001[Music] United States of America stands IND well that was tonight nice to see all of you thanks for joining us thanks for all those who are tuning in remotely tonight agenda that okay Michelle yes you have any agenda changes is anyone here wishing to address the board on a genda related public com Something That We're acting on even going from good to Great Michelle do we have any Communications okay with that we'll jump right into board and staff reports and it is my pleasure turn it over to my good friend Matthew burck with the Encompass Recreation presentation all right thank you my name is Matt berdick uh director of student empowerment success for the Watertown city school district and uh I'm here tonight to present on behalf of Kylie shell who is the Encompass Recreation
002director uh she had to work on Tuesday nights and it asked me to just give a brief presentation uh regarding the program and an event that she would like to host through her program here in the district late in June and um with that we're going to start with a short video clip that she has provided of an overview of the program and then I can share a few additional details and answer any questions good evening Watertown Board of Education and staff my name is Kylie shell and I am the founder and executive director of Encompass for creation Dr schmigle asked that I attend the meeting tonight unfortunately I do work a job at the community clinic providing therapy to neurode divergent kids on Tuesday evenings so I'm not able to be there but I
003appreciate being able to send you this video and talk a little bit about what we are asking of you so for those of you that don't know Encompass Recreation is a local nonprofit We were founded in August of 2022 and started our programming in January of 2023 we offer sports and recreation and opportunities to youth with higher support needs um and we commit to be able to providing opportunities where differences are celebrated and strengths are accentuated and everybody is welcome on our team we want our kids to feel safe and encouraged and included and challenged and um we hope that anything you've heard of us would would likely say the same um real quick I wanted to show you a little bit um from our pal card so we're a nonprofit and we have 501c3
004status um and when we talk about programming for youth with higher support needs we say that intentionally we don't say special needs or we don't say disabled uh because there's a lot of folks out there that don't identify like that but also there's a whole lot of kids out there that um don't yet have diagnoses so any kids ages two through high school that don't feel comfortable or welcome or accommodated in traditional programming are welcome at our program so just a little bit about what we've been able to accomplish um again we were Incorporated in August of 2022 when we started our programming in January of 2023 our first year programming we only planned four events and as you can see we at 65 and I think that that's a true Testament to how needed
005our programming was across the region um so what you'll see is we offered 65 programs and over 1400 youth participants over 500 volunteers and we just had some really amazing things going on uh last year our 2024 year we had over 175 different programs and over 1,800 yous participating in our programming we spent a lot of time seeking out grants and donations because we offer every single bit of this completely free we don't charge a dime um so we really look for businesses and organizations to uh wave their rental fees if possible so that we can have our programming be most accessible to kids like ours just to give a little bit of context we intentionally move around our programming so that we don't geographically isolate any particular group most of our programming does happen
006in Jefferson and Le County but we try to move things around uh at our most recent board meeting we had talked about how we had yet to have anything at Watertown and a few of my board members and auxiliary board members are Watertown Natives and even some them on your board and we talked about how we wanted to be able to have an event at Watertown and so what you'll see on this image is that we have kids coming from six local surrounding counties and Canada we have pretty consistent kids coming from all of those and our rule is if you can get to us you're welcome to come it doesn't matter where you're from if can get to where the event is you are welcome so uh I had had this idea about an
007exceptional Triathlon on my radar for a while we already do a swimming program we already do a biking program and we already do a running program so it really makes sense that we Loop in a triathlon um one of my auxiliary board members her husband is your track and cross country coach and then another one of my auxiliary board members is there tonight as a board member for you Lori and um there's just a lot of great people in your district and so I reached out and I talked to your athletic director and um we identified a date in June that we really like to have this TR along um when I filled out the request to use the facilities it was over $1,200 and that was a bit of a sticker shock for me
008um mostly because a lot of the other districts that we use um also use that same platform and they wave the fees because we are a nonprofit but also because we don't charge um and it's just really cost prohibitive for us to be able to have the program there at that cost we certainly don't want you to absorb any cost that you might have we've been asked to you know reimburse for custodial staff or whatnot and that's that's all within our our realm but certainly $1,200 is not um our goal is to be able to do this uh run bike swim program starting out on the track and then they can use anything with wheels whether that be their wheelchair or a scooter or a bike and go along the back parking lot and then
009end the pool for a swim so my hope is that you'll consider waving the rental fees for that area on this particular date or any date that we decide might be better for this program so that we can offer that free to these kiddos because they deserve the world and we're hopefully able to provide that um please let me know if you have any questions and if I can answer anything about this program or if we can um come to some sort of agreement about using the facilities at a reduced or even better yet a free option thank you so much summarize um the program again it's to provide sports and recreation opportunities for youth with higher support needs it it really the program really involves ensuring inclusive supportive and adaptive activities for all participants
010the date would be Sunday June 29th starting at 10 o'clock the the draft format is to start on the track with the run and then to transition to the bike scoop roll across the parking lot to the pool and then end uh in the pool for a swim far as pool safety and supervision I've been in communication with Lori Peters Lori's also talked with Kylie about this and Lori would be coordinating and supervising these three lifeguards ensuring that safety of the students in the pool there's also parents and helpers that would also be in the water as appropriate with the students and uh Anthony Perry has also been involved as a cross country coach to uh help with recruiting some volunteers from the cross country team that can assist out on the track for this
011event as Kylie stated they are a 501c3 nonprofit organization she does offer a their fully insured for events and activities and the key benefits of this program is to encourage physical activity and confidence building amongst these students creates a welcoming and adaptive environment for all abilities and most importantly really promotes Community engagement and inclusion uh I've been a part of two events with Kylie through my affiliation with South Jeff Little League we hosted two events at the Rodman baseball field last year they were very well organized and run we had volunteers it was just two great events that we were able to host out there and uh hopefully we can bring this to our district and and our community questions for all a great presentation sounds like a great event man thank you for coming
012yes thanks for sh okay moving right along on our board in Stafford boards it's my pleasure to introduce Mr Chad Fairchild and Mrs Olivia Gallagher to give us the welcome and student voice here at w well thank you all for thank you all for being here and good evening Board of Education and our my bosses uh we are which side are you so we are excited to present to you because Wy is the the Estuary of the district all the streams flow into Wy from here we get to have them two years and grow them up good and strong and send them out to see somewhere no and over up to the high school and part of what we do here at Wy is we it's been our Focus for the last couple years now
013since we've been here anyways to really plant the seed that our our students are young cyclists that they see themselves at the high school they see themselves at case Middle School doing being an athlete being a great artist being a great musician being a great student there and and and having a full career of it so you will hear us tonight probably refer to them as young Cyclones periodically that's very purposeful because you're young Cyclones and you're going to do amazing things for lots of years and before we go on uh a giant thank you to Dr schmigel to Lynn to Tina to Brie and to each of the members of the board because with your encouragement and support we have created some new new learning opportunities and and and different things that are part
014of our district Mission uh such as gifted and talented and richment program at Wy a national Elementary Honor Society a newspaper club that you'll get to hear about tonight A Watertown High School mentoring program where our bigger Cyclones come and talk to our little Cyclones uh we did some of that last year also with having different we've been doing it this year having different sports teams and different artists come up and talk to the whole we have the kids and what's it like to to be a big Cyclone we have to look forward to um I'd also like to make say a thank you or we'd like to say a thank you to the many many many Wy staff uh members who give of their time their energy their love their expertise to make these
015programs possible for our young Cy well thank you all and lastly I'm just going to throw just a quick thank you to Mrs wheeler who put the presentation together because she's that was a huge wonderful thing that she did now here we go up here y'all can turn around and look a light here so the big picture of Wy we have over 600 students each year uh at the beginning of the year was 608 609 on bed's day uh as of a day or two ago it was 596 so it just stays right around 600 it's pretty steady uh of those we have 30 do the eight mask with me here that would be 33 am I correct 20 one 33 classrooms uh pl8 regular education classrooms four special education classrooms behavioral needs classroom and
016at the end of the year we tally up we've done this for years uh we continued with it we have an academic ribbon award so those are our students that have had 85 average or higher in all of their core classes for the entire school year and we have 110 the 600 students 110 that's a pretty good number of percentage of our students are rocking it academically and so we are very proud of them now uh Staffing so how many staff does it take to help that many students be successful 118 to be precise plus some extra other services we have the North Country Family Health Clinic here at Wy plus their dental clinic we have pivot we have Liberty we have 4 and we have sack before and after school too all here in
017this building a lot going on here plus a lot of PD that happens here so that's the big picture opportunities at Wy Ensemble band National Elementary Honors Society first Lego League yearbook Club student council for H Liberty gifted and talented uh program stee Fair you'll see a lot of steam stuff tonight and a newspaper club which is new and exciting now you will find that there are 56 pictures and we are not going to talk about each of them we will talk about a dozen of them that would be a Baker's Dozen for sure but we would like to but we did we said no we are going to put up all 56 of them to overwhelm you in a good sort of way because there's so many amazing things that happen here and you
018just wouldn't know if we didn't show you some of that but we won't talk about all of it so in this one here I'd like to draw your attention to no I don't want to draw your attention to anything Mrs Gallagher I'll just talk about pictures one and three to start with uh this is highlighting our mentorship program that we have going on with the high school so we have invited high school students to come to Wy and really they can go into a classroom help students out with maybe some homework maybe some math facts or even help out in the cafeteria if they're feeling really ambitious that day um but it's really nice to have high school students come here to Wy and really set a good example for our students of what they
019could be as a cyclone in the future um picture two just highlights our spelling be uh we have picture four which is our rev theater students are creating their own script um picture five as you can tell with their jerseys on um this was actually a stem activity that tied in with the Super Bowl this year uh so we thought that was fun to highlight as well thank you uh we have some stem activity that we thought we should include um 68 n are just showing some more of that Super Bowl theme with um creating they created a an engineering design um as you can see in the picture so we highlighted that uh picture seven is our Coral Ensemble performance um for the holiday concert a lot of students might not have been able
020to make that in the evening So Lorie font uh actually allowed US during the day to come down in groups and we could view the The Ensemble and their performance so it was nice as a community in the building everyone to be able to go down to see that and it was amazing if you didn't get to see it so picture 11 is Miss goer um a teacher in our Middle School who came up and actually shared a Spanish lesson with Wy students uh 12 is some more stem activities 13 and 14 we like to have a little fun at Wy with our sledding and we have a pretty good Hill for it you can probably have drove by once or twice and saw kids out there sledding so that's 13 14 uh 15 is
021also with our rev theater and 16 um showing us how to use costumes for rev theater practicing with that and 16 Festival of trees is that correct yes yes some of our next I get to share a little bit on this this slide here in number 18 you'll notice our students in they're in some place that does not look much like Wy that's up at Star base on Fort Drum all of our fifth graders go up Fort Drum for different uh stem number 19 I really wanted to share with you 19 19 something that we started this year the bosses gave us permission said Chad you guys you guys can set excite some money to do this next year so what we did we pitched the idea like on Shark Tank and they said yes
022to it um and so you'll see down here that that's it's I'm sorry we didn't actually bring one I should have it says it says why math challenge on it and that's the back side of the shirt and on the front have just our regular new Cyclone logo and every student in our building from starting in January they have to memorize their math multiplication Vex 1 Time 1 up to 12 time 12 and know them cold automaticity just know it fast and if they can remember that and have it down really fast and they can do it every week they get a chance and classroom to to take a little take a little 50 questions and if they can do it in 90 seconds they get a check in the book that they got it
023once any other time in the year after that as long as it's a week later they do it again they win a t-shirt they get to pick the size tell them it's a adult medium or a youth size 18 but we said enough side of money side enough money to buy every kid in the t-shirt and so every week we're just encouraging him hey learn those NFA boys and girls and we are up to about 75 kidss already that we've order we've ordered T-shirts for and given out some of them so that's pretty awesome thought you should know about that because it's just good fun stuff F learning uh if you're wondering where the middle picture is that's out Fort Drum again I think you recognize the hill just fine more science uh stem projects
024there picture number 27 uh you might recognize those as some teachers and you might not they we do have some fun here at Wy those are our teachers dressing as the emotions of inside out we also had one of our teachers Mr Tomy breath drw up at is an amazing Gru really looked like G and he had his minions his kids dressed up as minions very fun um you'll notice in picture 28 and 30 that those are some of our uh gifted and talented program students who are doing some of their projects and we coding at the bottom one the projects at the top and then 31 we really want to point this one out yes is part of my biger cousin uh our students there every year right before the Christmas New Year's and
025all those holidays that happen around that time of the year we have a family style ZD dinner in each of the classrooms so we we and we buy Z for the all students and staff and special Z and we have the Fixins and we have a day and they just have their classroom holiday lunch in together so that's it's pretty pretty fantastic thing that we do there I think I have one more slide before I hand it back over to Mrs Gallagher you'll see oh there's our our groove there and many minions but they're doing a different science project there down below you'll notice slides number 34 35 36 that's looking to me like one of our wing pancake breakfasts we go we have the regular breakfast downstairs and then they get a breakfast number
026two hemade pancakes and their wings with their classmates and it's a lot of fun so we do that once or twice a year depending on the wing and how ambitious hungry the students are so this G so our next slide is highlighting a little bit 38 and uh 41 Sophia the cow um we do not have a cow at Wy but we do adopt the cow one of our classrooms uh connects with a local Farm to learn about agriculture where our food comes from they do a personalized Zoom video uh with the teacher and the students to really learn about food and agriculture um then also the same classroom actually is growing micro greens they grow them they eat them um again learning about where our food comes from and nutrition for our body 46
027is highlighting some CPR training that our fad Department offered for students um where they can learn how to give someone CPR if they were ever in an emergency situation the Red Cross comes in and does it with our steps great and then we want to highlight some Oreos um one one of our classes does an Oreo uh for math where students get to try lots of different Oreos and figure out statistically um what they predict they like versus what they actually like compare it with their classmates um I didn't know when that one was going n else I probably would have stopped down I was a taste I made a very good lesson lastly we really want to highlight our national Elementary Honor Society we had 65 students get inducted recently this is the first
028year where we have started a national Elementary Honor Society um Ashley Stevens Stephanie alridge have really done a lot of work to get this going and just if you had the opportunity to attend this ceremony it was it was really nice seeing how students were recognized and just how excited they were for being recognized for this accomplishment and that is not all but that is all the pictures that we're going to show you of tonight because that is just a taste there are so many things going on here at Wilding we figured you should have a flavor just a flavor sampling platter of what we do here at L so that's that's a little sampling next up I'm very excited we're g to introduce the newspaper Club to you and yes you can clap but
029I'm going to introduce them in just a moment here but I got a letter this is my handwritten copy of the letter because the actual letter was from a student and his he's amazing he started the project himself but his pip makes me work really hard I did in the fall so this is from Blake deline by young man right here be way he says Dear Mr Fairchild I would like a meeting with you about a newspaper Club I can get the staff advisor and students to help it would be like yearbook and I was in yearbook too I think this would be like CNN 10 is a student news program that they many of our students watch I would like a meeting in your office why I think we should have a newspaper Club
030because it is a teamwork group and it would be a job skill to I could not say no so of course we had a meeting and from there I will introduce Blake and I will introduce also uh Mr Pinkley over here on this side here and these two are going to take it over from here well I am jeany I'm the library media specialist at Wy school and um Blake came to me and asked if I would be the faculty advisor for a newspaper club and we decided we'd give it a try right yes so um I would like to introduce all the members of my little press that are here this evening all right so we have Damian and Addie and Gabby and Holland and we have Brooklyn and lvan and Blake and Joseph
031there are many more it's just a sample of some of our members so tonight what are we're going to do because we've been learning about asking questions and getting responses right and I'm going to start with a question and you already have a little preview as the answer right and then Blake is going to continue on by asking his peers questions that they are going to respond to so Blake why did you want to start a newspaper at Wy I wanted to start a newspaper at Wy because I thought it would be a good teamwork skill and a learning experience for the ones in newspaper I also wanted to start a newspaper to keep kids up to date with the school news wonderful all right so I'm BL you continue with your questions thanks and
032everybody prepar to answer how did you apply to be included in the newspaper to apply to newspaper Club I had to do a survey on Google Classroom which had many questions but one of the questions I remember most is why do you want to be a newspaper and then miss hle and Blake picked all of the participants based on schedules and whether or not they completed the which but all of the wild students did have a chance to apply Joseph where does newspaper Club me and me and where at the library classroom most most days until most days I'm last told of Life m in what have you learned about working on a group project like a new I I have learned that you have to be good with working with other people that you
033have to be a hard worker be socially intelligent you have to have good timing Brooklyn what is your favorite part of creating and issue of new FES my favor part is that I get to make all sorts of different things and I get to use a full thing called cameras so I get to make backgrounds and posters and sometimes I get straight on it too what have you learned about interviewing people for the newspap scary and it is scary because it's weird to ask questions like that what is one Edie what is one thing that you have learned by being a member of the newspaper Club I have learned that I should take my time and do my work the right way in the first time and it always should be kind what has surprised
034you about working on a group project like a newspaper I'm a free gift to put into it by working together a lot and by listening to each other for creating a newspaper I have learned a lot about working together we have about 19 kids that are participating um and nobody of course was denied um it's all about what fits into their schule SCH we do meet during sixth grade lunch and fifth grade learning lab so they bring their lunch with them and that's my lunch break too so oftentimes we we Munch out and and get our work done so we're working on um issue two right now deadline's getting a little close I am going to ask Blake to hand out a copy of the paper on this side and Joseph would you hand out
035a copy of the paper to everybody around this honey okay nice job learning how to use a lot of tools how to work collaboratively on Google Slides is our chosen platform and um you're doing a great job what questions do you have for us well I think this is uh phenomenal and know Blake fortune favors the bow and uh you had an idea and look what came with it you know I think you're an inspiration to to all your your friends at school and everybody who's involved in this it's great to be involved and very proud of that we actually have some certificates uh that we're going to give out and I'm going to call you off one by one now start with Mr Blake come on up you're welcome parents can I just say
036about BL I have to tell you a little story about Blake there we go okay Blake was a North student and when he was in first grade yeah first grade he used to wear his little um suit jacket to school and I knew then and there and talking to Blake that he was gonna go places he is a a very determined very creative dude and I am so proud of you good job hey thank you very up next is Addie sorry hey Gabby Joseph isue got tell you all this never get we've ever given out that is the best the B what is correct I got everybody in the newspaper Club is that right everybody that's here can I ask a question Joseph what is it that you want to write in your next article
037what do you want to research of on um do you mean issue two or um I'm usually writing about Napster like a music service that that um allowed people for digital piracy but but then it got shut down by the Raa the reporting industry assciation of America and then it got turn turn it got bought out in a bankrupt auction by Roxio and Mer with Express play.com another ser like a death build and became na 2.0 if it was bought out by Best Buy then that then most of it was acquired by rap never music service and and it turned it entire ESS into rapity but then it turned entirely into Napster and then na got acquired by um M SS in 2023 oh you can get a 30day free trial it no longer has
038although it no longer has Spees that it used to have when you all were kids yeah thank you Joseph stly I just want to thank you for giving up a good time during the day to meet with these students you're an inspiration people when they have ideas they bring them forward and they come to FR so you're making a difference in the lives of all of the peers at py and PE to come so congratulations to you disclaimer they interviewed me on Friday so if the article does not come out right thank you that's awesome job thank and that's yes thank you very much I would like to say on behalf of all of us at Wy Gallagher and everybody else thank you so much for all of your amazing support for our students we
039have an amazing group of young Cyclones here at Wy they're GNA set the world on fire in different ways um if you're ever curious about Linux ask Joseph don't start now Joseph next time you can ask him gendered and 64 B so this is the guy you talked on there the guy that you need to talk to about how to start your own business this guy right here the guys that you need to talk to about how to keep this guy in line or all these ones over here and all of the other ones keep me in line and so there we go but that's it for tonight thank you so much for coming everyone and Michelle is this the time when all the Wy peeps can head out if they have to take their
040kid for dinner oh I think so yeah before you go um and I'll let anybody want I you know I've been on the board for for quite a long time and there's a lot of special kids that go here but there's a lot of special staff members that work uh in wly and there was a time where I'm not sure it was as fun as it currently is and I would really commend you know Chad Olivia for bringing that back to Wy and it's noted on this end of the table and I'm proud of everybody in this room um and especially the school lers I hear she's greatly thank you all for for coming here at this moment thank you so Mr child was right this is the time where anybody who was here for
041the wly presentation is welcome to leave the rest of our meeting thank you all for coming you apprciate you I know it okay to follow but um moving along on our board and staff reports and I'm going to actually allow Jeff Wood to introduce our next speaker can connect um on the phone if he doesn't have he's kind of video challenged is Chris flood and Chris is the an engineer with Wells communication and they're the ones that prepared the uh Motorola proposals that you have in front of you as far as upgrading our radio system here at the district so I'll turn it over to Chris and obviously if there's any questions or whatever I can help facilitate them as well Chris are you there this is yes I'm here can everybody hear me all
042right yes great um again my name is Chris flood with whales Communications in barcom been with them for about 21 years and do a lot of these school systems same thing for health care and hospitality and Manufacturing space so very familiar with these systems and they're very reliable um I kind of go over just a brief overview if there's any questions please stop me um or I can can leave time at the end for anybody that wants to ask any um what it is that we're looking at is a it's an 8 repeater system that's going to be at six of the separate School locations with two being at the Casi middle Wy and high school being that they're in a cluster together so those two repeaters will service all the talk groups for those
043three schools um this is a linked capacity Plus system one of M rola's fancy ter for their digital um what that gives you is a lot of things over an analog system one is it's linked almost think of it as like a linked uh linked printers um that anytime somebody Keys up a radio they can roam at all these different sites so if for example you have a building and grounds Department which I'm guessing you do and they're at one of the other any of those schools within the huge uh consider a blob of coverage um they can key up and talk on their their uh their talk group at any of the sites so the repeater at the site they're in essentially allow them to roam like a cell phone I tell people when
044they're going down the road and they've been on the road for five six miles they've probably bounced off of three or four cell phone sites because it keeps soft hand off to one site to the next this type of Digital radio system does the same thing the nice thing about that is is if you have somebody in building and grounds and you're trying to find them in one of the schools if you go to their talk group and key up it doesn't care what other school they're at it's going to key up all the repeaters and that person that's in building and grounds is going to hear the uh transmission at the same time for a system like this too it allows every single school to get their own specific talk groups as I realize
045in a lot of school districts High School doesn't care what the elementary school's doing or the gr um or some of the other schools so each school will get its own talk groups just like it's its own little city there can be additional safety talk groups for keying up in one that's popular in a lot of school districts that we program in is a sitewide all call this is an emergency feature that when you key up the radio if either you have the permission to do it or everybody has the permission to do it on their radio it will knock all transmissions off of all talk groups on the ENT radio system to force through emergency announcements this is an immensely helpful feature that a lot of schools take advantage of uh for obviously uh
046lockouts or any kind of evacuations or things like that that you do not have to essentially go to every channel for every school and say hey there's a fire get out um you can just literally do a sitewide all call and it will force interrupt over everything these emergency announcements and it's a programming thing on who you want the ability to do that or not um with this system it included some extra components that we had talked about in a meeting and a couple of them were a uh Motorola ion device that you have some brochures there kind of giving a visual that's a ruggedized Android phone or an Android um handheld um that has LTE or a SIM card that can connect to Verizon or uh AT&T or T-Mobile and it's a 2A radio
047built in into it as well it's essentially a convergence device and I guess there was a need for some of the thirdparty apps that maybe you're running now that can run on an Android device that's where this device allows you to do multiple things on it not have to carry a radio and maybe some scanners or things like that that I had heard that back then it was a while that there was some kind of scanning app or something that you were going to be utilizing or already utilizing um next were some other radios for management which were labeled as R SS those are just a little bit more enhanced screen and keypad and give a little bit more uh administrative control over the radio system with the ability to do private calls from one
048to one person on a digital system so that's one of the other advantages with a digital two-way radio system um another thing with digital compared to analog is noise cancelling Superior so loud auditoriums lunchrooms things sporting events that are going on on if you have somebody standing within those events and they talk to you from there and you're sitting in a quiet room you're not going to hear everything that that's around them coming through the radio system so if it's something that uh schools have always reported back is how much quieter the radio system gets um also you have the the ability is encryption so you remain off the scanners you have a lot of news in the area that if as they say if it bleeds it leads in the news industry that you
049if they can hear it on a scanner and with any analog system in the current state of your radio system now if something said and they're driving by with their scanners to pick things up it can then be repeated this can be uh encrypted so you do not have to worry about that unless somebody was having somebody had like a 10 or $12,000 scanner which isn't the norm with the news industry um with the some of the other devices and things that were part of the system were the the um XBR 35 handsets that's the Basic Talk handset with a simple screen just letting the end user know what talk group that they're on and the caller ID of the persons that's talking and what's a nice feature too that you always know who's talking
050on the radio system so anytime there's a big radio system there can always sometimes be jokesters people doing bodily noises into the radio system blowing into the mic or saying things that they shouldn't or even keying up and holding it to an FM radio any anybody who got a large radio system has probably encountered one of these things before well with the when you have caller ID on the radios everybody everybody has a number so no nobody is anonymous anymore um so it stops that literally on day one next are there there is a uh control station that's going to be servicing some third-party applications uh Motorola Moto Turbo systems are capable of applications if you want to think of them as an iPhone there's an app for that and some popular applications that we
051had talked about in a meeting many months ago were uh connecting it to your PBX phone system and for two things that you could actually have an extension on anybody's phone system that could talk to the radio system when needed so they would just pick up their handset on their desk hit an extension number and then they can talk out to the radio system somebody would talk back they could listen and hang up or just find somebody if they're not person that normally carries a 2A radio or they want to say some kind of an announcement the other part with that connecting it to your phone system is that we can program in a button that can call 911 and because it will originate from your phone's PBX the 911 operator will know based on
052your location and your phone system that it deres at the school or which school so that it will tell them where you're calling from but you can also have an open conversation with somebody with 911 as an emergency button programmed into the radios and it looks like the rest of uh that was on the quote were some mobile radios going in building and grounds Vehicles about 15 of those and I think that's about it as far as what's included with the radio system um they we've done these for probably this is not a no you're not a beta tester these have been in place for probably about 14 years years I've been selling these types of systems and some of them have been in some uh local school districts around me that have multiple sites
053we have a sked County City School District that has 18 of these sites um and uh they work flawlessly and they're just they're very ruggedized the repeaters essentially unless it took a lightning hit um they just keep going and general lifespan for something like this um would be about 5 years as the factory warranty on Portables and repeaters but the actual lifespan of repeaters cuz they're in a protected room and just kind of doing their job is usually 8 to 10 years at least and we do get a lot of customers that go longer than that portable radios obviously those are uh uh item that's dropped or abused or thrown around or gets wet but these all come with a 5-year warranty and uh outside of that usually we're seeing similar Portables in those models
054lasting 78 years and keep in mind there's usually a battery change every 3 to four years changing out the battery just because it expires other than that I don't have anything else unless anybody has any questions I'm sorry I threw a lot at you right there but um please ask away if there's any questions yeah I have few questions when you can you just go over that six location only what did you say about six locations so it' be six uh six separate locations for the repeaters with um so six separate School locations and the district locations will have two so the there'll be eight repeaters total six at remote locations and two that will be servicing case middle Wy and High School uh and district offices that are kind of in a cluster from
055what I'd seen on a map in the past all around each other so they need their all their individual repeaters they would need two because they can two repeaters can handle multiple talk groups across all those offices and schools but there wasn't a need to have one repeater at every one of those because they were so close to each other so two repeaters at one of those building locations will service all of those schools and locations that was Case Case middle Wy high school and district offices so when you're establishing the talk groups does that mean talk groups can be heard in all of the locations if you want them to if you don't want them to that's a programming discussion further along of normally with school districts um we would give each School whether
056it's the the high school middle school elementary school their own specific talk groups so they can hear and talk to each other but some admins or some positions like building and grounds might want everybody and school so that when they show up at the school they can turn to the talk groups of the school that they're at that's really a programming discussion so we can put as little or as as much as you want in every radio um and you can talk across if you want to but that's again usually a discussion in programming so is that are there additional fees attached to those additional programs no nope that would be a a programming meeting like upon receiving a purchased order to move forward with the project usually we get the project or the order
057plac get the equipment kind of going start the FCC licensing and being you're very close to line a as they call it within 100 miles of the Canadian border takes a little bit longer to get frequencies because you we have to approve it with Canada's FCC along with the United States FCC so they both have to because they're so close you would transmit into Canada and vice versa so once that then happens I would usually schedule a programming meeting where I would come out and we'd whiteboard it and kind of chart it all out and I would bring examples and and visuals that I've done at other schools that were not Reinventing the wheel it's really a meeting to decide IDs and some functionality and some admin controls and who whose radio you want them
058on we've done these so many times I can kind of give you examples you don't have to come up with anything I can put up up on a whiteboard and we can kind of hammer it all out but no there is no extra charge for any of that that's included the batteries is there a charge do we have to purchase new batteries or the batteries that we have are Char rechargeable the B you mean the batteries that are for the new radios on the quote the those batteries that so all the radios on the quote regardless of the model are going to come with their own individual batteries batteries will come with a one-year warranty from the manufacturer and generally we usually see it's about three three and a half into four years is pushing
059it where then it's usually time and I tell people hey when you're buying a big system and you're buying all bunch of brand new radios put in the budget to start phasing them in in 3 four years to get half to replace them um the batteries will go bad whether they're being used or not I tell people it's like milk it expires whether you drink it or not but generally they'll last three to four years easily and then they'll just go into half power mode and that usually allows the radio it doesn't give as good coverage after four or five years because the radio isn't operating at full power so in your quote you answered my question so in your quote there $2,800 recurring annual fee for maintenance so how much are we tapping into
060that do these radios require maintenance is that I mean I think that's a lot of money for maintenance so are you finding that you know people are calling you to look at these radios throughout the year no no so that that maintenance was for the repeaters the fixed infrastructure the expensive piece that those repeaters are oh about 10 grand a piece and that is for the repeater the fixed infrastructure those eight repeaters on the quote nothing usually people don't do maintenance contracts on portable radios it's just not costeffective and it will make that number go up a lot higher it's an optional maintenance contract it's not needed or barcom calls it an SLA service level agreement what that maintenance contract covers the the repeaters just like the portable radios are going to come with a
0615year warranty and within the first six months anything happens we're going to come take care of it there's no if fans or butts there's no question but after say in a year or two you have a problem something happens with the repeater and requires a service call somebody comes over and looks at it determines maybe okay the repeater might not be working or there might be an issue rare but it happens then we go to take it out of service and then ship it back to Motorola so what that maintenance cover contract covers is the shipping cost to go back to Motorola and the technician's time to come diagnose and then come back and reinstall if you choose not to do it which you can and some people do um then you would just be
062uh then it would just be a charge of the shipping to go back to Motorola and the diagnostic trip from the tech and the the trip to come back to reinstall it everything at motorol is factory repair it or replace it is covered and you covered for that 5 years so that's all the maintenance contract is really meant to cover is those diagnostic trips shipping costs and that would be it and that's just for the repeaters I didn't even put it on there for any other radios because it's just not costeffective for the the portable radios and the mobile radios the repeaters are the big ticket items anybody else have questions yeah I guess what um how many schools have you put these in sir oh oh God I put on that uh that one
063of the sheets that the word documents but at least 15 maybe even more it feels like there's we just got done with North Colony School District which was eight sites SKC city was last year we also have this in um Albany Medical Center that's been going they're on their second batch and they've been using it for about 15 years and they have two sites uh a bunch of different manufacturing facilities they're all over um but I did have it listed and I can send it again of all the districts that are currently using the exact same systems no that that's fine uh the other the other question that I have is how long until these become outdated technology you know I mean every mot yeah yeah valid question because right there's always a new iPhone
064or new Android device or new tech generally in the 2-way radio space as I've seen in the 20 years Motorola you know they they usually keep and just like these radios are all capable of backwards compatibility with older analog systems motor always builds in like the backwards compatibility because the radio industry doesn't go the Leaps and Bounds like like a internet device like uh like an iPhone or an Android device or something like that or even a home computer where it just goes with those Leeps and Bounds so the XPR 3500 has been in their line for about four or 5 years and the new version is on its way out right now the R5 um it's within $50 in cost of the same radio and I can update the quote put that on there
065but they still are offering the XPR 3500s Portables and even after they discontinue it later this year in May or June where you can't buy them anymore motorol will still support them for repair for up to 5 to 7 years after and that's because there's I mean a lot of motor rols customers are police departments fire departments ambulance companies health care hospitals emergency rooms Public Safety so as far as making them outdated no and that capacity Plus system is second second gen digital and they're still supporting that they the radios support old analog operation and even old conven digital which is considered gen one usually with newer type systems they'll release a new radio and then say hey we have a firmware update if you want to add this new type of system architecture but
066for systems like this I no that's not been the case for many the 20 years I've been with Wells and barcom and sold Motorola products so it's fair to say that it would be a a purchase that would last for at at least by your calculation 20 years no well I mean hey I'd love wish everything last 20 years but I would probably say 10 years would be is what the average that we're seeing now with a recent refresh we did at Aly Medical Center uh big trauma hospital here um and a few other manufacturing plants that use similar technology where they're essentially keeping the exact same uh system architecture they're just upgrading the handsets usually within 5 to 7 years you might start to replace portable radios that they're just getting beat up lost
067stolen for whatever reason but the even whatever new models come out they'll always be backwards compatible to work with this current system and that's been the case with a couple couple new models where's the price on those portable radios on this quote here which there's a lot of numbers here so which one is it um quty 100ty 100 yeah yeah the quantity 100 that's the XBR 3500 that's the simple voice considered the voice only with a small screen on it that was the um the worker B radio and then the r7s which is the quantity of 30 that was more of the managerial enhanced screen with uh more keypad uh more controls for um admin features on the radio no that's not there it's 7:45 there 745 is it this right here I think it
068was 749 yeah 74950 y so 100 of them $74,000 um in your installation quote here you're saying saying that it's going to take 172 hours at prevailing wages at 17 so I'm thinking you're estimating that it's going to take you about a little bit over 3 weeks to install this system based on work weeks okay and that's usually yes I mean as far as from everything beginning to end return trips tweaks programming meetings yeah I mean FCC licensing everything involved yes but as far as the actual at every school put up everything installing all mobile radios working with the IT department for internet connectivity these do not also these repeaters do not need to be on your main Network and um so you do not have to worry about any kind of security breaches or
069things like that they can be on a VLAN and outside Network that's really just like networking printers together they do not do their own firmware updates and they do not need to go out through the internet for anything they just need to see each other on your network thank you probably more for admin folks but can you give the board a sense of the types of things that you would see this being used for thank you because I was just I was looking at Jeff to kind of walk us through that so we have the opportunity to kind of talk with our administrators um about what the needs are in their buildings but we also had the opportunity to bring this to the Safety Committee so Jeff if you can just share like our current
070system now has some limitations a lot of limitations yeah all the all the radios that we have now are just they just there's no repeaters like he's mentioning for each building so each they just work within that building they only can communicate with other radios in that building and that's it I want to do a districtwide lock down I can't do we don't have the ability to do that now not from a radio system Tex message or call everybody individually I can do a one button and lock the whole District down we do have the ability to do that right now though not I mean we do have locks so at the I just want to make that clear we do do we do have a lock down but it's for building right yes this
071gives it District capacity what this really does is it kind of marries Radio Systems with all the other systems that we have for safety so it interacts with our lockdown system you can be programmed to do that they can get alerts and texting and emails on this in the system um they can as as you mentioned you can have one toone communication which we don't have now so if you want to have a private conversation with a principal about a student anyone else right now if you did that on the radio would hear that conversation you'd have to say can I call you privately then go offline with this radio system you can make it oneon-one and you could keep it secure it's secure also as well so as as Chris is mentioning where it
072doesn't um like right now scanners can pick up our radio and they can hear our conversations going on if you have the right frequency tuned in you it's much harder to do it with this system you have to have a higher end scanner to to accommodate that so you know you could block down the entire district from one radio if that's what you want to program it to be and you can also communicate if I want to pick up the phone and if I don't have a radio like I may not carry a radio but I know Chad has a radio and Wy I can pick up the phone have an extension and dial Chad's radio doesn't matter Chad doesn't have to be at his desk anymore he can be anywhere so the mobility functionality
073is quite a bit higher so you don't have to worry about where people are sitting and what they're doing and they can literally be anywhere in the district if Chad's happens to be at a meeting over at Massie Street I can still call His Radio over at Massie Street and not worry about where he is so it's just it gives us a lot more uh uh uh expanding as far as where we're communication is and you don't have to guess where somebody is it just happens so it gives us a lot more flexibility is a what I'm looking for as to what we can do so one of the things I was thinking about Je when we went through the demo face it's like we use Raptor but right now when you go to a
074building you have to log in at a computer that computer to carry it out to a football game or a baseball game or basketball game is is not that friendly these devices at the higher end the fewer that we ordered those would have the ability to scan someone's license to do that background check and to give them permission to be on that camp they also have the ability to tie into the PA system which right now you're going to the phone and having to make a hold in place stay in place Etc but it gives more flexibility for emergency situations that we don't have now and like you said then 911 call can go right from the radio and they know where you are so it just gives us a lot more uh capability that
075we don't have now so we do have all those things now but they're building by building by building so um each building has its own system in place and they can manage it that way but if we had to do something districtwide which we've done in the sense that we had to do a shelter in place not too long a while ago but someone had to call every building and make sure that they understood we're in a shelter in place that takes time time is you know a factor when you have a crisis going on I try this no no all excellent points and your current radius is now is analog and as I'm understanding it was just a what they call Simplex just radio to radio a bunch of radio sitting at a school
076this is linked repeaters if you don't know what of repeaters I get at I work in this industry you don't just just think of it as a mini cell tower and all of them are linked together so that gives you a huge swath of coverage over all the schools but allows that linking to have all these extra benefits too and especially for lockdowns and what we call a sitewide all call I mean it's very powerful to be able to just pick up any radio hit the push the talk button for a site white all call and now whatever you say is forced through every radio on your campus that's on it doesn't matter if somebody's already talking on a different talk group it forces through that emergency announcement so that's a very powerful tool especially
077when something's going on and versus calling or texting or you know obviously picking up the phone my question would be for you how many radios and is this for it's roughly 100 of the lower end radios and then there was a handful like the administrators would had to hire and ones that give in the capability of doing lockdowns and having extra functionality um there a handful of those uh and the ones the high-end ones I think there was eight or nine of those um I think it was 138 radios total in the quote so for portable radios yes yes minus the ones that the admin so the at 30 admin radios which were the r seven 100 of say the teacher radios of the XPR 3500s and then um eight of the ion radios which
078is the scanner Camera Android device with the two-way radio built in um that was eight of those and then you also have 15 mobile radios installed in building and grounds Vehicles so they can talk amongst themselves across all the different schools and I think the 100 included like cleaners custodians uh Hall monitors um safety officers would get that that higher end radio but those lower end radios would be for mobile staff it if we wanted them um yeah right now you were to call not every custodian has a radio there's not even a radio number is building for each custodian to have it and so when things come up in the kid comments or something we just don't have that ability to to reach people with that the other thing is at the classroom level
079with some of our self-contained classrooms that need a radio um from some of our friends that are elopers you know it's beneficial for that teacher to have a radio to contact the administrator immediately when a kid elopes um right now that we don't have that's where that 100 number came from we sort of added all staff up and that's what we came up would it be fair to say possibly that if we like the idea and I I don't know anybody who could say that this isn't a good idea right it's obviously a good idea but it would seem like you could really cut down that 100 to get the ball rolling is that fair to say if every administrator and the guys in the maintenance trucks had them do we is it really like
080we need those 100 radios for people there were times I had 10 to 20 teachers with one in my building depending on the needs in the building so it's hard to put a number to them we looked at when we sat down and looked at numbers we looked at where crises come up so there may be the high school they need 30 um we have eight buildings plus Maintenance and Facilities that we would want to have them anybody else this is just a presented yes he just presented this right yes okay he was supposed to be at the last one but we had so many presentations we were trying to move and we can adjust those quantities on the any of those quotes if you needed to and I can also refresh and put the
081new R5 which replaces the xpr3500 on there as well but if there's any edits anything that you get you can always add to so it usually is very common for school districts that whatever number they think we usually get a call a few weeks or a month or two into the new school year saying hey can we order 10 or 20 more that's inevitable regardless it just happens because you realize hey this is working great we could really use some more here and there but you can always add to it as well okay well thank you very much Chris no problem that's it I can I can leave at this point run all right thank you so much for your time appreciate it thank you Chris byebye okay moving along board and staff reports Mrs
082Lori Converse is going to give us the policy committee meeting report right so we're going to start with bring the any question sus it's pretty straightforward it's CDC recommendations and you didn't have few changes yeah okay thing is 7602 is that polies had asked us to review it is a policy that's required at the district the only thing on there that we were going to change can you tell me what 7602 is it's providing a safe public school choice to students who have been victims of a violent offense um three of five we did not have a number so the student parent person in a rightful relation wishes to challenge the the determination that's an appeal that we didn't have a number of days in there so we putting 10 business days so this policy
083will be put up PR nice to review as well like we're not gonna well this hasn't been with that since 201 basically what the policy is though for more for through five so if a child was in danger just that North and something that had happened and they switch oh that they can switch location okay okay facilities policy 10003 this has come to light recently um because of Encompass and other programs that have reached out to usting our facilities so on page six we are going to add if you guys are all okay with students as well at page six section B under Civic cultural relis and Service Groups we are going to change that to save reimbursement for expenses directly incurred by the school district only when proceeds of activity sponsored by nonprofit organizations
084and this classification are using exclusively for the benefit of school or charitable coures so I have a question about that um so the board and soul discretion reserves right to wave the charges scheduled in favor of reimbursement okay so this so this is in line with education law 414 that all we had to do to change it so we so this way we don't have we can just say we're waving with fees we don't have to go through this whole okay because there's there's a bunch of things so that education law 414 is covered here because that's something that I had brought out to Dr that's all we needed to change it very simp you guys you want to this one I is bad okay and then finally one of the things that recently up
085is that we do not have a policy for board members um when they want to remotely for an extraordinary circumstance so we are having B write up a policy for that for everybody to review by our next meeting hopefully and then on so that would negate the 72h hour rule there still there's still on advanced notice that you have to give but I don't know if it's 72 hours and we haven't seen it yet districts were asked to create one in 2020 during Co but we do not have that policy so we're gonna look at draft on we're see what they so we we don't have anything right now no yeah so I have a question for you Mrs cers so um policy we brought I brought this up at the finance um meeting so
086policy 4202 regarding the depository Banks I think that when we got our legal advice um we are not in compliance with General Municipal law 10 um they did recommend a change and I think we need to put that on the docket we were discussing it today and I F it off for the whole board okay perfect so if we get this remote thing SE come emergency circumstances emergency ordinary nobody want nobody wants you like remoting in from the it's fair enough I'll take it oh and also we we're gonna hold off on the cell phone policy until State gives this guy I think that was shock for everyone laor that was wonderful that was actually really good good all right so moving along G and staff Dr Larry superintendent of school report good evening everyone
087um I want to thank our widely contingency for all of the samplings I feel stuffed um thank you for taking us on that journey and it's exciting to hear when kids have an idea uh to actually see it come to for and that takes a special type of leadership to support kids and allow them to grow um challenges all s of time so um the first thing I want to mention aside from that is the capital project so a week from today is an opportunity for our community to support our schools and as I've said in the past when our schools Thrive our community thrives and so these I brought for my own personal residence but anyone that lives within our district boundaries should have received the um Capital project newsletter and this week should
088have received the reminder postcard the vote will be taking place as I said on the 25th that we have two voting districts we have north of the Black River South of the Black River our two polling locations are Watertown High School in the band room and voting will take place from noon to 9900 p.m. this year we decided to do something a little bit different so people will be able to flaunt their I voted sticker with a Capital Construction logo on it and uh that will be closing at 9:00 p.m and then shortly thereafter I will advise the board and then put out a press release on those results that will be taking place during our music in our schools so if you have not marked your calendars to attend that event It's a Wonderful
089opportunity to celebrate music in our school of month with the fabulous talent that we have within the Watertown city school district keep in mind that this Capital project is critical to our infrastructure and moving our districts forward our Focus was keeping our building safe warm and dry and the biggest thing that I would like to say with this Capital project is that there is zero tax impact to our community that is because we get 93 cents for every dollar that we spend reimbursement and building Aid in addition to that the district and the taxpayers and the boards over the last several years have put money in a savings account or Capital reserves Fund in order to fund 10 million dollar to offset the cost of our taxpayers I want to thank everyone who's participated over
090the several years voting and supporting that tax no tax impact the next thing that I want to mention uh this Thursday um at 5:30 to 6:30 p.m is our art show at flower Memorial Library it is a wonderful opportunity to see the talent of our fine artists our teachers do a great job working with our students and it's a wonderful opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments and hard work the next thing that I want to mention I had the opportunity this weekend to watch it in person in Syracuse but our very own high school music department will be presenting mam Mia they will be showcasing that this Thursday at 7 pm Friday at 7 pm on Saturday 1 and 7 these students have started working in the early fall on this production under the direction of
091Rebecca Rose and they've done an amazing job and we know that our community is going to be proud of them and we know that you'll come out to support that the next thing that I wanted to mention is our draft budget presentation as you may have recalled in in past uh board meetings we're going to be resurfacing the stage of our high school which is exciting that will be taking place over spring break and so we needed to move our community draft budget presentation to case Middle School on April 28th at 5:30 p.m we encourage anyone who's interested to please participate the next thing you may recall a couple of board meetings ago we had a board member ask us to consider um purchasing our own buses and so we found with the support of
092our assistant superintendent of operations and finance Franklin Essex Hamilton bosies does a study and they have a three administrator team and over a period of eight days onsite and offsite they pull a report together to determine the feasibility of whether or not the Watertown city school district could sustain over years our own transportation department the cost of that study is8 8,321 6 90% our Aid ratio is pretty high here in Watertown our Aid ratio on that is 90% so the cost to the district would be $832 and I would ask that if the board is interested in this that we approve this so that we can book them uh moving forward for the transportation study the next thing that I want to mention is our kindergarten registration uh this year I've asked to put banners
093up so hopefully you'll see some yard signs throughout our community I think it's you know kindergarten is one of those grade levels that sometimes people don't start after a Labor Day and sometimes we find our own start date we are hoping that everyone starts on the first day of school and so in order to do that our kindergarten registrations are critically important so you'll see some yard signs throughout our community and uh we're looking forward to that and those begin in May so we'll be looking forward to that today uh Tina Lane and I had the opportunity to meet with our student advisory kids what an inspirational group of students um today they had the opportunity we invited guests in and adult guests and they had the opportunity to pick their brain about things that
094they wanted to do we've got a group of kids that want to create buddy benches at the elementary schools um we have some schools with Buddy benches but we have some reteaching that we need to do there um we have some labeling of things so that we're um educating kids on what the use of those benches are for we have a group of kids that think that there there needs to be some counseling services or social worker services with our athletes we have students that want to focus on food service we had one of those students participate in our food service interviews last week so we were excited about that um they just have a lot of Amazing Ideas and we're excited to help uh Shepherd them through that process and see something come to
095fruition by the end of the year lastly I just want to mention today Bri and I had the opportunity to meet with the city of Watertown and the county regarding our disaster relief R of you are following us on this we have been meeting bi-weekly since August with fan so we're working with the city on our mitigation efforts to make sure the mitigation efforts that we have in plan for the district align to what the county and the city is also planning so we're looking at some more hdmp grant opportunities and there's some environmental friendly grant opportunities so we're looking at those we're waiting for some advice and our idea is if we were were able to app for these grants we receive some of these grants to reduce the burden that would be on
096the taxpayers in our community so we're looking forward to that and that's been a consistent effort since August and that's all I have thank you very much items for consent agenda resolve that consent agenda items a and are hereby approved motion please John John second all those in favor any oppos motion carries items for answer oh so so I umry I asked for the because I'm curious I don't know and I don't understand so I printed them out so these committee what are these minutes like what are we looking at here what is this telling us as a board like why do we yeah I know I looked over it Matt but I wanted to ask you first you're approving um the minutes from the CSC or preschool meetings so once the meeting takes place
097um we finalize either the preschool IEP or the school IEP and then that goes on you have to put the Board of Ed date on there when they would be approved you're looking at like the services and related services and that's really because there is a cost to those Services added on in my so when really a formality okay so these are all curent when you do your committee meeting these are all current yes services that are being rendered EPS or special needs and accommodations correct from the previous board meeting up until this board meeting any meetings that took place or were finalized during that time the on the um on that report so okay thank you I just didn't understand like what I was looking at thank you okay items for board action whereas
098it would be in the joint interest of the Watertown city school district and the New York Cooperative member list as presented to the board to participate in Cooperative bits for the purchase of various supplies Services materials and Equipment as advertised by and awarded by the Watertown city school acting as lead agency is provided by General M law section 11 19-0 and whereas each board uh aains the legal authority to contract with the successful vendor and shall not be bound by purchase contracts or other agreements made by the other boards therefore be it resoled that the Board of Education of the Water Town C the school district hereby agrees to participate with the names of school districts in each Cooperative bids can I have a motion please second done all those in favor opposed cares whereas
099a resolution was passed by the board of education on January 7 2025 approving the 2025 annual meeting budget vote and election calendar and be it further resolved that this amended resolution reflects the revised calendar to reflect the change of the staff proposed budget presentation to be April 14 and the community presentation to be ail 28 additionally the publications of the legal notice will be adjusted accordingly to start on Friday and is hereby approved can I have a motion please second Tina any discussion all those in favor I I oppos appears resolve that the following proposition be placed on the ballot for approval by the voters of the Watertown city school district on May 20th 20125 shall the Board of Education be authorized to establish a new 10e capital Reserve fund pursuant to section 3651 of
100the education law and fund such Reserve fund um in the amount not to exceed uh $10 million in inclusive of ACR interest and other investment earnings to be used for construction reconstruction Renovations improvements and additions to all district facilities including purchase of Equipment Technology upgrades classroom equipment and or School infrastructure equipment development atle playgrounds storm and sanitary sewer uh driveways and parking lots such Reserve fund from yearend budget surplus funds known as unassigned fund balance as available for the fiscal year ending um June 30 2025 and each fiscal year thereafter for the term of the reserve fund transfers of excess monies from Board of Education U designated reserves amounts from budgetary Appropriations from time to time and New York state aid received and made available by the Board of Education from time to time as
101permitted by law be further resolved that the school district clerk is hereby authorized and directed to publish the notice of proposition in accordance with theal provisions of the education law can I motion John John second discussion all those in favor any oppos carries resolve that the following proposition placed on the ballot for approval by the voters in Watertown city school district on May 20 202 shall the Board of Education be authorized to establish a new 10-year capital reserve fund pursuant to section 3651 of the educational law and fund such Reserve Fund in the amount not to exceed one $1 million in inclusive of recruit interest and other investment earnings to be used for the purchase of furniture necessary Furnishings uh fixture and Equipment um which such Reserve fund to be funded from yearend budget surplus
102funds known as unassigned fund fund balance as available for the fiscal year ending and June 30th 2025 and each fiscal year thereafter for the term of the reserve F transfers of X monies from Board of Education designated reserves amounts from budgetary Appropriations from time to time in New York state aid received and made available by the Board of Education from time to time as all as permitted by law be it further resolved that the school district clerk is hereby authorized to and directed to publish the notice of proposition in accordance with the applicable provisions of the education la second discussion favor I say oppos resolve that the following proposition be placed on the ballot for approval by the voters of the Watertown city school district on May 20 and 25 shall the Board of Education
103of the enlarged City School District of the wtown city school district be authorized to undertake a project consisting security system upgrades in additions including but not limited to the purchase of open gate metal detection units and a handheld radio system in the amount not to exceed $500,000 which is estimated to be the total maximum cost thereof and paid for such project by using $500,000 from the it Reserve fund it further resolved that the school district clerk is hereby authorized at directed to publish the notice of the proposition in accordance with the applicable provisions of the education law motion please second discussion yeah I have a few questions um why do we need the security proposition so the voters need to the board first and then the voters have to approve the creation of the reserve
104which you guys did last year and then the voters approved it now we need the permission to spend the money so why couldn't we why do we need to have a security proposition if we have the money coming why couldn't we vote to just take the money out of the it Reserve account if we wanted to purchase something this is the it Reserve you're saying by take it out of the general fund instead of the it Reserve I think she's saying why can't the board just say because it has to be it's voter authorized to create it and voter authorized to spend it similar with all the other on we can spend somewh like the 10 million that's saved for the capital project there will be a proposition that the voters have to approve it
105to use it towards this Capital project so it has nothing to do with creating a proposition so that this is aable there are things that can be purchased that are aidable and the security things it is the state contract that we would be purchasing it from right and we're getting Aid on that but we have to have the rers approv to spend that money from that account okay so my second question is is is if we approve the security proposition because you put those two bids on there for the open gate and the bearcom is that auto is that automatically us saying that we agree that we should purchase these two items beom is not listed as the second one but we've already had more discussion on the first one on the open game no
106the digital links it's on there the this proposal is on part of that security proposition the radios are on there but right say specifically yeah says right there beom okay you cor great so that beom proposition is for $325,500 which makes sense that you want that it Reserve that uh proposition to be at $500,000 but my question is is if if we vote to appr approve the security proposition does that mean that we are also agreeing to purchase both the radios and the open gate you're authorizing the voters to vote on that so yes well we so yes yes so those two so that's what that means okay so then I have I have a few other things to say about that um you know the presentation is great I just feel like $325,000 on
107radios at there's a lot of things in the school district that need to be addressed and I'm having a really hard time justifying 325,000 or convenience right now we do everything that the radio is going to do I understand that it facilitates everything I understand that makes everything a lot smoother in communication but I can't recall an event the last two years that any of us would be like oh we should have had that radio and things would have been better I just have a really hard time you know I feel like these two propos these two bids are buried in this proposition and so we're saying yes to fre things um I don't I don't think we should be SP spending that that kind of money I really don't um I don't know if
108you know other people feel like you want to cut di like CH proposed maybe we don't want to spend get 100 radios I I just don't see why we need every person in this District to walk around with a walkie talkie that's my personal opinion I think others can say what they want um I feel that the open gate metal detector is something that we have talked about for a long time I think that that is a valid expense in my personal opinion you're getting six of them for 117,000 which is a third of the radios and we do have an issue um with kids bringing in stuff and you know we talked about putting them at case we talked about putting them at high school and maybe some of the events and they're portable
109and I think they're are much more attractive and versatile you know added piece of equipment that we can have so I have a problem saying yes to all three of these and the other piece that I'd like to add is I think it's important it's it's nice that you provide this information and that Jeff Wood is here to provide that I'd like to hear from ssos I'd like to hear from the SR I'd like to hear from Pete I'd like to hear from other people whether they feel like these are things that they're really going to be using and do we really need this um on top of the fact that we're spending half a million dollars when there are many other things that we need to be spending our money on so that's just
110my opinion I think that we should probably go around the table and see what people think I have a question just procedurally on this when would be the last Poss possible point where you would have just thinking the same thing when do you have to have these as it I have to publish these three propositions on that legal notice starting April so at the April 1 meeting is when I will be bringing that legal notice with all of these ons is it my understanding though that that the voters have to vote for it correct all we're doing is voting to take it to the voters yeah have the money so what you were also saying the money was already the money is already in the it Reserve account so you're just authorizing for the voters
111to say yes we want to spend this on it or the voter say no we don't want to spend it how much was the original allocation of a million that that money is very specific and what it can be used for yes but I will say to get to Millie's point is I did mention earlier maybe I didn't elaborate enough but we we do have a Safety and Security Committee in this district and our ssos serve on that our s ssos serve on that we have teachers on that secretaries on that principes on that executive team members on that so they chose that this was an area that we wanted to move forward so that happened outside of the board meeting and I think that if we have to support something like this we should
112hear what they want what they have to say like i' I'd like to hear that um a lot of money no I agree and I've mentioned this at prior board meetings so if somebody wanted me to invite an SS they would have been here and they would have been glad to be here you know I just feel like we haven't talked about it enough you know we've got sinks in the high school where kids are complaining that they can't drink they drinking water the toilets aren't working the sinks aren't working I mean there's just so many more tangible things that we're not supporting and to me this is a luxury this is a convenient luxury it's not a necessity no one's going to die if we don't upgrade our our radios and and and have
113to think about the the annual incurring fee you got $2,800 that is going to be part of the budget every year for maintenance you heard the longevity on this is 10 years um you're going to be giving it to custodians that can throw it around lose it whatever so that's why you have the maintenance room but you've got to get batteries every three to four years I mean this is not something it's not like a one-time purchase in the way to never have to think about it again it's going to be an Ur occurring um reoccurring you know uh expense and I think just in the condition that our district is in right now in physicality to spend $325,000 on radio to pay $30,000 $175 hours of installation I mean I think this is outrageous
114and my other question is did we I mean did our attorneys say that this was an okay procurement I mean don't we have to put these things out to bid it is a state contract that's what I said earlier State contracts are the ones that we can purchase from the barcom is a state so so Ferrara is okay with us okay with purchase from any state vendor unless is a state vendor so I to get to what you're saying Milly with the whole sinks and everything else get what John said what Lor said the and I get what you're saying with perception piece public perception is Big um it funds would not be able to be used to fix sinks or anything related to Ms I I also don't believe that just because you have
115the money I mean there's other things in it that we can there's a lot of things upgrades are when we went on our tour we store the closets like where all of the you know the infrastructures for computers they're terrible I don't know if the it money can be used for that but yeah we have money in the it and I I understand that you can't use it phones to pick six I get all that all I'm saying is that I think this is an extraordinary amount of money for a convenient and luxurious thing in our district has other things that we should be addressing and if you want to spend money from the it Reserve there's many many other things that you could do upgrades on our for it it's not just this so
116you know I have I have a problem that there's a proposition and we're saying yes to three things it's like all buried in one and we haven't heard from other people at all about the SEC about these radios it's a lot would you like toar I I think it behooves this entire board to get information than just one source it's a big investment and not just the board but the community they were asking them to approve this yeah I think it would be helpful for them to understand is this a need or is this aana that's what it comes down to right we're going to have needs we have plenty of needs we got $110 million of needs we're about to ask the voters to approve so any information we can provide that will inform
117people about this being in need is g to ultimately be beneficial would everybody be okay if we invited that group to come speak on first yeah we still have some time we could make a more informed decision then it sounds like the the metal detectors everybody is pretty much in agreement on I I oh go ahead Lor um so I I do just have one personal comment so the North Colony school that they spoke about my sister actually works there um why don't we she thinks they're great and then helpful um so should we not get some maybe some other schools and their feedback on it so I mean I agree it's a lot of money but I also was involved in the situation where radios would have been very helpful and I'm not going
118to bring up said situation but it was here and that would have been very helpful know what I'm talking about them um and that's just one so I'm on the safety thing I did the money thing M I went 100% do and we are I'm I'm more like it's a safety thing and I don't know I I don't I'm not a what if I rather have it here and then know that we save somebody's life than not spend the money and realize somebody dead so that's kind of where I'm at with it I also think that everybody's opinions are important I'm just like I don't know it's just if that makes me I'm hoping the extra information will convince us all that all the things we're saying I think there's a good chance of that
119to the April 1 and that giv you enough time to add it to it would it would be back on that April 1 yes because then I I'd have to have it on that leg it's the last get it would it be a good option too not just to have the but maybe have a teacher from like a teacher from W you probably should have right have a Safety Committee yeah is there a good representation from everywhere yes okay yeah we have extra meetings tomorrow so we have a lot of people that serve on and all different classes even like for Dell I mean I don't know I would even like to hear what they would want to say I would really like to hear what he would have to say as because I personally
120feel being events all the time that probably would be super helpful especially if you're like there's somebody doing something way down here and they shouldn't be and somebody could I need help down here because I've seen stuff like that happen quite a bit as a parent where there somebody might be fighting down by the bathroom somebody's down here and you can't yell to get help so that's I don't know so our current technology doesn't serve that so if you so we used lock down as an example so we used lockdown Randy as an example so right now I can go to the office office into a lock down but I can't do it from where I'm standing in an emergency situation you're not going to predict whether they're coming through this door that door if
121you have the device on you you can lock down the building immediately and not waste minutes trying to get to another a phone system we do have we have all of the things that everyone mentioned we do not have the convenience of being able to do an emergency code blue is a good example what is a c code blue addresses any medical emergency in the building there's CPR certified first at all of those things if that happened I would want everyone on my code blue team to have a radio and they knew exactly where to report and when to report I mean every second counts so I I I have a hard time putting a price T to safety but I understand what you're saying and I we do have things mechanically that we need
122to work out hopefully with the capital project we can get there but I can definitely invite these people to the first I I would just like to say there is a sticker shock there I understand that but I have sat on the Safety Committee I've served better Safety Committee and every single law enforcement officer I have talked to and every single trainer because I've done way more school shooter training than I care to ever remember I said every single second matters in that sort of situation and they can never get enough seconds back for a response from law enforcement if this saves five seconds 10 seconds 15 seconds for law enforcement it's worth every day and you know maybe after we have people come talk we we can still do this but on a smaller
123scale like okay maybe not I don't know but based on what he said and all these numbers a lot if you look at 100 radios with nine facilities you're looking at 10 just over 10 per building I it's not a lot when you look at the large scale then you look at the high school that has almost 1,200 kids or you know we have 900 employees in the district so 100 is not a dent with everyone getting one is it fair to say that you wouldn't put 10 in each building though you would scale it to the building that I think it depends on the need because you don't know where you're going to have things I always at the beginning of every year as a principal looked at what are my needs in the
124building what are teachers that have certain situations in our classrooms that I want to know about immediately in case we have a Loper or we have you know the kid we've had the kids with seizures those ones would want the team to reporting so it was either of medical or other reasons but they were assigned and I can't say I definitely had 10 in the verse well I think we need presentation I think everybody can agree on that is that right more information is always better yeah I'll invite them and they're gonna I'll be with them tomorrow R I'm sorry I asked this again but just for clarification is this aable yes are we gonna get it's like 93 cents to the dollar or is it a different ratio it's a different um different schedule
125that we fill out at the end of the year kind of like with the um the open gate metal detectors would you be able to tell us how much it would actually cost us if we decided to go with this if being that I I think that if something's aable it makes it a little bit more palatable right so if you can give us what it's like when you just said it's going to cost us $800 like why wouldn't we do something for $800 so I think that that would be beneficial if that's the end of the discussion I need a motion to table then motion to table second Randy all those in favor motions table result that the Board of Education hereby approves the interpal agreement Watertown Watertown New York and the uh Watertown
126city school district for the period July 1 2024 through 30 2026 use of each other's facilities for the inter Municipal agreement motion please second Lor a curiosity in this intermunicipal agreement the repe city is in everything except for the fairgrounds why did they say why they could not release they couldn't take on the burden of the cost of the fair grounds so we tried I mean we've been working on it since last April so year so that was the only we it that we had to kind of get through and so what I threw in for the fairgrounds is and the past of the district is only the fairgrounds for Varsity so I included JV and I also included lock usage so and in the spirit of that did you tell them that they have
127to pay for something if they lose our know their their math came out that they we owed them more than they would have owed us so didn't come out as even dollar for the usage and I think with the fairgrounds and the amount of striping and if it's raining and the amount of restriping the Staffing that they have to pay to do that the Staffing that they have to pay to do the lot for instance we're going to use that Fairgrounds are using the baseball diamond which is the Big Ticket item I assume softball diamonds and we're using the lacrosse and soccer the biggest thing was the baseball time yeah so I'm assuming that's a lineup item on your budget Bri it will be it will pending board approval tonight everything's pending approval all we
128all that the board of education on the city school district of the city of Watertown New York establish a rate of $372 56 per for School 425 for Health Services provided for non-resident pupils attending non- schools located withen in the city of Water Town the following figures illustrate the determination of the above rate and are hereby approved motion please discuss all those in favor any oppose carries all propos 2526 school year calendar is presented to the board is a second yeah any discussion yes so I'm curious I know that we have to have 180 days of school but I've gotten several I think a couple of us on the board have gotten several complaints about how many half days um we have had or how many days you know for superintending say like for example
129this Friday there no school do you know exactly how manys the district our less our superintendent count would be 176 right but when you have a half a day that's not a full day of education so correct it's a full day of Education no I know but I I want to know how many actual full days of academic education the kids are receiving so minus all a half days in minus you know your super whatever I'm just curious to see but there's actually less half days on we actually got definely we got rid of someing them together better so it is March this year that we're taking away for next year we're actually putting it so kids will get two weeks off for Christmas similar to the other districts because right now high school kids
130are at the disadvantage because this year they were here but bage was closed because it goes with majority of the districts that are closed in the region so this calendar is actually much better we've had several calendar committee meetings to get to this point bis provides in a calendar and a b calendar we solicit inut from the teachers bargaining unit and then we sit down as a committee to try to come up with meet the legal requirements of the number of days superintendent conference days I moved one of them um to um de number to give parents and kids that full two weeks teachers will be here for St conference day on that Monday Tuesday we had the 187th day their contract is 186 put that other day there but there was a lot of
131so you did acknowledge that there were too many we went through this calendar we did we did a much better job last year but this year we did even better um so I'm proud of what we're presenting today my Hope was is that when we present it and adopt it we don't have to bring it back 10 times afterwards might change that was the goal this year there's only four half there okay well that's good and just as an FBI like those half days there's professional development there's also teach conferences built into two those days can I just this is just my own information the parent teacher conference is in December the thought behind two days two half days rather than one day I think I know the answer but they can't get through the
132quantity of parent teacher conference that is a big parent teacher conference because you're looking the December one is nearing the end of the semester and any of those that was another thing that we put into consideration we wanted to make sure that parents and teachers have an opportunity to sit down to have a conversation before that semester ends and the kid loses the full credit or half a credit is that you're saying because it's tends to be more in the evening or the second half of the day because it's still a day yes right is that what you're saying absolutely yeah we that's why we made the change for like March the March where we realized when we analyzed the building principles they said in the second one in March you're more likely to get
133the elementary parents but not the second parents um and then the other thing I will disclose since we are being recorded that at any point if a parent would like to meet with their child's teacher they have the right to reach out to that that teacher so these are just the built-in parent teacher conferences I think the concerns that were brought up is that and I think this is just common knowledge is that when there's a half day they really aren't getting instruction on that day they usually make it like a fun day or you know you're not really getting all your lessons in and so I think that that's really the concern but if you did a great job in just cutting into four half days next year I think that's great because literally
134over the last few months parents have felt like there's a half day at least once a week for whatever reason noow days it's noow right so then that even aggravate terrible win this was a test right last winner was much better this winter but we're not out of days we have some continency days left so well it looks New Year Falls in febru February they're in school the whole month except well it's pending okay I somebody's been bring that up prepared I think the parents are going to be happy with the calendar I don't think we gained any friends with [Music] Stud all right so all those in favor any oppos motion carries resolve that the Madison Services request form in contract participate in specific service for the please a second discuss those in favor
135resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools Dr Larry schel the Board of Education certify approves the following resignations leave of absence appointment term nonpr instructional probationary non-instructional permanent provisional Hooters after school Cyclone Academy substitutes instruct substitutes non instructional pleas second yes so Owen mayard is going to be our new athletic trainer that's awesome I actually looked him up I have a question now um he has a master's in athletic training so why does he have to take the civil service exam is that a formality it is civil service law trainer he was required to do it too so so even if you have that level of degree they still make you wow that's crazy City great to work yeah that's point that thank you and my other thing is someone um I actually
136think this is a great idea but someone reached out to me and I don't know if this is something you could consider or even look into um if the athletic trainer could have a dual responsibility and also be do you know what I'm gonna say I think I might okay because you're like getting excited um a dual um responsibility and also being the coordinator for the weight room some you know some kids that use the weit room and the kids that are using there is really no adult there um and a lot of these kids can get hurt like if they're not especially like ninth graders or they're don't really know how to use the weight so I just someone brought it to my attention that's kind of in the same line of you know
137abilities so it's something I don't I don't think I don't know that you need a title but maybe that could be discussed with him if that's something has an expertise in that actually well yeah yeah the guy he's uh he's pretty impressive I looked him up he's pretty expressor he's from Hawaii oh wow yeah and he's from Evans Mills he does volunteer work right am I right wait I'm not sure about volunteer what first yeah he volunteers at Evans Mills ambulance um looks like he's really fit so I sounds he's just a tad taller than you he's a tad taller than you so if we can talk about that being the for the weight room I think that would be a really good addition idea to throw out there I think it'd be nice for
138the kids it's a good suggestion I yeah I just want to say Tina thank you for your tire Hillis efforts I mean I know it's been a long road to try to find another trainer yeah that's hard we know you've been at it we got lucky and we had a couple of students on the interview committee too they asked great questions it was really nice experience no I was really I was really happy when I saw that I actually did not think it was gonna happen so I'm very happy three quarters of the Year we' thank God the weather I have had people ask me about us as a district next year we already of budget is actually having a strength you could be that person but now like a fulltime strength condition somebody that
139you want radios and this full strength no no next year next year point that you just brought up some don't clue how to no it's true you're you're right I agree with you more of Club thing I mean I know all the kids have to be trained on how to use the equipment but there's a difference between that and actually having a plan for how you're going to try to correct you know what your goals are and how you're G achieve them correct great so all those in favor I any Mo fav please all that upon the recommendation of Dr Larry schmeel superintendent school St paate administrative believe of a non-instructional inlo effect of March 10 2025 is here by your John John second sorry discussion here those in favor I oppos Mo carries resolve
140that the student trips as presented to the board are hereby approved motion please second discussion car all at the approval of the next cryst advisor John wur uh advisor for the newly created chess club at high school your by motion please John mil any discuss how did you not start a chess club when you were here there was there's actually I believe he's a principal and IND now did when I was here his name was Nick Lee and he he did that I'm glad that it's F you popularity like yeah it's good it's really cool all those in favor motion that the approval of extracurricular advisor Pierce advisor and uh Sunny Ortiz as co-advisor for the newly created sprout Society Club at Water High School is hereby approved did you say before motion all right
141I love it what a great opportunity I I read through all their plans and what they've done and so it's it's actually been up and running right just hasn't been recognized formally what a another great opportunity for our kids good those in favor I motion carries we solve that the disposal recycl or donation of damaged outdated good unused instructional items Elementary MO please second discussion those in favor oppostion carries solve thaty disposal for recycle damaged musical instum from HT inter school is here by appr please I already heard you I want yeah whatever these instruments are we were not able to sell them on auctions interational because the poal of this time I need a motion for um an agenda change to add few the approval uh to wave a fee for Compass Recreation event
142uh whereas the Board of Education reserves the right to wave charges for facility use in favor of reimbursement for expenses incurred by the school district when proceeds from activity sponsored by nonprofit organizations are used exclusively for the profit of the school or the Char charitable purose now there result of the Board of Education waves the fee for the Encompass Recreation event scheduled for June 29 2025 and approves uh reimbursement for expenses directly incurred by the school district please Milly Millie so Lor got you discussion can I just can I just ask how do we determine that other chart is that an example for them so want to use the track is there a cost to the track is there not a cost to the track they would like to use the fol there could be
143cost of the we're hiring the light dark so what that last piece says that the district can't erase the cost of the taxpayers to run it um she's working on getting volunteers Matt's been working she's able to get volunteers and we don't have to pay um L brought up a good example of policy today and this is in alignment with where the policy is going at the next at the first reading next board meeting um but if there's an AB cost the district can't wave the cost of the ab cost because otherwise it would be a burden on the taxpayers so they could ruce other costs to those that minimum limit that's what that says are we required to have custodial being being that that is a Sunday I believe uh Sunday if we're opening
144up school on a Sunday yes that would be a cost yeah but it gives the board the latitude the policy to look at nonprofits differently and to look at the actual cost versus the okay anybody here tonight uh wishing to address the board on non agenda related public comment this little Cozy Corner though uh so recently there's been a lot of talk in the news um about a specific cut from the federal government through the USDA uh for the local food for schools program I was just trying to figure out I saw a piece I back to it that mentioned um funds for different schools and it said something along the lines of $177,000 for water town city school district is that anything that has been confirmed that that's a cut that's going to hit
145our district speak to that so it's actually $37,000 and for next year we were expected to actually double that number from the federal government USDA and right now we don't have a 100% confirmation that we will not be receiving those but when you look at the articles that were put out last week it does suggest that New York state that that is being cut um so for us it would be around $774,000 that we would lose those USDA which for us does sponsor the uh food table and so that would also impact a lot of our local farming whatever local farming communities we are using to collaborate with correct we believe and I don't want to speak for other districts but us being where we are financially our district will not see an impact obviously
146those monies would reduce from somewhere else uh but some of the smaller districts that are looking at Federal cups may see the loss of programs or Staffing because they don't have the reserve to fund those it is going to be felt around our region and in some districts it's going to be larger than others which is very unfortunate um I also wanted to say a couple more things um really briefly um was really excited to see that formation of the scub club and I know that it likely doesn't involve anybody here but um one thing that comes to mind that I think could be a potential um collaboration with that group is that um usually every May Community Action planning Council has a event that's open to the public called grow with Community Action um
147they try to have like the Master Gardeners from Cornell come in they give out seed packets um they have vegetables that have started growing so people can leave with like a pot of like Peppers or something they could just take home and grow on their porch um I think it might be a neat opportunity for that group to potentially participate or um something like that so I just wanted to mention it here and then um I just as a community member and as a parent I wanted to speak to the um safety piece about those radios um first off do we I asked Chad he confirmed we don't use tap app did we use tap app and then we stopped we never used it it's the is you become with like a tap app system
148that you can't require to people for people to put it on their individual devices so that's one thing so then you have some people with it some people not the other thing I would you know a consideration when we're looking at anything that we're asking for people to put on their phones is 2D compliance and foil possibilities yeah um you know we we really as a district want to be using equipment that we can manage and monitor yeah well and that was going to be from my experience it can be problematic so I thought that the radio sounded like a better option than the tap app I just didn't realize that we weren't using that um the safety piece is huge I know that this is a pretty Niche thing but as soon as I
149hear somebody say eloper my heart goes into my chest I'm a parent of a former eloper and that looks different for any child that does elope but I mean that part is huge to me I've been in this school for cold Blues um correct me if I'm wrong but Mr Le says you are a first responder and so I used to hear about cold Blues because my son had Mr blasquez so um just that urgency piece of trying to get to those situations um is immediately where my heart goes is to the opportunity for that safety piece is huge so I just wanted to speak to that briefly next one you thank you so much for your comments anyone else hav okay then moving along items for discussion information budget overview of discussion of propositions
150to the B free okay um as I mentioned before this budget is just a moving piece it is literally changing daily and last for I gave you guys an updated copy um at the last forming I mentioned that the insurance expected to increase the commercial insurance the property insurance was expected to increase 10% uh that is not the case for Watertown School District um I had a discussion with Adam lir who's our with halor fry and Kon last week all districts are increasing by a minimum of 177% due to the issues with um the wildfires out in California and the Hurricanes that had hit over the fall we're actually expecting a 40% increase in our Commercial Insurance um on top of those those National issues we also had the flooding at the high school and
151the gym wall um over at North last year so all those um conditions combined it's a increase of over $200,000 in the budget from what I had presented to you at the last warie and the claims was over what 170% yes yes so that increase went from 10% to 40% and I did send an email out to the neighboring superintendent and what Bri said was confirmed as far as the 16 177% um many of them saw significant increases in their deductibles for about or plus it increasing our deductible and I'm sorry I didn't bring that with me tonight I did provide that to Dr schmeel when the superintendants were gathering some information I know the supers are trying to get um halor francon to appear at one of their meetings was a joint email that
152we sent yes it was and ASO was even talking about trying to get them at their meeting next week um last Friday the admin team met and we had our round two of our budget presentations with all the buildings and department heads except for one je was we didn't want his germs around us um so we we went through and um reviewed the Staffing requests supplies and equipment requests kep some and remove some of the requests at this point in time I have passed on to Mr verdick um to review just to make sure all the special ed aspects are accurate um and to ensure that we're not doubling up on any staffing that might be covered under a grant as well can I add something there you sure can with the the reason why
153we're asking Matt to look at it is this year what you're going to see when we move forward as far as the budget presentation is that last year case saw significant need this year we need to add to our um Continuum of special education services to a significant percentage to our budget is looking at you know we have a great partnership with Jeff Lewis bosies there are some classrooms that are F that they can't accommodate additional kids who don't have the Contin services that we would like and so we're looking at adding some 611 classrooms 811 classrooms 123 classrooms um we're looking at T because we have many of our classrooms where there are AIDS in those spaces that do not have the um authority to be left alone with kids it has to be
154a TA or teacher so there's going to be some shifts there so we can make sure that people are getting those breaks that they need throughout the day um but that's Matt's going to finalize those numbers then we'll have a more concrete number uh to you but that's where we're going to see the most significant increase as far as staff Andross special education yes um so the packet that you have that's with all the Departments and buildings merged instead of giving a thick packet that you got last time I just gave you the total um please know this is when you look at it look at it this is not the final number this is just simply some updated information for you um as I go through you'll see that we're still waiting on some
155further information I'm still trying to tweak some numbers find and close up some gaps um when it comes to bosis we do have some finy numbers from bosis but not all um you did approve the um the moric agreement tonight and that'll be forwarded onto bosis tomorrow and that the last piece before we get the final numbers from Jeff Lou um another aspect of the budget we were talking about the Vans and trucks at the last board meeting um and it looks like we might because we do have the funds available in the equipment codes for this year uh we did get a quote for four vans from some local dealers as opposed to New York Bus Sales and they came in very competitive and U Dr SCH and I review that and hopefully move
156forward on replacing some Vehicles this year if we're able to do that this year then it would be removed from next year so that'll impact these numbers also yes correct what's the over what you for the quotes on the vehicles ,000 it was 25,000 per van what did you think it um it was 375 for four bands now it's down to 275 okay yeah it was it was almost 100,000 even shout out to Jenna e for getting together on that helps to have have connections a little bit um and again reminding you the budget numbers are not ready uh we won't have those numbers again from the governor until April 1st first for the for the remaining Revenue figures um but um actually Dr I think you brought this up we did get some um
157communication from ASO the one house budgets were submitted to the governor last week there were some great potential positives for the districts um the capital Outlet it was proposed again to move from 100,000 to $250,000 as we all know you can't really do anything with $100,000 these days really 90,000 10,000 break up right correct um the retiree cap waiver uh one of the houses has asked to have that extended for two more years and U potentially increas in upk a so that would be a huge benefit for our district and um a final note um I know you guys are all waiting for a big fancy presentation so Dr schmigel and I are planning on having a presentation to you on April 1 with whatever information we have at that point in time and um
158April 14th is the anticipated date for the board adoption of the budget and then um of course that is the first of several presentations we have two that are can be presented to the staff on April 14th and the community on the 28th that's Dr schle had already mentioned and we have two rotary presentations already scheduled for May 7th and May 8th and you've already discussed the propositions earlier tonight so I'll just any questions I have question Randy L do you guys have questions first no I just had questions on so the the that you gave first one gave us last week not the the one from last week so that one that I was do a lot of it I only got like four or five um that that is where you get the
159numbers that go over here is that correct yes that packet we've had a lot of the requests from the different buildings so I have I do have some questions of just those pages if you could just okay so I saw like um one of the pages it says hom school coordinator for $138,000 you don't pay home you salary benefits our Erp or ERS contributions our teacher retirement Sy contribute that's the outof the door cost okay so with everything including the retirement far their longevity here yes okay and we just as Bri kind of said highlighted that she just wanted you guys to have something so I didn't bet those yet what she gave you today were vetted less the IT department so then but like for example so I I was looking to like Athletics
160so we've got um marching Dan $100,000 for like that was that actually has to go up because the actual uniforms themselves are $100,000 when you look at the actual instrument that we're going to need is going to be more than that so what we did was is it was mentioned by the board earlier in the year conversation about ping marching band so when our our current U instrumental feacher at the high school decided to retire we added that to the advertisement we do have candidates that have applied we got five outside candidates and two inside candes that app to be the marching and the high school instumental teach and then um so I also saw like something about flag football Unified sports yes flag football yes that was a request if you remember last year
161and so last year they presented that and they presented um bowling last year we haded bowling this year we were going to have girls flight football there other districts that I can find out in the area I know we had it in the keys is and then what's uh sorry so many questions there so many Saw there um there was a video boards 90,000 that's the video boards see so you're asking for things that we didn't even approve so if you look at the current one that we gave you guys today we asked every Department that's why giving things early is sometimes not helpful because they looking at things that aren't real um so what we did is asked every Department to dream big what if you could have anything that you wanted for your
162building your department put it in there but that wasn't one was made it to the final round okay no that's good no that's I mean but that's good to know so when you do have that like it's not just it's the CH all like the whole boards those things we did because we think that those are important to have Cate those that's why we emphasized at last board meeting this is just you know this is the wish list but these are not the final yeah was like a $40,000 have a question I know did not is for like uniforms I noticed last year that some of our teams did get our new colors new logo not all of our teams have those um why is that not on that's included in um Athletics materials and
163supplies it's not a separate line item for uniform specifically it's built into the supply L okay question as far as I know Mike has created a rotating schedule when it comes to uniforms actually I think he gave me so it would be a couple years before all those get replaced with a new logo some of them that I think we've had them for a little bit so that's ask but that's a good that's good to know so then when people do look at the budget then they know that yeah they're not going to see all the itty bitty details in there they just and of course when it goes to the public it's usually grouped by department or it's grouped by oh here's all your instructional salaries and so forth they don't see all the
164little things that go into it okay so I'll look at the new one and I don't have any questions on I think other thing that I were look of Christmas but they we they did what we that does that does answer they're great presentations okay so I do have a few questions and I did look at all of this because I I don't want you to think that I asked for something that I'm not even going to look at so I spent many hours looking at this and I'm not a finance person so I definitely do not need to you when I ask some of these questions okay so what I did notice um and I don't understand and I want you to help me understand is that when we're looking at these you are
165giving us the 2324 actual yes and budgeted yes and then 2425 actual and budgeted corre and then you're presenting a a proposed 25 I I look at the previous two years just especially with a district that I'm not 100% familiar with budgets to see if there's if the budget is aligning with the extra expenses over the last couple years so here is where I'm confused okay and specifically I'll just use a real example of A10 Board of Education so the budgeted amount exceeded the actual expense so you're looking at 27,000 versus 21 right and then in 2425 the budget you budget at 41,000 and the actual expense was 37 but then we go to the 25 and you're adding $20,000 to the but let me just finish my thought so then I you can explain
166to me because I know you have an answer but I just have to get my thought out okay F so so in in 2526 you have 61,7 41 so that was an increase of 20,000 plus so my question is and I understand the first draft you gave us was only up to March 1st now you gave us a new one up to March I understand that some of these numbers are going to change although for this particular one nothing's changed um so I want to understand if and and this is a this is a pattern so like I've looked at all the Departments so if we are over budgeting or we're budgeting and we're spending less then why are we adding more for the coming year so for specifically that account code um there was
167um conferences um in in uh New Orleans in New York City and that was a big ticket item earlier in the year that was not expensed in previous years so I'm planning for that in the next year's budget so when we went to New York City that wasn't budgeted well you don't know from year to year until you guys said that you're gr so unless tell us now if you're going next year which is in New York City right but but you're saying it wasn't budgeted but that dollar amount specifically was not not saying that I'm I'm not sure was Sally had in there or Josh or or whatever um but when it came down to I like I when you look at the when you know looking at the detail of that account code
168that was not planned specifically so I'm just making sure those funds are specifically planned for those conferences for next year so that's just that but like I said there is definitely a pattern of that going on oh there's many budgeted items that the actual was significantly less and then we're adding more money to the 25 26 Season so we'll see what it ends up being but I did notice that the other thing that I I mean I have a lot of notes here but it after what you just said it's not even worth going into but I I do want to point something out though that is a little bit concerning to me I I just want you to know that as a board member I'm going to be looking at this specifically so in
16923 to 24 our budget was we budgeted $83 million and we only spent 57 million go down two lines mil oh I didn't that's all right well look at the one I handed you today that's got the okay so yeah so in 2023 budget 83 right and we actually spent 61 million and then in 24 25 we budgeted 87 million and thus far we spent 41 million I know a lot of that stuff's still going to come through um so we're barking up so right now in your budget you've got 96 million but I'm working daily to cut that down I know there's fluff in there Millie yeah um I can tell you so last year you've got ARA monies right Josh and Sally were very good about making sure staff were still protected into
170the general fund budget so that's where all that is and the but number right now you're only into March you're not even hitting right June where you're going to have the big teacher salaries where a lot of that's going to come out and I understand that but we had an approved budget in 2324 of 92 million and the year prior to that we had an approved budget of 82 million so so our Surplus every year is a lot of money so where I'm coming from my perspective is obviously I'm extremely conservative I don't like to spend the money we don't have to but here's my a we overinflating our budget and that's my one concern and I don't I don't expect you to say yes to that I'm sure that there's justification but I want
171you to understand when I'm coming and once you give us the real numbers like I don't want be surprised about what I'm going to be asking we have consistently over you know we have spent a lot less than we've approved we go out to the voters and we say we want you to approve a $92 million budget meanwhile we've spent 20 million less so now we're coming up to this year and again I've said this repeatedly and I know you're not this community but our budget for the city is $57 million and we have 335 full-time employees and 94 part-time I know that we're triple that in terms of employees um but you know when we're barking aund million budget in double the city and and we're going to get hit with a 20 there
172is no question that this the people from the city of Watertown are going to get hit with a 20% tax increase next year no question about it there's no way that we're going to get out of that so I'm really concerned about presenting an overinflated budget and according to these numbers that's what we've been doing over the last few years I think Millie just to kind of reiterate to what you already know that she just so everyone hears the same thing that last year was the last year you know receiving the ARA money so those position when those monies came in they were not supposed to sustain positions oh so what you were saying is actually true in the sense that so you're you're carrying the cost because you you don't want to eliminate the
173position when the funds are gone right and so you're almost like double building for that same position which is overinflating the fund balance so that is true but I will say just to reiterate is that last year going into this upcoming school year so this year being the last year we losing 5.8% you know as we were fully funded this year is that last year so you are going to see a strict a decline in that in the fund balance we're losing 5.8% yeah because that we were fully funded for our Aid when they caught the up that were underpaid over the years so we've received over 8% that's going to be cut back significantly we're only getting 3.17% in um our state aid so when you look at that piece that decrease of that
1745.8% then you look at what she said tonight an increase of 40% in in um our insurance cost then you look at a 10% increase in our utility cost then you look at a 6% increase in our health insurance employer coverages plus any of the negotiation that are going into next year's budget that balance is going to like any other savings account we're going to be spending that money um but what you said is action and it happened because it was booked in there the similar thing with Lynn and writing grants in those grants there's a sustainability piece and so you need to make sure that once those grants are gone even though they do a great job trying to get a grant to line up behind it the district has to be able to
175cover that cost after the grant ends so there's there's a reason for that but I get where you're saying and it essentially was with those article funds right and I I I do hear youe I I completely understand their 20% potential set city tax increase is foremost on my mind when I'm building this and I Dr SM and I have talked several times like I can't I'm not comfortable going to the public with what you know what we're looking at right now so my goal over the next week is I'm looking at doing a budget to actual comparison for the last three years and seeing is you're you know cutting out some budget lines where I can find it one thing too that we learned Bri and I both sit on the health insurance consortion
176for the community for our you know our region and one of the things that we're constantly having conversation about is we can go out and say this year we're only raising at 3% then next year we're coming out at 6% or 8% and that's exactly what happened this year with the health in Insurance Consortium going up 6% last year 90% of the committee wanted to be conservative and not spend the money so we came in low rate and now this year we have to almost double that to make up for what they didn't get last year we do have to be careful with that I believe with the overall I like a smooth increase I don't yeah exactly I I just wanted to express what I see here so that we do finalize the budget
177like you know I will protest as much as you know and not not against you because you're working really hard has nothing to do with your you you are that's why you're here you're here to tell us what's the best way to approach this but you know historically and you haven't been here you've been here for the first historically we have over we've sold in a Bud a school budget to the community and we never even spent the money and maybe you know on the other side of that is now we have a capital Improvement project for 110 million that we don't have to go to the taxpayers and say oh guess what we' got to pay this and last year to to be fair we had a 0% tax levy and we all knew
178that so I am cognizant of all that but I also want to make sure that the community you know is not um taxed unnecessarily and I know that's on your Forefront but I feel as my duty I need to stay there and correct me if I'm wrong but some of those left m is what went into our Reserve accounts C out here we were just about 8 million for the capital reserves for this project 10 mil it created the it reserve and it created the um the maintenance reserve and also included there too is is a big number for the Massie project yes so you know that's going to push it up but it'll be opposite by fund balance revenue of course that one just to reiterate as we've said in the past is that
179one is not aable because there are not students in that building so that has to be paid for a fund balance manager well I appreciate you explaining everything thank you else okay poliy review [Music] first good okay and we're gonna move past that then thank you Lori sure you were awake over there have some have some upcoming days to share with everybody Thursday the 20th is the Elementary art show 5:30 to 6:30 at the B War Library um also on the 20th HT y uh steam Fair 6:30 to 8 right here at Wy March 20th through the 22nd is the Watertown High School Musical M Mia 7 pm and there's a 1M mat on Saturday Friday the 21st superintendent conference Day no school March 25th Tuesday music and our schools concert 700 P p.m. and
180there's also a capital project vote on that day from noon to 9 North Elementary and watert high school band room Tuesday April 1st the faf committee meeting at 5:00 pm right here and following that is I regularly schedule Board of Education meeting um really so um thank you Olivia for your great presentation for the students that's everyone's favorite part everyone says that all the time so it's nice to see that this little boy here amazing unbelievable um and I saw his mom the way she was responding to him and that's probably why he's so outgoing because she's not I think that some parents would be like okay be Qui and she didn't do that and I thought that was really nice so a great kid um question for we all know we all know Wy
181has a phenomenal Ensemble group does that Ensemble continue at case yes they do so they but not and we budgeted for the second music teacher for this current school year okay not music everything great it's a different teacher okay all right I just want to make sure because that those kids are amazing um I promise performing Again by the way so we're inviting them similar to what we did last year we're doing a reception in here in the atrian on a board meeting Day in June recognize all of our reies and they'll be back there to sing again yeah that's awesome so I promise Mary Hughes um when we went to nicker Bacher uh and we had our thing there all the little kids had put balloons up and put comments and a lot of
182the comments that I noticed were about food like why do we have Sagi tacos and why do we have Sagi PB and JS and so Mary was not happy with my comments and so she went to Larry and said I think the board deserves a tour of the cafeteria which you know anytime we make a comment and someone takes the initiative to say you know they're saying this and it's not true let's educate them it was an incredible right Jason it was an incredible tour I have the up most respect for these cafeteria people they're they have a very organized way of doing the food I couldn't believe how much work goes into giving our children our food we didn't understand how every meal the only way every meal can be reimbursed is if every
183kid takes a protein every kid takes a fruit every everyone I mean it is incredible that these the cafeteria workers like tell a kid ah you need to take a fruit you need to come back and take a fruit that's a lot of takes a lot of energy she was her and what was her assistant's name uh brenon oh my God amazing I can't say enough I was so happy that she did that we talked about is Kristen still here we talked about we talked about Farm to Table because that's one of the things that I'm very invested in as well um here's the problem with Farm to Table I mean she said we do right now now we have a $75,000 budget that we put that they spend on Farm to Table they have
184fresh cucumbers and carots and apples and all these great things our workers slice them and serve them the problem that they're having is that the kids aren't eating it and she is so she gets so sad everyone there gets so sad because they have a tray where they don't really throw the food away they kind of put it down if kids don't need it and kids aren't eating it we all know kids never want to eat healthy stuff they always want to eat junk but we need to provide that nutritional education probably at the earlier you know maybe starting in kindergarten and teaching the children that these are the real foods to eat because right now they are wasting a lot of money um now the athletes come by and take the fruits or take
185whatever you know they they that's there um and then the rest has to be thrown away and it's so sad so we do have that Farm to Table initiative I didn't know about it and we were we were sampled the food the food was really I was really impressed so I wanted I apologized to Mary she took offense to my comment of and she said she said I don't even know why the kids are complaining about Sagi tacos we don't even put meat on the tacos you get the shells and then you get the meat and you have to mix it and I said you know what then you should go there and ask them ask the kids why do they feel like they're getting soggy stuck um but she's incredible and I promised her
186that I would give her a shout out and give her Kudos because that department is the ultimate finesse um so that's really the other Pleasant oh sorry the other pleasant surprise was he Mar the child I mean it's a trade B like hardly would fit on a trade even they're able to if they mono I look very impressed that about the possibility of doing like visual images so kids can see what they we have a great cafeteria I will never say another bad word about it we have an unbelievable cafeteria and they have a they have a lot of they're putting a lot of thought into Farm to Table and you know it's initiative that has to be brought up to our legislators as well um but it is really incredible and I loved it
187and I'm really glad that she contacted you and said let's get the board in here she um today Tina and I had the students in here for the advisory Council and she actually met with a student who during my interview we're talking about over two years ago and you may remember it was during the public session who asked the question what are you going to do about our food yes so that student because life comes full ccle that student is on the student advisory and sat at a table with her today and halfway or 3ars through the conversation Mary in Mary fashion who the lady that spoke up and so she remembered her all the way back from my interview talking about the food and so they had such an inspiring and insightful conversation today
188that the girl is going to help create a survey to survey kids and she just she walked away so it was an amazing conversation but when Mary clicked on that this is the same girl that spoke up in the middle of the auditorium it was a great experience today the other thing too is they use white meat chicken so they pay an extra she was telling us it's like 58 cents for like process and you get the dark white Mi yep but they they we pay extra we pay like a do25 get white premium meat and they made the chicken nuggets right there it was really I can't say anything up it's just a really impressive and we had a student sit on you know organized interviews left we for director food service because Mary's
189retiring uh in May and um a student served on that interview committee and asked great question so thank you Jason that's all I got thank you John Kane II I've never noticed third before my father as I've mentioned before was a proud graduate of Watertown High um just I can't say anything that's not hasn't been said you know Mama Mia is coming up go and see it um go and see music in our schools if you haven't seen that program it's a phenomenal program art you have so many talented kids in so many different areas uh and then spring Sports started yesterday I know that for a fact because I'm softball coach so good luck to all of our uh spring teams as they start their new seasons sir Tina fluro um I have a
190couple thanks um thank you both for having us here and having your kids here and for giving them that chance to do that newspaper thing I knew that Blake was going to go plac is back in first grade with his little soup jacket on um cute cutest thing oh my gosh he's so sweet um so thank you for you know letting them see themselves and invest and investigate different things um I had to put in a plug for cyclone Academy today I happened to be at the high school and some student after school walked into a teacher's classroom and greeted them and then the student the teacher said so how's Cyclone Academy going and he said it is going great he goes I can finally get my sleep because I guess he has some type
191of a medical issue that he needs more sleep than a regular child would um but anyway so he just he was so excited about Cyclone C so I had to give you a little plug on that because kids are really enjoying that so when I went I got to see the students that do the coffee Club and I didn't realize that they the money that they make from selling their copies they get to go and do something so they went to the mall and they all got to go in and do that little paint thing there they all got to yeah paint and pottery they're learning how to ride this the city bus they're just they they just are doing all these neat things with this money that they're learning that you have to earn
192this and then this is you know how you spend it and how much you lose or whatever so I was pretty impressed with that little coffee Club they did a lot more than I thought they did I guess I didn't realize all that and I was thinking about the radios and working special ed as Christen had mentioned we had a lot of with lopers and the minute that they go it would be so nice to be able to get on the radio and say you know lman in Jones's room or whatever and have everybody know at that at that time if there's a seizure if there's a fight if there's a fall whatever just so everybody is knows that at that exact moment so people can watch for this child or whatever to come flying
193past your classroom um that would be so beneficial because usually you have to call and then they have to hopefully be at their desk so if the principal's not there or somebody's not at their desk it just takes a lot of time away from being able to react right away and keep an eye out for the little ones that are so unhappy to be here so that was it that's all I got thanks so much for Converse I just want to say thank you to Chad and Olivia for your presentation it was lovely love was awesome um I want to say good luck to Mama Mia Cass I'm sorry I won't be here this weekend is my favorite go vote for the capital project please um to copy everyone else thank you Mr child and
194the entire Wy staff um I have my my son goes here so um I think the one thing that Wy is lacking is time so much opportunity there's so much that they can do and so many different programs um they just not enough time in the day um we tried micro greens at home they worked wonderfully until they didn't water um and then spring Sports um yes spring Sports have started that's very exciting and not to jinx it but the weather as well lining up perfectly so let's hope that continue biley not much to add except uh regards to Wy you know as you mentioned Mr Fair child this is the first time our students all come together as a group and there's no question that that sets the tone for middle school and high
195school and all those other things we're looking to do for our students so thank you for the magic that you create here and setting that home for the success of our students great um you're both doing wonderfully you've heard that keep it up I know that you will um in terms of the coffee Club I'd like to remind everybody on the board if you hav looked to your email we're going to have a pizza party with them Thursday at 11: I believe it is where uh I think High School in their room maybe I'll I'll firm that up okay Thursday at 11 and then we have been challenged if you didn't look at your email we've been challenged to a bowling match with the Bowling Club so hopefully we can that would be a next
196week thing but hopefully we can make that happen well I'm not gonna do everything out there we'll uh we'll figure it out time get there and have some fun that's all I got so at this time we are in need of an executive session huh discuss the medical Financial Credit employment history of a particular person or Corporation matters leading to the appointment employment promotion demotion discipline suspension dismissal or removal of a particular person or Corporation La gave me the first second John all those in favor see you next time