March 12, 2024 - Board of Education Meeting

001uh good evening everyone I have a motion to return um the regular board meeting to public session mran Miss Poland U all in favor motion carries unanimously I call the regular board meeting to order all the board members are present Dr ban would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flaged AL to the flag of the United States of America and to Nation [Music] andice please be advised that in the event of fire emergency and an evacuation should be necessary an alarm will sound please note all marked emergency exits and evacuate well away from the building at this time we request everyone turn their cell phones and other electronic devices to silent thank you our next meeting is a special meeting the budget work session with the community Forum that will

002follow at the KC Middle School library May I have a motion to hold a special meeting budget work session starting at 6:30 p.m. on March 26 M casar Bogner Dr Litman all in favor carries unanimously Dr Brown Hall recognition thank thank you very much president Singh so tonight our school Spotlight takes us to Mill Middle School as we highlight their student volunteer group The Herd we want all of our students to understand the importance of building relationships and community and this group of students meets regularly to do just that i' now like to welcome principal Chris McDuffy the herd advisors Megan Kino and Kelly gangji and students to share more and Megan I hope I pronounced your last name correctly awesome thank you for that Dr Brown Hall and good evening everyone um I Heard

003students and advisers do a wonderful job and I can't say enough about how proud I am of them uh their selflessness and acts of kindness have for strong con connections within our community neighbors be volunteering their time at a local nursing home or organizing a warm clothing Drive in the winter for others who may be less fortunate or down on their luck uh our her is a constant reminder that we are all part of something bigger than ourselves and that our actions have a power to make a real difference in the lives of others uh with that I'm going to pass it over to two of our her advisors Kelly gangji and Megan queno to talk a little bit more about some of the activities that they've done throughout the year um good evening first

004off I'd like to thank our Board of Education and the Williamsville Central School District for providing these opportunities for our students with the clubs and allowing us teachers to be the advisers to these tremendous students that we're blessed to have in our classrooms and the families that support us in everything that we do um our herd is driven by our students what we do comes from the suggestions and the desire of what our students come to us with and we have many of them um On Any Given meeting we may have over 100 students keeping them all occupied can be a challenge at times but they find a way and they use their special talent to come through and shine whether they're making posters for Spirit weeks or coming up with ideas for canvas and

005how to use social media to help us share out to the parents on uh what we can do as a community to support those within our own community and also those within the Western New York area um we've had Community fundraisers to help our punt organization um specifically to support our Williamsville Central School District students who have fought pediatric cancer um our students have learned how to build beds by attending sleep in Heavenly peace located right at the Eastern Hills Mall so they've learned how to use tools but also saw the greater good in what they were doing um there's so many things that we've done throughout the the year but we also focus on keeping it fun our students Drive our activities within the building so that we promote um during school and after

006school fun activities and we also create different um elements within the classrooms so that every student can be a part of the activ and not just the herd I'll let Mrs quo jump in I think she covered most of it but um just want to reiterate that our student body really drives all the ideas that are brought to the table whether it's giving back to our community or bringing Spirit to maill um it's student-based and led by them and we have some of our herders here tonight in attendance that are our go-to team of helpers um and we're just so grateful to be able to work with such a phenomenal group of students that are changing our lives but are also changing the lives of so many people in our community so thank you for

007highlighting us absolutely thank you very you m middle her is students at Mill working together to give back to our community and also bring school spirit to the building with the students leading the IDE ideas in those activities we as a herd try to give back to not only our Williamsville Community but our buffalo Community donating to different organizations and hosting different events for students to be a part of we're baking for good we're sharing what we're learning bake for good is in partnership with the King Arthur Flower Company students take home a kit and with their families they bake two loaves of bread and then they donate one to a local food pantry and then they keep one to enjoy with their own family amilies so it's a wonderful partnership with with King Arthur

008where we get to teach about the science of baking and then also they get to get back to the community it's just like really fun and you're just you know you're helping out as well as having fun and it's all paying off and going to good casses it's really cool to know that you're helping people not just like in your school Community but also like the Williamsville community and it just makes you like really happy and makes you feel good one ye two bags thank you within the herd we put our students out into the community to help support our senior citizens and also other organizations that support children and what I see these students come through with is just so energizing for me it makes me want to be here more for them so

009that I can provide them with the opportunities they're asking for and also to bring that school spirit and that positive vibe inside of our building so not just our herd members feel it but our faculty staff and students we're going to let you take your vote so that you have your your saying the spirit we get you want it is really cool to be a part of her um cuz we know what's coming next and we plan stuff and it's not just teachers planning it there's some kids so you get both sides of what people think we are all about building community and Connections in our building the herd as a club really shines in that aspect and it's really where kids want to be I mean at a giving meeting we have over a

010hundred students that join us to be a part of giving back and having a say in what's happening in the building it's a really rewarding experience and we hope that we're creating a lifelong path for these students to continue to volunteer within the communities that they live [Music] in that is awesome McDuffy awesome if you can also tell us your name and what grade you're in oh it's a good one um hello my name is Henry Noy and I'm in grade six um I love the herd I sometimes have to miss it but I still love to be involved awesome I'm in video announcements and we do like a video announcements every Friday and some we try to promote H herd a lot in what we're doing and it's really fun to her the whole

011aspect and it's really great to know that we're helping people and having fun at the same time and it's awesome awesome thanks Henry my name is Zoe Peter I'm in sixth grade um about herd is just like a great community and it makes you like feel really good when you do all the stuff for the community and like it's just really fun at the same time too absolutely awesome uh my name is Josie Lester and I'm in sixth grade and I love doing the her because even like though you're just like kind of hanging out with your friends you're also like helping the community and you're like like we we like collect T can tabs and stuff and we like do stuff to help the community thank you thank you so very much principal M

012great job herd students so next we are spotlighting the impact of our family and commun consumer science classes which are engaged in not only learning lifelong skills but helping children in need i' like to welcome Jamie pitell the district's director of family and consumer Sciences the Arts business and music director pit Nell there we go hello thank you so much for having us tonight so we're going to stay in Mill and be featuring the family and consumer Sciences program specifically from M middle school as well um family and consumer Sciences is how housed in all of our middle schools and it's really a Cornerstone program in helping our children really prepare for the real world finances sewing cooking all of the things that they need just to just to be really um so we're very

013proud of our program and very proud of all the support it provides our students as they navigate Middle School um tonight what we are specifically spotlighting is um in the classrooms of Andrea poror and Kristen fry this year they decided to embark on a sewing project that not only gives the kids the skills that they need to learn for that task but gives back to the community in a much larger way so what they did is they did a pillowcase project nice very nice and what's so special about this project is every single pillowcase will be donated to osai Children's Hospital wow that's and it every pillowcase comes with a little letter from the students who created it this one says be brave like a T-Rex and then it's a a T-Rex pillowcase if you

014can't see them but they all come with some words of inspiration and they will be donated um on the 19th actually and we're very very excited to celebrate that and also the takeaway that our students will have for the impact that the children who receive these will also have awesome thank you and we have a video to spotlight thank you director pitell thank you very [Music] much so the pillowcase project this is our first year actually giving it a shot we just decided that one of our themes in family and consumer Sciences class this year was to try to give back and make Community connections and um we just kind of thought of this one and hit the ground running I think it was really amazing to watch the kids kind of come together and

015um put a lot of effort into the donated pillow cases they made one for themselves as well but they really cared about the ones that were being given to the children they knew that it was something that was going to you know hopefully brighten the day for a child who was you know in a hospital for an Extended Stay in seventh grade every student made two pillowcases and we're going to be donating them to OSHA children's hospital um as we made all these pillowcases as you can see we added cards that were handmade that were like positive notes to make them like feel better and um we hand folded and washed all of the pillowcases and it was very fun thought of how like good of an impact it would be for the children at

016the hospital and like how we would like make a good impact on their lives I think it made us like really close cuz we were like helping each other out and we like we had fun together and we're like helping people together I'm extremely proud I absolutely you know love teaching family consumer sciences and seeing these children learn life skills that they are going to use again in their future you know they might not all have a sewing machine at home but they're going to use time management and attention to detail I think this is an experience that they'll remember forever so they can tell you know their own children about someday um and hopefully you know it's opened their eyes to the opportunity of being able to give back to others um throughout their

017lives and it was a really fun like working project to do because we get to make cards and knowing that like we're helping them out like definitely brings me a little bit of Joy just to know that like they putting a smile on their face and they get to like have a part of us that we're gifting to them [Applause] awesome and I just want to have Andrea and Kristen stand so we can recognize them for this beautiful project their [Applause] students thank you so much thank you that is awesome so much great community service going on thank you very much finally tonight we are recognizing one of the most accomplished student athletes in Williamsville North history a year ago you may remember we recognized him for winning the wrestling's program First State title tonight

018cam cerbone returns as a two two time state champion fresh off of winning the 152 pound Championship he is also the first wrestler in Western New York history to win six consecutive section six titles wow right that's amazing it is welcome to time state champ cam caterbone his coaches Joe muscarella and Jeff caterbone and Williamsville North Principal Bob [Applause] Coniglio [Applause] so C cam you got to tell us how how you do it right there's so many young students who are watching and like you know to be six executive section six titles to be the winningest student in North history how' you do it oh well uh since I was young uh I set high expectations for myself because I was kind of Born Into the sport of wrestling which I mean I feel like

019a lot of people uh when they're born into a sport they kind of uh they do the sport for fun which which for me wrestling was fun but uh unless you you wrestle or you you uh have been around the sport of wrestling you don't really understand that like it's not the most fun sport but the fun in wrestling is actually winning and the success success that comes along with it so I feel like the one thing that has separated me from other athletes is that I or from other wrestlers I mean is that I found fun in wrestling through the process before before winning and before everything else and when you're having fun with with the hard work and the and the and the miserable uh the miserable training that's what that's what uh

020that's what uh leads to to the success and all the and uh absolutely you know the accomplishments and all the good stuff and like a true champion thank you very much Cam and thanks for being here tonight appreciate apprciate you guys inviting me principal Coniglio I think cam is actually pretty humble uh two things I want to say about cam are one he realizes that wrestling is just an extension of education and he's learned resiliency through that I mean he he's technically open enrolled from East which I love so I love that get him in my school absolutely any state but one thing I noticed is I I heard about him as a freshman his wrestling family I knew his father through college uh but when was a sophomore he he was concussed in the

021semi-final and I truly believe that he would have won his first a championship then wow but that would have been a big step back for most kids but cam came back and won it twice in a row awesome uh and then finally just seeing him Mentor the younger coach younger wrestlers I see him talking to them all the time not just about wrestling but about school and how academics is important I see him all the times in the hallway talking to all the kids he really represents North and his family really well awesome coach did you want to say anything yes y good evening everybody and thank you for having us uh it's unbelievable moment to stand up here and talk about Cam caterbone and I've known him since he's since he was born I

022knowed his parents uh principal K Le and everybody uh he is very humble but he's very very good and he takes very good care of his he's been a captain of the wrestling team for the past five years he does everything that we ask of him uh a six-time section six Champion has never happened before right and the best thing is he's gonna go represent Williamsville at the University of Michigan in the fall a we would just like to say thank you for your support the board of education for supporting wrestling wrestling is not like Cameron said it's not the people don't understand the sport so much but it really builds character and people and with with your support and with wrestlers like him and our student athletes they have a chance to express themselves

023and learn many different things so thank you for having us and uh congratulations to Cameron awesome thank you very [Applause] much but we're doing a photo this way for the photo real quick if you don't mind e I turn it back over to you um thank you are there any other board acknowledgements Mr yeah I actually have a couple uh the first one was uh the UN unified bowling had their senior night the other night and that there were 60 uh participants in that I don't know if we know that and that was uh put on by the unified booster club which is only about a year old and it's taking off and that that's just a a Wonder wonderful event and then there was also this Williamsville North senior uh I'm sorry basketball banquet

024um which was a lovely event and it's also coach sworski is retiring as I think we know with 270 wins yeah will stick around to coach unified and finished the school year clearly but um I just wanted to those were two really lovely events and I just to prove that I'm well-rounded I just want to point out that the Williamsville North musical is this weekend Legally Blonde blonde and that's going to break a l to all the participant absolutely any other acknowledgements um I yeah I'd like to just offer to that same note literally um I intended the Williamsville East musical this past weekend and it was absolutely phenomenal the work that the the musicians the singers the performers the stage crew Everybody put in um I'm just continuously impressed and I can't wait for

025this weekend's uh musical at North so kudos to that group um and I want to offer too I know we just highlighted um The Herd um just another congratulations not only to the students in that organization but to the very familiar faces of those teachers who advise who are also parents in the district who are on ptsas who are at other meetings that I attend um the hard work has not gone unnoticed and they're just so passionate about what they do it's just so impressive absolutely and Williamsville East at Mama Mia yeah yes yes they did Mama Mia yep I've been to that show too and I agree it's really good was it was and next item is public expression I don't think we have anybody signed up for it okay okay moving on to

026item 4 B and 4 C student achievement outcomes and District website update presentations Dr Bron absolutely thank you very much president Singh so I am going to turn it over to our chief academic officer our assistant superintendent of curriculum assessment and instruction Dr Marie Balin who will be presenting our student chief AI outcomes and after that we will have our executive director of communications present our district website update so Dr Belling is on first thank you so much Dr BR good evening and thank you to the board of education and thank you Mr F paly I think if someone could assist me in forwarding the slides I would greatly appreciate it um and thank you uh to everyone um so many wonderful accolades accomplishments of our students I'd be remiss if I did not um

027also acknowledge that and uh to Echo some of Dr Spicer's comments um I want to first of all thank um the board um obviously the support of our programs but also our staff and uh students and in particular our teachers and our administrative staff at the buildings and here at district office um a lot of what we're presenting this evening is summative in nature um but as I mentioned to several of the board members and in thinking about tonight's comments for the presentation um there's certainly a a context behind this and what I want to emphasize is um it's much more than about numbers I think anytime we're looking at students our every action is to better their experience so certainly outcomes are a huge part of our work and our and what we do

028um but every action we take is to make what we do for students stronger so I really want to emphasize that too because I think everything we speak to whether it is academic whether it's Wellness or any program aspect every single action we take is with great great thought with great consideration and always with students at the center so hopefully um some of what is uh put into place this evening as far as the comments are concerned not only share some of the outcomes but what we're doing to ensure that this is a continuous Journey um all of you are aware and I think it's a philosophy that we all share is um everything we do is for continuous Improvement of our own efforts um making sure we're bringing our best every day because when

029we're at our best the students are also benefiting great so just wanted to preface my presentation by saying all of those things and you'll hear a lot of that as it um as it unfolds during the presentation but certainly um there are a lot of numerics involved in the presentation before we get into those I do want to share with all of you as as you are aware and certainly with our public and anyone who would have the ability to view the presentation um much of what is shared here is also publicly available the New York State Education data site is a tremendous resource it is very uh dense with information so there is a lot of information there um whatever we can do if anyone ever has any questions if you're a parent in

030particular Community member um anything regarding our programs or with regard to their own children please reach out to your your school building your teachers are a tremendous resource You're Building principls assistant principal our District staff here there's never someone too far away people are very close very happy to answer any questions um and if it's something in particular Someone's Child please don't wait to ask we we want to make sure that um if anything is gained from what we're sharing here tonight is a very individualized personalized approach it is about every single student so when we're talking about numbers and we see you know a collective in some way shape or form what we're really talking about is behind all those numbers are faces behind all those numbers are students so please by all means

031we are all here at your disposal we're here as partners so please ask us anything we could do beyond what we're already doing we want to be here to support your children so to start off um I want to make sure that we share um Nick if you can go ahead and forward the slide a couple of guiding oh I'm sorry yeah thank you guiding principles for assessment because in Williamsville and and certainly best practice in education is such that assessment is a system it's ongoing and really the beauty of it is that we are continually looking at not only what we have what the current status is whether it's individually or collectively but what more we can do um this is really just scratching the surface a lot of what we include in this

032presentation is really state level information um which is very valuable but please remember and I'm sure you all know but our community should know too everything we do whether it's testing whether it's observation whether it's the student work the projects that you've had the benefit of hearing about everything tells us something about what we're currently doing and what more we can look to whether it's in the near future or something we have have to plan for in in the longer term that is how we set our budgets that's how we set our priorities we're always looking to see what more we can do so from an assessment perspective there is a lot under that umbrella we have a lot of purposes for assessment we have a lot of types of assessment so while we will

033not go through each one individually you'll notice that several of the slides that we put into the presentation we did deliberately it actually goes through the terminology that we often use that's really more education oriented but so that we are all on the same page and our community knows what we're using we want to be very transparent with the types of Assessments that we are looking at what we use and how we use them so really the important part of that is what are we doing with the information it's simply not enough to have the information but how are we using it to benefit students so um again I will talk in more general terms but behind that again is what we're doing for each and every student which is not only personalized but to

034a very large extent different differentiated so um I don't want to Short change that part because while we talk globally about our efforts again they're very much on a granular level when it comes to students so um for us the definition that we have is a prioritized approach to not only data but data analysis um I will tell you um and I can say this with great confidence after being here in this role and the great pleasure I've had in this District to um work hand inand with our building principles and I know really nearly all of the the teachers personally at this time ever after being here for 13 years um they do a tremendous tremendous amount of reflection at the building oriented around students and student learning um while we may hear about

035a lot of the things again more globally their actions their Reflections what they're doing in teams what they're doing in partnership with our district colleagues there is always a thought about what do we have here now meaning the current status a lot of it does go back to numerics but whether they're looking at fastbridge which all of you know we use for RTI purposes all of those measures in our AIS plan that you reviewed last month uh and two months ago um and approv that on behalf of our district again no one item stands alone they are always looking at what they see in the classroom how are students responding to the instruction there's so much under that umbrella I hope that I will do it justice by touching on some of these efforts this

036evening but um I want to ensure that when we're looking at this information and certainly from a community perspective we really give um that lens a broad view because everything that we do each and every moment we interact with kids whether it's in a more formal way through an assessment or informally in the classroom in the hallway we're always gaining something so again it's on us as professionals as Educators to use that to the uh benefit of kids so I really can tell you um we visit classrooms Dr Brown Hall and I go monthly I also go individually I know the board has visits I hope hope that you have um the great opportunities to see the things in action because that is really what you know when you hear the kids speak to it

037and you see it and the teachers are engaged you really see it um alive and well but for purposes here you know this methodology is really more of a multifaceted approach so again while we we talk about three through eight assessments or we'll talk about region exams again all very important they are one measure so um what are they all when you look through the slides you'll see a lot of different types of Assessments used some are more formal like the ones we just mentioned and some are more informal so again um if any parent ever wants to know more about you know how does this impact my child what are some of the things that my child experiences there are many ways to get that information first and foremost we put a lot of

038it on wits um things that have numbers behind them certainly our Universal screening information is there but it again the conversation doesn't replace what you can find on a computer so I would just really again please ask anyone who needs more information to go right to to the source at the building so we will keep moving along here so besides that again just the next several slides just really talk about more of our um information gathering I spoke about the formal and the informal um you'll notice again for us we're really looking at systems and structures so that's really a large part of what I would offer um is the backbone of this presentation is the the things that we fall back to are predictable routines around data around analysis also recognizing that we never

039take the individual out of the picture and out of the equation but the cycle that you see on the screen is really the one that we have committed to the one that we believe in and the one that we recognize has been the most valuable for us as we are internalizing what this data mean and how we can improve upon our practices and what we are doing so the things that I'm speaking to are not only um you know really talking points but they're expected to happen they do happen and the way that we know they're happening is when we're asking questions at the building or principles are offering information to us or asking teachers to contribute you know Reflections about their practice as we are falling back to some of these structures not only

040for their own individual benefit in their classrooms but as a team there's so much to be gained when professionals are are talking with one another and sharing best practices what are you doing that's working in your classro what are some of the things some of the ways that you taught this math concept what are some of the ways that you engage students in the reading how did you embed student voice and what you were doing in your classroom those are all of the things that are not just um events they're routines so when we talk about these things we expect them to happen we want them to happen and we celebrate when they happen because these are things we want to be common practices not just best practices so um I know it was shared

041with all of you community may not know just this past Friday on March 8th we had a really superb engaging day of professional learning for our instructional staff um we I thank our directors and our our administrators in putting this um out many of the presenters were also teachers we had experts in various Fields um it was a great partnership with Mr scan zuo's office but we had 145 sessions so the reason I bring that up is because we are always looking to do better no matter what we're doing there's always more we know we can do and we're always looking to share because there's nothing more isolating than feeling like you are by yourself or having to reinvent things there there are great practices that people were sharing I can tell you having visited

042all three sites where we had our learning people were raving about what they learned what they were doing and celebrating kids so that's what we really want to continue so when we have these meetings when we talk about the data collection some of that you know what we don't want it to be is very sterile very impersonal it's what change can we make based on what we're seeing so we do that on a district level so the first of analysis always takes place here um our directors and I Dr Brown Hall Mr scano were very involved in looking at what do we see what is it telling us how do our actions our present status our programs align with what we achieved what we were hoping to achieve and where might any gaps lie where

043do we still have work to do these are constant things it is not uh every June we talk about it or you know every three months it's it's honestly a daily occurrence so whether it's a stand standardized assessment or it's something more informal we're already internalizing what change we can make um based on what we heard we were just at a conference today I will tell you it's it's still churning it's still going through like how can we take what we learned and make sure that our experiences for students are better but I would invite you if you've not had a chance um perhaps even during your visits I know these take place in a really regular basis but just lean into conversations people are having whether they're doing a formal data analysis or meeting

044as a team you will hear a lot of this conversation happening and it happens uh regularly so we'll keep going here but the next four slides we will not go through these are the ones that I mentioned were more reference oriented so I would just invite our community to look through them there these are very dense it's it's not meant to be U memorized that's why the slides are here but this is really the heart of a lot of the assessments that we we have in place and the purposes they serve and as you can see each and every one gives us valuable information on what students know understand and should be able to do so we'll we'll kind of go uh past all of those but um going first at first level of analysis

045as I mentioned um New York State assessments these have had great change over the last several years all of you are aware um certainly covid had a a tremendous impact but as a system and as a state our state is very much also being very reflective about the types of learning and how we're assessing student understanding um many of you have heard this over the years there's been great change in the assessments themselves one of the largest change changes coming to pass we'll actually see this year in the district is the implementation of computer-based Assessments I did include a slide again I won't go through every point but um this is something we are administering um in grades 5 through eight so that is something that will happen this year that is uh according to

046our state's timeline um we had to have two middle school grades Implement we're having all four we had very deliberate conversation about that implementation and after that is um completed we are also going to um transition our elementary students we still have yet to determine if it's going to be both grades three and four but that's certainly on our uh conversation list to have we want to implement the test and see how the actual operational test goes this spring all of our K through 12 principles have been kept AB breast of all of what has been transpiring at the middle level so they're very knowledgeable about the topic but it's been a tremendous taking by our District staff our building staff and certainly our building Personnel we had a very successful implementation of our simulation

047that all of you uh in our community were made aware of but this is something we don't want our students or staff to fear we don't want our community to fear it is a different type of testing um because you're not just testing the content you're testing proficiency with technology so it has you know other different components to it but um we tried to reflect on the screen some of what the state has directly shared with with us while it's not exclusive to computer-based testing it's really important to keep in mind that when we look at results they really are for informational purposes they are not intended to be comparative in nature we don't want to minimize their importance though as I mentioned earlier they're part of a larger assessment picture so really the greatest

048benefit we have are looking at Trends are looking at again any item analysis that we have at our disposal but really drilling right down to not just that grade level but that individual student by time we've received the results and this year they came you know they come in the fall typically by time they're at least their late fall um and I know with computer-based testing the effort is to turn them around a bit earlier so results come a little bit quicker for districts but they still are quite a bit in a rear so by that point students have moved on to their next grade level so we do also have to acknowledge that they're not just in time they're not immediate so what we have to do is kind of look in the rearview

049mirror and take what we can from those assessments coupled with the current assessments the just in time assessments the more informal assessments any computer uh based assessments hopefully will come quicker but there's still a little bit of time that passes between the time they're administered and um the time that we get the results but we always as a practice have shared with our community and again these are all public all of our performance uh as it relates to these assessments but also uh remind everyone that well this goes into results we also list participation because uh we recognize and honor that families ultimately do have the ability to determine parents and Guardians can determine for their children whether or not they are going to engage with the 3 through eight assessments and that is only

050for the 3 through eight assessments so it's 3 through eight Ela and math and five and now it's grades five and eight science um that is not the case with other assessments so when we talk about the region exams and AP exams that is not the case so um AP is more of a choice because the kids take the class and then the assessment but with Regents there is not a choice at this time um although I will say and all of you know this the state's philosophy is also um changing I would say quite dramatically in that um we've seen different Pathways certainly come to pass there's more of a conversation about that but there's also a lot of conversation happening about the best way for students to demonstrate their understanding so I do

051think we're going to see and have already seen um tremendous progress in advancing those conversations that assessments will not be the only way that students will be able to do that but for now this is where uh where we are but on the screen we've uh shown our participation rates um you know there was a lot of conversation many years ago when this first really was uh building steam about you know whether districts will be adversely impacted by that and you know how what that would look like whether it would be Financial we have not to date had that happen but um the state did did change I would say dramatically because at first there were no as they called them opt outs or refusals but it is an acknowledged piece now that families do

052have a choice um we put out our information through witz we've shared it in newsletters But ultimately it is the family's choice we do try to share what the benefits of taking the assessment are um but I would also say and you saw this in our a AIS plan and this is according to also the state's guidance is we cannot um punish or adversely impact a student's programming or any steps we would take to support the student by having the absence of an assessment so these are just numbers these are you know people deciding for their own children whether or not they are going to engage so as you can see that's what those'll say um we also do report on the assessment levels as all of you know right now it's still of levels

053one through four system again this is based on the test takers for um those particular grades I will tell you and it's always an AS at the end the eighth grade numbers always look like they don't align with the others they look a lot lower you know and then you know we often get questions about what what that means or why that's the case remember at eth grade our students have the opportunity to take advanced classes so when you take earth science and when you're taking advanced math you do not take the eighth grade assessments they're not double tested so anywhere from a third to a half of our students are taking the advanced classes and that is either through teacher recommendation or student or parent um electing for the students to do that so

054again those are all there um this is all publicly available anyone can go on the data site that I mentioned earlier and actually get the results and drill down by grade level you can see subgroups and we'll share some of the information there um it's very important to also recognize and this is true anytime you are looking at grade levels or subgroups is the numbers are not all consistent our numbers from last year far test takers are not the same as this year however many students are in a subgroup I will tell you they range from zero to single digits to larger they're are great variables so when we're talking about percentages they're not all equally represented so when we say 50% 50% of 10 kids versus 50% of 300 students is drastically different so

055we just cannot look at a number and draw an analysis that way it really does take us drilling down right from that larger picture um down so um here you see again by subgroup again I would just encourage anyone who wants to know what do these mean and what significance do they have is just to recognize that we do publicly make it available part of it is to provide the context for the results but it should not minimize the results because whether it's one student or 100 students our efforts are still to make that students academic experience stronger and overall educational experience stronger so some of the um discourse that we have all had and that I want to make the community aware of is how do we do that um one is through our

056professional learning that I just mentioned a second one is it starts right here at the district office with our directors in our curriculum teams um I will give you a perfect uh example of some of the things I'm talking about just yesterday I met again with Dr Hunter Dr Hunter has been a great contributor for us and a partner in diversity equity and inclusion he helped tremendously in positioning our thinking and developing helping us to some action plan so when we do our summer curriculum work that all of you have graciously supported we are going into it with goals and objectives that help to meet some of the needs that we've identified those are not only globally identified but right down to the specific subject area so we're already talking about what the summer looks

057like Dr Hunter will be joining U myself and our directors here for a number of our staff meetings just like he did last year and then he and I meet individually with the directors to again plan for the summer curriculum work so when the teams are planning they're already starting with a focus in mind the great thing about the teams is the teams are teachers who are partnered with our directors here at the district office and they dig into this quite deeply so again it is not a generic conversation it is not a you know wasteful conversation it's a very focused targeted conversation so then when staff come back in August um when we do do our professional development this summer when we're opening doing our Opening Day activities they're very focused on what we

058can do for students so we're already hitting the ground running so I want to make sure that you know um our tremendous commitment to that that's just starting here at the district office and then really things fly when they get to the building level it's really our ongoing supportive teachers our major function is to remove barriers for our teachers for our instructional staff and for our students and anything we can do to do that is really what we're doing so again I mentioned computer based testing um there's a lot on our website about it um I thank Mr filipowski he's done a great job helping us uh craft some correspondence to families again if anyone has any questions relative to their own students experience please ask the buildings um I feel like we are ready

059for it so I think there was a question one of the prior meetings I feel like there's been great preparation we've had several meetings where our entire body of of team has come together it our our technology team our directors Mr scan Uso's office and his directors principles assistant principles I mean it has been a tremendous undertaking teachers have been critical we did a wonderful job as buildings implementing the simulation I'm very confident giving even the students comments that we're going to be ready to go so we'll let you know how everything goes once uh once we return from our spring break there's really not much time before testing starts so as you know we're coming back back the 9th we are off on the e8th that Monday um that following week we're we're already

060looking at testing and it's really just kind of AUD study stream from that point forward um we have then the math in May and then we'll have some science Testing so again we will certainly let you know what our experience will look like but we will do everything we can to make sure our teachers are uh prepared our schools are prepared and most of all our students feel comfortable and ready to go with the assessments um Regent exam appeals uh you've heard about this before but just for the community's knowledge too there were five cycles of appeals that our our students were able to take advantage of um much due to the uh covid um you know components our last one was in August again when we looked at the numbers they ranged you had

061to have had a passing um course average and then testing averages between uh certain numbers 50 and 64 um Dr ronal was a tremendous partner in this we were we were reviewing uh pretty much a you know kind of a steady stream of of applications anyone who met the criteria the state um put out we we uh really approved all of them there was no reason not to so um you know those those did sunset in August so we are back to um you know kind of regular operations here but just in case anyone were to ask you or our community was wondering there were five cycles that were impacted with the last one being in August um on the next set of slides and again I won't go through every single piece uh with

062you you or with our community it's all here and uh on the slides for you but we did note all of our performance as it relates to all of our Regions exam so all of that again is there I will tell you and this is true of the three through eight even though we we tend not to and it's a dangerous sort of slippery slide to make comparisons um and all of you know this even when schools were ranked we were often times at the top but that is not I I don't like to really kind of put that out there because it seems like well then we're done we're not it's never finished it's a continuous cycle we do enjoy great success our students do a tremendous job the teachers and principles and our

063District staff I I give accolades because certainly that's all earned but we are continuing it is always about what we can do better um so again while there the numbers seem you know like they're strong they're you know we're on good footing and we certainly are it certainly is always about H how we can do more so what does that look like we have curriculum work in all of these areas you know you helped uh support the proposals that were brought to you as part of our curriculum Council review so that's certainly a part of it it's ongoing professional development with teachers and really it's hearing from kids what's been their experience what do you need help with what seems clear what other supports do you need so you all recall that long list of

064supports we talk about our learning Labs we talk about our AIS plan we talk about you know really a whole host of things we do for and with students that's all in service to supporting their academics but also their overall experience in these courses also and we can refer everyone to the speaker series what to do when your child is struggling in school so that is also available on the website because that was recorded yes abolutely and that's a key question because that's a tough one because oftentimes you know and you get to that level of of angst as a student and we always say to parents too if you notice something even if it doesn't seem significant please ask because we wouldn't want the struggle you don't want to sit with struggle whether it's

065a smaller struggle or something that's more profound please share it with someone because again there's always something that can help that person that student that individual move forward um sometimes it's just a quick check that's what the learning labs are for you're in it might be a particular concept maybe it's a homework assignment maybe it's something you know you're like I'm really grappling with this I don't understand or I just need my understanding checked a little we have things like that they are things that are more sustained if it's a little more sustained we have AIS we have support structures through RTI at the elementary school I mean the list we have it on our website it's significant there's something at every level there's something at every grade level there's something course you know at

066the course level there's a lot so that could be overwhelming too because what we don't want is someone to say like I want this service we know what the services are someone tells us what the concern is we're hoping to match the resource to the need so we don't want people to feel like they have to name it sometimes you know and sometimes you may not realize what all of these um you know components are but once they tell us it's our job really to match the resource with the needs so we can do that certainly we we speak about the passing and Mastery rates those again are up on the screen um generally speaking from a reporting standpoint again this is something that's important for all of you to know in our community we're

067in good standing with all of our our courses our subgroups all of the metrics that the state gives us we are we are on solid footing again it doesn't mean compl complacency or that we're we're settling it just means that we're in a good place right now always looking to do better um graduation uh rates and some of the information you'll notice we did Mark asbd or that we don't yet have um again as soon as we get it just like we did last year and in past Year's we will go ahead and update the presentation some of the information is just not yet available um often times and this is not the case right at the moment but sometimes we will get information that has to be embargoed and can't be shared publicly right

068now we just don't have this so and as soon as we do have we do have it we will let you know at the board table and we will update the presentation it will be in my community update perfect thank you thank you and then again you'll you'll notice again we we kind of put some tbte holding points and places for that um and same thing on this slide um we continue to have some really strong interest and course um enrollments in our AP courses so again we we do share that information with you I do want to make sure our parents and our community to know um and I would actually link this to some of our this slide too on our dual enrollment and advanced opportunities if you go on our district website

069and look at um Williamsville East Williamsville North and Williamsville South each one of them posts by Design our course cataloges it has every single offering in our district in each one of those three Publications there's a tremendous amount of effort that goes into to make sure that everything hopefully parents and students need um what are our courses what are The Graduate requirements but why I mention it here is you'll notice that there are symbols next to some of the courses those designate um if there is a partnership that we currently have with an institution of Higher Learning it's in the catalog um I will tell you we're we're always adding in that respect um I'm very pleased to say that over the course of the last many years we've had great Partnerships with our colleges

070and universities and we want to continue that um it is a wonderful thing for families um often times students are leaving with credit um that's a great thing or it's an interest area they've had so they've gotten a chance to really delve into some of the topical content area a little bit more deeply but um you know when it comes to tuitions and things of that nature um a lot of opportunity also lies in the fact that uh oftentimes either students are bringing credit with them into secondary institutions or um they're at a very reduced rate now so students can actually have that ability to um purchase that now at a very reduced rate which is also helpful to the families but I'm in talks right now I don't have can't share all the details

071at the moment but I'm hoping to add five more courses that we don't really currently have Partnerships with that I've been approached um by a CO local College to say could we partner so we're in the process of looking at that so once that comes to fruition hopefully um soon I will be able to bring more of that information to you but at last count we had over 60 opportunities and that's a lot and it's growing uh by Leaps and Bounds hopefully every here so um you know with that I will conclude the presentation and again just thank you all for your support but uh please know we're at uh everybody's disposal when it comes to providing information or support we are here um we look forward to more updates more accolades and and more

072efforts on behalf of students so if there's anything I can do or provide to you please don't hesitate to let me know so if there are any questions at well thank you very much Dr Bill we appreciate that very thorough very detailed a lot of information so thank you very are there any questions board members may have for Dr go ahead president um this isn't directly related to your presentation but I was just curious about an update in terms of the seals that we were looking you yes absolutely and I I will tell you um both seals the Seal of biliteracy and the Seal of Civic writin are uh ones that we've had significant conversation about and we are um actually um the directors and I the respective directors for those areas have engaged in

073ongoing conversation with Dr Brown Hall we actually have some information that we will be bringing um to our teachers and the WTA specifically for advancement of both of those but we are going to be poised and ready to implement them fully so we are excited thank you so much for the update absolutely thank you Dr L uh first of all Dr Bal I thank you for the many years of seeing your presentations they always uh thoughtful well presented and provide a great amount of information and I just you know one of the responsibilities we have as a board is resource allocation so I think about a wish list and you know all the things that you know you've talked students and parents and teachers about what they might need to further enhance our Student Success

074so you know over and above you know we have the AIS and we have the learning labs and AIDS and things AIDS in the classroom uh anything quickly comes to mind um it might be beneficial that we could think about thank you Dr liman well first I want to say and I and I thank you for the question but also to each and every board member uh Dr Brown Hall we are when I say most fortunate in our district to have the tremendous amount of support and res resources we do that is not an understatement I I appreciate everything we have when we're looking at um sort of more Forward Thinking and some of the resource allocations you're talking about what we're really trying to be thoughtful about is um I think the one piece

075I really see and this is something that it has to really be by Design is that um and I draw back to some of our Dei um goals and objectives is the student voice that we heard our students mentioned a lot of Endeavors that they're leading um that is something I think honestly and I I hear this from our teachers too is we all have an interest in doing it I think we have a lot of great examples about how it's currently being done is really looking for more opportunities to make sure that that's occurring so I think one of our Focus areas will certainly be to look towards anything that would allow us more time effort and energy being uh dedicated really to looking at student leadership and how we're supporting that so I

076know there was something that Dr Brown Hall and I talked about that again I'm hopeful to share with you soon um is that we are looking for opportunities for students to not only lead those Endeavors but to share with peers to share with adults so that we're actually hearing their voice and that comes a lot um also in their learning anything we can do to promote that student voice and choice is going to be really at the Fort and and really a lot of that's going to come based on conversations that we're going to be planning to have um kids at the center so I think I'll I'll I'll reserve the um right hopefully to come back to you with some more granular information but we're really looking to students to um really Propel that

077information forward for us board member Vian I have two questions one maybe really in the weeks um I saw in one of the slides that were list subcategories and one was K students with disabilities how do we def I'm just curious how you define that well there is well I'm glad you asked because actually there is a and we can actually list this and put it up on our website um the state defines it each one of those categories there's actually 53 pages of uh you know definitions sub categorizations you know metrics weightings it's actually quite complicated so um I would say it's probably best that I put the guide up because with each one of those even as far as the leveling system and the categorical aspects each one is very unique I would

078also say to you the way it's defined in one report is not necessarily the same it's defined in another so it's always helpful to be somewhat in context of what we're looking at so what I'll do is I'll post it because for this purpose it's actually calculated very specific speically and who it is um but it's also important to note who it's not because anyone who has a program other than um so for example our our students who are in our Nissa program so it does exclude some students so um I will post the the document because each and every metric is tied back to how it's calculated and each one is calculated differently and my second question is looking forward do you think there's going to be a renorming of conversion charts coming out

079of covid where they let's be frank were pretty favorable toward kids getting Mastery level and passing do you think there's going to be a renorming and if there is how will it affect these numbers if at all do you think I think I think it's a yes and a yes so there's already been a lot of renorming even before covid because every time we essentially have the presentation it always draws back to what is the context the charts are different the items are different the conditions are different the variables are ever changing and I think and because of Co the whole system could not be maintained I mean so frankly when you're looking at reporting it's really just taking us even this long and even from a state perspective we're not going to be on

080the same footing we be were before because the system was disrupted so it is not the same system the benefits of that is it's not the same system so all those that the opportunities we talked about you know the different ways of looking at progress and achievement that it's not just a singular item that it's not just one moment in time I think those are some of the benefits that are coming out of this absolutely everything has been having to be rebuilt so it's really going to be everything you just said so I think it's helping to redefine what what these things look like so I would look forward to more conversations about that great question all right and I have just one last question or comment can this um pres this metric and any

081other metric be combined to create a baseline to see how our di programs are doing in our district that is also another outstanding question because there is no one metric so the difficult part of it is when you take all of this in its entirety can be also overwhelming because there's so many different types of information so really it's up to us as as the practitioners of utilizing the information to be able to take the best of all of what we have in front of us and then make those conscious decis decisions about how to move forward at this point what we can do is do what we've done is share the information put a context to it and also keep those conversations moving forward about what programs we're offering how we're making our decisions

082and what more we have to do but the the hard part remains is that there is no one exact picture because the variables are so um different they're Ever Changing they're moving so it really is an ongoing discussion which is really something that I think it's something that all of us have to really um promote and and share with our communities there there really isn't one way to define it because there are so many ways and so many things that students do on a reg regular basis and for us it's how do we internalize all of that and make our decisions so really it's hard to point to one item and I think back to Mr Ban's point this is where the state is really going to have to help support us as districts as

083Educators in helping to say what do the full picture look like because I will tell you and I think all of you understand this is the system is not not what it was it won't be the same system we all knew or understood it's changing and a lot of it will not be numeric a lot of it will be performance-based a lot of it will be anecdotal a lot of it will be observational a lot of it will be um outcomes that are not traditional or stagnant or static for that matter so um all we can do is continue to speak to these things and inform ourselves and our public about what we have at our disposal and what you know really be very transparent about what we're doing so that is that is our

084approach thank you thank you thank you very much Dr B and we are going to move on um to Nick philipos presentation on the district website update I like to fade in the background I got to walk all the way to the front of the boardroom but for a good reason tonight um I am very excited to be able to uh provide this update to the board of education and to our community and this has really been a project uh 18 months in the making we we started our our website um redesigned really in the summer of 22 after we established the districtwide communications committee and then ultimately the districtwide um website subcommittee we started by reviewing websites locally regionally and nationally to get a look at what we wanted what we didn't wanted functionality

085tools that might be available navigation um that might better suit uh our our stakeholders here in Williamsville we also established non-negotiables um we ultimately signed a contract with final site in October of 2023 we got the thumbs up to start building in November of 2023 and that's really what we've been uh doing night and day a lot of long weeks long nights long weekends um but I'm proud of the work that our team has done uh in the Communications office what our Communications committee has done um as a whole and uh to get to where we are right now has been no easy feat um we did uh extensive reviews starting in December January February and again uh this month I'm meeting with the uh the K12 principles tomorrow during our regularly scheduled meeting to

086go over once again uh any information and updates and edits that we need to make prior to our launch um over the spring recess which is when we are targeting April 2nd and 3rd um is when we're hoping to flip the switch so to speak and go from the current site to the new site it takes a lot of coordination on the back end we have a phenomenal it team here in the district uh we're also working closely with bosis who is hosting our domains and also with our vendor final site the most important thing I want everybody to remember as we go through this process um and it's really high priority we talk about this often myself and Mr Morales who works in our Communications office the website is a working document it has

087to be constantly maintained and reviewed um edited and updated regularly it's not a set it and forget it by any stretch of the imagination if we set it and forget it we're really doing a disservice to our community and our stakeholders who go to our website to find information as easily um as possible so how do you kind of do that for the most part we need feedback we need constant feedback so once we launch in April um we'll welcome stakeholders to to send us emails and provide that feedback that way we can continue to make tweaks and edits leading into the summer um throughout the summer and then really have a strong presence a continued strong presence when school begins in September of 2024 we'll also be using Google analytics to track habits if

088there's updates and edits we need to make in terms of navigation and functionality we'll have those analytics at our finger tips um to to make those necessary items uh are necessary uh edits as we go along as it relates to the district domain the good news is the website address is not changing it will be Williamsville K12 .org the only change comes with our school websites how it's currently structured our school websites are subdomains they will now be their own separate domain so they will not live on the same server they'll have their own IP addresses own DNS server all those things um and I'll go through those I'm not going to read every single web address to you think everybody would fall asleep uh but the gist of it is that it'll be school

089name. Williamsville k12.org so here's a look at the elementary schools our middle schools I do want to note him elementary and himim middle will be himim elementary. Williams k12.org or himim middle. Williamsville k12.org that avoids any confusion and then our high schools as well so the big question is what were we ultimately looking for in a new website I'm not a doctor but needed a facelift and a pretty serious one um and we went with a very modern design um as you can see in the screenshot I know I'm not bringing it up live for you right now but um our ultimate goal in having a modern design was to also streamline and consolidate the information that our stakeholders were looking for if they can't find it in two to three clicks we're not doing

090our jobs and I know there's exceptions to the rules and there are some things um we have to click to get information but that was really our guiding principle from the very very beginning um was make sure information is easily defined um easy to navigate to and is there um with Clarity that way folks can find it as easily as possible again how do you do that well functionality across the board uh for us is Paramount whether anybody's on a desktop a laptop Tablet any type of mobile device there are nuances with websites and the platform that you're looking at them on but we also wanted to make sure that when they are accessing the user experience is not vastly different which it currently is um if you look at the current website on a

091desktop looks very different than it does on a cell phone the nice thing is throughout the process of building the new District website on the back end we're able to look at the website on different screens in different modalities so it was built on a desktop ultimately um but throughout the process we've been able to say hey what does this look like functionally and navigation wise on a cell phone what does it look like on a tablet and we've been a that's been a very good resource for us to use and I think one of the most important things to remember too is you want to be where your people are I think the majority of our stakeholders would probably first thing in the morning what do you grab your cell phone right and if

092there's an update um or information on the district website um we had that top of mind as well knowing that they would be navigating there whether it's a a weather closing an alert or whatnot um that they would be going to the district website to find that information right from their phone uh access accessibility um is also a big thing the nice thing about final site on the back end it has an ada8 Checker built into it so as we were building our Pages um we wanted to move away from PDFs we do have PDFs on our page uh throughout our throughout our website um but we wanted to make sure that we were meeting the needs of all our stakeholders not just some but all and that's really one of the most important things

093we were able to do and that was one of the very first things that we established with final Cy was we need to make sure across the board um we're Ada accessible for for all of our stakeholders we also wanted to um make sure that Google translate was integrated so at the top of every web page you'll see you have a social media links but right next to that in the text box is a link to Google Translate so 130 plus languages um at anybody's fingertips to translate the website which is very good uh throughout the process this too we met regularly with uh our our our team in the district office um our instructional directors directors of special education um also our building principles and administrators we met with their Communications teams as well

094um and the feedback that we got even in the communications committee meetings uh we needed quick links um customized across all the levels so that if there were high priority items individuals could access them fairly easily so across all levels regardless of whether it's an elementary school middle school or High School everybody at the top of the page will have their calendar their newsletter uh e alert opportunities to to either sign up or review the process for E alerts and then a direct link to WIS as well um at the elementary middle and high school level things get a little more a little a little differentiated to to a certain extent um and the elementary level three additional hot links and the Middle School are the same directory information uh the menu and then registration

095as well and that was direct feedback we asked them what are the high priority items that you routinely get questions about from your parents um from your community members who reach out to you and these were were the top three items that typically came up um at the high school level it differentiates a little bit and this is direct feedback we got from our students as well we know students don't regularly go to the district website but when they do they told us in our Communications committee meeting that it was Athletics and music and the course catalog that they were often searching for so student voice we always want to elevate that that was a key component of establishing uh or building the uh the high school Pages awesome one of the cool things we're

096able to do with the new District website as well is integrate calendars um so at the district level um obviously as many of you know we get questions about when's the next board meeting so similar to what's in the printed calendar uh we're able to integrate that digitally um on the back end through Google uh and final site so we'll have a calendar that folks can go to search for board meetings PTSA Council meetings sepsa meetings breaks marking periods Etc the same functionality will also be available to our schools um and it's School level events and it's very surface level as many of you know we did go through an extensive process and reimagining our printed calendar for Safety and Security concerns so you see at the very bottom of the screen please continue to

097refer to the witz event calendar for intimate details of of the inner workings of the school whether that's a field trip guest speakers assemblies those items will still remain behind secure portal on wids what are the ultimately look like you see it right here so on the left hand of the screen uh it's a summary of events five World populate automatically you can load more to look at more you can also on the calendar overview select a specific day um and it will populate the events on the left side you can also do keyword searches or searches for specific meetings so whether you're on the district level or at the school level you can search for board meetings PTSA PTA meetings sepsa meetings all those things um and they'll be there right there at your

098fingertips and that's one of the one of the pieces of feedback we wanted as or we received as well was a lot of folks go to the district website to find information on when meetings are when events are taking place um and this is easy accessible um and a great resource that we hope our our stakeholders are able to utilize to know more about what's going on in the district especially for board meetings um communication I am the executive director of communications and uh accessibility transparency are our top of priority for us uh on a daily basis um I know I get calls and emails and I'm I know our buildings do as well about hey I'm trying to contact a teacher I can't find their contact information that will now change we now have

099a fully integrated active directory where uh you can search for any staff member whether they're a custodian a teacher Aid a teacher myself um and their information will populate with the building they're in uh what they teach if they're a social studies teacher um uh it'll give their building location as well uh and they'll give their email and their phone extension so teachers do have extensions it doesn't ring directly in the in the classroom because you don't want to interrupt instructional time but it does have the extensions um listed there and even if you know first name but you don't know last name you could search it that way you could also do just a basic building search with without searching for first and last name and get the individuals who are in that specific

100building with anything it's a continuous work in progress right there are items that we are still working on on the back end uh top of mind is the street directory in its current form um it does not provide the opportunity to do a specific address search so if you were to search for as an example like 357 Anna Woods it would not give you an output you can only search by the street name so if you search Anna Woods it'll give you kind of a batch result uh as you see I know it's tiny on the screen but it says zero to 99,999 I know there's not 10,000 houses on that street give or take um but it'll give you a data set range and then it's incumbent on whoever's looking for that specific street

101address to know what the address is and if it falls in that data range it'll give you the um the schools of attendance that the house is zoned for so that's a work in progress we're continuing to work on the back end um with members of Mr scan Uso's office um student services and exceptional education they use that very frequently we also know anybody coming into the district they do review it to know what schools they're going to um I do get a lot of calls from uh real estate agents wondering wondering where houses are zoned for what schools houses are zoned for so we know that's top of Mind a top priority um for members of our community as well we're also working on uh an app a mobile app I love the functionality

102of the of the of the website um and of itself on a browser but we are working on the back end with final site to have a mobile app that's available to roll out um in the summer of 2024 so that's a work in progress as well so what are our next steps we're going to continue to work on the website up until we launch um and then we're going to continue to work on it after that we're not going to set it and forget it that'd be a bad idea um and we are looking for feedback even before we launch and what we'd like to do is host a 2hour test session with stakeholders we're looking for parents and Guardians students teachers uh main office staff as well because we know when parents can't

103find things one of their first calls is to to the school um and we want to make sure that uh when it comes to functionality and navigation tools that we're meeting the needs of our stakeholders this will give us somewhat of a baseline I know there's thousands of people who live in the district we're trying to get it down to 40 but any type of feedback we can get is good feedback we can't shy away from that um and stakeholder input is of the utmost importance so Thursday March 24th 21st uh from 4 to 6 PM um we're going to provide several prompts and an opportunity for folks to kind of get a backend look um and a and a preview of the of the website um to go through it see what works what

104doesn't what tweaks and edits we need to make before we form launch during the Spring recess if anybody's interested email contact at Williamsville k12.org let me know what stakeholder group you're a part of I'll put you on the list um and then uh early next week we'll follow up with uh with next steps we're also with the directory information we want to make sure even before we launch that that information is up to date and ready to go so the last week before spring break I'll send an email out to all faculty and staff uh asking them to just double check the directory information make sure it's right there's a lot of coordination that takes place from HR and IT that we'd have to get in order for any changes need to be made um

105but we've uh we've already made some small changes um but that's our goal is to make sure that that's up to date and ready to roll out and like I said at the very beginning very proud of the work that we've done um Michelle mckinstry who works at Williams North High School as a part of our Communications committee she's uh the career center coordinator at womenv North High School she's been a great resource um she's back in the district after leaving for for a short time but um I'm very Miss kinet can you press number two on there there you go thank you um she's been fantastic throughout this process uh not only from a staff member perspective but a parent perspective um as well with that I'll open it up to questions from the

106board any questions board members Dr s I mean is there any personal information or anything on the website that we should worry about no no there's no personal no other than teacher email addresses and extensions or uh staff member email addresses and and phone numbers there's no personal information so the website is pretty secure I'm guessing oh absolutely yes yes vice president go ahead yes thank you for the presentation and I know you say the office of communications which is a very small group so I know that your small group has been working very hard to get this done and on time so we appreciate all your hard work thank you Bo member Balia oh yeah it looks really good from what we've seen today um I just had a question about the what caught

107my eye I mean the app yes so you really have a goal of this summer completing it or is it I just think that that's wonderful I mean to be one of the first school districts to have an app where basically everyone goes to anyways rather than using Safari or Google Chrome that caught my attention I didn't know that was on the list and I think that's awesome I was just curious and I know it's you can't just say yeah I'm gonna be done yeah is that truly a goal like that is attainable the that is the goal yes that is the goal I mean there's things we've worked on on the back end uh with final site the goal originally was to have it ready when we r R out so it goes out

108in tandem um in April unfortunately things some things happen on the back end um with final sight that that's not able to to to happen but they gives us more time and an opportunity to make sure we get it right when it rolls out um and I'm not naive enough to think this is going to be the the perfect roll out we strive for Perfection Perfection is tough to tough to reach and Achieve um but we've worked uh like I said many long long days long nights long weekends um to make this as great of a website as we Poss can for our stakeholders and I'm really proud of the the work that we've done with the work of our committee um I know Mr mana and and vice president kasmar Bogner are on our

109Communications committee meeting as well or yeah Communications committee um and we've really worked at a Breakneck Pace to get the information from our buildings and from our directors here at the district office and all of our departments here at the district office to consolidate streamline make sure the information that is on the new District website is not just kind of a toss up um there needs to be purpose for it it needs to be intentional with everything that we do and the work we've done I think speaks to uh what the what the new user experience for for the K12 website will be and then just a follow question with with that moap the idea would be it's has everything that the website would have correct like and then mixed in with the schools or

110would that be would just be more of the district website it would be a district app right um we haven't gotten too much into the nuances of what the app will feature but knowing we have a district website and school websites I'm sure those will be customizable and able to um to be [Music] integrated any other questions is there any plan to add widths in the app too no no that would not not at this time Dr say the quick no right hard no absolutely so executive director filipowski thank you and your Communications office as vice president pointed out for all the hard work and developing and helping get this website to a place where we feel comfortable launching early April so thank you very much thank you for the phenomenal presentation Absol I'm gonna

111put her on the spot real quick Miss McKenry would you like to add anything as as a staff member and a parent who's worked on our committee is there anything you'd like to add not to put you on the spot um part part of the joy with the communications committee is that there were all the stakeholders we also had students something that um Mr Phil housy didn't mention we had students who came and they shared and some of the ideas the mobile app was actually first brought To Us by students um high school kids were like you know we really don't do websites um can you can you give us something else um they had some great ideas and it was a collaborative effort among everybody to put this together and I know from a

112committee standpoint we're just really excited to roll it out and see what the community thinks um because it's certainly going to be a a really nice addition to our district awesome thank you thank you very much thank you I turn it back over to you president Singh um thank you Nick and your communication committee did a great job we have a motion to recess the regular board meeting for the purpose of conducting the budget work session Dr Spicer Mr bascal U all in [Music] favor motion carries unanimously I would like to call the budget work session to order all board members are present Dr Brown Mr mki absolutely thank you very much president Singh I'm going to turn it over to our interim chief financial office assist officer assistant superintendent of business and Management Services

113Mr Tom matki a lot of the information town will present the board and Community have seen before but this is another view of it so thank you very much Mr matki thank you Dr Brown Hall uh so uh tonight we're going to continue on with our 2425 budget development process and and again um there are actually some significant changes that uh have happened um between our February meeting and tonight um both on the expenditure as well as on the revenue side um just for those who may not be familiar with the format um the first page here is on program continuation expenses it's those items that we need to maintain the current program we have in place today in the 23 24 school year um and the column uh more on the right side is

114a look forward to the following year 25 26 and that's like a place a holder for what we do expect or can expect at this time so getting right to the information uh I'm really going to highlight the changes that occurred and the first thing I want to share is uh in salaries um that was able to be reduced $250,000 from what we saw in February and that's a result of receiving some additional retirements um over what we normally do we are we already had about 20 retirements in that number which was just a little bit under $3.1 million if you look to the right to that 25 26 you'll see that that number is closer to 4 million normally and actually even higher in other years so that's why our initial number was lower

115due to those 20 retirements that we had um already taken into account um moving down from there um the social security has not changed uh however if you look at the health insurance line you're seeing that we have a very significant adjustment there uh reducing that by $2.3 million so what occurred um as you know we're self-funding in our health insurance and over the last two years we have had significant increases in the amount of expenses we've been paying that was continuing on through the first part of this year but that Trend seemed to drop down significantly um toward the end of 20 uh three and this continued into 24 so with that Trend continuing um and reviewing this with our consultant um we're able to make a $2.3 million reduction as I said there

116so that's significant our Bose number uh has not changed so that's the same number as was presented in February however the transportation number is increased $775,000 and that's due to the fact that we looked at our current actual Roots as of today at this period of time we projected it to the new contract as you all know we have a five-year agreement that takes effect with student transportation of America uh beginning next year in July and so we had to add that money to the this budget cyber security does not change but what that does do is it reduces our increase here to about 9.4 million which results in about a 4.19% increase so looking to our next page this is the enhancements that we're doing this has not changed from what was presented in

117February $ 9,520 uh representing um additions in our special education department uh to classes are going to be added at the high school one at the middle school and one at the elementary this is a new slide um we have for the first time introduced budget reductions um again we incorporated that salary reduction already and the health insurance into our continuation slide but this is over and above that uh so what we did to try and offset some of that Transportation expense increase is to reduce the pay down amount that is in our bu budget uh this will not have a long-term impact on financial planning but it does assist in uh bringing forward a a lower budget and a lower budget increase so what that does from a summary perspective um on the numbers

118you've got a uh continuation expense increase of 9,368 51 you have the program enhancements of $59,500 and now the $525,000 reduction um uh in that area so we have a new increase for 2425 of 9,352 571 a working budget 232 m745 74 4.19% increase but most importantly um I think if you look at the bottom you're going to see that we reduced the budget by 1.03% from what was presented in February so now I'm going to move to the uh Revenue side and I'm going to start with um really the information on our tax levy and I always begin there with the tax cap calculation I'm going to highlight three areas as I normally do starting with um that growth factor which is provided to us uh by the New York State Department of Taxation

119and Finance um that multiplies by our current year tax levy to give us a subtotal amount which then we add our current budgeted payment in lie of taxes to it for another subtotal amount which is a little bit uh about 143 million almost $400,000 um that's what we then multiply the 1.02% and that's really where many people refer to the tax cap as a 2% tax cap so that's the 2% cap piece keeping in mind that New York state had a CPI increase of 4.10% um last year which would have been applicable to the 2% so you're under by 2.10% um moving that forward um as the board knows I'm going to drop down to what is called the carryover last year we had a significant amount of foundation Aid increase so what we did

120is we did not use all of our tax levy and so that amount is available for this year um so that makes a total maximum increase of $ 5,659 th000 um taking this into account the expenditure side which you have seen and some other changes which you are going to see on the revenue side we're proposing now to reduce the levy for 2425 to an increase of 4,1 155,000 which is 2.97% and that is actually 26.5% below what the school district could Levy to our community looking at um the rest of the revenues um I'm going to go over this again uh in segments starting with um the state aid amount at the top there are two changes that happen to that um first of all uh we are anticipating that there will be some

121changes when the final New York state budget occurs uh there will be more dollars going toward school districts and and I think principally to the foundation Aid line so that has been increased in consideration of that based on historical information and what we're hearing from Albany by $646,000 at the same time uh I've mentioned in the past that I was going to look at building Aid and I did and I saw that we had some projects in there where we don't believe we're going to have our final cost reports filed because they're still ongoing there's still some contractors doing work on the security project so that's been reduced by 300 ,000 so we have a net gain though of 346,000 uh moving down our sales tax revenues have continued to be strong we received our

122January revenue from Erie County and so we're able to add 250,000 to that so now that's $1,250,000 we also um added an additional $800,000 in our interest earnings uh with consideration to a conservative estimate uh next year because we do think the interest rates will drop a little bit um but this this amount this 800,000 um should still be a a solid number for us and that's a $2,860 th000 total increase and then um lastly um we have a major impact here which is a reduction of the tax levy from what was provided in February of 1.3 million and so all of those items um continue to allow us to reduce the fund balance and the reserves as was previously stated so again tax levy increas is 2.97% uh and as I mentioned before the

123CPI was 4.10% so uh in summer summation here you're seeing that um you know again our working budget at this point is 232 mil7 4,574 uh our tax cap was at 4.04% % about 145. 6 million uh our proposed Levy is significantly under 144 M100 th000 or 2.97% and that we are 1, 154,000 below the tax cap amount and that was 204,000 below in February so I think the key number here that I want to share is working deficit we had almost a 2 $4 million working deficit in February and that is now zero so our budget is balanced we've included retirements as I started out with and we also have included the forecast for additional Foundation Aid thank you very much um as always very thorough thank you very much so now um I'm

124sorry Dr s you go I'm you don't have any questions quiet I'm sorry I just had one question like we'll be voting to use the capital projects money to fund the air conditioning project assuming it is passed how would it affect the Budget moving forward because we have to fund the capital fund again and we lose the money we getting on interest uh the capital reserves are as you said Dr Singh funded um with end of year fund balance every year is different every year is dependent upon you know the final amount of revenues that we receive and the final amount of expenditure so um you may recall that last year we had the controllers report and I emphasize that it's not really the budgets that matter it's what the actuals are at the end

125of the year so in looking forward to funding Capital reserves um if we save money on the expenditure side which we always try and do through everything you see bids and all the other items that we try to to maintain cost controls on uh and if we are able to receive some additional revenues that are over and above our budget estimates that provides us the opportunity to fund those reserves and um I I would say positively that I see that there um what I can forecast is what the reality will be because every year is different other board members with questions sorry into that youal talked and mentioned about it could be extra money at the end that we typically put into the reserve budget and again there uh do you believe there might be

126more options for enhanced revenue and then the other option would be can we instead of putting into the reserve budgets lower the tax levy going into this year I mean it's an option it's not saying we should do that I as an option to think about I think you're always looking at options to try and low the levy um what I would s say is over the last two years if this is the levy that goes forward we have been under what this board could have levied to the community by almost $4 million and you there is a loss of of future Revenue to a certain degree when you're under that because the compounding effect does not occur because those $4 million are not there so um having said all of that as a every

127year is different and you always have to be looking for the future you always have to be looking forward and say what happens if the sales tax revenue for example comes in lower for for one year or two years and that's why the budget has to have uh almost a multi-year look the numbers that you see are not just looking forward to one year they're looking forward so that if there's a negative adjustment hopefully it's not going to to be severe but you're able to do it without impacting the tax levy because you don't want to have to go out with the super majority of 60% um vote of a levy and and ask your community for that right yeah I I agree your point is well taken so thank you Mr thank you Mr

128matki thank you for this outstanding presentation so I'm looking at um bus transportation it says in in the packet they just has reviewed our current in District bus routes as well as our projected outof District bus routes to determine if the route numbers will be similar in 24 and 25 the district has experienced bus route additions when applying this information to the new contract amounts it is determined that an additional $775,000 is necessary for school bus transportation doesn't that seem like a lot a lot of extra runs and a lot of extra money I mean three quars of a million and my so my question is is that for the entire five-year contract that we have no it's for one year the reason why it's increasing is because we do have um some special education

129runs that are going outside of the district we do have private school runs if you have one child who enrolls in a private school and they're outside the district and they do it within the timeline we're required to take them even if it's one bus we always try and combine buying those as much as possible but it's not so one bus for one one child is about $770,000 a year understood even though it's um it's hard to hear um but my I I guess like you know this doesn't just come about I mean this is something that we've always had to provide and so why wasn't this built into the bid of sta um knowing this so if if you're saying at $775,000 how many additional runs do you anticipate and it's just going to

130be enough money to fund it it's I would say right now that that represents about 10 runs oh my God now what what we're looking to do at the same time is um every year is a little bit different we get enrollment numbers at the end of July and then we try and do bus consolidations and we try and do that the best we possibly can um it's important to know that once we do this increase the increases will continue but they're likely to be lower as you look forward to that 25 26 year you'll see that that number is significantly lower so this is kind of the year that we have to um add the amount that's going to sustain us in the future um the contract is a pricier uh it's it's not

131unusual for Williamsville it's just how it is out there uh drivers are still you know in short supply and what does that mean they're paying drivers now you know close to$ 25 $28 um you know per hour and they you know before covid that rate was around $20 per hour so you know when they did their contract they were not just thinking about you know what they're going to do to recoup those differences they're they're thinking about five years what they're paying and they also have to think about um in that dollar amount the bus replacement they're going to have to do 100% bus replacement you know I I shared with the board that the first bus came in last week and there's about 25 more that should be arriving before now in the end

132of the this school year and then into the summer but we have between you know about 150 buses that they service to us so all of that and that's not even thinking about the cost increases for electric buses when that happens are three times the cost of a regular diesel bus yeah I I understand and I'm going to keep beating this point that you know we've been we've always had to provide that kind of transportation and it seems to me like the the the company that won the bid I don't want to say low Ball but now they're trying to claw back an extra three4 of a million dollars for one year now so in future years are contract I know it increases every year is it a set amount or a dollar amount or

133is it a percentage of year toe that goes up I can I think I did not explain how the bid worked um really clear and and I can help you understand that the bid was not done on the number of roots that we have the bid was done by pricing and it was done on they give us a price of what it is to for each route and we apply Our Roots we control Our Roots so we're not being we're not being charged for what um they bid out number when we arrived at the bid estimate it was just that it was an estimate but the actual amount it's just like like I what I said on our actual general fund budget we have budgets and we have actuals so every year if we can

134cut bus runs then that number will go down well have we looked into that have we looked into consolidating bus runs I mean we can 5 to 12 grades 5 through 12 two t of a mile do the thing there's there's two issues there number one is what time does the bus get to school because if you lengthen the run and you trying to put more kids on a run and reducing it now that bus doesn't get to school on time and the second thing is if we have the runs that are closer to elementary middle they use the buses much more than high school if you try and pack those buses up believe me I've gotten the calls from the parents on the first week week of school and they say the buses are

135overcrowded technically you can have kids three in a seat that's not something that we really try we try and split the runs up and and that's what we do the first couple weeks of the year we you know we balance the loads but we we try and do it and we will try and cut costs but the reality is between this and all the other costs that are associated with Transportation it's just a large number thank you for your explanation just correct me if I'm wrong Tom parents still have time to apply to the district for transportation for the privates and the non-district schools they can still do that now yes they have weeks to still do that correct April 1 is the deadline one more thing that I think may help you um with

136the dollar increase although we're do we have to budget it ahead of time we get Aid on that too so our transportation Aid will go up it's just going up on a year lag so that's the positive side of this so so what's our what's the the total cost what's our end of that $775,000 going to be a year we normally are getting about 70% Aid you should have said that in the beginning thank you we have two more questions down there I just have a quick question about the private school one I know we have to give that are there buses that that we we have the route but no one's using because a lot of them they're all being that I'm just curious if there like ghost buses no we don't have any

137routes out there with that don't have kids on it okay and it's a 15 mile uh door too from the uh school of residence to the school the child is being bused to so if the distance door Todo is 14.4 miles that's another bus for a child thank you I I was just curious no I I was just going to comment you know is like when we were talking about stacking up bus routs I do do remember the phone calls and the emails that we were getting about kids arriving 45 minutes late because the bus route had been doubled up and they were delivering a child to a private school that they couldn't get into the school until a certain time and by the time they dropped them off and then got to the school

138our kids were coming in at 45 minutes late so I understand why we have to have a separate breast rout those emails are always at the start of the school year and there were many of those any other questions or comments thank you we will now have a public forum for Budget only anyone wishing to address the board in regard to the budget may go to the podium at this time okay would someone like to make a motion to adjourn the budget work session and public forum Dr Litman all in favor carries unanimously BR I hand it over to you for agenda items 6A 6B and 6 C thank you very much president Singh so my community update because we did have um a number of presentations this evening my community update will be brief

139and then we'll go right into to 6B and 6B will will be coupled with 6C 6C is not a separate presentation but it does talk about um the new capital reserve proposition so with the community update we'll start off and the reason we have these first two slides they all deal with the school calendar and that's because in the um questions the comments that were submitted to the board at cont contact Williamsville k12.org a lot of individuals asked if there was a way that we can either start school in August like many of the schools in the South do an in school earlier in June because uh some U members of the public in the community thought that we went to school too late in June and so um I want to just provide and

140I know it was a question from a board member the information from the state education department and school law right so when we talk about the school year I know it's easy for us as Educators in the school district as board members to think the first school day and the last school day of being the school year the school year and that term when it's referred in education law is really July 1 to June 30th right so that all encompasses the school year can students be in session before Labor Day what about before September first so education law provides that students must have full-time instruction begin with the first day of September in which school is in session so School cannot begin prior to September 1st when you look at the calendars though September 1st

141is always right around the uh end of the last week of August and it wraps into labor day that's why we don't start until the day after Labor Day what we can do in August though is hold our superintendent conference days and that's what we do so the last wednes Tuesday Wednesday Thursday in August we hold the superintendent conference days where teachers return and receive their professional learning and they do um professional learning at their school buildings can students be in session after rating day rating day is decided by the state education department and it is a day in June once all regions exams are completed and it is the last day for teachers and we have that on our calendar however the law does provide that instruction can be provided and counted after raing

142day it just has to occur before June 30th historically we have never done that as a district I don't know that any district has but it can occur after rating day however it cannot occur many days before rating day because the June region exams usually go up to the day before rating day so that's why we can't end school early in June like some southern states do they AR you know end the end of May beginning of June nor can we start in August this is all governed by state law and we follow that so this is just for anyone's reference it'll be in the community update and in board docs our speaker series we had the last speaker Series yesterday enhancing student learning through instructional technology and that video presentation um is saved and

143you can actually click the link to watch the video presentation that presentation and the previous one what to do when your child is struggling in school will both be housed on the district website and there will be references for our parents and community members that was the last speaker series of the school year we will start the new speaker series in October of 2024 our community Forum will take place on Tuesday March 26 at Casey Middle School following the budget work session as you heard the motion when the meeting started the budget work session will begin at 6:30 p.m. and the community Forum shortly after at approximately 7:00 p.m. in the Casey Middle School library our annual budget vote and School Board elections will take place on Tuesday May 21st at the North High School

144gymnasium from 7: am to 900 PM so we encourage all of our community members anyone that can vote even our students who are over the age of 18 18 or older to come out and vote that day we pride ourselves on the public support we get on that day we want to continue that total solar eclipse you know it's a funny story because when I first started in the district and this was July 2021 Mr Mark Percy at North set up a meeting with me through Nick filipowski and he said um Dr brownall I want to get your um mindset for the solar eclipse that's happening in 2024 I said Nick why you bring this man here he talking about three years later but I didn't realize how big an event it's going to be

145and I thank Mark Percy for doing that that forward thinking and planning because I feel very confident that we are prepared to provide our families and our students the glasses that are necessary the Forward Thinking of myself and the other superintendant to cancel school that day and we are working to look at what type of remote work we will have for our 12-month employees that day many of you uh may remember the Erie County Executive asked a couple of weeks ago for a business business to consider also which of their employees don't need to travel that day into the offices because we do um anticipate a large amount of um guests in our region during that time period um so we're planning ahead for that day and again I thank Mark Percy for being Forward

146Thinking and coming to me three years in advance to make sure we had this day marked on the calendar and there's been so much planning around this day I want to thank him I want to thank our instructional staff I want to thank Nick lowski for all the work so I said that to say um there will be no school on Monday April 8th we will be extending Spring Break by one day the student packets are being sent home on Wednesday March 20th well they'll have two solar eclipse viewing glasses and one flyer in sight and the faculty and staff packets are being sent the week of March 25th and they will have one solar eclipse pair of viewing glasses and one flyer our cak update so it's very important so our board members our

147uh uh families uh of students that are in our special education programming our staff members all received the thought exchange survey we are looking for great feedback from all of those special education stakeholders that will really formulate and give us ideas and thoughts to fuel our vision and our mission that is taking place with our special education strategic planning team so please make sure that you check your spam and junk folder for your QR code and the survey link just to make sure it did not fall into that because everyone that received that we really do value your opinion and want to get that information from you at our last meeting that was held on Monday we clarified roles regarding cak and the Strategic action Planning Group and task force we gave updates on lighted

148up blue for autism awareness and ified athle Athletics presentation I know Mr buan presented that and our next meeting is scheduled for April 15 it is pushed back a week because of the spring recess and the solar eclipse a reminder and I do Dr bellan covered this in her presentation I wanted to make sure we had this slide in the community update also the New York state grade three to three through eight testing dates from the last board meeting I wanted to make sure we included the summer school dates also Elementary and Middle School July 9th through August 19th at Transit middle school high school summer school will be held at WHSV East July 8th through August 20th and the special education summer school will be located at high Middle School July 8th through August

14916th I encourage parents to make sure you're talking with your school building because for the elementary and middle and high school summer school will not be every day for most of the weeks it will be Monday through Thursday technology 2026 so what is this so we are forming a committee and we're really looking at what will technology look like in our classrooms or what technology will our classrooms need for the future and so when we have that year 2026 looking forward we want to know what will be necessary in our classrooms we know that our interactive white boards that our in the classroom many of them um cannot be repaired any longer the parks are not being made for them so we're saying if that is the case what are our teachers going to be

150using that will also be student friendly in the future so we are forming a committee with teachers with administrators with District staff to really look into that and so I want to thank both excuse me Tom matki and Dr bellan for as a cabinet members leading that I know um assistant superintendent skan department is is in that and I also know that HR is in that to look at what type of Technology will need an HR to really be forward facing with our employees also the international Society for technology and education many of our staff who are instructional technology coaches will be attending that conference along with the foundational educational technology conference to really understand what's out there what we need to be Forward Thinking about especially when we're preparing pring our classrooms for the

151technology that they will need in the year 2026 and that is a community update so are there any questions about the community update thank you board members at this time I am going to turn it over to our interim assistant superintendent of finance and Management Services to discuss information and updates for our elementary school air conditioning Capital project Tom I'll turn it back over to you thanks Dr brownall uh so as the Board of Education knows um uh we have a capital project that was actually approved uh back in 2022 um I thought that to begin this presentation we should start with going back to that period of time and reviewing what the goals were when we were planning the project and they really were uh three major goals one was to provide air conditioning

152at every classroom in the district that did not currently have have it we also wanted to improve ventilation remember we're coming off of covid-19 uh ventilation and filtration combined and we wanted to make sure that the new systems were Energy savings energy compliant um in the end um the final goals were that um we were going to really concentrate on the elementary schools and we got there because when we did our initial cost estimates they were so far above what we were were thinking we could do to the community without having an impact to the tax levy that we decided to do this in the phased approach um we also know that we were improving the uh ventilation and the filtration so that was being done uh we were getting Energy savings and um at

153the same time uh we were doing some uh what we call case work or Cabinetry replacement at the elementary schools along their window walls uh you may if you're in the buildings you know those walls those cabinets were original to the building so the old units were situated there they needed to come out so we're going to remove them and put in new Cabinetry so what did that proposition look like um it was approved on May 17 2022 um it utilized three as reserves um for about 23 almost 24 million as you can see uh we were adding uh two years $1.5 million in each year the 23 24 and 24 25 years uh of budgetary outlay and we were also including um a debt amount a new debt amount of about 37.7 million for

154a total proposition of 64 million 9,318 so with that approval uh what we did is our Consultants our Architects our Engineers they started to go forward after that may vote and do the planning the design all the information all the details that are required to do two things submit to the New York State education department for their review and approval and secondly to allow us to provide documents for bidding we received our approval from the New York State education department this past October 6th we went out to bid on the 23rd and we opened bids on December 5th uh those bids were well over our budget and as a result um we requested on January 9th that the board reject the bids so having said that um we were 22 M92 684 or $64 um

155over budget and that's an estimate and remember that total proposition was about 64.1 million but the reality is all of that proposition is not just for construction expense it's for all the EXP expenses the construction budget was about $53 million so we're we're almost 50% over budget so what we did what determined the bud budget overages well it really started with the severe lack of construction workers in our area this started before this but it was uh really accelerated with the fact that we've got some major projects going on um below you'll see what they are and the major one is the Buffalo Bill Stadium $1.7 billion worth in growing um so the labor costs were twice as high as what we expected um we had a lot of second shift work put into the

156project so that we would not impact our education program uh in the buildings um and that was um extending the work timeline and it basically reduced efficiency and we heard that back from our contractors upon talking with them after the bids were received and of course material costs were higher we're not alone in this um you can see I listed an article from the Buffalo News many other our neighboring school districts have had different situ or had similar situations so what did we do um four-step process step one was looking at ourselves and so what we had to do is review and redesign and do value engineering so the keys to lowering our costs were to review our system designs really ask oursel the question can we do it better less expensive uh reduce the

157amount of Labor work that was incorporated to put this in review the specified materials um review the equipment specifications um and then also think a little bit out of the box and then develop bid reduction alternates so the design changes that we have added um these are just a few of them I'm highlighting using exposed duck work so if you go into many buildings you'll see the commercial look it's the round exposed duck work by doing that we're saving labor we're saving expenses because everything else was above the ceiling so just as in this room you see the ventilations that was how we planned it when you take the ceilings down that's expensive you also run into conflicts there's a lot of things above these ceilings that we don't see wires cables other duct work

158some stuff that's Electric it's all up there and it all would have to be reviewed and moved and that costs money so we also did we're going to reduce second shift work how are we doing that that's Thinking Out of the Box we're going to use swing space in the schools this will be a little bit inconvenient for the elementary schools if this moves forward but it's doable and it's only for a short period of time because the thought process is that they can do two classrooms at a time and that should take about a four-week period of time then the people go back into their classrooms and then the uh they move on they move on to a different uh two more classrooms so we're also eliminating um equip some equipment buildings that we

159put together um initially every every school had an out building that was built for the chiller systems as well as the heating systems they were going to be put out there we went back we redesigned the way that they are going to fit in the building we eliminated three of those buildings and we were able to reduce the size of others and then uh again efficiency on Duck work by redesigning where we're putting the the equipment on the roof we can reduce the runs and that saves money the second thing uh that we did step two is to uh add bid day alternates we always have bid day alternates but we had to add some deduct alternates here and in this project um I want to stress the last item first we hope that we

160don't have to take any of these we want to award 100% but we have to do this in order and we have to share it with everyone to be transparent as well so the areas that are not interrelated that can be separate systems are what you see here so it's gyms cafeteras libraries kitchens um removing boilers um or the heating systems from the schools uh and just leaving the chillers and leaving their original ones and um removing the hot water systems step three is the part that we're now talking about additional funding so what you're seeing here um is that we would add capital reserve dollars from these reserves um these are some of these are the same but most of them are different from what we done originally and uh the keys here are

161what I highlighted by using the reserves you're not impacting the current or future tax levies you're not impacting the budget you're not impacting um the budget in the future um what you are doing though is you're right now with this type of allocation you're using up pretty much all of our Reserve dollars now it can be built up again but it will take a little more time so it could have an impact on a future Capital project step four is to add a budgetary outlay um $3 million one time 2425 the upcoming budget that would be voted on this coming May um this won't increase the budget because it's a reallocation uh we would be moving dollars from the um the debt service line to um the budget outlay this would be a single year

162as I mentioned it would have to go back in the next year in 2526 it's available due the board may remember last may you approved a um a pay down of debt that pay down has allowed us to have a lower debt payment and as a result of that um we can do this but as I said it has to be transferred back to pay for this debt in the air conditioning project that 37 million dollar that's still there um as well as uh any future debt that you may want to do in a future project so um we had one more item here that we wanted to look at if we're adding dollars to the project when we began this project I mentioned how we're replacing the casework um that's basically three rows of

163tile there and a lot of these classrooms and the elementary school were built in the 60s they have ASB bestus floor tile it's not necessarily hazardous but it's something that we should address and this is the time to address it if you want to do it right you remove the floor tile in the classrooms so when we considered adding dollars we said let's do this right let's add some dollars that allows us to remove the Elementary classrooms as best as floor tile so what that does is it brings us to what would be a total uh proposition um that would be $22 million 960,000 uh you would be considering this up until the March 28th date and making a decision there and if it is something that the board wishes to move forward then the

164proposition would be on the 21st of of U May and again um there's no impact to the budget to the tax levy or future tax levies in doing this so what are the pros and cons of doing the additional funding well on starting with the pros certainly we're adding air conditioning in the elementary schools as was originally um agreed and approved in the proposition um again no impact on tax levy tax rate future budgets um and it's probably the one time window that or the only time time window we have to do this at the current costs um and then we're doing the asbestos replacement on the flooring in the classrooms on the con side we're using up pretty much all the reserves so that's that needs to be stated um the costs have increased

165exponentially um the fall bid pricing is not assured either but it's a shorter timeline um and the funding doesn't guarantee that all the work can be done that's why those bid deduct alternates are there so what are the other Alternatives if we don't do the funding certainly um you could do three buildings without doing anything more and then you have the question about what three buildings do you want to do secondly you could postpone the build the project indefinitely uh and wait to see what happens after the major capital projects are done you could proceed with the current funding and and do three buildings and then maybe Midway through the project see what the market looks like for labor and go out and possibly do more funding or decide that that's where you want to

166end and then lastly you could just abandon the project completely so with that um we're at the point where um if we do this new funding it's $22 m960 th000 I know I'm saying this several times but it's it's important um it would not impact our budget it would not impact the tax levy it would not impact the tax rate and it would not add debt in the future um it would allow us to do replacement of those best as tiles in the schools and um right now if you if we do this it's probably the very best opportunity you're going to have to complete this project at the current costs uh high as they are but at those costs [Music] thank you very much Mr matki that was a lot and so and this

167is why we put it in the board packet on Thursday for a preview right but now is the opportunity for board members to ask any questions I believe Dr Singh wanted to go first I just had one question for the $3 million would it be part of the next year's budget line yes it would be moved from the debt service line to the um the line that would be for 2425 for budgetary outlay and if you look at the budget if this were to happen um when it's presented it would actually be 4.5 million and the reason for that is if you go back to the very beginning we already allocated 1.5 million so we're able to do it we're able to do it because of the pay down onetime shot would this one put

168us over 3% increase there would be no there would be no increase on the tax levy it would be the 2.97% that I said That Remains the Same that does not change with this and is there any chance you'll get additional State funding for the increase in this project the state funding is always based on Final expenses so the way that works is if you do all the work um it's it's us this is going to be a three-year project so if I go forward to 27 28 when it's done and you file your reports 28 29 is when you get the first aid on this project Wow have a question then uh the Dr Litman asked the percentage of Aid right now it's at 66.5% Mike you wantan to go go ahead um thank

169you Tom uh so how long does it take I I might have missed it to repay this uh money and what interest rate think we'll borrow it at are you talking about the capital reserve or our debt that we would be the debt the debt is uh the way we do that um Mr Mana is we take out Bond anticipation notes short term uh for what our cash flow needs are throughout the project and then if we have dollars available before those notes fully mature into a bond which would be at the very end we do pay pay Downs so we try and reduce the dollar amounts every year so we balance in that way two Financial items balance number one is looking to the Future doing a pay down of the debt so your

170bond amount will be lower your your interest payments that you're paying over basically 18 years will be lower and to funding Capital reserves which are helping you offset the amount you're going to borrow from the beginning so those things are are kind of intertwined going right to your question what are the interest rates right now I can tell you that at raa1 rating um about $30 million was just taken out at about 4% now that will change by the time you're looking at this but that was the rate that that's currently out there right now and if we draw down all the capital reserves let's say there's unanticipated cost which surely there will be what do we do we either get the money from somewhere else or do we just pair down the project oh

171that what would happen is when we do bid Awards um we're buying it at that time everything's locked in and so the way that this is structured on the financing end with and and especially that additional um $3 million budgetary outlay um we have considered a 25% this is normal a 25% um um I would say it's for constru construction estimates and change orders within the project budget so it's already accounted for is is really the answer thank you if we move forward what percentage of the project do you think will this maybe on what percentage of the project will be done with that funding all I believe 100% And the reason I say that is because I'm always a little bit conservative but the only thing I will say is that the construction um

172is really in a weird place right now yeah and that's why we have to have those bid alternates but we would if anything's going to come out it's going to be the non-instructional spaces first right that's that's our goal like the libraries would be the first thing to be added in that's where kids are a lot we probably would leave the gyms out a little bit because they're big spaces anyway um and the auditoriums that's another one where you know if we had to we might have to take those out but there's few not every Elementary even has an on so that's how we would look for it but I I do think we're in a position with these numbers to try and do the whole project thank you okay Mr BC Yeah you mentioned

173about the capital reserve balance being depleted is an estimate how long would it be to to build that back up in the future and I know it's an estimate I know it it's not an exact science right and and I will answer that in a in a very brief way there's a lot of complicated factors that you all know about so if we can have about a five or six million dollar on in fund balance on an ongoing basis um as I said you then have to make a determination on what's the financial benefit of putting it in a reserve or splitting it between a reserve and a Debt Pay down and what is going to create the most savings to the community if interest rates are high you want to do more of a

174pay down right so that in the long run your community is not paying that interest if it's if the interest rates fall down you want to put it in your reserve because that's going to make the future borrowings less because you're not going to have to use borrowings to fund the project so that's the answer I think that you can blend it um and as far as timeline we've got about you know $38 million in our reserves right now um and and there will be a little bit more this year so you're probably talking about a seven seven eighty year period um if things go the way they have right now with today um to get them back to like a 38 to 40 million dollar level and how does that affect and not to

175say we're going to do one anytime soon after this but uh capital projects in the future then I mean you have to raise that I mean you're looking um again our district has been very proactive and using reserves as you all know and that has helped really allow us to do more work than what we actually could pay for if we're only using our level Debt Service because that's another factor of the financing plans we don't um increase The Debt Service um when we go for a new project like other schools do we say when our debt is paid off we have more capacity we then do a project so um having said that I I think again it's going to be based upon timing it's going to be based upon the the dollar amount

176of the project if you want to do a $10 million project you could probably do that very quickly you know three four years if you want to do a $50 million project now you have to consider you know what's your debt load what your leveraging is on your on your debt um and then you know maybe there's some options within the budget that are there that you could transfer to ad debt without increasing the budget or the levy too so there's some Financial ability to do some of those things okay and just uh one last question I don't know if Mr M can answer this but ultimately if it we if it was decided not to move forward with this extra budget I mean essentially who's deciding or or we do the alternative I should

177say that who's deciding the uh what three schools are getting done you know I'm I'm it's an honest question actually I know we're all laughing but but ultimately I mean we are representing our constituents and that is you know as I took this in and we knew a couple days ago that that was a big question of mine I won't say a con it is a concern but you know obviously as you mentioned as alternative funding if it's not increased and I guess that technically falls on us or br maybe I I I would have to I I'm serious that's that's a question I had who that that would need a lot of study it it would right we need a lot of study and a lot of conversation on what recommendations would be brought

178to the board and why right so study um conversation and understanding why the recommendations would be made for three schools as opposed to these other three schools right and I don't ask that to be rude or just I know oh no no no question true question to make sure we're making the right decision by March 28th let me tell you when Tom and I went over and we we discussed I mean we discussed these things right and I'm like now who would make that decision I'm looked at me he said probably you the board I'm like yep absolutely so yeah so these are discussions we have and I I said it jokingly like Tom you know but I know right and so but that's something as elected officials you all would definitely have to be

179involved in that and would have to approve prove those three schools being the ones that we move forward with and that that is a lot of a lot of thought that would have to go into that don't yeah say my joke tied into that is that could impact uh open Ram in in some of the schools down the road too but I guess my question just for gathering information um we do have some schools now that were built with air conditioning Transit Middle East High School Edition okay a little bit in North High School okay so because I just want to get that you know Clarity and how's it determined um you know when air conditioning is set and at what temperature and I guess the other question is how often is the air conditioning

180used in reality we normally uh turn the systems over because they're uh you have to have heating or air conditioning in most of these buildings um in based on forecast weather forecast to be very honest so in September it's usually turned over you have to have heat in place by September 15th I believe that's SED requirement and then in the spring again it's weather forecast it might be it's probably around the second week of May when we started doing the air conditionings on and the coolers on those systems get them we get them going a month yeah okay that's a short period of time technically and just to tie into that though and this has been talked to not just by school districts by legislators of of certain temperatures now almost like snow days with

181heat days yeah yes I mean that worries me too thinking of the future because if you don't have air conditioning then all of a sudden you're canceling school you're running out of those 180 days just that thought as we're thinking about all this Mr bu this may go without saying but Tom you don't Envision a time that if we put this off that's going to be any cheaper it will just go up exponentially correct yeah I know one of the when we talked about it initially part of that was the availability to have summer school in an elementary school building which we do not have the capacity to do now correct any other questions Tom could you highlight just information on the new capital reserve proposition that is also um just information sharing sure so

182so that Reserve is a standard um 18 years uh 39 ,500,000 uh it as you see um the we've used a lot of our reserves and the New York State controller's office um has said and this is the interpretation in law that once you utilize you fund a reserve to its maximum and then you have the community in this case approve expenditures from it you can't refund that same Reserve Reserve it's considered um uh extinct at that point so that is why we need to continue to have new reserves and that's why you saw in the presentation I had all these different years listed because those reserves are now at the point where they're totally exhausted this Reserve would allow the district the ability to do just what you were all saying putting some more

183funds away the the last Reserve that we have which was the 2022 Reserve has about I think about 14 million doll left in funding in that Reserve so to get where you're all thinking which is up to about you know 40 million you need a new Reserve thank you very much Tom thank you very much for all of the information you share tonight which is a lot and a lot to think about and we appreciate you providing all that information thank you very much president sing I'll turn it back over to you um moving on to student calendar would someone uh like to make a motion to approve and adopt the 2024 2025 student calendar has presented T I'd like to make a motion to amend the calendar as it is well I think you

184want to make the motion to take from the table the motion to amend yes right I'm sorry yes I'd like to make that motion a second Dr Litman the table the table the amend um any discussion um yeah i' just like to put forth the idea that we should add in the Jewish holiday that's falling during the school year this year and that I guess the arguments for this are manifold and I've made them before but I will make them again if we truly believe in Dei this is a no-brainer uh that we we can't speak out both sides of our mouths we've added other holidays I don't see how we can not use use this holiday um this is a high performing district and students and parents will most likely I guess this goes

185back to the data that um our vice president astutely asked to see about student attendance on those days um I don't think that's an accurate metric just because of all there's so many different measurements some parents would be like no if there's school you got to go it depends on how religious you are it's it's a very different thing um and again if we're going to honor some students we have to honor all the traditions and cultures inside of our um district and this is going to sound silly but I think we need to be on the right side of history and accepting everybody in our district who is represented and I guess those are the the strongest arguments that that I have come up with I have a question what was the Dei committee

186uh sense of this right and so when the Dei committee received the letter requesting that it was a request to substitute rash Shan of from yam kapore so we don't substitute um uh holidays and so that is why the Dei committee did not recommend it in the initial resolution and the Dei committee said let's talk to the board about bringing a motion to actually add rashash only for the 2425 school year not like the other resolution was to have those identified religious holidays continue because we'll have yum kapor after 2425 that falls on a school day so the recommendation from the Dei committee was to bring the calendar to the board and then the board could pass a motion to identify rash Shana for the 2425 school year as October 3D any other comments well

187I just say you know I I support Mr Ban's uh key points and I know we look a lot at data uh knowing talking to Jewish students and their families not all of the students take uh the holidays it's similar to the achievement data not every student is reported so not every absence is reported I think uh it's a oneye Exchange in for Holiday we would have if the calendar was different so I don't think it changes too much but I do think it has value for uh all of our Jewish students the Jewish faculty and the community in general to support the EI that every uh area is included may I say something yes and I just want to keep in mind that we will still have more than the 180 um required days

188and we will still have five snow days if rash Shan is identified and this is only because I know Mr buan expressed last time that asked the Dei committee to reconvene and look at it for years in the future but that's not being considered now only thing that's being considered is for the 2425 school year so we will still have more than our 180 days and we will still have five snow days I just want to make sure we we say that I think the other thing is it doesn't cost us anything it doesn't hurt us it doesn't hurt student achievement it doesn't mean we're losing days I'm sorry go ahead I think Mr bu has a lot of valid points um but it does hurt from constituents I've heard from it does hurt their

189family pocket uh discussing days off and family care and you know babysitters um and that's what I take into account and I've heard from a lot that already have expressed it's just another day I have to either take off or pay ultimately that's what I hear I'm just saying so it's just m wner yes um as I've said before so I'll keep it concise this time um I think the difficulty here in is really truly honoring all of our stakeholders there's no way that we could possibly observe every single religious or cultural observance that happens in this District so it's making those decisions which ones are we going to observe we had a process in place to have the Dei committee look at that and make recommendations to the board um and this one was

190not recommended by the Dei committee so that is my hesitation at this moment lman I say was there anybody representing Judaism on that committee do we know of and and I just want to be clear that there we did not pick or individuals on that committee weren't representative of any religion the individuals from that committee when the board members referred that recommendation or that question that came from a community Forum where a parent asked how do they petition the board to have a religious day off that was referred to the Dei committee the Dei committee formed the Dei calendar subcommittee because the Dei districtwide committee was not formed to look at issues of that nature it was to develop the Dei plan for the district so when we inquired of members of the Dei committee

191that would be interested in being a part of the Dei calender subcommittee that's how we got members we did not seek out members that represented individual religious organizations and the way the recommendation of the days came about was because those were the ones that we looked at the attendance data for and because those were the ones that were headed to the governor's desk to be considered now I do know that the yam kapor and the rashash were not considered because many of the legislators thought that schools already had those days off this is what I heard from a state official that they thought schools had those days off because so many schools do now we do give yam kapor off and that is a Jewish holiday and we've done that for a number years right

192yes and so that is why so I'm just giving you the reasoning and the rationale why the Dei committee handled it the way it did it wasn't an oversight it wasn't neglect however these were the things that were considered yeah doesn't mean it can't be changed that's what we're discussing now absolutely to Mr Ban's other point that he made at the February meeting asking that he be sent back for the Dei committee to have consideration of rash shaa I just think think that it would send such the bad message if we don't give this holiday off it would make this District less welcoming to the Jewish staff faculty and students and that is just to me not the message that we as Williamsville want to spend send out to the community do other districts have

193this day off or would be one of the few um I'm we studied uh and I know the school districts that we studied I believe uh I know New York City has off but I believe the Brighton school district also has this day off or they have yam kapor I'm not sure which one and I'm not sure how they're handling it for next year Dr BR just one question so what is the process to have this considered by the da committee for the next calendar right and so that is something that board member buan will ask the board to send that back to the Dei calendar committee for the 2526 school year any other questions comments okay all in favor of amending the 2425 student calendar to observe jashana sorry I missed I missed one

194okay there was second discussion so okay all in favor of amending amending the 2024 2025 calendar to observe rosha [Music] Shana uh two three four five six seven uh the motion carries 7 to two thank you you gotta ask for yeah anyone opposing opposing not opposing no yes no abstain anyone abstaining obain so the motion 72 is that a further discussion on adopting the calendar has amended oh I just want to comment reading through this uh under Memorial Day recess I mean all the other holidays don't have recess after it so I don't know if we need to include the word Memorial Day recess because it's a regular national holiday anyway so it's up to you guys oh you're talking so let me just go where you're talking you're talking about 6D says Memorial Day

195recess on the calendar yeah the one I have printed out um does you say that this a spring race yeah but there's a difference between a holiday and we have President's Day we have you know okay indigenous people all of the others don't say recess on them just all right we will score that's ABS we will change that to Memorial Day yeah just consistent absolutely El great is mean we back again is any I just wanted to clarify that will mean that um October 3rd will be noted as a superintendence day correct it will yes so teachers will be reporting correct it will be uh superintendent staff development date correct be happy to get it um is any further discussion on adopting the calendar as amended all in favor of the calendar has amended I

196think you did this right yeah approve second right we just did this yeah we did we did the voting we did the motion last time yeah we did that okay then moving on to the next item the president did we get a vot have to vote on it voted on we got we didn't get the original motion because Mr buan um moved to take it from the table before we voted on the original we we motioned and second the original we so we we have to go back to that yes okay to the first second and then yeah right so talking with the first one okay sorry is there a further discussion on adopting the calendar has amended all in favor of the calendar has amended opposed abstained we already did that you got to

197ask no this is for this is for the full calendar as amended yeah this is abstained I'm voting no on the full full calendar no okay X 711 okay motion carry [Music] 711 moving on to president's report the onboarding committee meeting will be held on in April the date is to be determined Community Forum will be held after the special budget work meeting start times at 7:00 in Casey Middle School library after school with staff conversations with the board will be held on Wednesday March 27th in the South High School cafeteria area :30 to 4:30 p.m. and a board of education Retreat will be held on April 24th Sak uh student Forum with the Board of Education will be on Monday May 20th other events are and and building visits are listed in board dogs

198any board member questions comments regarding the events or building visits he's got right I believe that officially we are supposed to speak at the board meeting about our visitation so I'm just um I'm just uh saying that we did visit um Maple East and maple West uh we were actually able to see uh a new phonics lesson that was taking place at Maple East um which I know Dr Balon had presented about the ELA curriculum I believe it was in September so it was it was a wonderful visit being able to see that instruction taking place and all went well in the visit lman and just so you know I do plan on attending the visits at Heim Elementary Heim middle I'm not on the list there it's a short walk from the house and

199thank you uh Crystal for filing the report item 7B through 7 I 7B vot candidate information is available if interest please reach out to District secretary Lin carry 7 C annual vot V information is also in board dogs 7D policy Review Committee 8,000 committee will meet in the coming months date and time to be determined 7e and 7f ECB and nisba items are in BO dogs Mrs kasmar Bogner will be attending the nsba virtual conference on April 6th to 8th any questions or comments regarding any other ECB or nisba items Miss pul yes I attended the delegate assembly meeting um for which we did not have a quorum but we did vote um remotely as is uh allowed for in the bylaws um so we did pass the Bose budget there will not be a

200dues increase for board membership to bosis again and for the 10th year in a row so I think you mean ECB correct yes yes correct sorry is at the Bo's campus so sorry but um the next e the next delegate meeting is on the same date as our annual meeting um in May so um I have already said that neither myself nor our alternate would be able to be there so we will no doubt be able to do remote voting again for that one um continuing on on 7g i1 bosis calls for nominations nominations for 81 bossies Board of Education must be received on or before March 18th we'll make our nominations during agenda item 515a 7 a iie1 B's annual meeting notice and vote all 19 component school districts are required to vote on

201i1 boss's budget and I One boss's board candidates in the third Tuesday in April 7 I under board leason assignments school notes from our meetings are in board dogs does anyone have anything to repeat under leason assignments um correspondence pleas no correspondence was received since the last meeting and items 9 through 13 minutes Personnel business and finance exceptional education special needs and Student Activities and District facilities and support services may have a motion to approve the agenda items 9 through 13 has presented Mr Mana miss pulan any discussion all in favor motion carries unanimously on behalf of the board congratulations and welcome to Michael Kelly the newly appointed assistant superintendent of finance and Management Services well thank you so much I really appreciate U the unanimous vote um this is a tremendous opportunity and uh

202what I'm very much looking forward to and you know I was I was driving here and I have a couple of quick stories my daughter is a freshman at Duane University in Pittsburgh and I hadn't talked to her for a few days so I called her up and I was talking to her on the way down here and she said you're going to the Williamsville Board of Education meeting I said yes she said you know what I'm thinking I said no she said well that was the last soccer game I ever played was against Williamsville North I lost and finished my high school soccer career against Williamsville and I saidwell I'm sorry that's a bad memory she said no because this is a really good thing for us she said remember if you uh if

203you can't beat them join them and so uh here I am today uh joining joining the Williamsville team and family so I thought of that and uh everybody was so welcoming to me when I came in today and you know it reminded me of a popular quote that everybody's probably heard before um there's no such thing as strangers only friends you haven't met yet and that's the way I really feel here and I feel a real connection to Williamsville because for a long period of time I worked at 6350 Main Street uh at Gateway Long View as their CFO and every day I would come into Williamsville and I really felt part of the community so in a way this is a real homecoming for me and uh you know a place I'm very comfortable

204with and very much looking forward to being part of this group so thank you so much and I'm looking forward to working with all of you welcome Michael thank thank you very [Applause] much pict oh yeah [Laughter] at this time I would like to thank the following retirees for the service to the district Susan sence teacher at H middle school for 34 years of service Jesus wow been R's elementary teacher at himim elementary school for 33 years of service and gain slma clerk typist from East High School [Applause] Y is there a motion to take from the table policies 2110 3110 5140 5321 5322 5323 6550 65 60 retire MH 6560 from 2009 7619 21 20 23 10 31 20 31 30 32 50 53 30 6440 6460 6510 and 6520 second reading in adoption

205Cas Bogner Dr Spicer any discussion all in [Music] favor the motion carries unanimously is there a motion for second reading and adoption for policies 2110 3110 5140 5321 5322 5323 5731 6550 6560 7350 and retiring policy 6560 7619 212 20 23 10 312 31 30 3250 53 30 6440 6460 6510 6520 has presented bner Miss pan any discussion Mr the question on 2110 you brought that one up right the one about orienting new board members um just a comment on number two the elect shall be invited to attend board meetings and participate in this discussion knowing that would be typically one board meeting in June and I read that and I think about well you know we have executive session uh and I know they're not invited to that but um you know I guess

206my question is should that included there or that's just understood that only a regular board meeting it could not be know that but if you read it you say we're participating in the discussion of the board I mean I'm just looking for clarity guess it's separate than executive session discussion they could discuss but they couldn't vote yeah they could not be included in executive session yeah I just want to make sure that somebody doesn't read this and go well you know you're gonna have a meeting before the meeting I want to be there and okay I think we know that two board meetings right it's usually two board meetings have the May the eth board meeting the week after right after you're right and then the June okay we're good thank you that's the only

207Point um sorry just a vote all in [Music] favor motion carries unanimously is there a motion to keep policy 6191 on the table for second reading and adoption for the April meeting Dr Litman uh miss blinger any discussion all in [Music] favor motion carries unanimously is there a motion for the first reading of the policy 7134 7313 and 7320 has presented casner Dr Spicer any discussion [Music] no all in favor motion cares unanimously may have a motion to table these policies for second reading and adoption for April meeting M bman Mr Mana all in favor motion carries unanimously at the annual i1 bosis meeting they will be be reviewing the nominations for the April elections for two board member seats which carry a three-year term presently there are two candidates who are seeking re-election we

208have been provided with a letters for review would someone like to make a motion to nominate candidate for ar1 boss's board yes um I move to nominate Edward Cavin the incumbent located in the Sweet Home school district as a candidate for the election to be held on April 16th 2024 to serve as a trustee for the board of Cooperative Educational Services first supervisory District of Erie County in a term beginning July 1st 2024 through July 30th 2027 June 30th oh I'm so sorry June 30th 2027 is there a second is blinger any discussion all in [Music] favor any anyone opposing Iain the motion carries 801 um we have one more candidate would anyone like to make a motion I resolve to nominate Mrs Renee Wilson the incumbent located in the Chik Daga Central School District

209as a candidate for the election to be held on April 16 2024 to serve as a trustee for the board of Cooperative Educational Services for supervisory District of Ary County in a term beginning July 1st 2024 through June 30th 2027 a second M any discussion all in favor now anyone opposing so the motion carries 702 um we have second public expression Miss there no one here okay moving on item 17 and 18 there are no matters to discuss under instruction curriculum and legislative item 19 uh matters to discuss under Committee of the whole our next meeting is a special board meeting and budget work session on March 26 with Community Forum to follow at the Casey Middle School I have a motion to adjourn the regular board meeting Mr Dr Spicer [Music] car un I

210[Laughter] Iain [Music] happy