monitoring what's happening with the tariffs because that will be an increase in our expenditures for supplies if that 20 to 25% is passed on to the consumer. And then we're looking to the extent to which we can keep up with inflation. So these are things that we're looking at more broadly. Other than that, this is our spending plan. Just a couple questions on polling locations quickly. Has the district still maintained and kept updated with the new, with the location changes, the where to vote portion of the website? That comes from the point. Okay. And we've informed them already of the polling location. The second part is that I know the election districts are the technically correct term. for school district elections. Is there a way that we can just list underneath
058or somewhere the ward district breakdowns of each of our election districts since most citizens in Utica are very aware of their ward district but not necessarily aware of specifically which election district of the school. We can certainly do that. In the past six months, the superintendent's team has been working with the county on the maps. You may have seen in the conference room there's a map. The county department of planning assisted us with putting that together. And so we've been taking a look at it because the city demographics have changed so much from these. And so we're taking a look at it for next year if a change should be made. And we'd like to maybe be proposing something or if you have any suggestions. But there are very strict laws the John Lewis laws
059for many years ago and making sure that everybody has that opportunity to get to a polling place and vote So we'll make sure that that we do that for you. So as it is right now We still do have entire Ward districts together. None of them are split up between two separate election districts, right? We yeah, if I could just talk about that we had we had a meeting You know, we sat with the map trying to figure out because we had adjustments that had to be made because of the Exigencies that happened with a couple of the polling places And we were advised at that time that you know, we couldn't make any particular changes In terms of I think isn't it we basically matched the cities I think within Now maybe not but
060I think what we're what we're gonna try to do First we try to use the schools, right? Sometimes the way our schools are laid out throughout the city. It doesn't serve a purpose So You know then we were gonna make some adjustments to try, you know, like we have some districts We have seven people voting get 14 people voting Just in terms of efficiency, it would be a little better to maybe make some combinations, but I think at this point, we're just... Yeah, the annual challenge is always that people forget that the school district elections are different locations than the general elections, and then they say things like, you know, they won't remember. Well, that's silly the school district election district, but they'll know I'm Ward three district I think it's a lot easier to
061just send something that says, you know, you vote at this particular place and Send it out and then do it on channel 3 if anyone watches it YouTube you know all of the different Instagram tick-tock all the websites all the be an assistant so when someone comes and they're at the wrong place it literally will print them a ticket it'll say no you're supposed to be at martin's yeah so they'll literally print it and it has directions and everything and we'll say this is exactly that's awesome so it's very right instead of just being like okay now you go to because i've done that before right so instead of doing that whole thing if they do go to the wrong place they'll say actually you're for this you're in this building and here's a ticket
062that will take you exactly how to get there And Mr. Ferrer just mentioned we can also put it on our website so you can know it a couple of days before where you have to go. Yeah, you can add the words. All right, any other questions? I have one question. So what happens to the funding, right, when we're budgeting for so many positions and we put them in the budget and they don't get funded in that budget? We don't bill them, right? What happens to that money? So that's the money that we would refer to as either contingency money and or what ends up being fund balance at the end of the year. Because as everybody knows, we have to have our spending plan. We can't go over the overall spending plan. So that's where
063those dollars would come from. And then the next year you start over again. There is a spot where you can carry, you know, if we're buying something and we've already sent that out to the vendor, we call that an encumbrance that we bring in, but that's the only money that comes from last year into this year. Thank you. But overall, the goal is to, as we're looking at our key performance indicators, is to be able to identify needs. So, for example, if there's greater need with tutoring credit recovery to make sure that our seniors are getting over the hump, we want to be able to allocate those monies to specific areas within the budget to address those needs in real time so that we're not necessarily keeping that. Anyone else have any questions? Thank you.
064Appreciate it. I'm sorry, I apologize. I did want to mention that in terms of communication that I did receive correspondence from the New York State Association of Small City School Districts that their executive board approved a financial contribution to help offset the legal costs in connection with the Meisto case, which is the one that was supposed to generate the full complement of aid. in the amount of $10,000 to assist us with that defense. So I wanted to publicly thank them for doing that. I also did receive a study this week that was generated by Hamilton College and it was a COVID-19 pandemic. and the impacts on the physical well-being, emotional well-being, employment and financial impact, housing stability and youth education. It's also done in collaboration with On Point for college relative to the refugee community
065and the impact. We'll have to see if we can get some additional copies or at least an electronic version. And I wanted to thank them for providing it. Okay, so I guess we'll get to the superintendent's report. I'd rather do the superintendent's report. So would you like to present your superintendent's report? Joe, I do. Okay. Do you have any comments or anything that you would like to say in connection with it? Yes, we're going to pull S185. Okay. Does anyone else want anything pulled? Yeah. I'd like to pull S189 on page 14 and then pull S171 through 174 for mention, not for voting purposes. You have to pull it or you can just comment on it. Did you want to read the... No, I'm just pulling them because those will be addressed at the regular
066meeting. Oh, so we're just pulling them entirely? Yeah, we're pulling them entirely. Just pull them entirely and we'll do them on Tuesday. Okay, so it's 171 through 174. Is the... This is... parliamentary, but is the superintendent pulling them or is the board pulling them? Do we need to make a motion to table? I think the superintendent is pulling them because they were in there by error. Okay, so then the only thing that's actually being pulled by the board is S189. So the superintendent is pulling S185 and then 171 and 172 through 174. Anyone else have anything? Okay based on that information can I have a motion to adopt the superintendent's report with the adjustments made to it as suggested Any discussion about this particular portion if not all in favor opposed Motion carries. Can I
067have a motion? to address s 189 on page 14 I'll make the motion need a second Okay, any discussion about the first clarification It's labeled at s 189 in the index. I just noticed it's actually s 188 on the page So now it's s 189 The clinical affiliation agreement? Yeah, it's 189. No, it's 188. He wants 188, not 189. Yeah, I was looking at the index page, not the actual page. Well, I just want to get a clarification there, Braden, because the clinical affiliation agreement between the Utica City School District and Liberty... Least in the superintendent's report that I have says s 189 in the one I just picked up Okay, so you're you're gonna call that s 188 Yes, it's fine. Okay. Go ahead. I just want to make sure I'm the goodies on
068the same We're talking about the affiliation agreement with Liberty So that that's clarification to pull it and talk about it in the neck for legal advice on the next executive session before voting Well, could we have an explanation during this particular from someone from the administration as to what exactly this is? That would be helpful. Sure, I can explain that. That is a... guidance counselor who attends that educational program she's seeking her guidance counselor certificate and is pursuing a placement akin to a student teaching placement with a guidance counselor in her school district so we need an agreement between the two in order to facilitate that so that that's in order to allow someone who attends that school to Do a clinical placement. Do a clinical here in the district. Yes, one of our guidance
069counselors. So essentially that would enhance, it's like basically student teaching but on the counseling? Correct. Okay, do we still need... Does the district know who the student is? The student did reach out to the school district. Okay, are they a former alum? I don't know that answer. Okay, I would still like to talk about it in executive session. Okay. Is there any other... If hearing none, then I need a motion to go back into executive session with a 10-minute recess. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?