Board of Education Meeting - 4/13/2021

001good evening we'll call this public hearing order thank you tonight's public meeting is in relation to the appendix that needs to be attached to these school districts safety plans excuse me our emergency response plan uh labeled the communicable disease pandemic plan that's been posted on our website for 30 days part of the legal requirement is then to open this for public comment which we will do now until 6 30. may want to unmute b.o.e hmm steve may want to unmute the boe connection so people can hear good evening let's call this meeting to order at 6 31 p.m good rise for the pledge for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with appreciative all right uh three one all those in favor [Music] 3-2 approval of the minutes for the march 23rd meeting thank

002you linda thank you ross discussion all those in favor all right opposed motion is scary moving into board recognition coming over to mr route this is all working for mine okay so um i see we've got both uh trevor and laney on with us obviously i think probably everybody's at this point has had an opportunity to pick up their copy of the watermelon times but with that being said it's still my pleasure to introduce each of them as uh the two of them as our valedictorian and salutatorian so i see laney with us elena you want to give us a wave lady's there with dad there's laney welcome laney um and trevor are you there we'll take the cue from the teachers here there he is okay trevor is on camera so thank you thank

003you lainey thank you trevor for joining us and i'm sure uh the board of education all the administration here we would love to give you a little bit warmer reception than the zoom meeting but at the same point we're happy we're able to to recognize each of you as our uh top achievers for the class of 2021. so uh trevor obviously oh uh trevor is our valedictorian uh he is currently um awaiting uh the final decision on where he'll be heading off to school next year uh but is uh looking at a pre-veterinary or biology track uh uh track so um i've had some conversation with him he's got some great schools on the table and we're excited to see what he does uh he's been absolutely outstanding student here at waterville at the junior

004senior high school during his time a member of the varsity soccer team and also national honor society and as we as we talked about preparing for tonight he wanted to make sure he thanked his mother and father john and debbie for their support uh through his journey at waterproof so big round of applause for trevor i told you you needed to have an eight to ten minute speech prepared as a warm-up for the commencement ceremony in june so uh do you have any words at this time you are new to trevor no eight to ten minute speech trevor not yet working on it okay very good okay so once again uh i told him when we were discussing it this morning i said i i feel like graduation is gonna be a little on the

005short side he's a man of few words but that's okay sometimes so congratulations again trevor very well done thank you next up laney i see her smiling face down there in the corner so uh laney's been an absolute pleasure to have here uh this is actually um i feel like i'm getting old this is my my first class of seventh graders that's great this year uh since since being at waterville so she used to be a lot shorter um but she's still just uh a great kid to have around we're gonna miss her as well laney is headed off to utica college for occupational therapy this fall she's she's looking forward to that obviously you probably know laney from the basketball court the soccer field and the softball field she's been an outstanding athlete a

006member of three different varsity groups during her time obviously a member of national honor society as well and uh lainey wanted to extend the thanks to both her uh mom and dad patty and donnie obviously and then she wanted to give a special shout out also to her grandparents who have been uh wonderful supports her through her uh time as a junior and senior high student so lainey i told you as salutatorian you had to have a five to seven minute speech if i remember correctly so do you have any any words you'd like to offer tonight nope not yet nope not yet okay they're both in the draft phases for their speeches at graduation and we'll talk a little bit about graduation later but like i said two great kids it's been a pleasure

007having them here watching them grow up uh the last six years so uh congratulations to you guys congratulations to your family and obviously like i said from the administration board of education everybody here in this room we wish you were here there's usually cupcakes or something to eat but uh like i said at least we're able to at least we're able to still recognize you so wonderful job guys and you have to stay on for the entirety of the meeting as well just kidding so have a good night guys okay i'm over here i'm sorry i didn't even yeah there we go have a good night thank you thank you all right uh we'll move into the business operations 5-1 the general fund warrant for 431 121.55 thank you ross thank you linda discussion all

008those in favor aye all right opposed motion is carried 5-2 approval of the school lunchtime warrant thank you susie secret thank you mark discussion all those in paper oppose motion is carry 5-3 approval of the capital fund warrant thank you russ thank you susie discussion all those in favor opposed motion is carried in 5-4 approval of the cse cpsp recommendations thank you susie thank you russ discussion that's an awful lot thanks to uh csc for having us done yeah getting there motion is carried moving into presentations and over to our superintendent dr spring thank you so uh the state education department actually yesterday released a framework that they are going to be approving at their main meeting and it is um a draft framework to advance the work of diversity equity and inclusion in school

009districts around the entire state uh so they're viewing this as a call to action that's a a very uh urgent call to action so that school districts will be encouraged to develop policies that again advance diversity equity and inclusion the belief is that we have high expectations and hoping for positive results for all of our state's children and the belief is that the only way this will be accomplished is through a lens of equity and inclusion so we will be looking at adopting a culturally responsive and sustaining framework and addressing areas and having processes according to school governance so this would be something that we would be discussing at the board level um also teaching and learning in our curricula and what's happening in our classrooms perspective is a very important part of this instead

010of learning about history or or from one perspective um it's very important that many multiple perspectives are are honoring or looked through and the goal is to ensure opportunities for students to engage in civics and social justice um a possibility of a capstone project and this is something that i have discussed with nick before in our social studies department to actually have uh our seniors and participation government uh solve a problem you know using design thinking and a problem maybe in our community or our region and then working on how to solve and actually presenting um you know to the board presenting the local government on their ideas um so so something like that is is also very favorable so i think that's exciting so more on that to come and we do have updated

011guidance from the new york state department of health on end of year celebrations effective may 1st so the guidance limits again the stage is encouraging celebrations this year and graduations but there are limitations and there are restrictions so the restrictions are based on the size of the venue and how many guests that you are looking to have all must be physically distanced by six feet that is not changing and everyone must wear masks everyone must have the health screening tool completed contact tracing and seating arrangements and charts have to be submitted and kept on file and for medium and large size events you have to have proof of a recent negative common test or a vaccine so the they have outdoor events um and for us that would only be our athletic field but that's

012not even an option for us this year because of our capital project and the work that is being done in our field so when we look at indoor events um small scale up to 100 people or two attendees per student up to 50 capacity so that possibly could be our gym um or our auditorium but if we're looking at a six foot distancing in our auditorium i believe it's only about 90 people so so there are definitely constraints there um the doh and cdc are continuing to recommend that large gatherings be avoided they are still recommending that school districts hold virtual graduations or ceremonies videos drive-in drive-through individualized ceremonies and when we get to the reports from our principles they're going to talk a little bit more about what they think this could mean for

013us this year i did have an opportunity nick sent me the video of the graduation from last june and i was extremely impressed and it was a wonderful ceremony and it was a beautiful day so i i commend on everybody for for that great ceremony so we'll hear more from our principals thank you so additionally the new york state department of health is coming out with um updated guidance so you remember at our last board meeting i did present to you the updated cdc guidance so now the new york state department of health is following their lead and they are adopting those guidelines with some caveats here so no barriers i think that's that's a big thing we have been hearing a lot in our region that some school districts were uh purchasing barriers as

014a way to allow three feet um but that is not being promoted by our state department of health so so that's not allowable um as part of our plan and i'll go through it in just a minute we do uh have stakeholder input and that's something that's a requirement here and and i consider our board of education meetings part of that we also have a committee that we have met internally and we will meet again with them next week and we are looking at a parent survey so we'll talk a little bit more about that as part of our plan so fat face masks at all times that hasn't changed except for meals so when students are eating they have to maintain a six foot distance because they do not have masks so there is

015a change in language here that i do want to call your attention to and i i know steve brought this up in the past so they have eliminated the word social distancing in the new guidance it is now termed physical distancing so from now on you will only hear them say physical listening and there's another standard to the three foot uh distance in counties with high transmission it is okay to continue to have your elementary students at a three foot distance but high school and junior high only if they have a cohorting model okay and that is not the model that we we have in our secondary schools and i also would like to call your attention to the cdc covenant tracker so last week before vacation we were in united county identifying as a

016county with a high rate of transmission so during last week sometime it was downgraded to the next lower level which is substantial so you can see this is very fluid and it could go up again next week so it makes it very difficult to make a decision on whether or not we should bring our secondary students back because if the rate of transmission again goes up then we have to maintain a six foot distance not a three and we cannot accommodate the capacity of all of those students at one time in our junior senior high school six feet must be maintained when not wearing a mask in common areas always between adults and and children between adults and students and in music classes so that doesn't really impact because we're already following you know the

017six feet we have lessons so it doesn't really impact them so i always like to provide what do we look like right now as of today so as of today we have two students who are on quarantine one staff member we have two students in isolation that means a country positive and no staff members so what is our recommendation so our recommendation from our admin team and our committee and our committee is made up of our wta representatives our president representatives from each building also we have elementary teachers we have secondary teachers and our admin team so that's our committee we met on march 31st or the end of march and we'll also be meeting again next monday so the recommendation is that we return all elementary to full day may 3rd we're going to

018be sending on survey to parents tomorrow we want to gauge their interest in having their children attend for a full day and what their transportation needs making we also are in the process of measuring our classrooms at mts using the three-foot marker developing bus routes and runs once we have the survey from the parents we'll be able to do that and of course tracy will take the lead on that and then we also talked about sixth grade should sixth grade go back to mps obviously it's disrupted we understand that but there was also another consideration here and that's our capital project and there was uh you know we are looking at uh starting our cafeteria and um we just don't want to have any more distractions for our students and teachers in our sixth grade

019so we did talk with our sixth grade teachers and uh they are in favor of going back to mps if that's going to work for us they were very very adaptable very agreeable so we will continue to develop the details of the plan some other things we need to discuss lunch periods uh arrival and dismissal those are things that we'll address and then we will post our updated reopening plan on our website so are there any questions we return back to all day or we plan on going back to the normal schedule that you'll donate to school earlier so again students won't be able to be they're either a full day in person or a full day result there won't be any half day um but as far as the arrival and dismissal schedule so

020so that will depend on the busing so it's going to be currently the way that we started to look at transportation was at the same time that we are now ticked um because we're going to have to double and triple o so we will still need to to bring our junior senior students in they will stay on the same time so their times remain the same everybody's times remain the same as they are this year yeah good question all with a little bit of staggered arrival for elementary at the start yeah there there'll be there will be some sort of stagger once we have our numbers then we can really start to plug in um you know it is a 5 10 15 minute stagger how many loops do we need to make are we

021doing any course yet or for all work with elementors of course scoring lessons i'm sorry every student uh receives general music um and there are also instrumental lessons but no course okay so do me at the high school with some small scores so what happens with when you say general music do they meet together i mean yeah the music teacher goes to the each classroom to each class so everybody in that classroom okay never mind i but there's no course there's no and there's no band there is band there are banners but not a band of sixty or seventy students again and it's too lazy and it's about a mountain outside maybe next year yeah i know you know we think about everything but i wanted to hear performing so we will continue to update

022you on our fire and they go to they don't i thought we were eating in the fight that i lost that so right now um those students that are full day so our special education programs and our 56th graders currently believe in their classrooms but they are currently visits and that's not changed for even that that guideline is not changing right i know this yeah so we'll see looking at susie um the gymnasium the cafeteria most likely we will need to utilize both of those spaces before eating spaces okay and it's like in the classroom again out of the committee one of our elementary teachers had a great idea on their snack time at elementary um and they won't be three feet apart so how do they use that and it will be an ac

023row so robes will be labeled adcd so if you're in row a and c you'll be six feet apart you can have your snack and then row b and d will have their skin so just some creative ways and that was a great idea that one of the teachers came up with right good thank you okay um so i hope i didn't panic anybody when you came in there's a facebook in front of you i printed and left that for you and we'll talk about where we are and um we're not going to go through that document tonight but we are going to go through some overviews and linda or ross or steve jump in at any time from the committee and um interject if you like but we'll again start and review where we

024are what has changed from our last meeting and um the status as we walk into tonight so again um waterville has constructed a budget committee and that committee is made up of three board members in the admin team new um concept a new platform for us we have met now five times um most recently we met again this morning to review and make sure that um we had all of our pieces together and this is just an outline of where we started so the board had given the committee parameters and just to make sure that we all remember where we started one of the parameters was to build a budget that was balanced without the use of fund balance was to maintain our expense growth at less than two percent increase and was to start

025with the tax levy limit for our revenue stream at 2.5 percent so those were the parameters we started with and where are we today as we come into tonight's meeting we have built and will be recommending a budget um to the board it does not have a fund balance allocation this is a balanced budget without using fund balance the expense growth is 0.63 so less than one percent it's uh just over 118 000 increase from year to year and it does contain a tax levy limit of 2.5 in the revenue stream so we've seen this information before and it's just updated for our current current steps and if we can uh move over to the next slide and again um i think you'll see where we go once we get through a couple of these

026slides here so we will talk about the anticipated expenditure plan and we're going to do this right now on a summary level and on a global level so items that are included in the budget everything that we have currently in our academic athletic and extracurricular program is included in next year's budget okay so there have been no changes to the academic program the athletic program or the extracurricular program unless identified which we'll talk about over on the other side um it also our plan also is to re-engage our upk program okay so some of the items that are not included in the 2122 budget are the seven fte 7.5 fte vacated positions that happened this year we did not fill them they are not rolling over and they're not being filled in the 2122 budget

027um as you can see we have an english amatha science in ais a special ed an aid and an assistant principal position that are that were vacated and not being filled at our last board meeting we talked to you about some other items that we were recommending for a reduction um and that was in asl levels three four we talked about maintaining levels one and two so we would have spanish chinese and asl the other item and the last board meeting that we spoke about reducing from the budget was the spo resource that was at the elementary bill so when we look at the number 1971 357 the items that are on the right hand side of this column are not included in this budget okay does anybody have questions about people thank you sure

028so not not very different from what we talked about in the last meeting the piece that we stopped at last time that we met was the revenue piece um at that point we still had about a 68 deficit there were some items that the committee had um in conversation and discussion if we needed to move in that direction but what happened last week was we did receive our updated and final state aid runs so they were very different very different from the january um we're going to just walk through this and i'm not going to i'm not going to get very detailed in the january portion of this i will highlight a few things that change but as we move through this slide um we're going to be talking about waterville is now anticipating receiving

029a total revenue package to to offset their expense budget of nineteen million ninety nine thousand dollars three hundred forty dollars okay so when we look at 2021 the first column our state aid this year 12 million through eight eight our tax levy 5 million 437 168 some other revenues of seven hundred and fifteen thousand dollars and then we balanced this year's budget with four hundred and twelve dollars of fund balance we all remember last year when we built this budget so our 2021 budget um was was built as a deficit budget with a fund balance um piece to fill that gap we fast forward into the building of 2122 budget and when we started in january the first run that came out provided us a small increase and 12 million 574 000 there were many

030things in there that were concerning to us we didn't know how they were going to shake out september we talked about the governor had identified collapsing all of our expense driven aids and then capping them moving forward he had included star as part of our revenue stream which has never been part of our state aid revenue stream so there were a lot of things in that january run that were concerning so so we didn't do much with revenue we waited um april 9th we had an approved budget and the numbers rolled out and this is the first time in i don't know um seven eight nine years we have a true real increase in foundation aid so oftentimes our foundation aid for the last several years has stayed flat and any increases to state aid

031is that increases that we've generated on expense driven aids so we now in this budget there is a true real increase uh in foundation aid brings us uh to a total age package of twelve million eight hundred and eleven thousand two hundred and forty six dollars we were very pleased with this um the other thing that was not included there was no take back so that has been something that is last year happened um in the first january run there was a take back of 80. this is called a phasing so there's this is supposed to be a three-year phase-in to bring us to be fully funded in our foundation aid stream okay um we have about 400 if the aid calculation ran in its entirety we're receiving and forty thousand dollars the rest of

032the money is um supposed to be given to us at fifty percent next year and then fifty percent to bring us to our whole steps um so in total our state aid we have a 3.4 increase that is inclusive of foundation aid and inclusive of increases to our expense driven aids okay very happy um it's a total of four hundred and twenty two thousand seven hundred and eighty dollars an increase that we have not seen in a very long time so um as we move down the table here our next large revenue stream is the tax lobby and at this point we have built that tax levy with the 2.5 increase brings us to the 5573 our other revenue and we are not allocating any fund balance to cover our expenses now for the first

033time in my 20 years something very interesting happens that we're going to look at in the next slide um so are there questions on revenue i have questions but i'll i'll work with you okay um so so the next slide here we're going to take a look at and just uh go back and refresh ourselves on sorry refresh ourselves on the conversation we had about the tax levy limits we're going to do a little walk through the tax levy limit historical data from the time of its existence up through now and the very top line there a little bit small but it says tax levy limit so that was the allowable limit we as a district were able to go up to and then the second row is the tax levy that was adopted by

034the board of education um it's important when we look at this to just be sure that we're not out of whack um when we start talking about um you know the tax levy limit and the situation that we're in currently in 2001 too so again i'm just you know we just look across the chart and we see um in 13 14 and 14 15 we go up to the limit 15 16 we stay at 2.5 percent 16 17 we go to the limit 17-18 we go just under the limit um and then 1819 through 2021 we go to the tax levy 2122 we've talked about this our tax levy limit is 0.109 it will generate us 5 934 does not help balance our budget does not help stay within the goals of not using fund

035balance which we are at 1.96 percent um so we talked about what do we do we we are we had multiple conversations about the need to override the cap at this point and generate um consistent revenue as we have in the past which is where we came to the 2.5 and that is what is built into the revenue budget so again you know this is this is a point of demonstration and historical data and um showing us where where we are comparatively to where we have met does anybody have a question about the tax levy limit so in summary again we're looking at this we're looking at this at you know the 2002 here we're looking at this in summary the far right column our expenditure plan nineteen thousand nineteen million sorry seventy one thousand

036three hundred and fifty seven dollars our revenue plan nineteen million ninety nine dollars three hundred and forty so as you can see we have a little bit more revenue than we have built in the expense budget so this is this was a little bit shocking when we were in the red when i finished the revenue numbers because we haven't had more revenue than expenses in about 20 years um so there's some conversation that will take place there is a recommendation that the budget committee is going to bring to the full board as we move through this um in what we what we do as we we move into the next series of steps here so again our revenue is just under 28 more than what we've built into the expense budget okay which kind of

037brings us to this point here the budget committee is making a recommendation and again any of those folks wish to jump in the recommendation is for next year to add back the spo um that is at a cost of about 25 000. this is a fifty percent funded position from the sheriff's department tonight county sheriff's department the district pays fifty percent the ship the united county sheriff's department has a grant that pays fifty percent in light of um the recommendation for next year is to bring this back um into the budget at the 25 000 um the recommendation also is to approve the 2.5 tax levy increase so we would be going out with a 2.5 uh increase it is over our levy limit we will need 60 majority and to approve the expenditure plan

038totally now if the 25 000 is added back which is the recommendation from the committee 19 million 96 000 350 so there's a lot of information here and i know you folks haven't seen all of that information we've met five times we've been um knee deep in all of this information so what are the next steps here so tonight i've provided to you now the final budget that the committee has recommended in line by line detail we are asking that uh you folks take some time digest that document and then provide us with questions and then on the on the uh questions are due back to the superintendent no later than the 20th of april so it gives you about a week certainly i'm available to take calls in between and i'll walk you through

039some of those questions that you may have and there will be a need for a special board meeting so by law the board of education has to adopt the expense plan no later than april 23rd which is next friday all right so we will need to have another meeting um the suggested date is the 22nd which will be specifically to address board questions um and approve the expense budget we need to open that that topic up to make sure that everybody can make that date work we need to have uh another date looked at so it's next thursday i just have a negotiation session with both seats so but they usually 6 30 or 7 o'clock meeting [Music] next thursday season so can we make it seven just pretty scheduled for next week is our

040retreat so it is a lot to have back-to-back meeting so i will send out a doodle the first week of may actually looks like it's a pretty open week so we'll see what your availability is and possibly moving and rescheduling that retreat date to the first week of bang so so we'll um so just to kind of give you a quick walk through the document that you have in front of you which is the line by line document it is a comparative document from current year to the 2122 budget um it is then broken out by a percentage change in a dollar amount change and to the right of all of that information are some of my notes on each of those line items if there is a large swing i certainly did not um

041comment or note on items that have a one or two percent increase or decrease or fifty dollar increase or decrease um i did try to put as much information in there so that they so as the user reading that um it was helpful to at least identify what was happening again if we can have questions no later than the 20th and i am available at any time so if somebody does have a question that you want to talk through it may be easier to talk through a question and then we can put it on the list of a board question that came through for the full meeting yeah the only thing i ask is that all the questions you receive yes get discussed yeah if if me yep right i was going to bring that

042up for the members who aren't on the budget committee our thought process has been to give everyone this full week to take the detailed budget go through it have that time for dialoguing questions uh at your own convenience and then to get those questions to administration so we can go through them at that meeting of one second and it's still the same process we've always had it just has streamlined it so that we're we're more efficiently looking at where we're gonna land and if there are any concerns with anything we're looking at you know kind of question that out in the next week and we'll have a good discussion on the 22nd so just some dates to remember for all of us here and for all of the folks watching april 19th is the last

043day to submit a petition for a board nomination may 11 will be our public hearing and our presentation will be in the three-part component budget which is required by law and then may 18th is our budget vote 8 am to 10 pm to 8 and it will be held in this room um so we voted here last year historically for years we have voted in the cafeteria but there that will be under construction so we will be voting again in the boardroom and we'll be using the main door to come in as we did last year question what is the last day to request an absentee ballot we can do that up to seven phases okay so the last item i have and i'm sorry for being so long-winded um but again i just want

044to continue to keep you updated because things are moving quickly and and come back and revisit the conversation about the new federal money um there's only yes is notice out to the community in regards to the budget um so a little bit different this year um so historically we have done a mailing newsletter a mail newsletter so a paper newsletter that gets made in light of the time that we have in when we're going to approve this budget that process um it takes a while for the process to happen for the for the uh information to go to print for it to get printed and then for it to go to mail we are not going to get that document out to folks before they need to have it in their hands so we talked

045about that at great lengths today at the budget committee meeting how are we going to distribute information to folks um so we will distribute information via our social media of course on our website in a newsletter format on our facebook page but for those but we know there are folks that don't utilize those methods of media so we will be taking out a one-page ad in the waterville times and we will basically implant our newsletter in the waterville times so we're hoping to capture those folks that may not be social media folks that have subscriptions to the newspaper uh but again the point here is we will not be mailing out a physical newsletter we just approving a budget next thursday will simply not give us enough time to do that that's okay yeah any

046ideas from board members i mean we've had experience where stuff drive after after the vote you know because the timeline is always late let's be clear if people are watching for the first time haven't really followed this before sure this is normal we get everything very late in the game we have to build a budget kind of guessing very educated but guessing where we're going to land and then it puts us under the gun to figure out how we want to handle it and that's part of what we hope to accomplish with the new budget committee this year was to haggle out different scenarios and have a better understanding when the numbers came in the final run of what we had prioritized and now the board has we've got years we'd have like a couple

047days we have a whole week to go through everything recommendation-wise and then come back and have another meeting even though it's the day before we're going to be very well prepared it's been a good process have a good discussion so there is no there's no legal requirement to providing letters there's a legal requirement to provide the budget notice um that will go out as it needs to it's a seven day notice that goes out prior to the budget vote that will go out as required uh the newsletter is our way of communicating to mediator constituents i have questions but i'll just let you know better okay well all right yep so um federal money two pieces december money in march money known as cssra that was the december stimulus and rescue which is the march

048stimulus our allocations as seen here by the two categories are identified on our state aid run waterville will be receiving three million just over three million dollars in federal stimulus money in two different categories information is still coming out there is a lot of um pieces that we don't know yet but this is what we do know we do know this will be called a brand in eight which means it will work just like a federal grant it will be accounted for and recorded in the federal fund not in the general fund it will be a reimbursable grant we will spend so we have to have cash flow and then we would submit reimbursements and get our money back um the cssra which was the december money is available for use until september of rescue

049is available for use until september of 2024 we do know that a portion of this money will be restricted we have heard but we do not have the actual percentage we have heard it was 20 we have heard it's going to be there will be a percentage restricted specifically to fund learning gaps academic learning gaps we don't know what that have a meeting percentage friday i'm hoping that we have some more information um other uses of this money will be utilized to address social and emotional gaps so as more information comes out when we are dealing with friend raw money generally what comes out is a list of allowable expenses and either the federal government or the state government whomever the powers be will tell us these are the things you are allowed to spend

050that money we will use this in a three-year strategic plan as we've been talking about um so again you know this is for reference point this is this is what we know today as we get more information we will continue to update the lord as that comes yeah i have no questions yeah i've seen new stories and so other people have about the total amount of state aid uh spending three statements yep price three percent yep now i understand that three percent is the foundation aid of correct portion now what is that other where does that other five percent where does that money go to it it doesn't exist it doesn't exist okay um so i again um i did not do it side by side one of the things that i do every single

051year is i take that very first run and there are four three or four categories in there that always always have over projections so you can take our oca number you can take our transportation number and you can take some of these small other ima called they're called ima expense driven categories those are built on projections that were submitted the prior year okay so we submit projections the prior year and then the state pulls that information and they utilize that to drive those aid numbers in our run when i get it i look at that and i say there's absolutely no way that i am going to get 1.4 million dollars in transportation i'm not even going to spend 1.4 million dollars okay so i'll send this to you an email because this is the

052numbers from the state i know that they have posted on the accounts i'm sorry i just wonder because they're off by 75 they're off 75 what they say we're going to and then they also have the foundation they've broken out which is the three percent number you have yeah so so i'm going to talk to you about those numbers i just want to understand yeah and we can walk through i think you know it's um we'll we'll walk through i'll send you an email so we can and i can send you to i mean i have a very detailed document that breaks out where our expenses are now um so transportation aid is aided at 90 percent if our expenses are 900 000 and i get 90 back i'm not getting 1.4 million dollars right

053well this this actually refers to what they say they're giving us yes that's what they do yes so so that's what i want yeah we can walk through that clearly absolutely well we'll the other thing i understand we're going to be reimbursed now for transportation cost of 1920 school year and meals and one time we weren't going to be is that is that part of the budget is that number in the budget so yes so let me just let me just explain a little bit um when we turned to the school year and we got into september of this school year there was a lot of conversation at the state level that schools were not in session march april may in june of last year and that they were not going to aid schools for

054transportation costs incurred because they did not have students on buses okay right right so that that was kind of the pretense there was a lot of fight about that um we were either transporting meals some school districts were using their buses for internet um we were still transporting students that were in special program et cetera bringing supplies um also back in march of last year which was the big piece of this push of saying we were told specifically although there was nothing in writing but we were told very clearly that we were not to lay anybody off okay and some of that was in transportation so so the this back and forth dialogue happened across the state with new york state schools that said you know we were told certain things we did what we

055were told but now you're telling us that somehow you're going to measure what our actual expense was even though we expensed that money but uh but we didn't transport students so they they tried to collect some data we were all required to submit data we did um and kind of wondering where it went in in this in this final run in the in the adopted budget of new york state new york state outside any expenses that you incurred last year while you were in closure and if you can ascertain that you were transporting in any capacity meals supplies or students we are going to age you as we would have in the past so that's what that language means okay so does that give us any more money than we anticipated no it gives us

056what we anticipated because if that was not the case one third of our expenditures would not be needed so that number so we would have to adjust for them anything else well i just i have more pleasure i've got that i'll send you yeah yeah send them and um you know then i'll get everything back to the board the only question i would have is about the learning gaps on the on the federal money do we know how we're going to assess that can we how we're going to assess what the learning gap is well i mean we have tools one is i ready there was a presentation to the board earlier this school year um and another thing our principals are going to talk about in a minute i mean we are definitely encouraging

057our families to have their children participate because it will be good information i'm sorry the three through eight assessments oh okay guys so that will be good information um even though it's only one section but still it will be good information um for our you know teachers and our admin team and for parents to just gauge how well student work this year during a difficult year and what the future um you know what it means for uh planning for next year so so between i ready between the new york state assessments between teacher collaboration teacher recommendation and professional development on you know spiraling the curriculum prioritizing curriculum for next year we will be able to manage them can you use any event money for the summer program yeah so summary school that's something we're still

058working on we did canvas our staff to see if we would be interested before the great house of staff who would like to participate so yes so that is something we're working with after school of programs epidemic school year also nick is preparing a credit recovery program for high school junior high and high school students for summer so that's all for you yes yes and tim in true fashion of the state at some point probably after the fact but we'll come out with a definition of what fits into that learning gap you have to provide the definition for that or is the federal will um well the federal government is providing the money to the state so it all depends the federal government may have a definition but then the state can also implement additional

059restrictions and does this money flow through the state to us just like just like anything else yeah yeah yeah so um yeah when they they hold the money and then we submit a reimbursement or we're already planning right but then we'll mention different discussions thank you okay all right so now i'm going to turn it over to google so you have clear direction on putting the budget together [Music] to present to the board under 20 seconds they have everything that you discuss only our item that is outstanding would be um if we're adding we they have everything that we looked at today so as of right now my understanding is that the spo is is back in the budget we're improving the 19 whatever that figure was with that 25 000 in that is the

060present i just want to make sure that it's clear with everyone okay thank you awesome okay so just a few items on my report this evening obviously uh or i guess not obviously but earlier today we put out a letter to the community to uh parents of uh students in grades three through eight regarding through three testing uh maureen will speak to this as well but uh we have three common dates between mps the junior senior high of four those three through eight exams to take place ela will take place on april 26th on may 10th will be our math exam for grades three through eight and then june 7th will be grades four and brains eight the science exams so um as dr spring mentioned those will be a key indicator uh to legend

061to measure the learning that's taking place this year and to begin to formulate our plan uh with regard to uh recovering some of the type it lost through the pandemic uh the remote hybrid learning the gaps that we've experienced this year so i've been sitting and sort of watching the parent surveys it looks like we uh we have some strong levels of participation protection so we're trying to get there yeah so i hope that uh the parents who um that haven't submitted just yet the survey 300 the survey just went out at five o'clock okay so um for all those parents who haven't submitted at this point um please as we said that's that's going to be a key indicator there's a lot of selling points to the assessments this year in the past they've

062been two or three day events this year it's going to be a single day one session so not a long drawn-out process for our students for those for those young learners especially so we feel like they're they're as appropriate as they've ever been in terms of assessing students for uh you know that what they've learned throughout the course of the school year so computer-based you know we're not doing computer based this year because we had obviously jumped into that we were kind of on the forefront of that but just with all the uncertainty this year uh going back to dr davis uh maureen myself tracy we we all sat down this fall and we said you know what this is this is probably not here to uh to push that so we decided to go

063ahead and go back to paper-based i would assume that we'll probably we'll probably move back in a normal situation towards computer-based testing but once again april 26th for ela may 10th for math june 7th for grades 4-8 we are asking parents uh rather than sending in the opt-out letters we've pushed out a survey to all of our parents grades three through eight we're asking them to identify whether their child intends to participate um the students who are not going to be participating their day on those dates they will be learning asynchronously um just especially up here at this point in time i don't have a lot of general spaces to put an opt-out so i don't have i can't put them in the cafeteria in the auditorium all of those common spaces the gym everything

064is used up right now so uh those students who are now participating there there um they will go a little bit differently uh this year on those testing dates but like i said we are encouraging as many participants as possible to help us get engaged on what's taking place what our learning levels have been this year so um there's uh i i don't see any harm in putting students in front of these examples this year i i don't i don't see any harm in putting them in front of these exams that are normally here but especially this year single session one day um let's let's go ahead and measure what we've what we've been able to accomplish this year it really directly addresses your question tim on top will be assessed and that is one

065avenue that we're hoping our parents will value um that will really help not only uh to determine where our students are before we are uh as educators [Music] so the letter and the survey are all on the website they've been posted on the social media sites we did independent phone call blast and uh separate text or email so that's based on user preference so um if anybody is uh watching on their cell phone or some other device and they're having trouble punching in the the survey results they can certainly call our secretaries in the morning we are asking that everybody get that into us by next monday april 12th that way april 12th now april 9 19. this is monday i'm off by a full week um monday april 19th that's one week prior to

066that first administration of ela exam and that we will be able to do the best job we can of planning where the exams and the commitments for the exams will take place and everything so um i think that that more or less i just want to add that there is a testing window for all of these exams um i know that i have two students that are going to be away on the days that we're giving them and they certainly can be taken during the makeup period so um we also talked about parents we may not hear from for whatever reason if you'll give us a couple of days to reach out to them and help us to get 100 response for our consequences as parents uh parents planning as well so uh 338 test

067testing that's the rest of the details and spelled out by building in the letter that uh dr strange subscribe website it's going to pop up as an order but when you get there it was linked in the text message link to the emails it's on our social media so it's available pretty much every every mode we have um i'll jump to regents exams just to stay with the assessment thought process uh i think we've touched upon the fact that has been turned down significantly this year in terms of the number of administering there will be no um there will be no exams in uh either what's that oh i thought i heard something sorry um there will be no social studies exams this year we're looking at an ela administration for a lot of creators

068we're looking at um administration for algebra also administration for our earth science learning environment okay so they've trimmed down the number of exams that are going to be offered this year and that's driven by uh the federal department of education um it seemed as though new york state they applied in a couple different phases to have a waiver so that those exams didn't have to be administered uh the federal government the department of education indicated that they need to be offered so with that being said new york state has said that the exams need to be offered but they will not be required so once again puts us in a little bit of a quandary in terms of uh garnering student participation um there there is not going to be a requirement that students participate

069in these regions exams it will not be necessary if they pass the courses uh through the four quarters and their final exams they will not be required to pass the regents exam in order to gain that credit so it's kind of turning our world upside down compared to what's uh what the end of the school year usually looks like usually those exams are important part of you know capping off the learning that's taking place so we are still obviously going to encourage students to participate as much as possible um i i think that a lot of our students are probably going to still want those marks on their on their transcripts um with the transcript piece there's uh the option to withhold that number if the student ultimately they do not get the mark that

070they that they hoped for they'll be able to in consultation with myself our guidance counselor they'll actually have the option to uh withhold that from their transcript so once again um we feel it's like it's a it's a good opportunity for students to go and show what they've learned this year uh it's really low stakes for the students in terms of um it will not be part of their final grade calculation so we'll encourage students to participate once again all right yeah the guidance we got is that it's it's not to be used for um promotion um determination of credit etc the only question i'm going to the only question i'm going to ask uh seek clarification on is if they for example got a better grade on the region's exam than they did on

071the final if we substitute that score and i haven't saw a guidance on that specifically just yet but it might be there 60 somewhat answers so can you talk about you know how regions stays are you know how we get attendance out of region states but now that there are there are those days are not going to be yeah for regents exams they are attendance days and what you're doing yeah so the the four we've drafted up um to dr springs point where were notified that uh generally if we're administering regents exams um the in terms of the calculation of 180 days of attendance those days do not go into that calculation we don't have to take catalyst because his answer can be administered usually it's because our staff is pretty well booked up with

072administering exams this year with a small number that they're administering uh what we've drafted up is a final schedule to go over uh to kind of run a concert with those reasons exams um which that typically hasn't taken place here so that will uh we'll still have the students engaged we're kind of uh trying to put the finishing touches on whether all of our final exams might be administered uh remotely uh you know what that might look like so there's still some some nuts and bolts to figure out as we can as we approach right but in order to meet the 180 day requirements those days that are when patients exams are not scheduled we have to have student you know attendance yeah they have to be learning they have to be you know right

073participating in an assessment um those regents exam state exam dates this year they will not be a day off for students usually their day off if you don't have an exam scheduled that day anybody have any questions about that yes i'd just be interested if you don't have to tell me now i guess i've been valve um also um i'm wondering how i only know how one university works with this you know situation okay i know they were looking less at sap than acts already and i've learned about how this affects different child child a student decides to go on in a um in a college level or to you know trade school or whatever how this affects how they determine how whether the student is required is not the requirements and that sort of

074thing also i'd be very interested in knowing if we have students that are going out in music and art whether they send up their portfolios and their auditions um still happening there they have to be prepared in their junior year and like how the cold cold isn't back there because that's different than some students i know not every college asks for um in-person interviews and that sort of thing um or right you don't have to write a whole lot or somehow it isn't something you do in the deaf difference but i'm just wondering how all this has changed you know last year this year mr grayson mr grayson i would just say i would just say that um my conversations with mr gray and he'll probably film the points here is the the application process

075i think it's a lot more holistic than it used to be so um you know we're the only state that administers regions exams they're you know they're a big deal in new york but um i don't know that they carry the weight outside of new york but they that they that they do here so one thing i i do know since they have waived the sat for many college colleges that it has increased exponentially the number of students who have applied yeah which is what i understand i just was working with the colburn and over there and i have to admit you know i don't know if we have kids going on in our but it definitely is different than this you're fine for school that's okay let's hear from you um mr gray mr

076gray do we have anybody headed um this year so this year um we might have one or two and i know that there's been auditions um mrs quayle obviously with with vr you know going back years kids would create their portfolio that they would carry in a you know a large suitcase looking thing you know now a lot of it is the kids transfer onto slides and can send those in through that format um you know auditions were pretty limited because colleges you know were often not even allowing on-campus visits um as the spring progressed um schools were letting small groups kids would have to sign up far in advance you know and you wouldn't have an open house with a college with um you know a couple hundred kids and their parents coming to

077to visit so schools are gradually opening up um you know i'm hoping this is just a one-year one-year deal um with their colleges not being is accessible um for the students to come visit you know they've all jumped into what we're doing here with zoom presentations and with online presentations where the kids are talking to admissions people through the online format um you know jumping over to sats and standardized testing we're seeing some places open back up with offering them but not all schools are i mean locally um you know there's some area high schools where our kids go and traditionally take the sats some still are not offering through june locally at but i know there are a couple schools and we've had kids going to herkimer for example or rfa where they're offering

078them i'm strongly encouraging our kids our juniors you know who are looking at schools that will be looking at sats or traditionally have looked at sats to try to get in and take them when they become seniors next year i'm not sure what to expect i don't think anyone is as far as what colleges are going to be asking you know for example this year every suny school waived the s.a.t as a requirement and so did most private schools um you know so i think they might be getting a pulse on um you know are are they going to continue um maybe not requiring them or will they go back as it was in prior to last march um but you know i just want our kids to cover themselves so kids that are looking

079at you know we i met with all the juniors and their parents um students looking at schools or thinking about school so traditionally offer them try to get in and take them and you know next fall many of the schools high schools that offer them locally where our kids traditionally go um if they open back up i wouldn't want our kids taking them for the first time in october november december with only one you know one crack at the test if colleges are going to come back and require them so um you know we're really we're trying to look to the future and and you know it's a little bit of a guessing game but i want kids to be you know have things in order um if they are going to come back and

080be required but i haven't really gotten a sense from colleges with our current junior class when they become seniors next year what those requirements going to be but like i said if we see things opening up where places are offering them i'm strongly encouraging kids to do it or we become a site here right pardon me or we could be a site here yes i know um some schools have started doing that um in school s.a.t offerings too that came out a couple years ago um it's a school day test um it's not a saturday thing it is during the school day where schools you know we're being allowed to offer them to their own students we didn't get into that um because our kids would often like i said go to clinton or new

081hartford or on a saturday you know not not losing a school day to do that um but that could be a possible another option but it would be a school day test thank you mr greg and the last bullet uh graduation thankfully um we did receive some guidance it was yesterday my memory serves um regarding uh graduation and other end of the year ceremonies uh proms balls all that good stuff so um the good news is we got it a lot earlier than last year i think i was planning graduation until the day before graduation last year um but the bad news is they made it uh more difficult without a doubt um it's uh it's going to be it's going to be interesting again so um just trying to figure out basically it becomes

082a mathematics you know it comes out of exercise and logic i so today i met with my um full day in person seniors we all got together in the library i said you guys need to give me your list of demands i you know i jokingly tell them basically kind of the parameters that they would like to uh you know see their their commencement to take place to take place under um they followed the same as last year so they do not want to be separated they want all 70 of them to participate at the same time they don't want to have you know 10 different uh seven-person ceremonies or you know uh they don't want to be split up which that was in school like this that's to be expected um they also do

083not want to be capped to one or two people um i brought up two people because uh one of the magic numbers by the guidance is 200 i have 70 kids so 70 kids two parents a piece 210 so we're up into i'm sorry about that right so we're up into one of the magic numbers for an outside ceremony so um when i asked him is two you know is too going to be enough absolutely not you know i mean you guys saw last year i don't know we probably had 700 people out there i haven't like um with the every car was jam-packed so um i kind of i'm thinking that once the guidance changes we're probably going to be in vehicles but uh we're looking at a couple different options um once again

084using this area out here uh i've reached out to harvey nursing home if you know maybe if something is relaxed uh could we use the lawn out there it's a nice setting has a little bit of shape um so we'll be hooking graduation planning for the next 10 weeks nine weeks whatever it is and it'll probably probably change ten times between now and then but uh plan on we we expect that uh the morning of june 19th we expect to be graduating somewhere somehow and then um it'll most likely be weather attendant so keep an eye on that as we go up to it uh last year's class they didn't want any part of moving off of that weekend i 100 agree with that also um i didn't even raise that question but then this

085year too many too many people have family coming from out of state or from some sort of distance so we'll come up with a couple of contingency plans for you know doing that in the morning and afternoon the next morning is two different options if it's thunderstorm or you know the rain rainy day or whatever so um if we go outside of the vehicles i just i don't know i don't know the feasibility of that if we go to an outdoor event even um with more than 200 people uh the logistics just become we have to be plucking vaccinations and or a negative problem test uh that's been administered within the last 72 hours uh pcr i believe and then within maybe 24 hours maybe if it's a rabbit so it's just i don't know

086where they i don't know why that works but ordered proof of vaccination yeah the proof of vaccination is easier but you can imagine if we had to collect proof of vaccinations from everybody that was here last year or try to get them to all have a negative token test and i explained to the students today i am very very very very apprehensive of having students test the day before graduation because a positive test means that they will not be there for graduation so i will try to come up with some sort of i i think the drive-in makes the most sense i think the safest opportunity i just i would not want a kid to miss i would want some of our students to miss their graduation um because we insisted that it not being

087the vehicles that would be outside or indoors or whatever the case would be and the positive testing is that they can just that just that's the um not the way we like so no you're fine um so you mentioned have you mentioned um parenting as a possibility i threw a couple ideas up to them yeah yeah you see this special time for us these are these are just brainstorming they're not thinking one of the first people i reached out to because i think we've seen how many cars they put out on the field for uh the cruiser so i thought it looks like a space and talking original quest um if we have the opportunity if the if they lessen these requirements and we can maybe do you know circles family units in distant circles

088at least there's some shade up there i don't know so like i said we're just we're just brainstorming um where you know kirkland town park came up to this point i don't know they don't even one of the most important things we've already started working on uh securing the sound from the same place we did last year so um that's that's probably one of the major what just keep them together have big number of guests make sure we have the sound it worked out well [Music] so we have some really cute pictures here our positivity project team got together and decided um that they wanted as a way to kind of instill excitement as well as build connection and community we held two matter meetings yesterday one for our purple team and one for our

089gold team uh the focus of the meeting was supporting others in need and a creative way to demonstrate that to the students was to invite two special guests one of them being one of our seven uh nine through twelve teachers uh debbie incanterra one of our special education teachers um and actually her rescue dog buckley uh brewer is here often um uh and visits with the students but uh she also has a rescue dog buckley uh therapy dog thank you he's also he's also rescued though you're right but he is a therapy dog yes um so they were kind of the focus of our manor meetings yesterday um and one of the really sweet takeaways that students realize is that every rescue dog has a story just like we as humans have a story each

090one of us has a story uh so they were able to make that connection i did ask debbie to give a little bit of a statement um so she she basically talked about the nature of um dog rescues um and what that is all about and also share a little bit of information on the uh rescue that she is involved with uh personally outside of school um but and i hope debbie i strongly believe that humane education can play an important role in creating compassionate a compassionate and caring society when we take responsibility for ourselves each other our fellow animals and the earth it helps students develop a deep feeling for animals the environment and other people based on empathy understanding and respect and at the end of the presentation it's great mrs nicotera and

091buckley visited every classroom all of our hostess classrooms and uh had a q a session uh with the students and um uh you know it's not a messy dog so so their parents could be dealing with that but um it was just a really enjoyable time uh as a first day back from extremely um so we did talk quite a bit already about new york state assessments um i just wanted to add that obviously um years ago it was each subject area it was over three days a couple years ago was paired down to two days and now obviously with the situation where it's one day um i i do know that uh for instance our um i believe third and fourth grade have 18 questions on their ela test and i believe there's 28

092on the 5th and 6th grade test i did take a look at the manual um a lot of expected time that these should be taking for 3rd and 4th grade it was anywhere from 60 to 70 minutes and fifth and sixth grade 80 to 90 minutes so with the date of the ela exam which will be april 26 we will still be in our half day model with the exception that most students will be able to finish during that two and a half hour period um we won't have to worry about that on may 10th when we are back already so um there was a pta meeting last night a couple topics that came up there um was uh how how will fun day look for our students this year we definitely are trying to

093plan something fun for the students uh the idea where each class maybe go outside and have an opinion was talked about um you know and just trying to brainstorm some creative ways we do have a teacher roundtable for our pta if teachers aren't able to attend the evening meeting we always do a once a month after school meeting that's being held on this monday and trying to get input from teachers this monday ideas for fun day um and also sixth grade graduation um moving up ceremony obviously the big focus here is our seniors especially when there's so many hurdles and challenges um but we certainly will do something uh for our sixth graders last year we did put together a very nice virtual ceremony but we also did some additional activities we had volunteers of

094teachers uh and i believe we split up into six routes we mapped out where every sixth grader lived and trains of you know four or five cars went to each student's house and delivered a little goodie package uh bag bucket um to each of the students about a week before they finished mps so we are brainstorming ways as to what that looks like and certainly if the decision is that it will be virtual we will be sure to add some added bonus things in there for our sixth graders as well so i wanted to give everyone an update of where we are with our enrollment numbers for our special education students uh this is a compilation that started on july 1st so that's the beginning of our school year so it's back to july 1st

095up till today and i put a little matrix together so we can kind of see you know a column in a row of how where students came from and where we place them so if you look at the column all the way to the left that's students that have transferred in some students that moved into our district from another school district since july 1st 14 of those students were placed in our in-district programs i do have some little antidotes underneath some of them about some of the students for example of the 14 there are a couple that we may need to look at programming for next year this year it has been difficult to play some of our students in boces programs because they are full not just full because their numbers are full but

096they are full to the capacity for social distancing so that has made it challenging so you know i just kind of made some comments on that because these numbers as always can change depending on need and uh five students that moved into the district did need an out of district placement and i'm also talking a little bit about that you know we have a student who we've been keeping here remotely um because the parents might remote instruction but once remote instruction ends uh he will need a placement so again just some antidotes there uh in total at the very bottom you can see we've gained 19 students that moved in the district and then of course we have students that transfer out so we have students that live in our district and then move to

097another school district two of those students left our in-district program and uh six of them actually left programs that were out of district programs so if you kind of look across out of district placement row you'll see that we are minus one student in the out of district category um all right they're okay and um i also we also have to look at new referrals as well so our teachers if you look at the third column over our teachers are always giving students ais they are working with students that are struggling especially the elementary level so over time they meet they assess the data they're not making the progress that they need to be making they are then referred to special education now some of these of these four students were actually would have been

098referred last spring but because we shut down that didn't happen so we had to actually kind of backtrack and go back and to continue that process we did have more than four referrals total but four students qualified for special education that were referred so if we look across the top row we see that we're up 16 students uh total um but we're down one of our out of district placements so we have a total of 15 students that are new to our special education program so again we are still gaining more than actually we're losing so currently and again this is today today our numbers are we have 106 students that are in our in-district programs here we have 20 students at our boces placements and we have four students at ucp giving us a

099total of 130 students i will definitely give you an update on this at the end of june because what will be interesting is for us to look at that and then look at what we have at the beginning of september because a lot happens in the months of july and august a lot so i'll do that so that we can take a look at that as well and i just thought you know and of course i'm always keeping the admin team abreast of everything that's going on every time there's a change so there's no surprises um it's again another guessing game but we do try to project what we are looking at for the fall as best we can for a bunch of reasons obviously and then the next slide i just wanted to give

100you know some additional information where are these students coming from uh i thought it was kind of interesting for myself to know that and um that's the breakdown there's really um they're mostly you know nearby schools most of them are and we have had quite an increase in the last couple of weeks so we had six students move into our district since march 4th so that has been challenging uh we have been able to accommodate all of them so far stay tuned we did over spring break and we actually held 30 cse meetings between the last four meeting in this one and that's for the breaking for we were getting well thank them yeah so that's just a snapshot for today thank you very much yes so um an update of where we are we're

101athletics um we're winding almost winding down but it doesn't feel it our uh fall two season we started back on march 15th um it was basically two weeks of pre-season and then break came but um we did have some games over break um we were able to move some um we had um some athletes and families who were away so um when when possible and it wasn't always possible we were able to move some games to this week and going a little bit into next week but everything's run smoothly um families you know each athlete was given two passes and all all the schools that come to waterville um have spectators comment and those athletes that will have two spectators they're showing up their passes they fill out covet assessment forms before they check into

102the games um and it's run you know relatively smoothly um and our families are able to go to away games because other schools are allowing once again two two spectators per athlete so um next week we actually start our spring season um we sign ups began on back on march 30th so as of today we're about two weeks in the the sports that we um put up for the spring our traditional spring sports and you can see softball baseball track and field golf and boys which is actually mixed tennis i think we've you know i've presented that um how the tennis program works um practices will begin next week on on monday the 19th for varsity and the sports that we offer at the jv level we'll start the follow or uh modified level i'm

103sorry i mistakenly wrote jv the 26 is when modified start um anything that we may have jv which it's looking like softball that would also start with the varsity season on the 19th to clarify the spring season will start on monday but we'll also be wrapping up fall sports um that will go until the 23rd um we have a football game on the 23rd and a the last cross-country meet on the 23rd as well as a couple soccer games during the week um it's fine to have the um carryover of wrapping up one season and starting the other if a student for example or student athlete is for example looking to play baseball but they're currently on the football team they can count up to four of their practices for football toward baseball so it's

104not going to hold um the athletes back that are looking to move on to the next sport um because they will be able to count their practices and get going with that so once again as of now for the spring we've we've had two weeks of sign ups um you know we're going to carry this through the end of the week um numbers you know i think are down a little bit um you know i we're really hoping to get kids out and active and and you know we we have numbers to um you know especially with our um sports that are team based whether it be softball baseball um you know the one we have to have you know a minimum number of athletes on the field we were able to get the teams

105going but we do have room for more so um you know we'd like to have more kids sign up um once again through the end of this week it's on family idea is where the families sign up um i know mr rauch has helped you know pushing this out to families through various social media platforms the sports boosters have been posting about it so um once again we'd like to see you know more kids sign up for these sports and if anyone has specific questions you know families out there that are listening please call me at school um if you have questions about about the sports and uh you know what options we have so pretty optimistic and hopefully we'll have weather on our side um the spring season is runs a little later than

106it normally does it's going to go into regular season's going to run into early june um but the month of may is the schedules are filling up um kids are going to have a lot of games going on for about five weeks um but it's good to see them busy and active and and getting out and about so any questions of course you know what i'm going to answer um tennis yes there was one person have we been promoting it or yes i mean we've been promoting all the sports i've had conversations um you know and i've explained once again the the tennis program it's a uh the spring season is um officially called boys tennis but it can be a mixed team if you didn't have a girls program that year which this year

107we didn't um and i've spoken to some families um you know and you know kind of educated them on how the program would work but um yeah so at this point it's still at one i just wish they would be exposed and understand that um because it's a lifelong sport and it's really intense and alone out there but you know we can have our teachers talk about it yeah it'll be great i mean even i mean if you want me to bring the dell here or somebody here i wish you would i wish you would mrs quail i'd love to see him i enjoy watching him or one of the younger big guys since he passed or somebody angry but you know i know that um as i've mentioned before at one point we just

108had a long time ago when my son was here he um they had mixed tennis and they had mixed doubles that he played all the way through and uh it's just it's it's fun but it's intense and you're it's something that when you take it with you or something it's um it's very um vigorous and yet when it comes to a real match like if you're in college you don't have anybody that can no coach can help you you know as far as it's your own you have to you know deal with a lot of they can help you in practice but they can't help you once you're in the match and that's a really um i think it's a strength of that sport um because it teaches you to rely on your own self

109and learn to deal with your um you know with different issues such as whether or not you're scared or how you're going to do something and that sort of thing um yes i i provide that highly but i guess i can't get out there and get the kids there one of the years i don't know when i have a question do we it's um tennis one of our modules and we've done pe class it is okay yeah i just i just wish that they could see you know yeah you know and i think um what may have you know hurt us a little bit too once again is last year um you know i i i've coached it for a few years with the girls team we haven't had a boys team in about five

110or six years so we had the girls team um not this past fall but the previous fall and all the girls on the team were seniors um so then this past fall we um you know when we didn't know we were going to lose sports for the fall you know we had a handful of girls that were going to play on the girls team um we didn't have the team um in a number of those girls um didn't play another fall sport so i i you know did some recruiting and and had numbers now the girls a handful of them do play a spring sport you know tennis wasn't their main sport they were doing it in the fall so they would have something to do now that we're in the spring season you know

111they may be doing softball softballer tracks so that also affected our numbers a little bit and then you know i think after the shutdown last year um coming in march um any time out on the tennis courts would have been probably you know april may and june of last year so you know we we didn't have the exposure i think that we would traditionally have either so it's kind of been a bad perfect storm in this regard you know so um you know but but the goal is is for the fall to get the girls team back up and running and um you know and and you know once again if we can get kids out there mrs quail that's that's like you said that in golf these kids can be playing forever thank you

112i'm sorry no no i i appreciate it i wish they would you know take a look at not something everybody's been exposed to you know like football and sometimes so thank you yeah oh the other thing i want to add too with the with the spring season um is there is a post season in the spring season um sectionals are still on the docket um the state tournaments um will not be happening but but sectionals are there's playoffs there's um things like that where that where the previous the indoor winter season that we had in the current fall two that we're having there are no playoffs um you know it was mostly to get the kids back out and playing inactive but this spring since we lost it last spring um schools in the state

113and the section three are trying to make it as normal the spring season is possible so we don't want these kids to lose two seasons so thank you thank you very much all right moving into board committee reports i can report on the policy committee we last met march 25th at which time we looked at about 16 policies the 16 that are presented on tonight's agenda for step one approval some of them are simply being renumbered it looks like both these are restructuring their policy some have minor changes you can sign with legal updates some have major changes i would encourage you to read through them i haven't read through them all myself to see if you can catch things that should be updated to their technology or new procedures for instance we're looking more

114closely at policy 1008 use of school equipment to take into account uh municipal sharing [Music] three additional policies that are on tonight's agenda to legal lots of pages some are three sentences some are 39 pages it's probably good for us to read wellness job all right so the wellness committee met on march 31st we have expanded the committee um i'm not exactly sure how many members but we'll work those i think 17 numbers right so the the goal really was to talk about our seal plan our social emotional academic learning plan the role of our welders committee really to serve as a guiding coalition for the plan um we'll be analyzing the district data everything that we talked about here and we'll be utilizing the committee on to to do a lot of the work

115we did look at our school-based health center needs assessment survey leads results uh and uh we had 332 responses um and i i think that the i don't have the survey results are in front of me that's part of the notes but i think that there was a strong indication that people would use the oh yeah would you say i think the whole concept of mental health what is mental health and when you ask somebody are you in need of mental health services what do you think the response is the response is no so so that was a big discussion point that we need to kind of go back and maybe reframe some of those questions so we are looking at isha delivering a second survey with reframed questions and also with more with different

116questions about i forget the second survey is more about we're going to combine some of those questions from that we felt were might need to be reframed from the first survey and put it into the second survey basically talking about like transportation would you utilize you know a clinic if there was unavailable i'm trying to think of some of the parades we talked about so i can send the survey results to the board weren't somewhere some of them were well they saw would be the same family yeah but they they all had multiples because they read it as each person whatever so it kind of you know screwed them so other things we talked about was on setting up a meeting with the neighborhood center but it's not just waterville that is experiencing a problem

117with the service there just really is a shortage of clinicians statewide so it's not just us obviously the need is great and we'll see what we can do to try to fill that need uh hub update we did hear about activities from our club and our partners in connecticut community schools we talked about a passport idea program for the next school year we talked about the grant applications for the barton foundation and what our needs possibly be regarding equipment or or any infrastructure and the district fitness center update a question was about sport teams sport teams utilizing it has been serviced and inspected there are still capacity limits facing over restrictions you talked about compassion coalition and bargaining grocery setting of meeting so a lot was discussed and i can send them in and stuck

118to the whole board and i'll send the survey results so i apologize for not having fallen badly excuse um we were left at the last meeting approving contractors and we did not approve the electrical contractor that went out to mid um i was a rebid let's say that bid opening was this past week over break um you have an item on your agenda for approval we've had very favorable bids come in actually more favorable than the first time around so we were very pleased with that um so hopefully as we move through the agenda and that it's approved we'll have an electrical contractor um in in the realm however as you came onto site today you may or may not have noticed that we are mobilized and there is a lot of work that has

119taken place in a very short amount of time uh if you look to the right of the building as you come in um there is a lot of equipment staged over near the music wing we have a lot of heavy equipment here the back field has already been stripped and it is getting ready for drilling so that will that is scheduled to start next week they've got um they've got their piping here they've got their casing here um everybody is boots are on the ground and we're moving um kitchen work will start on the 19th again next monday schedules are coming online and happening quickly um one of the things that i will continue to do as i've done in past projects is i will send out weekly email to the staff as uh the

120following week what we anticipate work schedule to be certainly changes as either product doesn't land or does land and um you know there are changes that happen but outline the week for folks um so that they kind of know what areas we're going to be in and working on but for next week drilling will start out back kitchen work will start um in the actual kitchen and it will be disassembling and taking out equipment and starting to remove electrical items um we will then turn that space over as soon as we move sixth grade back down to mps so that that space will meet the renovation date the goal will be for the kitchen in the cafeteria to be complete and turns back over to us before september so when our students come back that

121space is ready um the next area that will be on the docket very quickly and bob and i are working closely on conversations will be the turf um the timeline to get that back for the fall gets really short really quick um so we i'm working closely with bob and we're hoping that there will not be um an impact to track where we're bob is working on games moving them up front and um you know being able to turn that over before the season is completely finished and if we don't turn the track over before the season ends we will not have it back in august so of hang a balance you know the front end in the back end a lot happening very quickly um today all trades were here on site so um

122it's exciting got a lot going on be a lot of movement happening thank you another question looking at uh public comments the word questions really weren't any public comments other than a nice one i don't think she would buy it she came through the forum um and cara wanted to give a huge shout out to jody thomas for being such a great influence of the positivity project at nps and just said it was amazing to see her in action be down there shout out to no other questions oh very quiet any uh board questions yeah i i do have one um i really want to take a look at moving our board meetings to once a month um i know what it takes for our administration to get ready for two months two meetings a

123month i think we have streamlined the meetings down where we did not feel really early now so um people are not picking up petitions for running for board because it's a considerable amount of time so i really want to put that out of the agenda somewhere seriously take a look at that and what that means tracy on business ends when it has to be approved in that whole time um i just think it'd be much more efficient as a district the possibility to do that especially for for our administration um these guys are extremely busy and um i don't know what the board feels about that no i think i'm i would like to see this as well if we look at reducing the number of communities here put some of these together perhaps budgeting

124capital projects for instance it combines some of these stuff so we can make the whole operation more efficient come down to five or six committees health and wellness technology audit health and wellness safety capital budget is so there's eight you can you can attend she said technology yeah but uh so i i don't know what my peers think about that but um we can do it effectively i'm gonna say it's free i think we can this is a very uh enthusiastic board they do their homework um but i i think it's really i i i watch you guys put everything together for two board readings and you're you're you're spending a lot of time that could be especially if you've got your hands full i just think it's just normal that's my opinion i think

125it's um it's a great idea i think in this you know it's been such a crazy time since you know covet started that i think it was necessary to yeah i mean we did not we might involve the state here i don't know about you we must have felt it much more fun as long as it doesn't end up being a situation where we take everything put it in one meeting i would rather meet once but you know how then if you have to deal with so many things in executive session there's so many things that it becomes a really loud one really loud meeting in november too long regardless of it's a retreat topic if we think about the reorg feeding in the summer if that would be the appropriate time to go into

126that and know we want to scope a certain number of committees but they really look like we all could really come in knowing what we want to be a part of being a part of you know two committees or whatever you're not stressed out thank you a lot of factors and [Laughter] [Music] do you remember the year that it was the superintendent the business official yeah the architect all in one and we have our homework on the budget basically we're cut out for done all right let's move into a new businessman and one acceptance of resignation retirement i'd like to um make the motion on that one i'd like to change the retirement date to june 30th 2021 i believe that i could have passed the letter that came in july 1st and that was

127so it said effective june june 30th with retirement dates starting july 1st yeah that could affect her july exactly what would it be to do number one do we need to revisit that there's no tickets very deep all those in favor all right good thing yes oppose motion and scary with great handle 10 2 exceptions of a replication opposed motion is carry 10-3 acceptance of a resignation russ thank you tim discussion yeah what's this doing i mean are we still getting bus drivers then okay as far as application very fast everyone else everybody another discussion all those in favor propose motion is carried for appointment of bus drivers hoping to approve thank you mark thank you susie discussion all those in favor opposed appointments of coaches for spring sports 2020-2021 thank you ross thank you

128to the discussions all those in favor aye opposed motion is carried 10-6 approval appendix communicable disease endemic plan it sure is so moving thank you ross thank you thank goodness for my public education uh all those in favor oppose motion scary so 10 7 we just need to pull it's not relevant anymore we need to do something with the approval of the agenda right from the beginning i forgot to mention that so down will never come back up again matter in the current paperwork so um irrelevant because now we have new york state department of health guidance that aligns with cdc and guidance yeah notice it wasn't documented who made the motions i believe the agenda all right 10-8 approval step one of three policies so move special thank you as listed okay discussion yes

129sorry so i'm a bit confused on steps one of three new policies are free right all policies are two and if there's the full board and at the first vote and all board members agree it doesn't come back up for a second vote so i believe that's our policy so if these are not new policies it's it's one of two well if that's an old policy it's better to come by the board the last one that are drafted the first one for the record management you all vote on a records management policy for on a reorganizing this policy that is in draft form they are redoing the records management so that some things that you used to have to save either either permanently or for seven years is now they're putting out new rules for

130that so therefore there's a new policy that they're putting in place that we would be um is it a different type it's it is a different type okay it's i believe it's it is using the one that we use during the reorg only they are updating the information in it to for some records not to have to be saved as long as what used to be so those two draft policies that are here they may need one of three so if we could pull those up right and all the other ones have been approved by this board before and with a full board here they wouldn't come back up again i don't know if the policy committee i would prefer to have time to read through them well then then i'm going to then i

131am in a motion to to table this motion that would be appropriate um so i think that would be appropriate that's what the policy committee is actually asking you can review okay so does that make sense yeah and so would you i'm going to leave the giraffes out from there they'd be separated yes they would be separated one at two and then one of the three right or would you like it on the 27th well oh we'll do so i'll put my original motion well i believe that you had asked for the motion for it to be paid okay so i hear permission yes all those in favor aye approval oneida county board of election contract second thank you ross thank you steve discussions all those in favor all right opposed motion is carried 10

13210 approval pm transportation quotient reproof thank you mark discussion all those in favor all right opposed to scary 10-11 approval of extension lead reply thank you mark progress for you secondly okay thank you discussion let's start with nurse yes [Music] 10-12 approval of payroll calendar 2021-2022 thank you linda exactly thank you tim discussion all those in favor opposed promotions carry 1013 approval budget transfer thank you susie thank you ross discussion all those in favor all right oppose motion is carried 1014 approval of the capital project thank you robin thank you mark discussion um in here the total contract dollar amount is one million six hundred sixty six thousand nine hundred and that's what the adults that says total contract amount i don't know if there's a different number there that's what the adults that's what

133the adult okay so if you could just put that number in the motion yes i am any other discussion check do we have a need for an executive all right you get a motion to adjourn you heard me all right the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone thank you tonight