Board of Education Meeting - March 24, 2026

001This is a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education. Good evening and welcome to our Board of Education meeting tonight. Um our president Larry Davis is off on vacation, so I'll be taking his place today. So, you might need to give me a minute if I um if I stumble. Um we'll begin by calling the meeting to order. Our first agenda item is public participation. If you haven't done so already, please put your name on an index card and um provide it to Dan Goldman, who is sitting right there at the front. Um we will be calling those interested in speaking one at a time. Please remember the comment should be limited to 3 minutes. We will signal you at 2 minutes that you have 1 minute remaining and then ask

002you to wrap up when you see the red note card at the time limit. We will also remind you that comments should not identify specific staff or individuals. Okay. Let's see. So, the first um public speaker today is Mark Diggory. Sure we could do that. You got it. Okay, thanks. Um good evening. Uh I'm here tonight on behalf of the residents living adjacent to the Brighton School athletic field along Brooklawn Drive, Lynwood Drive, Hollyvale Drive, and the surrounding streets. The document I have provided has been reviewed collaboratively neighborhood and I am submitting it for inclusion in tonight's meeting record. It outlines our concerns and proposes practical mitigation measures to address the project's negative impacts on nearby homes. The document is organized into several key sections. These recommendations are not exhaustive and additional impacts and mitigation

003proposals may be brought forward by others in the community, including those related to the environmental monitoring, accountability, and operational oversight. First, we outline the context and the background, including the lack of opportunities for meaningful community participation and input prior to the design's finalization and contracting. Given the project's close proximity to residential homes, the need to for mitigation was predictable from the earliest stages of planning. Yet these impacts were not identified or communicated to the community as the design evolved, limiting community feedback that could meaningfully inform the environmental review process. Next, we identify the primary areas of concern, including impacts such as light, noise pollution, environmental exposure, student accessibility, and loss of overall community character. These are not abstract concerns. They are immediate, day-to-day impacts experienced by residents living directly adjacent to the site. Some of

004these impacts preexist and are intensifying as site preparation and landscape changes occur. The document outlines practical measures as examples of expected mitigation responses. These include evaluating lower risk turf materials, adding infill containment systems, improving pedestrian access, establishing structural vegetation berms, and implementing lighting controls to reduce impacts on nearby homes. These recommendations are drawn directly from topics identified in the environmental rule and a review and discussions with community members concerning issues that impact community character, community health, and well-being. Finally, we can provide these recommendations. They do not eliminate the need for the district to bring forward thoughtful mitigation proposals. While the community has identified potential solutions, it's the responsibility for communicating, designing, and implementing effective mitigation ultimately rests with the district. It is critical that these include, at a minimum, selecting a lower risk turf or

005infill material such as EPDM rubber as a bare minimum instead of recycled tire. Providing infill barrier fencing on the proposed fields. Addressing neighborhood student access and accessibility. Taking steps to drastically reduce the existing and future light and noise pollution. Implementing procedures to monitor that these continue to operate as intended. We offer these recommendations in good faith and believe it is now in the district's court to bring forward meaningful, well-developed proposals that directly address the proximity-driven impacts identified in both the environmental review and this submission. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um the next speaker tonight is Kim McGarry. Good evening. Um I'm coming with a proposal to the board. Um Cornell University's Turfgrass and Safe Sports Field Program has a grant currently entitled Enhancing Governance and Stewardship of Youth Athletic Fields to Maximize Safety, Environmental

006Stewardship, and Community Well-being. These um this team has expertise in assessing the viability of natural and synthetic fields given the numerous factors school districts face, such as cost, maintenance, um player safety, field use, and environmental effects. I believe that the decision for the turf was a bit short-sighted. You know, I don't expect you as a school board to be experts in environmental health or even human health, but I have to say that my blood boils when there are comments about scientific information being called opinion. It is not opinion when journals are publishing information on this. And it makes me angry as a scientist, but it also makes me angry as a parent of two children currently in your school district and one who will be in your school district soon enough, that the respect for

007science needs to be there. Today, we are talking about budgets also. And again, the turf decision was short-sighted. We have a short-term gain in some athletic time. However, in 2023, the European Union already banned rubber rub crumb rubber infill from artificial turf fields due to microplastics. So, what's the what's the viability, the long-term viability of having an artificial turf field? Are we going to put this in and then they're going to ban all these products that we need to use? And now we're stuck with this field and the disposal and maintenance of it. So, I really think that there needs to be an educated decision. I don't again expect you all to be experts in all of these things. However, the lack of taking this information to heart and truly considering it is so disheartening.

008I I just question if knowing all the information that you know now, is there a different decision that could have been made? And I hope we entrust you with the safety of our children, but we also entrust you with our tax dollars. And this is a very big expense that our tax dollars are going to, and I just don't think that enough due diligence in the long-term thoughts of just the environmental impact, the cost impact of all of these are taken into consideration. I know that there's discussion about going over the tax cap and that money is coming from different places, but the money is ultimately still coming from us, the taxpayers. It doesn't matter if it's a different pot of money. It is still money coming from your community. And I have three young

009children and I can tell you this, I just anecdotally said to them, "Do you like playing on turf? Like is this something that you would This is where we go and fly our kites. It's a field that is used by the community at large." And they said, "Mommy, why would they do something like that?" You know, this is coming from young children that have the foresight to understand that grass should be a viable option, and I hope that you consider the discussions with Cornell because they are literally the experts. This is all they study. This is their bread and butter. And they have the expertise, and if you aren't going to listen to the community about the science behind all of this, I hope you will at least have a discussion with Cornell. And I

010can give you the contact information. I'm happy to connect you. I've had lots of discussions with them, and they said they would be willing to discuss with our school board um cuz that is what this grant is for. It's to help through these discussions, all the pros and cons of all the different aspects. I don't feel like this was done when it should have been, but there's still an opportunity to do it now. Thank you so much. >> Um the next speaker tonight is Tracy Pasquantonio. Hi everyone. Hi. I'd like to address the Board of Education specifically tonight. I understand you're all here unpaid as elected volunteers. You're taking time from your personal lives to represent our community and I appreciate that. I've always appreciated the Boards of Education here where I live and where

011I worked. I understand that one of your responsibilities is community relations. Being a liaison between the public and the school system, representing community values and priorities. I also understand specific to Brighton that you all oversee the priorities of the Brighton Blueprint. One of these priorities is operations, creating a safe and sustainable educational environment including oversight of capital improvement projects. I know that the majority of you voted for the current turf project design. I also know it could be tricky to represent different perspectives of a specific situation. Given that a number of your neighbors, me being one of them, have been here at meetings for months, speaking, sharing information, emailing you all with our concerns. Are you asking questions about the project with us in mind, too? Are you reflecting on decisions that have been made?

012And are you currently thinking about this project and possible changes that could be made? I hope you all are considering our concerns now for the project and for future projects. We're your neighbors who you also represent. And I ask that you acknowledge our concerns, continue to ask questions on our behalf, too, offer suggestions, and advocate for areas of compromise. I hope we aren't being overlooked by our Board of Education. Truly hope. And I also truly appreciate the importance of your role in our school system. Thank you. Thank you so much. >> Thank you everyone for um coming to our meeting tonight and um being part of our public participation. Um we're going to move next to approving the agenda for tonight. Can I have approval of tonight's agenda? So moved. Moved by Karen. Second? Second.

013Seconded by Sue. All in favor? I. Um the next item will be to approve the minutes from the March 10th, 2026 meeting. Can I have um a motion to approve the minutes. So moved. Moved by [clears throat] Kerry-Lynn. Second. Second. Seconded by Clayton. All in favor? I. Thank you. Um next on our agenda is an update on the capital project work being done at the high school. So uh very pleased to introduce two experts tonight who are coming to give us some perspective, some advice and recommendations, and walk through some emerging conditions that we've discovered at the site. Uh particularly the project that's been spoken quite a bit about, and are looking forward to sharing with you what we found out, when we found it out, all the information around it, and what some recommendations

014are to work through again uh some challenges that occurred with the site. Uh presenting first and at the podium right now is Brian Sesilinski. Brian's a senior principal and one of the founding members of SEI Design Group with over 35 years of experience in planning, designing, and building of commercial, municipal, medical, and educational facilities. And the second person presenting to us is Michelle Patterson-Witmer. Michelle is the operations manager and principal for Terracon's Rochester and Buffalo, New York offices, overseeing environmental and geotechnical consulting, geotechnical laboratory services, construction materials testing, inspection, and drilling operations. A New York professional geologist with 30-plus years of experience, she has led environmental assessments, soil management projects, brownfield cleanup program investigations, remedial alternative evaluations, and remediation efforts for soil, groundwater, and vapor intrusion intrusion. Michelle's a vital technical liaison for developers, contractors,

015property owners, municipalities, and legal teams to facilitate safe, sustainable, and productive redevelopment of impacted properties, and provides regulatory guidance to work collaboratively New York's New York State regulatory agencies. I mentioned both of those and read the bios in full because I think it's important to weigh their perspective and advice based on these immense qualifications these two people have that are coming to provide us with perspective. So this isn't uh you know, a presentation Lou and I are giving to you, although we feel good about the work that we present to you with experts. We've asked them to come and give their perspective as experts and technical experts in the field. So Brian, thanks very much uh for joining us, Michelle as well, and please uh get us started. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Uh I'm

016going to take you through where we're at and uh a few items that we're going to need to address going forward. Uh I'm starting here because this is the overall site. Um orient you to kind of the gray spot at the bottom is the high school. Um the site we're talking about is up here to the right. Uh and this is a little bit of a blow-up. And I'm just going to highlight this piece here for later. Um this is the current site. The pipes and these little lines that you see on here, I don't know if I can highlight, here we go. Um our current drainage systems all going to this outfall out. That'll become relevant as I move along. Um this is the current design. Um this is what was approved and I'll

017show you a bit of the schedule uh on where this is at at the moment. Again, I'm going to blow this up. And I'm going to highlight a few things here because again, it will become relevant. Um this is the current retention facility that I just circled here. I'm going to talk about this. Uh and once again, that same current and would be existing outfall. Okay? Again, this will become relevant as I move along. Um What is the issue that occurred? Uh the project was awarded in November. Uh the contractor began with some standard practices as we do in stripping the topsoil uh and beginning some of the excavation. Uh upon doing so, we encountered some cinder and ash. Um behind me, Michelle's going to talk about what that was and some of the history

018of that. Um when we did some original cores, we knew there was some of this. Uh we've hit a little bit more than we originally had found in some of those initial cores. Uh and therefore, as protocol, we tested those samples and campus helped us foster the the testing of that. Um and then the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation was involved and soon you're going to find out why. Um this is kind of a little bit more so everybody understands the history of what went on. Um bids were received here on November 6th, moving along the chart. Uh we provided letters of recommendation and began construction uh by awarding those successful bidders, and we broke ground in the center here in January 6th. Um at that point, soil began to be moved. We

019encountered the cinders and ash and fostered the testing. Um Terracon was brought on board by the contractor. Um and those test pits were done. You're going to see the results of that. Uh those were received by the contractor. We quickly reviewed those. Those that were then shared with the district on February 23rd. There's a weekend there that we did some assessments uh and those were brought forward. Um and I think this timeline's important because it spells out the contractor and the process is working exactly as it should. Uh the consulting firm Terracon um brought those findings to the Department of Environmental Conservation. Uh we have had discussions going forward with that. Uh and uh we've also notified the Department of Health, um which was required based on the determination uh that the Department of Environmental

020Conservation made a declaration of, and I'll let Michelle talk about that. And um we are beginning a soil management plan. And that's where I'm going to turn it over so you can find out a little more of the [clears throat] detail. Hi all. Thank you. Um I hit down? No, enter. Sorry. So before we get too much into what our findings were, we wanted to just give a brief history of what the property is. So I think many of you know, there was an old brick manufacturing facility here in the 1830s to 1920s. During that time, um this is over 100 years ago, they excavated nice beautiful nice clay that you have on your property um to make bricks, and appears that they likely backfilled or used some of the ash cinders waste from the

021brick manufacturing process and put it back onto the property. Um so after the school purchased it in '25, there were school additions, and then the school also added to the property to get to the current parcels. Um what we did when the fill material, what is called historic fill, was found, we did 20 test pits throughout the area of where the fields were going to go. Looking for where is this fill? How [clears throat] deep is this fill? What does this fill look like? What is it? And so we found it in 17 of the 20 test pits. Um from below the topsoil, some places 2 and 1/2 ft, some places 7 ft. There were three locations that we didn't find it at all. Um, the fill includes ash, cinders, brick, glass, there's bottles, there's

022ceramics, pieces of metal, um, combined with the soil. So, it's just really a miscellaneous fill, let's say. We took analytical samples from six of the 20 test pits just to kind of see what do we have. You know, we separately took those from random spots in areas that we knew we could have to do some future excavation. The analytical testing results did identify several compounds that do exceed the regulatory standards. And with that we decided or we recommended that we, uh, site management plan should be put in place. We talked with, um, the school district, worked with their attorneys, contacted the DEC, and said, "Well, how are we going to manage the soil? We know that it's there. We know that there's impacts, so we know that it's fill." Uh, so this is a quick

023picture. It shows the different test pit locations. They're really, really tiny, so sorry about that. Um, the green ones up in the top right-hand corner are the ones where fill was not encountered, and the ones with yellow is where fill was encountered. Um, looking at an aerial photograph again, the blue estimate is an is an estimate based on the 20 test pits of where we think the fill currently is is located. This is a 1951 aerial photograph showing the, um, the old school, the brick, and where that fill material was. And then in 1931, you can see there's a white area where that fill material is currently, which could be evidence or indication that's likely where it came from. Um, these are a couple pictures of what the fill is. It's, you know, like I

024said, miscellaneous. You can see some pieces of bottles, there's pieces of just rubber or rubber rubble. Sorry, excuse me. Rubble, bricks, metals. These are the test pits that were done. It's a little difficult to see, but, um, the one on the left, test pit number five, it's fill material all the way down, you can see. So, there's fill material there. Um, so, what do we do? They're kind of the next steps, right? Um, so we're working with the DEC, working with the school, the architects, all as a team to kind of collaborate and figure out what is the next steps in order to help manage the fill material, which we know there's impacts, and also still be able to develop the property for the school. Our first recommendation was to do a site management plan,

025and I'll talk a little bit more about what that is. Um, managing the current soils on site. And then also complete community air monitoring during any of the excavation and development work. So, what is a site management plan? DEC, Department of Health work together, and they have a site management plan that, um, we would follow in any type of typical impacted site. It helps to provide guidelines to managing impacted soils, outlining protocols of excavation, staging on site, testing and disposing of the soil if it needs to go off site. Basically, how are we managing it to make sure the public, the environment, the workers, everyone's protected and and uh is aware and to manage the the Sorry, manage the soil properly. The safety procedures are within the site management plan. Um, they'll be indicate they'll

026be recommendations for dust suppression to make sure that we keep the dust down, personal protective equipment, you know, what type of um, really the, you know, the construction workers would have to wear. We do a community air monitoring plan, and this would be reviewed by the Department of Health. Um, basically, what that is, we set up some real-time air monitors within designated work areas. So, as the work is being done, we have real-time air monitoring results looking for particulates or any potential, um, really dust and concerns that might be generated. The site management plans often contain a cover system. What that means is that we know that there's fill there, and we know we're going to build a new field. The new field becomes our cover system. It becomes an area for us to control

027future exposure to this fill material that's been in there for 100 years. That it's expected to be combination of the new field, asphalt, concrete, and possibly some clean soil. All this will be done in accordance and in working with the DEC and the Department of Health to make sure that we're meeting their requirements, their expectations, and also helping the school facilitate that we can still complete this development. Uh, I think the thing that I didn't state is that based on this all site work has been stopped completely. So, nothing is going on um, active at this point until the management plan is put in place. The Department of Environmental Conservation, Department of Health are all fully on board and have weighed in on that plan, and it's presented to yourselves to make final determination. Um,

028but some of the things that we thought we we'd point out here, uh, the the synthetic turf system, um, will help provide that cover that is kind of in some of the guidelines right now. I'm not going to say everything's perfect until we know all of the answers that come through with working with DEC, but, um, it will act as part of that cover system. Um, the impacted site materials, regardless of either, we would have hit these, um, to the level that we found. We didn't expect those on the initial cores, but we would have found those in either, uh, option. Um, the modifications to the extent of the site work here, I wrote, per contract documents will be incorporated into the site management plan. So, as we look and we're going to make some

029suggestions along the way based on the interpretations that come back to us, um, we'll be coming back to you with further information as we go. So, what do we know at the moment and what are some mitigation opportunities and and what did we find out working with the contractor? Um, don't get too nervous here, but the first is based on what we found, if we had to take all this soil and remove it off site, uh, the contractor started throwing some numbers out, and I'm going to throw these as estimates, and please take them as such. Um, these are hypothetical based on everything we know and knowledge base currently. We took some volumes of the current fill material that's in there, and we took an estimate that it would be about 14 million to take

030that to a waste site that would take this soil. That's a big number. Um, so, the second number here, number two, is the cut and grade option. Um, this would be to just mitigate the areas of disturbance. So, we're going to find out more working with, um, Terracon here, DEC, and Department of Health of to what level. Uh, in a lot of cases, they like to leave this stuff intact. It's been there 100 years. Um, if we look at the option where, uh, the current design is and we maintain the storm water retention basin, that's why I highlighted it. Um, we're looking over $5 million plus or minus. Some of those samples did come back without issue. In part of the soil management plan, as each piece of that soil comes out, it would be

031tested, decided, and then decided where it goes. So, the number would change in that scenario. Everybody following so far? Okay. Please ask if you have questions cuz I know this is a little complicated. Um, working with your contractor, DiFiore, campus, ourselves, um, everybody that's involved in the team of this, we said, "All right, what can we do to maybe mitigate the costs a little bit more?" And one of it is to make some modifications to the elevations of the entire system. Uh, and I'm going to show you a slide here down the road of talking about where the elevation of the current uh, field is now, but we would raise just a portion of the field up closest to the parking area. Um, we would redo that would reduce some of this the fill in

032the disturbance, right? We lifted it up, even a foot, mitigates more of what has to come out. Um, we would provide a cover system to meet some of the requirements that we've been talking about. Um, in this scenario, we would remove the retention facility, and we would put chamber system, and I'll show you a little bit of what that chamber system and put the storage of that water underground. Why? Um, that means less soil disturbance to do that and putting it in a localized area, tighter, and I'm I have a graphic for that coming up. Uh, the reduction of that fill and disposal costs obviously all come down. Uh, and so far what some of the guidance, we believe that there's a benefit of doing this. Uh, again, we'll find out more, and at some

033point the Department of Environmental Conservation will hopefully address you as well. Uh, cost estimate to be identified upon completion and approval. So, I'm throwing you some numbers to give you some caliber of some of this. Um, we don't know until we have that whole plan in place. Um, we believe this is a little bit more in the $3 million range, um, if in fact all that soil had to go. If it's tested and has to stay, the number changes. So, we're trying to give you biggest caliber at the moment. Uh let's see. Little reduced fill and the elevated cost implications, um 25 to 30% savings. So, that's that differential from that five maybe down to about three. Okay, everybody following so far? What does that mean in the change? Uh and this is a little

034bit why I showed you the diagram to begin with. This would be the new chamber system. So, if you remember in the initial slide I showed you up in the right corner was the retention facility that we We're going to get you some water. I'm sorry. It's all right. Just came from presentations all morning. I'm losing my voice. Uh so, that chamber system would go in this location. This is the existing uh outlet. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Uh and I circled the same one that I circled on the initial slide. Uh thank you. So, the disturbance then is a lot less in that corner. The samples we took in that corner, which were the three that Michelle referred to, were the ones that came back not filled. Uh and most of that

035would remain as is and we would only have to make that little trench to the red circle to make the connection uh to the outlet. Okay? Everybody following pretty good so far? Okay. This is a chamber system. Um not yours, not Dave. We just random uh pulled it so you can understand what it is. These are underground chambers. Uh the top shows them before they get their final covering. Um the bottom kind of is a sectional graphic that would show where we would put a layer of stone and gravel, then put the chamber system, and then gravel on top, then cover uh and finish and it would look like lawn. And this again is just for the uh storm water mitigation, correct? >> Correct. And remember that mitigation is in place for that 100-year event.

036Yep. You know, on a daily basis, this is just going to go flowing through the system. Um some of the good in this, if there is that that I can present to you, is the fact that by putting in what we're doing, we're taking out the top layer, we're putting stone and other coverage material for the drainage system in place. Therefore, this water that was going through some of this stuff prior will now go into the chamber system and not pass through some of that that soil and that fill. So, this is the area where we talked about the cow fence? Correct. That would be gone. It would be gone. Yeah, and I'll back up because that green area would now become So, right now the cow fence as you refer, this little L, if

037you will, was that prior piece. >> Okay. I see. This now would go underground and you wouldn't even see it. We would not even excavate this section of the site. That'll I just want to put a fine I'm sorry to interrupt >> Yeah, go ahead. I want to put a fine point on this cuz there are many people here that have asked this question quite a bit through this whole process. We had originally um particularly at the last community forum presented that as an option as an answer to the concerns about the storm water mitigation that had been designed. We said it wasn't a pond. People thought that it was a pond. The cow fence was around that. That area that was a concern for people. And the underground system was not something we were

038recommending because of the cost at the time. Now we're saying, now that it's a necessity on the bright side, if there's a bright side, now we're able to do that or we should be doing that. We have to do that as part of this plan. Correct. Okay. You don't have to, but it it is an option in the process to save funds to to handle the situation. Okay. Um This is a fun slide, little tough. Uh this came from our site contractor. Uh when you look at the site, and I I know this is a little hard to understand, but again, the the little flag on the upper right corner is the connection to that outfall again. Um this is a cut and fill diagram. Red means we cut the earth, green means we fill

039the earth. The darker the red, the more the cut. The darker the green, the more the fill. As you can see, working with the contractor and our campus crew here, we've uh and um Apel Osborne, who's working on the design with us, we've come with an option that really is fairly level to what you have. What does that look like? This was an interesting diagram cuz um one of the things that came out of some of our meetings was, well, oh my goodness, if we raise this up a little bit, what what's this mean? What's it do? This is a very large expanse. So, on your left is would be uh the property standing at the back of someone's property. On the right side um is sitting uh would be the softball home plate. And

040when you look across that distance, if you actually look at this little line I kind of highlighted across, it's actually level. Um right now there's a dip. It comes down and then up and down and up. Um by doing what we're doing, it it really stays fairly level. So, the visual impact of all of this is I guess what I'm sharing is even if we bring this up a foot, it's fairly a level system across that large-scale distance. Okay. And I think I give it back to you for closing. Thank you. So, I guess our closing thoughts are what does all this mean, right? The fill material has been there for 100 years. And now we have to figure out what to do with it. This fill would have been encountered pretty much no matter

041what. Anytime you put someone will put a shovel in that part of the property, we'll find that fill. Now we know it's there. Now we know we have to do something about it. This new development will address and improve the school this area for the school. It will provide a cover system, so there's limited impact or no potential exposure in the future. It helps with storm water management. Storm water is then contained within the field and the chamber system, not running through the fill material like it is currently. Um this all will be done under the guidance of the DEC, the Department of Health, and all part of our site management plan. So, really, that's it's there and this is our recommendation for what to do next. So, we just wanted to give and Brian

042the board an opportunity and ask any questions. Could you comment on uh what when you tested the fill? You didn't talk specifically about what was present. And that notion of the levels relative to industry, to safety, whatever those levels might be. Can you just speak to that just a little bit? Sure. So, the the contaminants that were found are what's called semi-volatile organic compounds and then metals. Those are typical found in ash and cinders from incinerator type of material or from incinerator activities. Um In some cases, there were detections below the DEC calls the unrestricted soil cleanup objective. Other cases, there was some compounds above unrestricted, some above restricted residential soil cleanup objectives, some above commercial level soil cleanup objectives, and a couple compounds above industrial. It's very select locations. So, with all of that,

043that material can't be reused someplace else. We can't excavate that and take that to a new subdivision or it has to go to a landfill if it becomes excavated. But leaving it in place, because it's been there for 100 years, we have this beautiful clay underlying everything, um as well as we don't use ground water, the new system's going to help manage storm water better. Leaving it in place in discussion with the DEC was certainly an option to look at. Again, because if if it was excavated, it would have to go to a landfill. >> If it's excavated, it would have to go to a landfill, right. >> Okay. Would you elaborate on the compounds that were found? Um okay. Um I don't have it here in front of me. I'll go from memory. So,

044the SVOCs, they're called the benzos. Those are like benzo(a)pyrene and benzo(e) PAHs. Yeah, the they're um typical heavier petroleum asphalt is where you would find those type of compounds. Some of the metals we found were some lead, some mercury, chromium, and add some arsenic. Which arsenic is common all over the place. But it it was present at concentrations above the regulatory standards. Okay. Thank you. Mhm. And is this a design that you often use in projects like these where you have fill that's over 100 years old? >> Mhm. Yeah, so historic industrial fill, you know, is all over Western New York. We're New York state is an old old state and um old industrials, there there was no regulations. So, um we find this quite often at new developments. Um I did work on a

045school that we did this exact same thing. We did a a field which was designed as the cover system. Mhm. Does anyone like do do like neighborhoods ever like, you know, knowing, you know, our history in Brighton with, you know, the brick Did neighbors ever have their own soil tested to see if like their property happens to be like a testing area or is it often discovered incidentally? So, things like this will be discovered doing during work. You know, it prompts it where you start looking into the ground and find it or if there's a property or sale or transaction for commercial properties, due diligence is often required that might find it. Typically for residential unless somebody goes and looks, it wouldn't be a typical thing that we would look for. Right. Any other questions?

046Any other questions? When we When we first did our core samples, can you describe how that's conducted? Because we've been we've had other projects where we've done things like core samples and then when we take down the wall, that's when we find what's really there. Is that this this kind of Right. So, the initial sampling was done for geotechnical purposes. And they use a drill rig to collect soil samples in a 2-ft sampler. So, and it's 2 in wide. So, it gets pounded down. It's called the it's a It gets pounded down to collect the soil sample in the 2-ft sample, 2 in wide. And that's what they do use for the classifications. So, if you have a 100% recovery, fantastic, you know what you're looking at. But very often in fill materials like this

047because you might have a big piece of rubble or brick, it skews what's actually recovered in that sample. So, when you want to get a 2-ft sample, you might actually only have a 1-ft sample. And what is that extra missing material? And so, sometimes when you have that, we knew that there was fill material there. We didn't realize there was this much fill material. Thank you. We did We did in the contractual obligation have a little bit of knowledge knowing there was something. Okay. So, you did have a value in the bidding that covered a little. But not to this magnitude. Not to this magnitude. So, really the three options, excavate all of it, 14 plus million dollars to another to a landfill. And then the question is what what do you do after that,

048right? The second is a modification of that at a pretty significant cost as well. And the third is the field essentially regrading, filling, and some modification, but the the field will help act then as a barrier. Right, exactly. Then the field will act as a cover system as well as assist with storm water management as well. With the chambering system that Yes, right. Which will be underground. Again, that was to reduce as much of the soil that has to come offsite. Right. And the and to reduce the amount of disturbance. But by reducing the disturbance, yes, we are Okay. I don't have any other questions. I I can talk about next steps if you'd like to. Yeah, I just you know, just a statement of just an acknowledgement that none of us are soil experts

049or environmental scientists. So, it is extremely important to us to be involved immediately with the DEC, with the you know, Department of Conservation, with scientists like yourselves to address something, an incidental finding that, you know, was harmful and maybe led to the the concerns with, you know, soil quality all along for why it wasn't a great draining player surface anyway. So, I appreciate your presentation very much. Excellent. We've appreciated the expertise and perspective since, you know, the testing came back at the end of February and we could start to really dig in together in terms of what next steps could be. And the DEC guidance was really really helpful, too. Um What our next step is is of course the management plan needs to be finalized and that work needs to be done in association

050with the DEC and the Department of Health. Uh we are then working also at the same time simultaneously with our council to determine what the next steps need to be relative to approvals, relative to environmental concerns, and relative to coordination with the State Ed Department who approved the plans in the first place. Our uh plan, once the soil management plan is approved, then we can come back to you with here's the proposal for what we can do about this, you know, very specifically and what the regulatory steps are to get to that place. So, we would plan that at an upcoming meeting. We just don't know when that will be yet because those plans the management plan needs to be approved first. Yeah, the site management plan is in process. We're doing it to DEC's.

051They have a a temp template and a standard expectation. So, we're working with that along with the new design and having all that support document documentation for the cover system as well. For community members here, we will be coming back to the community to schedule forums and specifically going to the neighborhood streets around and with a mailer to invite people to learn more about the soil that is probably present at their property as well, but for people to best understand the site and to ask questions, ask questions of the experts, the people who are advising us, and really understand all of it. So, as soon as we can schedule those. Do we Thank you. Yeah. We'll take the questions. Yeah, so I think we'll wait we'll let you know as soon as we have the

052forum dates and times selected so that we can have more of a discussion on what will Can I just add that those discussions be before like any contract modifications are done so that public input can actually be heard? Which is the way we've run into where, you know, these contracts were signed, you guys said, "Oh, we can't make changes to the plan." So, I just ask that those community forums actually be before there's any cuz this is obviously a huge change in the soil cost and everything. So, please do those well in advance of any contract signing. Can we be very up front with you that the community forums would be to share information about this and to answer questions about it, but it wouldn't be a solicitation for input on design. Yeah. I I

053don't I do think the community though like because one of the questions I have to them is there's there's different costs associated with them. What is the healthiest alternative for this like I mean as a a scientist like, you know, you're putting the water to a chamber system. Grass helps clean things when you put it into a storm water pond. Now it's going into a chamber. So, like I think that we as a community should be able to have I think the point of those forums is to be able to get those questions answered. Yeah, we'll address we can Yeah, but do you understand what I'm asking also that they be done before decisions are made? It seems like a lot of decisions happen ahead of time and I just ask that so that the

054community's voice can actually be heard, that we can ask questions and come back with secondary questions cuz like there's a group of us and we're just learning about this now. And this is a I'm sorry, this is a big deal. We agree. Yes. We know. Yep. Yeah. On all the different levels and I know you guys are are feeling that, too, but I think this is a a great opportunity to have some more dialogue. Yeah, I think it's important to hear the community and and also I we do want to use the forums to be informative to all of our neighbors and to any community members who are here. I I do appreciate though this this collaboration with our contractors, the you know, the conservation um you know, all of So, they are considering both

055the health factors, the design factors, the the mitigation factors. So, um we still, you know, still have a lot of work to do, but I I'm I'm appreciative of how detailed this work has been so far and it was certainly something we all had to Kim Kim can I Kim can I clarify? We We are We will end up having a forum before anything's finalized because I know that just timing wise, we do want to So, this is a limited audience tonight. We would like all the neighbors directly around the field in particular to hear this same presentation to be able to ask any questions. So, to answer your question more specifically, yes, we definitely will have a forum before anything's finalized. I just didn't want to give the impression that it was a like

056a design charade or something like that. Can I ask thing in the short term? Like there's a ton of soil like exposed right now. Like how long does this process normally take? Like how long is this soil going to sit there exposed? And is the fill material currently exposed or is it deeper? Like is there a short term mitigation measure? We just took the top soil. Yeah. All work has been stopped. There's a storm water plan in place. You have somebody that is certain Sorry, I'm just No, go ahead. If you want to come to the mic, actually, so Yeah, I'm just going to answer to it. There is somebody that comes and checks that and it's monitored But I'm saying like is that fill exposed? Cuz you you talked about like dust mitigation. So,

057in the short term while all the other things are happening, is that stuff now exposed? Um Do you get what I'm asking? We we Yeah. Kim Kim we asked We asked the DEC specifically in our last meeting with them if anything needed to be done with what was there now, and the answer was no. That that that was that could be done. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for your and I know we'll be we'll be continuing this conversation and see you. >> Yes, thank you so much. Um the next uh presentation will be looking at the preliminary executive budget proposal. All right, so uh like to walk through with you right now the preliminary executive budget proposal. And I say preliminary because the state budget has not been finalized yet.

058That won't happen until at least April 1st, the statutory deadline. Uh but in all likelihood, we're thinking that it'll probably take the legislature and governor a little bit longer to get to uh where they need to, and we can't finalize our numbers until that happens. Uh this is a really, really challenging process on that end, but overall for some reasons that I'll explain, the plan right now for us is that on April 7th, we will present to you our executive budget proposal. If the state budget's not approved at that point, we'll have to present to you uh with our best guess for where that's going to land. And if we have to amend before it's presented, we can do that as well. Uh as you can see in the calendar, like I mentioned, tonight is

059the executive budget proposal, but really referring to it as a preliminary proposal at this point. April 7th, the hope would be to be able to give you a more full proposal. And we have the budget hearing on the 12th. And again, uh on the 19th is the vote. We will have budget forums in between that I'll detail in just a moment as well. Really important we think to point out, and this is posted online, I know hard for people to read, the results that people are getting for their investment. So, continued high graduation rate a large percentage, of course, of our kids earning a Regents diploma, 97%. But 62% of those kids with advanced distinction. And many of our graduates, 77%. Think about that. 77% of our kids leaving with at least one advanced placement

060class. 91% of our kids going on to a two- or four-year school. I won't read all of them at you, but a detail of all of the incredible accomplishments of our kids, of our faculty, of the work that makes it happen. The people that make this happen though are our people, and I want to dig into that quite a bit tonight. A lot of accolades around music, arts, athletics, the experiences that kids have, the opportunities that they have to participate in that. We're trying everything we can to make sure we protect those experiences, recognizing that the whole experience is what plays into the great success we're seeing for our students. This preliminary budget proposal also honors the guidelines that you set forth for us in the fall. The two items to highlight that are key

061to this conversation one aspect of the first guideline was to make sure we were prepared, responsive, and continued pressure from inflation, a labor shortage, and limited growth in resources, state and federal resources. So, that's really important to point out again, inflation, labor shortages, and limited resources from state and federal government. And finally, on the I'm thinking about the long-term impact of any decisions we make, compliance with the property tax cap, but understanding long-term what the financial impact of our decisions are, which we'll get into tonight, this idea of the long-term and where it's left us. So, the two um sides of the equation to be thinking about relative to the budget in this proposal. On the left side using the same amount of money from reserves in the appropriated fund balance and the revenues that

062we know right now will be available to us or we can assume are available to us. $1.2 million in foundation aid, in new foundation aid that the governor's proposed. And the proposal from the state is not likely to go down in the final process. And $1.2 million from the property tax levy, if we were to go out at a 1.95% increase, the capped number. So, keep that number in mind, $2.4 million, right? New revenue, $2.4 million. On the right-hand side, really important uh important uh to point out kind of the big numbers. There's lots of other numbers, too, right? Utilities, uh insurance, supplies, materials, equipment, service agreements, right? A lot of other expenses. But the biggest buckets, the biggest items to talk to you about increase in salaries, 4%, $1.9 million if nothing was to

063change in the salary line. And often I say this, I want to repeat it over and over again. That's what we should be doing, right? Investing in people. We've negotiated all these contracts to be competitive in the marketplace and to bring the best people here. Nothing in this regard is exorbitant or out of the market trend, but that's the cost of doing business with people here. The second is the health insurance increase. Again, we participate in the local consortium, keep rates down as low as we possibly can, we're a leader in that consortium. That rate increase is outpaced by the community plans, in other words, ours is less expensive. Do everything we can to keep that benefit from growing. But it is growing significantly, and this is a national crisis that's impacting us now very

064directly. That increase is 6% or a million dollars. The next big bucket bucket for us is the increase in retiree health care. That is out of control, not the retirees or the fact that we're supporting them, the rates. When we heard the national dialogue about the elimination of health care subsidies, this is what's happening right here. It's coming home to roost. That's a $1.1 million increase. And finally, an increase in BOCES costs. Remember, BOCES is a cooperative. All the the Monroe 1 districts, the east side districts participate in that cooperative for specialized services, support supports for students, other supports on the management side. And those cost increases that we're experiencing, they are too. We have to participate that in sharing that cost for the services that we subscribe to. That cost increases $1.2 million. So,

065remember all of those that I mentioned, those are the big bucket ones. And the revenue of $2.4 million. All of that's created this gap of $3.66 million or 3.3%. The gap between those revenues and those expenses. So, the three big buckets to think about. Revenue, $2.4 million. Health care costs alone up $2 million. So, if your new revenue coming in is only $2.4 million, and $2 million of that is a health care cost what about everything else, right? It just doesn't fit. The third item to be thinking about then are all those other challenges, and those big challenges, which are salaries, special education costs. That those two alone are another $2 million. Right? So, we're at $4 million without talking about those other big bucket items, without all the other expense increases that we see

066in our household budgets as well. $4 million with $2.4 million to spend. Those things again just don't add up. The property tax cap calculation is the algorithm provided by the state. There's no choice for the district in this regard. It would yield a 1.95% capped number. What's interesting about the cap is this is a legislative solution without really a remedy and out without really any flexibility and without any acknowledgement of cost increase. 1.95% doesn't come close to keeping play keeping pace with inflation. It would only allow for a 1.1% increase in spending. Clearly not nearly what we would need to support programs and services. The way our money is spent is important to remember. It is all in people, programs, and services. Anything you see on this chart in green or blue are employee benefits,

067payroll, uh in- instructional support, extracurriculars, right? It's the people providing program. In the other quarter or so or a little bit more, you see BOCES cost. Again, that really is also people. There are some administrative costs as well, debt capital, supplies and services of 16%. We point this out because people should know the vast majority of our spending is on people. That is what it is supposed to be all about. The larger portion of that though that keeps growing is that employee benefit, 26%. It's really dramatic how that has changed over time. It is starting to get up to the point where it's going to equal the salary cost within our overall people cost. So, that budget starting point and the gap between the starting point and the revenues we expect we would have to

068increase taxes 7.93% to pay for the expenses. 7.93%. There will not be a proposal to increase taxes 7.93%. But we had to take actions to figure out then what to do around that. Reviewed all of our staffing allocations. Looked at our current financial position and how we could use current resources, so the reserves we have available to us. Gathered community feedback. The community engagement exchange, we had two community forums as well to hear more from our community. Looked at forecasting our mandated cost increases and looked at where there would be opportunities for efficiencies, if any. Discussed the impact, of course, also of reducing spending to lower the tax burden and the tolerance to raise the tax levy over the state's tax levy limit, which we talked about in the forum with community members uh last

069week. Two key charts to take a look at and just point out. I keep harping on this idea, but it's really, really important. Consumer price index. So, this is the basic measure that many economists and generally people use, the media will use, the government will use to talk about cost increases, right? The measurement of inflation. And it's an index of household type items, groceries, costs that people experience, that is used to describe for people, to put a number to this idea that, hey, my costs keep going up. My costs are out of control. And so, there has to be a measurement of that, and consumer price index measures that. And it's generally accepted as a measurement to think about the increase year over year. Our state budget uses that. The property tax cap formula uses

070that. That's the measure. If you take a look on this chart on the left-hand side, the annual changes in the tax levy compared to inflation in key areas, right? Growth in key areas from 2001-22 to 2026-27. The blue line represents the tax levy. The orange line represents the consumer price index. So, like household goods, etc. Health insurance is the gray line. Minimum wage is the yellow line. And minimum wage, remember, pushes all wages up, right? As an indicator. Really interesting to take a look at how those things are not keeping pace with each other at all. On the right-hand side shows you over the period of time the cumulative changes in the tax levy relative to these other changes. In fact, we know that over the last 20 years, CPI has averaged over time about

0712.6%, whereas our tax increase has averaged 2.2% approximately. Those two things don't make any sense. There is no other revenue source that plugs the hole between those two things. If your expenses are going here and your revenue's here, something has to give, and that is a real problem. That's where we would say the property tax cap from a taxpayer perspective, it is good that it is maintained or reduced the growth over time. But the question really is, has it artificially suppressed revenue to a point where the levy can't keep up with the expenses are? Or some people would say, "Well, then cut all the expenses." And we're saying to understandably why somebody might say that, we want you to understand what that means. So, if we have to cut the expenses. So, what we're suggesting

072to you is a modification of that, a a somewhere in between. We would propose at this point in the preliminary proposal to increase taxes 3.98%. There is no penalty for the community to doing this. Right? In years past, particularly when Governor Cuomo was governor, there was a loss of rebate check, there were a lot of threats, there were a lot of ways that it was interpreted by communities as you paid a penalty You paid a penalty for going over the property tax cap. There is no penalty. The community just has to decide to do that. And they have to decide at a different rate. The normal budget vote, it's a majority vote, right? 50% plus one. In this case, 60% of the community would have to approve to adopt a levy over the cap. Expenditures

073by object change then with this budget, and we've made reductions to accommodate that revenue source being 3.98 instead of 7.98, right? And not the 1.95. This meeting in the middle as best we can reduces our expenses in a series of ways. We would spend less on salaries and wages. That would be an increase of only 1.37%. Employee benefits would only increase uh just over 6 and 1/2%. BOCES would be 8.54%. Supplies and services just over 1%. Debt transfer 5.88%. And again, those reductions would get us to that place where we could propose to the community a 3.9% uh tax increase and maintain quite a bit to be able to do that. It does not come without sacrifice. On the left-hand side of each one of these charts are the level one reductions necessary alongside a

0743.98% tax increase. The level two reductions in red on the right-hand side would be necessary in addition to level one to be under the tax cap. And in this example at the K-5 level, we would be proposing class size adjustments, particularly uh elementary sections that would be slightly larger, and the reduction of a counseling position. And those three positions in particular uh would get us to the place that we need to with level one reductions. At French Road, we would be reducing the teacher on special assignment support, the administrative behavioral support that is currently in place. In terms of all of the people themselves, they would be made whole in this because of attrition. So, we've really tried to balance this idea of what are the cuts that we can make furthest away from programs

075to children. That's really not possible, though we've got a series of those also. With understanding how do we maintain the outstanding team and group of people that we have here at all school. So, those reductions through attrition, retirements, people leaving are able to be accommodated without people being laid off in that particular area. If at the K-3 5 level, we had to be under the cap, we would also have to cut other non-mandated programs, extended studies would absolutely be cut. Primary project, which is a K-3 3 program, would absolutely be cut. And the instructional leadership positions, the parts of positions that are supporting professional development and growth, support for our teaching staff would all be reduced. At French Road, other mental health behavioral supports that were added during the pandemic, so counseling position in addition,

076would be reduced along with extended studies, fourth grade instrumental music as well, and those instructional leadership positions. So, let me be very clear. At the K-3 5 level, level one is some class size impact, mental health support, counseling support impact, [snorts] and uh the behavioral administrative support um at uh French Road. If we have level one and level two reductions, it's also adding to that extended studies, primary project, instructional leadership, um and instrumental music at fourth grade. Howard, do you have a question? I'm happy to answer it at the end. Okay. Just checking. So, class size, that impact, I just want to point out to you what we're getting at. There's 11 sections right now uh scheduled for each grade level K, 1, and 2. We had planned on reducing at the second grade level

077by one section. What we're suggesting is that we would also reduce at kindergarten and at second grade. So, the class sizes right now this year are 17.6, 19.7, 21.9 average in each class K-3 2 at Council Rock. What we are suggesting in this proposal is they would be 20.4, 21, and 22.1. That is not ideal. Smaller the better is often how people feel. What we're saying to you is this is a very responsible strategy, knowing that we always would like lower class sizes, and our community expresses that. Let's be very clear. That is a high priority in the budget survey. But given the choice between a slightly larger class size or having to reduce extended studies, primary project, mental health supports additionally, or fourth grade instrumental music, we're saying to you this is the most

078responsible proposal that we feel we can make to make those reductions and find that balance between getting to 398 or being under the cap. Uh at the third, fourth, and fifth grade level, we'd be looking at sections of 23.1, 22, and 22.6. Again, we'd always prefer those to be smaller, but these are not outsized uh sections either. At 12 Corners and at the high school, so the secondary reductions. In the level one category, we would need to maximize through attrition, again, hiring freeze, class size adjustments. So, we're talking about in particular a one uh section reduction, a one full-time equivalency Making class size adjustments as well, and a reduction in the teacher leadership uh parts of people. There are currently two tenths of a position for several staff members. And a reduction of the percentage

079of money spent on clubs and activities. Those clubs and activities have not been determined yet. We would do that through a thoughtful analysis in terms of what clubs are most active, which ones uh serve the most kids and have the greatest impact, and provide a dollar amount to the middle school to be able to make those decisions. At the high school level, we'd be looking at a very similar approach, a hiring freeze based on attrition. So, you'll hear this over and over again. Again, looking at positions where we know we have retirements or people exiting, and looking then to not fill that position so that we are making sure we are keeping as many people as possible. We're reducing electives class sizes as well, and or increasing class size but reducing the number of electives.

080The teacher leadership uh positions again, and a percentage of clubs, and coaching positions. We won't be changing the number of teams necessarily unless there's low participation, but the program assistant positions in particular we'd be looking at in this category. On the right side, if we had to go all the way to 1.95, it would be non-mandated programs again, including intervention services beyond what's mandated, extended studies, sixth grade world language. Absolutely for sure, I'm telling you those things would need to be cut. I just want to be not threatening, but clear with our community that if we have to go under the cap, we will have to cut the programs that distinguish us from other places. At the high school level, same thing. Non-mandated intervention services, reduction in course offerings, additional mental health supports, and perhaps

081other interscholastic athletic teams as well. Other areas in the district we're looking at, transportation. We would have to look at a reduction of charter trips impacting clubs and sports with level one. We will need to do that and be more efficient in that particular area. If we have to be at 1.95%, we will have to look at expanding the walk zone for our students. District-wide, we're looking at our supplemental services to families and supports, the family navigator in particular. That position will be reduced. That can be done through attrition. We will have to look at if we go to level two, other non-mandated programs and supports for families. We provide quite a bit uh throughout the district. And then department allocations, level one, we are looking at reductions in contracts, materials, equipment, other supplies across

082the board. If we have to go to level two, we'll have to go to further reductions that will impact student programs, and particularly those programs that support students and families in financial hardship and risk. Those are not any choices that we want to make. Those are not choices that we present to the community as a threat or unrealistic. That is the reality of the gap between the levy cap's number and what the increase in our expenses are that we have to accommodate. The cost to people, I think, is really important. And that they pay careful attention to because all of the rest of it is, okay, but what am I getting for my money? Well, how much is it actually? For a home valued at $250,000, our best estimate without having equalization rates yet or

083the [clears throat] uh the evaluation or the valuation from the community is a $285 increase in Brighton and a $295 increase for homes in Pittsford. School district Brighton, but a town of Pittsford. Key slide. What is the difference then between the two? The cap number is $146 per year increase. Thank you. The non-capped 3.89% is $285 increase. So, again, if we propose a tax increase of 3.98%, and that's my fault, it says 9.5, 3.98% $285 per year increase. If we propose the capped number, it's a $146 increase. So, it still will go up $146 either way. The question is the rest, right? The other $142. Uh what makes sense for people? For $142, we can keep those things. We've mentioned this before and presented this last week. There's no change to this in particular, but

084this does tie in to the conversation that we just had around the site work at the high school. This is the reauthorization. So, this will be a capital project referendum. The items in bold were authorized in the last project, but not awarded because of either design changes, not bid to where we wanted them to be bid, cost escalation, etc. We need a reauthorization from the community to be able to afford those items and replenish our con- our construction contingency from the project that we have used on other items already to be able to accommodate at least a large share of the cost increase that was detailed in the previous presentation. Right? So, these two things do tie together. But what's very important for people in the community to recognize is that these two things are

085not connected. I don't disagree with our community members tonight that said, but this is all our money. Absolutely. However, if we were to not do any of this capital work, if we never were doing the turf, if we weren't starting construction counselor, it would not change the budget budget proposal by one penny. That's really important to point out because the project is paid for through the reserve, the construction reserve, the capital reserve, and the state aid on the project. This is the design of the continuous capital project cycle that we are in. Once we were able to budget for the debt service payment in the budget several years ago, that debt service payment is staying the same. The example I've used uh with people before is, we bought the car. The car is now in

086our budget. Our monthly payment is in the budget, and it will continue to be in the budget, and it will not go up. That car payment is still paying for these projects. And if we weren't doing these projects, we still have that car payment for the projects that we have already borrowed for. That would not change anything relative to the general fund. So, this is very uh different from the rest of the proposal. And the capital dollars cannot be spent on the general fund budget. The capital reserve is restricted by law to only capital expenses. So, key issues for reflection and consideration for all of you and for our community. Our tax increases, again, have not kept pace at all with expense increases. Our tax increases have been lower than the consumer price index, which

087doesn't even measure that giant health insurance increase or salaries, right? It doesn't even really start to describe the explosion in expenses. If the cost of services increases and revenue doesn't keep pace, there's a gap that eventually has to be filled or eliminated by either revenue or cut in the expense. Really basic concept. We feel like we can soften the impact of that by combining a tax increase while making over-the-cap reductions. Right? So, finding a middle ground. Not passing off that entire gap to the community, but saying, we've got to find a middle ground somewhere. We need more revenue to be able to support all these things. We can make reductions in these places, but if we go further, it has a dramatic dramatic impact on the things that make us better and different. Staying under

088the cap would require additional, again, significantly impactful reductions, but going over the cap requires a 60% approval, and the community doesn't lose any rebate check, any payment, anything else. There's no penalty to doing that. It's simply a taxpayer decision to go above the cap at that point, which it should be a community's decision to do that. And we feel that they should be able to make that choice. The next steps, again, will be the to assess the impact of the state budget, whether that happens by the 1st or not. We have a community forum on a budget forum, I'm sorry, with the board, and budget adoption on the 7th. That's the next presentation when this will be finalized to the best of our ability. On the 8th and the 15th, these are not on the

089calendar yet, but we will be promoting them. We'll do community budget forums at 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on both days. So, four community forums. We've not had them before, and we will schedule forums around the projects as well as was requested before. We have a budget hearing on the 12th, and the budget vote, of course, on the 19th right here in this building from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Can I answer any questions for the board? Any questions from the board? I think we'll have lots of discussion at the four forums that are upcoming. For sure. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks to you for your preparation, for our principals and doctors for participating and trying to figure this all out, and for your leadership and participation along the way as well.

090Yeah, thank you for the team. It's a lot to figure out. Thank you so much, and I know there are Brighton High School students here tonight who are presenting, and so I thought Dr. Hall could come up. Uh it's a late night. Thank you for staying. It's a school night. Yes, thank you. We have three students presenting, one on Brighton Believes Day and some projects that he did, and and our book club at Brighton High School and how likely that is. So, just going to start with our Brighton Believes overview. I'm sure the other principals will talk about it, incredible day in March. Uh we did a lot of service projects. This is something K-12 that we um every building's involved in, and every building does it a little bit differently, um but it's a

091way to demonstrate service and our Brighton Believes qualities to our community, and hopefully do a um practice our caring and collective responsibility for helping others and helping our um Brighton community and the greater community Rochester. I want to thank every year at the high school, it it differs in terms of what we do for projects, and our grade levels usually take on a project, but they're sponsored by our different clubs um or sports teams. So, these are all of the clubs or sports teams along with their advisors, their officers, their players, who volunteered extra time to put together the project, organize the project, get the materials for the project, uh do the directions for the project. They split up um teammates or club members to go to different home rooms to assist, and they are

092the ones that help sponsor our Brighton Believes activities, and I never know who's going to come to our interest meeting and who's going to propose a project. And all of those teams did and clubs, uh the list is there. And this is all that we accomplished in basically an hour. So, an hour of activity, but it, you know, several months of planning. But just 500 food donations, 220 period packs, 170-plus birthday cards, 400 laundry detergent packs that they they made for the Center for Youth, 70 fleece blankets, 300 pairs of no-slip socks, positive and supportive letters to our servicemen and women around the world, and 800 peanut butter and jelly sandwich bag lunches for the Open Door Mission. And most of our work goes to the Open Door Mission or Owen's House and the Center

093for Youth. Um which is just I I look at this every year and how much they accomplished in such a short amount of time for our community. It's quite amazing. And Noah, if you want to come up. Uh Noah had an idea for a project during Brighton Believes Week, and he's going to tell you a little bit about it. Uh Go ahead, Noah. Uh well, thank you, Dr. Hall. Um and thank you, everyone, for having me this evening. I'm Noah Biedenkopf. I'm a junior at BHS. And about a week and a half ago, I was lucky enough to run the Brighton Believes CPR Saves Lives event, where we were able to train 41 students and six adults and certify them in uh, child and adult CPR and AED um, well, training and as well as

094choking prevention. And I had this idea about six months ago as a member of the Brighton Fire Department Explorers program, where we ran a similar event there. And I brought the idea to Dr. Hall, and he's was super enthusiastic, and we've been working the last six months to run this amazing event. Um, it it was like overwhelmingly successful. We had lots of um, engagement and uh, some great pictures. And I I want to thank the Brighton Education Fund for sponsoring this very important event. I want to thank um, the Brighton Red Cross Club for, um, their volunteer support. And I want to thank uh, Mr. Conroy and Mr. Feltes for providing um, many training dummies as well as volunteer support. Um, the Brighton Volunteer Ambulance and Brighton Fire Department for um, their incredible instructors to

095help facilitate the event. And importantly, I want to thank Dr. Hall for his amazing support throughout along the way. So, thank you. Thank you. Can I just interrupt for a second? Noah is also an MVP uh, math team member, just announced this weekend, so congratulations. [cheering and applause] So, yeah, I I part of my job, I love when I can support students with these incredible ideas. And actually, we're looking for funding, and I I said, "Noah, you could I'm sure you could have written a grant." There's a Brighton Education Fund or the Nancy Beck. He gave him the paperwork. He went from there and got all the funding to give all of these kids a free AED CPR training. Now, we have about 40 students in the high school who are now trained um, emergency

096responders for AED and CPR, which is amazing. So, That's awesome. for all of you. Good job. [applause] Super awesome. And yes, the dodgeball team. I won't tell you which place we came in, but we are very excited. We had a great group and we had a lot of fun. That Brighton Believes Week was really super. Great turnout from our high school group. And now, I have two other wonderful young ladies who are going to come up with our library media specialist specialist, Howard Ennis, Tikfa and Rodia to give you a a quick snapshot of what our BHS Book Club is doing at the high school. Everybody, I'm Howard Ennis. I'm a librarian at Brighton High School. Uh, this is my 26th year as a librarian, and in every year I've been the uh, in two

097different schools have been the advisor to a book club. And I just have to tell you that this year our book club has just been incredible. Um, just amazing energy, diverse, uh, huge groups, different turnout, just a very different vibe. And we owe a lot of that to, um, Tikfa and Rodia here, who are going to tell you more about the book club. Just one more thing, I I'm just so I think one of the reasons we've been so successful is that we've also been addressing literature, uh, involving, um, marginalized communities like immigrants and LGBTQIA. We even read a book about tuberculosis and made it fun. And, you know, and we collaborated, and we just did some really interesting things. And a lot of those ideas, most of those ideas, came from these two girls,

098who will now tell you more about it. Hey, I'm Tikfa, and I'm going to talk to you about what Book Club is. So, in Book Club, we choose two to three options every month, so that hopefully everyone has a book that they're excited to read and to take home. Um, Book Club is a place where not only are we forming a stronger reading community within Brighton High School, but we are also reaching out to the greater Brighton, um, community. We have Dina Viviani from the Brighton Memorial Library come and bring us our book selections every month and help us get books. Book Club is a place where we can foster new friendships and meet other people who just really love books as much as we do. We can hear new perspectives, um, that we might

099not have automatically heard just through involvement with a new community. And I know with our super fast-paced 21st century lifestyle, um, reading a book and finishing it through the end can be rough. You have school and work and so many other responsibilities. And having motivation and something that you're looking forward to, um, can be super helpful in getting a book read. And lastly, Book Club is a place where we can challenge ourselves. We can read genres that we might not have automatically wanted to, and we can hear new perspectives that are just super interesting. These are pictures from one of our most recent meetings. It was a collaboration with the social studies department and the ENL English as a new language students. It was, um, very fun. We talked about the topic of immigration, which

100is very pressing. It's on everyone's minds right now. We, um, chose three books and discussed them, and it was super enlightening. We got to hear new ideas and thoughts from different people. On to Rodia. Hi, I'm Rodia, and I'm going to be talking about the future of Book Club. Um, we plan to collaborate with many other clubs and departments. We're currently collab- collaborating with GSA, which is the Gender and Sexuality Alliance Club. And from, um, collaborating with other clubs, we hope to increase the reading culture at BHS. Um, all students and faculty are invited to our meetings, and, um, our next meeting is on the first Wednesday. Um, our next meeting is on April 8th. Um, it's on April 8th because of spring break, so. Um, this is our poster, um, GSA chose some of

101the books, and we all voted on it, and we ended up with They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera, which is a very popular novel, and The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag, which is a graphic novel. And this is going to be books we'll be discussing on the April event. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have any questions? This is wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. I don't have a question, but just as far as our district and all the difficult things we're navigating right now, like listening to you guys, our Book Club, and our, um, AED and CPR training, all the things that you guys do as students are why we keep doing this. Like, you're incredible people, and we're really thankful that you will be our future leaders. So,

102thanks for being awesome. >> [applause] >> Yeah, just incredible, incredible young people, and that's why I love what I do, too. Carey Lynn, thank you. Um, so, just some upcoming events. We have our HBCU trip happening as we speak. Um, Mr. Bowen, and Dr. or Mr. Green, and, um, Dr. Paddock is on that trip with one of our teachers, Kelly Weeks, has, uh, they have about 32 students, uh, in Washington right now, and doing a great job, uh, getting some feedback. Um, looking forward to break and concert season coming up. Yeah. That's a lot of events. Any questions? Thank you so much. And thank you for bringing students. That's always a highlight. >> Yeah, I appreciate them for staying so late. staying late. You guys can go. Yeah. [laughter] And also, if you're interested in

103governance, this was a good one. True. Yes. So, thank you for being here. Yes. All right, next up, let's Council Rock. Is Mr. Tappen here? Here he is. >> [clears throat] >> All right. So, there's our dodgeball team before principals celebrating, um, exciting way to kick off or to to finish off, actually, the day. Um, so, we celebrated Read Across America Day. It is typically very highly celebrated at French Road. We've kind of always gone a little bit under the radar. Um, Ms. Shafer and I did kind of a March Madness theme this year. So, we did the read-alouds for eight books. It's now down to the finals, Maybe Something Beautiful versus Cranky. And you're hearing it first. I'm announcing it tomorrow morning. So, if there are kids listening, Cranky was the one that won.

104So, yes, Cranky was the one that won. So, um, we will announce that tomorrow morning. But, a lot of fun for the kids to read, listen to stories, and celebrate, uh, reading during Read Across America Day. Dodgeball game, we were very happy to have so many participants, a lot of uh, cheerleaders and people willing to go in. We have some great action shots there. Um, but we had a really great time. Thanks to our fans for coming out. You know, we didn't win, but we had a really good time playing, so. So, for Brighton Believes Day this year, we actually did a project that started with our kindergartners, our youngest learners. They were doing a, uh, unit in social studies on responsibility and community responsibility. They came up with the idea, uh, to do a

105cereal drive. We at first and second grade then hopped on and we were able to collect 508 boxes of cereal that were donated to the Brighton Food Cupboard. Um, we had a huge assembly on Brighton Believes Day, actually ended up being on STEAM Fest Day, which we're going to talk about in a minute. Um, and we did the ever popular domino. Um, but we had to do it three times and I want a little credit for that. So, we did >> [laughter] >> we did half hour assemblies and the kids helped us. They each got a box and they brought it in and after each assembly we cleaned them all up, put them back in the boxes and gave the next group. And so, I was sweating. I was gushing sweat, but their faces So,

106this actually, if you have this, I'm not going to play it now, but if you have it in yours, it's a video that shows kind of the end of it and the celebration. Um, and it was just great. We talked about community service and introduced what community service is, why it's important, and talked a little bit about what they can do not only, you know, in their communities at home, talking about what a community is and talking about the difference that they can make as an individual and I think it's really great to see them empowered. Um, whoa. Okay. Um, so, STEAM Fest. I I have to be honest, I saw many of you there. Thank you for those who were able to come. Um, it will be an event for next year. Um, this

107is the website that you can absolutely go and check out, um, and click on it. 40 different stations, 70 plus volunteers, and really 700 of the most incredibly happy kids I've ever seen. I've been at Council Rock for 14 years. This is no doubt my proudest day that I've been there. There have been a lot of other things I'm really proud of. But watching our kids and our community members volunteering in a really different way than we often get them in to share their expertise and their a part of who they are and seeing the kids who had family members just so proud to see what they did. And then the kids were given complete and free reign on, you know, the stations. They weren't guided by an adult. They weren't told where to go,

108when to get there. They said, "You have an hour and a half." And we had some skeptical teachers and they admitted it. They said, "How is this going to work?" And they were like ready to like jump in, but they took the time to back up and watch the kids and they made their decisions and watching them choose was so empowering. And some of the stories that came out of that day, I'll share two. One was walking behind two little boys, think they were first graders, and they were like, "It was such a great day." They didn't know I was behind them. "It was such a great day. There were no grown-ups who told us where to go or what to do. We totally got to choose." And the other kid said, "Yeah, best day

109ever." Um, and then we had a another student who So, one of the rooms was a break apart room and while I do this so that it keeps going, I'll just kind of scroll through some of the greatest pictures. Um, a break apart room where there were VCRs and DVDs and DVD players and things where they could truly take it apart. They had goggles on and they were just taking things apart. And we had a young man who came into the room. He didn't leave the room. He stayed for almost the entire hour and a half. He took an entire remote control apart and he put the remote control back together. And Eric Jordan, who is our district, uh, you know, technology specialist, um, was there and it was great cuz he was able to

110see it. He doesn't often get interface with kids. Um, and he said to me, "I hope it's okay, Mr. Tappen. I let him take it home." And I said, "Yeah." And I found out today he's since taken it apart and put it back together to try to do it faster. Um, so, really tapping into things that sometimes we don't get to see at school, strengths and areas of interest. Um, so, it just was really awesome. And these are just some of the pictures. Um, we had representatives from the community. We had representatives from some of the tech companies. There was art, there was music. We had retirees coming back to volunteer. It was just a really special day. Um, so, we'll invite you again when it happens, but special and super thanks to Katie Fallon,

111who's our instructional, uh, lead teacher. She did from kernel of an idea to the all the finishing touches. She had everything planned out. Thanks to the PTSA who helped to organize some of the things for our volunteers. We had a nice lunch for them to thank them for being there. Um, we were able to send thank you cards from kids and, um, things like that. So, we're we're just really grateful for all all that that day really turned out to be. So, upcoming, we've got report cards going live on School Tools starting Thursday. Uh, Superintendent's Conference Day, so no students on that day, but lots of learning for adults. We're looking forward, um, to some collaboration time. We then spring right into spring recess and then we celebrate Bus Driver Appreciation Day. We pick a

112day. It's not necessarily the day that's on the calendar, uh, but we at Council Rock celebrate them, um, and the amazing things that they do. And then at the end of April we'll have our Open House Ice Cream Social and Book Fair on these days. Please note, kindergarten's on a Monday. We'll all be here together on a Tuesday, so we don't have it on that day. And then on Wednesday it will be first grade and on Thursday it will be second grade. We'll send out all kinds of information on that, like a schedule and I'll report on that kind of the next time, uh, to let people know what's going on. Cool. Thank you so much. So, you want to see us four days that week is what you're saying. Say it again. >> You

113want to see us four days that week. >> I do. I just don't want you to miss the action. I think last year I scheduled it over a board meeting and you couldn't be there. So, I wanted to make sure you were able to be there to help scoop the ice cream. Thank you so much. All right, French Road. Are we good? >> it? Are we doing it? Okay. >> She said she's doing it. She went out and tested it. Okay. Hello. Um, we've had a very exciting month of March. Um, just like the other principal said, the dodgeball game was a ton of fun. Um, we didn't really win all that money games, but the ones that we did run was a lot of fun. Um, we also lost at rock, paper, scissors, which

114was part of our deciding factor of going to the next level. But it was a lot of fun for the staff to Thank you. the staff to be together and we had a ton of kids out there supporting, too. So, it was a great day for our families. Um, prior to the dodgeball game, we had our Brighton Believes Day, so we once again supported Happy Birthday Cha-Cha-Cha. We had 125 gifts that were wrapped by our fourth graders. You can see up on the top left. It's quite, um, an event watching them figure out how to fold paper and tape and cut and all of that. Um, our third graders made about 350 birthday cards that go in the birthday box for Happy Birthday Cha-Cha-Cha. And as a school we collected 1,380 boxes of mac and

115cheese for Happy Birthday Cha-Cha-Cha. We only set it up once. Um, this is the big culminating event for our fifth graders. We have learned the hard way. We put stack boxes every class, so when the kids like knock them over, it doesn't knock over 1,000 boxes at once, so we're able to kind of lift those up as we go. If you could have heard the kids' volume and singing Happy Birthday and screaming in the room, it was pretty amazing. Um, Carey Green, who you see in the bottom right, she is the founder of Happy Birthday Cha-Cha-Cha. The bags go to students in, um, Buffalo, Rochester, um, Syracuse and I believe Utica. She started the day off with the kids doing a, um, team meeting talking about the importance of Happy Birthday Cha-Cha-Cha and making sure

116every child could celebrate a birthday and the difference that they make and she came back for the dominoes and she said it was so incredibly powerful and she was so excited to see their excitement. It was picked up by two of the news channels, so that was a lot of fun as well. Uh, that week we also had Read Across America. You could see a couple of our local celebrities that popped into the classrooms. Um, it's just great to have the partnership with the Brighton Police as well as the Fire Department. We've got Mr. Tappen, Dr. McGowan. We had people in and out all day. So, it was a lot of fun for our kids and our teachers and adults alike. Um, the following Saturday we had, I'm sorry, the Saturday before we had, um,

117Festival of Ideas and we had a ton of kids. If you went on the third floor, all you could smell was frosting. Um, lots of cake and cookies and all the things. We had kids dancing, we had kids making TikTok videos. They were doing aerial art. Um, it was a lot of fun. Danielle and I were charged with, um, trying to keep the kids organized and we had some board members helping us get the kids write out their name tags and all as well. So, that was a fun opportunity. Um, we uh, continue to do our Bruins done once a month and that's when our school comes together as a whole community in the morning or the afternoon for a school wide assembly. This one happened to fall on St. Patrick's Day. One of our

118teachers is married to, um, Katie who owns Jameson Irish Dance School and there's some dancers that are part of the Some of the dancers are from Brighton as well. So, they were able to kick off Irish dancing with our kids that morning. We also introduced the winners of our yearbook cover contest. You can see the posters made of their winning covers and we just talked about some of our things that we're focusing on as a school with our Brighton Believes qualities as well. This was a pretty cool opportunity in fourth grade. We had the Cornell Agriculture Education Program in some of our fourth grade rooms and they learned how to plant microgreens in space and then they continued to practice planting those seeds, watching them grow, and it was really neat for them to see

119like something they're doing in the classrooms actually taking place in space to provide food for the astronauts. This year our special areas have created a contest, the Brighton Believes Special Area Contest, where they're trying to show respect, responsibility, integrity, self-control, and kindness in their specials. In each trimester they acknowledge the class that earned the most stars showing those different qualities. And you can see the looks of surprise when all the specialty teachers walked into the room. Again, it was on St. Patrick's Day, thus all the green. Um kids were screaming and squealing. I think Mrs. Eden ran away with the trophy at one point. So, it was a lot of fun. They get to keep the trophy in their classroom for the next trimester as the classes compete to see who will win trimester three.

120As we move ahead into April, we have our superintendent's conference day this week, spring recess. We're getting ready for our computer-based testing. Um Mr. Taplin and I will be doing bedtime with books with our incoming third graders for the 203 crossover event. And then we're kicking off the ice cream socials and wrapping up April with one more computer-based test. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And TCMS. [clears throat] Good evening. Good evening. Finishing up March here. Um as just a reminder that March is music in our schools month. So, we have lots of pictures from all the different concerts that we were able to celebrate and enjoy at the beginning of the month starting with district strings at the very end of February. Um but we also had our band

121concerts and our vocal prism concerts as well as our students um at the elementary level which incorporates our sixth graders and our seventh and eighth graders which is part which are part of this uh secondary level participating in the all county music festivals as well. So, so much going on uh in the music world. And um I love that our band teachers do a phenomenal job of having our students take on leadership roles and introducing the songs that they're going to play um a little bit of cultural background to the songs, a little bit of musical exploration behind um the intricacies of the songs. And um it's super fun to to see them in those roles. This was um the vocal prism concert but it was during the day. It was as they were rehearsing

122over at the high school and getting prepared for that. We also had um our urban suburban family dinner which probably in my five years here was uh attended the best that it's ever been attended. And um selfishly it was great for me to be able to see these families that I now know for five years. Um and seeing the students go through the high school those seniors that um are graduating our students that I kind of came into the district with. So, so nice to um enjoy the partnerships with the families and just uh enjoy an evening of breaking bread together and celebrating all that we have to offer. Uh we are rounding out our activity nights of the spring. We have one more sixth grade activity night and then of course our big eighth

123grade dance. And um just always lots of fun. Kudos to our TCMS strong students who are always there to support everybody else in making sure that they have a great time. We also um as Ms. Coggin said celebrated 35 years of festival. I know we talked about it last year. Um somebody had to ham it up in front of all of the t-shirts to show us that it was 35 years but we just wanted to celebrate that a little bit. Um I This is the first year nobody offered me food as uh Dr. Rio knows that's really important to me is food. Um and nobody offered me any any frosting or anything like that. But many cakes and many cupcakes decorated um scuba diving all of the things. It's always just amazing. Again, I know

124we talked about it at the last meeting. Um but just the way the community comes together to offer these unique experiences to our students is just it's truly like nothing else that exists. Um of course of course what was super exciting to us at TCMS was we celebrated our 100-year anniversary. Uh we had and it was also on Brighton Believes Day. So, we had a great assembly where um Mr. Quinn, Mr. Terry Quinn, and Mr. Rob Thomas joined us as former principals from TCMS. Again, selfishly it was a great day because um Mr. Quinn hired me well over 20 years ago at TCMS. So, to have him there and then of course having been able to work with Mr. Thomas and just to be able to celebrate all um that they have done to build

125a culture at TCMS and how we've been able to continue and grow on that. Um but also we had Bill Manley there who was uh you know, gave a great speech and um and accreditation for us. Um it was just a a really nice way to to celebrate TCMS and all things TCMS. And then we rolled right into our Brighton Believes Day where each grade level worked on a different project. One grade level worked on um sun catchers for local nursing homes. We had another uh grade level that worked on kindness rocks that are going to be be put throughout trails in Brighton for folks to enjoy. Um and then we had another group that um that worked on bracelets that are being shared uh with different organizations throughout the community. And then of course

126we moved into dodgeball. We finally did it. Took us four years. May have been my win in the rock, paper, scissors competition that sealed the deal. But um we lost terribly to the 650 seniors that were out on the court [laughter] again. Um but other than that I think we made a great showing. Um more than um being proud of of the the faculty that showed up. And if you one thing is, you know, if you look at the faculty that showed up it's not just teachers. And I love that we have a representation. We have TAs, we have security staff, um we have clerical staff. Like everybody's all in um as a part of TCMS. But when you looked at our student section, um I'm bragging but also so proud. Like we killed it,

127right? I mean, we had definitely had the loudest voices there. Um and it's so fun just to see middle schoolers just be in all engaged in something in such a positive way. And of course not to overlook all of the fun things that are happening in classes each day. I always love to this time of year as Beowulf is being taught at seventh grade because um you know, Beowulf who loves Beowulf? But actually what our teachers do with Beowulf makes the kids truly enjoy it. Um they bring it to life in all of the different ways that they can. And um as they're exploring, you know, the symbolism in in of light and darkness. Um just so many smiles as they're um as students are studying such a classic text. So, uh kudos to our

128teachers and our students. Also to Noah Gray who um secured fifth place in our regional spelling bee recently which is the highest place we've had since we've been back in the spelling bee game. So, very exciting. Um and then upcoming events our seventh graders are currently on the DC trip. Uh and we also have our hometown exploring going on as well. So, different activities each day for students who did not attend the DC trip. We have conference day this week, spring recess. The marking marking period three is already over as soon as we come back from break which is crazy to me. Chamber orchestra, um our state testing, and then of course our spring dance that I mentioned. So, it is just we are moving and grooving and and all great things. Thank you. Thank

129you. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you, principals. Um next we're going to move on to approve the election inspectors for the 2026-27 annual budget vote and election. This is Tuesday, May 19th. And just to clarify that on that one. So, can I have a motion to approve? So moved. Moved by Karen. Second? Second. Seconded by Kerry-Lynn. Any questions or discussions? All in favor? Aye. All right. Um and the next item is to approve the first read policies. Um we're approving two three first reads, policy 7132, [clears throat] the non-resident student policy, policy 1620, the annual organizational [clears throat] meeting policy, and uh 7522, concussion management policy. Um did you want to comment after? Or do you want to comment before we vote? Uh well, I I would just say with all three uh the

130con- the concussion management was reviewed by our um health and safety and athletic staff. Uh and it is compliant and both aligned with what our practice is and what the law requires the regulation requires us to have. With regard to the non-resident students, uh we have shifted our practice now. So, currently if you become a non-resident during the year, and this is with the exception of seniors who are entitled to senior privilege, you are able to pay tuition for the remainder of the year at a pro-rated rate if your student good standing. What we are saying is that if you become a non-resident in the fourth quarter, you are able to do so without paying tuition. The thinking being uh it it quite frankly is just a point in time where we'd like kids to

131be able to finish the year. It seems um a little bit arbitrary to charge tuition at that point. We'd like kids in their best interests to have that consistent educational experience. Prior to the beginning of the quarter, we believe it is likely in the best interest for a student to go to their next school to begin to establish relationships etc. in that environment. Uh so, that's the one change in that policy. And finally with regard to the reorganization date, this is really just a reflection of shifts in state law regarding uh the the time frame when the reorganization meetings happen. So, it's a first read. And if you have any questions or suggestions before we finalize the next meeting, please say the word. I appreciate that with all of the end-of-year expenses that come to

132families and students dealing with pictures, field trips, and things, any any savings is appreciated. So, thank you for considering that. You got it. Thanks. Um can I have a motion to approve the first read policies on these three? So moved. Moved by Sue. Second? Second. Seconded by Clayton. Um all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, thank you. Um next up on our agenda is the consent agenda, which includes field trip approvals for the Outdoors Club, DECA National Convention, New York Speech and Debate, and the girls lacrosse team. It also includes fundraising activities for Speech and Debate at Five Guys. So, if you'd like to support them, that's Five Guys on Monroe Avenue on April 8th. Um and then our gift we'd like to read our gift. We have one gift here on the consent

133agenda today. A gift from the Purple Light Project at Rochester Area Community Foundation in the amount of $3,000 for French Road Elementary School arts programming in 2026, specifically the School of Rock production. Can I have a motion to approve our consent agenda? So moved. So moved by Karen. Second? Second. Seconded by Clayton. All those in favor? Aye. And I think that's it. Any comments before we adjourn? Okay. Um can I have a motion to adjourn this meeting? So moved. Moved by Karen. Second? Second. Seconded by Clayton. All those in favor? And we're adjourned. This has been a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education.