Board of Education Meeting - 1/13/2026

001order at 6. If we could rise for the pledge, please. I pledge allegiance to the to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right, moving into 23. We have a consent agenda for the minutes uh and tonight's agenda. Can I get a motion? So, >> thank you, Justin. Thanks, Lori. Any discussion? Thanks for the question, Mr. Nichols, via email on the reports. Appreciate that. All those in favor? >> I opposed. Motion is carried. Moving into business operations, we have a consent agenda 3-8. Did we get a motion? >> Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Kate. Any discussion? This is for the general fund warrant in the amount of $1,197,26460 December 15th. the general fund warrant in

002the amount of $44,4184 on December 30th. The capital fund warrant in the amount of $23746 from December 15th. The capital fund warrant in the amount of $624.60 from December 30th and the school lunch warrant in the amount of $9,4145 from December 15th. Any other discussion? All those in favor? I >> I >> oppose. Motion is carried and I will turn it over to Superintendent Abby. >> Thank you. >> Uh the first thing was we had our initial meeting with Kestrel Construction and March Associates for our upcoming Capital Ally project. We're able to sit down, talk through timelines, logistics of payment, um ordering of materials. So tentative timeline, they're working on getting all their materials ordered. They didn't know the exact lead time on when the materials would arrive, but we're hopeful that that project will

003begin in the spring. Just as a reminder that capital outlay includes hardening of glass and doors down at NPS, and it's my understanding that this is like kind of the final element to that that at this point in time now, the entire exterior of the building has been hardened. Um, the larger item that we added into this, the the doorway closest to the gymnasium, which gets a lot of use obviously for athletic events that take place down there. Anyone that's been in and out of there, that door has had a little bit of abuse over the years. And you, so that full door system is going to be replaced within this capital outlay, but that's probably the largest part of that. It shouldn't be overly invasive on MPS. we've talked about either it's going to

004take place over breaks or they'll be on third shift for the majority of that work if that's the case but it's it shouldn't be too elaborate going on in MPS and shouldn't impact the education at all um simultaneously we have our capital project where is in with state ed right now so we are having our first meeting as far as looking at the cost analysis and looking which will then lead into starting to develop a timeline for that. So, we just this evening scheduled our first meeting with CNS to go through those things for January 23rd. They sent over a preliminary thing that Cynthia worked on and got some numbers back to them. So, they're ready to start talking through all of those things. And at the same time, we'll be looking at what alternates

005we would want to have available should there be enough funding during that project to be able to do some of those things. I'm pretty excited about uh we had our introduction. So, Mrs. Chrisman, Cynthia, and myself are all taking part in an AI agility challenge through MVCC. Uh 20 days, 20 minutes a day. It's six core compasses. So, we had our virtual introduction to that. I'm pretty excited about it. the just in the introduction the ideas that they brought up about how to prompt and the different ways that you can utilize it are things that I've never even heard of and things I've never even thought of and they were very clear about by the time there I can't even remember how many they said the number of iterations they've created of this program just

006in the last year alone was shocking to me and they're just constantly having because of the speed in which it's evolving and it's constantly changing their evolution, but this would be a really good it's a good push. I like the idea that it's you should be doing this every single day and I think it's going to really ingrain that thought process in our workflow that much more which simultaneously today we had model schools at our faculty meetings both at NPS and at the junior senior high school. I'll let them address that when they give the reports, but they received some initial training in AI from model schools as well, and I'll let them talk about how how that was received and how that went today. So, it's we're trying to get ourselves to a point

007where we're comfortable utilizing it ourselves because I don't think we're there yet. And I think that that's step one before this is integrated throughout, you know, our educational day and students are allowed to work with it within the lessons, we have to at least be at a functioning level ourselves. And that's that's where we're at and that's what we're doing right now is we're building our own capacity so that we have the ability then to teach our students how it can be used in an ethical way. And that that's what a lot of the conversations around AI and education is is what's ethical, what's not. And the biggest fear I think of all educators is will it replace those skills that we're so like passionately trying to embed in our students that problem solving. Do

008we we don't want them to just be rellyant on the devices. We want that to be like the supplement. We want that to make them better. And one of the things from the introduction that I found most interesting is that they were really harping on the fact that those that are really successful in tapping into AI are the ones that have the most personable skills, which I thought was really interesting. I never really thought about it that way, but the idea of you being able to interact with AI correlates well with your ability to interact with humans. that same type of prompting and interaction and dialogue, which I had never thought about it that way, but I'm interested to hear hear more about it from that lens because it's it's not anything I've ever heard

009before. So, so we'll continue on that work and as as we progress through that program, we'll we'll be sharing things with with other people and hopefully be able to report out more with faculty. We've talked about it at teacher leaders quite a bit throughout this year, too, and we hope to continue that conversation. Uh today at 1 o'clock, Governor Hokll gave her state of the state address. I haven't had a chance to really dive in deep on that yet. Um but obviously next week is is more important for what she'll be releasing for us. Like that's when we'll be looking at those preliminary foundation aid runs and and you'll be hearing some more conversations about that tonight in in the budget presentation. So, next week is when we'll be looking to have something a little

010bit more concrete on that, but today was the overview, and there's quite a bit to digest from what I've seen so far. So, I'll we'll get working on that as well. Uh, and lastly for tonight, we we've talked about it numerous times about the idea of our our audit committee transitioning into a budget and finance. And so Cynthia and I have have taken the time since our last meeting to plot out our dates in which we're going to dive into our planning for the budget. So then we're ready to report back to all of you on more. So we've currently scheduled five meetings just between her and I on our calendar so we have them spaced out appropriately and ready so that like time doesn't get away from us. We already have them on our

011calendar and we're working around those timelines. So if we want to really make that transition, I think now is the time. So I'll reach out to to the audit committee and and ask if if this is how we would like to continue this. So our our next meeting that Cynthia and I have scheduled for ourselves. We would then schedule a meeting in the next week with that committee to go into a more in-depth conversation and then it would get presented at the following board meeting. So we have our scheduled then we would meet with the committee and then it would come back to the full board at that. So I'll reach out to the committee members to see if if we want to pursue that avenue like that. I think I think that it's worth

012a shot for sure and as we kind of brainstorm through it. I I like the timeline and I like the way it looks especially be given that this is my first year in the role going through this process. So I think it would be helpful to have those additional conversations. It's only gonna increase my comfort level with the process. >> You Dr. Tim. >> So on that um I would like to introduce uh Dr. Rick Tims. He's a school finance expert and consultant with extensive experience in providing long range financial planning guidance to school districts and board of educations across New York State. Dr. Mr. Tims is a retired BOSIE superintendent and former school district superintendent. He is considered a master of complex education funding structure, particularly the foundation aid formula and has over 20

013years of experience providing financial guidance. I met Dr. Tims last fall at a presentation to area school business officials. Um we discussed our need to develop a long range fiscal plan to ensure the stability and security of our district. And now Dr. Tims will pres be presenting to you the framework of the process used to develop that plan. >> Dr. Sims, >> I've got a handout so you can follow along. I'll just I'll just sit here and use the mouse to get us through the PowerPoint. Uh I don't stand on a lot of formality and putting on my suit this evening was killer. So uh normally I'm in shorts and t-shirt, but otherwise I'm doing well. Uh if you have any questions during anything I say, please just bring it up, right? Because the key

014thing is is it's no good unless everybody understands what we're doing, what we're trying to accomplish. So yeah, I've been around a long time and I I do a lot of uh long range planning with school districts. Uh it's a complicated process in many ways, but the idea, I think, is to really find out where the district will be probably in the next 5 years financing. That's basically our goal. But the idea would be to do it as quickly as inexpensively as possible. Uh as an expose superintendent and school superintendent and business official, I know it sounds like I can't keep a job, but the idea would be uh the idea is to do it economically. All right? And to bring some understanding to what's going on. In the end, what we really want to

015do is provide a presentation to the board with all the data we've we've come up with and basically our findings and recommendations. So with that, let's just see how we're doing here. Look at that. Perfect. Okay. So, some of this we can read, some of this we can't. Can we get that one piece out of there? Thanks. Welcome. What's so nice about being either that or put it way on the top. Yeah, that's good. That'll be good. There we go. Perfect. Thank you. Okay, so the first thing is we only use official documents. In other words, we're not trying to make anything up. Uh it's more than a spreadsheet. We we can we're going to come up with some spreadsheets, but it's more than that. It's really understanding where the money comes from and where

016the money goes. So the first thing you'll see on the list is basically the SED submissions of the ST3. Now these are really important because these are filed annually with state education department. Matter of fact, if you don't file them on time, they don't send you your aid. So it's really important to get that in there. and it outlines really where all the money and all the different funds are that the school district has. So, we're going to start analyzing two things on this on these forms. One is what was budgeted for revenues and expenditures and also what actually happened with budget budgeted expenditures. So, we're we're here's the thing right now Cynthia is trying to figure out what's going to be in next year's budget. So, here we are at the beginning of January

017and she's going to have to come up with a budget somewhere in April so you can vote on it in May. The budget will not take effect until the following July, but it must exist and work all the way to the following June 30th. Other than that, no miracle is going to occur. So, the idea is you want your best estimates, but you want to find out how close you came and basically how things work. So, that's what we're going to start off doing. We're going to go five years back. Now, we're going five years back because of a couple things. One is I'm interested in what happened during co with law school districts because there were unique opportunities during COVID to actually build fund balances to help you survive the future years because it

018was just a one-off a lot of federal grants that districts had access to but we'll probably never see again. So the idea is what did we do there that could help us in the future and if it wasn't so successful what are we going to do now? The next item on the list, as you can see, is the education department website aid calculations as they're updated. Your superintendent kind of alluded to the fact that the governor did her little speech today about her basic ideas and all that, but it is next week where the money starts flying out in terms of spreadsheets. But more than that, you got to keep in mind the legislature still has to approve that plan. Sometimes they add to it, sometimes they subtract from it, sometimes it's altered a little

019bit, but it's all based on a lot of estimates either by the state on their finances and also all school districts in New York. There are 673 school districts in New York that receive state aid. I'm working on the state aid for about 3 to 400 of them depending upon how deep they want to go. So, we're really knee deep into this analysis. Now, you notice it says as they are updated. This is important. Cynthia at actually at the beginning of this year basically before October 15th around or about October 15th had to do a number of submissions to the state about your district enrollment the dem demographics of your students and things like this. Those numbers will change all year long. Same as same as you know the Bosei services you perhaps buy, how

020many kids are in CTE, kids coming and going. So those numbers are always being updated. So what happens is we could look like today at the SED website and look at your aid and then next week and it could be different. So the idea is to find out what's really going on there. The next one is the auditor's uh recommendations and reports your external auditor. Every school district you have an audit committee is required to have an external audit by an external auditor. It's kind of like to make sure no one ran away with the money and the money's in the right spots. So, we look at those to find out what the recommendations have been in the past, which is pretty simple. Uh, those are the documents that are sometimes a couple hundred pages

021for some districts if they're very large, maybe a hundred or less for other districts, but there's a lot of data in there. Number four, current projects. For instance, I just heard now here you're going to do a capital outlay project. That's great. You're going to do you're in you've got some uh approvals going into SED for another capital project. But these capital projects are finicky in a sense that certain forms have to be in uncertain times to make the aid start. In other words, you're going to be borrowing money. You may be using some of your own money that's part of your reserves. But we want to look at the timing of all that to find out how it's going to affect your budget because remember state aid for a capital project cannot start any

022sooner than 18 months after the commissioner's approval date. which means there will always be a lag difference between spending some money and getting some money back from the state. So we want to see how that works for you. Look at bonds, bond anticipation notes and existing debt service schedules. So that is very important because those are really a big mover in your tax cap calculation called your capital exclusion. So we want to look at that as well. Foundation aid history and potential changes coordinated with state aid planning service at Quest R3. You belong to this service and anytime I can get data from you or for you for free, I will tap that service. The idea is like I said, I'm a penny pincher. I was a superintendent of a risky. You can still go

023there and you'll find out I was a penny pincher. The idea is is to make sure that we get the best bang for the buck for the district. We want to make sure that we do a good job. So, if we have to rely, we'll say on this service that you actually belong to, we will tap their assistance, okay? Whenever we need it. Other expense-driven aids. Number six, I don't know if you're aware of this, but we talk a lot about foundation aid because it's the biggest aid category that you get, but there's a whole bunch of aid categories. I'm going to show you some of that are yours, and we've got to keep an eye on all those aid categories because to me, it's all the money coming into the district to support your

024efforts. So we're going to taking a look at that like excess cost aids, boseies, transportation and so on that type of thing. We're also number seven going to look at the reserves of the district. You have reserves. You got reserves in your district. We're going to analyze those reserves. We're going to analyze them two ways. One is how much is in there and what they're going to be used for. And the other ways is should you have the money there or not? So we're going to look at both things so you find what's going on. I'm going to give you a list of the possible reserves coming up. Uh we're going to take a look at the amount of capital reserves you have. Capital reserves are not often used by many school districts, although I'm

025getting my clients to use more of them because they're my favorite reserve because they're a reserve that keeps giving back. And what I mean by that is if you can save money ahead of time with with the public's approval, we can spend our time buying more things cash than borrowing for the for whatever it is. Like I'd like to buy buses cash. I like to do capital projects with huge cash down payments. Does everybody see where I'm coming from? No interest. You're not hiring uh accounting firms. You're not hiring a whole bunch of people that have to go get you the money at the bond market. So, the idea is any way we can find a way to do things better, faster, cheaper. Capital reserves may help you out. We're going to look at your

026fund balance history and the opportunities through the co era where the Chris and ARPA grants were there. We're going to also look at operational issues. So in English, what this means is, have we saved any money over the last few years to help us in the next few years? If we have, how are we going to use that money appropriately? If we haven't, what are we going to do about it? Because this could be problematic. The other thing, too, is operational issues are rearing their ugly head in many school districts. Let me give you an example. Four or five years ago, we could have school districts buy a pickup truck for like $35,000. They're now $70,000. The district I live in, we started a capital reserve four years ago and this year we bought a

027huge dump truck, salter sander plow with blade. Can you understand what I'm saying? $180,000 cash, not even in the budget because we planned for it, saved the money for it, crrewed interest for it, got voter approval for it, and we had had voter approval to spend it and buy it. But we showed good faith that we were planning ahead so it would cost them less money in the long run. So those are the operational issues I'm talking. We're also taking a look at your tax cap calculations. If you stayed to the cap, not stayed the cap, but under it, over it, challenged it, whatever you did. But we also want to find out what are the contributing factors to the number that your cap comes out to be, whatever percent it is. What's making it

028move? And what do you have control over, what you don't have control over? Uh the next thing we're going to take a look at um potential financial events that affect your tax cap calculation. So for instance, pilot agreements, solar farms, are everybody with me? Building any kind of commerce and building an industry, but also your capital projects. So take a look at that. The controllers report. In this process, I'll be working for you. And I will find things that I love that you do and I will say keep doing them. But I must warn you, the controller may not like what you're doing. The controller is across the T dot the eye person and he follows every letter of the law completely. I don't have a problem with that, but he's not running a school

029district. Okay? So, it's it's easy, in other words, for your neighbor to tell you how to do your lawn, but they don't live there. So, the key thing is is that you're going to get two points of view from me. One is what the controller would say in some cases, like, geez, I wish you hadn't done that, or I wish you'd do this, or can you do this instead? And you may find me saying he's not going to like this, but I love it because I think it will help you in the future. Okay. Um, we're going to take a look at the use of funds here. What I mean by funds, there's different ways we talk about funds, the appropriate fund balances and the unappropriated. So, what we want to find out is how

030is your budget being balanced? In many cases, almost every single district in the state of New York, it's very rare that the revenues actually equal the expenditures in the budget. It's extremely rare. So what happens is many cases you have to use your own money should you all of a sudden spend out the budget or revenues come in short to balance that budget by the end of the year. So we're going to take a look at those fund balances. The thing next thing is we're going to look at TRS and ERS rates which are the pension systems. Now again you have no control over that. You can't negotiate it away. It's a state program. I don't know if you're aware, but when the stock market does good and their investments do well, you tend to

031do better. When they don't do so well, you don't tend to do well because they charge you the difference. Keep in mind, um, you know, I've been around a long time. When I started teaching, I think the earth was cooling or something, but it was a long time ago. So, what happened was teachers would do the 30 55. 30 years they'd teach, 55, they were out. But now we're having faculties with people 50, 60, 70 years old. So they're living longer, they're living healthier, they're making more money. So it's starting to put pressure on the pension systems, if you can understand what I'm saying. So we got to keep an eye on what that means for your district. Okay. The next thing, projected contractual obligations. You all have basic collective bargaining agreements and we got

032to find out the effect of those on your your budget going long term. We also have to keep in mind though that some of these things are more complicated than they look. For instance, in order for you to hire people when people leave, you have to be competitive with your neighbors. Sometimes this strikes boards is very difficult to understand because they say, "Well, we're only going to pay what we can afford." It won't matter what you're going to afford. If you're going to exist, you have to compete because you are up against the same labor market as not only just your immediate neighbors, but I'd say within the three Boseies region, Madison, Herkimer, and Onida to be clear. So, we're going to take a look at some of that. The impact of district's budget due

033to potential loss of potential pilot agreements. Pilots come, pilots go, more solar farms are coming. We're just going to do a quick investigation, see if we see anything on the horizon, and if it's a big issue. If it isn't, we'll drop it. Other words, we don't want to study anything. We find out immediately it's not important. Okay. Tax levy history. We're going to take a look at your tax levy history in terms of how you've raised these funds and what proportion they are of your budget. districts like yours that are smaller and rural like many of the school districts I was a superintendent of, you know, you tend to rely a lot on on taxes, but you would be surprised the ratio of taxes to state aid. So, the problem comes in when all of

034a sudden state aid is starting to be cretailed and then the pressure goes onto the tax base. This is a problem. So, we'll take a look at it. We're going to look at your revenue expendance variance difference. So in English this means is what's the difference between what you budget for revenues and what you've been getting versus what you're budgeting for expenses and what you've been spending and how you've been doing it. So we're going to take a look at that. We're going to keep in mind recent impending statute regulation decisions of the commissioner that might have implications on your finances where there's one big one right now that I think could be a real problem for almost every district in our region if not across the state. It's called the zero emission bus mandate.

035Now, the truth of it is I think there's a lot of people saying, "Look, we want cleaner energy. We want this. We want that." The question is affordability. I think it's going to be the issue for school districts like yours. Keep in mind right now you can buy a 67 passenger bus around 170 grand diesel. These buses will be about 425,000 each and they have to have a place to plug them in. So, the big thing is it could have an economic impact. Not that anybody's pro or con against having an electric bus. The key is the finances is what I'm worried about. Other words, what's your affordability? What's your fleet turnover? How many buses do you turn over a year? What would it take to retrofit that bus garage of yours? Right. Okay. So,

036it's that type of thing we're going to look at in a in a very basic way, but we'll have some understanding of it. How about evidence of long-range financial planning? I'll be looking at what kind of plans are already in place in the district for long term. Other words, what have you already thought about? So to me, I start thinking to myself, not only how many pickup trucks and snow piles are we going to replace and when and how much they're going to cost, but also I don't know if you ever saw the cost of a floor scrubber. Okay, those floor scrubbers, I mean, they're a small fortune. And so what happens is there's regular maintenance O andM operations and maintenance buildings and grounds issues that come back to come and bite us in the

037can. The other thing too is we got to think of other things for n in 202122 and that era we sent everybody home with a Chromebook or a laptop. Everybody we all went home with a piece of technology. Question is where is it all and what shape is it in and what's the plan to replace it and how are we going to pay for it and also the drops in the buildings and the updating the servers and the licensing. I'm sure this gentleman knows a lot more about and I do. But the key thing is is here's what I hear. change, change, change. See what I mean? So, the idea is how we're going to handle that. Interviews with the business official and superintendent. I'm praying that we won't need mental health help by the

038time I'm done with Cynthia asking her 50 million questions. Although, so far so good. We've already started talking about things and she seems right on the ball. Zach is a new superintendent, so we're going to bring him up to speed with this new district. So, it's going to be a great great team effort. But I've got a lot of questions because we we really want to have a good product at the end. Let me give you a couple examples here. Hitting a button, but nothing's doing. Are we frozen dead in the water or what? Here we go. Are you going to have to do that every time or should not? Okay, good. All right. All right. Here we just hate to have you have to keep bouncing up. I'm sitting down so I don't have

039to bounce up. Okay, here we go. All right, here we go. So this first this next page basically is state aid. So you notice I'm only showing you part of the page compared to your your page. And the reason is because I'm going to focus in on where we are. All right. Each one of these little items in here is basically the aid categories you're eligible for. And I've got red lines around a bunch of them. Let's start off with foundation aid. If you'll notice, it's the biggest number on the page. See that? And look at what's happened to it year after year. 23 24 25. It went up a whopping $14,000. What did you do with all the money? Okay, so this is my worry. My worry is you're heavily dependent on this aid,

040but it's not moving much. If you look at the next year, the governor's proposal was to give you 2%. A 2% increase. You were not eligible for 2% under the formula, but they gave it to you. So, it was 205,000. That's much better. Right now, according to the formula, you're not you actually are not eligible for any more money at all. None. Zero zip zilch more. Okay? Matter of fact, the state could actually claim you're overpaid by $104,000. But I'm hopeful next week the governor will say, "Hey, let's give all these districts, we call them safe, harmless, safe, let's keep them safe from harm and give them a 2% increase. So maybe you can get another maybe 210 out of it or something." See what I'm getting at? Because you're going to need the money.

041You've got a escal uh cost escalating. Now, the other thing, too, is you got transportation aid, but summer and and regular and regular transportation aid, and that tends to move up and down. Now, you'll notice basically it's moving quite a bit right now, but the thing is is the cost of buses is going up. So, what's happening is it looks like you're getting well, we're getting more money in aid, but your costs are going up. And remember, you don't get fully paid for the whole bus. Okay. The next thing is building aid. So, we've got building aid across here and this is the building aid that you're getting and what's on schedule and you can see it moves. It's moving down a little bit. Now, I'm hopeful that we will get some data from the

042district for your new capital project that we could put in and we will then if you'll notice in the future years there's zeros in there. We will fill those in and find out what your future capital projects are going to grant you an aid. There's Bosey's aid that fluctuates. You'll notice yours is going up and going down. The thing about Bosey's aid that's interesting is the aid comes in the year after you buy the Bosei services. Okay. Now, keep in mind if you're thinking, well, we've got a large number of special ed kids. We'll say at Boseies, this should help our Bosey's aid. It won't help your Bosey's aid at all. Special ed kids are paid in foundation aid. Okay? And they're also paid in the next two aids down public and private excess cost

043aid for highcost kids and high-cost programs. Now, if you'll notice yours, it's gone up and down. But this could be kids coming in and going out of the program or aging in and aging out, moving in, moving out. But the other thing you got to keep in mind, we have a new law that says you have to educate these kids to age 22, but the age stops at age 21. Okay? So, in other words, you're going to be buying some costs going forward. And then we've got like software aid, library, textbook, and hardware, which are really small aids, but if you'll notice over toward the end of this little piece I've got, you'll see a whole bunch of red numbers under 25 to 26 difference. These are per child. So when your enrollment goes down,

044the aid decreases. So the big question is what's going on with the enrollment? I've got to tell you that like 80% of the school districts in the state of New York, their enrollment is declining. So the things that are paid per child, your aid will go down. Now that does, now keep in mind if you lost a kid per grade level, you're not going to change the grade level configuration in your buildings, right? Your cost would stay the same, if not escalate, but your aid may go down in those categories. So that's going to be part of the rub here. The next one is universal prek. Okay? And what you'll see here is this this this aid is in orange. That's because this money goes into the special aid fund, not to general fund. And

045we we're going to look a little bit at the UPK business because the UPK some districts their the aid they get easily pays for their program and other districts they struggle to pay for their program because the way the program is really put together and maybe the district has no choice in how it's put together and that'll be a complicated issue we'll talk about. Then it says total aid. Then it says overall increase decrease and that's without the UPKA. So what we do is let's see if we can get this thing move. I'm hitting a button. Oh, there we go. Look at this. I'm hot. >> I'm scoring. Okay. The yellow part is the part where we got to figure out where this is going. Does that make sense to everybody? So I threw in

046some numbers to keep everything basically stable. But the question will be will they stay stable? That's going to be what we're going to try and look at. So that's it down the way. Now, the other thing, too, is if you'll notice down here, uh you'll see I've got some zeros on the bottom that are in yellow. I have no evidence that even if the governor gives you 2% more this year, that you will be eligible for 2% more ever again. So, I think this is going to put our crimp on some of our finances. All right. Next thing is I'm going to bring up some ideas for you here. So, I don't know if you're aware of this, but all of us that talk state aid, we talk in a foreign language, right? It's called

047state aes or something. I have no idea. But what happens is you don't have enrollment. You don't have kids. You have tap poo totalable foundation pupil units. We call them children. But what happens is when we have talk about taffoo, we're talking about weighted kids. And I don't mean how much they weigh. I'm talking about their demographic. Okay? So for instance, a general ed kid, a regular kid goes to school is counted as a student. A special needs kid is counted as 1.41 kids. Okay? So, let's make it up. Everybody here in the room last year had a thousand kids in their school district and so did I. This year we have 900. All of us. So, we're all in the same boat, right? No, not even close. See, last year you lost a 100

048general ed kids. That's how you got to 900. I lost 150 of them, but I gained 50 special needs kids. So, I still have 900 kids, but I am more needy. Is that understand what I just said? and therefore my cost was rapidly and this is what's happening to a lot of districts a growth of special needs kids and of course obviously look as I'm an educator as well I taught for many many years so the key thing is these are our most needy kids we've got to support them with everything we've got we are all they have so it's important to make sure that we we keep an eye on these kids and make sure we do well but it will put pressure on our budget financially you'll notice down here down here I've

049got tapoo 20067 911 11 and then 27 uh 20078 1199. So you have lost enrollment but you've also lost weighted enrollment. Does everybody see where I'm coming from? So this is one of the dynamics the state looks at and says why should we send Waterville more more money? They've lost kids or they've lost actually the needy kids. So that's what to look for there. On the right hand side of that you'll see it say this expected local contribution part of the foundation aid formula. They watch how much your property values are. You don't have to collect the taxes if you don't want to, but they're going to assume that if you don't want to, they don't have to send you the money either. So, that's what you got to keep in mind. They're actually calculating

050whether you like it or not, how much you should pay. So, whether you collect it or not, it's up to you. But, they're going to subtract it from your aid formula. And your amount that you should pay is going up. Not a lot but it is going up from one year to the next because they believe you have increased in wealth property wealth particularly. Okay. And you have by the way. Next one down is the PNI pupil needs index. English for that is special needs kids but in a different way. They would be economically disadvantaged kids for instance or English language learners. Okay. So your number is 1.74. The lowest this number can be is one. The highest is two. So you're like 3/4 of the way up. So that is pointing in a direction

051to help you get aid, but unfortunately because you lost all those weighted kids, that's the one taking it away. See if we get the next. Let's see what we got. Okay, next one up is okay, let's go down. Keep going down the page. Your CWR, combined wealth ratio, you're half the state average 49. In other words, your income or property values are half the wealth state average. Other words, if they took all the school districts and compared their property and income value to yours per student, you're right in the middle. Between average and below average, not between fully the richest and the poorest, that number would be one. So, you're still a needy kind of a district, but not as needy to send because you've lost the enrollment. That's what's undoing you. The state sharing

052ratio is an attempt to bump your aid. You have a 762. So there is an attempt to use those economically disadvantaged kids and also your special needs kids to help you but your loss of enrollment itself is what's restricting you. The next one over is safe small area and income poverty measurement. This is community poverty very low. You the community is not destitute. Uh you go to some of the big cities you'll see that economically disadvantaged 0.52. You've got some in there certainly worth it. Need resource capacity. You are not a high need school district. You're an average need, believe it or not. Miles in the district 75.5. Uh I' I've been to your district probably I don't know probably 50 times in my career. And I've got to tell you that's why I got

053here a little early. I thought I wonder what Route 12 looks like because I used to have to drive up to get here and a lot of times it was closed in the winter. I mean you guys don't know what I'm talking about. So the key thing here is is that when we talk about those zero emission buses too based on the train and the weather, what's the capacity of the district? Now we're not going to do a research project on this because it would be too expensive. But there are grants out there to do this. Matter of fact, the state is suggesting that you do a grant out there and and do it and I suggest you would too. But the key thing is there's a lot more to this than meets the eye.

054Your gross factor is 1.0048. That number as it approaches 1.0 01 would mean a big increase in your property values and you've had one along the way. I already looked at your tax cap. I've actually recreated your tax cap since the year 1213. So I can I can actually tell you what happened and where it went. But the key thing is you still have growth on the right side of the page. See we get Whoa. No, that's not right. Come on, Rick. You can do this. Maybe not Rick. God for the tech guy. That would work. Here we go. Foundation aid 10 million 467. You see that there? You're scheduled for no increase unless next week the governor says something. She may be if she comes in with nothing or 1% or 2%. I'd like

055her to come in with three for you because I think you're you really do deserve it. The key thing is is that maybe we can get the legislature to add some of that, but I don't know. We're in for a tough next couple years with the state budget itself. they're in trouble, too. And the feds are not making it any easier. Uh the feds could actually bankrupt this day. I mean, seriously, by withholding funds. So, we're we're going to be looking at carefully. Right now, you would have to find nine kids by June 30th to break even pool and have them come to your school district and be here all year. So, you're real close. You're on the cusp. Your building aid ratio is 89.2. All right. So, what happens here is you got a

056good chunk of change for doing a capital project. I am really glad to see you're doing them because I'll tell you, you've got great aid ratio. This is something to do. It's really a plus for the district. Your transfer aid ratio is the highest in the state at 90%. Kudos to the district. Somebody's got their thinking cap on. Okay, that's great. The next one is your high cost ratio 749. Very good. Your Boseies 8 ratios is actually above average at 79. So that's very good. So, you've got a lot of things going for you in many, many ways, but it's the foundation aid that's the killer here. That make sense to everybody? Okay, let's see. See if I did it again. Keep hitting that thing. He's got it. It's hot. Okay, here we go. The

057next one are reserves. These are all the reserves you could possibly have. Now, you'll see I haven't put anything in there yet because we haven't studied your reserves, but you're allowed to have a workers's compensation reserve. you're allowed to have a um a reserve for ERS and TRS. Then there's all these liability reserves for property loss, liability, insurance, and there's even reserves for taxi claims. We're going to take a look at all those reserves. And then we have reserves for employee benefits and acred liabilities, which you're allowed to have. But you'll notice I've got down here four capital reserves. I've got some of my client districts have seven of these. And the reason I say that is because uh they are the gift that keeps on giving because they allow you to buy things cash

058or as much cash as possible. So we're going to talk about that reserve for repair. We're going to talk about mandatory reserve for debt. And then there's other restricted reserves. You're not eligible for any that I'm aware of unless you have a nuclear power plant here that I don't know about. Other than that, I think you're good. Now the key thing to keep in mind here is going to keep hitting the button and see what happens. Here we go. Here we go. The other thing to keep in mind is the proportionality of your reserves. If we end up in financial problems as we look five years out, there's only one place to get the money that's easy. It's your own reserves. Trying to get it out of voters is extremely difficult. I've been there. I

059fought those all those battles. It's really interesting. But the key thing is is that if we keep having say into the future deficits, the question would be how long would these reserves last? Everybody see where I'm getting at? So the key thing is is that the best lay plans of my net. All right, here we go again. Okay, we're not doing well. Okay, okay, good. Why don't you hit the rest of them so they all pop up at once here? Here we go. Look at this. What's going on? There we go. All right. Keep in mind the capital long-range plan timing. Let's go over to the left. Transportation, vehicles, technology, and equipment. All those are important. We can start reserves to cover those. None of this is getting less expensive. I do not expect pickup

060trucks to decrease in price and I don't expect buses either because you have to buy them. Think of this. Here's a commodity you must buy. So technically industry make it any price they want. Understand what I'm getting at? So you got to keep that in mind. And next we got to take a look at any planned use or loss of reserves. Okay, we'll try one more time. my sh. Okay, so the big question is where are these reserves going? All right, hit one more. All right, now we also want to find out where the rest of the money is. The idea is full disclosure. I'm a transparency guy. I think the more a board understands where the money is and what it's used for and is more informed and the public's more informed, then I

061think everybody's better off because here's the thing, it's a sacred trust. We're spending other people's money, right? So the key thing is we want to make sure we get this right. So the top part of the page basically is this. We want to find out what's happening with the assigned appropriate fund balance. In other words, is there a growing difference between your revenues and expenses that you're budgeting? That's what we're after. We want to find out where the cash is and how much you have of it. We want to find out how much has been assigned for specific purposes. We want to look at your overall fund balance as I mentioned earlier. In the middle, we want to analyze that appro. In other words, we want to find out if you're meeting the the law

062in real property tax law 1318. Do you have 4% or more in cash? That's what we want to find out. If you have more than that, what are we going to do with it? If you have less than that, what's that? Is that going to be a problem? I'll tell you right now, that would be a problem. Okay? So, that we're going to look at that issue. It's called real property tax law 13. The middle part is the analysis. We're going to see if you have a debt service fund and how much is in it and if it's grown or decreased over time and what you have or haven't used it for. And we're also going to take a quick tertiary look at the school lunch fund to find out if it's healthy. Right now,

063you are in the C program, comprehensive eligibility program. So, the chances are it's healthy. We should be good. That should take us a whole two seconds to figure out if it by just looking at the number. Okay, now let's try it again. Okay, just hit right through there till we get to the next page. Okay, hit it right there. Everything comes out right now. I can already tell you a couple things we're going to have to do right right first blush. And that is the 25 26 budget, your current budget. I think we got to be careful with your budget. If you don't need to spend it, don't. Now is I would start going on a January basis on a needsonly basis. In other words, no like, oh, I got an idea. Why don't we

064buy a this? I think that that kind of we got to get rid of that kind of thinking. Okay, I call it Christmas in May and June. So to me, let's just stick to the script. In other words, whatever we thought we're going to get, let's just get that and hold the fort because what I'm really worried about is I'm seeing this in every school district in the state that I'm studying is over time their expenses are starting to outstrip their revenue escalation. Things are getting faster in terms of expenses, okay? And the needs are greater. So we've got to be very careful. I think we should start like today. Okay, that's what I would say. Second one, keep in mind we're going to have to extrapolate and make assumptions. We're going to do the

065best we can. We're not going to make anything up. We're just going to do the best we can based on the facts that we have. So, in other words, keep in mind, as I pointed out earlier, I don't know how anybody would expect Cynthia to come up in the month of January with a budget that doesn't start till July 1. It's got to last till June 30th and have it perfect. There's just like no way. And matter of fact, by the way, when when the governor comes out with her run, it will be wrong because we know it's going to change. Okay. So, the key thing is is we're going to just do the best we can. Three, we can look back at history and it'll tell us a lot, but the truth of it

066is is while it tells us where we got our money and how much we got, which will give us some clues into the future, it is not the future per se. We got to find out where our expenses are going. D, we may have to look at attrition, breakage, things like this over time. I got to believe 65 to 70 70% of your budget is in staff. It's in people. You are people business. You walk in here during the day, it's just people. It's just people all over the place. That's what it's supposed to be. It's a school. It's people working with people. So, you mean we can cut all the paper clips and not buy as much paper and not get that one copier for that one place. It's not going to make a

067difference. Not at all. It will be in people. So, we're going to have to analyze the people part. Okay? But you got to keep in mind, you will need a physics teacher. You will need a special ed teacher. You will need a foreign language teacher. Does everybody understand that? So the idea is it's not like you could just do anything you want, right? And you want to maintain certain amounts of class size. You may even have contractual provisions for those a escalations long-term to a financial plan. We've got to realize that those are moving at a different rate than your revenues. Okay? Then what we're going to do about them to get them into bigger balance. F. What we've got to do is keep in mind that I do not believe long term over the

068next five years the state of New York will come to rescue Waterville. They're not coming. Okay, we you guys got a big bump of three years ago in aid and the feds came in during COVID, but absent a pandemic again, I don't see a lot of help. Next page, if you could hit Thank you. Evaluate revenue and fund balance amounts for sustainability and liabilities. In other words, some of the reserves you have is because you may end up needing to spend them for a specific purpose. Like we'll say a taxert reserve is an example or a big liability. If you get hit with a child victim act claim where I'm going to sue you for a million dollars or $5 million because I was molested in 1972 by Mr. Smith, then all of a sudden

069we got other problems, right? So those types of things occur. Three, the loss of all the federal grants is a real problem. A lot of times what districts sometimes did is they bought a lot of stuff with it that now is got to be replaced or they hired a lot of people with it that are still here. Like we hope that's not your case. I found a couple districts where it is. It's a nightmare. I'm sure that's not yours, but we got to find out. Or the safe harmless thing has really got me worried. Okay, this is really because this is big money to you. I mean, we could hiccup over $200,000 in a second here. So, that's going to be important. Number five, that zero mission bus. I can plan a plan with it

070and without it, but I can tell you right now, if the plan without them is is going to be very difficult, there's no sense in doing a plan with them because all we'd be doing is wasting your money. And I'm not into wasting your money. I'm really not into that. Next thing, we're going to have to look at your capital construction you've got going. Now, when's the best time to plan a capital project? Anybody know? during a capital project. Got to plan the next one when you're in one. That that's the way to look at it because you got to keep them going. Vehicle replacement, equipment, technology replacement. We've got to look at those plans. For instance, our tech guy over here may have a great tech plan, but I'm not interested in what you're

071buying. I want to know how much it costs. But I don't want to know how much it costs now. I want to know how much it's going to cost when we buy it. Understand? So, if we need a a snow plow with a dump truck with a salter sander with a plow and a wing in 29 2029, I got to know how much it's going to cost then, not now. See where the way I'm looking at this? Okay. And last but not least, we're going to monitor that tax cap. It's probably the most unpleasant conversation any district can have, the tax cap. Nobody like I don't know if any citizens are yelling out, "Please tax me more." Okay, but the key thing is is this. It may be your lifeblood. Here's the thing. The the

072school is a reflection of the community it serves. I've got some schools really that are really on the cusp of falling apart. I picked off these new clients. I don't know where they came from, but they're like falling apart. But what happens is they have not stayed to the cap. They have not collected the money have. And the question now is going to be for this their communities. You want a school or not? You got to remember you are in my doctoral dissertation. Your school district is in it. Waterville's in it. Guess what? My doctoral dissertation was on school district mergers in 1983. You and your neighbor collapsed and that's how you got to be here. We got to avoid that like the plague. Okay? Because it's unpleasant. People don't like it. So, we're going

073to take a look at that. So, I think I'll answer any questions that you have, but we're going to do in a short period of time. Now, here's the thing. As I mentioned to Cynthia and Zach, here's how this works. We could come up with a quick plan, but it won't be as accurate as if we come up with a plan that we take our time on. Here's what I mean by that. It doesn't mean spend more money doing it. That means we have to wait for certain things to arrive. For instance, I could tell you right now your foundation a zero increase, but if we could wait a week, we could find out what the governor's going to tell us, right? Does everybody see where I'm coming from on this thing? If we can

074wait a couple more weeks like into say February, then I can find out from Cynthia about how much are we going to spend out of this budget all things being equal and what do our revenues look like? Because by then we'll have it all our tax money and we'll have more state aid and it'll be more predictable. So we see how this works. We can also build our budget in this thing to be parallel to whatever Cynthia comes up with for you. So as you have your budget review committee as Zach has talked about earlier, we can stay in sync with that so that we understand where you want to be and then we can see five years from now where that'll take you so it becomes more accurate. So as you build your budget

075and I can be on leg with that. So in other words, I could get this done sooner, not necessarily, I don't mean faster, I mean sooner if you understand the difference, but it won't be as accurate as if we build it with your budget. Does that make sense to everyone? So, a lot of boards are saying, "Well, geez, I'd like to know earlier." Okay, here's our answer so far is the dilemma. But it won't cost anymore because we'll just slow down our meetings if you get our drift. Slow down our work till we have the data we need. I don't want to spin our wheels, spend money we don't need to spend. The idea is to do as efficiently and as inexpensively as possible. Now, any questions or comments? But we're going to go through

076a lot here. I mean, Cynthia's gonna, you know, by the time this is over, it'll be therapy. >> Well, I would just like to thank you for the presentation and the preliminary work so far. I am encouraged to hear you reference some of the best practices that I think we have in place already here that you'll find and we'll wait and see that and I believe you know the board members can speak for themselves but I believe as a board we're very interested in reassuring ourselves on the things we believe we're doing correct but also learning other strategies we can incorporate to maximize every dollar that we spend. Right. >> And also to educate us on how we can best make the tough choices. I would also say we're very aware that the long-term financial

077picture isn't great. I think you'll see we were relatively conservative, I think, with our COVID monies. We didn't we tried not to build in structure uh both you know items hardware of people that would require money that wouldn't be there >> after the funding was gone. But we also recognize that you know benefits salaries everything is escalating and we're going to have to make some tough choices. We talk very openly in our meetings with the community, with our stakeholders in school, and nobody likes those conversations, but we just want to make sure when we have to make those decisions that we've done everything we can to maximize our money and that we have all the information we need to make the best decision for our kids, for everybody, but for our kids. That's what we're

078here for. So, really appreciate it. >> Yeah. See, to me, if I could help you out and you do well, kids do well. saw it. That's really exactly because I'm still an educator. Key thing is I think what the boards need is not necessarily the answer. They need options to get something >> and that's so you make some some choices and like choices. >> Great. >> Yep. Any other questions or comments I can answer for you? Well, if you do in the meantime, of course, you have my number there. I'm on speed dial. I think on selfhel that's good. No problem. That's what I'm here for. I eat live and breathe this stuff. I just absolutely love it because it helps, you know, just being in a school is so uh I really just like

079it. So, thank you for inviting me. It's been a pleasure. I look forward to giving you a nice report. >> Thank you. Look forward to it. >> Appreciate it. Thanks everybody. Have a good evening and thanks to the tech guy. Good >> job, Mike. >> Thank you. Have a good evening everyone. >> Thank you. See you soon. >> Awesome. OC date eligible sir. >> Good night. Good evening. >> Good night. >> Anything else from the business office? I mean that was >> Yeah, >> that was a big one. >> I say the only other thing to add is like you know how he's talking about he's going to continue to get information from us. So we met with him with our preliminary talk last week and he essentially assigned homework >> I'd say to us

080but really it's it's more Cynthia than than the two of us and so we we set a deadline for that. So by Friday she's then submitting all these different information in a shared spreadsheet that we have with him and then we meet with him again gives him a couple days to look through it and then we talk through that data set and then that leads to more tasks on our end and to go back and forth. So that's the process that that we've begun and we're engaging currently >> excited about the process to see what the future looks like and have options and how what levers are important. >> Right. I think too on that that note and uh just thinking out loud here since we've relaunched our website, it could be a great opportunity

081as we work through this process to make sure that whatever information and resources we have publicly available that it's easily accessible on the website. You know, I I recognize most people won't use it, but that still is a good way for us in the community or administrators to point people back to, hey, here's let let me answer your question, but here's the resource. Check the website. And even links do a better job of linking to the appropriate state and federal resources that can help people understand. You know, again, I don't want to wait into dangerous waters, but you know, he's referencing something that's very real in terms of if the federal government alters the funding we receive, how does that impact the school? Like, people should cut through all the noise and just read the

082facts and like here, how do we show like this is what we're navigating. Here's the source. you can read this and digest it yourself and understand why we're making the decisions we're making. Because again, we know we're always going to be tough decisions. We just want to make sure people understand this is the information we had. It's why we made the decision and judge us on that, but judge on the facts as best >> 100%. It is best for you. Well, I think one one thing that stuck out too is the uh with the tax reference go to the tax not just you're not taking you're not getting that that tax record that's also impact that's well understood all the time >> you're not taking advantage of >> but yeah there's always raising our tax

083but your point like here's I think it's >> that being done in a closed room, you know, fac, >> right? And I've heard it though all nine years I've been on the board. People don't understand, especially when we've had this fund balance like these reserves like, well, oh, why why can't we just have zero this year? Well, we'll have to reexlain it every year, but it would be good to have that resource right linked on the website and be able to show like, hey, we we all know we don't like two, three, whatever the percent is increase, but this even, you know, a mockout. This is what would have happened if we didn't do it. And this is the this is the position the school would be in if we didn't make these short-term tougher

084choices. Long term, we'd be in a really bad situation. not taking and gets the 2% basically sending a signal back that you did not need those funds. So then >> you're not going to get >> instead of taking 2% now you're in a position to have to take five to get back to you. >> And I think what we see historically is our community is actually very educated on how this works. That's why we tend to get 70 75% voter approval on budgets and capital projects. Yes, there's the vocal unhappy minority of 20 25% of people that I I don't know why always vote no apparently no matter what we do. But at least we're able to show a vast majority in the community, hey, like this is why we're doing what we're doing. We

085all agree. I mean, we wish it didn't have to be this way, but under the parameters we have to operate, this is what we're doing and this is why and the best. >> Yes. Yeah. And we want to keep it that way by being transparent >> like you said. So >> that I thought that was super helpful. I mean the way he explained everything that tax like really understandable. So >> and it's even better when he has more numbers to go and then it's more digestible for everyone too. So as as he's getting more data from us that's even more easily understood by people too. >> Yeah. >> No and and I agree just again for me his last point like I don't know why I haven't thought of this in the past but again

086now that we've relaunched the website I think it would be great during budget season and presentations to literally be able to pull the website up in the presentation and show like tax cap like this is why it works the way it is. this document literally right here >> on our website. >> So please reference that and then again like future effect is of not going to >> right and and like we said we know we won't get 100%. But then it's easy for us when that person comes into the meeting, we can say, "Hey, look, there it is. Go read it. We we know you don't like it, but this is why it works. We're in the community." If you're at Mulligans or whatever, you're in town and somebody's like, you know, don't go to

087the website, go to the board, it's right there. >> So, but you know, I mean, again, we're at a football game, we're at a basketball game, whatever. You know, people say this. >> I think on that point, too, just websites also get as well. >> Yes. Well, there's that periodic. >> Link it right in there. >> Awesome. Those are definitely things we can work on for sure. >> Yeah, good ideas. >> You got to follow that principles. >> We're We're still game plan. Well, you've got some great data in here, Crystal. So, I mean, >> love that I follow you. Do you want to go first? >> It doesn't matter. >> I'll go. Merry Christmas. Oh, god. >> Looking at the December report, all of the fun things. Um, and honestly really beautiful things that

088happened to MPS throughout the month of December. Um, including staff bake off, cookies with Santa. Um, MPS winter concert rescheduled. The take two was wonderful. Well job or well done to the students and to the staff. Our music department did a great job preparing the kids and they were truly excited. We did do a dress rehearsal at MPS included at our December matter meeting. Um, kids competed dressing staff as snowmen and had a really great month. Um, student council at MPS uh, slated out the days for spirit week and also supported um, the events at our matter meeting. Um, holiday feast. Mrs. Claws came, brought treats. Are you feeling the sunshine yet? This is tough. >> Tough audience. >> It's great. >> Happy New Year. picking up into January. Um, as as Mr. Abby um

089stated, we did after school have initial AI training for our staff and I look forward to learning more about how we can be more efficient, think smarter, using the technology that we have access to. Um, last Wednesday we honored two of our MPS students at Brothertown Optimus Club uh dinner celebration. Congratulations to Gwen ODM and Mason Machete. that'll be included in my next report. But such a great evening. So, thanks so much to the optimist club for recognizing the hard work of our students and tomorrow I actually look forward to attending the session at Boseies to learn more about the future graduate from the primary lens in the elementary level. So, lots of good things busy start to the new year >> for us. >> I tried. Thank you for warming up for me. So

090for us, uh we are entering regent week. It's testing season from now until the end of the year in our building for every grade level. Um so uh market period ends, you know, in two weeks. Reges start next week. We do are giving ELA exam to all 11th grade English people. We started that la started here last year where we'll do it again which also will take the load off of what they have to do in June and the rest of the reach exams that are given in January are solely for kids who leave for graduation requirements stuff so no other course is taking it. Um update on the athletic eligibility just to give you corrected numbers. The total once everybody finally got their stuff done. Um five ineligible athletes total for the entire sports

091seat for for what's left after the two weeks of trying things out. So those kids have turned in their cards. They've gotten their approved or something like that. So we're down to five total. Um I can give the breakdown to you if you want that. Um the next check will be at the end of the marking period. So the marking period grades are important. So I think 27th is the Wednesday Wednesday that they are due and we look at 27th or 28th. Uh again our attendance data there. If you have questions on that be more than happy to take those. Um the next data table I I I knew like just feeling it anecdotally what I thought. Um I shared this data table about staff attendance today at my faculty meeting in December. I addressed

092it. And I said, you know, I really feel like, you know, I go through and it just feels like my mornings aren't as painful as they used to be trying to figure out coverage and to do different things like that. So, we went in and we pulled out the data. So, the data that you see in there, I don't have the conference days, like if somebody's out for long-term sub, that's not included. So, it's just purely personal sick day that current staff take for that. So, you can see what it was last year compared to this year, and we are trending fairly well. um which uh I think is great you know and I and I addressed it at my faculty meeting it was funny I put this slide up on um faculty meeting I

093said tell me what you notice what do you see you know all their numbers oh improvement things are going down oh it shows that kids are coming here and I said well let me tell you it's not the kids attendance it's your attendance I said you know that's improving but what what what I harp upon them is is the fact that when they're there. It sets the expectation. You know, you you know the classes when in the past you oh they're never here. Oh, they're out again today. All right. What is the difference in education between a sub coming in to cover the class and the direct instructor that's going to be there? You know, uh it changes what the instructor's having. I said, "You are not only what you're doing, teaching them what your

094content is, is the importance of you are showing what it's like to be an employee that comes to work every day, that values their job, that does what they're supposed to do. You have to set that example because they don't all have that example at home, you know, to come from, you know, and I I told Mr. Abby this, sorry, Mr. Abby, but I I said to them, I said, I want a lot of bonuses in June, you know, let's keep this attendance going because it's the right thing. it this is the best problem we could ever have problem >> you know it makes a big difference for kids stuff like that so I just thought kudos to the staff so I just thought it was interesting to put that in there for you J

095um great thing we did in December we changed our department meetings and this came out of discussions with teacher leaders and what things we can do you know we do so much within our in our departments so we piloted and tried let's do grade level meetings and so because we don't have that kind in planning time we don't have that team aspect where um I and you know Mr. have the same kid what are you seeing and what's issues with the kids like that. So what we did is we ran grade level meetings and teachers of hearing the names who do you want to talk about you know so we had an agenda we worked on that and so all the grade level the like all the nth grade teachers were in the room and

096then all we did two sessions so we had three grade levels meeting at time and then we switched after half hour uh I ran a session Kurt ran a session and our counselor ran a session so the three groups were meeting and we talked about kids and it was just a great conversation in terms uh are you seeing the same thing I'm seeing? I think teachers don't realize what we're doing on the back end where we're able to share. Look at I've met with the parents three times or we're in the process of doing this. You know, I said, you know, it's a beautiful thing brand new teachers because they just think they're falling apart. I can't do this stuff. But when they hear somebody who's been around 20 years say, "I'm struggling with the

097same kid with the same things." They're not alone, you know, and we they turned in kids names that weren't even on my radar or our radar. I mean, we talk about kids constantly because they're not necessarily our high behavior kids or something like that. So, it's something that we are looking to continue. We're going to rotate with department meetings and grade level meetings and continue that to try to build that holistic approach and very positive feedback on that. Um with AI today at our faculty meeting um went really well again it's building capacity of the teachers and we came from again teacher leaders have asked for the training. You know, we brought in training earlier this year with Lightseed, earlier this year with Masonic. Now we're bringing AI. Teachers are telling us what they want

098and we're trying to deliver to them. So, it has valuable meetings. You know, can't get mad at me. This is what you ask for, you know, but training is stuff that they're actually looking for that they incorporate in. So, using Gemini, which is part of our Google suite. Um, and they actually ended with a really cool thing looking at notebook LM I believe it is. It is also part of Did I do that right? Y is part of our Google um suite thing too which I think teachers have really got interested in because one of the things concerned about AI is it draws from the web it draws from everything with notebook you can actually put in the sources you want whether it's a bunch of PDFs it could be website links it could be

099different things so then when you ask the questions it's only drawing the information from those sources that you did great for classroom. Great way of introducing a classroom. What's the tool for a teacher? Well, I can upload the nextgen science standards. I can upload the last four reached exams in this PDFs. And then I can say, what are the trends? What are we seeing? What standards are being done? And it's going to give me those answers to helping me do it. I can say, write me a quiz, five questions. Pull it from the regions or write questions similar to on these standards. It'll pull it just from those documents. a teacher can really target those things. Adjust this, give me this passage, give it to me at a level 11th grade reading and eighth grade

100reading level so my special needs kids can read at that level, too. So, a lot of great things and the teachers were super super re uh receptive, respectful. I mean, the trainers that we have, I will put a plug for the Mora. The trainers that we've had these last couple of times that we've been working with from model schools have been outstanding with the staff. Very, very good on that. Um, uh, we're getting ready to start scheduling. We're doing our our program of studies. Um, conscious connections is something that I talked about at the, um, wellness committee. um it is actually going to be part of our MTSS. One of the things that we know is that um kid having a trusted adult makes a big difference in their school and it's something that I've

101done when I was at Perry and so teachers have what it is basically a kind of a mentoring type program but the kid doesn't know that they're really mentored. So like we take a look I took requests from teachers of what kids we think are falling through the cracks. It's not our behavior problems. It's not our thing but could be a kid on the fringe or it could be something. Do they really have an adult in the building? they have something to go to. And so we're turning that list back to the teachers and teachers are going to sign up to be that conscious connection where they actually will make sure they touch base with that kid each week. Kid doesn't know it, you know, but it's just part of making sure that all kids

102feel a part of the school because we know that connection to an adult will make the biggest difference. We want to make sure that every kid in this building feels like they have one adult that belong that makes them belong to them. So that's something that we are instituting and going in. Uh we did all our fun winter things too. You know, we're not just a fun sucker here. Um two quick things. I just want to touch on cell phones because I know this has been uh discussions whatever like that. Um cell phones has actually gone really well. We've only had one repeat offender of being caught with a cell phone since we've been here. We had picked up maybe about five or six throughout the year. Do I think kids may have them on

103them? I can't tell you that kids aren't carrying them around, but most of them are in the locker. >> They are. Oscar, we know they don't. >> However, >> what's important is that they're not using them during instruction in the classroom. I mean, I got to pick my battles and what I want kids attentive in the classroom and that is what I do feel that we are getting with it and stuff like that. So, it has been a positive. Kids have been very respectful of it. Well, they do get caught. They know there's consequences. They turn it over. It's not a big, you know, blowout and stuff like that. >> That's the one thing I will say. In all the cell phone incidents that we've had, there's been no back and forth with the teacher.

104Every student has turned it over. >> That's great. >> So, it's there's been no argument. I think that's cultural shift. >> That's fantastic. I think there's been a big it's a great we've been building a really good culture of respect and going back and forth I think with staff and kids that know that it's not like you know I I like even with the eligibility kids come to me so I said look I'm not doing this because I'm a jerk this is the policy these are the practices you know get it to me tomorrow and I'll put you back on you know like it's building those accountabilities and they know you know because if you know with that sort of stuff last thing this is going to come up tomorrow Um Russell Franklin is going

105to address it with the wellness committee tomorrow. We've been pulling data. So, one of the things we did is took the conference room in the in the guidance office and turned it into the zen. So, it is a kind of place for kids to recharge. There's like cool chairs, there's fidgets in there and stuff like that. But what he's done with it, because it can be like it's a waste of time, kids are going to abuse it. It's a hangout session. This and that. Literally since that we started doing this, we document how many kids go in, the number of minutes that they're in the room, why they're in the room, what the things do, you know, so like the average thing is like it's like between five and seven minutes for a kid to

106reset to do something. We use it for deescalation. We we do we keep track of how many kids, when they do it, what they're doing that. So, he's going to present some of that initial and discuss some of that initial data with the wellness committee tomorrow. But if anybody if you guys something the board as a whole would want it, you know, we can more than be willing to share that. >> You mean Thursday, right? >> Thursday. Sorry. Sorry. Trying to get this week over with. Three-day weekend coming. >> Brutally honest. >> I just want to say thank you. I think even just the showing the staff attendance and how that has changed um is a testament to a shift in culture and climate and um I've heard that from a lot of teachers as

107well too. So >> thank you. I really love the update on the on the cell phone policy and the fact that you know you're willing to adjust and not be on the you know we're going to catch you if you're carrying it around more stuff. If the end result is for them not to be disrupting class and they're not that's so they don't have to do it then so thank you that's great >> and I think the focus on social emotional all school is so key >> I do very much appreciate it seems like we focus on looking for what works doing what works with the uh social work zoom and those sort of things. I appreciate that. I'll come off about cell phone because we struggled with this for a while. It seems like

108we have something in place to follow. I think that's I think that's reflection. I appreciate that. I think that's the approach that they're buying into. >> Well, >> I would echo too. I think the consistency obviously must be a key and I really appreciate that it feels like we're building a culture of high expectations and that we're not scared of that anymore. I think for a while we heard a lot of discussion hesitation around holding everyone staff, students, administration to higher standards like oh we can't meet it because no everyone can and everyone will want to when the culture and the climate is there when the support is there and like Kate said it came up in our consultation on education committee unprompted longtime 20 plus year teachers in that room said this is the

109best we've ever felt in and it happened to be this building. Um, and I know that's true, you know, down at MPS. Also, I think the attendance numbers are super encouraging. Uh, to see the improvements, the behavioral improvements at MPS. Love seeing that data. Uh, it was great to see the attendance improvements from faculty and I won't say who it was. I ran into a teacher in the hall when I was doing track practice. The teacher said, "I am definitely going to get the attendance bonus this year. I love coming to work. I I don't want to miss anyway, but I'm going to find a way to not miss because I love being here now and we'll figure it out when my kids are sick at home. They're old enough now." So, it's just it's

110great to hear those things because then that's going to allow us to focus as a board supporting you more and help you focus your energy on like making sure these kids are all successful and we're not spending time on all these distractions. So, That's a perfect segue to the point I wanted to make as well because I was down at NPS today for the AI training and the presenter like she didn't need to say this but she talking with Miss Chrisman and I at the end she just commended our faculty on how receptive how her and the other person that have worked in both buildings this year have just talked about how receptive the teachers have been to the development that's been presented to them. So like kudos to them for yes, they're happy. That's

111great. But at the same time, they're also being receptive to even bettering themselves within the classroom and learning new things and and they have been and it's been wonderful. So So it's it's a good feel all around. We're continuing to to push and they're continuing to be receptive to it. It's it's a good place to be. >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> We have one one more question. I don't want to go down rabbit hole, but um how do how do the attendance numbers students these don't seem to reflect the attendance numbers that we get? Did we talk about chronic absenteeism? You know how we'll have 20% of kids which be chronically absent. It seems like that that the attendance is a whole lot better. What's the difference in those two things? Well, I'd say that

112there's So, for example, when you're talking about say a 95% attendance rate for the day that you got 95% of your kids that were there, that doesn't mean that you don't have some of those kids that were there that day could still be kids that are chronically absent. So, it's you're looking at that data set a little bit differently. So, anyone that's chronically absent is 10% or more, >> right? >> So, and obviously that changes as the year goes on. We're how far away from 100 day of school? NPS usually knows that stuff. school days. >> So, let's just use 100 as an example. So, if we're talking about being so anyone who's missed 10 or more days at that point in the year at the 100th day of school is technically chronically absent by

113the state standards. It's not a it's not perfect. Someone may have missed 10 days for a legitimate reason and may not miss another day of school at that point in time. Now granted, obviously by the time you're at the end of the year, 18 days, that's a significant amount of school. So it's an important number to focus on. It's not the end all be all. Technically, someone could be chronically absent and still be doing very well academically. There's definitely a correlation, negative correlation there. You miss a lot of days, your grades tend to be lower for sure. It's definitely not a guarantee. Do we still have a problem with the number of kids that are chronically absent? Yes, we do. Because the kids that are absent a lot are absent very large amount and those

114are the ones that are very hard to change those habits and those habits really have to be addressed at those younger ages and we need to have those interventions and they are and th that's where we're going to get that gate. So like we talk about the seniors, the seniors always like those kids have been in those habits for so many years that no matter what intervention we do, it doesn't mean we're not going to do it. We're still going to have interventions and still try to reach out to those kids. Those habits are very, very difficult to change. So those kids are chronically absent. Yes. But those that maybe weren't chronically absent or were on the verge of not being chronically absent, those are the ones that we're seeing as improvement and that's why

115our percentage is going up. But we still nth grade skills coming out of FPS. my current seniors, you know, so that part of like cleaning up co the years, you know, we just trying to get across that stage. And one of the things in the last this December attendance letter, we also sent out letters addressing kids coming late. Probably one of our biggest problems is kids leaving early. And I talked about in the letter about, you know, some people, you know, call because they want to come home and mom and dad picks them up just because they call to come home, you know. And I wrote, please don't pick up your kid unless the nurse releases them to be sick. You know, it's again, it's that that habit. Well, I don't feel like going to

116my thing. So, you know, we're missing 8th to 9th period. What class are you doing worse in 8th to 9th period? because you're always going home because you just feel like you're done for the day and changing those behaviors and going through the stuff. So then we look at at 71 days you may have had 10 absesses whatever and then you you left school early 20 times that's 30 interruptions out of 71 that you've interrupted se you know 30 of your 71 days of instruction because you left early but people don't think about that you know when they go through or until they really see the number on print oh I really picked them going every twice a week to pick them up or something you know and families don't realize those things >> when

117I I just did the math because we can get lost in If we have 740ish kids times 180 school days and if we're at 96% attendance, you could still have 36 kids or 148 kids missing 36 days of school would be 20% of your population missing an average of 36 days if they had all the absences, right? They don't. But so it's easy to get to 18 and still look like, oh, we're at 96% attendance, everything's fine. No, it's it actually needs to be like 99 point something if we're going to start eliminating like chronic absenteeism. It creeps up. So yeah, it's a lot. I mean, and I'm sure if we looked at it, we have a lot of kids that aren't just at 18. By the end of the year, they're at 25, 30,

11835. >> Yeah. There's like 40. There's like that pocket that's like >> huge number of absences, >> very very high numbers of absences. >> And then there's a large amount with a very low number of >> less than five. >> Yeah. >> And th those high numbers are are really hard to move. But those that are it's a good gauge. Like if we have a requirement, we're looking at that data. So it's a good gauge, but I think I'm jumping to conclusions. I would assume they're looking at numbers well before the chronic altitude is enough. you know, like we don't want kids just those kids as being our high level interventions. When there's trends, those things are looked at and hopefully there's those interventions that can kind of get them back to where they need

119to be. >> They are two days a month, but December four or five days, but I said that's why you don't miss school October and November because those five days are now you're still within the 10% because you did get sick. You know, don't take those days off just because the weather was nice. you know, to keep yourself within those percentages. >> Yeah. >> Lots of great work though. Thank you. >> Anything from our student rep putting Oscar on the spot? >> I think just going back like policy, I think you're seeing lots of those respect. you guys around. See you guys in your lap. >> You You can You can choose not to answer, but did I hear did a little birdie tell me that you got some acceptance news already? >> That's awesome.

120>> Recently, I got to >> That's the one I was talking about. So, >> very very Yeah, that's awesome. It It's one of the top top top pharmacy. >> Yeah. Congratulations. >> You're waiting on it. We don't want to jinx it. I know you're waiting on something else. So, we'll just >> wait and see, right? But awesome. >> All right. Committee meetings. >> We did have a safety committee meeting on January 8th. Um, excellent meeting. Talked about a lot of different things. Um if if you don't know we always have a representative from the safety office from Ojambosis come and great resource to have just all of the time but it's nice when they actually come out to district and able to share some additional things. They gave us the heads up fire inspections will

121be starting March 16th and that was actually Jamie Re's first meeting with us. So that was perfect connection for him to have you know a face tof face with someone from from the actual safety service right then and there. So that that was a nice introduction for them as well. We talked more about where we are in our emergency drills at this point in the year. Um, and we had talked previously about creating a reunification plan that the long-term plan that we're going to make sure that we have in place by by next year. We talked about the fact that water hasn't done an off-site evacuation in a while. And we've really settled into fall of 26 is when we want to do that because we feel more confident that we can predict the weather

122a little bit better based off in the fall. Spring makes me a little nervous as far as sending a whole bunch of kids walking through town to an off-site evacuation. I'd rather be able to have a little more confidence in what that weather's going to look like. So, early fall is our tenative plan for that. Uh, and then Dr. update which requires all of the cardiac arrest education for faculty, staff and for our students. Safety office was helpful in in sharing both a vector training which is an online training platform for our staff that they've gone through all of that and our students have been receiving that education as well. And they created a video which is friendly for for our younger students because the video they shared with us previously was was definitely for

123adults and able to be used with our older students but not really how we would want to deliver that information to our youngest students. Um, other things that we were able to have discussions now that we've we've done some more lockdown drills, we were able to have a better understanding of one how the button operates, which was very eye opening for me because when when I first got here, I was told there was a key on the button. I was like, well, it does logically it doesn't make any sense to me. Like, why would you need a key to go into lockdown? Like, that seems like we're taking more time. But now, we actually got to run some. the key is to release from lockdown, which made a lot more sense to me once we

124actually were able to do that. So, that was good for us to have the practice of actually executing the button. Um, and Mr. Perry and I had had fun with the new capability of the phone system. We made sure we did it while people were not in the building and glad that we did. But now the phone system does have the ability to actually has a lockdown feature as well and and we're in talks of can these systems talk in the future. so that one executes the other. But now we have the ability with our new phones that once you go into the lock down mode of the phone, it goes through the PA system through all of the phones. It shows messaging on the phone and you're able to hear throughout the building. Lock

125down, lock down, lock down and that goes on repeat throughout the entire time that you're within that. The amusing part why we're laughing is there was there was some nuances as to how to get out of it and we were afraid we were gonna have that going on for for quite a bit of time but we figured it out and now once you've done it a couple times it makes a lot more sense but the directions we were given were complicated once you do it >> very patient with but not with all the noise >> pretty patient >> and then we we had some updates from um So the opioid prevention program that we are a part of that allows us to get Narcan. So we offer that training simultaneously through Vector, it's not mandatory.

126We don't have to train anyone. We have to offer the training, but it's nice if people are willing to take advantage of it. And so when we offered it, actually seven people went through the entire training. There was there was an online portion and then you had to meet with one of the school nurses and be able to actually show that you know how to utilize Narcan. So so we've got seven trained in the first quarter and then more people are going to be trained and that's coming off of multiple years of zero. So gentleman who kind of brought that to our attention that hey this is something that we need to be doing and and people volunteered just to do it just to be informed and take that knowledge. So that was really great

127as well. We have Narcan in all of our AED locations and we get that for free by being a part of this program. So, we have to be able to offer the training and then obviously there's an expiration date on it. So, she keeps an eye on where it's at and then we just put in the order and it comes for free by being a part of this program. So, it's it's a nice service. And then at simultaneously, the fact that we have people in the building that are getting trained and volunteering to do so, >> it's good. They do not. No. No. But they they're available obviously in the nursurse's office and in the ED locations. Some services do that that way because I've actually done that in the past where they gave it

128to us. They gave us actually they gave us like a a voucher and then you could go and get it. They didn't give it to us right then and there, but if you want it, but no, that's not part of this particular one, but it allows the school to have it for free. Um, some of the additional things that we talked about was building in grounds and just the safety aspects obviously with winter and the snow cleanup has has been phenomenal. So, kudos to to our guys for that, especially that we've kind of been in between our supervisor positions. Like, that's that's two guys that have been cleaning up all of that snow for the entire district this entire time. And and they've really >> doing a great job. >> Been going above and beyond.

129And we've gotten lots of compliments from people about like they've never seen it that clean in the walkways. And this was like particularly cold and hard to get that down to bare concrete or asphalt. So they've they've really been putting in the hours and really working hard for that. And it's and it's only going to get better now with Jamie coming on that now there will be that third person available to help and support. So So really good on that front. other other things that people had brought up just uh camera upgrades which are things that we've been talking about and that kind of that came from from Jim Fister just in a couple of investigations that we found that you know we've got some some areas where we could use some additional cameras. Those

130conversations have already been in the works, but there were things that we talked about and it was good to good reminder that we do have those things that we need to be cognizant of and make sure that we're planning those things out long term. Once we do an investigation, we find there's an area where we don't have great vision, we make take note of that so that when we do go into our camera upgrades, we make sure that we're doing them with purpose and that it's an improvement and not just to replace cameras. we're doing it and moving those locations so we have visuals where we need them. Um the other one of the other conversations that came up is so we have a board policy to have the vision panel. So look if you

131look at the door right there how it's got the vision panel. We have a policy that allows us to have essentially a screen on there. Now there's requirements for what those screens have to be. Obviously they've got to be fire code compliant. We have the policy but it was never purchased. So that was the conversation that got revisited. Is this something that we want to look into purchasing? And then throughout more of the conversations became, we don't necessarily need them everywhere, but there's certain room locations where there is no great hiding place and we should invest in that. So we talked about in our next lockdown drill, that's going to be one of the focus for when people go around to clear rooms and they look which rooms do we need to look into purchasing

132those for? They're not necessary everywhere, but there are some locations where it would be beneficial for us to have. >> Exactly. >> I hate that we have to think about that. >> Yeah. >> Me, too. >> Yeah. But >> but it's reality. >> At the same time, it's it's better to be prepared >> and never have to utilize that planning than than the alternative. So, it's it's sad, but at the same time, it's well worth it. >> So, yeah. And Dan, you were there as well. Is there anything else from that meeting that maybe I didn't highlight? >> Okay. And then as stated, we have we have wellness committee meeting coming up on Thursday. So at our next meeting, we'll report back out on that. So our discussed there. Kate or Lori, do you want

133to give an overview of consultation on ed? I can if you don't want to. >> Sure. Uh overall pretty straightforward positive meeting. Um you know the teachers just brought up two items that were taking a look at that I know Zach is taking back to the admin team and then going to partner with the teachers. One was an interesting discussion that honestly I hadn't thought about because my kids drink water, but the amount of drinks being consumed during the school day. Do we need to take a look at our policy around open containers of drinks, the type of drinks, like a lot of caffeinated drinks kids are drinking and then leaving empty cans in the hallways or in classrooms. just really tightening up, you know, what what would make sense in terms of a policy

134or procedure, probably more of a procedure, uh, to regulate, hey, this is, you know, when you're in lunch, whatever, but when you're in class time and you're in the hallways, this is what you should have. Should it be a water bottle? Could we even provide a bottle? So, they're going to take a look at that. I think that was good discussion. And again, we emphasize open discussion there. making sure as we continue to strengthen our culture, this type of issue should just be bubbling up through the principles, bubbling up to Zach. They don't have to wait and ask us as a board to take a look at that and it doesn't need to be an official policy. Uh the second item was probably more interesting because it related to academics and it wasn't again something

135that I would have thought about um honestly, but re-examining the changes we've made to our grading policy potentially in terms of with just having the grades down to four marking periods, having midterms if we have them, which I don't think we have many, having finals incorporated in that last marking period. If you do the math, if a student is really not succeeding and getting, you know, a 50 in mark period one and two and then potentially even three, they have less of an opportunity to try to pass a class because everything's then in marking period 4. And again, I hadn't really considered that, but going back and taking a look, especially since we're about at the midpoint soon, we're going to be at the end of marking period 2. Like really, how many students are

136we talking about? what support can we give them? Is that more of the issue or do we need to reexamine the four grades versus the five grades? And is this a a good case of we had intent great intentions, but maybe we need to take a look at the policy again. So, Zach and the team are going to take this back, the teachers. It's not really something we're going to need to look at as a board unless they bring forward some recommendations to us and say, "Hey, we have looked at the data and now that we've had the policy in place, this is what we're seeing and this is what we recommend." And I think that was the main discussion, you know, Kate, Lori, please jump in. But after hearing both issues that we emphasized

137to them, it's like, hey, this makes sense. This is great. But remember, as a board, we're just here to support the recommendations that all of you in conjunction with administration bring to us. We're not here to make a policy on drinks, caffeinated drinks. We're not here to revisit the grading policy without really good due diligence and partnership between teachers and admins. So, I think it was positive and that's again where we heard some really good discussion on, well, the school culture is great. We love coming to work and we feel good. But I think it's just reinforcing those mechanisms of you know as these issues are coming up do we have the right process to go through leaders from the WTA or you know teacher leaders or what's the right way to bubble that up

138to the principles and then to Zach so they can kind of solve these issues. Just if they need us bring it to the board but if not just go do it. That's that. So anything to add on >> the only is just ensuring process in place. >> Yes. >> For um any policy that we review that that really does pertain to teachers and making sure that they have provided feedback or insight on the topic and we know that they >> Yeah. So basically like even for us from the policy committee standpoint or as a full board when we're reviewing the policies that we're able to say checkpoint this has been reviewed by the teachers in conjunction with admin like we know they're on board with this. So then we're just looking at language and we're

139not having to ask those kind of questions like oh what do the teachers think? No, we should already know and be able to have admin tell us like, yep, it's coming to you because it's been vetted and they're on board. So, there was not in a real negative way. There was some of that sentiment around the grading like, hey, maybe we didn't have as much input as we should have >> and we also didn't anticipate this. So, now we want to maybe re-examine it, right? And I think procedurally, I'm sorry, let me go ahead. >> I think the sentiment the that they're bringing they are bringing up things for to administration and not this committee. So that the communication is important. >> Yeah, >> they feel >> I was just going to say procedurally. I'm

140glad that you brought that back up. K essentially when when we get to their next level of policies that we're going to that's where it's on me then to look at those and say, "Oh, this one we should get some teacher and then I'll go back to administration on that level." So like before it even goes to the board, members of the policy committee, I'll be seeking out that that insight from them. So that way when we have our discussions, we already kind of have a little bit of an idea of what they're what they're thinking or how that would impact them. Wanted to circle back to one thing that I did forget from the safety meeting. um is working with the nurses currently on over-the-counter medications that state has really limited what a school

141nurse is allowed to use with students. Like for example, saline solution, lip balm, Vaseline, unscented hand and body lotion. Like these are items that they are no longer allowed to give to kids without authorization from both the parent or guardian and their primary care physician. Yes. So, it's it seems pretty crazy, but um they pres they found a form that they think would help simplify the process as far as getting those the ability those signatures from them. So, we've had the conversations, how are we going to do this? And we had talked about like putting it out in parent squares so parents could just sign up. But then it was the idea, well, then we still need to be written by the doctor. So that would just get us a smaller list that would still

142have to do that. So they came across this form and I think that this is probably the way that we're going to go and I'm going to talk back to the nurses again and see if they're ready to what information we need to share out and we'll share it along with this form. A really interesting idea came out of it of could we just regionally use this form and like share it with pediatricians in the area and just say like hey have these on hand that way anyone that comes in would be able to just say oh yeah and can I have that form signed to get back to the school? Maybe that would streamline the process. So if a parent doesn't bring it with them when they go or they could just call and

143it's already on in the office. Is that something that we could implement throughout the entire region? >> Yeah, exactly. >> That sometimes Dr. >> Right. Yeah. So, you you should see something coming out soon. I I'll follow back up with the nurses and we'll get we'll get messaging out so that people are aware that they are limited on those things. on top of the bus. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. So after we had that bus go off the road earlier this winter um in when we met afterwards and just talk through logistics of it and the things that happened. So like instantly what was not anticipated was obviously if the kids have cell phones they're going to let their parents know that this just happened. So we had parents show up before we were even able

144to respond to the scene. And you know that puts the bus driver in a really difficult position. Like are they going to sit there and say no you can't take your child? Like they can't they can't do that. But at the same time our procedures in an instant like that is that they're checked out by medical personnel because we want to make sure that everyone's okay no matter how minor the incident. Like we want to make sure that we're being safe and we're we're taking a look at that. And if it's during school hours, we can utilize our school nurse for that. But this was this was after staff had already left. So obviously, you know, we were kind of requiring, you know, someone else em EMTs to come in and evaluate those kids. So

145since that, um, each bus now has a signout sheet for parents in an instance like that, that they're acknowledging that they're there, they're picking up their child, and that their child has not been cleared by any medical personnel at this point in time. Uh, we were able to go through and have incident response details listed out. So if a situation were to happen, but these are the steps that we need to be following. So I'd love to never have that again, but you know, we live in central New York and the weather's bad. So there there's going to be a time that we run into this situation again, but I think that everyone's going to be that much more prepared and how to handle this and and the logistics behind it. >> That's great. >>

146Brings us to board discussion. have any items to discuss? I know we had a couple questions emailed that were answered, but >> just the question that was just around so everything is going to be in ML schedules going forward. That is the plan that like all all events that are scheduled, all sporting events, all other events should be in there so that when someone else looks and they see the availability that it's accurate. >> That's true. >> Yeah. And I I think too we've learned some things this year with the gyms, which is kind of obvious, like you show up and there's a gym, but we can we can make sure as spring rolls around that we have the same diligence around our fields because especially in the spring, you can have some fields that

147are like in really good shape and then some that are nasty and multiple teams or a community organization that is approved like AYSO wanting to use a field and maybe they can't because another team is saying like our field is saturated. We're going to be over here. I think just getting really all the coaches and then everybody else who wants to use facilities on the same page about how we make sure we have booked our event space and that it's actually available at that time is really important because that's we know Dan had brought up and I had observed some you know conflicts with fields like sports teams which always get priority changing times and then it not being booked. into the system >> and so somebody else is expecting the facility to be available

148because they booked a time and there's a conflict and it it hasn't been a big issue but we want to make sure it doesn't become one. So, I think I think we're in a good spot. But >> and if there's things like it hasn't been a big issue, but if there's things that we can do, minor changes, >> right, >> to just avoid them altogether, like why not make them, >> correct? and Tom and I when it came up he and I talked through the logistics of all of those things and and we've made some changes and I think that there's I I've been checking the schedule and actually just called Jen yesterday I believe and I said you know I was checking just to see what was going on this week and I I

149thought I saw a conflict and and she knew right away. She's like nope and I've already communicated to them. So I was like great it's wonderful. So it seems like it's trending in the right direction. I I think there's still some things if I'm seeing it correctly. I want to fine-tune what's going on at NPS gym. Not sure that one's quite up to date yet. So So I'll touch base with that one and go from there. But it looks like ours currently up here at the junior senior high is in much better shape than it was even just a week ago. I think a lot has changed in that week. >> Yeah. Hey, it's good too because we we want our facilities to be used by approved groups and if it's open, people should know

150it's open and if it's booked by, you know, a sports team or somebody that's already reserved it like then look for a different time. But I think the more we're able to confidently operate this way, the more usage we're going to get. So, it's good. Any other board discussion before we move to first public comment? We're there. >> All right. Well, let's just move right into personnel then. We have a consent agenda 7-1. Can I get a motion? >> Second. Thanks, Dan and Justin. Any discussion? Okay, all those in favor opposed. Motion is carried and then we're into new business. And again, we have a consent agenda covering 81 through 85. Can I get a motion for 8-6? Thanks, Lori. >> Thanks, Tim. Discussion. Um, I mean, I'll say a couple things here. We we

151do have a donation. Um the donator has it requested to remain anonymous at this point, but we're very appreciative of the donation in the amount of $30,000 which will be directed as requested to a mixture of special ed underprivileged students. >> Uh very appreciative and and very excited to see what we're able to come up with that. if you have any topics. >> The tenative plan is is approximately a 50-50 split. So, so the person feels very passionately about special education services and wants to make sure that we are able to give what we need for those students. So he kind of had the idea of well if it's something that would be really great for kids but maybe it's not in the budget like that's exactly the type of thing that we would like

152it to be able to fund. So so that's the mindset behind it and those are going to be the conversations. um special education department has had preliminary conversations about what their interests might be. And the good part is though that it doesn't have to be rushed either. And I've had that conversation with them about, you know, just because this money is here right now doesn't mean we have to spend it this month. Like if you don't have this immediate like, oh, that's what I want. Like let's not rush it. Let's use it within the purpose what its mindset truly was. And then the other half um is really about just kids need things and and we have connected community schools and they do wonderful things but sometimes it's not available there or there's limited time

153frame in which we want someone to be able to be supported in some way. So that's where that other money is going to be utilized and it's going to be utilized in the manner of we're going to have a process and we're going to have like people that are most in the know about who's in need and essentially we'll oversee that process and if someone really needs something we're going to make sure they get it and we're we have that money available so that we can do it quickly. It's very nice gesture. Very pleased with with both the generosity and simultaneously the trust in the school to utilize it correctly. So I it's been very nice conversations leading up to what the mindset should be about it and I really enjoyed that and once again

154very grateful to that person. Uh, I just want to thank the WTA for getting that MOA done. It's a good one to have done and out of the way. And then um I'm very excited to see uh what began as our agreement with Brookfield to make sure our girls could play varsity basketball, having them come back to us about joining forces on modified girls basketball. And I think, you know, transparently as we are working on, you know, plan to rebuild the girls basketball program, I think this gives us a potential blueprint for how we can move forward and, you know, being open-minded down the road about should we look at combining sports like we already do with football, with Hamilton, you know, to do what's in the best interest of kids in our programs to

155make sure we can be viable year after year and not see these es and flows in participation. And as we rebuild girls, you know, it'd be great to see if we can get a JV and a varsity agreement to have all three levels for them to develop. Um, and then maybe look at that for some other sports because it's it can be uncomfortable and you know, we'll have conversations I'm sure down the road, but what's best for kids is having all stages of development. And I think I would just say personally, I've seen a lot of kids in sports I'm familiar with, it's a huge jump to go from modified to varsity. And if we're able to offer a JV program like we do in basketball, boys basketball, um, as an example, that's so beneficial

156for kids emotionally, physically, you know, boys and girls, but particularly boys. like that ninth grade boy is not at the same physical state or mental state as that 11th to 12th grade boy competing in the same sport. So I think this is it's a little thing but it's a big thing potentially for us to build partnerships >> partnerships on their own. >> Yeah. Any partnerships we can build that >> make it no longer a necessity for eighth graders to jump up and play varsity. It's it's a good thing for kids. >> 100%. Yeah. Yeah. But any other discussion on 86? If not, all those in favor? Motion is carried. That brings us right away to our second public comment. Patty public >> well see a foundation we're reworking our bylaws but in a meeting tonight

157and some things optimist we're glad to see uh come to our meeting and Zach became a member of >> so thanks that we build that schools and um you know we we had Cole Adams was our youth month. We brought eight people with him which made me a record. >> That's awesome. >> And our two uh MBS kids had an entourage as well. Program was connected community schools. So, our members help the end of the evening. They learned a lot about not just what connected community schools does, but many of our members don't have kids in school anymore to be aware that there is those needs that we would take, you know, we might take granted. I talked a lot about Melissa and Ben talking about food security, but but just some other basic things

158that connected PD has done. So, We're looking to do a project with them. Got a couple of ideas. So, see where that goes. And you talk about the partnership with Brookfield. I'm excited to come here Friday and see the girls uh playing here. I went down Friday to see them play Madison. It was a foul flagged game, I guess, be the best way to say it. A lot of lot of fouls flying around, but uh You know, the girls play really well together and they're a fun group to watch. So, Friday here, they were pretty excited. The Brookfield girls are excited about playing here. >> So, >> I've seen lately Ann Hannah's been the leading scorer in a couple games. >> She had the u >> Great to see >> it was it was a

159it was a very close game with Madison Friday and Hannah um Hannah got a rebound of a there were so many missed free throws. Madison missed a free throw. Hannah got the rebound, took it the whole way. Of course, she got fouled um because that's how that whole game went and uh she made both. So, she did the tying and then we basket. So, um she assets. >> Yeah. >> Thank you, Pat. >> Yeah. before Christmas. >> Awesome. That's great. Okay, any other board questions, man. Look at that. Even with an outside presenter, it's 7:59. >> Do we have a need for executive session? >> Oh, we don't. So, can I get a motion to adjurnn at 7:59? So, >> thanks Tim. Thanks Justin.