001Motion to exit executive session. >> Motion by Frank, a second. >> Second by Penny. All in favor? I. >> A motion to enter public session. >> Motion by Frank. A second. Second. Derek. All in favor? >> I. Okay. We will move on to consent agenda items. We have personnel action. CSA CE recommendations. Treasures report 2025 2026 educational agreements the MOA with BA the 2026 2027 board meeting dates 2026 2027 school calendar adoption the sequa smart school bond act approval of the contract extension for the superintendent and the 10-year recommendation for Tammy Moore those items al together are A through J with K being approval of the consent agenda items if Any items to be pulled at this time? >> Okay. Motion by Frank to move. Okay. Second. >> Second by Derek. >> Ela, how do
002you vote? >> Yes. >> Benny, >> yes. >> Derek, >> yes. >> Greg, >> yes. >> Rebecca, yes. We move on to the treasure, the president's report. I actually had to type it out today to make sure I have it because I thought I want to say it. Um, first I would like to thank the voters who came out to participate in the recent vote last night. While the results were not what we had hoped for, we appreciate everyone who took the time to engage in the process. The district still faces critical infrastructure needs and the upgrades that are that were proposed remain essential to maintaining a safe, functional and modern learning environment for our student body. As a board, we will regroup, evaluate our options, and work with administration to develop a path forward.
003The need for renovations has not changed, and we remain committed to finding a responsible way to address those needs. Um, at the same time, we are now in the process of developing the budget for the upcoming school year. This is always an important and thoughtful process. It is essential that residents and voters have accurate information when forming opinions and making decisions. I strongly encourage anyone who is seeking clear and truthful information to ask questions either during public comment or at one of our board meetings or by reaching out directly to the district superintendent by email or Colleen's email which she was provided in the budget presentation. Finally, I would like to remind our community to attend the many events that highlight the accomplishments of our students. Our district is fortunate to have a diverse and
004talented student body even though we are small and their achievements in academics, athletics, music, arts, and extracurricular activities are something our entire community should be proud of. Your support at these events means a great great deal to our students, staff, and to their parents. And I would elaborate more, but Kim has asked you to have that under business. >> That we'll do under new business. >> Yep. I move on to the superintendent report. All right. Good evening everyone. Uh we'll start first with the budget. Colleen has put many hours and thank her thus far. more work to be done and to preparing a budget that reflects the goals, values, and mission of our school district with working collaboratively on looking at efficiencies um for our our district. Um as Katie mentioned, we want to encourage
005absolutely encourage community involvement at this stage now while we're developing the budget and encourage community to come out to our our budget um workshops and to engage in the process. Um we have uh staffing that we hope to maintain uh for the for next year. I think it's very encouraging. That's we're looking to do also expanding opportunities for students. I want to give a couple examples of of course work coursework earlier that either new course work or potentially new coursework that we're working on in both the middle school, high school and elementary school as well. Some of this is in place, some of this potentially coming up in the drone soccer was mentioned earlier which is a steam program. We're hoping to add marine biology. Mr. Um Ben Burns and I actively are working uh
006with Mr. Christian on remology becoming a college level course through Sunni ESP. Uh we're working on adding a business course for next year for students. Uh we have meeting with president of HBCC coming up. So that's something I'm hoping to have in place for next year. Civic seal readiness was open this year. The civic seal the seal by literacy uh is in the works for next year as well which requires some collaboration also with the building principal as well. public coursework and Miss Karen Day to offer some opportunities for opportunities for students. Also, if we got middle school math and support Tom mentioned earlier and Sam as well about the reading, we would love to add reading. In fact, that probably the priority right now if we could uh but with the middle school with
007the math teacher looking to add that would add as in the middle school which is also a need along with librarian at the middle school high school and also librarian at the elementary school both to be a 0.5 position. Right now, we currently have no library at the elementary at the elementary school. So, that'll be an addition there. I also mentioned the district did expand two sections of prek this year, which are hopeful to maintain. Uh so, I want to put a plug in again reminding families that April 1st deadline for prek registration. Please sign up your your children if they're uh eligible. Uh it's going to help us to budget for the upcoming school year. That's a long list of uh coursework and opportunities for students that are in the works already in place
008uh for students. So colle's job in terms of budget and looking at those efficiency and maintaining what we have and we're trying to build more upon that with with um with our resources. I also want to mention budget focus on Tuesday May 19th. Um important that um everyone tunes in for that and please engage in the process leading up to that as well. I want to thank the community for the capital project vote presentation. We had a record number of voters, 550, who took part in the project vote and exercise their democratic right to vote and encourage the community to stay involved and and keep the community informed on next steps. Some of the questions I've already heard is heard from the community is what is next? What's going to happen next? So, the board
009is going to continue to look at um the project and reflect on the project. We have a survey that went out today and that survey is very important for our community to fill out. It'll be open for two weeks and the survey really will speak to the voters in terms of why you either support the project, maybe did not support the project. So we can use that feedback uh with the with the board to look at potentially a project again in the future. Uh we do have to maintain the infrastructure we have and closely monitor and inspect um for example elementary roof does have holes in it. We have to look at future repairs, flashing issues as well. We spent $14,000 recently on the slate tiles and we have to invest more money in that
010which would not be eatable but nonetheless there's leaking water coming in the building from that. We also have a domestic water tank here in in the Mills High School which uh which is under watch by the Department of Health. We may at some point have to open that tank up and empty the water out in order to fully inspect it. That could come at a cost of $6,000 or more. Again, would not be needable. Uh and if that tank is not something that we can maintain and keep, we have to talk about some type of emergency project there as well. Also, the auditorium uh we do have doors in the auditorium which were um which are currently not up to code. They're not fire rated doors and the hardware is broken. So all the doors
011in this auditorium actually lock and that's a safety concern as well. And so the price tag about $25,000 on those these doors as well. And although it was not part of the project, it was part of uh planning for the project to have those doors repaired and that $25,000 also would not be eatable. Um right now we found some other means to find money for it. So we have those items and and several others of course that we have to continue to monitor now in the short term and figure out what the next steps are going to be so we keep school open for for all the children here in the school district. So please stay tuned for information. Please fill out the survey. is very important so we can plan next steps as we're
012the budget and then potentially future ideas for how we can work together on the potential project. I also want to mention that the teachers recently parttook in the superintendent conference day and quest 3 regional special development day. It was a wonderful opportunity on Friday for everyone to uh dive into professional development. I would say our in-house options from our survey results were fantastic. Um Ariel Gilbert was instrumental in leading that work. A lot of great offerings here in house. There was uh a lot of things that pressar as well, but the feedback that we received so far in the teacher survey is that they really thought they got a lot out of what was offered in house. So kudos to Ariel and helping to coordinate that in her role. Um I think that's it for
013that. So thank you. >> Thank you. And administrators presented already. So opportunity for public comment. I know signed up. >> Great% is probably good. Is the battery done here? >> Test. >> Is it working? >> You know, you can talk loud. Just talk loud. I don't have an emotional attachment to the school district, but I do have a financial interest in this in the school district. I am a taxpayer unfortunately. More importantly, as one of the supervisors of the four towns that make up this district, one of the rules that I've kind of learned over the years is you need drivers to impact your population growth in these communities. One of the main drivers, especially for veteran communities, is your school district. Both the cost effectiveness, how much it cost, you know, to uh to
014be in the district to support the school district and its performance. And right now the trends for the last x number of years have all been on the negative side of that for these four communities. So I come from those two perspectives. My personal financial perspective and as the perspective of the supervisor of the town as regards to the uh capital project I was a bit surprised until just the last five minutes that there wasn't any self-reflection on the reason for why the vote was so negative. I actually supported the project today, but what I didn't support was the process. Fundamentally disagreed with their process and I'll tell you why. I contacted the New York State Board of Education few weeks before the vote and I asked them I got a hold of somebody and
015I asked them a series of questions about capital planning budgets and things like that just for my identification. And what I was told is is that uh school districts are required to have five-year capital plans on file. Um and it's rolled out. It's it's renewed each year. It's updated and renewed each year. So that what the purpose of which is that for taxpayers, they have a sense that the board respective board has a sense of what the respective capital budgets are would be required over the next five years. And they moved in and out and so on and I understand that. But it certainly gives a sense to the taxpayers that you're looking out for the long-term interest of the school district. Uh I asked the business manager, Miss Mills, where's the five-year plan? I
016can see it online. There was no five-year plan. There's no five-year plan filed in the state as well too from what I understand. In fact, the architect that was hired, I guess, to prepare this five-year plan has been fired by this for whatever reason. So there's no capital uh plan even though the commissioner's regulations part 155 and 153 require fiveyear capital plan. Okay. So that's probably one. So then I asked questions about operating plans and I said is there a similar requirement for operating plans you have five operating plan and I was told no there's actually not a requirement to have a 5ear operating plan but it is considered best practice by the state for school districts to develop five operating plans because with the two of those two things together okay then what you're
017creating is an narrative you're creating a narrative around what your objectives are both financially as well as you know soft factors and you're creating a narrative for taxpayers what is it going be over the next five years for taxpayers potential that doesn't exist here right now and I think you know in self-reflection for my self-reflection on why the vote is so negative I think it's because the community has concerns about the ability of this board to develop a narrative okay here's why we need to do xyz over the next five years here's how we're going to achieve now things will move around every year and so on okay I think not having that long-term planning fundamentally undermines confidence, the public's confidence in folks. It certainly undermines the confidence that that I have in folks. Okay?
018And I don't want that. I'm a resident here in in these four communities. Okay? I want the school district performing. I want the school district to have financial sense. I want the school district to be tax efficient. And I what I would please please ask you folks to do and I've said this I think at some prior meetings as well too. Focus in on the long-term plan. Don't focus in on the crisis management. I think the word last year from board members were actual is crisis management. We're always in crisis management. Why? Because we have large structural deficits and now this year we have critical infrastructure. That's emergency repairs. That's all crisis management. If you have a long-term set of plans, okay, you avoid crisis. Yeah, there's always going to be situations that pop up
019and so on. Okay. But you give a perspective to the four communities that you know what you're doing right now. I think the vote told you the the population doesn't have uh confidence in this board. And furthermore, the last comment that I'll make is that when you have disagreement that comes from employees of this district that's publicly made, okay, that fundamentally undermines what you're trying to achieve, whatever you're trying to achieve. Okay? And would strongly encourage that you guys get your shopping in order first, okay? So that this doesn't happen again. It was pretty embarrassing. Furthermore, the last thing I will say on that is that when you're going to respond to that, respond as a group. Don't respond individually. It's the board. This is our position. This is why. Okay? Come together much stronger
020when you're a team as opposed to individually when people have these type of situations. But again, please focus on long-term plan. I think you'll be a hell of a lot better off going forward in this crisis management mode that you're in right now. A structural deficit of 2.8 8 million which was indicated tonight and everything they're going to be in crisis management over again for the next couple months. There's a lot of work that has to be done to close that gap. That's all I want. I'm happy to support you folks in any way I can. I'm happy to help you folks in any way that I can. But I think you have to start with let's figure out what we want to achieve over the next three five years. Okay? What our problems are
021fundamental realities of the district or defining development or whatever. Okay? and let's put together some very >> nice. Thank you. >> And it's disappointing that there's one member of the public. >> Sorry. >> You know, we have that same disappointment that people don't show up. >> Yeah. I mean, if I had kids, I would understand. I don't I can't have that disappointment. So, >> you're just a member that's invested in your tax dollar. I'm very invested in in the performance success of performance. So I strongly encourage you change your approach and maybe that'll improve your performance. >> Thank you. >> New business. We have one we have one item for new business and it's a walk in resolution provided a copy. It is for the um continuation of the bus proposition. So every you know
022year we replace buses based on their continuation cycle um on our plan. Okay. Whereas Bland Central School District, the district is has a need to purchase two 66 passenger buses for the transportation of students. And whereas pursuant to section 70925 pay of the New York education law when authorized by a vote of the qualified voters of the district, the board of education is authorized to purchase such uh passenger buses for the transportation of students. Now therefore, be it resolved that the board of education approves the following proposition and shall submit such propositions to voters on at the May 19th, 2026 annual district budget vote and board of education election and include such proposition in the district's notice of public hearing and needed budget vote and election. Shall the following resolution be adopted to resolve that
023the board of education of the Burlington Central School District is hereby authorized to acquire or two authors. Number one, acquire in the fiscal year 2627 to 66 passenger school buses at a cost not to exceed $355,000, which is estimated to be the maximum cost thereof. And to expense such funds from per for such purpose and freely levy the tax necessary therefore to be levied and collected in annual installments in such years in such amounts as to as may be determined by the board of education taken into account state received and for in anticipation of the collection of such tax to issue bonds and notes of the district at one time or from time to time in the principal amount not to exceed 355,000. or enter into a lease purchase agreement at the principal amount not
024to exceed 355,000 to acquire such vehicles. Um this question of the adoption of the foregoing voter proposition was duly to vote of the board of education. Um and this is just so we can include and meet the timeline for to add this to our ballot in May for the budget. Um, I'm sure Janette will provide more information to uh the taxpayers and the residents about the process, but we every year we purchase new buses and surplus the old buses. Is that the right terminology, Colleen? >> The inventory last longer than it surplus it. Yes. Okay. Can I get a motion to adopt um this resolution? Motion by Kim. A second. >> Second by Frank. >> Yes. >> Penny. >> Yes. >> Derek. >> Yes. >> Frank. >> Yes. >> And I'll be Yes. >> Question
025on the uh reports coming from Janette. We get as the board get a report of all the buses, mileage of the buses, the years of the buses. How much are we annually? They should be on their system spending to repair these buses. They should have that data. We used the board used to get that report every month. Um, but I think their automated system there, their work system should retain all that information so we get a perspective of where our fleet is standing. So I think that it probably give me the report of the cost of the mileage, but I think in the work order system that will cost it won't just necessarily break up the repair. >> No, it'll give us what we're spending yearly or monthly or I'm not looking for. I'm looking
026for say we have about X. It's a 2008 and we're spending $30,000 a year fixing it. That's not a monthly repair. So that also goes into when replacing buses pick out and I know they do it but it be good to the board to understand in the public also that they're picking out the worst buses that got excessive repairs that are not madeable and that's 100% on the tax base versus a bus which you get aid on and you got no maintenance and you got extended warranty so it's no cost the district to maintain. Well, I think that um we get 75% buses. >> We get transportation on them which was on the slide >> less than that. >> What I'm saying is a lot of these buses we used to have on the feet.
027I don't know where it is today. We spent so much money repairing them. You could bought a new bus to save money. And also you roll over these buses. There's warranties on the first whatever it is one to three years I'm not sure before they get extended warranties that has no cost to the district. So kind of and I know they do it down there. So it should be good to get the board report on that to get up to speed planning it must do >> well it would be the board and also the public so they actually >> but I think it's all done in systems which is a matter of generating report and to get hinders perspective here why we don't have the long range plan yes the architect didn't do his job
028but also um we haven't got a work order report on the facilities for a I've got no idea what the maintenance truth in fixing. I don't know what they're hiding when they're fixing. Is it cost effective? And that's also important to the public because I think we're we're fixing a lot of dead horses here that are costing us a lot of money and it's not able. So I think new management getting work order system back up effective so you track down what you're spending also help you find your plan which that needs to be put in. I agree with it. I'll just add heighten that we also did RFP back in the fall for that purpose to get the architect of record here. So, we've been talking a lot about long-term planning. Obviously, the short-term
029project and media things, but I'd love to call you and talk to you more about kind of what's going on, hear your ideas. You got a lot of great stuff you said there. Um, but absolutely with Jim Graham, we've started talking about actually with me next week on on the capital ally project for next year, which is going to go on a referendum for May. $100,000 which is basically a preview for us to identify how with this building what we're going to do and then we're talking about what the long range things were and the board did leave some things out like the parking lot for example that was not on the project which is things that Jim mentioned hey longterm this is what I'm seeing windows and the parking lot so we absolutely have
030to start to look at those I couldn't agree with you more and that was conversations that Kie and I have started with the board already playing out a lot more work to be done but I'd love to call you at some point time I know you the emotion too have come conversation too. >> But to his point, we need to get our house in order and whoever takes over needs to be aggressive and do the work that the board's asking for, not just get snowball. Okay. So, we need to end all this on a a bad week on a good, positive, happy note. Um, I went to the play, the newsies on Sunday. Um, and I just wanted to give praise. I don't want to miss anybody, but to the entire cast, the crew, the
031staff, all the community members, everybody that came, the audience. I was really impressed with the costumes, the singing, the lighting, the acting, the dancing, and all their New York City accents. Um, and what really left an impact on me when I was looking around were about how many people were involved. Um, it wasn't just students and teachers. I mean, there were community volunteers, there was Berlin alumni, there was staff, um, parents who helped. Um, and it really made me leave, you know, the building with a really great sense of pride. Um, just in what, you know, the students and the staff and the community really are trying to do. Um and you know I was just really happy to be part of the whole group and you know proud I also I was awesome. It
032was fairly interactive. Any other business? Okay. So the next round table will be April 2nd for this building. It's another budget workshop. And on Thursday, April 21st will be the next regular board meeting. And I need the proposed executive session related to a very specific personnel action item. everything. >> I second. And I do not suspect there will be any action after the session. Yeah, we don't need no You know,