BOE Meeting, March 3, 2026

001Heat. Heat. Good evening everybody and welcome to Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026 regular board meeting of the West Sent Central School District Board of Education. Um we're going to begin with roll call. Um I'll start with myself and I am here. Mara >> present. >> Lorine >> present. >> Cal. >> Ryan >> present. >> Adam >> present. >> Charlotte >> pres. >> Laura >> present. named him. >> Sarah >> present. >> Jeremy present. Zack here, sir. All here. Superintendent Lisa. >> I am here. >> Excellent. Um, if we can have the pledge. Uh, may I have the Cleveland students come on up and we'll have you guys do the pledge. >> We'll have you come right up to the front microphone. Whenever you're ready. >> I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of

002America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you very much. You guys gonna hang out right there and we'll start with your um your presentation. >> I did the pledge the last meeting and you guys did a much better job. I got really nervous microphone. Okay. Well, good evening. It's nice to see everybody. Thanks for having us, Board of Education. So, we are going to show you a little bit about Clinton TV. Um, we have a little presentation for you, but I wanted to give you a little background as to why this started. And there are a couple ladies here. One was on vacation in Florida. I think I I reached out to her during the summer. Another one had a

003lot of bright ideas. Mrs. Enders there. So Clinton TV was created because um one the announcements are kind of loud um when we just get on the microphone and we're just blaring things out and it didn't seem very engaging. So we thought we'd take the opportunity to maybe switch things around a little bit and we created Clinton TV. So these are just some of the people that contribute to Clinton TV every day. Um and then we have some wonderful um news anchors that are going to tell you a little bit about it, but there's a whole presentation. They're not going to come up one by one. And I think Mr. Roasta, we are ready. And then we can answer any questions afterwards. Good evening, Board of Education. Welcome to Clinton TV's broadcast. Good evening, members

004of the board of education. Every morning at Clinton, we don't just hear the news, we experience it. Today, we're taking you behind the scenes of Clinton TV to show you how our teachers and students turn a simple morning meeting into the best part of our day. >> Let's start with how we kick off our runs with a little little harmony and a lot of pride. >> Hello, I'm Adrienne Fuja and I'm Anelia Norwick. We are two general music teachers at Clinton Street Elementary. And we are so excited because this year Mrs. McCarten gave us the platform of the morning announcements to be able to highlight one patriotic song each month. The repetition has been great for the students. By the end of the month, everybody knows the patriotic song. And looking ahead to the future,

005maybe next year, the year after, we can incorporate things like different genres of music or incorporate different artists every month. So, we're really looking forward to having that moment at the morning announcements to really enjoy music and make it a part of every kid's life every day. >> That was the monthly patriotic song. It really helps us feel like a community before we dive into the day. But speaking of the day ahead, we need a jacket for recess. >> Morning Clinton Elementary. >> Hello, my name is Mrs. Kustra and I am a kindergarten teacher here at Clinton Elementary School. This is my 27th year in our building and it definitely feels like home. I am the school meteorologist and I'm in charge of doing a weather forecast. Every Monday morning it is put on the

006announcements and I share the weather for the week and some fun weather facts. I have been interested in the weather forever and in the year 2000 I was in a snowstorm and I was stuck in my car on the throughway for over 11 hours. And ever since then, I have made a commitment to myself and my family and friends that we will always be prepared and ready for any weather that comes our way. So, I love sharing that with my students and all the students at Clinton Elementary. >> Thanks, Mrs. Kuster. Now I know exactly what to wear out in the playground. >> Moving from the sky to the brain, Tuesdays get a little factor or fiction. >> That's right. It's the day we all try to outstrike facts. Good morning, boys and girls. >>

007Hi, everybody. My name is Juliana Oarzac and I am responsible for the true or false Tuesday segment of Clinton TV. Each week, I create a video with true or false facts that I hope engage our Clinton community into learning something new or exciting or maybe even surprising. Typically, those facts have something to do with the season that we're in or the holiday that's approaching or maybe just something interesting in general that kind of goes along with what we're learning in our school at the time. I love video production. And what makes being part of Clinton TV so special is that I found that love of video production when I was a student at West Senior 10 years ago in my TV production class with Mr. Root. So, it's a very awesome full circle moment to

008know that 10 years later, here I am doing similar things for my own school community as a teacher. And I love Clinton TV because it allows me to mix my creativity with a little bit of school spirit and a little bit of surprise for everyone, including the teachers, because I find that >> the videos are also really fun for the teachers to watch and be part of as well. So, thank you. >> Good morning, boys and girls. But Clinton TV isn't just about facts. It's about character. >> From celebrating student wins to learning about how to be better humans, these next segments are the heartbeat of our school. Knowing our friends got a kudos award makes everyone want to work harder. >> Hi, my name is Bailey Hartman. I am a fifth grade teacher at

009Clinton Street Elementary. Here at Clinton, we have a schoolwide system called kudos awards where staff members can shout out or give kudos to any students who are showing positive sixpillar behavior, going above and beyond, making improvements, or overall just doing something that the staff member feels they should be recognized for. So, every Thursday we have the kudos corner where all students who have recently earned a kudos award have their names on the slide followed by the action that they completed or the positive behavior they were showing. That way, we can spread some more positivity around our school and other students can see what their peers are up to and what positive behavior they are showing. >> Good morning, Clinton Elementary. >> Hi, Mrs. Shefflin here, the social worker over at Clinton Elementary and a proud

010member of the Clinton TV team. Each month I help with the announcements to teach the kids about the six pillars of character here at Clinton Elementary. Six pillars are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. A pillar is assigned for each month and then we learn about those pillars through the announcements. Kids help me with videos. We have a monthly vote so that students can be recognized for showing those pillars. and we get to teach a lot of good stuff about making good choices, being great kids, and just being allaround awesome Clinton kids. Thanks. >> Next up is our today is segment where we kick off every morning by celebrating national holidays in weird history. >> Hi everybody, my name is Emily Masset and I'm a third grade teacher at Clinton Street Elementary. I wanted

011to start by asking, did anybody here know that today was National Anthem Day? Well, if you didn't, that could be something that you learned on the Clinton Street morning announcements because each day, Monday through Friday, we celebrate a national day for that calendar day. Mark your calendars and make sure to wish everybody tomorrow a happy National Grammar Day. >> What a great way to be able to celebrate our wacky, wonderful, and inspirational days of our nation. >> Who knew it was National Grammar Day? On Wednesday and Thursday, we're leveling up our vocabulary and our mindset. Let's check in with Miss Thornton and Miss Andress. >> Hi, I'm Melissa Thornton. I teach fourth grade at Clinton Street. And my role for the announcements is new word Wednesday. So, every Wednesday I pick a new word and

012I give students the word, the part of speech, the definition. We use it in a sentence that's relatable to their life or outside in the real world. And then we have something to think about while using the word and challenging them to use it in their daily lives. We always say use it, don't lose it. This is something I think is great for anybody from kindergarten to fifth grade. It's a word that's appropriate for everyone and it really helps enhance their vocabulary. >> I actually used the word impeccable in my essay yesterday. Thanks, Mr. Thornton. >> Hi, I'm Mrs. Andress. I teach third grade and every Thursday morning I get to inspire through our morning announcements with our thoughtful Thursday. Um, I use my 365 days of wonder book, which is just full of inspiration

013to find uh the quotes that I think will really promote uh some classroom conversations or uh you know inspire some positive thoughts. One that I loved was when life gives you lemons, make orange juice. be unique. And I also found this one that I will be using soon. Hope is like the sun. When it's behind the clouds, it's not gone. You just have to find it. So, I feel very fortunate that every Thursday morning, I get to be a little inspiration for our students. Now we're checking in with attendance matters where we celebrate the students who show up every day ready to learn and lead. >> Being here is the first step toward success. So let's see which classrooms are winning the attendance choice this month. >> Hi, my name is Lauren Ma. I'm a

014building sub at Clinton Elementary and I help with the attendance challenge on the morning announcements. So, the attendance challenge is each month we get the percentages for each grade's attendance that month. And then I set up the morning announcements to go over each um monthly attendance for each grade. And it's kind of a competition between each grade to see who has the best attendance. So, it's been a fun way for students to get involved and notice their attendance and notice how important their attendance is. And it's been a fun way for kind of like the teachers and us to kind of see how our grade level's doing. And it's been a fun way for everyone to kind of be better with our attendance at school. >> Now, usually the teachers give out awards, but on

015Clinton TV, the students get on the mic. >> Mrs. Guari and Mrs. Dendress help us shine a spotlight on the teachers who go above and beyond. >> Hi, I'm Mrs. Andress. And I'm Mrs. Guari. and we are here to tell you how we use the morning announcements to showcase our cougar kudos award. Mrs. McCarten uh has a program the kudos award where she will come and highlight a student for showing great character. Uh teachers nominate these students when they see them showing one of the six pillars and we have decided to kind of flip that. So now we want the students to be on the lookout for the adults in the room or the building to see how good of a character they are. So what character traits do they show? The students can nominate

016using a cougar kudos form. And this one we recently got was for Miss Ma. She shows citizenship and that's because she has been covering Mrs. Zelac's class for the time that she's been out. Nice job. And Miss Ma now gets to show off all the cougar kudos. So, it's wonderful that we're able to showcase these teachers or adults that get recognized on our morning announcements. It's a big honor. >> We're heading into the weekend, but not before crunch the numbers and catch some giggles. Time for the math minute. Everyone's favorite way to end the week. >> Hi, I'm Cara Blazak from Clinton Street Elementary. We decided to add a math minute to our morning announcements to build math fact fluency. We are using songs to teach the math facts in a fun and catchy way.

017>> Hello, I'm Mrs. and I get the opportunity every Friday morning to spread some laughter or at least try to bring a smile to everybody's face with my Friday funny. Um, >> not always. Not everybody finds my jokes funny, but regardless. Um, I just love that I get the chance to spread some happiness >> on uh Friday mornings through the morning announcements. >> Have a wonderful weekend, Clinton. >> Do you know why Gary took an orange to the prom? >> No. Because he couldn't find a date. Hope you're smiling. As you can see, Clinton TV is more than just a broadcast. It's where we learn, laugh, and grow together. >> Thank you for supporting the programs that make our mornings bright. >> This is Clinton TV signing off. >> Welcome to Ready. So, you can

018see we pack a lot in about 10 minutes of time every single day. It really has made an impression. Um, there are some other things that we do. We just highlighted some of the big ones, but we do a weekly challenge and one of my cafeteria monitors, um, a first grader said to her, "You didn't get that challenge." So, kids are really paying attention. Anything else that anybody wants to highlight? We usually talk about the jokes. Um, it's really brought our building together. Um, it's hard to get everybody in one space, so everybody's receiving the same message at the same time, which is is really great. So, thank you for having us. Anything the three of you want to share? No. >> You can tell how much you love it. >> Well, we know who's

019not AFRAID OF THE CAMERA. >> THAT'S RIGHT. That's right. that has been very obvious in our building, the people that are that like to be highlighted on some more than others. Um, but thank you. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Can I say that? That was impeccable. Okay, we're going to move on to a presentation from Young and Right Management. They are going to give us an update on the 2026 capital improvement project. >> No, I'm sorry. And campus construction. I apologize. and the do that was not that was not impeccable. >> I'm happy to turn it over to uh Tori and the team. Just last week on February 25th and 26th, we held student focus groups at East and West Senior High School. And on the evening of February 25th and 26th,

020we held community focus groups so that we could get feedback from the community around the proposed plans that are still a work in progress, but every day coming um more into clear picture for the proposed project that we have um for the muchneeded repairs and improvements in our schools. So here to tell you a little bit more on where we are in that process, I'll turn it over to Tori from Young and Reich Architects and also campus construction. All right. Hi everyone. Thanks for having us again. Um today's presentation will be very similar to the last one except for some expanded ideas that illustrate what we are thinking based on feedback from the district and working with um the facility group. Think you know all of us. I'm going to pass over these pretty quick

021maybe. There we go. Okay. So just a quick recap. um BCS scope was quite a bit that we were able to prioritize and narrow down with the district. Um the current budget hasn't changed over the past few um budget reports and updates to you guys. Um so that's still about $80 million. As you can see here, this kind of breaks it out. Sorry, mine is close enough. Okay. Okay. Um, so as you can see here, this is broken out by building to get to that total and we're going to go through each building here to kind of show you highlight what scope is included. Um, so at E Senior, Mick, I don't know if you want to add anything um, specifically about the BCS items. >> Sure. Absolutely. Um, when it comes to BCS items,

022often uh there's there's items that get ignored. Um, you know, in the past we've talked about how we we didn't really do capital projects for a period of about 15 years. And what that hits is something called replacement cycle where the longer you delay, the more emergent the repairs come, the more expensive they they are. And uh we're at that point where we're finally planning to do some uh work towards a replacement cycle. One of the major systems in a building is the boilers. Um last week I had a opportunity to speak to some students about this. Uh does anybody know when the Vietnam War started? 1965. Okay. Uh when we put a man on the moon, 1969, that's the age of the boilers uh at East Senior High School. Okay. So, that's just one

023uh key, you know, key system that we're we're finally looking to replace here. Um we're also looking at uh things like fire alarm system. And these are systems that um we really shouldn't be the the people in the building, the students, the faculty shouldn't be worrying about. Um they want to be worrying about the the exciting things that we're seeing that you know in the in the rest of the capital project. And some of the general renovations that we're looking to accomplish is the bathrooms at EC Senior. So you can see here the existing conditions. Um this is something that the staff has been advocating for. Um and on the next slide here we have an image of what we're looking to do. So, this is just a preliminary layout, but this shows um individual

024stalls instead of replacing with the traditional game style bathrooms of having boys on one side and girls on the other. Um this would open up the space, potentially have completely individual stalls, full height, um actual walls, doors, and then have some larger bathrooms with sinks inside the individual rooms as well. And then have a community sink space out in the center. Um, so you can see the rendering on the right kind of shows how it would be walking from the hallway into that space. Um, and in those focus groups with the students, we got some really positive feedback about um, this type of layout. We've gotten feedback on this design, not only from our students and the parents that were in attendance at the evening focus groups, but also from our school resource officers because

025added supervision in our restrooms is something that's critical right now. um from trying to deter things like vaping to fighting in bathrooms. When we can increase our supervision and increase adult supervision, uh that's going to enhance our school safety. So, right now with separate boys and girls bathrooms, only a female can supervise the female bathrooms and a male can supervise the male bathrooms. In this design, every student would have individual privacy as Tori mentioned, not behind flimsy stall walls, but full walls um from floor to ceiling on the sides of them and then a more communal sink area, thereby allowing much more access and opportunity for the adults in the school to be able to supervise the the restroom space. And this is a much more common design that you're seeing. Um, Europe designs all

026of their bathrooms this way, but we're seeing it more commonly here in the United States as a way to balance both privacy but also increase supervision. >> Does the state have any comments on these bathrooms? >> Yeah, we've actually been corresponding with them quite a bit. Um, since this is relatively a new idea in New York State, um, so we're still working with them to see what they will accept for this type of layout. And >> how many bathrooms are you seeing now? Um, I forget the count off the top of my head, but it didn't reduce the count than what's currently there. >> Well, I'm saying how many are we doing? >> Oh, it would be that center main area. Um, I don't think >> Yeah. >> So, you can see there. >> So,

027you can see where it's highlighted, that purple bank. I know it's hard for me to read on this, but it's um it would be stacked on each floor. >> And part of the reason why we're only doing this one set of bathrooms is just to keep the cost down at $80 million. If we did all the other bathrooms, you know, we're going to add another 10 plus million potentially to the project. pretty much all >> Yep. So, we also picked these two since they're stacked. Um, it just makes sense to do all three at the same time, but also try this system out before you do all of the bathrooms this way. Um, make sure that it works and the district likes it and um, it provides the safety and security that they're looking for.

028All right, the other item at E Senior is the baseball and softball field. Um, so this is a little bit different from the last one. Um, we've been reviewing it with the athletic director um, just to revise it, make it make some tweaks. We moved the softball field over a little bit to give it a little bit more to the left field um, for baseball. And there was a sidewalk that originally went up to East Middle School um, that wasn't necessarily needed. So, we reduced that to save some costs. >> So, you're 100% sure that two games can be played at the same time? >> Yes. >> How far is the outfield? >> Um, so left and center field is 320 ft and then or left and right field, sorry, and then center field is

029360 ft. >> And that press box right there, that's doublesided, right? >> Yes. >> Doublesided press box. So, they can still work over on that do that in case or something, >> right? Yeah. >> And one more question. Did they price out like what turf would be? >> We did just about another $2 million put. Yep. >> But there there was a question actually by a community member at one of the um user group meetings which was a great question. We actually build all the brand new fields with the full drainage and everything under them. So it'll be a brand new field. They'll just have grass and then you can come back at a later date and actually swap it out and put turf in. We do that quite quite frequently. >> Yeah. The reason

030I asked is I was approached by a couple PE teachers about if two games can we play at once and then how much can those fields be used for other activities? >> Yeah, this will be designed with full drainage slot drains, the finger drains under especially under the infield sections but also out in the outfield just to make sure it's a as dry as it can be with grass in Western New York, right? And weather. Thank you. Is it baited? >> not >> but again another thing that can be added in future projects. Yep. >> Okay. Moving on to West Senior. Go ahead. >> Um, another thing I didn't mention about East Senior, it goes for that building as well. Um, you know, we're intent on making sure the pools are upgraded u, you know,

031to a proper standard. uh the filtration systems, the chemical feeding systems um have been neglected and you know we're hoping to provide a good swimming pool for the students. >> Okay. Similar similar condition to the restrooms over at West Senior. Um to give you some context for the restrooms that are proposed in this project, it would be the two individual ones near the auditorium and main entrance. And then there's a stack of bathrooms that would occur on two floors um towards the right side of the floor plan highlighted in purple there. So for the individual ones that are close to the auditorium, that would be more of your traditional one for one replacement with individual stalls. And then for the large restrooms, it'd be a similar approach that we saw at East Senior. Um, so

032more of an open area with individual stalls and then some large restrooms with sinks inside and then a communial space for the sink in the center there. Okay. Okay. Hand over to MRSA talk about the middle schools. So at the middle schools, the BCS priorities are very similar to the high schools. And for the renovation scope, um the district is looking at infilling the pools at both East and West Middle School and creating a tech space. So as Mech mentioned, um the districts need the districts, sorry, the district is interested in investing in maintaining the pools at the high schools. So, they've there's been discussions about the need to maintain the middle school pools or if it makes more sense to infill them to gain more educational space. Police, if I can just interject there,

033excuse me. Our two of our pools were shut down by the Erie County Department of Health just this school year uh due to unsanitary and uh conditions in our pool and the filtration system. the East Middle School pool because it is in such need of extensive repairs in order to be brought up to speed. The East Middle School pool has currently been drained. It would be about $3 million to do the necessary repairs at the East Middle School just to get that pool open. So, it did really prompt us to evaluate what is our need for pools in our school district. What is the need by athletics, by our fizzed department, and also by community ed? And what we found is that those spaces really can be repurposed um to give our students another new

034opportunity and instructional space in a a more cost-effective manner because maintaining a pool, not only the repairs of $3 million that I mentioned on each of those pools just to get them open, but the ongoing maintenance that a that a pool requires is very extensive. So in this scope plan towards the bottom of the page in the purple shaded area is the area of the existing pool and adjacent locker rooms on either side of the gym. In the upper right hand corner is a photo of the existing pool that would be infilled and on the lower right hand corner is a photo of the existing technology shop. This floor plan graphic shows a potential new layout for the STEM suite. So towards the bottom in the area that's red and blue is where the pool

035would be infilled and converted into a shop space and a steam lab. And then the green area is a new access corridor from the existing hallway. We are taking over on the right hand side is where one of the existing locker rooms is. So this would be turned into the corridor to access this the stem suite and then on the lefthand side splitting up one of the locker rooms into two smaller renovated locker rooms to achieve this. This is still preliminary and we're still working out the necessary storage areas, offices and whatnot in this layout, but this gives a broad picture of what the space could look like. What is this? >> Um, >> art is the A. >> Yes. >> Science, engineering, art. >> So, is this an extra in there >> for art?

036Yeah. >> I thought they were getting a saw. >> The the inspiration photos in this slide are some technology renovations that we've done for high school and middle school. um middle schools in districts across Western New York. So the lower picture shows a lot of visual continuity between the space, a lot of glazing, things like computer labs, um 3D printing labs or CNC machines and wood shops. >> All right, question for you. I know it doesn't have an outside whatever around which is showing us what you're working on. Do those the shop and the steam lab and the sauna, do they um have outside access like larger doors since some of this equipment is used larger or is it just we're boxed in? >> We can >> we were envisioning an overhead door in at

037least the shop space. >> Okay. I just not familiar with the outside surroundings of that room. So just curious. >> Thank you, Zach. I thought it was the same thing. >> Also at East Middle School in the upper area at the top of this scope plant shows where the existing technology shop is. And this area would be renovated to become a music suite. So in this floor plan graphic we see in the purple area that is where the tech shop was or is currently. Um, and this would be renovated to become instrumental music and then the adjacent areas are a chorus classroom, a general music classroom, some smaller practice rooms and teacher offices. And on the right hand side, we have some photos of the West Middle School edition that was done for the music

038suite. And the lower photo is at East Senior High School's music renovation. At West Middle School, the BCS priorities are very similar. Boiler plant replacement, miscellaneous plumbing repairs, and door allowances. And then also infilling the pool at this building and a focus on the technology renovations. On this floor plan, the area in purple towards the right is where the existing tech shops are. There are two larger footprint shops and these could be converted into four uh standardsiz classrooms which West Middle School is very in need of classroom space. So this be able to allocate those classrooms to that area and then shift the tech to the pool space. So again here we have a preliminary layout rendered view. In the lower leftand corner in red and blue is where the pool is. This would be

039split up into the shop and steam lab. And then the girls locker room in pink. This is currently where that that is. And then a little bit below where the green corridor is. So, we're taking a little bit away from the girls locker room to have that access corridor to the steam lab and renovating the boys locker room as well. Marissa, could you please go back one slide? Sure. So at West Middle School, as as was mentioned, this is going to allow allow us to garner four new classrooms. On the right hand side of the screen, when you see the layout of West Middle, where the current technology classrooms are, those would be four new classrooms. That was critical feedback that we got through the redistricting and reconfiguration process. West Middle School has classroom capacity

040concerns. Currently, we have teachers on carts that do not have assigned classrooms. our world language teachers and our health teachers. And we also heard overwhelmingly from our community that the community does not want us to disrupt the current east and west boundaries. So by creating classroom capacity at West Middle School, we will be able to maintain the trajectory that students have to go to West or East Middle School depending on where they currently reside to uh West or East Middle School and on to East or West High School. But in order to do that, we do need more classroom space at West Middle. So in this design, not only do we fill in a pool that is aging and in need of about $3 million worth of repairs, we get beautiful new steam classrooms in

041that existing pool space, and we pick up four additional classrooms that will serve our world language and health teachers. All right, moving on to the elementary schools. M I'll have you give an overview of the BCS items for >> sure. Um this building specifically, uh we have a generator that's as old as the building. Um it literally is an engine. It's a classic car. Um, so you know, at the worst point in time is when you lose power, uh, when it's cold and windy. And, you know, this is just a great example of something we need to get a better replacement cycle on. Uh, another thing that I didn't mention in the other buildings, this goes for all the schools. Um, the the plumbing allowance and the door allowance. If we think about the doors,

042that's security. That's building envelope. Um, we think about plumbing, that's again a system that you don't want to have a problem with. Uh, when it comes to the drinking water, when it comes to the drainage, bathrooms, things like that. Um, you know, the maintenance team has done a lot of work identifying sections of piping or doors across the district that need attention. And in the capital project, we've we've built this allowance into each building to allow us to target where we need to replace sections of piping or valves or doors, things like that. >> And some of the site improvements that you'll see in a couple slides won't pair Allenale with West Elementary. Um but just wanted to highlight here the plan is to repurpose the tennis courts as well. So fill in the cracks,

043reseal it, restripe it um so that the marching band can continue to use it and it also can be striped for pickle ball or four squares. So the students could use it as well. >> Can I just ask you what the approximate cost of that would be >> for the repurpose of the tennis court? >> So sorry for those locations. We're looking to uh save some cost by not replacing all the ashfall and resealing and restriping the top. As far as the cost, I don't recall. Um but it it's significantly less than replacing the ashalt that would have been over a million dollars. >> Understood. >> Okay. And then at West Elementary, similar BCS items, um but some also district program priorities since this district does have a lot of students. We're looking to expand

044the cafeteria, um renovate the third floor to or second floor to get rid of some of the offices and turn those back into classrooms um and provide some additional single-use restrooms in this building as well. >> Yes. Elevator. Go ahead, M. Uh so uh West Elementary where we are right now the elevator is at that age where the it's very hard to find parts. Uh limited technicians know how to operate on such an old piece of equipment. I know in the Borbanese in the past we've talked about a $75,000 repair that occurred at West Senior. Um that came out of pocket completely. You know, we're hoping to avoid an emergency repair like that. And to get ahead of that, it's a great idea to replace an elevator. Um, make sure it's reliable in there for,

045you know, students that need wheelchair access or individuals accessing different floors. >> Absolutely. Um, yeah, this is another building where the fire alarm system is is aging. Um, there are there are portions of it that are decades old and again, that's a system that uh, you know, is here for safety reasons and we don't want students or the faculty to worry about. Something like a false alarm in the middle of winter. you know, we need a new modern fire system to protect our assets. >> Okay, so as I mentioned, here's a scope plan of the second floor here at West Elementary. Um, so the area that's highlighted in purple, those are office spaces currently that we plan to reconfigure to turn them back into classroom spaces. And then there is another bank that's colored in

046purple that's right around the corner here. There's two existing individual use restrooms right around the corner. Um looking to add two more to add to the count to this building. >> If I can just add on to that, Tori. Yeah. I specifically here at West Elementary School, we've broughten back a lot of special ed programming and have them placed back in district. So rather than our students with special needs being placed out of district or in Boseies where we're paying tuition, we've strategically tried to bring those classes back into the district, which is a cost savings to the district. However, those are children with very high needs. There may be only six or eight children in a classroom and there may be four or five adults. So some of these uh laboratory spaces are to

047accommodate the adults in the building because of the the high number of adults that we have working with our special needs kids and the needs that we have to be able to support them. Okay. And here's a preliminary site plan for West Elementary in Allenale. Um, so we talked about this at the last board meeting about creating a better circulation for the overall site here, um, to help with parent pickup and drop off and bus access to both the buildings. Um, so it's a pretty large footprint now for the pavement. Um, so we worked with our landscape architect on the circulation of this. So the plan is to just reseal the whole parking lot that's in that darker gray. And there's some areas that we'll need to completely, you know, add new asphalt to. Um,

048but this will allow it to be restriped into a circulation pattern that will work much better. So, this will provide separate lanes for parents, a separate lane for buses, um, to really improve that traffic flow at both the buildings. At Clinton Elementary, we have similar BCS repair focuses, fire alarm replacement, um the door and plumbing allowances, and then another focus on site work improvements at this building. >> What are grease traps? What are they for? >> Yeah, I can't answer that. Um so uh both at Winchester Potters and Clinton um the grease traps when installed probably several de several decades ago. Uh they were they were not engineered or put in correctly. So we've had a constant issue where the the piping that goes into the grease trap and exits it um shears off shifts

049in the ground. Uh and it's been it's been a long time issue. So what that now it's a it's a county regulation that we need to have grease traps so we're catching all the extra grease come out of the kitchen. Um, but it has been a it's been a long time effect, you know, effect on backups and plumbing problems as well as odors and things like that. Um, it's actually a relatively uh easy thing to fix because it's all outside the building. It's it's just digging it up, installing it properly this time, and then, you know, we'll be in good shape. >> For the items that have alignments next door, is that just whatever money we have left to be able to put towards that is what's getting done, or is that, hey, this is

050the list. this is all getting done. >> Um, so I've come up with a pretty extensive list list with um, you know, some of the guys in the maintenance section. However, as we get closer to the actual design, um, we're going to be able to specifically say this 20 ft of pipe needs to be replaced. These five valves needs to be replaced. Um, it is built in as an allowance. So, it's it's not just leftover money. It's actually a targeted amount of money that we're going to prioritize across the district and the buildings. Um, but yeah, I've had some great feedback and there's a lot of excitement on the in the maintenance crew to get some of these major problems fixed. So, >> yeah, I would just be uh interested to know, especially like when

051it comes to doors, >> specifically what doors are going to be replaced just to make sure that those doors actually are replaced. There's been >> things in the past that were promised and then when the final >> uh product is delivered, it's nowhere near, you know, everything that we see that. So, I would really love to have especially when it comes to stuff like that. I mean, you I would have no idea. I'm not going to throw a wall to make sure something was replaced, but doors are something we can see. >> Absolutely. >> I'd like to make sure that that's actually taken care of. >> And as of right now with with the maintenance, um I regularly hear about the doors and it's it's basically a list that we're making. And when it comes

052to the time that we we select which doors, you know, I we have enough minds on it that we're going to know which ones are the problem ones. And um you know, I'm excited to get them replaced for the site work improvements at Clinton Elementary. We talked about this at the last board meeting as well. Currently, the parent pickup and drop off uses the same loop at the front of the building that the buses use. So this creates a backup of cars onto Clinton Street and creates an unsafe condition for everyone involved in that. So this layout expands on the current site work to provide a loop that goes around the back of the building, an expansion of overflow parking and a new playground that is encompassed within this loop. So the area in blue

053here is where the new play surface would be with new playground equipment and many more cars could fit in the queue this way. um around the loop. And then at the beginning and end of the loop, there would be manual gates that the district um staff could close at certain times during the day when pickup and drop off is not happening so that the school could use the loop for extra play space during the day. >> I have a question for Dr. Greer. What percentage of uh parents, students have opted out of the bus transportation? So, we did a survey over the summer. A Google form was sent to all parents. If they were going to opt out of transportation altogether, now knowing that if their circumstances changed, they would have the ability to opt

054back in. We had 422 parents that opted out of transportation altogether. So, that means that they are saying on a daily basis, I don't care for you to stop by my house in the morning or bring my child home in the afternoon. But then we also have parents who I would say on occasion may pick up maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays their child has dance. So on those days they're picking up their child and the other days their child's riding the bus home. So when we designed these loops um you'll see it also at the design at Winchester Potter Elementary. We did work with the principles to try to determine on a daily basis approximately how many children or how many families do you have picking up every day on a daily basis because right now

055you can see it's a very very short queue for cars to line up before they're all backed up on Clinton Street which is unsafe and on Potter's Road when we're talking about the Wind Pot campus. So this will allow a much greater distance and we're confident that it's going to alleviate the problem tremendously. >> So these parents so 422 approximately so that's maybe 400 extra cars we're seeing at these schools each and every morning or million right with that but they can do the public or the bus transportation too >> they can. So that's where all this backup is coming from for the 422 families that opted out with the transportation, >> right? They've they've opted out. So their child's not routed on a bus right now. >> Okay. >> Oops. >> First question is

056the playground at Clinton, was that something we would have replaced or uh suggested to to replace if we weren't redoing the driveway? >> Yes, it was suggested to be replaced in December of 23. It was part of the December 23 capital improvement project vote that unfortunately that referendum was not supported by the community. So now that playground is two years older. By the time this project is approved by the state and uh hopefully approved by our community and approved by the state and then we actually do work, you're talking about 5 years from 2023. So, we have targeted in this project the three elementary playgrounds that we believe are in most significant and dire need of replacement. Instead of doing all five, we've targeted the worst three playgrounds, which then also allows us to get

057on a replacement cycle because 15 20 years from now, we don't want to be in a situation where we have to replace all five of them again. So if we do three in this project, then the plan would be to do the other two playgrounds in the next project. That staggers our replacement a bit. >> And then if possible, could we get a cost for what these added driveways are at all the schools and like the changing at uh the west out building. Um I I just curious to know what those the cost is just for those specific things. Yes, we can do that. >> Because the way I look at it is we're already charging the taxpayers for transportation and because we have 422 people that opt to sit in their car for hours

058a day for whatever reason, I don't know. Um, and now we're going to ask them for, you know, the rest of the taxpayer for money to appease essentially these 420 people. So, I I'm just curious what your cost is. Well, I think more than that, there's parents who did not opt out who will routinely pick up and that's their choice. But it is a problem with elementary school. >> I don't disagree. I see every day. I've even screamed at the people that like to block driveways on Clinton. I have no problem with people in my day job. Um but I just am curious what the impact that is on the $80 million. >> Sure. You know I want to throw out there um the last not the last project but the might have been the

059one 8 n 10 years ago whatever the big one 75 million the west middle parent drop off loop that was created. Um but like you know if we have if we have to have people dropping pick up their kids that has changed I think the world as far as getting kids in and out safely and flow. Um I mean it'd be cool if there was a stop light there. I know we don't control that. Um, but just someone who drives their kid every day. Um, but I don't I make him ride the bus. >> I had choice words, which I'll keep to myself. >> I make them ride the bus home, though. So, um, when I drop them off, it's I mean, we're in and out and it's smooth. Even when there's a little bit

060of a line, so if we are doing something, I really like what you guys have um done to this point with the drop offs and stuff, it seems to be working. So, >> I think we will inevitably always have some parents that pick up and drop off. parents need to pick up because there's a dentist appointment or whatever the case might be. And when we can separate our bus traffic from our vehicle traffic, it increases and enhances the safety that our our children are not trying to get out to buses at the same time cars are coming into the lot. And this allows us to separate the parent pickup traffic from the bus traffic. >> We did that at West Senior also, but that's the way that's going that project. >> Yeah. Like I said,

061I don't disagree with it. I just would like to know what the impact is. >> We don't have detailed line by line estimates in this pre presentation, but we certainly do have it. That's how we got to the the total cost of the project. So, we have all of that information and can share that with you. At Northwood Elementary, we have similar BCS repairs at this building as well. fire alarm replacement and the allowances for plumbing and doors. We also have a main office renovation, developing music space in room 126 and another focus on the site work improvements. So, at this building currently, Northwood is prek through 5th and with the redistricting it's going to be grades 3 through 5th. So, the playground was in need of replacement anyways. So, we worked with our landscape

062architect to focus this play surface to older age groups. So, you can see in this rendered graphic, we have a basketball court and some play surfaces around the existing concrete pads that the PTO put in where there's a gaga ball pit and some um play lines on the ground and then also new playground equipment. And this whole complex is to be fenced in. Just curious. I know the elementary schools are getting the cameras. I believe the upgrades, correct? >> Um, will there be a camera that hits that that is going to be visible? >> Let me double check. I believe we have one that's mounted on the exterior of the building that gives playground coverage when we looked at the site and the scope of everything, but I'll I'll double check that. I think there

063is one there now. basketball court off hours for any older kids. >> Sure. >> That's another example of where the bus is separated from the parent drop off. That's been like that for a while. >> Yeah. >> At Winchester Potter Elementary, we have very similar BCS repairs to Clinton Elementary. Um the building footprint is pretty much the same. So again, we have the same issues with the backup of cars onto Potter's Road at this school. Um and again, we have the expansion of the overflow parking and the parent pickup and drop off loop wrapping around the building towards the back. At this building, we also have the playground within the the new loop and the gates at either end. And you can see at the end of the loop is where all of the cars

064would queue up for the pickup and drop off. At Winchester Academy Boseies, we have some building improvements with a necessary roof replacement and building facade repairs at the masonry at the exterior of the building and upgrading the fire alarm system. And then at the bus garage, this building is also in need of a roof replacement. Marissa, before you go on to the next slide, if I could just interject here. You saw the work that's going to be done in all of our buildings, including the transportation facility that is in in need of a roof and needs that are at the Winchester Academy. There is one building that you may have noticed is not in this presentation, and that's the Ebenezer building located at 900 mil Road. That building is in need of some substantial improvements

065and repairs. But long term, our plan is to vacate the Ebenezer building and sell that building, thereby reducing our footprint as a district. It will also reduce our expenses from utilities, maintenance, ongoing repairs of that building. So, we are not investing any further in the Ebenezer building because that would not be a wise investment. And our hope and goal is to move out of that Ebenezer building in the next 12 to 18 months and list that property and um completely rid ourselves of that building. Any proceeds from the sale of the Ebenezer building, we will certainly utilize to do continued maintenance and repairs in our other schools and continue to protect the investment of our taxpayers. >> And I maybe you just said this and I've heard it plain. It goes back on the tax

066rules if it's sold to someone privately. >> Correct. As as long as it's not a nonfor-profit organization. If it were to be uh sold to a developer, then it would benefit both the county and the school district from increased traffic's revenue. >> Doesn't happen a lot. So, >> so here's a quick overview of the May vote milestones. Um this is the same as the last presentation, so you can see where we're at. um come a long way to get to where we are right now. Um and we're right in that public meetings, project advertising, um getting the word out to the district and the community. And then upcoming, we did have a couple community meetings last week, like Dr. Kruger mentioned, some focus groups at the high schools with the students. Um and then we

067have a couple more on the docket upcoming. So, a community presentation scheduled for April 29th and May 12th. All right. Do you guys have any other questions for us? >> Um, I just have um as far as providing like how much each project and each piece cost. Maybe I'll see what you're asking guys about that. Maybe we're not there yet, but just pricing us. So say say the the floor or playground or that kind of stuff. It'd be nice to just um break it down so we can see what money is going where instead of like this large of $82 million. >> We can certainly do that. We that's how we assemble all the costs. So that's easy enough to do. We have all that information. >> Each one of the lines that you saw

068in the presentation, there is an actual cost that we didn't want to overload people with. So that was not showing. So there's a line cost for each one of those items. That's a fair one question. Um, next one is with the new classrooms and the steam room all that is equipment and furniture built into the price. >> So, I'll let them interject, but something that's important to keep in mind for capital improvement projects, we do not get state aid back on furniture. It has to be built or fixed in in order for us to get state aid back on it. So take for example at East Senior I know you know that main office the counter which is a fixed structure um where our secretaries sit behind that counter if it's actually a built structure

069into the school we we are eligible for state aid but a table or a chair like this would not be eligible for state aid do you want to add any detail or expand on that further >> you you got that correct I mean when you do sedd does allow if you build new instructional space they will consider taking a look at if you outfit it with furniture. Sometimes they'll grant a one-time aid for that, but as Dr. Cooker said, usually it's it's basically it's the state looks at it. Anything that's fixed, they'll aid and the rest of it is outfitted as the district sees fit. >> So potentially in a music space, um if you think again of our newly designed music spaces at West Middle or East Senior, they had storage spaces for instruments

070that are fixed storage spaces. They also had storage for all of the art supplies and materials. Those storage units would be something that would be eligible for state aid, but the chairs that our musicians sit at during their orchestra or band practice would not. But we have chairs and those would likely go to the new space or we could consider getting new chairs, but they would not be eligible for state aid through the project. >> Traditionally, the other thing is like when you build sometimes we build new classroom additions and then the state recognizes like, okay, that's a brand new addition with classrooms. Therefore, they'll give aid because you literally have to go out and purchase additional, you know, little t, you know, tables and chairs, etc. So, any other questions? >> All right, we'll

071get you some additional information. Thank you tonight. >> Thank you guys. >> Thank you. I just want to thank Young and Wright and Campus Construction. They were here a lot last week. Um, two different sessions for student focus groups to get feedback from students. two different evening community sessions. Um Mick was in attendance at each of those sessions as well. So, thank you very much for helping us to get some feedback um before we put this into a more finalized state. Thank you. >> Thank you guys. >> Dr. district question. >> Okay, we're going to move on to our B budget presentation. Uh, Mr. Will, you going to come join us, sir? >> Sure. >> So, I'll get it started with a few slides and then turn it over to my colleague Will. Um the

072slides that you've seen before, we're going to breeze through pretty quickly tonight because as we build our our budget, we are adding to this slide deck week after week after week. So, we've actually taken our goals for the budget development process, priorities for curriculum and facilities and condensed that information for you. Uh where we are tonight, if you see everything that's listed in bold, uh those are things that we've already completed. uh bringing us to at our last meeting the tax cap calculation, discussion and submission of that tax cap and tonight uh first draft budget and then our second draft budget. Appropriations, we have no changes on this slide. This is the same slide that you've seen previously. appropriations are really all of our breakdowns of our anticipated expenses with the biggest expense as you

073know being salary and benefits. No significant changes on this slide, but what I did want to um highlight for you on this next slide regarding TRS and ERS. You'll notice the significant change in TRS, which is teachers retirement system versus ERS, the employee retirement system. ERS rates are going up 16% next year. So that's the retirement contribution that we pay for our non-instructional staff. The TRS is considerably lower at 9.4% and that's because of the way in which tier 6 is structured. Tier 6 is the next retirement tier where individuals hired in tier six are contributing a substantial amount more for their retirement. And tier six is being very vocal right now. If tier six has their way, they will be contributing less. If tier six gets their way, that number will go up for

074school districts. New York State sets that number for us. We do not determine that number locally. That is a number given to us by New York State to which we have to budget for. So something to keep in mind as to why those numbers are so different right now and why they could potentially and substantially change in the future. I did want to share some background on where we are with staffing and our staffing analysis which is an ongoing process. We are always looking at things like class size, monitoring our staffing, when we have vacancies, when we have attrition, asking the question, does this vacancy need to be filled? Do we actually need to fill each one of these positions that are vacant? And due to our detailed analysis and really being on top of

075things, we were looking at our preferred building subs and our use of substitutes. In some changes that we made starting in September, we have reduced our preferred building substitute expenses by $271,000 this year. That's as of February of 26. and we're estimating that we will be between about $450 and $500,000 in decreased expenses um for the work that's been done in that area. It's not advancing well. In addition, I wanted to just give you a snapshot of where we are for support staff and CSEA in terms of the number of employees that we uh currently employ because employees and benefits are the lion share of our school budget. So here you have a breakdown by department of the number of employees. We took a snapshot of precoid and then a number of school districts, West

076Sakica included, had COVID stimulus funds which allowed them to hire additional staff and to use those funds for staff. So you'll see that there was an uptick in the number of employees starting in 2324 and where we are currently when it comes to support staff in CSEA. Similarly, we've done that analysis for our teachers and we have teachers broken down by department. If you take any one of those lines, you can see the change over time. Second page of this for teachers again by department or content area. And then at the third page, you see the summary of the total FTEES overtime and over years for our teachers. There was a question at our last board meeting. So I wanted to take an opportunity to give you that same snapshot. When it comes to building

077level leadership, uh the number of principles and the number of schools that we have changed has been unchanged um over recent years. The number of assistant principles and teachers on special assignment have been adjusted. A teacher on special assignment is a teacher um who is not teaching in a classroom but doing other administrative or support duties. And you'll see that the number of teacher on special assignment otherwise called TOSA has changed over time. Uh TOSA can be a great benefit to a school but there are tremendous limitations. Atosa is only employed by us for 10 months. So we're not getting any additional support during July and August. And Atosa has limitations on what he and she can do because they're teachers. They cannot evaluate or observe other teachers or work in a supervisory capacity of

078teachers in any way. So there's substantial limitations. So you will see that the number of TOSAs is decreasing as we're adjusting the number of assistant principles because if you have a topstep TOSA and a entry level assistant principal, the salary and benefits are quite comparable, but you're actually able to get a lot more um assistance out of that assistant principal and it's a 12month position instead of a 10-month position. And then on the right hand side you see that the building level leadership has really remained unchanged. Next slide, we have a summary of our certified administrators, an explanation as to the two additions that we've had um over years in that the addition of an elementary special education director, which was the recommendation out of the special education audit and then an additional director that

079is fully paid for by title one funds uh to support our title one schools. Well, I'll turn it over to you if you'd like to go over some of the other budget codes that we have. >> So far, nothing's changed on this slide. We go to work now starting immediately working with the department heads to see where we can trim back. Um, there will be some changes, I would think, by the uh meeting of the 17th and certainly by the end of the month and the final budget. So, we'll look to find some savings here. Some of the things are not controllable. Electric costs, you know, the cost of our gasoline, diesel, cost of our natural gas for heating. So those uh projections going forward on those items are not optimistic. Um I think I've

080said before, we all looked at our electric bill in the last month or so and had a little shock. School district is the same. Uh Bosey's budget's in development. It's uh a lot of lines to this budget. Uh roughly a third of it is special education. So that's being finalized in the next week and we'll have a better idea. We've built in some cushion here just based on some uh extra tuitions and some extra placements going with kids going to Boseis programs. So uh our hope is to improve on this uh by the time the next presentation and certainly by the final presentation. Uh no change on this slide. Uh that debt service the borrowing uh schedule remains the same and our transfers for the uh capital outlay project and to the special aid fund

081for our percentage of uh special aid grants and reimbursements. That brings total general fund first draft appropriations to just over 171 million. That's up around 5.6% uh year-over-year. Now, the revenue side of the picture, no changes here. This is the tax cap. The tax cap's now been filed with the state controller. Again, it's a calculation that says the maximum we can charge to the taxpayers and levy without a vote of a super majority is uh 73 and a.5 million in rough numbers up 2.23% from last year. Each quarter% on the tax levies about 180,000 in other words 1% increase or decrease in the levy is 719,000 roughly. State aid. There's been no change in this slide. The next change would be an adoption of a state budget scheduled for April 1st, but oftentimes a week

082or two late. We hopefully would have it before we approve or adopt the budget in uh midappril. So, we can actually mirror what the state is projecting for us. These these numbers are based on the governor's presentation plus our adjustment of building aid to account for the capital projects that were closed out on December 31st. And we would hope that uh we would find through the legislative process greater than a 1% increase in foundation aid. This is a summary when you bring all the numbers together. Uh there's a breakout in the next slide of what the miscellaneous revenues are, but other key revenue items that we haven't addressed to this point include Erie County sales tax is around $10 million. Uh last year audited was just over 10 million. So we're budgeting on or about

083the same. Uh state aid reflects the number you see on the prior page. Federal sources are Medicaid reimbursements. district files its Medicaid costs from its special ed program on a quarterly basis and we receive reimbursements and we're tracking uh budgeting pretty much in line with the actual revenue from 2025. Bottom of the slide depicts the breakout between local, state, and federal. And as we pointed out in a prior meeting, we've gone to from 60% locally funded to 53% with state increasing state funding being the offset. This is the detail behind the miscellaneous slide. Uh major items here would be continuing education. That program is budgeted to break even. These are people who use our buildings or we supply continuing education services to um Ms. Riot also operates uh the before and after school program. Those

084programs uh have an equal expense side to them. So these are these are break even revenues and expense. Uh interest income uh interest rates are down. They've been falling a little over a percent a year for the last three years. So we've we've taken our best estimate based on what we what we estimate our cash position to be at certain points in the year and what T bill rates will be for next year. Uh one really positive item here is the uh extension of the Winchester Academy lease which I believe is on your agenda for tonight. That's approximately $700,000 in revenue, which will continue this year, but it likely be substantially decreased in future years as Boseis moves into its new facility after major construction. Some of the revenues that you see in past years

085are related to financing. A lot of times when the district sells its bonds, the uh a premium is charged, which means the the financial is issuing institution is tacking on an interest so they can pass it through to their investors at a different rate. They actually give us more money than the face amount of the bond. So we book that as revenue and we've had some success there in previous bids, but it's hard to anticipate. So we don't we don't budget for that on an annual basis. So you pull both sides of the house together. Total revenues of 163 and a half. Total expenses of 171.5. That's an $8 million deficit before we apply reserves. If we applied the reserves in the same way we applied last year, this current budget year, that would leave

086us with uh roughly a $2.5 million deficit, which we will look over the next month to reduce andor remove. How will we do that? First, uh a slide on the budgeted I mean the reserves. uh $35.5 million of reserves at year end flat with the 2024 number. And if this capital project is successful, we'll be deploying about $5 million $4 million of reserves and $1 million of surplus funds to offset the local share. So we will see a fund balance decrease on the 63026 audit by a similar amount. strategies for closing the budget gap. Uh monitor of the state budget process. Um we've already talked about the active investigation of all the ask fors by the departments. um the BOSI's budget final formulation and uh other non-personnel related cost codes. We had meetings today with

087our adviserss on healthcare and received a fairly positive report on healthcare going into next year from our actuary. So, uh would likely there'll be some adjustments to that code going forward. Uh position control, retirements, benefit cost review. As I just mentioned, one major item to keep in mind is we're negotiating with our teachers. Salaries and benefits are therefore estimated and uh if we're fortunate, we'll conclude those negotiations this spring into summer. Um but it's unlikely to be concluded before we adopt a budget in midappril. So they will continue to be estimated going into next year. And of course, fund balance. We can use fund balance at any point to close whatever budget gap the board decides. Next year's capital outlay project continues uh repairs and replacements of doors. Uh this will be year two at

088Northwood. So we'll be completing Northwood's doors uh replacement. We have a current year replacement going on there. Next year will be part two that I believe the plan is to continue to go forward to spend $100,000 a year in any individual building on doors. Um the unfortunate part about that is $100,000 doesn't go a long way when it comes to doors these days. Uh both in terms of the cost of doors. So, uh, we'll do our best to chip away and anything the capital project can't pick up, we'll try to pick up through the $100,000. Uh, at times there's been advocate advocated for increasing the the capital outlay limit from 100 to $250,000. That would be wonderful. Uh given the inflationary nature of our environment, the $100,000 is just a small drop in what's really

089necessary on a maintenance side. Here's the draft bus page proposal. We're looking at five buses at roughly $173,000 each for almost $864,000 worth of bus purchases. These are large 65 64 passenger buses. I don't know what happened to the fifth person. Maybe kids are bigger these days. Um and we'll use a portion of the district's bus reserve to fund these. We do this annually. Um, we have not yet purchased our first electric bus and I I'm not a fan of the electric bus program, but we continue to try to work forward and in build space and we've worked with a couple of uh distributors of buses and we may well have one or two coming to our district in the near future for use or display or be able to bring the board on board.

090for a ride and you know show you what the electric bus can do. Next steps uh superintendent will address the district on our professional development day. Uh March 17th is our next board meeting. We'll have a second draft and hopefully progress on closing the gap. Uh March 31st is a budget advisory committee meeting to uh discuss changes that are in process and probably make some final decisions about the what the budget will look like when we head towards adoption. And uh April 14th, we have a meeting with this board to uh hopefully a draft uh adopt the budget um and begin the process of creating all the documentation that's necessary to get us to a vote on May 19th. I believe be happy to try to answer any questions if you have any. >> Just

091um so the buses >> Mhm. >> I don't I don't know if you would or not. Probably not, but Say we get those five buses. How much would that save us for like um you know like contracting a first and stuff like that? That would kind of make you know what I mean? Like if >> No, these buses are replacement buses in our fleet. >> Rep. >> Yeah. So this is for fe fleet maintenance. >> Maintenance, >> right? Okay. >> We we roll over a bus that's probably 8 to 10 years old. >> Jen's nodding so I got it right. uh with very high mileage that's becoming more and more difficult to maintain. >> Okay. So these are replacements not additions, >> right? >> We are targeting 64 passenger buses though instead of 30 passenger

092buses to move more kids and hopefully retain more in-house routes. Okay. >> Rough estimate for health insurance. Not surprised by the increase, but rough uh estimate, what's it per family plan? >> A family plan right now would be at the high end of the 30s, >> like over 30 or 30,000. >> A high end of 30,000. So closer to 40. So that's why I kind of brought the issue up when we were approving a certain contract because with the one we approved previously or the MOA or whatever it ended up being they were we would have paid them roughly 20,000 last year. Now we're paying 90% of let's call it 40 and they're only paying 10%. So I mean to me that's a huge benefit they gained and that's why I was you know made

093a stink in the past about when we did Lista's or agreement cuz that's to me a huge benefit they gave by getting on the uh school district's health insurance and now you know here we are with another budget that keeps increasing and we to me I thought it was around 30 so the number's even higher than I >> well I'm giving you the the most expensive plan I don't have uh all four plants in front of me at the moment. >> Even if we called it 30, it's still I mean an additional $7,000 benefit they essentially would have gained by switching to the district's insurance. And that's the kind of stuff that you know I brought the question and was given the answer that the district wanted to give and yeah it's costing the district

094or the taxpayers more money and that's why I don't voice my concerns and here we are with another budget that you know I think I would I would be okay with the tax increase if we didn't have to throw there that we had to pull out of the reserves because that's a budget we still can't afford. Any other questions? >> Thank you for that. We're going to move on to our student exeicio board member reports. Move over to Kale. Sure. >> Thank you. I just have a few things today. Roappa, which is our social studies honor society, was able to go downtown to city hall for a tour. Was great. I wasn't able to make it, but it was great. Uh this Friday, the girls varsity basketball team is playing Lancaster, I believe, in the

095AAA sectional championship. That's at Buff State at 6:00. And then this week is World Language Week. So our world language department has put on some events with our foreign exchange students like trivia, learning Italian, and learning German. And on March 11th from 6:00 to 7:30, interested juniors can go to a college uh in interest in college event and that's at East Senior that'll feature mainly local colleges. >> Thank you. >> So this past weekend, East Senior presented the performance of Spongebob the musical. Uh our student council is hosting a craft show on this Saturday. Mission is $1 and it's from 10 to three. E senior is also participating in a literacy theme week in honor of literacy month. Tomorrow key club is hosting student versus teacher volleyball game for at 6 p.m. to raise awareness

096to the Plymouth Crossroads. Is it the they're raising money for them? >> Yeah, Plymouth Crossroads. It's a house in I believe in West Senica. They they actually host one of our students for homeless young men. >> And seniors next week are leaving for DC. And then for upcoming events, there's a United Band concert on March 10th 10th at 7 p.m. There's a sidebyside orchestra concert on March 18th at 7:00 p.m. There's an anything goes concert March 25th at 7:00 p.m. And E Senior is hosting a blood drive on March 26th from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. >> Are you guys both playing tomorrow? >> I will be coaching. >> I will not be driving. >> Well, thank you so much. We're going to um this is where we're going to add in uh board committee

097reports. I believe um Mara and Dr. Krueger and everyone was talking about how much we do not at the board meeting and it' be nice to kind of keep each other informed on what we're doing besides the email or the minutes from the different things. So, um we're going to add that in here and basically as we go to different committee meetings, whoever's there kind of pick which person wants to present and we'll go from there. Um, lucky for me, everyone at the safety committee from the board voted that I'm going to present on that. Um, so, uh, typically once a quarter, I believe we have our safety committee meeting, and I'm not going to go into in depth specific things we discussed because obviously it's, uh, safety related. Um but it is nice to

098have the um collaboration of all the different people in the district as far as administrators, SRO's um uh staff, Mick, everyone discussing all the different uh things that come up and what they're working on. And um we can always get the board uh specific presentation and executive on certain things, but it is nice to see the uh the improvements and the changes being made throughout the district on that. Um, so it's uh it's it's it's just a real nice collaborative effort to see everyone tweaking things or improving things or looking at how to make things uh run better. So um good on there. The next one would be policy. Thanks. Um so the policy committee meets uh pretty regularly. We um excuse me. Um on our on our um website, we have a whole series

099of different policies ranging from um board policies to safety policies to um curriculum policies. I think in total um don't quote me on this, but I want to say there's upwards of like 200 policies. There are a lot of different policies out there. So um we should be reviewing these annually um and staggering them over time. So you're not reviewing all of the policies every year all at once. Um and what we're doing is we're working with Boseies on a policy audit and they're providing us with some insight into how we can enhance and standardize some of our policies. And so Laura and Lorine and I are on the committee and we actually just reviewed 12 policies that we are planning to make uh well a subset of which we're planning to make updates to.

100And um of the 12 policies, we we are probably going to recommend about nine of them, um there's one uh that we need to get some additional information on, but we're going to recommend nine or 10 of them for um a board review for next uh I think it's in April um to to vote on. Uh they're they range from um kind of standard things like disciplinary procedures, EEO procedures, um workplace violence, um those types of things are in there. And then um there are a couple of other policies that we uh want to make sure that we're in compliance with before we adopt the policies. And so we are uh Dr. recruiter is going to bring some of those policies back to her team, make sure that we have processes in place to uh

101comply with some of the enhancements and then we will bring those to the board. >> Any questions? >> Cool. I think the next one >> is one. Um, if I'm and if I'm mistaken on this, um, Jeremy and Zach are on the safety committee with me. You used to be, right? We did. Okay, you got it. Um, so next is the budget advisory committee. And again, I drew the short straw on that one. Um, I believe Loren and Jeremy are on that committee with me. Or is it Zach? I forget. I'm so used to seeing you guys. >> Zach. Okay. But you guys are on that committee with me. Either way, you you picked me and I won. Um, we met uh we met last week and basically what we did was we got a

102preview of what we saw here tonight and um there's also some good ideas discussed. I believe the the people on the committee all again go over everything. They come up with some good ideas or some questions we'd go over so we have some clarifications. Uh one of our budget committee members even had some great ideas about trying to save money on electricity and it's really cool to um to just kind of work work with the small group people and talk about ideas and different things about the budget. Um, we are going to be meeting again on the 31st and I believe that will be probably the final meeting or do we do a wrap-up meeting after the budget to kind of prepare for next year? >> How do we typically do that? >> I don't

103recall if we did a wrap-up last year or not. >> I would like feedback from the committee, I suppose, if they would like one final wrap-up or if once the budget's adopted, if they feel like we're we're okay to pause until next year. >> Excellent. Okay. Well, we're definitely having a meeting on the 31st and um we'll be going over the final numbers on that. So, that is that on that. Guess we'll go over to my >> to um >> like tennis. >> I know. In addition to um district committees, there are um Erie County Association of School Boards um as Ryan is displaying on his shirt. Um think I think they'll appreciate the advertisement. Um they they have a couple of different committees that board members participate in. One of which is the delegate

104assembly and uh the delegate assembly um there are delegates from um school boards from across the county and we will do things like proposed budget um and I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. uh nominations and um there are a couple of other like upcoming events like the school law day that's coming up in the I think it's later I think it's in the summer um but there are a couple of different things that are on the standing agenda. One of them that they we talked about this this week or this past week um I should say that they meet three times a year too. Um we talked about the um push to increase sponsorships. So, um, Erie County Association of School Boards is having budgetary issues. They seem like they're pretty

105solvent, but they'd like to increase their budget so that they don't have to increase dues to school boards or I'm sorry, school districts to pay um pay for. And so, one of the ways that they're advocating for this is through um sponsorships from um businesses that do companies that do business with um school districts. So, that's something that they're really pushing for and we discussed that. The second issue that we talked about was actually um the nomination committee and um our our chair here at VDI is going to be serving on the nominating committee. Um and that is a committee where I believe you nominate um award recipients. Is that correct? >> Um I it's actually a committee where we work on the leadership team. We nominate the leadership team for the >> That's right.

106>> Uh board. >> For the the Erie County >> board. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so we approved Ed to serve on that. uh that committee. So, congratulations to you. >> Thank you. >> And then um Loren also serves on the nominating sorry the awards committee which actually nominates people for um awards for their service across the districts. >> So, thank you. >> Awesome. >> And uh last but not least is the um ECASB budget committee. And again, I believe Sarah um typically goes there and you help out with that. You guys were kind enough to let me go to the last meeting mostly because I I know that was coming along with getting the nomination. Um we discussed the budget um and then we approved it um for the upcoming year. Uh there was a

107lot of a lot more give and take and discussion than I would have expected. Um it was nice to see all the different school districts with questions kind of learning what the budget is and and how um how it's going to change. Uh as Mara said um dues have not been increased in 10 years. uh that's something that they're pretty proud of. Um again, they're looking for sponsorships from businesses which is helps offset not increasing the dues. But we did ultimately approve the budget and um the other cool thing about the meeting was we went over all the different school districts that had representations there. We talked about the upcoming projects that they're working on, whether it's bathrooms or facilities, um you know, the air conditioning situations, roofs. Uh we all spent a nice round

108table going over what they're what they're facing, what their budget numbers are looking like and how they're handling it and whether they're getting um good support from community and whether they think it's you know unfortunate that there's things that like boilers from 1965 and stuff. It was really great having feedback with all the other um districts. So I I I see why you guys like that so much and thank you for letting me go. I appreciate it. That's it. I'm going to shut up and over to Lisa. Thank you. I'm happy to share with you my superintendence report. On Friday, we had the absolute pleasure, district leadership and CSEA leadership and I had the pleasure to host our snowplow crew for a lunchon to recognize and to thank them. Um, in part because yours truly

109won a radio contest to thank a snowplow driver. Um, we got a gift card to Anderson's and we hosted uh the snowplow crew. This crew is up regularly all winter long at 2 3 in the morning to ensure that our parking lots, our driveways are clear, safe, and ready and so that we can open school. So, it was a wonderful opportunity to thank them Friday and to host them for lunch. And I thank them for all that they do. I also wanted to recognize a student at E Senior, Sierra German, who took advocacy and took it into action. Uh Sierra noticed that there was a void at at her high school. She wanted to start an African-American study club. She approached her principal and advocated for doing that. Um and a teacher, Ashley Sorenson, agreed

110to be the adviser of that club. Her efforts were highlighted on WKBW. uh just p this past week. I've linked the news story there if you'd like to watch the news story, but what a remarkable young adult um who really just took a action and advocacy and made it happen for her high school. And kudos to uh the leadership at E Senior that that actually was responsive and listening to the student body. Our our building should be reflective of our students and the clubs and activities that they want within their schools. I also want to recognize a student from West Senior, uh, Emily Bersins, who was recognized, um, as the teen of the week from the South Towns B. She is also going to be the saludiatoran at West Senior. And the article that the

111South Townsb had published regarding Emily was simply remarkable. What a what a bright young lady and we are so proud of her for that recognition. As we highlighted with campus and young and right, we did host our facility focus groups last week. Uh here you see pictures of students at East Senior who gathered. They got to see the preview that you had tonight of what is planned for our schools and to give us their feedback regarding that. And we did the same facility focus group with students at West Senior. The best part of my week is when I'm with with our students. I had also, this might have been the best part of my week. Um, I also had the sheer joy to be at Spongebob the Musical last week. Um, the students at West

112Senior did an amazing job. What a fun musical. Great music, costumes. Kudos to everyone that was involved in that. To the cast and crew, it was absolutely amazing. And I hope you were also able to see at West Senior, they hosted Something Rotten, which was another remarkable show. The talent that our students have on stage is just truly amazing. I also wanted to highlight and give a shout out to John Delbo, Tory Jones, and Kim McCarten at Clinton Elementary. They hosted a Clinton's tech day. And many of the activities during this tech day were actually facilitated by our own high school students. And as you can see, there were things where students were involved in technology, but other things were more hands-on, involved in engineering and arts. Not everything uh was technology or screenbased. Um

113they did things with 3D printing and technology tools like Canva and our students experienced augmented reality. So, what an incredible day and thank you to everyone that was involved in giving that experience to our students. Next, I'd like to shift gears and highlight some of the success that we had through our uh winter sports season. As Kale and Charlotte highlighted, um as they were talking about events in our schools, our girls basketball team is still playing and you can catch them Friday night at Buffalo State. Um they are having a phenomenal year. So, good luck to them Friday night. Some of our other teams are concluding their seasons, but nonetheless, we did want to recognize um how far they made it this season. We had great success with our indoor track team. So, congratulations to

114our runners. Our cheerleading team also um placed very strongly in the ECIC competition. We had a wrestler, Nicholas, who actually made it to states. So congratulations to him. To be able to compete at the state level and unfortunately he did lose his first two rounds, but to be able to go to Albany and make it to the state level is quite an accomplishment. We had two bowlers. Um both Kelly and Josh and his brother Jacob had an amazing bowling season this year. So congratulations to them. And some upcoming events. I think this was mentioned already by our students at East Senior. The students versus staff charity volleyball game is coming up on March 4th. That's tomorrow night. Charlotte also mentioned the spring craft show. And I wanted to highlight for you that East Middle School

115will be hosting uh Moana, their school musical this year, the weekend of the 27th and 28th. So hopefully you'll have an opportunity to check that out. I think that's our last school musical this year. UPK registration is open and underway. Uh you may apply for UPK and enroll your child by visiting our website and it's encouraged that you do so during the month of March because we will be holding our lottery on April 9th. And then I've also highlighted um some of the upcoming events. Charlotte mentioned some of them. We have a lot of amazing concerts going on throughout the month of March. You'll see that at both of our high schools, we do some they're called side by side, things of that nature, but it's basically our middle schoolers getting to play alongside our

116high schoolers on stage together. So, some of our schools call it a unity concert or a sidebyside concert, but you'll see that those are occurring throughout this month. Uh we also have the East Senior College night. Just a lot of great things going on. >> So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. We'll move on to our public comment. Um, >> hold on. Just one second. Uh, I just had a question for Dr. Um, I've had a lot of, uh, teachers and educators ask me about like the timeline for that redistrict. I just need to know where to direct them to in regards to that. >> Sure. So, we have a redistricting and reconfiguration committee that meets once monthly. We're actually meeting tomorrow morning. We are neck deep in all of the logistical planning

117for redistricting specifically bus routing uh logistics around um packing up and moving of classrooms. We are working with a moving company to assist us with that. And then we will be having faculty meetings mainly this year on the east side because it's the east side that's impacted. The following year will be the west side, but we'll have faculty meetings on the east side so that east side faculty and staff are aware of what the plan is for the summer. Was there anything specifically that you had a question on? >> They were wondering um once everything's moved over, how much time they're going to have to like settle in and get their classroom. That was like the specific one of the specific part. >> Sure, I can understand. That's it's a lot to move a classroom

118and elementary teachers like to have all the bulletin boards done and ready for the start of the school year. Um Mickbar and Dr. Civone are working on the the details of that, but they know the desire of elementary teachers to be able to have time to unpack and get in their classroom. We're targeting mid July for the move to occur. Mick, can you confirm that or do you have any more specificity on the date? Um yeah, right now the the major movement for you know pallets and materials between the buildings is scheduled to be on July 20th. Um we're hoping to wrap that up with no longer a 4-day work week and then essentially give um hopefully the very end of July and August for both the custodial staff to sort out large unpacking and

119then towards we get towards the end of July the end of August to be able to give teachers the opportunity to come in and do the detail set decorating class. >> So I mentioned the principles of you school too will be able to reach out to them. Yes, we we have a communication timeline as well. So, when we're together tomorrow, we'll be finalizing plans around faculty meetings and when we'll start to roll this out. The other major log logistic is that of transportation. And we want to let families know this month in the month of March what the approximate start and end time will be at their schools because there will be an adjustment with the reconfiguration because we recognize that that might have an impact for family and their child care situations. So giving

120families about 6 months notice before school starts in September so that they have adequate lead time on any adjustments they may need to make. >> Perfect. Okay, thank you. >> Thank you. We move on the public comment section. I have a nice little paragraph I'll read if there's anyone who is looking to come up. No sheet showed up next to me with anyone's name on it. So, I'm going to take a guess that we don't, but I'll just double check. Is there anyone that would like to come up for public comments? Excellent. There you go. Well, thank you. Come to the meeting. We will move on to number three, personnel. If I may have a motion on 3A, please. >> I'll make a motion to approve. >> Mara, a motion to approve. >> I'll second.

121>> Laura, I have a second. Any discussion on 3A? I'm just going to voice again that I mean I understand we have the tossis there now and they're going to fall back in positions from retirements, but and essentially it's going to be status quo budget. It's going to keep it equal to where it is. However, uh as we saw in the numbers, we can't afford our budget. So, I would have rather us looked outside the box and put pressure on directors to fill this role uh as well as their director position uh instead of creating two more positions. Thank you. Any other discussion on that? Okay. All in favor? >> I. Anyone opposed? Anyone? passes 61. Thank you. Well, we'll go on to Oh, looks like our consent agenda four. If I may have a

122motion on the consent agenda, please. >> I'll make a motion to accept the consent agenda. >> Sarah, motion to accept. May I have a second? >> Second. >> Mara second. All in favor? >> I. Anyone opposed? Okay. consent adjust agenda passes 70. And now one of my favorite parts of the meeting. >> Thank you. I'm gonna ask Dr. Cerone to come up and join us u for some personnel recognition. Uh the board just took action on a number of appointments that I'd like to highlight for you, please. First, Jen, would you like to congratulate our retirees? >> Yes. Congratulations to all those years of service that you see up on that board. I look forward to uh our recognition. Typically at our June meeting, uh we will be inviting them in here and you'll have

123a chance to shake their hands and recognize them. So, congratulations. This is certainly exciting and she's in the house. Uh Miss Farley, uh if you please stand for a moment, um Aaron Farley, uh just approved for her tenure. We could give her a round of applause. Sure. Uh, I've had the pleasure to work with Aaron for many years and I know Aaron you're not alone. If you want to introduce Mark to the crowd and then if Mr. Mark Yoli if you wanted to say a word after that my partner Mark. >> Thanks for being here Mark. >> Absolutely welld deserved. Um, we had the pleasure of welcoming Miss Farley to Westside family in the spring of 2022. And since that time, she has been a tremendous team member. Every day, her care and compassion for

124students, families, and staff alike reveals itself. Karen, I'm proud to work with you every day. Proud to call you a colleague, proud to call you a friend. Miss Farley's deep understanding of educational systems and school programming is an incredible resource to our team and to our students and families here. and I'll speak for a congratulations on a very welldeserved. >> Thank you. >> I would like to add a few comments. Um it is with such great joy that I was able to recommend Aaron for her tenure recommendation. Um and have such confidence in that recommendation. I have seen Aaron time and time again work tirelessly on behalf of kids. She treats the students at East East Middle School as though they are her own. And um I got to witness that up close and personally

125just on Friday night. And the the care and concern and commitment that she demonstrated to our students is second to none. I am so incredibly cra proud to have her as a teammate and a colleague and so glad that you are with us. Congratulations to you on the muchdeserved recognition and honor. >> Thank you. We have several other appointments here tonight. I know some are are in attendance. Uh I'd like to uh call attention to a leadership appointment in our transportation department. Josh, could you please stand? Uh this is Josh Torres. Josh will be joining us as the assistant uh supervisor of our transportation department. Uh before I turn it over to Jen to say a few words, I will just say it was a pleasure to get to know Josh through the interview process.

126He comes to us from Lancaster where he worked at an auto mechanic. I also would commend you on your volunteerism. You are a captain at the volunteer fire department and also you are a vice president for the Western New York Mechanics Association. So just I think illustrates uh your desire to give back. Uh but Miss Jones, I know you have to a few words on Josh and it's great to see other members of the transportation department here. >> Yeah. So we're um we're all excited to have Josh join our team. Many of us in transportation spend um many of the daylight hours with each other um and we see each other more than we see some of our own families. So um we went through the interview process. Jo Josh is an excellent candidate. Um

127he comes with this incredible personality, a strong drive to learn. Um he is very calm, compassionate. I think a lot of things that we are looking for in our transportation department and we are really really excited to have them. So when you tell us who you brought here today absolutely thank you all. I'm here with my wife Leah, my mom and my grandmother and my in-laws and my soon brother-in-law. >> Congratulations Jen, do you have any other announcements? >> I do. I have a couple more team members. Um, so our transportation family is truly blessed. Um, we're growing and um, I'm really excited. I teach Dr. Savone all the time. We're already a transportation destination out of Western New York. Um, so we are building our teams fully of Penny. Uh, so today I have

128Gina with us. Gina was a substitute bus attendant for us um, since the beginning of January. uh she helps us with um many skills as well. She has um been kind and clear with a lot of our students um on the buses that we we service um to different buildings. Um thank you Gina for being here. I also have um Karen. Um Karen came to us in early September of this year as a substitute bus attendant and um she has been on many different bus routes. Um, a lot of our students in our our community need uh different types of specialized transportation and um she's she's been here for I don't know six to seven months and um she's going to be now a permanent um bus attendant and you want to tell us I

129know him. Uh this is Rick. This is her husband and he too is a bus driver here um for the district. So thank you. I got Betty here. Betty has been here for a while. supporter for our transportation team and I got Britney. Um, I think that's pretty much it. We got a a good team to keep rolling. Um, if you're looking to get away from your family for a few hours, come down to join us. >> Thank you so much. >> Congratulations to other appointments. They may be watching from home. to my understanding there's no one else in attendance that was appointed tonight but welcome to all the the others that joined our school community. Thank you very much. >> Excellent. Thank you. What we're going to do now is we're going to take

130um a 5 minute plus 5 minute recess. So the first five minutes we'll then assess to see we're just going to do up to 10 minutes. We're going to come out and um get a chance to meet you guys, say hello and uh congratulate you plus if we need to take a little break. >> So we'll see everybody in 9 minutes and 54 seconds. Now on to any state which is awesome. On a new business we are going to ask for a motion on 10A please. So move >> Zack. A motion on 10A. Zack, I'm sorry. Motion to accept 10A. May I have a second? >> I'll second it. >> Sarah second. Any discussion? It's an awesome thing that's happening. It's really cool. And are, you know, really cool to see these kids doing this.

131Um, so I will uh take a vote. All in favor? >> I abstaining from this. >> Anyone opposed? No. >> Or I might have a kid that's getting to go on this trip. >> Congratulations. It's a tremendous honor for your daughter to be chosen for this. >> Very proud of her. She's definitely a hardworking musician. So, it's nice to see this for her. >> Yeah, that's great. >> And the other student, he's he's also a very very talented trumpet player. Awesome. Yeah. >> Nice. >> So, that passes 6 with one abstain. >> Let's see. So, if I can have a motion, if everyone's interested on um B through L. >> I'll make a motion to approve B through L. Did you say >> yes? >> Laura, motion to approve. May I have a second? >>

132I'll second it. >> Mara, a second. Any discussion? >> Um, just want to note the donations. Um so we are taking action to approve donations um in one is in the amount of 1500 from Northwood PTO to Northwood Elementary Steam night in March of March of this year. So this month and then the second donation is for 3,697.51 from a fundraiser through Snap Mobile and that is to the East Senior boys basketball team to be used towards awards at senior night and the banquet. >> Excellent. >> Any other Yeah. Just uh the calendar is this align with Bosey's calendar. >> So we follow the GMT JMT which is the joint management team calendar. Um so we've looked at the Bosey's draft calendar for our recess periods. It does follow the Bosey's calendar. We actually start

133a little bit earlier than Boseies. Boseies um starts on September 1st for faculty and staff and we start a little bit earlier. They do that because in some teachers contracts, some districts they cannot bring their teachers in. Some contracts say prior to September 1st, others say prior to Labor Day. So trying to get all of those districts to agree upon a calendar is is nearly impossible because every district's calendar and contracts have nuances. Um, but this does allow um us to preserve the day before Thanksgiving, which there's value in our district of that. That's something that our community and and teachers and staff really appreciate. And we also have the day off before Memorial Day. That is a snow retrieval day in the event that we need to pull that back based on the number

134of snow days. We've gotten a few phone calls. I've heard from building principles um about an eagerness of having the calendar released so that pam families can book vacation and travel plans. So, now that the board has adopted it, we'll take the word draft off the of the calendar and we can make sure that it's updated on our website so that families have access to that. >> And then I just one more question on the calendar. Uh January exams just because I know there was a some issues behind the scenes this year. that's going to be no high school students in attendance again or are we planning on having high school students? >> I don't know if we're ready to make that determination today. Um, this year when we looked to do it, the number

135of high school students that needed to take regions exams made it really impossible to have school in session as a typical school day. The goal is ultimately that if students pass their exams in June or August that we have very few students needing to take a January regent exam where we could work towards that. But this year there were just too many students that needed to take the January regent exams. >> And I only brought that up as I had several angry phone calls from teachers saying that the board was saying that the students had to be in attendance during the exams. And I'm like oh no we did not. No, I think that there was um some advocacy from one board member in particular that felt really passionately about it, but no, the board

136didn't take action on that, but it has been something that we've discussed at the board table in the past. >> Cool. Also see um we've got some trips on there, which is great. And uh so the question about the calendar though, the calendar is live with our agenda um to the public. >> Yes. >> Okay, cool. it it should be accessible as an attachment on the agenda. >> Okay. That just I don't look >> Melissa's confirming. Yes. >> That way. Okay. Just cuz I people have been asking me about it too. Um and I did tell them that wouldn't be approved for a couple of months. >> So just just >> discussing the misalignment between um Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and regions week which is typically aligned. I know. >> And with all the

137problems that we've had with snow days, why wouldn't they just start them on that Monday that they can move them back if need a question? >> Yeah, that's not a local decision. At the state level, they determine when regent exams are. >> Yeah. >> So, I know Labor Day is late this year. I haven't looked at the calendar. Are we starting early again this year or next year? >> Yes. And some of the feedback that we heard for families with young children in particular, by late August, all of the camps have wrapped up and college kids are back at college. And so that late August really becomes a a challenging time for our families. So the fact that that we'll actually bring students in for two days before Labor Day, we got some positive feedback

138um when that was previously done. >> Are you planning on being here next year? >> No. >> Okay. Just have one more thing on this uh independent audit. Was this all federal funds that we received or I guess it's >> the completion of the federal portion of the audit. When our audit was done for the general purpose funds, the federal government had not issued final guidelines to the auditors on what needed to be audited federally. That was issued in the fall and the audit was completed. >> So I see the Medicaid reimbursement. Where is the rest of that? So is that what we received from the federal government? Was six. Is >> this federal audit? Yep. >> Um refers to uh the IDA money uh title one uh cafeteria refers to the grants not to

139>> Gotcha. So it's essentially just grant money. That's okay. That's all that's all I have question. Thanks. Thanks a lot. >> Any other conversation? So then I'm going to guess what I say. All in favor? >> I. >> Anyone opposed? That's a 70. I'm not going to vote onformational documents. So we move on to board of education discussion. Um the only thing that I think we're going to bring up at a work session is what we talked about. Um we'll do that at a work session of what next year is going to look like and input and all that and whether you get to keep your name tags. um how that maybe one person has to leave them. We'll see. Um we'll talk about that. So I have nothing else. I don't know of other

140board members. Mara >> um just a quick reminder. So on Tuesday we have a board we have a school visit to East uh middle school and then West Middle School. So East Middle School I believe is at 7:30 and then West Middle is at 9:00. And then um we are also 9:30. >> 9:30. Oh, thank thank you Melissa. 9:30. Um and then um there's a a cafeteria style lunch to follow at 9:30. >> But I appreciate and I appreciate the idea of doing it in one day. But we also did I don't want to I don't want to imply that West Middle is not important, but several of us spend a lot of time there or have. So I figured we'd throw in the lunch thing so we can maybe a little bonus. You you

141you know you don't like I like eating lunch. So we'll check it out. Um, I'm excited because I know where you where you're going to be heading at 7:30 in the morning. >> West Middle circle every day dropping my kid off. That that's you. Um, >> was lunch. >> Um, is it 11? Is it What's the earliest they do at 10:00 with Mr. But I'm thinking an early lunch. Um, I gave you more time at East Middle because of all the um updates there and because so many of you haven't been there yet. So, starting West Middle at 9:30, I thought 11 lunch would probably be That's correct. Yeah. Thank you. >> Cool. Um, yes. If anyone has a second RSP, one way or the other, please. Um, and I don't know the technical thing

142if you guys I don't know how that works with our with being invited or not visiting. I don't know. So, I'll let you deal with that. >> If if you'd like to be involved, we can talk with your principal about having you be excused from school, but I'd want to make sure we communicate with your principal and that your parents are okay with that as well. But, as long as they're both supportive of it, then we'd love to have you. >> I will send you invite. >> Yeah. I just didn't know what the protocols on that. So, I didn't want I'm not allowed to invite you, I don't think. >> I'm sure the lunches that they drop. >> Yeah. The you guys the lunch at the high school we when we did our last tour,

143there's some pretty interesting stuff there. >> Oh, yeah. >> Um I I like some of those food choices that they had. Um they wouldn't sell any to me. They weren't open yet, but um it seemed really interesting. Does the middle school follow that same route? We'll find out, I guess. Right. >> Like the grab and go. No, they don't. That's where the complaints from >> my room come from. Oh, okay. >> Yeah, it was uh >> the traditional lunch option is the same. It's just the additional offerings that the high school does is the >> the next level version for for those kids once they get to high school. >> Cool. >> Have you guys seen the back lunch one at the senior? >> Yeah, that's Yeah, like the VIP section. >> That's where I

144got to go. >> Yeah. So, I'm excited about the next one, too. Cool. Anything else um for board discussion? Anyone want to >> uh I guess mine's a question for Dr. Ker. I was just curious for the capital improvement proposal when we're going to get like the breakdown like when we get you know total cost state aid anticipated state aid um possible reserves tax increase. >> So I think one thing that that we wanted to get feedback on from you tonight is this could be go handled one of two ways. One would be um as one large proposition and that would be my recommendation is that we go out with one proposition that would be approximately an $80 million proposition. We have capital reserves that would allow the project to be um with no tax

145impact up to about 52 million. So that remaining amount of 27 million would have a tax impact to the community. Um, the reason why I'm recommending that is in December of 23 when we went out with three different proposals. Dr. Rabby was the superintendent at the time and there were three propositions. Prop one had to pass in order for Prop 2 to be considered. Prop 2 had to pass in order for Prop 3 to be considered. And the feedback that we received is that was very confusing to the community. um that they almost thought they were choosing one, two, and or three choices or picking and choosing um some of them. I think that unless you're at this table and you know fully invested in learning about the capital improvement project for voters to be

146presented that in a way that may not be clear. Um the feedback we received was December of 23 was a little confusing and so our recommendation is to fully explain to voters in the community what we have in reserves that's going to minimize the impact on taxpayers but that there would be a tax impact. Um correct me if I'm wrong. Will the tax impact I believe is estimated for a typical value home in West Sakica at $40 a year? about 20 >> 20 excuse me, I'm sorry. About $20 a year, >> but do you want that ahead of time prior to the March 17th meeting? I mean, we can share that information with you prior to March 17th. >> I'd like to see the breakdown prior like prior to whenever we're going to vote to

147move forward as long as well as like the breakdown of each part of each school like U Zach recommended for. Okay. >> Not the specific July item, I guess, not the whole entire >> great. I know what you're saying. >> And I I do and and this might be a discussion when we are voting on it. Um I do I trust you and your people um just me saying that, but I do want to make a priority. I I'd hate to do like what we've had to do with past um things and cut things at the end that we've noticed that type of thing. I'm not implying anyone here has done that. It's happened in the past. So like let's fix the doors. Let's And I think you guys have done a good job of

148building in that extra cushion and not extra cushion but the numbers are proper. So three years from now the cost of a door didn't double or if it did we've accounted for that. Am I am I correct in saying it that way? >> Yes. And I think the benefit that we have in this project that we haven't had in in projects prior is we have an estimating team both with young and right and with campus construction and campus uh providing that oversight. We have some more checks and balances than than maybe we had previously when we had Young and Wright serving as both the architect and the construction manager. So that team working together, double-checking everything, double-checking each other's numbers, uh double-checking the accuracy around estimates and what the going rate is and the prevailing

149wages, uh for everything that's been estimated out and costed out into the project. >> Yeah. I mean, these these big projects, especially the contractors, the subcontractors and stuff, there's a lot of stuff that could be snuck in or snuck out. like being on top of whoever that project manager is on site is something that I don't know if it's my job or whose job but that's how these construction jobs go. >> I just don't trust them. >> No, we we've seen it in the school district way too loose prior to Dr. coming in. >> I'll see the trailer with him. >> Definitely got snuck out. Yeah, and that's I said our current entire leadership team top to bottom I'm I'm I'm happy with including I think campus and young and right are working really well

150together. Um I love to see the right side by side like that. So um yeah that's and and I personally we're not voting now is I support the going as one and not splitting it. Um I think this stuff needs to be done one way or another no matter what. So let's just make it happen. Um so if that's a discussion we have later or whenever I'm good with that. Anything else? >> Thank you. >> No more discussions. Okay. Um, thank you for getting our signs uh taken care of. Mr. Sin got um I believe >> otherwise known as Mr. Brinker. >> Mr. Brinker. Um he he attended dinner with a couple of our exofficial board members of the chamber awards dinner and they they put the they put their foot down and said we'd

151like to see our names in wood. So I really appreciate them getting it taken care of and from what I understand the wood was was found at East Middle in the basement. Some really nice valuable wood that they were also able to use for some other projects. So they were doing some sort of a walking around looking and the wood uh we didn't pay for it or anything. So, um, they look really great. I'm glad that we, uh, we have them. Um, even Zach, he didn't break his yet. Um, cool. So, thank you on that. What we're going to do now is we'll move on to the 13 and anticipate an executive session. I'm going to ask for a motion and if it's approved, we're going to go into executive and then after that, when

152we're done, we'll come out and close the meeting. We're not looking to conduct any other public business. So, thank you everyone for coming out. Um, if I can have a motion to go in executive for the employment history of a particular person. So move. >> Zack, may I have a second? I'll >> second it. >> Any discussion on the matter? Okay. All in favor? >> I passes 70. We'll see you guys on the flip side.