Board of Education Regular Meeting 2/24

001It's 7:15. We have six board members present. We stand als for uh the budget development presentation bills. Colleen, is your microphone on? Might need to turn it on. Yeah. >> Yeah. Thank you for coming this evening. We're going to go over some projected revenues and reserve update every year. We give the board an update of where we are at reserves. We're starting goals of this presentation. I did write out a lot of parts of this presentation. I wanted to make sure people at home if they weren't here today could read the details. So, I will be reading a little bit off. We apologize for that. The goals of our presentation today are to provide transparency about the district's financial status, provide insight into the district's sustainability challenges both in developing last year's budget and this

002coming budget. Um provide comparison between staffing impacts versus the seeking of operational efficiencies and where the money is spent and where we have saved. providing context for the 26 27 budget discussion around wants, needs, potential impacts on sustainability progress, and to assist the board of ed and administration in setting 2026 2027 budget development goals with 242. We're going to close out that budget. I'm going to show you a slide with the reserve status, but I wanted to kind of give you the takeaways first. So the district did use reserve funds to close out the budget gap last year. Several positions were restored for this current school year into that budget. Reserve funds were set aside for retirement payouts. You'll see that on our grid in a moment, which are not part of our annual operating

003budget. So in the 26 27 school years, there are at least 10 employees who are fully eligible for retirement. They have 30 years in the system. There are some who could go early, who go less than that, but 10 who are fully eligible at this time. So those retirement payers, why do we need to set aside money for that are there below those little arrows? 37 and a half% of final salary for teachers and anyone in the BTA unit um with 20 years of service or more is what we pay out upon retirement. For the administrative unit, we pay up to 24,000 in unused sick times as a payout retirement. And for the CSEA, 11,000, that's the up to amount for the unused payout upon retirement. So interest was credited to each and every account

004in the reserves, which you'll see in a moment. um that is what is required of public accounting and that did include the 45,000 increase to the capital reserve that is part of our capital project. So when we build a budget and there's a budget gap, we have to use our reserves. We can use no more of a reserve than we anticipate spending in that year. So if our workman's comp bill or insurance comes out to about 53,000 per year, that's the maximum amount that we can use to close the budget gap from that reserve. And it works that way for all of the reserves we can access. So this year we did pull down from the ERS reserve and dropped it into fund balance the remaining amount for urgent needs having to do with our

005current facilities issues. We had an emergency asbestous abatement project that was completed in and it cost just under half a million dollars. State aid for this project does not return to our fund balance. It's credit to taxpayers in the tax levy calculation. Both school buildings have aging systems that are deemed unsatisfactory in our building condition survey and are estimated in that building condition survey to be within three years of remaining useful life. These items that you'll see a little bit later are included in Proposition One with critical infrastructure to be presented in March of this year. If a major system begins to fail, the district will need a short-term solution. Emergency costs such as these must be paid from fund balance. Repairs and maintenance do not qualify. So when we drew that money down into

006fund balance, it's to give us a little bit insurance because if the fuel tanks were to go down, if the water tanks were to go down, if we needed a temporary repair or a temporary tank or whatever the decision may be, we have to have enough money in our fund balance to cover it. And that could very well not be able if it is a temporary fix and not a full um reconstruction project. This year we've already spent a non-reimburseable 13,000 that was spent to patch the Berlin Elementary roof. We spent some additional amount recently. I haven't got the invoice yet for the septic system connected to the middle school week. Here is our reserve status slide. You'll see the net change column there. A lot of the net change, as I said, is due

007to interest earned that was credited to those accounts. The area want to draw your attention to is our ERS. You'll see that that has now dropped a negative $616,000. And that is because we transferred some of that money to TRS. Our TRS is underfunded. The reason to increase that fund is so that should we have a budget gap, we can pull more money. TRS is our biggest payment. It's much bigger than our ERS. We don't have enough money in TRS to use it to close a budget gap. So, the goal is to kind of bring that up so that we can take advantage of it should we need to. You'll see that amount that's circled there in green, the 524,000 drops down to fund balance. And the remaining difference between the 4, the 524 and

008the 530 that you see there is the interest that was credited to that account. Um employee benefit liability is that account that I was talking about where we have to pay out unus 37 and a half% to teachers and men unit at the end of employment. You can see that previous to this year it was at 137 and now because we transferred some of our money there is at just about at 250 which should cover us. only have one retirement this year. So, we hope that that amount will last for two or three years if those retirements are stagnant. If they're not, we'll again have to fund that so we protect our budget. At the very bottom, you'll see our adjusted fund balance. We don't typically adjust the numbers until we close out the books

009at the end of the year. At the same time, I have to keep in mind what we've already promised. And one of those numbers is the addition of the prepaid. So where our fund balance was, we have to kind of keep in mind that we've already spent 92,000 of that potentially that leaves that remaining amount just under 500,000 in excess fund balance. It's above the 4%. The impact of budget on reserves. So rever reserve funds have an annual usage limit that was describing before with the workman's comp. You can only use them for the purpose that they are set for and you can only draw them down for that reason in the amount you anticipate spending. If you're closing budget gap, you cannot spend them otherwise regardless of circumstance. I know last year when we're

010having a difficult budget time, some people saw the reserves and said, "Well, why don't you use these reserves? is because we cannot legally use them regardless of the circumstance except for the purpose they were made for and only in the amounts we anticipate spending. They provide stability and time to transition. So when you see a school district start to draw down on their reserves. It's one thing to on paper use it to close your budget gap. It's another to start to draw it down, which is what we just did. Um that tells us that we now need to adjust course. This is the signal to us that we need to look at what we're doing and spend the next couple years evening that out as smoothly as we can to get back to a place

011where our revenue exceeds expenses so that we can fund some of those accounts like the employee benefit liability account. So those reserves buy us time. They are not a permanent solution. They help us get through emergencies and temporary revenue shortfalls, but they cannot support recurring costs forever. And that is why salaries are particularly dangerous because they reoccur each year. They increase and all the benefits that go along with them increase as well. So we are now doing a very detailed job of monitoring our costs, finding efficiencies where we can and developing those sustainability plans. And that is really what we have to keep in mind as we go through this next budget process for the 2627 school year. So our largest reserve just to give you an idea if we were to continue to draw

012down on it, we have about three years of contribution set aside there. So it's very important in the next couple years that we look closely at sustainability. So as I said before, we're really working on correcting the course. That time is not over. It did not end with the last budget and now everything's okay. That is not the case. We are still trying to work towards sustainability. Um in this budget when you saw those the closing budget numbers, keep in mind also we had several positions that are still in the budget that were not filled. For example, our special ed position continues to be filled by teachers taking on six six sections, but that would have to be included in the budget. So when we're looking at our expenditures, they can actually be quite bit

013more if each of those unfilled goals, let's say, had a family plan. That's about 28,000 each of those unfilled roles in addition to their salaries. So when a school district is in a positive trajectory, which is what we're trying to get, the revenues meet or exceed expensive and that creates sustainability opportunities. In those circumstances, we begin to set aside for reserves to reduce taxpayer burdens. We can put aside uh funds in a capital reserve. We could um put aside funds in a repair reserve. We could put aside some funds in a asset reserve if we wanted to replace equipment. There are lots of things we could do to prepare for the uneven costs that occur sometimes. Reserves are our financial insurance. They act as a safety net and they protect the district from unanticipated expenses

014such as a large workers compensation settlement. Even if I only took down 53 to close about 53,000 to close the budget gap and we later had settlement that was 200,000, we can again in the middle of the year draw down. But we can only do that when one of those situations occurs that's related directly to the reserve and that provides us insurance and stability without affecting um staffing and programs. Otherwise, if we did not have reserves and something like that were to occur, we would have to do layoffs in a year to cover it. So by using those reserves wisely to mitigate year-to-year budget fluctuations, the district can invest in long-term projects and priorities and really strategically stabilize the district. And that's what we're looking at. Bottom line, reserves are a tool for both security

015and strategic planning for money set aside today to ensure the district can meet future needs and respond to surprises tomorrow. That is what they are for. So we are still working towards sustainability. We drew down on the reserves. How did we get here? There's been a topic of much conversation over the last couple years. So if you look at that date range between 2020 and 2024, you can see year overyear the district was far exceeding what it had in prior years. Started with half a million increase and then year-over-year it was a million or more increase to the total budget. If you look back in time, those years that are not red dotted, the only year that's large is that 600,000 year. And in that year, the gap elimination funds were returned. And so that

016would be a recurring revenue. It made sense for salaries and things to be added in that year. Those other years that are marked with the red line are years in which we had co funding and that is not recurring money yet. the salaries and the budget overall went up by a million more each year. And then you'll see the final little box that's not within the red there, the uh nearly 600,000 that was reduction in salaries to bring us back toward sustainability. So where did the salary increases occur? You can kind of see the different departments down there on the bottom. Mainly those salaries were added in instructional step. Again, same colors. Can you see those reductions in our current past two years into that staffing? Again, you'll see the biggest impact for instructional staff.

017A lot of times we've talked about finding efficiencies in operations and we're going to look at that in a little more detail in the next couple slides. So overall when you look at the trajectory of operations there might be things from year to year that spike or increase over time but they are not the largest driver of expense in our budget. That red line along the bottom shows you the increase or the decrease from year to year. So any of those years, the biggest increase, you saw that one little spike there where it's 560,000, but other than that, it was pretty level or dropped at times. So I mentioned we are looking at efficiencies even though this is not our largest cost driver. We're going to look in a little more detail at each of

018these utilities. Heating oil, electricity, telephone, garbage. I know it's not a utility but I include that in. So historical telephone little spike there. Um but even with our current cost around that $28,000 this current year we would have spent $150,000 in smart schools bond act money to replace old phones in our system. Instead of doing that, we removed it from our smart schools bond act and we picked up a Bose service that is state aidable and the cost runs about the same as we've already been spending in telephones. So by doing that we freed up that 150,000 to use for other things like our security cameras and things like our doors at no real impact to budget and potentially savings. We also closed 11 unused lines, analog lines that have been open. Some of our

019lines had not been identified, which ones were not actually being used, like fax lines and some emergency lines. Some we do have to keep open, but we are also looking at allowable wireless um connections and we have a meeting about that next week to hopefully lower it even more. Eating oil, as we all know, is very volatile. We are on a bid. We've used the bid last year. We used the bid this year. We're going to submit our data to another Bosey's bid service and see if they can beat the state contract. However, this is an especially volatile year and we are already 25,000 above where we were in February of last year. Storage of garbage. You can see why this caught our attention. Price spike there. However, thank you to the maintenance department, particularly

020um Daryl Hansen, who did some research, got some quotes, and the ultimate savings to this district were a full 12 months would be nearly $8,000. And we also get to add recycling historical election. This is another one that grabs our attention because of the large spike last year. As of December, we joined a cooperative bid. That's where they take all the demand from various schools and they put them all out together as a bidding package so it's more attractive to biders and they gave us a rate of uh 10.3 cents per kilowatt hour inclusive of all the mandatory uh agency fees. Um we joined in December so they gave us all the coldest months of the year at that 10 cent rate. The actual bid the winning bid was around 8 cents. So we hope

021that when they rebid this year in April, we'll get the lower cost whatever that may be for this coming bid. Along with joining BISM, I know some people have asked about uh green energy in the district. That bidder who won has 50% of their energy provided by solar. Uh when I checked the prices currently against to see, hey, they gave us this higher rate. Are we still benefiting from it? Yes, we are. When I checked um on February 10th, the rate was about 14 cents per kilowatt hour. And thank you to Terara, our treasurer, who is tracking both our expenses and the market expenses to ensure that when we close out this budget, we can make sure we are saving money by being on this bid. Um, another factor, we've seen some spikes that come

022through in notices from NISK because they still have our delivery. And one of those spikes is related to the trailer at PES. We've had some discussions around consolidating storage and a plan to remove that trailer eventually. It's costing us about $9,000 in a lecture to heat that building. This is for the closing budget where the money was actually spent by percentage just to give people an idea of the breakdown. Two of the things I labeled on the bottom were items I thought maybe people would know what they meant. Regular education, special education are pretty self-explanatory as is transportation. Central services includes things like our legal funds, uh, records management, data and public information, our website, insurance, the district administration is the board of ed, tax collection, superintendent's office, business office, and any personnel related management

023costs. So that's kind of the closing budget status and says of reserves and now we're kind of moving on to the revenue for this coming year. I put the calculations up there so people can see them. I know most people don't really care about the breakdown. They want to know what the tax levy is, what the increase is, and what the overall percentage will be. So, our dollar increase is 252,000, and our percentage increase will be 2.32. This is our percentage year-over-year increase. So, there's that 2.32% off to the side there for this coming year. Just a sort of a point of comparison because people are always hearing that there's a 2% tax cap. The 2% is a number that you plug in to your calculation. So if I go back here, you'll see the

0242% cap on inflation. It's part of a formula. It is not necessarily a 2% cap. So, in comparison to other districts in our area, last year when the tax levies went out, 13 districts reported and the average was 2.9%. This year, so far, eight districts have reported and the average was 2.8%. So, we are this year running below the regional average in our levy calculation. Here are our preliminary revenue projections. So, as the months go on, we'll get some updates in things like hopefully foundation aid. We may get some adjustments in our Bosecape calculations. Some other information may come in that changes another number of your refunds or we might watch the market and that interest projection could go up or down. So, this is very preliminary, but we're seeing a lot of decline. Our

025building aid is going to decline because of the money coming back on the emergency project and some debt closing out. Our public and private access cost that has to do with special ed students and I believe that is due to enrollment changes as something like textbooks, hardware, software. You will see that defined also with enrollment. So foundation aid currently our increase is $88,000 from the prior year and you can kind of see how we compare to other districts in the year. So we certainly are one of the lower districts and that is accounting for 1% over our prior year. Our boat season unfortunately has dropped. That has partially to do with our average daily attendance. It could also have to do with wealth ratios of people who are filing their tax returns. And the same

026thing, our transportation aid has also dropped this year. Some preliminary estimates for what's coming in the March budget presentation. We know that our commercial insurance will go up 7%. That's not bad considering last year I think went up 18% 20% somewhere around there. Our pharmacy will see a large increase 26%. Um high mark blue shield which is where most of our employees are thankfully is only at 5%. However, CDPH is a 15% projected increase. So, we won't get the actuals on that until sometime at the end of March. So, it may be when I present the next budget, I don't yet have those final numbers. What we know now, we're talking about adding a business or financial literacy teacher due to some mandates coming down from the state. As you know, we have an elementary

027library position that is part of the current budget. it was not retired this year. So, we hope to put a librarian at the elementary school. We also have positive news in the increase in funding for prek. It's moving up to $10,000, which is quite a bit compared to our 6,600 in prior years. Um, looking at that prek cost since we did add that section during the year, the total cost for this district is 280,000. Of that 188,000 is paid by the general fund and state income taxpayer of all our revenue. The only amount currently for the current year that is paid by a grant is about $93,000. In addition to those factors, we know that we have two contracts to settle. Both the Berlin administrators and our largest uh union, our Berlin teachers association. That

028brings us to question. So just quickly comment. So we we look at the prek with a new offset in the grant. So if we have 28 students that would be 20. So we have we'll get to this a little more when we do our budget presentation in March. But we currently have 28 students enroll. However, only 14 of them are claimed by Berlin. The other 14 are claimed by Questar. So we pay the difference between what Questar receives in a separate grant and the balance comes to our budget. So that um total costes that include both the Quest Star and the Burl as the total amount we paid to Quest Star. The 92,000 is the 14 students we can think. So if you took 14 and multiplied it by the $6,62 that's the So is

029it more cost effective to look at building a grant exclusively >> with that new $10,000 amount last year? You might recall I had a calculation that I put up and it was very close and what we were worried about is the escalation of salaries as st as staff about the schedule. With that 10,000 in there it is very possible that it would be more cost effective to post it entirely. Yes. >> Last year I believe it was $6,600 per student. Now it's 10,000. So definitely change changed the outlook. It's a consideration for the board to to look at our options district for prek uh meaning continue to h house work with star or to look at a building inhouse program based on the increased aid that we're receiving as a cost um savings for the

030district and if that were the case too just to put it out there for community and teachers that teachers are that are in the program still would have first right to keep their positions and that wouldn't change those positions in terms of losing the jobs or It would be more of a classroom would have to be paid for fully, technology, materials, desks, I think paid for by the district and then the staff would have to be absorbed into our own budget as well. >> Kelly, I just want to just say thank you for the presentation. Just point out to you coming off a year last year where there were staff reductions and cuts on the board, it's been uh very conscientious about making this a year where we're not going to be looking at further

031reductions of staff and opportunity for students. what you have here this preliminary right now you know what I'm just want to highlight towards the end here is the word addition is here we're looking at you know very careful thoughtful additions around mandates um such as mathematics financial literacy and potentially a business opportunity like the fact that we're position in position now a year later uh coming off the good work the district did last year to balance things out to be able to talk about potential new opportunities and adding something is is tremendous that we're in that position to have that discussion now so hopefully we get some more positive news moving forward. Foundationally, I can touch upon a little bit later. Right now, it's not great. The 1% that we're proposed to get is only

032$88,000 in my update. I'll talk more about that, but I think that's at least something I want to highlight in terms of where we're at now compared to last year. We should clarify the library is already in the budget. That's not actually an addition. It's just an unspent amount. So, we're really only talking about one teacher even that is not a full addition. you remember you have a staff member who is partial staff development partial math you did not fill that portion of that >> and that's coming from a new mandate that's coming from the state also that requires coursework in the financial literacy >> yes >> the financial literacy is required for uh 6 through 12 this upcoming school year it can be something that you can integrate into current coursework as an option

033so something Mr. Burns and I are looking at as well. Um, but with the librarian piece as well, it does result in some potential shifting around. Um, for the elementary K through five, Jody I spoken a little bit. We don't know the year still for elementary. Likely that'll be integrated through curriculum, but we still have to look at that. There are some mandates. There's also climate um environmental I think in a couple years coming out as well. So, there's some new mandates we have to be attentive to making sure we're meeting this. So the state's going to give us 88,000 but require us to essentially hire or halftime teacher to teach the extra coursework. >> We could look at it too $88,000 and then we could be covering health insurance increases of $300,000. So that's

034>> right now we minimumly which is a better year of health insurance $300,000 increase or something or more and then $88,000 in foundational aid. So the foundational aid is obviously not keeping up especially for smaller districts. It's that chart that Colleen showed. There's a lot of districts in the same boat getting 1% right now. >> Return on the drop in our housing transportation is also >> and and then the options really are for for money for the district to maintain the budget really is foundational aid and then taxpayers. So that's position the state puts the schools in. And then of course as taxpayers, we all are um we're upset because the taxes to go up. There's only two sources of revenue for for schools. Colleen, I know you mentioned it. Can you touch more on

035why our our season transportation need you have the exact reasons why? >> I can pull the formula. They produce it on state website and I can compare it to last year's formula if you'd like more exact detail on that. Imagine it does have to do part of that formula is average daily weight and attendance. That's part of it and probably also our wealth factor. But I can look at the actual formulas they use and find out what the differences are from isolation. >> And when you say like wealth factor, it's not the wealth factor decides. It's not the student population. It's the population. >> Any other additional questions? >> Thank you. Thank you. Okay. At this time we will move forward to presentations. The first one is the ELA regions results presentation by Dave Bley.

036>> Good evening. I think each member here got a packet of presentation. I'm not going to go uh speak about each uh slide. That's for hopefully you read uh if you have any questions about it. But the purpose tonight is to speak about the ELA regions that we had all students in 11th grade and some 12th grade take for the January regions. It's the first time we've done it. Um we're going to go through it a little bit and u some data. So why keep it in January, not June? Big thing is that we wanted to give our students opportunities for a couple of things. One to complete it now. As you know, junior year is when usually students have the most regent exams in uh June. So we wanted to take the regions away

037if we could. The other thing is for students that may struggle or at risk, it's one more opportunity to take the region exam, but afterwards to create uh personal intervention plans to help them pass. So I can tell you that Islam has gone through every regular for students that might not pass it and is already have targeted intervention with those students. Overall performance we had 55 students take the exam. Mastery level is if you get a 85 or higher we had 19 and 55 which is 34 and a.5% reach mastery level. Students with 65 or above we had 43 of the 55 which is 78%. and students who um 55 what we call a safety net students IEPs that can get from a 55 to 64 and achieve New York state ed uh uh regulations

038in terms of they get credit for the LA regions altogether we had 85.5 students meet state ed requirements uh towards graduation that's a tremendous number below below 55, we had eight students, right, >> David, can I just point out one point of emphasis here? Um, these students are all 11th graders as you mentioned. They're only halfway through the course that students would normally take at the end of the course exam or any course chemistry, physics, students traditionally take a full year, September through June, then take an exam. So these students have taken only half of course and these are the results. So the fact that you see an eight there, it's easy to it's easy to tune in on the eight and say, "Oh, eight students fail. That's not good." Those are those are eight

039students out of that whole group that failed that still have not finished the course. So overall, that's says a lot about um the success of students who obtained mastery obviously as well through the year too. >> Absolutely. And we have our ELA department chair, Miss Gilbert, up here. loves being up here to speak. Um, real quickly, one of the reasons that Mr. Rizzo, myself, and Miss Gilbert thought the students could successfully pick up on Mr. Rizzo's point really starting in prek, our students are for ELA are getting prepared for the ELA 11 reasons. So, for example, I taught US history that is a fullyear course. ELA they're ready to take that's really refining their skills in 11th grade. U would you agree with that? >> Yeah, we really work on the curriculum to build up

040the rigor over the past few years preparedness are coming through and able to meet these expectations. >> 85 I'm going to round it up to 86%. Uh that is a a a real tribute to Miss Gilbert and the rest of the ELA department because they have been doing that for the last couple years. This is a fruit of their labor. They deserve a lot of credit as well as the students. So the eight students that um that we identified for six students have IEPs, one student is co currently being referred for special ed and one student does not have an IEP. All right. So that tells us something right away that we're working not only with uh Miss Line, the ELA teacher, but also their students case managers um more special. So I I'll speak

041about the big thing is I want to go here targeted instructional plans developed for each student. Each student we have already created an individual plan. So what works for student A may not be what student B has and we're not it's not one sizefits all. We have really differentiated and I'm really proud of everyone involved to make that happen. So what are we doing moving forward for June? I don't want to. >> Um, so we sat down and we talked about the students where their needs were. >> Ariel, come on. I'm sorry. Do you mind using the mic? >> Um, so we we met as a group and we looked at the students were struggling in and we could meet their needs, whether it was in their schedules. So we've talked about we've added AIS

042to a lot of the student schedules, move some things around so they could get that in. We also talked about um progress monitoring and looking at the writing with Christie as well as um what they're doing with their case manager. >> Can you just quickly explain what progress is? >> Um so it's looking at their whether they're doing different writing in the classroom. Um we do use kind of the comprehension piece to see how they're doing with that and just monitoring to see if they're making progress and if they're not to really dive into that data and see where um where we need to improve. And then we as closer to the the assessments, we've talked about maybe doing um some like more interventions. Maybe we'll meet with them more times a couple weeks before

043just to really push them to be successful. >> I can't the last check regions practice for rubric based scoring to build stamina consistency. I can't emphasize that enough. Some of the students just get tired and it's because it's reading reading comprehension breaking it down to writing three hours. That's a lot. So that's one of the reasons that we're trying to build. Think about a marathon runner. They're not going to run 26 miles right away. They have to build up to it. So that's the same way that we're looking at that. So couple things based on looking at the indicators of progress. I don't want to see positive that I like in the future progress. Um just shortened timeline going into September. They did not know that we were going to do this. This really came

044about in October. So Miss Lontain and the students really stepped up the mastery. We're thrilled about the mastery level 85 or higher. You know that's a great number for us. It's showing us that AIS is working. Still a work in progress, but we're headed in the right direction. That's positive feedback for us. Strategic focus moving forward even earlier identification of at risk students. So 10th grade going into 11th grade having um the teacher sit and say hey we really from day one 11th grade we have to target when I say target mean positive these students so we don't have to wait necessarily for the exam but start it immediately. So hopefully we don't have those eight students that may not pass. um extended prep time as we spoke about one area I'm concerned about is

045students assistant attendance in AIS some students don't see the value in it to be honest with you so we've been discussing that in terms of how to make it more um rewarding and open for students to want to attend we can tell you we have data that shows students that went consistently to AIS pass the exam. So we do have the proof. Just want to really quick structure right. Sorry. >> The last one. >> Um so we several years ago created or created a program out from um it's called SRSD and it's really just using different strategies and we've really um put them try to play 612 in ELA and uh also in our school our social studies classes. And it really breaks down the writing process to students um whether they're a strong writer,

046they're struggling so that they're seeing that consistent language 612 and they're you know they're heavy writing classes and we found that by doing that it's really improve the writing. >> It's through all the curriculum areas. So it's not just they go to ELA this reinforced in all the classes. So it just becomes second nature and and our teachers are devoted to it which students like I said it's just that's how they like to so >> um so we talked about again doing a regent prep right before just really targeting the students in their areas they're struggling in um the writing workshops where we have teachers working with students targeting those certain areas but in smaller groups. Um there are some students that don't have any study halls and don't have any room in their schedules

047and we've given them the option that they could always um get extra support during their lunch period if they want to. They don't have to but it gives them that extra option. Some of the kids have actually asked if they can do that. We're going to also offer some after school regions prep as it gets closer to the assessments. And then again just um having those checkpoints to make sure they're making progress in all their their classes with their grading and their reading. And we're not test prepping like we're not just teaching them the test. What we're teaching is life skills that they need to have that encompass the test. Um because I'm not a believer in test prep and there is skill. So while we're getting them ready for the regions, these are lifelong

048skills. Kind of went over these already. And I just want to recognize I think every meeting I discuss Miss Spielberg, we are so fortunate to have her. I'm very fortunate to have her as my partner. What she brings to this building, to this district, I cannot say enough. She is amazing. And then Miss Lman came, I think Mr. Rizzo and I really scared her when we said, "Let's do January." And she stepped up and she did a fabulous one. again, she can't get enough credit. Her and the students deserve the most credit for this, and I'm very proud of what we've done here. Um, this is our little symbol that I think we're going to be using, especially in the portrait of graduate. I think it's discussed what we're doing now. Anyway, any questions? >>

049Did you say I present? >> I 100% did. That's good. Very nice. >> I am not that creative. >> I will say the information is us not a just clean up the slides information. Question. Thank you. >> It's also worth pointing out too that this June will be a new ELA exam as well. They're going to completely revamp the exam and typically when the exam is revamped students struggle. So it's advantageous these students have this exam done now and they have the option whether they want to retake it or not. uh for June and then if they didn't do well there they can do it in August as well. >> So the eight students that were not did not meet success will have to take it on a new exam. >> Correct. So the big

050big reason why we wanted to move now on this rather than wait another year is what we know has is a known test and the format and you know while the essay topics will change and the themes will change the format is very familiar. It's predictable in a lot of ways when you have a new exam. They can completely you don't know what's going to come out that first year in June and kids tend to be unfortunately the first time sometimes skinny things where they the scores do drop especially math did a lot first year. So we've avoided that with all these students now and the ones that have done well they don't want to retake it. They can now focus on other other exams now with energy and more challenging exams global and and

051physics and whatnot. very quickly you you'll see for the best few years this year I'm sure included the new regent exams being the updated ones sciences or ELA math they are very strongly focused on reading reading comprehension extracting from there some questions others read interpret and write that's across the for so we're kind of anxious to see how the ELA is going to look in June because we're kind of doing that but we want to see the slant that they're put on. But it's speaking to my earth science and and bio teachers and speaking to the teachers around the state when they uh you know offered it last year for the first time in June. They're not your old biology or science exams. They are strictly reading extracting bringing outside information in. So that's why

052when you hear us speak about literacy that's what everything is based on. >> Thank you. Thank you. The next is class of 2026 senior trip presentation and request. Hello. Unfortunately, my students who were supposed to be here had an emergency, so could not make it tonight. So, here I am wearing my advisor cap. Um, we respect respectfully would like permission to have our senior trip in W, New Jersey this year. Um, so how students can pay for this trip and the cost of the trip. So all students have been given an opportunity to work in sessions, donate items for fundraisers, participate in the candle and pie fundraisers for the pies. They are coming out this week, so please buy um as well as many other activities throughout the year. The cost of the trip includes

053accommodations for two nights at the B Harbor Hotel, transportation, breakfast for two mornings, admission to the Kate May Zoo Morris Pier and the Ulo Times Theater. So a quad occupancy is 529 and a triple is 559. Uh the itinerary we would depart here on Friday, May 22nd, which could be potentially a give back snow day if we stop using them all. Um, so we would not be missing any school and if not then we would be missing the one day. We would arrive in Wildwood and explore the boardwalk until check-in and then they would check into the hotel and then have dinner on their own. We would get out Saturday, we'd have breakfast, we'd go to the zoo, they'd have lunch on their own. Um, and big letters there's lifeguards will be on duty at

054the beach from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. So for the students who'd like to go to the beach, we our hotel is right on the beach. Um, and then after lunch we'd go to Moraice Pier, dinner on their own, and then we would have bright and early Sunday and depart for the meeting of the Lives Theater for the one:00 show. And then we would arrive back Sunday night around 7 and then they would have Monday. So we hope you take into consideration our requests and you know how many students how many students are interested in attendance. >> So right now um I think we have like 46 students and out of that almost 30 are interested in attending. >> Fun to help us. Yeah. >> I know you said that. Yeah, some of them will

055have their trip paid. Others are very, you know, laxed easily on how much they want to participate. But more than, well, I would say more than half are willing to pay the price that it's going to cost knowing that they've been given opportunities to fund raise. Any other questions? >> Thank you. A motion by Frank. A second. >> Second. >> A second by Derek. Ela, how do you vote? >> Yes. >> Penny, >> yes. >> Derek, >> yes. >> Frank, >> yes. >> Kim, >> yes. >> And Amy, yes. >> Thank you so much. >> Have fun. Thank you. >> Okay. Report the student representative. I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. Um, first off, I wanted to apologize for my absence on the last two meetings because I was at basketball games. But,

056um, we've returned from our winter break and everyone is getting back on schedule. The past month has been busy for students as they have been settling into the third quarter. Winter sports have wrapped up and all the teams gave their best. The winter sports award ceremony will be on March 2nd at 6 pm. The student council will be volunteering at the light up literacy night on March 5th at the elementary school and we have a science theme about magnetic fields in the northern lights and we are celebrating students who come to the principal's list with the dinner on Thursday at 6 p.m. The student council will be opening and there is a public concert on the Wednesday before break and it was an enjoyable winter activity that got to show off what students have been

057working hard. A big thanks to the music department for showcasing our talented students. The PTO held a skating party at chemicals over February break which I attended with my friend. It was a big turnout for all ages and everyone appeared to have a lot of fun. I was invited to a virtual meeting held by 30 on February 19th which was a virtual workshop on AI best practices for school years. It was led by Waldonado a leading expert in the AI field. The meeting was for board members all over the county and it was very effective. I learned a lot and took notes. Some things that stood out to me were AI governance which ensures that AI is used in a safe and responsible manner. How AI can be used in school and making datadriven decisions.

058AI powered coaching for teacher development, reducing workload, boosting achievement and something called RAG. RAG stands for retrieval generation that combines the intelligence of the chatbot with the accuracy of real time information. The last thing I'll talk about regarding this meeting is something called yes or care. This is for AI adoption and how how to implement AI in schools. Instead of being a hard no for AI in schools, he said the mind mindset should be saying yes with care. Meaning that AI can be incorporated into a school environment as a helpful tool enhancing structure, not replacing it. If anyone is interested in more learning, I can discuss it after meeting. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay. The next is the capital project public hearing. And at this point, I will turn it over to your fiscal

059advisors, our architect, our construction manager. Come up here and actually sit as the board. That's alcohol around here. >> Would you kind of come? You can come right on right through here >> behind the maybe behind the table. Yeah, you could also just hold them up when you're ready to speak to however you're comfortable. I'm going to stand for now. Right. Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here this evening for those of you particularly came out to learn more about our proposed capital project. Uh we have a presentation for you uh and a lot of people that have come together today part of the team to share information with the community with the board about the proposed project. Um so this presentation is uh behalf of the Berlin school district board of education. My

060name is Ken Rizzo. I am the superintendent of schools. I'd also like to welcome uh introduce to you Mr. Jim Graham and Teresa Samansco from Synthesis Architects. I think you've seen them both here before in previous presentations. Um and also uh Mr. Eric Roar who's president of Schoolhouse Construction Services as well. Welcome them as well. Many of these uh individuals have driven great distances to be here this evening. I'd also like to welcome they're not named on the presentation but there's certain certainly part of this project proposal and if this project goes forward um a big part of what's going to be a successful project and that's going to be our uh our friends at fiscal adviserss uh Mr. Andrew Shrik comes from Syracuse I believe drive here today and Mr. Scott Sullivan to my

061right is joining us. Scott Sullivan is from Day Automation by Stark. Is that correct? Got a new name as well. And they're gonna Scott's going to speak more about the proposed control system that um day automation would be uh leading and uh spearheading us in terms of overhauling that. Um so everyone here is going to have a role here in speaking today. I'm going to start things off. So the teacher and me uh has a table of contests sort of for you here. What's going to be in the presentation? uh topics. We're going to have a pre-referender timeline. Where are we now and where are we headed? I really want to um for those of you who are new to the project proposal, just hearing hearing about for the first time, I want you to

062be able to access information just like anyone else who maybe knows more about it. So, we're going to kind of start with timeline, talk about what's in prop one, prop two again very briefly. Uh we have an update from synthesis uh on the historic preservation office. That's a really important update. We're going to talk about why now for some of these items. We're going to talk about the control energy impact uh with day automation. We're going to talk about a cost analysis. We have fiscal adviserss here and our business official colle and our board. We're going to talk about both timeline for the project. Uh we're going to talk about the summary of survey questions, some of the key uh takeaways from the from survey that went out to the community and thank the community

063for engaging with that survey. And then at the end there's going to be uh opportunity for questions, discussion, additional feedback. And also for those of you who signed up for public comment as well at the end certainly we can speak uh more and answer those questions as well if you have questions regards to the project. So one of the things that we noticed in the survey was a question about accountability. Um, I would say there's no greater accountability than having a team that can trust uh each other and work with each other transparently and communicate very openly. And I hope right now what you'll see is we have a team here right now. Team that's been working behind the scenes day in day out. Um, is here tonight. Uh, this is not a project that's

064being proposed. You know, one person's going to be putting, you know, putting forward architects to do all the work or project engineer. This is really a team of a lot of experts in different areas coming together uh to work on a project and make sure it's successful for this community. So this is really our team. It's the board of education uh of the school district. It's a facilities committee that's been involved since back in September. Uh it's synthesis architects, it's schoolhouse construction, it's fiscal advisors. Um I didn't have have day auto on there because they're one of the vendors we were working with. There's a lot of other companies that would come into the fold in this one forward, but this is really what we talk about when it comes to a team and building

065transparency and trust with each other and accountability through the process. So, where where are we now? Where do we come from? Um, this place started back in the early early fall. Discussions about some of our infrastructure that is coming near the end of its life and how to best go about looking at our building condition survey and trying to make sure we plan to ensure school stays open, frankly, and that our facilities are what our students deserve, our staff deserves in order to ensure the best teaching and learning in this community. So, we did do an RFP process back in the fall if you're not familiar with that. essentially you put a call out to the outside world to say that we're looking for the best architect that we could find to help us work

066through a building condition survey. That building condition survey was completed in 2023. Um the next time it's due to the state is in 2028. Um the board went through a very thorough I would say interview process. um interviewing three well-qualified architectural firms and ultimately sentences architects was the the firm that the district decided to work with for this project. So that's where the really things uh really got into high speed here in November and in December. Uh we had a special boardification workshop meeting um boardification meeting for capital project resolutions on January 20th. We had the community capital project survey that was put out January 22nd to February 4th. uh the presentation tonight where we're at right now. The project vote is on March 17th and if uh the board uh if the if the

067project passes the board will accept those results um on March 19th two days after. So what's included in prop one very briefly for proposition one and EMHs fuel tanks. Those are tanks that are, as we're going to talk more about in a moment, um they are non-insurable tanks. They are tanks that present liability and risk to the district and potential if they're not replaced uh for school to uh not be in session, at least in person for students. Uh propane conversion of those tanks and fuel tank removal is included in Prop One. the BES roof replacement at elementary school, the Koopal reconstruction, the BM BMHS septic system replacement and domestic water treatment system is also included. The numbers up here show you the cost um of each item. I'm not going to read the ball

068to you, but you can see up here at top point for the propane conversion 1.8 8 million. The roof of Koopa 1.7 septic system 556,000 and domestic water treatment 1,48,000 and then the total prop one is 6.35 million for proposition one. For prop two, um the auditorium, which we're in right now, is part of prop two. The control system is part of prop two. And then the sidewalks in the front of the building um at the elementary school are included in prop two. We'll talk more about the sidewalks and which sidewalks and why not a little bit as well. Total cost for prop two is $3.1 million. Everything is listed there. That's in prop two. Give the community one more final look. a two-minute video for you just so you actually can see what these

069items look like. In case you've not seen it before, this is a new video highlighting some of the different items that included in the project. Mr. >> Don, thank you. >> You want to put the microphone That was >> Good evening, Berlin families. I want to give you one last look at different parts of our capital project proposal. Beginning first right now behind me with the roof and the Koopa and Berlin Elementary School. All right. And one final look at the inside of the roof here at Berlin Elementary School. This is included as part of proposition one in a capital project proposal. And here's one final look at the fuel tank here at Berlin Elementary School. This is included in prop one. So this is one more look at the 6,000galon domestic water storage tank

070here at the middle school high school. Hello M community. So for our capital project proposal I want to show everyone the access point for the septic system at the middle school high school. This was just flushed today due to the septic backing up from the district office. Uh the septic system here is part of prompt one and it does provide service to the district office to the middle school uh and high school cafeteria and also to the middle school bathrooms as well in the building. So one more look in terms of part of the proposal the project would be replaced under prop one. So I'm standing inside the bathroom of the district office and in this location this is where the septic system did just back up and we had outside vendor come in to

071flush the system. And again reminder this is part of prop one is to repair and replace the septic system here in middle school high school. And this is just one last look at the middle school high school. So this is one final look at our building control system which will be in place under proposition two. >> Good evening. >> Okay. Thank you for your attention to the video. Hopefully I give you another look at things uh in the project that included a visual for those things those items. So, uh, why now with these different items? SL back over here in front of the camera so the committee can see me. So, in terms of the elementary school, high school fuel tank removal and conversion. Why now? So, why now? The tanks in both buildings are

072no more no longer insurable. At one point, they were insurable a few years back, but it was very very expensive to obtain insurance on those tanks because of the age. they've now reached an age and also uh because of the physical condition of tanks in particular the tank at elementary school which is an outdoor tank it's encased in concrete has now reached a point where that tank cannot be insured uh any longer. It presents an environmental risk where it could potentially leak and that would cost the district a lot of money in terms of cleanup and potentially impact our ability to maintain continuous instruction for students. want the community to be aware of the age of that tank. I am not going to tell you the tank is old. I'm going to let you determine

073for yourself whether it's old or not by telling you the year that was it was purchased. It was purchased by the district in 1996. At that point in time, all the information that we have suggests the tank was purchased as a refurbished tank at that time. If you're wondering why the district might do that, one reason why they may have done that is because it can be more cost-effective to purchase a tank when it's refurbished. So that tank was not a brand new tank most likely at that point in time and it was installed in 1996. Uh the tank in the middle school high school which is a buried tank in front of the building near the flag pole that tank was installed in 1988. So why now for the uh roof of the elementary

074school and why now for the Koopa the roof at the elementary school that building was built in 1936. This is coming off the heels of the great depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt little history uh that time period that's a very historical building and um that roof is the original roof to that building. It is made of slate which is a rather expensive material. Um and slate has a life life expectancy. It's not really you know I'm learning a lot from our architects here. You know, it's hard to say that it's guaranteed to be 100 years or 30 years, but we can say that at this point in time, the condition of that roof now that it's 90 years old is at a point where we do know that those slate shingles, slate tiles are thinning out

075and they're starting to fall off of the roof and they are heavy and when they do fall off, it does obviously allow water to come into the the building. Uh Co City Music Hall familiar with that building, most recently renovated. the roof on that that structure also was slate and for the same reasons it had to be replaced. So um community has asked questions like well can we wait another 10 years since it's a 100redy year roof. First off 100 years is is not a guarantee it's just a rough time frame 100 years. Um sure I guess you could say we could wait 100 years. This year we put $13,000 into a repair on that roof. And you can see from the video, there's still holes in the roof, even though it was $13,000 to

076patch it because it can't be done completely patched and sealed up unless it's really restored. Um, that $13,000 is not aidable, which means it's a direct uh hit to the taxpayers. Um, if we do a project where we replace the roof, we get 75% state aid back on any project. So, if you think about it this way, $13,000 this year. If we needed to bring out someone next year to replace uh parts of the roof again, we can spend another 15 $20,000 next year or perhaps three years or five years. We don't know how long it'll be. So, we can continue to try to fix it, but each time we fix it, we're we're paying money that's not going to be eatable. Um and it's going to come out of our general our general budget.

077Um, and we also run again with water coming in the classrooms and having more disruption to the students and staff, the elementary teachers who are down there, Miss uh, uh, Jod's down there and they'll tell you that, you know, there's there's often times when there's heavy rain that we do see water that comes in for classrooms. Uh, Colleen Mills also mentioned earlier the septic system recently the repairing of the septic system. We had the septic backup. I'll show that in the video in the bathroom. um that does service our middle school, high school cafeteria where your children children eat. Um that's the septic for the for the bathrooms there in the middle school. It's also the septic system that services the district offices as well. Um so that's something where we just brought in a

078vendor to flush the system and to uh fix it for now temporarily. But again, if that backs up, we will continue to pay those bills each time we have to repair that. So it comes down to the community decision about do we continue to fix try to fix things fix things fix things or do we really try to address things and um you know have a more permanent solution to these to these different issues. That septic system does have broken pipes pipes that are collapsed pipes that are not not working anymore. So it's in a it's in a condition right now of near disrepair where it's coming to a point where really in our building condition survey we've identified it's something that should be should be fixed and replaced. So, back to the roof. Um,

079liability, repair, uh, water from any classrooms. The condition of the Koopa, the Koopa is is obviously peeling. You can see the peeling on the outside. But more than that, there's also water that's that's coming into the building from the Koopa area. And you can see that very clearly in the video on staining in the roof area in the attic. So, for the septic system, it's no longer fully functional. There's broken and collapsed piping. um septic backup recently this month as well required professional servicing. It's not the first time this has happened. I'm told a few years ago that the district officers actually did flood as a result of uh the septic system and that had you know carpet got to be replaced and torn out and just they did also uh just force staff to

080have to move. The Milk High School messed with water treatment system. So that tank was installed in 1988, same year as the uh fuel tank. That tank is located at the front of the building. It's a 6,000galon tank and it does have heavy heavy rusting on the exterior which you can see in the video. Um each year the district last few years has received letters to the Department of Health uh citations because of the rusting on the tank. We don't know what the interior of the tank looks like. We only know the outside of the tank uh is heavily rusted and it is something that the uh regulator department of health has said to the district that it should be addressed or replaced and if you can't do that you need to continually monitor that

081tank very carefully because it does have heavy rusting on it. So it's another item that is included in proposition one for prop two control system. Why now? So prop two includes this control system in the building right now. We don't have a way to efficient efficiently manage temperature control for heating and cooling in the building. So we have classrooms that are sometimes overheated and we have classrooms and spaces that are very very cold. One example is outside district offices and the hallway which the middle school students use. That hallway gets very very cold. Um most students ask your child if they're a middle school student, they'll walk in the hall. It's freezing a lot of times. So we don't have efficient control um of temperature and air circulation. It's not efficient for energy. It's not

082optimal for student learning and and teachers teaching these spaces either. So that's one reason why now that system is we don't have a functional system right now that we actually can use that actually controls um air circulation and comfort uh in the building. The auditorium you're seated in right now. I think you can probably formulate your own opinions good or bad on whether this is um a a space right now that's really up to date. It's the building itself uh is from the 80s. There's a lot of wear. Um the seating there's there's seats that are broken. There's seats that have been pulled out because of the condition of the seats and rusting on the seats. Um the floors um have cracking. Uh so in that proposal we're talk we're looking at um seating, flooring,

083efficient lighting and sound. And to be clear with auditoriums, one thing I learned again from our architects is that you can spend a lot of money on auditoriums. Um the district's not looking to spend a lot of money. The district's looking to spend um money efficiently and smartly to bring it up to speed to where it should be for students to use this and a community to use the space um as a as a learning space, as a community space without, you know, breaking the bank, so to speak, and putting in all kinds of fancy technology and getting really crazy with the space, but really modernizing the seating and the flooring, uh and making it a really space that we can be really proud of for our community and our students as well. And then

084for the elementary sidewalks, um the sidewalks to be clear, these are the sidewalks in front of the building and these are sidewalks that have not been previously fixed uh by the district. So one reason why now is for a full ADA compliance uh for for individuals with disabilities. There is cracking in these sidewalks. Um when there's cracking, there's always a safety and liability uh uh risk there as well. And then again as part of the project we do the district would receive aid back on this project uh for for the sidewalks as part of prop two as well. So those are the items that are that the district the community will vote on on 17th as part of proposition two. And I'll turn over now to Jim Graham to provide an update from the state

085historic preservation office on the roof and the clock tower. Very important update. So we require we use public money on that building that's 50 years or older to review that proposed work with the state historic preservation office. And so they we've submitted to them our potential plans. We gave them a couple of options what the district may be looking to do. They came back with a pretty clear response. We would ask about potential staining seam roofing and they said that really is an option for this historic building. We look at this as a cultural resource and they would like us to consider things that are slate or slate like we've explored with schoolhouse using synthetic slate. Unfortunately, synthetic slate, the real value on synthetic slate is the lack of or not having excessive weight the

086way slate does. But if you saw the video, the existing building robust structure. So the structure is already in place. Doesn't really make sense to go to SIC Avenue. We can come back to a state. So that is what the preservation office is asking us to look at. They've given us a couple of other options to explore and continue that dialogue. Um but really as far as the roof is concerned and replacing slavery. Um and as far as the Koopa goes, we're supporting a restoration of the Koopa, not a um removal as had been suggested restoration of the so historic integrity of the building will be maintained through the project and that that is the current that's been presented. >> Thank you, Jim. So, I'd like to invite up uh Scott Sullivan and Scott is

087again from Day Automation by Stark. One of the questions to the community um gave us one of the some feedback the community gave us in our survey was there questions about what would the potential savings be for district if we installed this new uh HVAC control system. So we behind the scenes did a lot of digging in terms of our energy bills from the past couple years and working with uh day automation to look at what those potential potential savings could be so that our committee can make an informed decision about Prop 2 and the HVAC control system. So I'm going have Scott share a little bit about his data because it's really the data that he put together for us. >> Yeah, thank you so much. So I didn't put this data together when

088clear I have a lot of smart people in the background to do this work for us. So our energy engineers, what they do is they take the utility bills and we've done this with a lot of districts. We we're in over 200 districts in New York State for this type of solution. So over the course of all of our work across the state, what we tend to see with a more modern uh revamped system is about a 7 to 10% utility production across the board annually. So, what that comes out to is over 6,000 gallons of fuel oil and just shy of about 2,000 kilowatts of energy. So, again, I'm not an energy engineer, so I said, "What does that mean in real life?" So, there's calculations in the background that they run. So, what

089I did was put those pieces of information up there for you guys to see. I don't want to read them all to you, but those are real life examples of what that means for the district. Um, and that's again kind of already mentioned it from the temperature and the heat and the cooling of the spaces and that learning environment is so important. There's a lot of studies that show that having a maintain HBAC system does lead to better cognitive results, less sick days because the the air is more healthy. So that's the information I have for you guys tonight. Appreciate it here for us tonight if you have questions. Thank you, Scott. A few other things that Scott's not going to tell you because I want to brag, but I'll brag for for him and

090for for the company. Um, if this this project were to pass and go forward, uh, the district would continue to continue to be working with a automation by Stark. We I'm already for the partnership with a um, and that partnership started back in the fall with our elementary school. You may may have noticed the swipe badges were working and access to the building was very limited certain doorways. Um through our smart schools bond act we have grant uh we were able to uh allocate money to work with day auto to bring them in to to look at the system and they very quickly I would say were able to get those door uh swipe badges repaired. So that's now a safety concern that's been been addressed in the building. Furthermore, through our smart schools bond

091act grant, we are working with day nation to look at uh door props for our buildings for monitoring for safety and security, which as a parent myself, I want to know that, you know, my children in a building that is safe and secure at all times. The doors aren't being propped open. Uh the cameras work properly. Uh those safety uh pieces are in place. um our our camera system. We're going to move to a cloud-based system, a much more advanced system um that the nation's also working on right now currently again through a grant as well. I keep saying grant grant grant. I want the community to know this is not money that we're just taking from the general fund, your taxpayer money. These are grants we pursued through New York State and I can

092I will brag for the automation and tell you just how responsive they have been. They are tremendous in terms of the information they provide, their response to this, answering questions. I would say every member of the team up here right now in terms of why they're up here right now that we've invited them up here on this stage because I have the full confidence of everyone up here in terms of where we are right now having worked with them just a few months and seeing the communication and the trust that we've built as a team and I would put I would put datation right there in terms of uh the trust that I have in them thus far at this point in time and I think we're the right company to move forward with in

093terms of this project if the community feels that the patrol system should be replaced um that they will do a tremendous job in making these classrooms um optimal for your children to be able to learn in in the building a more comfortable space for everyone and certainly saving um some money along the way as well with our energy usage as well. So I just thank Scott too for coming out today. He didn't have to do that either today. He came out here uh to be able to so thank you your team. Thank you. And now I'm going to turn over to our next set of experts uh partners as well and Andrew is here from advisors. So I also want to call bills as well just join anything here with our financials turn over and

094thank you. Okay. Um I'll be pretty quick and brief kind of like this slide. Um but happy to answer any questions obviously if anybody has any. Um going from left to right prop one uh the crit critical infrastructure proposition. Um, as Ken mentioned, 6.35 uh total authorization is the total um amount you can spend on the project. Districts plan on using just over a million dollars of capital reserve funds for the project. That's funds on hand in the capital reserve that are dedicated for capital projects like this. Um estimated impact as a percent of the levy. So the piece that everybody cares about, how much are taxes going up for this proposition one? um 0.57% that's percentage of the 2526 levy. So as compared to 26 27 it's actually going to be slightly less. Um

095and what does that equate to? Estimated impact per $100,000 of full value of home property $610. um prompt two I won't go through each individual piece um but percent impact of the levy 78% which equates to $8.30. So total between the two propositions uh 1.35% tax levy increase if both propositions were passed which equates to $1440 on $100,000 of full value. The one piece I want to point out that's pretty obvious and why we get there is obviously proposition one is uh you know more than double the price and the uh impact of the levy is less. That's the utilization of those capital reserve monies. Um the way the state views the projects and the way they aid the projects is they base it on the dollar amount of the project itself not how you

096fund it. So th that million dollars worth of reserves, you will not borrow those funds. You won't have to pay long-term interest on those funds, but you'll still receive the aid as if you did. So leveraging those funds is how you're able to u you know achieve a proposition that's twice the value and impacts the taxpayers less than than proposition two. Um like I said, a pretty quick explanation. be happy to answer any questions now or at the end or if there's any anything else that you want to add. Thank >> you. Right. And another um piece of feedback that we saw in the survey, the community feedback, there was questions about um about energy and alternative solutions. Has a district explored alternative solutions other than propane. Propane was absolutely something that was brought up

097in the survey by the community. A lot of questions about propane, the conversion, why propane? So, we want to make sure we talk about propane today with you all. So, again, you can make an informed decision about the proposal. And to do this, I'm going to ask uh Eric Rober and also for Jim Graham to share a little more about this slide and other alternative energy solutions the district has considered over the past few months and why or why why or why not the district didn't decide to go down those different paths. >> So, You see here it's been calculated out there significant annual savic. So based on current fuel costs were able to establish annual savings of over 27,000 homes. That's a good over the last several years. We've been asked on occasion to

098track that. And that's been pretty consistent over the last five to six years. It' be at least $25,000 more savings than propane. Why propane? Well, as the district considers greener, cleaner fuels, propane makes a lot of sense. But the Asian fuel tank front, propane does not contaminate. Propane does not contaminate groundwater way does. So, it's a very wise decision as you move towards greener and cleaner fuels. We've been um asked as we move forward and um not part of this project. I look to advise the district on grant opportunities for other energy projects. So there's a lot of things whe whether it be NAERTA the utility there's opportunities for other green projects such as geothermal and uh solar so to continue to help the district move in that direction. In this project, we're looking at

099propane as a first step to move through green fuel, achieve savings, and makes a lot of sense in economic and uh and climate. Just to add to this a little bit, um, in regards to geothermal and opportunities for solar, um, we're we're at a stage where most of our school clients don't find it to be an affordable move without the grants. So, you know, to think about, you know, why don't we just take this step now, then the cost would be tremendous um that we'd be up against and the payback probably wouldn't be checking out for everybody here in the community. So as Jim had shared, Naerta has been working with many many public entities, school districts in the state. They have some programs that help support the design of these systems as a step

100one and then a step two taking that design and applying that for a full grant or a a significant funding towards a grant that that implements these systems. Um, so that has been starting to be an effective practice across the state and something we're we're hiring currently. >> Can you just elaborate on grants and the district to pursue a grant? I know we did with the water. We were trying to go down that path. You tried very diligently to get a grant for it. What's some of the time obstacles in terms of grants? >> So the the the timing is uh unfortunately very lengthy and certainly there's there's no guarantees. Um, I I mentioned briefly a two-part system. Part one is a public entity, a school district can apply for that design component. And if

101they're fortunate to receive it, there's then a design time frame. Jim, I'll lean on you. That could probably be anywhere from 6 months to a year to go through fully evaluate the the facilities and how these systems would be integrated. Once that design is in hand, you know, so say a year down the road, Ken, um you then have would have the opportunity to submit that for the full grant opportunity. Um with that, then if if a district is selected, there's a whole process of going through an SED review process, bidding, procurement, and then implementation. I would say overall, Ken, you're looking somewhere in the three to five year range depending. So, it's a it's a lengthy process, but it can be worth. You >> might also I don't slide as about a wood chip

102system. I'm not familiar with the wood chip system, what that is and maybe why that's pros and cons. >> Okay. I'm I'm certainly not an expert on this topic, but I I can share a little bit of insight. Um, going back um I would say a little over a decade, there was some popularity with wood chipped type systems, wood chipped boilers. And if you think about your your plet stove that that you might have at home or a relative has at home, similar to that except for these are wood wafers that are burned in boilers. Great great concept particularly in an area that has uh you know a healthy supply of lower grade wood that can be used. Unfortunately, those systems have not had a lot of success in the state. Um there may be

103some that are successful. I know we have several clients in different parts of the state that did receive grants for these types of systems, but they were proved to be, you know, ineffective overall and they have since shut them down. Um, to my knowledge, I'm not aware of any active grants currently for those types of systems today. Thank you. So, yep. Sure. Anything else here in the board? Thank you Jim. So with that slide, just really wanted to show the community u the thought that's gone into some of the decisions behind some of the decisions that the board has made, the district has made that um yes, other energy options have been considered um along the way and ultimately uh with all the information that has been provided by experts district um has included in

104the proposition one the propane conversion. So timeline again this is going to be at Jim and Eric again talking more about timeline specifically uh a question that came up regarding you know if a project were to pass when would it start and when would it end which I think is a that's a great question for the community to to understand in terms of what's a realistic timeline to get these this through SCD and to get get the materials and to get the bids and get everything in place and actually have the work actually done. So right now is a big hurdle. Review times are fairly short. Um we do have some design time we would need after a successful vote. >> Thank you. So, so we look at the project in a multi-phase budget potentially

105two years. This is depending upon both resolutions. Initial plan looks at construction as soon as 2026 and there's aspects of both um the roof propane conversion and the automation controls implementation to happen in 26. Other aspects of the project require a lot of planning. The mass of water requires coordination, approval and permitting from department of health, Minnesota county department of health and as well as the septic and DC aspects of that as well. So between the state and county approvals, those things require design time. So we be looking at those being in construction. So um and of course you know as I just maybe >> Sure. Sure. And I'll I'll touch base just briefly on some of the work that's targeted for 2026. It would it'd be great if we could promise to you this

106evening um the activities that we're going to achieve this summer. Um unfortunately there's components that are out of all of our controls. Uh Jim had touched base on the SED review times. So if if the community supports the referendum vote, um that then gives approval for the design team to prepare packages and then to submit to the state education department where they review it and approve it for the ultimate building building permit. Right now the timing is not so bad as Jim had mentioned, but there are variables that come into play there. Once that once that is approved and we have a a project with a green light, we can then at that time look at look at live real life what is the lead time for these variable these various components and also what

107does contractor availability look like. So when we think about things like appropate conversion which would be great to do this year we're certainly going to strive to do that. Today we know lead times. Two months, three months down the road, those lead times are going to be much different. And so we're going to keep we're going to be tracking all this very closely and we're going to pursue achieving what we can. Again, focus on building controls, propane, and then the roof at the elementary school. In regards to the the building controls, I'll lean on day automation just a little bit. And I'll mention that um it was shared that uh there's a state contract procurement avenue that's that's available with their services with the HBAC controls that allows the district and public entities to go

108direct to them with pre-established pricing which makes that process a little bit more efficient, more easy and uh kind of brings that at the at the top end for 2026 work at this point. understand that. >> Um the other thing to kind of touch base on is the concentration of our work. So similar to what you've seen at least in the last capital project that we were involved in delivering here at the district, the the the bulk of the of the work, the disruptive work we are going to be targeting for the summer months when school's not in session. Certainly, if there's summer programs, we'll be coordinating locations for that time of of operations and so forth. However, we're not able to achieve all of this work in July and August. We used to be

109able to achieve a lot more work during the summer precoid and unfortunately our workforce and other factors have limited that. We can still be very productive, but we're going to need to have activities during the school year that that's going to include close coordination with the district administration, the director of facilities, and so forth, so that we're keeping the construction operations separate from from the school, the active school day, the the educational process, and so forth. That may mean some some work at night. That may mean roofers coming in at 3 or 4:00 in the morning like we do on many projects. Um, that's something that's going to be in our shoulders, working closely with the district to play. >> Any questions? So, there was a lot of great feedback the district received and the

110board reviewed from the community in the survey. Again, thank you to everyone out there in the virtual world and thank you everyone in the audience here who did uh partake uh and fill out the survey and provide that value and feedback. This is just a summary of a couple of the key questions that maybe haven't been addressed yet in the presentation that we wanted to overtly discuss here um near the end of the presentation with everyone. Um so one of the questions here is what are the implications if prop one is not approved can prop two still move forward? The answer is if proposition one does not pass proposition two cannot move forward. So, Proposition one has to pass in order for Prop Two to pass. Can Prop one pass and Prop Two not pass?

111Yes. If Proposition one passes, which is the critical infrastructure, Prop 2 does not have to pass, right? In which case, we would not be doing the auditorium and the control system and the sidewalks. That would just uh be left for another day to revisit. Um, and the Proposition One components would be in that case part of the project. timeline. Uh, this is a good question. What's the rationale behind scheduling the project vote in March? Why not wait till May when there's a budget vote so we can get the full picture as a taxpayer? I'm a rental county taxpayer myself. I want to know what the full cost is going to be for for my family and my and my tax bill because this is something every year where the taxes tend to go increase in

112rental county in all of our communities and it's very expensive and it's very difficult to maintain a household. So the answer here for you is the district decided to move forward on this timeline because of the critical nature of these items. All of the items that have been identified in the proposal by the district are items that are identified as critical because if they fail, the school district may have to make alternative plans for instruction. Meaning, if the fuel tank were to fail at Berlin Elementary School, that could mean that your children would have to uh find a different space to receive an education. Um, people suggested places like churches uh or town hall or remote instruction. Those are real things that we'd have to look at in terms of planning if the fuel tank

113were to uh leak uh and become a a situation where we had to move students out of the building. Um, why did the district explore alternative instruction options in the community survey and how does this relate to potential school closure? Uh, so the survey is not meant to scare anyone. The survey was meant to tell the community that we have a pressing concern regarding our infrastructure and the district has a responsibility to at least put it forward as something that, you know, we the district feels should be considered for uh fixing. And if it's not fixed, these are items that potentially could again impact instruction. So I want to show you just want to show you some local schools in our region and area and what's happened lately in the news. Couple headlines uh recently

114from February, last month or so. I'll start on the left hand side. a sewage backup course to high school in Pittsfield. Um so the school was closed on says Wednesday, February 11th due to sewer backing up. You'll see um Mayfield Central School District on January 30th. They had multiple days of school closure. Um that was related to I believe water main break. There was a water issue in the building. So they had to go remote their instruction. >> Sorry. >> Use that microphone. The microphone microphone. Just use it. Yeah. >> Okay. >> And then on the right hand side, you'll see who's in Falls. Uh recently also had to repair from remote instruction. Um their heating system um was an issue in the building. So they had to move students a couple days uh believe

115that they were remote u impact instruction in the building. So this is just real information that's just happened recently. And what we want to do here in Milin is hopefully avoid these types of situations by planning now to um these address and look at these systems that potentially could result in school being shut down. What is the projected state aid allocation for for the BL project and how many years before the project hasn't paid off? And I'm going to turn to Andrew here just to fact check me on this. Okay. But believe the answer here is 75% state aid. We have 75.4% state aid that we would get on this project and it would be paid off over 15 years. >> Um, Andrew, anything else you want to elaborate with that? >> Yeah. Reconstruction projects

116like this, uh, the state pays the building aid over a 15-year period. So, we over structured the debt to align with the U aid payments so that the net budgeting on a year-to-year basis is level throughout. So it's um you know exactly right and 75% um you know aid ratio which means basically 75 cents of every dollar you spend is coming back in the door to the district. Um on a high level there are times where there are scope items that are not eligible. Um we often refer to those as wants. We start looking at things like press boxes, field houses, um things that basically aren't tour instruction. We've looked at the scope for this. Everything is infrastructure. Um assume that everything would be able at a state level which um because the the scope

117of work is all aid eligible work. So um there's nothing in here that jumps out as you know going above and beyond in the state would have any sort of concerns with that. >> Thank you Andrew. Also, I'll add as well with the off. >> Thanks. >> With the aid as well, I believe you can also receive aid once every 15 years on on an item. So if the fuel tank was replaced, you can see that fuel tank for 15 years one time. Correct. Well, so all these items that were in here have not been previously. >> Correct. So there' be no appropriation or >> um and last question, will the proposed capital project impact the district's ability to retain staff and provide opportunities for students? The answer to that is no. The as Andrew

118showed earlier, the district is allocating a million dollars from the capital reserve account to the project to minimize the impact on taxpayers. The money that's in the capital reserve is not money that can be used towards teacher salaries that comes from the general fund. So whether the whether the project passes or not, it's not going to have an impact um on retaining teachers um or keeping you know letting go of teachers. the district has made a conscious effort at this point in time to uh move forward with not having to cut staff. While we don't know the full full layout in terms of the budget for this year uh coming off of last year, um the goal is to expand opportunities. I would say that the pre kindergarten program this year expanding in two sections

119is one example of that. Uh but this project will not have any impact whatsoever on whether or not um you know staffing were changed for next next year. But is it's a good great question that was asked in our survey. So we want to continue to have dialogue and engagement with our community. U therefore as of tomorrow we're going to be opening up an email uh for the community for any further questions or comments you'd like to share. The email address is listed up there bcs capital project 2026 central.org. That'll be open until the day before the vote on March 16th. So if you have questions, please feel free to email. Uh certainly your feedback or questions can will also be related to the board of education as well as a way for us to

120continue that dialogue with the community between now and that vote date. And then our final slide here, this is a reminder you can find more information about the project. Everything is housed on our capital about our capital project on the district website. There's a QR code there. The capital project vote will be on March 17th from 12 to 9 at Berlin Elementary School. Uh there'll be a corn beef and cabbage um event there with food, a jazz cafe. Um and also students will be performing. There'll be live music as well. It's going to be a half day instruction for elementary students. They'll be dismissed at 12:00. I hope this presentation provided you a lot of information helpful information to help you make an informed decision on the proposal as a community member. Uh we hope

121that you will come out and you will vote on March 17th and I thank you for your attention to our presentation. We'll have an opportunity for uh for the comment and questions. I'm going to turn over the board right now first with questions, comments. >> What if prompt one doesn't pass? >> If prompt one does not pass, then prompt two cannot pass. So if prop one doesn't pass >> correct >> other the board first before we go to the community if you want to you certainly open up to the community. >> Thank you very much. Um, so we want to open up for anyone here on the panel for the community for those that are in attendance. Any questions that you would like to ask? >> Yeah, my name is >> 20 some odd years

122ago district had about a thousand kids that went through a process of consolidating the elementary schools down. in part because of a reduction in the six cost base which made a lot of sense at the time. Today that meant that we had two buildings effectively 20 years ago at a thousand students. Today we have 550 students roughly with the same two buildings. We're asked now to spend money on both buildings when I haven't seen the alternative which is to consolidate into one building instead. Can you comment on that? Just to clear your question, I'm gonna have the board Katie will respond. Um, your question is 20 years ago, this district went through a consolidation of some of its infrastructure. Two of the elementary schools were closed at the time, a little over 20 years ago.

123At that time, there were a thousand students housed effectively two buildings, two current buildings. Right. Today you have almost half of that at the state probably 550 something like that. And yet you're still being asked, we're being asked as taxpayers to support two buildings. At some point when you look at the school projections that was described a few months ago u when we did our budget vote it looked like that 550 was going to continue to climb. So why are we so why does it make sense to support infrastructure rebuilds of two existing buildings as opposed to consolidating into one building? >> No, my question I guess back to just are you asking then to move the students all K through 12 into the middle school high school building or into the elementary building or

124just say either way either way. >> Either way I'm looking at the numbers. >> Understood. So I think part of that fiscal advisor can kind of answer that. Um it was in 2010 I think that they started to sorry it was 2010 that they started to consolidate elementary schools and move and move um from four buildings down to three down to two. I think in fiscal advisors can probably comment on this is the new construction need when you don't have the population to support new addition. I think the buildings would have to have new additions put on to accommodate um the students to kind of se you know segregate the prek through let's say fourth fifth fourth or fifth grade and then the middle school high school so they're not all combined into one. I

125think you could probably Exactly. What I I think I'm getting that um the the state really really frowns upon aiding anything at if you have to do infrastructure work, additional infrastructure work in a building while simultaneously closing another one to your point exactly what you're saying declining enrollment. So there is a chance that if the district wanted to do something like that, additional work that would have to be done at either building, you know, a addition type thing, the state may say we're not paying for a penny of it. And that type of work is in nature more generally um expensive than the reconstruction work in general. So it gets more expensive with zero state aid versus reconstructing the space. I just will comment on current space right now utilization in the building working with

126principal Burnsley Miss Kalo as well is particularly in this building um we have zero classroom spaces that are that are empty and not in use in fact it's been a struggle with a couple of safety concerns with some spaces looking at um better usage and we just haven't options in terms of where we can put students um some doors and things we wanted to to fix. Um the elementary school I know is tight as well. I don't know Jody you have much over there in terms of legal room but it's we're pretty close to max and you're talking also about cafeterias u as well considerations there and also physical education gym spaces um so at least currently right now where we're at we wouldn't be able to just move students into a building as is

127right now um and utilize the spaces with the current moment if Rome would have to continue to decline significantly to be able to even consider that >> other questions do you have any additional Uh questions. He >> declined 50% in 20 years. Decline another 25% in the next 10 years. Do you really need two large buildings to accommodate 400 people or even less than that less than 10 years from now? Seems like a pretty expensive fixed cost base for such a precipitous. >> Thank you. Thank you. I'm Craig Moer. Uh, graduated from Berlin, work for the district and facilities and, uh, yeah, kind of a long history. I got kids in my daughter in elementary school, so I'm going to be next year. So, um, a few questions. And actually, this is the first time

128I've been in the auditorium in probably a year. And I see we have new speakers. Um, and I know we have a new, um, mixer and amplifiers, all that stuff, um, in the past, I believe less than 10 years. Um, and I got to say, everybody, I'm a sound engineer. The stuff that's going on with the microphones tonight is not due to this being a poor quality sound system. These are actually all high quality pieces of equipment. They're professional audio equipment and they just weren't really installed in the right way and they're not being utilized well because unfortunately people that are using them aren't trained. Um, and I just have a concern that we have in here and in the whole list of the items here, it's a it's a pretty small percentage, but $120,000

129for a performance sound system. We just spent some amount of money for brand new speakers and probably amplifiers and processing of that. We have a sound system that the other end of it could be utilized differently, could be set up differently. And I've talked to people about this before. Uh so I don't understand why that $120,000 is in and I'm just curious as to what it is. Uh it's $120,000 will buy you a lot of sound equipment or it'll buy you a small amount of sound equipment that's way more than what a school can handle because uh in working in my uh audio field, I worked in quite a few schools in the past year or so that have um systems that the school doesn't know how to use. They really have no idea how

130to utilize it. And they're spending $50,000 plus on a mixer that they don't know how to use. Now, the mixer that was put in here several years ago was $5,000. It's a mixer that can be used well and can make great audio, can work, do everything a school can need. So, I really don't understand why we're looking at $120,000 for a sound system upgrade. The lighting is a different story. I know that from experience in the school. um we're probably completely justified in 100 or 200 some thousand dollars for lighting. Um because that's literally completely falling apart. Um couple other questions and that's just a kind of a rhetorical question. I don't know if anyone has any answers if you have reasons why we're looking at $120,000 to replace things that are relatively new. Great.

131Thank you first off for your your comment. Um I'm going to do my best to answer that and I'm going to tag team here. uh with Jim and try to answer that first part if you don't mind. Um you asked about the money spent in here. Some said that was part of a grant from Smart Schools spot act that this money was able to allocate that just like the the cameras that we're trying to upgrade for security. That's that's where the funding came for that to be clear. I'm going turn over to Jim to speak to the the rest of the sound system. So developing pre-referative budgets, we don't know all the details yet, but one thing that we always hear is the message that you've provided that things are overdesigned for schools. Things are

132always um there just isn't a skill set because the equipment is so sophisticated. We had the good fortune about 15 years ago to come across our consultant. They weren't consulted at a time where it be hard to consult something because they were somebody that worked in high school on tours. And if in your world of AV, there's no ceiling. It can always be better or can always be better. And on my home district, when my kids were in school, they would hire subs to come in to teach band and music so that the music teacher could reprogram everything after the community. We we try to avoid that. So, we don't know all the details yet. So there's a budget on that that paper. Our consultant is going to come in and interview people and they're

133going to provide an absolutely appropriate system for what the functions are here. >> I don't expect, you know, that's a budget number for us to make sure that we can cover whatever we intend, you know, we're setting out to do. I I would hope that we spend a lot less on this project that we don't hear complaints like that because that is far too common in high schools all across the state. >> Yeah. And I would say and this is just something to maybe take a note on. Um the biggest issue we have here is that the mixer where the person's supposed to do sound is in a different room from where the speakers are. It's it's like trying to drive your car while you're sitting on on the couch in your living room. So

134maybe part of that money might be used to get a control board in the space so that you know the existing one >> or having a booth out in the room is and yeah I've been saying that for 10 years. >> So uh okay well thank you that that that makes a lot of sense and I I appreciate that. Uh >> and lighting controls too a lot of times you know. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> My home district as an example when my son was in course he was always in front of the stage. The stage was illuminated beautifully for >> Yeah. >> Everybody in front of the stage was dark. And I used to say there's got to be a button back there that says all on. Just push that button that says all

135on see everybody. But um but the criminal was so sophisticated that that couldn't happen. So we'll make sure that anything that's done here with the lighting is very user friendly. There'll be a number of presets so I can use for presentation for for instruction and for other performances that happen based on what actually happens. And then one other thing is also and this is for Rachel's ease is uh considerations for streaming because she does her absolute best but the audio microphones that aren't going into the system that you're streaming more meetings it's not great audio so that just is another thing and I know schools have focused more on that with co since but that's definitely needs to be a consideration. >> Thank you. Can I just follow up? Great question. We are fortunate that

136Miss Mona, our music teacher, is trained with the equipment. I know that she does consultation for it, but she's also trained in it. So, we're very fortunate to have her. you know, so when we work with the consultants and all, she's a perfect person for us. She's been very helpful with it. >> Thank you, Greg, for your feedback. Appreciate it. >> Any additional public comment? I just want to just again wrap things up by thanking everyone um on the stage here today for coming in and taking the time to share their expertise and about the project. So thank you all. >> Thank you. By the way, Um, at this time we will continue to move on. We do need to have a short executive session related to a um student and a employment of a

137specific personnel. We need to take action tonight during the meeting and I don't >> make a motion for executive session. >> Motion by Frank, a second by Penny. All in favor and again it should be short. Oh yeah, we have the rest of the gonna We'll stop the stream now and return after executive session.