001support and to consider those Staffing efficiencies if we could find them if our staffing were improved and the workload was distributed as it should be we might be able to use our IT staff to improve our um documentation of processes so things like incident response Disaster Recovery they could be formalized into a written plan which we are required to have and they can focus we on the skill Dev part of things shared services was another recommendation so we've already made some movement on that we have a Questar employee here two days week for the remainder of the year we met with Nar already to discuss a more robust Network support model and we'll sort of be able to pick and choose what we need or what would be best for our district we don't necessarily
002need to purchase the entire model as presented and we'll be having an additional meeting on that next week with n and I would jump in on a couple of things a lot of this was prompted because we knew we were going to have some change in staff and I would like to take a moment to acknowledge um Trish Weber Trish has been with the district providing us tremendous level of support in our very small it Department in Trish's last day with the district will be this week so I would like to acknowledge her and thank her as she heads off into retirement um additionally and the board has the entire report uh that they received earlier but one of the recommendations and one of the reasons I wanted to be sure to discuss this publicly
003this evening and at this point in time during budget development is among the recommendations made was to consider looking back to that director of curriculum position that we lost and perhaps tying that together with director of Technology responsibilities I thought it was important to raise that too because ironically I met the afternoon with our PD committee which is comprised primarily of teachers and our building administrators and Tom is our PPS coordinator and we really talked about how in order to move forward with robust curriculum development and implementation that group as a whole felt very strongly that we need to look at that position as well um so that something we will be looking at through the budget development process and it aligns with the recommendations that have been made in this report along with the
004desires of our professional develop one other piece of that is that we are also having a follow-up meeting with Ken hopefully next week and one of my hopes is that he'll sort of be able to help brainstorm and talk through some of our staffing options in that any questions from any board members on there's a lot of work and practice yet any questions board members thank you next item is have a motion for the minutes to the January 21st meeting Mee is there a second any questions discussion Andrew yes Kim Penny yes and yes I have a motion for the minutes of the special meeting of January 27th any motion there second second Andre second questions Andrew how you V yes Kim I have any yes yes the next meeting next second is a policy
005reading second reading on 5684 5731 5742 is there any questions of any of those call policies could I have a motion for the policies makees [Music] motion any questions Andre yes Kim yes Penny and next time will be the budget development presentation right so the theme for tonight is our Revenue projection for the 25 26 school year a good number of slides in this slide deck not all of them need to be explaining very but let's start with our tax so this before you is the basic calculation the first number you'll see up there is our starting Levy that would be the 2425 current year Levy and that gets multiplied by tax feas growth which is a measure of economic growth last year our multiplier was much higher I believe it was a 1.007 number
006so for that reason our revenue is a smaller increase from that um Factor alone next part of the calculation is where you remove what you paid in the capital L last year so these are voter authorizations and the way that our debt service um is paid each year so they reassess the payments that are due on our capital projects and our buses and they'll add them back into the formulator the 2% cap that we hear about frequently um applies to this part of the calculation however over the past four years inflation has been higher than 2% is 2.95 for the coming year so we cannot keep up yeah thank you um next section is our new Levy for the capital projects and bus purchases is a little lower than the last year that will also
007bringing our Levy down and there at the bottom of the tax tax levy cap the maximum we can collect with this formula is 10, 636,000 below that you'll see the total Levy per thousand and again this is a number we're require to report for reference when the actual taxes are levied they are levied according to town so I know one of our towns this year was $17 per thousand another $60 per thousand this is the entire assessed value in the school district divided for that tax cap is not necessarily a number you can take and figure out your own bill year toe increase based on this calculation is 9,928 which is a $1.24 increase the portion of that Levy that 29,000 is a 27 Cent per th000 increase again spread over the entire tax base
008the only thing that would change in this as we continue to work on our budget potentially is the capital Levy that 2025 Capital Levy if we got updated information about our debt service the amount we have to pay for our capital projects and Bo gr buses versus the state aid we receive in those categories an adjustment between the tax P or the state e they kind of work together whatever is not covered in state e gets covered in the tax levy for those older approved items this is the history of the tax cap over time the first year they imposed the 2% cap was in 2012 2013 and this follows the school's history over time you'll see in there wherever there's a one 0 2% that means the district had the potential to go up
009to 2% in the calculation because there were as 2% or more inflation any other year for example if you look at 2014 2015 you'll see there's a 1.01 146 multiplier as because inflation was 1.46% it did not reach 2% inflation and so the school can't calculate more than the actual rate of inflation or 2% which whichever is greater at the very bottom you'll see a role called selected Levy that is what the district actually levied for taxes the number above it would have been the cap the maximum the district could have Levi for taxes in the next sort of separated set of numbers you'll see dollars unclean and that is the difference between the maximum tax cap the school could have collected and the actual tax cap they collected um the increases in tax over
010time are along the bottom in yellow so if you were to just take those sort of flat differences in what the maximum collectible tax was versus The Chosen Levy you would come to1 mil 46,000 over time Colleen am I correct that has to do with the fact that a compounds year to year based on that calculation you showed on the previous slide so this number the 1 million number it's just straight adding the next slide will be the compounded number this is just what was the difference between each year what you're talking about is this one maximize tax Ling compounded over time so if we had gone to our maximum number each year that number would have then gone to the top and been the basis for calculation for the next year if you carried
011that through time the district could have collected $7 million which could have gone to reserves fund bals capital projects whatever the district may have chosen this doesn't mean that the district made poor decisions it means that this is potential and that we're going to think about it going forward because we do have Capital project needs and we should be making very strategic Reserve choices so when we select our tax cap which is the only area voters and the board really have the Choice over any choice order state aid is what it is so revenue is what it is um this is the area where we can make a strategic choice to go to the cab or not and include things like should we be building our workman's comp preserve should we be building our capital
012reserve maybe we don't want to tax to the top but we know we want to collect a little extra which in turn saves the taxpayer money when they do approve a capital project do we want to set aside money for reserves will we need it for safety in a future budget along the way a question came up about um Gap elimination adjustments there was a time in New York state where the New York state budget was at deficit and they chose to take that of school funding at that time um one of the reasons and we're kind of in a similar situation historically right now was that the employee liability reserves in many schools were high employee liability reserves were intended to pay for separation so when an employee either departs for retirement or otherwise
013we pay out anything du to them vacation leads let's say and that's what the eal was intended for um the controller found that many people including this District had a High ebow um I think when I looked at it over time time at one point we had two million sitting in our eil we don't have that many people retiring in a year to have that be a realistic number we've since moved into a capital project that's a good use of that money um but to offset that state debt the com controller said well why don't since your ebals are too high you should use that money to make up the difference and we're going to deduct money from each school and this is the total impact on burlin so nearly $7 million in the Gap
014elimination adjustment over those years that also could have gone to increased reserves um set aside savings we have for projects a little short overview about found AG EU which is a complicated formula however the state determines based on where you live the cost of living and other factors what it cost to educate a pupil in your area and then they multiply by pupil units pupil units are not enrollment they are enrollment waited for special ed and English language Learners so you'll see that our waiting historically has set that 794 pupil units and the multiplier there is the amount that the state intends to contribute to our basic Aid which puts us at that 6 million number 6 million and that is where we've heard with the hold harmless or save harm lless I should say
015um the danger of if that were not carried for we would be two million down in our funding however this year the governor decided to keep save Harless and to also includ a 2% increase historically we have seen a 3% increase we do certainly appreciate at least receiving the 2% which is 173,000 the coming slides are for reference and I'll talk about them a little more on the revenue comparison slide one thing I did want to point out about transportation is that this year we have about 121,000 more in Aid than we had last year and one of the reasons for that is that our bus purchases were not reported on the state a information system for prior years last year our Treasurer terara caught us up she as recently as yesterday and today found
016additional buses so these numbers we'll look at again once we have a better estimate of how adding those unclean buses to our state a management system will increase our so a little bit of we hope that we have building Aid we have OC's Aid excess costs is for special education text books Hardware software Library High tax a is just another element of a formula that was put in place um back in 2013 based on adjusted grow movement is just followed through every single year it's not a Le based a other revenues so we've had very good interest earnings looking at the history of that we are at this moment projecting $350,000 Medicaid this we kept flat for now we'll continue to assess that with our special education department that 95,000 was the opening number for
017this year kept it there U B's distance learning if we choose to pick up distance learning services in our budget this year there will be a corresponding potential to gaining Revenue uh in a prior year it was projected at 40,000 that placeholder right now we need to work with n if you make the decision to move ahead with distance learning to understand what our potential payback is and that is for teachers Who deliver distance learning so when we use our teachers delivered to other schools they pay a portion of that salary that we can count as Revenue our B's revenue is projected at 25,000 I'll be talking about that in one of the coming slides eate is the there are two eates which may eled to the second degre is the part that is helping
018our Network the first part is those 20,000 which has to do with our basic internet connection we get a refund or a reimbursement for part of that money each year in the past we did not collect this e rate money every single year and so this number could be a little lower than actual because we don't have multiple consistent years to base our projections on so this is a safe number right now we'll continue to look at that too penalty on late taxes again has historically gone up and down that's totally dependent on whether taxpayers pay their tax bill on time and um we don't want to assume they're not going to pay it we're not going to project it to high but historically I feel we can depend say 10,000 or so in late
019penalties and then missous items I'll talk about again on another slide so here is our state aid run came out in January was part our February presentation a couple things to be pointed out should anyone look at this Universal prek is not part of the general fund budget it is a grant budget it goes in its own little bucket and it does not fund anything in the general funds we cannot count that as Revenue our Bose aid number is right now projected on this run at 61,000 B A is based on a percentage however there are rules inside of B's aid for example Staffing they can only or only use for Aid purposes 35,000 of a staff members um salary who provide the service we don't know necessarily know which staff members are involved in
020which services to calculate that which portion of their salary counts which portion doesn't so bosis provides us with an estimate of what they believe the true number is also if anything was picked up in a grant that cannot collect po EZ so right now we're projecting that to be about 50 51,000 lower than shows up on the run because of Grants and because of some of those calculations um that are not for dollar reimbursements we will continue to work with B we may have added items throughout the year and that number could increase if they are aable items so we'll continue to look at whether or not it's safe to increase that the final number that is highlighted up there is our building Aid which you'll see is 1.8 million and on our previous slide
021I think it was in the 1.4 range because it is less 378,000 which is the current amount that state Ed is aware of related to our emergency project at be so the reason it's deducted is one it's being paid for from fund bounds and if we collect that for Revenue to run our next budget we may not be able to build our fund balance should we have another emergency project um and an additional reason is we don't know whether the timeline will bring in that full Aid or not we don't know whether the full expense will be met so there's some very there but the amount without that project would be the 1.4 million the comparison to this current school year and the coming school year and some of the differences tax levy is based
022on calculation Foundation Aid is entirely based on state aid um and then I have highlighted off to the side some of the changes that people might question why they don't match or why they went up or down again that boies a is based on our current advice given by boies the next number is our textbook Hardware software all combin and that does go down a little bit based on our enrollment it's a first student amount if you look at interest we're going up 150,000 from the opening Revenue budget this year and that's based on historical performance we've seen good Returns on our investments for our reserves and we would expect that continue although some percentage points have gone down throughout year we've accounted for a similar movement in the percentage points and we feel that
023350,000 is a safe number at this point our Bose refund is the next number that's lower so each year when the bosis sort of Shores up the total cost of their programming they would either give districts a return or there could potentially be a deficit in this case projected there to be 85,000 refund and some years we've had hundreds of thousand refunds some years we've had very little by this point in the year most of those refunds have they're done so we only got 7,000 instead of the 85,000 osies has told us that in the coming year we should expect the same they believe their numbers are pretty close to what they budgeted and there wouldn't be a large return put a little bit in there in case we do get a return but that
024is part of the risk of running the numbers right when you project a budget there's always an element of risk of going too high or too low and hopefully in the amount of risk you choose to take they sort of balance out late penalties again that's the historical fluctuations not going up to the maximum we've ever received and not going to the lowest number we've ever received just kind of getting the middle number and that very large hador miscellenous is an important one for us so if you don't run drivers and we won't be collecting revenue for that uh there is a Medicaid projection in our budget that has not been collected historically so we will not be including that budget line as for Medicare Part the pharmacy um reimbursements with the district is not
025eligible for our insurance refunds so RC Health Trust has again short up their pricing and then returned any rebates or overages to districts at the current moment in time they're telling us not to expect that in fact that the trust is running at a deficit and there could be an amount the district needs to pay out so we are not projecting any of that Revenue that we received this year I believe we got 148,000 in refunds and rebates and insurance this year we planning for a budget just looking at expenses across time here are a couple of numbers to consider our 2324 net expenses are important because that is the last full cycle we have we're planning a budget based on half of a year completed and moment so the most accurate full year we
026have is 2324 and then we look at if we're on Trend off Trend spending low spending below if um anything has changed historically to kind of come up with their numbers so that total net expense is reduced by the 430 and capital fund pass through because that's picked up from reserves that was not an expense to our general fund budget just passes through to make it to the um Capital fund where we spend it and then we had 58,000 in bu forp those are open purchase orders for services that have been provided but not paid or items that have been purchased but have not been paid out we have to receive a purchase before we actually pay a bill and those are sort of in transit items that roll over until next year our current
027year 2425 projected Revenue that is our budget number is 24 million our 25 26 projected Revenue total is 24.2 million so that gives us an additional nearly 250,000 over last year however we know our expenses are ever increasing so looking at the 2425 budget which is 25.5 million against our projected revenue for the coming year if we ran the same exact budget with no increases we would be 1.3 million down that we would have to make up in fund balance reserves taxes those are our only needs as we continue to get information about those Revenue sources information from the bosies continue to look at our interest on our bank accounts we will adjust these numbers in March and April for any new information so looking at our historical expense at the end of the year
028when the books are closed what did we spend and how did that increase over time to and this helps us understand whether our current available balance is a realistic number or not we can see from the history there that most years we were a million or more above the prior years's expense that we tell hypothetically just as a point of reference at this point in time before we get into the nitty-gritty of budget planning that our 25.5 million would probably be in the range of 26.5 Milli given that pattern so here are some further projection factors that we'll be considering as we decide how big that Gap is our health insurance increase is between 13 and 16% so depending whether you have Blue Cross motion over cdphp the total increase comes to about 425,000 our
029bosis increase will be about 3% that's information from the bosies they say that they don't have any categories that are going over 3% so that's very good for considering that the rate of inflation is 2.95% some areas will be lower some will be higher but the overall is 3% Nar isting 5% that brings us to an 83,000 over and above the current year then again there's the inflation so our current estimated available balance is 1.8 million over the last couple days I've been counting my colleagues to encumber everything that they know is coming up at least with an estimate and then I go through and I account for things I we're halfway through the year and we spent this much on Subs let's assume we'll lose that same amount in sub or if we know
030this some other expense is coming along let me deduct that from the available balance because I know it's not going to be sitting there we come to that 1.8 million based on the historical Trend that number is probably lower so we want to continue to assess that estimated available balance to understand when we close out these books if there's money that can be rolled over to run the next budget without picking up additional brand new money from our reserves or our funds and here are our current reserves 600 in workman's comp 560,000 in unemployment reserves our ERS 2 million range TRS is 364,000 employee benefit liability we did move some money for separations this year so that's a good use of that money um 116,000 and then our fund balance estimated at this point is
031$515,000 so it started at 1,1 14,000 and we've deducted a number I think was around around 500,000 for the estimated emergency project that is being funded from fundaments hopefully we don't expend that full amount and that number goes up the capital reserve is offset at the bottom because we cannot use that money to run a budget it is voter approved money that must be used on Capital project that brings us to our questions or information requests for our March presentation or something you didn't see and you would like to calculate let me know you're in the audience listening or at home you can also contribute and email me those questions and I'll them Mar presentation this Pro seems really simplistic but is last year's budget as difficult as it was are we in a repeat
032of that was not here for the full process I have some of the historical documents it we're not starting from the sizable negative considering the reduction at that time assumed reduction is a but we still have a gap to make up and we still have huge Insurance increases next time in March I will have rolled over the salar I'll be able to tell you what the difference between current salaries and coming your salaries are so that 1.2 that's over and above the revenue we expect we ran the same budget this year and collected our Revenue that 1.2 million does not include the increases for insurance salary most increases in inflation so we're starting at 1.2 down in Revenue hopefully we can roll over some of the revenue some of the reserves that we picked up
033to run the your budget that would be the best case scenario but we will be adding more to that we'll also be looking for efficiencies so I'm am asking my colleagues to go through their budget lines and really defend what they have there what will you be spending it on what your plan uses so we can really see what amount of discretionary money is in there to make informed decisions about where we can make reductions even if it's a little bit across the lines we have many lines of the budget and sometimes people say well it's you know it's just $500 it's just $1,000 all those things add up it could be a full ta's position over all those budget lines so really um doing some detailed budget work and asking everyone to work together
034to find those efficiencies so we can run a Le budget and if I could chime in on that we we're not out of the wood yet we're in a better place than we were last year remembering Sherry Fischer joined us last year and up at this February meeting and kind of got thrown to the malls um to defend the situation she didn't create um and Sherry did a lot of work going through last year's budget process to get the most accurate and up-to-date information but giving the timing at which she arrived that was a challenge to do she was kind of building the airplane and she flew it um Colleen has really taken the work that Sherry has done and expanded upon that you know I guess the good news is we're not starting in
035the best place but we are starting from a more informed place than I think we have been in a very long time from the presentation it shows that a lot of efficiencies have been helpful the increase in interest better Investments managing cash um you're right col those little things are not big so go to the staff look for little things they are any other question thank you is there any public comment at this time for any of the agenda items okay we are going to have to table one item I think on the consent agenda which one uh approval of claims audit calling December there's an error that needs to be fixed by the uh claims a okay we're going to pull the December claims audit on the consent gend a is there any agenda
036items that any board member like hold if not then could I have a motion for and approval of the consent agends minus the audit report in December I'll make it makes motion second Andre second it any questions and how vot yes Kim yes Penny yes n yes Katie is traveling so we have some comments here the president's report on behalf of the board i' like to announce the election and I'll turn that over to Maren at this time so I'm very pleased and and a email went out to all staff yesterday that that the district has identified a candidate for the superintendency I'm very pleased um I want to thank all those who participated in the process from the almost 400 folks who responded to our survey the nearly 20 members of the stakeholder committee
037who participated in interviews and the board of education for their involvement in the interview process as well well I've been happy to serve at Berlin in the role of interance superintendent I am thrilled to be handing over the Reigns to a highly qualified individual who will serve the district for the long term and I'm happy to assist that during the transition to the new superintendent in any way that the board or the individual determines thank you once again as a board we as a whole we' like to thank all those in the stakeholder groups in the community for their input along with Questar and Dr long for their dedication and time during this search process um and the board will be acting on the appointment of the March 6 Roundtable meeting that's we will move
038that meeting from bees up here to the middle school high school um for March 6 um I would like to give cudos for all the work that was accomplished by our facilities Department over the recent Break um and S I hope I'm not stepping at a report but a number of tasks that have been outstanding where were able to be addressed including the changing of water fountain filters the installation of the Cy oven and the Assembly of a poster printer that will be used districtwide for instruction for instructional purposes celebrations and promotional purposes uh thanks to S his crew as well as Tammy and her staff and the students in staff at middle high school for their patients during the temporary disrup of typical cafeteria operations before and after the Break um to make sure
039the other installation was possible I would also like to thank an schno and the CSC bargaining as the CSC bargaining unit president her negotiating team for the very professional and respectful manner in which they engaged with the district during the recent negotiation process uh I believe the M that appears on this evening's agenda for your consideration is a mutually beneficial agreement that will serve both the district and their membership well for the duration of the contract I look forward to a continued positive working relationship with CSA and their leadership and appreciate all they do to support our students and our schools um we alluded to the round table meeting next week in addition to appointing our next superintendent the Roundtable meeting will also be an opportunity for the board to hear some updates on some
040initiatives that have been undertaken this year Tom Olen and Samantha Higgins will talk to and on uh currently undergoing an mtss audit um provide a little overview of what mtss exactly intended to uh accomplish and what they are looking at why they are looking at and what they think the benefits to the district will be Jody Calo and Dave burnsley will provide a followup to the data and information they shared with the board in October they will include the most current data highlight areas of growth uh and we'll share the progress they have made towards the action plans and next steps they shared with you earlier this year thank you R Elementary um I know last month we talked about some initiatives that we're running and and working on um within our staff so one
041of those is adding some phic awareness programs into our Ela program so we are happy to know that those manuals have arrived at thees and we are working with Kim engl this month for her to come in and give our teacher some training um so they will be utilizing that in the coming school year so that we can have a full implementation in September we had our simulation testing at the end of um at at the end of January that went very smoothly it's a big undertaking um with having the amount of staff and the accommodations meeting student accommodations and it just gives us a really good idea of how that's going to run and making sure we have enough space and not enough people to accommodate all of those things so we were able
042to successfully do that and we feel much more at ease going into our testing season in April and May we just finished up our I ready winter assessment testing and have gathered that data I know I just sat with um Sam hiin today we kind of went through some of that data and she's in the process of scheduling some data review meetings for each of our grade level teams so we're looking forward to starting those in March some other things going on in the building so we had a Super Bowl can drive that we collected over 139 cans of food to help our Helping Hands food closet kindergarten also this year for the 100 day of school which was Monday they collected a 100 boxes of cereal to do a long Domino um event down
043the hallway which was very fun engag for everyone um they ended up collecting 160 boxes of cereal and all of that cereal again will be donated to our food closet to help our families and our community which is wonderful thank you for everybody who donated and helped accomplish that we have some fourth and fifth grade art Club students that are will have their work on display in the South Concourse of the empire ST Plaza in Albany which is very exciting shelle McDonald who's our our club advisor submitted some of those artworks and they're going to be on display there from March 3rd to the 23rd and they're also um holding reception for the students and the parents to attend on March 13th and lastly we are getting ready for our spring enrichment clubs for our
044third to fifth graders so we traditionally run up four weeks in in April um we are still looking for volunteers so we are putting it out to the community if any parents or community members are interested in coming on in after school and running some of those clubs um we would welcome your volunteer time thank you R middle school high [Music] school want to go Athletics first just a little recap on the winter season we had over um 12 teams that we offered for this season with over 150 student athletes involved we had our swim team finished six in team sectionals um we had our boys volleyball swim girls basketball and bowling teams honored by Nisa as scholar athlete teams to receive this award 75% of the roster GP gpas added together must be greater
045than or equal to 90% um we also had Noah bone steal and Myra Snider selected as honorable mention for the was League All Stars for our um our winner sports awards night will be held March 3rd right here um starting at 6pm uh I'd like to also thank the BNL Sports booster club for all of their support during our big uh Mountain Madness that's our big basketball event where we post games from 7:45 to 9 o' at night and also for making our senior night so special I also want to thank Rachel tresy for always covering all of our events and making it look so great on Facebook and putting it out to the public um we will be starting spring Seasons March 17th will be kickoff of spring we're going to offer we're hoping
046to offer all three levels modified JB and varsity for for softball and baseball if the interest is there the schedules are made so we're good with that um the signups have opened up starting last week and in one week we've al already have 54 student athletes signed up um something to look forward to for spring our varsity baseball team will be competing against Argy high school on May 10th at Double Dead field in Cooper and that will be starting 10:30 a.m. that's all I have any questions thank you guys thank you so February uh we began the second semester we're off to a strong start continue to focus on academic achievement attendance and student engagement teachers are working closely with students sure they remain on track and reinforcing ntss support for those needing intervention and
047speaking of ntss we have our new employee uh Sam Higgins Sam can you stand up for a second I want to acknowledge you publicly um Sam you've been here two months middle of November said yes no she's been here since uh and she's already made such a a strong impact as NS as coordinator but also so much more I think Jody I can speak for you as well U we're thrilled to have her so she's made big difference I want to just acknowledge her public thank uh principles listed this Thursday I know that Maddie already uh mentioned it um I'm really excited about we will host the principal list din to recognize celebrate our highest achiev students this event highlights academic excellence and perseverance reinforcing our commitment to a culture of high expectations the dinner
048is also an opportunity to engage with families and honor the's hard work and meaningful way uh I've said this before this is a great event not only to celebrate with the students and the families but this came through the students c um I would love to take credit for it but I'll be L it is uh with Nate Mr Ellis being uh advisor Karen dayen and with Ariel they have given the space for the students to speak about their feelings feel safe from doing it anding stent voice in the building Maddie I think that be fa say right that they give you guys that sense of freedom and security to do that so I think that's one of the main reasons why I'm so happy about the dinner so speaking M Ellis on May 13th
049is math night March March I mean what I say I'm already thinking about the spr uh March 13th uh is math night we're really going to push uh it out to the public this year because was uh Mr Ellis and students worked so hard on it and last year attendance was low and really they deserve uh to have a big crab because they do so many things uh in it so I hope uh people will attend this year to recognize and honor our students who put a lot of work into it BLT updates building level team updates discipline subcommittee we are streamlining our discipline process to ensure greater consistency and efficiency in how we address beh this includes clear structured consequences the refined referral process and emphasis on restored practices where appropriate the goal is
050ensure that all staff are aligned in their approach creating a more structured fair and effective discipline system you as a a board uh you'll be asked hopefully in July um and I don't want to step on anyone's Toes by saying that uh our code of conduct which will reflect the hard work of of uh of the what's it called stakeholders so that's very important formed a table subcommittee recently members of the form the table team I.E Ariel Gilbert and parent uh TR Webster went to who it FS to gather insights on their Agriculture and sustainability programs inspired by this we're exploring the idea of students building the greenhouse to provide handson agricultural learning experiences uh we feel that we have students available that can help uh uh construct that um however I've not gone through
051the expenses or anything like that yet so this is just an idea don't kill me yet uh this is just a concept thatt meeting we spoke about today uh we are also looking into grants to fund School Gardens and sustainability projects integrate science business and nutrition education into our curriculum um teacher handbook we are the fin stages we started last year of completing a teacher handbook this building hasn't had a teacher handbook in at least 10 years okay this lines with my goal of consistency Clarity and transparency in the process procedures again when we got here uh St say that we were lacking in a lot of those areas so we are trying to be consistent throughout the building uh with great and appropriate processes procedures a clearly defined handbook will ensure everyone is on
052the same page regarding policies expectations best practice unification of the building student voice subcommittee we're working on a building wide unification initiative to enhance student voices and Foster a stronger sense of community this includes making student work more visible throughout the school incorporating student input and decision Mak the goal is to strengthen school spirit and ownership ensuring that students feel heard valued and engag in shape in their school experience and data using data to drive instruction in student GR subit that uh oh excuse me I'm sorry that's the subcommittees I want to talk about data and how we're using it data chats become a key component of our instructional decision making teachers have actively using assessment data to make hitp curric curriculum adjustments ensuring that instruction is tailored to meet student needs through self assessments
053and progress modeling students are becoming encouraged to take ownership of the learning helping them identify areas of strength and growth the focus is on using real time data to guide structal practices intervention strategies and student Support Services to improve overall achievement we are redefining what data we use meaning traditionally it's been State data and diagnostic tools like I already it should be so much more 10 years pH uh formative summative assessments so we are incorporating heck of a lot more data points to get the whole CH it is shortsighted just to use a few items uh uh data points and uh you know which data points you use so we're trying to be much more round well rounded and what we use to uh assist students uh May 30th not March May 30th we're going
054to have a mock accident events here in the building in collabor ation with the r County Sheriff's Office we will hold a mock DWI accent for students attend in Pre 11th 12th gr this is a realistic demonstration of the dangers of impair drive and reinforce the import so making safe choices during prom seon so I've done this in previous districts I've run about 10 of these events and what we do is we'll have um donation from one of the local garages of the car that was in an accident we have we have approxim four students in the car before this all be uh communicated with parents well ahead of time we'll have to get clearances but the students will have a makeup on that depicts blood it will have scenario of unfortunately uh what happens
055in the DWI accident we're not trying to Sugar Code it the students need to um and we'll have the contributions of BR County Sheriff's Department New York State Police uh we've already procured a helicopter from BR County Sheriff's Office that will be on scene along with our local fire uh departments and ambulatory uh Services we will have um one of the law enforcement uh uh officials narrate as students you know as the accidents going on what to do and Jo of Life stuff like that and then we will have a debrief meeting in here where we are securing some people um that uh will present so for example when I was principal at walkill we had four students drive into school uh got an accident when I got in scene there was one student that
056was on the ground that was fortunately dead another student that was dead in the car Jo of life was uh used to save the lives of uh of two other students and the mother and I the one student car we went around a while we presented to different schools about that she spoke from a parents point of view I spoke from my point of view as a principal but we were drawing on stage by law enforcement uh and actually people from hospitals it was very impactful so we're trying to do the same thing for our students um it's not something that we shot away from because unfortunately is a reality and if we don't discuss it uh maybe students may not have knowledge so we're hoping that they will listen and and and take it
057and then finally and I'm going to really get into this uh next week's Round Table just quick graduation rate State data came out our most recent graduation data Berlin graduation rate last year was 89% State average is 86% students with disabilities here graduation rate was 55% and economically disadvantage student graduation rate 79% while our overall rate remain strong we recognize need for more targeted support for our students with disabilities population and we're refining and structural strategies diversifying the structure and increasing intervention efforts to help more students cross the line successful additionally and I know we spoke about the budget I say this from my perspective no one else we must expand programs that align with the students interest longterm aspirations such as house Career and Technical education program and business courses yes business coures even
058that business is top college major among students we don't know what for one business I mean we have a MTH Financial fin but more traditional business courses um I understand that there are restrictions but definitely like to explore this as a cabora for um the students interest longterm expirations really need to be taken as we move forward our Focus remains on academic Excellence student safety and create the unified engaged School culture I thank you the board for continued support I thinkk I think she the world adire and I look forward to share any questions thank you thank Services all right there we good evening so at the December board meeting the board had requested some data on uh the counter students with disabilities and general education students in co- talk classes my sincerest apologies for
059missing the January board due to illness and I assure you i' much rather would have been here I did share some of that data I passed that out to the board earlier I just want to take a moment to kind of Orient you to what you have in front of you so you'll see on in the list all of our integrated class settings we'll have a count of our general education students and a count of our students with disabilities or our students with I APS as well as that classes total and then the percentage of students with disabilities in that section I did also include I want to note that I have included the consultant teacher direct classes in this list as well as they are also integrated classes um but are not considered co-
060talk classes but I I did want include those to make sure that I captured everything so at the bottom you'll find an overall median and average percentage of students with disabilities across all of those classes uh as well as at the very bottom uh the average and median for U students with disabilities excluding those consultant teacher classes um I kind of calculated some of this information based on um New York State guidance uh for a 50% or less ratio for students with disabilities in co-taught classes that's why I calculate it separately as well um to separate that out for you as you can see our average class and our our medians are slightly above that recommended ratio and we see a lot of variability across our sections uh with a low of 16.67% of students
061with disabilities in a section all the way up to 81.25% um depending upon the course I do want to knowe that that is a consultant teacher class so that is not covered by that 50% recommendation from the state as they do not have a recommendation for uh ratios for consultant teacher direct classes but again they are comparable and integrated classes and thus I feel that they should be both considered some of the reasons I think for that high variance one of major challenges of a small District when looking at any statistic uh is really our small sample size Lees us really vulnerable to variation uh that you would naturally expect to see um in any group of people and it's not something that's absorbed by that higher cter of students where you might see if
062you have say a thousand students in a cohort you know small changes and variations are going to be lost in the statistics whereas if you have 100 or fewer students those High those differences are is going to really come out um you can also see that every single one of the classes that I have listed on the side are single meaning that that class only runs one section The Only Exception there is fourth grade which has two sections of code talk classes and the reason I bring that up is that again with that small sample we don't have multiple sections where we can balance these numbers across so it makes it more challenging to maintain stable consistent ratios um for any given offering so essentially the way that it ends up is that any student
063who needs that support within that cohort will be in those sections meaning that it's highly susceptible to variation between student enrollment changes in needs for those students based on their IEPs from year to year Family Mobility so having a single family with multiple students moving in can really impact them as well um so we see a lot of variation across across those sections because of that um the Alternatives can be challenging especially as we talk about the budget season if we wanted to look at really cutting those ratios down for some sections that would again be really subject to variation and something we would have to revisit every single year as classes change and teaching certification requirements across those different cohorts make maintaining Staffing for those variations very very difficult we would also you know
064have to look at those those different options on an annual basis so that would be one option and again that would include Staffing increases and as we discussed you know and we're during the budget season and that's a concern as well but I did want to bring that up as one way to mitigate some of those variations and the challenges associated with that give a little bit of a crch for seeing that um does anyone have any questions from the board about information I've shared do you have any idea how how do we compare with other school districts simar S I believe that we offer a really nice Continuum of services now uh with the addition of the Stars program we offer a lot of different options to students which also contributes to some of
065those size challenges so for example if we were a district that only offered co- talk classes we did not have a selfcontained program perhaps we had very limited if any resource room supports we would see more students potentially in those Cod talk supports because those are the only supports that we have which would equal out those numbers uh however it would mean that students are not necessarily getting the level of support that they might need most appropriately um so I I do believe that we offer a very robust Continuum I'm really excited about the starsb I I've talked with you all about it quite a few times um I can certainly look to get some more information for you about the ratios of other districts if they're willing to share that information with me um
066I I would anticipate that we're going to see some similar variation that they have which makes comparisons at a more granular level kind of difficult because of that variation but I can certainly reach out to uh neighboring districts and nearby districts that compare to us demographically to see if they're willing to share that information also in the limited time you've been here typically if a students identified with an IEP do they ever work out of it or does it follow all the way through school to the services completely through school I will say that for the most part they do tend to stay classified um there is not a lot of turnover but it does happen and I see that in two different ways so one way to look at that is to say well
067if we have these supports are they truly working if we're not seeing that reduction in students who are identified on the flip side of that I would argue that we are identifying students who have disabilities and if we're doing a good job with our identification we are caping students who truly have disabilities that are not necessarily going to be outgrowing those or changing those because of certain supports I guess I'm pushing back is is we're putting these resources in is students performance helping them that they're more successful I would argue yes I I struggle to answer that from a factual standpoint because it depends on what information you like to look at no no just in general you know why reports is helping students to be more successful gu I would say yes absolutely um
068from a number of different supports again I'm going to go back to the Stars program since I know the board has gotten a lot of information recently about uh the development of that program and some of the things the students are doing and working on um those are life skills focused classes that have a lot of value to students who struggle in those areas and who would otherwise not receive a lot of direct instruction in some of those areas if they were for example in Co talk classes where it is assumed that you're at a certain level of development when you're in a fourth grade class that you may not be working on those skills that they otherwise need support in is there anything in particular you'd like more information on or DET trying to
069get a feel the data provide absolutely appreciate that any questions I would also like to share a little bit um coming up at our next board meeting uh I would like to talk with the board if if they're open to that about the rest of our Continuum of services and a little bit more about the detail of those different supports that are provided I know I've shared a lot with you all about stars I just kind of mentioned another couple of supports to you tonight about resource room and I'd love to go into some more detail to talk to you all about what Berlin offers and what our consumer services looks like if that's something the board would be interested in I'll defer that to and Katie all right follow Katie when she gets back
070all right wonderful thank you thank you buiness office very briefly I have two points to so in the year 2020 I mentioned in my slideshow some of the buses were not recorded on the a in resistant infix we also were recently working on a maintenance of Maintenance of effort calculator which is a calculation for our special ed Grant funds 611 and 16 619 federal funds and we saw a large discrepancy that was causing us to essentially not meet our maintenance of effort obligations and ultimately we found that the entire 2020 year needed to be re-entered and so I'm sing big thanks to Tara our treasurer for working on that and Michelle herin and the special ed department for coordinating with us on that and also to the transportation department and Rick leer for helping us
071get those buses collecting a that's it thank you so she's nominated me partnership partnership yes uh Janette attended a character Ed assembly on Valentine's Day at thees to reintroduce bus merits to the burlin elementary students this is very similar to what they already do in the classrooms in school but it will be specific to bus instead of just handing out bus MERS to those who ex a responsibility respect safy and have them bring them at the schore Dr a bucket for chance prize uh they sign contracts with families explaining how it works students will sign and return the contracts um stating that they've joined the program um our goal is to Foster better relationships between the students their families of staff and involving the pendant uh hope hopeful to reduce some behaviors as well as
072reduce the amount of referrals on the bus as the progress we will keep you updated uh a mural we last year we had students come down to the transportation department and start mural um caller from mural as Jette says uh they were not able to finish due to time getting away from us late start uh there has been a new group of students that are coming down this year uh to continue on Pro on the mural get that finished up for us so we can uh be proud of it not look at a half finished project um we'd like to thank Shannon and Samantha for letting students come down and help us out there um GPS trackers I know Katie had asked about GPS trackers um with pool stops we've sat down we've had three
073uh web um web meetings with different companies um we've narrowed it down to two that we were interested in um we have a packet we didn't bring anything with us today we'll have to talk to Colleen um budgetary wise see if be able to fit it in or not um and uh I think that's about it um Sports as we already stated has come to an end for for winter take a little breather before we get into the spring and uh on a final note we did take possession of the two minivans um that the board approved last year um and that's Ved sure thank you go Browns was nice and let Transportation go first so um as Moren alluded to we did get the uh be up and installed over the February break um
074Tammy and her folks received the training on that today and I'll let her talk about that but it looks like a a really nice addition to the to the kitchen and hopefully we work out very well so along with that there's always things that break um so in the last couple of weeks we've had some issues with the walk-in crew her own Elementary School um where it wasn't Cooling properly it led to the replacement of the compressor motor mechanical the digital temperature control switch and a few other parts it's operating as it should currently um but I was also made aware of the fact that it is aging equipment and that the district may want to consider upgrading sooner rather than later definitely something that we'll have to take under an advisement and uh have
075discussions about the future budget one way you know that equipment has been there for quite some time time so it is age um I want to we have a representative from FM Global who's scheduled to come in in a couple of weeks to perform the buy annual inspections of the boilers in both school buildings and that's for our insurance carrier and also to keep us in compliance with New York state regulations and finally I just want to take a moment to really publicly thank the building and ground staff for their hard work during the recent snow and ice storms um they worked extremely hard chopping ice curing snow from the sidewalks at both schools um plowing got done by years truly and I only got the truck stuck twice so so you all it all
076worked out well as we all know it's been a tough couple of weeks with the the storms but hopefully spring is coming so thank you thank you service okay as we mention about the oven so was installed we had a a trainer from rationale who came out this afternoon however there is an issue with some connection and I'm not really sure what it is so service tech has to come out tomorrow morning at 8:30 so I'm hoping fingers crossed that we are able to sur hot lunch tomorrow I I don't really know because I'm not sure exactly what he needs to do it was working last week when he was here so I I'm not sure now what has happened so um so let me just explain to the board so when the appliance when
077gas appliances come through their their um Plum and and programmed for natural gas so then they have to be reprogramed he knew this the other day they did work to the ovens to be able to convert that and what they think is that the programming um to operate some of the equipment internally that it didn't accept the pro programming correctly so the technician feels that he comes in the morning and resets that programming that the ovens won't work the way that they should so they worked the other day when they were stalled they had test them and go through everything 100% and make sure it was checked off and they did operate the other day but for some reason allow components to work hopefully by lunchtime tomorrow'll be having let's hope so because um so
078we had to serve cold meals uh we did it the 14th the 24th and the 25th and today the kids were just we are tired of this whenever we have real meals so um I mean we gave them plenty of options we had salads and parets and several different Bento boxes and sandwiches and they just don't like cold meals so they're they're looking forward to having their hot meals back so um hopefully that's tomorrow for them um so the trainer who did come out today it was just a quick overview um just really to get it up and running and show us you know how to do some things I went to skyville a couple weeks ago and met with their cook and their director and their cook is willing to come out and spend
079a couple hours with our staff so I'm going to call their director and see if about getting that set up um for us so that we we really know what we're doing um in about a month we will have a chef from R out who will come out and he'll spend about four hours here um and really teach the staff how to um use the oven but um it really should make a big difference it it doesn't just bake we can steam we can air fry um this oven does a lot of different things so fingers crossed that we get that going up tomorrow um one thing I do want to say is I really want to thank the ladies in the kitchen um you know they they really went out of their way they
080had to go back and forth outside in the snow and the cold to get access to Refrigeration we had to use the fax room um so they were back and forth over there we had to use the cafeteria to serve um and they they did a fantastic job they really stepped up their game and I'm very proud of them and I also just want to make mention to thank Alisa Hammer Smith because she had to move her classes to other rooms in order for us to use the class room um I recently submitted an application for the after school snack program of Child Nutrition I received an email back uh Friday that they're looking for more information so I'm going to get that that over to them this week uh at the beginning of February
081I appli for the no kid hungry New York grant to get equipment for our second breakfast program I originally applied for 177,000 and I received an email on Friday that uh we received a grant for $10,000 so I have to put together got a plan on exactly what I'm going to use the money for majority of the money is going to be spent on an actual cart um the right now we just have this old dented up cart that there's no room on it we have to serve all cold meals because I don't have anything to keep things hot so the part I'm looking for will have hopefully Hot Wells cold Wells we with breakfast sandwiches um you know for that second breakfast uh for kids to enjoy um as Sarah mentioned the compressor went
082down the Ary school um so I had to put together a list of food loss and I gave that to col to see what the insurance company anything they would do about that the same day the compressor went down the portable warmer went down here at middle high school so we went without that for a couple of days um technician came in and due to the age a wire had deteriorated so he had to fix that and we are so far good with that uh the 25 26 school year Commodities list came out in January we will receive this year appro next year approximately $32,000 in commodity money I've allocated $4,000 to our pilot program which is where we get our New York State apples from uh $113,000 to our favors program which is where
083we get all of our fresh fruits and vegetables from and the remaining balance we get what we call our ground boox items we start with about 80 items that they want us to choose from um and then after all the districts put in their wishes they narrow it down to about 30 items so that list is due March 7th but I will have that completed by the end of the week working with n lisf for a middle high school Pi Day Challenge for the students uh March 14th is Pi Day but because it's superintendent's conference day I've moved it to the 13th and we're calling it a prei day um so Nate and some of his students are working on a question related to pizza and uh whoever they'll put in their answers and we'll
084pull three or four winners and at their their request they would like a free slice of pizza as their if they win um and lastly the kitchen staff will be meeting with a master instructor from Child Nutrition on Friday March 14th for training it's an all day training and we'll cover topics from offer versus serve requirements sanitary Night Safety those sorts of things and um very fortunate the training is free any questions thank you we want the facility committee met before the board meeting um progress the facility committee is as follows the district is in the separation mode with our current architect SEI seep forward different path uh We've identified emergency project for elementary is pretty muched doors insted and we're waiting for one more proposal from a contractor we should be able to make
085a decision on that and hopefully move that forward and so hopefully in the next few weeks thank you and we identified the $100,000 project at bur Elementary which district will be soliciting an architect to complete that $100,000 project anything else you did I forgot and it was a very good meeting thank you for everyone that attended is there any public comment no there'll be round table meeting March 6th here at the Burl Middle School High School auditorium 7:15 our next regular meeting will be Tuesday March 18th at burin mpal high school at 7:15 have no executive session is there any oh can't forget that item 12 that um we have here the do which I need the motion for make motion is there a second second any discussion andry go yesim yes P yes oh
086yeah they voted last night and I thought it was important enough that it warranted its own acknowledgement on the agenda absolutely in light of some of the feral Federal exective orders and requests from the US Department Ed we have been asked to review some of our policies um looking over the policies that we have Mar inone to as well for the the only one that I can see that we fall under uh their request seems to be on policy 7552 so I just wanted to see if we want to um I know we're updating our policies as it is we want to do a first reading on it or put it for first reading for the next meeting yeah I guess my only question would be at present right now because of the differences between
087federal law and state law we're being cautioned to not move too quickly uh by both nispa your organization nisus our organization and our own legal council I'm not sure if I shared with the board The Memo from our legal council if I did not I will do that um what I would like to do is see first if this is a required policy because not all policies are you mentioned another one earlier I would also like to reach out to um I'm G to get it wrong is it Eerie one that we do our policies with done to see if they have a proposed revision that we could look at and also have Council review it so if you would allow me the opportunity to do all three of those things before the next meeting
088then I can report back on all those three things and we can make it DEC yeah I I know that we have received some communication from New York state from lawyers those SE um saying that we shouldn't jump ahead because it's an executive ENT of law I do want to bring up that we have set presidents in this district and York State at large to follow executive orders which is what we did through the entire pmic none of those are laws that all executive orders we have to make sure that we are not being prejudiced towards who executive orders we following if we following executive orders we must follow ex now do that that would be great thank [Music] you any other board members ifone there's no exective session can I have a motion toour
089motion second all in favor I like to thank everyone for coming up there's a lot of information tonight a pretty ly meeting thank you [Music]