December 14, 2021 - Board of Education Meeting

001um [Music] may i have a motion please to return to the regular board meeting to public session thank you dr lippman second miss casmerick bogner thank you all in favor post extensions motion carries unanimously i called the regular board meeting to order all board members are present ms bolin would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance to play sorry [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to be honored for which under god indivisible with liberty and justice for [Music] please be all that in the event of a 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 that everyone turn their cell phone and other electronic

002devices to silent thank you before we review the agenda we need to amend our motion for heading into executive session the motion that we made was to enter an executive session to discuss a legal matter with our attorney and an employment matter relating to two employees i'd like to amend that motion and ask for a motion to adjourn into executive session previously to discuss two legal matters and employment matters relating to several employees i have a motion for that amendment thank you dr mcleary and dr sang thank you any discussion [Music] thank you [Music] all right and now we're going to review is there a motion to approve the agenda as president thank you mrs bieger dr littman as well thank you is there any discussion on the agenda tonight all right opposed abstentions motion

003carried unanimously thank you dr brown hall we will now turn it over to you for board acknowledgements thank you very much president leatherboro so tonight we continue with our school spotlight highlighting the great work that goes on within our buildings this month our school spotlight focuses on williamsville east and williamsville north high school social emotional learning is one of the most important aspects to everyday life in our schools at williamsville east faculty staff and administration have worked tirelessly to connect build community and create safe spaces for students i like to welcome outstanding principal brian swatland to share more on east leading with compassion initiative hello thank you dr brown hall board of education welcome leading with compassion at east high school we have implemented many initiatives this year that build on the district goal for

004student health and safety the video that you'll watch depicts a great work of three of our teachers megan shepp lisa azarelli brown and carla catalano our initiatives include sel presentations to the faculty by lisa and carla there have been a total of two presentations for 30 minutes each we have a book study that is going on for an implementation team facilitated by megan shap which includes all members of the special education department where they are creating lessons to share those out with the students and the faculty the book is titled what happened to you sources of strength is currently running a we belong campaign where students fill out post-it notes and post those onto the wall in the commons our challenge to change is running a diversity campaign with puzzle pieces which signify how we

005all fit together leading with compassion helps all of us with connections to each other and to the building and the community as well as understanding trauma we do not know the extent of the trauma that our students faculty and staff have undergone due to coven but is our goal to be sensitive to the needs of everyone in the building so these are just a few examples of how we lead with compassion thank you thank you [Music] as a parent in the school district i am really proud to be a part of a district that is attending to in such an intentional way the whole student all those parts the social the emotional and the learning are what make a student the support that i see from my colleagues for students is really reassuring and energizing

006as a professional we have a campaign going on right now through sources of strength we belong there's a new display downstairs i think it's in student street again it's that sense of community and it's sort of all through the building with students you make that investment every day it may not happen on day two it may not happen on day three but all of a sudden you're having a student who's sharing something that's really important to them and they recognize you as a trusted adult and that's where it's holy and beautiful we are living through this pandemic and it's a shared event for all of us but our students and our colleagues are all responding differently to what we're going through and so i think it's really important to build on the fact that we're

007relational creatures and that we all need connection with others and that we need to be compassionate with our students and with our colleagues i think that there's been a huge shift now there are so many other layers of support for a student so for example if we have a student where we know there's you know that that is experiencing some difficulty you know the guidance counselor is involved we have a social worker that's involved we have maybe a gen ed teacher that's involved especially a teacher myself so we have so much more support for that student we know from human experience that when people feel connected they're able to thrive and so for some students it might mean that they can make it through a day for others it can mean that they can focus

008and they can be resilient and they know that they can get through something that might be challenging academically because they feel supported and so when teachers are extending those moments of grace and acknowledgement of the student as a human then we get a lot more academically from students and i think that's really the exciting part about it is that it is social it is emotional and it is learning all those three pieces together that support each other awesome thank you very much principal swatland [Applause] at williamsville north their model is learning today leading tomorrow to help guide students on their educational journey and as they begin their college search or look for opportunities to join the workforce north high school developed a space to help with this process i'd like to welcome our hard-working principal

009bob coniglio to share more on north high school's career center good evening thank you dr brown thank you board of education um when we uh started at north when i started there um i spoke with carrie angel about our career center and kerry said to me that the previous years before i started she was actually sitting in the lmc the library and kids had to whisper when they would talk one-on-one about their career and college choices she then moved into a very small room that's adjacent to the library and she would do presentations in the senior cafeteria when it was available this year with the amount of laptops and chromebook carts we had we were able to retrofit an attaching room to the library that tripled her space and gave her room to have not

010only in person and virtual visits but several kids at a time where they could talk about either careers college recommendations and life planning she's been so overwhelmed with students she's actually not even reached out to our business teachers and working with ninth and tenth graders because these kids are now asking how can we plan ahead not just juniors and seniors so she really has taken this room and made it her own made it part of north and really it's a welcoming place for anyone to practice either their searches for college or also what they want to do in the future so everything in this video is going to show you um what kerry has done in our building thank you does anybody know what they want to do yet any like uv for dental school

011fantastic the secret is i have the best job in the district i work with with amazing students i get to help them do positive things with their life and i get to connect with them in ways that most people in the district don't the career center is comforting in a way to step back from my crazy really stressful day and school and sit down and just focus on myself and focus on my future the career center has truly been the best part of my day it's truly the best thing that this school can really provide for students who are really really confused about the future and it's a way to to really sit down and relax and ask questions and feel comfortable so we felt that the career center needed its own dedicated space prior

012to my starting here at north it was kind of housed in the library uh where students um didn't have their own space to work and miss ansel worked with kids one-on-one and they you know they're in a library so they have to whisper and there are students that want to look at career opportunities scholarships college planning so we needed a dedicated space and we had a computer lab uh connected to the library that would probably triple the space so we kind of refurbished it and refitted it to meet her needs in the career center so there's still computers in there that students can use but you open up the rest of the space which offers opportunities for students to do virtual college visits in-person college visits career assessments working on scholarships or applications for college

013and it really is more than triple through capacity and it's become a dedicated safe space for students to do research their future i love um to be able to help and and to guide them and answer questions and to make what can be so scary and overwhelming manageable reasonable understandable and not intimidating i truly appreciate it and i think the district and mrs ansel for helping me for my future and for everyday stress and for all the information they have provided me and for all the help that they've gave me awesome [Applause] i'll turn it back over to you president leatherbar thank you and we had an opportunity to visit the career center recently so that was really awesome to see that are there any board acknowledgements you have merrick boudner yes um i just

014noticed today i was on the new york state pta website and they had a poster contest in honor of their 125th annual convention there were four divisions for the contest and two of the divisions were winners from our district so i wanted to congratulate navanesh gowal from country parkway elementary for the primary division and shariti mulgand from mill middle school and the intermediate division awesome that's really cool thank you everyone else from the board mrs van sice i would just like to quickly say a thank you um primarily my child does go to williamsville north but williams had their parent teacher conferences love the option that you could have either attended in person or virtually um and it's amazing to see just how organized and well-run it is the staff members just dedicating their time

015it's it's wonderful um why i still don't know my way around there but there are students that help you it's a really easy process a great way face-to-face i chose the in person but um i just commend the staff for working this extra time and we all know that there's some heightened you know anxiety and different things going on so it was a really pleasant experience so mr coniglio please let your staff know how grateful we are awesome thank you dr litman yeah i just wanted to uh recognize the um i did it 10 last month the north deca installation of offices new members and i know that some of the other schools have have also done that and i just wanted to reiterate the importance of these co-curricular activities in business and in other

016areas in their help in developing future leaders in our community and in the business world and the extra effort the teachers and all of the high schools do uh in these types of programs thank you dr litman all right we're moving on to item four which is public expression and i call on our parliamentarian this chasmeric bogner to review our public expression format welcome to all who have come to this regular board meeting although state law does not require us to hold a public comment period we have chosen to do so because we believe it is crucial for us to hear from our community members about their concerns and issues having said that please note that the board is here to listen the public comment period is not designed to be a discussion accordingly please

017do not expect the board to respond to your concerns and questions tonight this is because we take your concerns seriously and want to have sufficient time to process and research the issues if need be we will respond to you by email after our meeting or have the proper staff member get back to you at the appropriate time also please be aware that under state and federal privacy laws and per our policy 1510 we are unable to entertain any comments related to employee personnel information or any topic that may disclose information about a particular student on these matters we would ask that you go through the appropriate administrative channels finally we recognize that right now our nation and our community are polarized on a number of issues that said we want our school board meetings to

018serve as an example to our students that both our school board and our community members can deal with controversial issues in a civil manner and demonstrate mutual respect in that spirit we will insist that all speakers and audience members maintain civility and respect for any divergent views that others possess we ask that speakers please address their comments to the board directly rather than the audience in the unlikely event the meetings shall become unruly the board will recess the meeting and return once order is restored the board will now contain uh entertain public comments for up to 30 minutes each individual speaker is allotted three minutes you'll be signaled at two and a half minutes so that you may conclude your remarks right now after i call on you please step up to the podium and

019state your name our first speaker this evening is tim tarrell carol someday i'll get it right mr terrell that's all right i'm sure i'll be back [Music] all right well thank you for having me again last month i was here with words of support for dr brown hall speaking about masking and that was really great today it's a little bit different um but we had an email exchange last month i had an email exchange with dr brown hall and the board of education regarding incorrect and misleading information on the district website page concerning cobit 19 vaccines we tried to connect on the phone and we were both busy so maybe we'll have a chance after this in my email i had three items of concern number one the status of available vaccines needed to be

020updated to use the proper terms of fda approved or emergency use authorization as it reads now it's misleading at best it says there are three cover 19 vaccines available to individuals johnson johnson approved for individuals 18 plus moderna approved for individuals 18 plus pfizer approved for individuals 5 plus well the issue here is the term approved has connotation in our culture and it's fda the fda is the agency that approves medications and stuff so there's only one vaccine approved by the fda currently the rest are all emergency use authorized so i recommended it reads like this and i had links to all of the fda source material that explains this it should read johnson johnson currently emergency use authorized 18 plus moderna same eua 18 plus pfizer under commer community label currently fda approved for

02116 plus and pfizer uh eua for individuals five to fifteen so i recommended the district educate people and explain the difference between these two terms it's really really important number three i just recently found out in the email chain as i was doing the email the formula for the dose for five to eleven actually had been modified a lot of people out there are saying that it's the same formula what's the big deal it actually has a different formula and the fda web page explains this it says the vaccine authorized for use in children 5 to 11 includes different inactive ingredients compared to the vaccine that has been used under eua for individuals 12 years of age and older that has been studied in clinical trials so basically the formula that kids 5 to 11

022are being exposed to is not approved so the response i got was disheartening dr brown hall said i didn't want to keep you waiting or under the assumption there will be changes to the website based on the information you submitted i truly understand the information you submitted was to be helpful but it can be seen as an attempt to dissuade parents or individuals from having their children or themselves receive the vaccine as leaders of the community i believe it's your responsibility to provide correct and accurate information especially when it pertains to the health and safety of the children that we put in your care to refuse to correct the website leads me to believe that you're willfully and willingly uh complicit in a misinformation campaign if i'm wrong i look forward to seeing the website

023updated hopefully we can speak about this so i can come back next month and say that everything's all good thank you for your comments our next speaker this evening is terry king good evening board dr brown hall thanks for having me tonight or allowing me to be able to address the board i have a few concerns that i'd like to address regarding the budget um i really appreciated uh mr maturski's presentation last month in which he really i think sounded an alarm bell for for many of us to have to pay attention to when we made the transfer for the capital fund the loss reduction of 4.8 million dollars from the capital fund and i was i was curious because is there a plan to replace the money in the capital fund but more importantly

024as i began to think about this and i i reviewed kind of his presentation we also noticed that we had a loss of 284 students from the beginning of the calendar year now the new york state funding reimbursement formula is is based on our census count of students how is that going to impact our current operating budget especially in light of some of the costs and areas that we have to manage the school going up considerably with inflation and are we really going to be in a deficit position because i fear that at this trajectory with the student loss formulas and reimbursement and movement of money that we took from the capital fund we're really going to be looking at a deficit and i'd like to really know mid-year if that's if that's really going

025to be happening because that's going to have a serious impact on the new budget for 2022. then the next question that comes up in the presentation was that we're actually looking at doing some additional capital expenditures with an air conditioning but really what is the master plan to maintain the reserve fund the capital fund in light of some of those projects especially when they require matching money on a local level and if the matching money comes from a local level from operating tax base or formula from state reimbursements again are we facing a loss and then the next question is what will be the exposure of the new contract budget with the union how will that impact the budget going into the spring of 2022. so i say that that i think that this is

026an opportunity that the board can take a hard look and begin to really take a mid-year look at our fiscal ability to complete the year solvent or are we going to be facing a deficit and if so what's the plan of action to correct that and address it and then the next question is do we still have the cares act money that was deferred the 6.571 million that was delayed as well as the american rescue money because we originally in the 2021 budget deferred that for 2022-23 or has that been spent i i just questioned that and i think it's a good time for the board to take a hard look so thank you thank you for your comments and that concludes public expression for this evening thank you miss cosmerick vogner and thank you

027to all of our speakers dr lemon we have a policy that we revise so speakers have to sign up ahead of the meeting okay and i think you voted for that policy we're going to move on to our next item which is our presentation on enrollment projections and the impact on open enrollment um dr van gaal i turn it over to you thank you very much president leatherboro our assistant superintendent uh mr skanzuzo will be introducing dr grossman from the red group good evening dr brown hall board board of education members i'd just like to take this time to introduce um from penfield new york dr stephen grossman who represents the research evaluation and development group also known as the red group to provide us with a detailed presentation on future enrollment projections dr grossman

028[Music] hi everybody it's a pleasure to be here again this year you should be seeing the uh powerpoint slides i don't see them oh here we go and there it is okay so i'm gonna prompt um uh nicholas to um move the slides along so it might be a little clumsy but we'll uh we'll figure it out uh each year we've been doing these enrollment projections for williamsville and this year we pushed it back because we had some questions that we researched and now we're ready to present our projections for uh next year and five years in uh and stretching out uh 10 years so we'll do it and i'm i'm sensitive to your time constraints so i'll try to make it brief but i'll be willing to answer questions at the conclusion so so

029we'll go for the next slide i'm just going to assume unless i hear differently that you can hear me okay all right so enrollment factors that we look at every year are changes in the kindergarten class size the current enrollment migration of students in and out of the district the number of resident school-aged children in private parochial home and charter schools the number of students in out of district programs or incarcerated high school leavers and then the last one doesn't deal with students as much as factors that would impact some of the items above the economy and that we look at housing patterns primarily and and employment because a lot of districts have families move out because of uh downturns in the economy so we'll go to the next slide please so we find that

030in williamsville uh over the past many many years changes in kindergarten class size the current students in in district and migration of students primarily into the district during the school year have been the major factors in the past year we've experienced something that uh i don't think anybody could have possibly ever anticipated and that's the ongoing pandemic and its effect on enrollments so we'll go to the next slide please okay um so what we're going to look at as we have each year is the past present and future of k-12 elementary middle schools high schools and then we do a little summary and conclusions uh that we glean from the data now if you want more detail of course you have a very detailed report um which which uh outlines the projections for each school

031and um so it uh and grade level so it gives you a lot of detail but uh we won't do that tonight next so we start of course with the kindergarten and how do we figure out what next year's kindergarten is going to be well we try to be as close as we can by using what we call a correlation with the live births in the district five years previous and as you can see from the graph uh and we go back all the way to 2002 that is 2002 births affecting 2007 enrollments that there is a fairly strong correlation between the trends of the live births and the trends of the kindergarten enrollments and the percentage difference varies from 112 to about 118 percent uh over time so that we take a kind of

032an average of that and i and i also uh cut it back a little bit because of the pandemic effect with kids coming into the district during that five year period and we the red the red numbers 680 and 685 are what we're using to project forward um based on the um the historical uh trends so we only project two years ahead and then in the uh projections we we use those as just a baseline to continue uh forward because those classes then stay in the district for the you know the kindergarten class moves through for 13 years not the same students necessarily but you know the class okay we'll go to the next slide we also have to look at who's in the school district as of october of 2021 and this was the

033beds report the basic educational data system report that the district submitted and it's a snapshot in time because as soon as you put it in somebody's moved in somebody's moved out but overall this is what the classes look like as you started the school year and you can clearly see that you've got some classes in the 9th 10th 11th and 12th grade that are significantly larger than the kindergarten through 4th grades so those will uh have an effect in terms of attrition uh as time goes on and this is not new this is what's been happening for quite some time and we'll go to the next slide so as i did the projections in 2019 i clearly missed something when i didn't realize there's going to be a pandemic in 2020 and what happened there

034was that uh students um parents pulled them out for homeschooling and uh sent them to uh programs in in the community that were having students come to school and the it impacted the enrollments by a factor of about three or four percent as fewer new students came into the district and more students transferred into non-public options this year we did not see a continuation of that we didn't see a return of the 200 or so students that left but um we did see a stabilizations so we'll go into what that did uh in a few uh slides next slide okay so we have to make assumptions when we do research and one of our assumptions is that kindergartens will be smaller than 12th grades and that's not probably a stretch migration will offset some attrition

035that's been true up until the pandemic but now it's true again the economy will recover and we had uh been coming out of the um the recession and looking at you know good times ahead until the pandemic hits so now we have to recover from that and other factors will stay stay stable stable rather and that has um been the case so moving on next slide so a five year history of our k-12 enrollment uh show and that's k-12 it does not include pre-k students that are in the buildings um it shows that we've lost 450 students um over the past five years in k-12 next slide what were projected k-12 enrollments uh is that we will continue to lose about another 120 117 students uh over the next five years over all the grade

036levels okay next slide now that breaks out uh differently for the different grade levels the uh five year history of elementary schools has been a slight increase or stabilization as the larger fourth grades did move out and now there's some parity between the fourth grades in the kindergarten and you have students moving into the district in the k-4 area so we haven't had any loss over the last five years and projected in slide 12. we project that we will continue this the stable state you know 34 is within the margin of error for this size sample so um you know pretty much uh not looking as long as we don't see anything unusual in the live birth numbers we're looking at pretty stable projections for the k-4 13 please thank you um the middle school

037we did lose quite a few over the last five years about 292 students and that's due to some really big classes moving out and the smaller classes moving in next slide but uh what's going to happen now is uh it'll stabilize because now your your eighth grades moving out aren't going to be that much smaller are that much larger than the uh fifth grades moving in and uh you'll have students moving in into the uh grades filtering in as the year years go by and then uh the next slide okay the five-year high school history has been a loss of 206 students on a base of uh and that's to be expected because we had some some pretty large uh in fact when i first started it was concerns about the capacity of the high

038schools um but uh that that concerned as as enrollments uh started to decrease but um um you know you had some really large classes leave and smaller eighth grades moving into ninth grade and then the next slide and then uh we foresee that um next year and beyond you'll lose another uh 220 on on a base of about 30 3100 um until that levels out and so we're looking at a leveling out as the chart of k-12 showed over all the grade levels barring any uh unusual things happening in the district so 17. so um what we see then is if you look at the slide obviously not going to read all all the numbers but if you go from current to next year to 2006 7 projection you see some pretty similar numbers moving

039moving ahead a little bit of loss in the high school area but otherwise uh pretty close to what is there now and so the implications of based on this is that the current enrollments over the next five years shouldn't have any uh impact on current attendance areas or current feeder patterns uh in terms of building capacity or you know for any other reason other than if the district wanted to do something different for for some reason but the enrollments themselves are not going to cause any uh disruption in in buildings and so on uh next slide so we're at the conclusion point uh k-12 enrollments will level out as as follows small increases in elementary and middle and decreases at the high school level next five years no changes in attendance areas or feeder patterns

040will be necessary because of enrollments no major changes in facilities will be necessary because of enrollments there may be for other reasons but not because of enrollments and the pandemic will continue to have a negative effect on local economy and ability of families to move into the district having said that it seems to me that we're coming out of this and um the next few years we should be the pandemic should be less and less of a concern um both economically and in terms of enrollments and probably you'll have a pen-up demand you may see some additional families moving into the district as it's uh more feasible to do so and the economy improves um next slide and that's the thank you slide and um i'd certainly be willing to field questions if you have

041any thank you dr grossman are you able to hear us i can okay wonderful um i'm gonna see i'll start on my left and then go down the table to see if there's questions from the board starting with dr lipman thank you uh thank you for your presentation um i just had two points uh one is on slide 17 where you mentioned that heim elementary and maple east elementary would see somewhat of a much larger increase than others and i just want to know what draw you drew you to that point and it might tie into the conclusion one i don't know if it does i'll bring up one of the conclusion points after that yes any uh all the trends uh there that are shown there based on the cohort survival ratios being brought

042into the chart and projected forward and i'm not sure why heim um has more kids moving into it than the others but that's that's what drives that increase both the existing classes and then the ratios from year to year over the five years of kids moving of kids moving into the school it's not a huge amount but it's significant i agree and uh thank you for that insight the second goes with the conclusion about people maybe not moving into the district at a higher rate uh in my perspective i believe in williamsville the real estate market is reasonably strong as i drive around i see more new buildings going on um properties in my neighborhood sell in a few days or less so right um and and i don't know if you have that answer

043because none of us are real estate gurus at all but you know i think the conclusion that real estate prices or housing may keep some people out we'll have to see if that as we talk next year if that follows along or if we do get uh migration of new people into our district i'm pretty i'm pretty confident that that you that if things progress and get better you will have some uh some more in migration of families with school-age children but the last couple years it's been a little uh difficult because the housing stocks and the lack of new construction and the supply chain and all that you know has affected it so hopefully not to mention cost um you know in the bidding wars for the existing houses and so on so uh

044you know that'll remain to be seen um and people are getting older nobody's getting younger so there will be more uh of my uh generation saying well you know i think we're going to move to north carolina or someplace warmer and uh and retire there so yeah it you know it's a it's a flexible variable for sure thank you so much mrs um yeah i i'm a the representative for home elementary and over the last year or two a number of parents have come to the meetings with concerns about construction in the area and how the addition of single-family homes other structures may be impacting student population so i'm not surprised at all to see the heim elementary numbers um proposed to increase in the way they are and i i was curious if when

045you mentioned migration if uh construction projects had to do with those numbers but seeing the you know the five-year future look it's concerning to see just how much heim elementary looks a little different than the other schools my question really is um more on the district level of how do we as a district take these enrollment projections and then use this as a tool when we are preparing for our budget and the reason that i ask that is because another concern coming out of high elementary has been class size particularly in the third and fourth grade classrooms that they're larger and those classrooms are smaller and if we are expecting an additional 30 students um where do we go from there so i'm just hoping that our district is looking at this being proactive and

046i'm curious what those next steps will be right and i'll say that's exactly why this is so beneficial and that the district does it every year because not only is it used for staffing it's used for long-range planning also as to what it will look like in the schools and that's why we pay such close attention to it and try to develop in our minds what needs to happen do we need to find additional space in the school do we need to reallocate some spaces in the school building so all of those are being thought of by the entire leadership team when we look at these numbers but we do take these into consideration when we do our planning every year really great to hear thank you very much any other questions on my left

047on my right vice president van sais kind of along the lines that mrs bieger said i know you said that of course you were not able to pre predict as no one did impact that coveted had and it was a three to four percent you didn't see that return this year i'm wondering if in your projections you were factoring in the potential because i believe kova has still impacted some family decisions where there are still families that are homeschooling maybe doing non-pub still so were you able to look at the projection potentially of students returning or was that not something that was factored in yeah i mean that's something that has to be thought about because there are a lot of students in non-public and homeschool not so many but in in the universe of

048not in public if they all decided to come back tomorrow it'd be a problem uh but uh it's very very unlikely so i did not uh factor in specifically those home school children it was about difference but i also felt well well what i did was i did factor in an immigration um ratio as we move forward and that's why the enrollments don't go down uh exactly as the difference between the kindergartens and the 12th grades if you follow me they they uh we've got factored in that there's going to be students moving into the district uh continuously or moving or students moving from uh homeschooling for example into their regular the regular classes it's just uh virtually impossible to predict uh you know exactly how many that's going to be but given the numbers

049it shouldn't have a a major impact um because it's spread out over 12 12 grades although most of it i will say is like you know k-6 right but it's spread out over all those grades so you have 20 you know 20 over six schools or 30 over six schools um you know but yeah you know i've reduced some of the uh assumptions relative to the number of students that will be moving back into the that'll be moving into the district uh the net increase from students moving into the district based on the history and what's been happening but uh you know you're well below capacity at this point given the building and the buildings capacities and the numbers you actually have okay thank you so that was my concern too the migration piece because

050while we all drive around the community there's two brand new developments going up that i think will impact dodge casey and the heims so i was a little bit shocked to see that actually dodge's numbers will go down but then the unpredictable return of students or not just it's going to really be this game of trying to really balance and make sure that our class sizing and our staffing is all just to reassure you um we've been very other than um the pandemic year we've been been very been able to be very accurate for next year and then you know if you go back and look at the accuracy over the period of time we've been doing this we're fairly accurate if anything we've overestimated the numbers going back you know where you go out

05110 years because we've actually been doing it long enough to look at what we predict 10 years ago and it's not too bad but the accuracy um for next year from past from last year is like you know five percent or something so it's pretty good it's in the report in the appendix thank you any other questions on my right okay thank you dr grossman i just had one follow-up question i think most of the board members hit on everything in the a test report under the section of methodology you know you list the factors that in fact in the enrollment trends and towards the bottom of that page you mentioned that the town of amherst planning department assist assisted with us so does the town of amherst actually give you information on like how

052many new homes they're building is that part of this uh they used to but my contact there uh mr black uh retired now i go to a chart of sales that they have and i've done an analysis of that um and just to just you know what's selling how many houses have sold what they're where they are and what their um uh you know what what they're likely to generate um and um so i've been using that so they've been very helpful as helpful as i think they can be okay thank you so just just for clarification that piece of it you're basing off of homes that are already existing that are that have been sold right homes that are under construction could take uh three years before they actually send kids to you know

053before they're finished and sold and everything and homes that are permitted um you know it could take four years before they get all the permissions and all the approvals and things so they have a lag and especially in permitting they have a lag between the time that they're they apply for a permit the time they actually sell the the property okay it's quite a long lag makes sense and i guess um my last question dr brown hall would be for you because later in our meeting um i think it's in um part under the president's report perhaps or in section 10 we're going to be asked to vote on open enrollment and um you know i do see that dodge is expected to go up by like 20 students next year but then significantly drop

054off and i also know that um board members have asked some questions about um now that we have enrollment data you know the other piece of that puzzle was sort of like building capacity and when we're talking about building capacity we don't just mean like fire code but we mean like capacity for being advantageous for student learning so you know it used to be that the uh decision to open and roll a parent had to notify the district pretty early i don't know if it was january or february forgive me i forget february but i know that that we've moved that since and it's now later it's in june it's june 1st is that correct okay thank you so is there any um repercussion any negative you know repercussion or consequence if we were to

055table the vote um that was recommended to us later in the meeting for um the open enrollment authorization no there wouldn't be any repercussions we can still do that in january and that would still allow enough time for parents to indicate you know if their excuse to open and roll because we do have that additional time and then we can actually look at uh capacity and other things that the boards have questioned the board has questioned okay yeah i mean when we get to that point four members i'm going to call upon you for your guidance on that because i am interested in sort of the rationale of why we are continuing to offer open enrollment for elementary other than what i noticed are two schools that also um whole house some of our self-contained

056classrooms but perhaps we want to think about maybe just offering a sibling preference option for those families instead of just open enrollment open enrollment got it um you know i just really want to be under the belief and i am under the belief that all of our elementary schools provide amazing learning opportunities absolutely and um you know we're trying to eliminate a culture where we're competing with one another and foster a culture of support and belonging absolutely so um that's something for the board's consideration when we get to that point um i know he's off of our sim call but you're still here okay dr grossman i just want to thank you there you are and i can see you thank you very much for being here your questions and for the detailed report sir

057thank you very much thank you thank you dr grossman okay happy holidays everybody happy holidays happy holidays to you and thank you assistant superintendent skanzuso for ensuring that this report um gets done every year so thank you very much yeah it's interesting and even the attachment that you know with all of the detailed information of how it comes to the findings i find that fascinating so i also found it interesting in that attached report that he indicated a lot of the in-migration was from international families and just like that will have a different kind of an impact on us that would increase yeah right yeah absolutely yeah there's more than just the powerpoint there's a whole nother attachment that's available for the community that if anyone's watching this video um and that's all available on

058our board docs very thorough yeah very thorough yes great board members are we ready to move on to the arkansas agenda thank you so moving on me i have a motion to approve consent agenda items six seven and eight please thank you mrs bieger and second miss pullin is there any discussion um i just want to thank after we vote thank the williamsville education foundation for their mini grant donation of nearly eight thousand seven hundred dollars which will be used to fund 19 products that support student learning throughout our district and the williams education foundation does raise most of its money through its wall of fame breakfast i know we haven't been able to do that for a few years due to the pandemic but we are looking forward to the return of that event

059in the fall of 2022 i believe and i am the liaison for the williamsville education foundation as well so i will um follow up with a letter of thank you to um mr schubert who is their president right now all right so if there's no other questions or comments all in favor on items six seven and eight okay opposed ascension motion carries unanimously the board of education extends best wishes and gratitude to the following retirees for their service in the district linda gowens who works at district office for 15 years of service and margaret singleton at high middle school for 14 years of service thank you very much [Applause] all right let me click back on our agenda all right we are on item nine is there a motion please to approve the november 9th

060board meeting minutes thank you miss chesmar zach bogner second was mrs speaker there any corrections or additions to the minutes seeing none all in favor of approval all hands up equals motion carries unanimously you're now on our president's report okay our conversations with staff event um is coming up in january earlier this year we agreed to set aside three dates throughout the year where we would make ourselves available to district employees so that we could encourage open communication and engagement we were supposed to be going to south high school on january 27th i wanted to ask the board what they thought about moving our start time from 3 30 to 3 o'clock only because we did notice that we were sort of standing around waiting for people to come in i know one board member

061has expressed that they will be might might have to be late because they'd be coming from work but i do feel like that would still be okay because we don't all have to be there the full time um and i just want to make sure when we're scheduling this we're scheduling it for what's most convenient for our staff so that we are thinking about their availability like we don't want an elementary teacher to have to wait around for an hour before they see us so is there any feedback on that anyone wants to say yeah your name and the other it makes sense and start at three for those who can be there at three that will be um probably more helpful to those employees that would be willing to get there i think it's

062a great idea all right and just to get it on the on the record then can i have a motion to move the start time for our january 27th event to 3 o'clock and so we would have it go from 3 to four thirty thank you mrs van sice and miss casamara klopner all in favor of that opposed abstentions motion carried unanimously thank you so um mr bilipowski will get that changed so that um staff know that we'll start at the ratings out of 3 30. all right um there is going to be a virtual event hosted by new york state education department on the review of graduation measures in new york state this virtual event will take place on january 27th um is that the same day yes it is the same race okay

063well that's gonna make it difficult for any of us to attend that but um it does start at two o'clock if anyone does want to catch the first 45 minutes or so you can just notify mrs carey and she will register you for that event uh we do have a community forum in the spring yes mrs cosmetico i just wanted to mention that with most of the nightside events as long as you register you can watch the video after the fact so we could still register for the event and see the video even um i am registered for that already and i will need to attend that okay part of my professional job absolutely no i get it but it's good to know because you know if we want the information just to register then

064you get it afterwards thank you for that um we our community forum is scheduled for march 22nd after the budget work session so that will be here um and we last year we were on zoom for that but we will have to discuss you know what's the board feel on that because we might be able to do it in person and i i think because it's march 22nd and more than three months away we might want to wait to make a decision on whether it be virtual or in person it's true we're living in a time where things change every week right every week okay that's a good good call on that one under school visits um we did visit forest uh transit middle and south high school on november 16th there's a report in

065board docs on that and january 20th is the next school visit date and that's for east mill and country parkway i usually do a ton but i'm not able to attend that one because it's a thursday and i have a prayer commitment on thursdays can i ask um who's available from the board okay they got lots of hands with dr lipman miss poland miss speaker and this brokener and possibly visit vasquelia dr singh has this oh and dr singh has his hand up too and that was a yes awesome so we've got we've got four five five possibly six so that would be wonderful and miss kazmir booker you offered to write the report i know right that's i just wanted to confirm that i will attend and i will write the liaison report in

066your absence so much i appreciate that thank you all right so now we're looking at the erie county association of school board items item b the legislative breakfast was held on saturday november 13th dr singh and dr brown hall attended this event dr singh thank you for the report you submitted do either of you gentlemen wish to add anything about that event okay so at the legislative breakfast several districts spoke about being in favor of and supporting the test to stay initiative senator ed rath sent a letter to governor hopel urging the new york state department of health to develop guidelines for students for the test to stay program and in addition to senator rath signing that letter assemblyman michael norris from the 144th district which he serves like a small portion of williams which

067is why i'm naming him he also signed on to that letter so i'm just bringing that to your attention because at your spot there were there are um thank you postcards and um if you are interested and dropped in writing a letter of of thank you just a quick note like one of just a question says you could address that to either um senator ed rath or assemblyman michael norris thanking them for um for signing on to the test to say letter and you don't have to fill out the address if you just put their name mrs kerry can address them for us and put on the postage um the other option for those postcards is we did have some of our legislators attend the legislative breakfast and um let's see i know assemblyman wallace

068assemblywoman wallace was there uh assemblywoman mcmahon and senator edward um so if you also wish to use the card for that purpose we also have like a stack of like a gazillion cards we're not short on thank you cards um but please know that um i'm the i'm the legislative liaison and a big part of the work is about building relationships and you don't just go to people when you want something you also go to them when you want to thank them right and that's part of just being a good partner and being in a relationship so um please consider using that thank you card before you leave today um after we adjourn any questions on that all right um that leads into the legislative team meeting which was held on november 18th i do

069have um the report in board docs and it was at that legislative team meeting that we were get we were encouraged to go back to our boards and speak about using the postcards we are fortunate because our district has a tab on its website that has all of the um advocacy information with all of the contact info and addresses the speedboarding of that event was held on december 2nd uh dr mccleary and dr singh attended um dr mccleary or dr singh either of you wish to add anything about speedboarding i did read your report no i think i had it all in there in the report excellent thank you very much and um our upcoming meetings for erie county association of school boards are listed in board docs does anyone have anything they want to

070add about ecasp thank you um item c the new york state school board association there was a free virtual legislative and state budget webinar that was on december 9th i was planning on attending i think mr richtowski was planning on attending too there were some login issues i ended up getting the link sent to me after the meeting had concluded um so i didn't attend but i did see that they're going to be sending out the information and they have sent us the legislative priorities already from this bus so i was able to see that as well and i believe all of you received the news by email so you should get that information as well does anyone have anything else to report on new york state school board association all right so now we're

071going on to the review our mid-year review of our district policies oh actually no we got one more thing to do first the policy review committee um and we've had three different committees ongoing uh for a series of one thousand two thousand and three thousand have been meeting or have met and we'll be submitting updates in agenda item 11e so you'll see some of the um when we do our first readings of board policies you'll see some of the uh proposed policy changes for all the bylaws today further updates will be on the january agenda and the 3 000 policy committee will be meeting again on january 4th and then i figured um at our january meeting we can discuss what we want our next steps to be because as each committee concludes their work

072then we can go on to you know starting new work with the four thousand five thousand six thousand three all the way through eight thousand does anyone on any of the policy review committees want to add anything or say anything about the work that's been ongoing great thank you so now we're looking at our progress report of the board goals implementation plans so our august 10th meeting we developed and approved our 2021 2022 board goals and a board member volunteered and committed to monitoring one of the approved goals for each area and we're going to be sharing out on that progress at this time so thank you for pulling that up mr filipowski so up on the screen you will see the first goal which is student learning and that was one that um i

073took responsibility for monitoring so i just want to share a couple things about the student learning and academic achievement well i'm not going to read it read it off the screen to you but just point out a few things impressed so earlier this year during a committee of the whole discussion that was actually initiated by dr singh assistant superintendent beelin recommended to us as board members that we use this academic year as a baseline for our student achievement data am i stating that correctly dr malin thank you okay because i know there were some questions about you know why aren't we examining data and you gave a very thorough explanation for those who didn't know about regions exams being pretty much optional so therefore not being a very accurate data point um so therefore when

074you're looking at the progress monitoring that i did let me just pull up that for myself too um you can see that for the first row i included reports that speak to how the board monitors the work of the district with respect to curriculum and instruction specifically the support of the district polls they think that that's really centered to our work as a board is that you know we had we have proven to adopt the district goals and so we have to then follow that up and sort of put our money where our mouth is and then support their work because that's the only way that that work can be completed um and let's see the the review of that work is going to take place at the january meeting so next month we meet

075in the new year um our assistant superintendents will share out on the different areas of of our district goals for the remaining rows i shared evidence by noting the date of the board meeting and the agenda item or the action occurred i want to point out that a little something about the mathematics update i know prior to the start of the pandemic going back to 2019 achievement in mathematics specifically you know at the high school level was an area of focus for the board and we had asked our superintendent at that time to examine that area more closely and dr bielen came back with some recommendations and supports and coveted right and everything was sort of put on pause um but now here in the present supports were shared with us and we did receive

076an update this fall on the math learning labs and i believe that was our september meeting and as a board we approve the funding for those positions so i would just like to ask dr brown hall that we continue to monitor that area um perhaps in a few months receive another update just on how that's being implemented i know when we did um a visit at north back in november it was just kind of starting to get set up and then when we visited south we actually got to see one of the rooms we could see that there was definite progress but i'm also specifically interested in making sure that our students are aware of you know what's this math learning lab about how do i access it because by the high school level we're

077trying to teach our kids to self-advocate and um i'm i'm a mom of a high school kid and you know just questioning or questioning our friends it didn't seem to be a lot of knowledge about it so that's just something i'd like to just keep on our radar as we monitor our work and then this also one last thing when i looked at the work i submitted with a fresh set of eyes today i realized i neglected to include the evidence around our steam rooms and that's something i think is really important for everything that steam stands for right the science technology engineering arts and is it math or music math thank you and uh so mrs carey i want an update to this chart to include information on our steam labs because it is

078a new learning opportunity this year in williamsville and it's another area where we as a board approve the funding for our steam teachers does anyone have any other questions about any of the work or progress we've got some excellent recognition too in the third third column about celebrating achievements i think that's been some really nice things that have shown out even tonight when we saw evidence about the career center all right so now i'm going to call on um the board members for each section going forward so our next section on student health and safety is for dr litman yes and it already out i think i first want to thank president leatherbarrow and mrs kerry for their assistance in all of this and just to reiterate what you see there i'll just go over

079some of the highlights again the goal of the board of education to prioritize the resources necessary to support the physical mental social and emotional health and safety of students throughout this academic school year to do that the action is to review update and approve district policy related to student health and safety in august we approve the dasa district building coordinators uh we adopted the district safety plan uh and ongoing at each meeting we received reports from um our superintendent dr ron hall in september about reopening and transportation health and safety in october about school health and safety and staffing issues november health and safety we'll learn later today what december will bring to us again issues with covid and the guidance we receive on an ongoing basis and our responses as well as school nutrition

080fitness report the second action is to advocate for the resources necessary to support uh all of these endeavors while promoting diversity inclusion and belonging for all of our students we did appoint dr singh as our board liaison to the wellness committee we do receive reports we also during the fall clinton forum i interact with parents of mental health concerns interactions and advocacy that many of you are involved in through erie county school board and the new york state school board association and the last on the agenda something on today's talking about a resolution for the test to stay program so again thank you for the contributions of everyone it's appreciated thank you dr any questions or comments or feedback for that goal all right seeing none dr mcclary i call on you for our goal

081of board [Music] thank you mrs leatherbarrow um our first um goal is to serve as liaisons and so basically all board members have written reports from their meetings and have presented them and attended the meetings that they are assigned and so forth and of course the superintendent has presented weekly videos and board of education updates that have been very thorough and very helpful the second goal is talking about holding forums and we did have one and their upcoming dates are listed for our various budget and other community forums the third goal talks about visiting schools and we do visit the schools regularly we've already had some opportunities to go into the schools and we will continue to do that until we have been able hopefully to see all of our district schools and the fourth

082goal talks about sending correspondence to the community since this particular topic deals with the umbrella of the community and president leatherbarrel has done an excellent job of responding to the emails and questions that have come in from the community that's the goal thank you very much and i'm just seeing this is carrie in the fourth and that fourth column um just there's a typo with the word members they're not embers we're not setting anyone on fire um okay so budget development and fiscal oversight um this is chaos merrick bogner thank you president leather barrow for our budget development and fiscal oversight goal i actually when i review the agenda every month for our meeting i actually note any progress or any items that are related to it as i do as i review the agenda

083so on my measures you'll see the date and item numbers that correspond to each of the various actions for the first action that relates to our facility and capital improvements this fall the music project was completed we're currently monitoring the security improvement and infrastructure project which is scheduled to begin in the spring and summer of 2022 as well as looking at a potential district-wide air conditioning project which if approved by the board will be voted on by the community at the may 17 2022 annual district vote the second action is monitoring our expenditures and revenues for the current school year which we do monthly through approval of our cons consent agenda items and also our finance items so i've noted those that we've done so far this year on action two the third action is

084overseeing next year's budget development and fourth is providing opportunities for the community to review budget development and provide input in october we approved our budget calendar which outlines the process and last month mr matusi provided the historical budget presentation which is sort of the starting point as we move forward in the budget development process and these documents are both available for the community to view in board docs and then the fifth action is when the board adopts the 2022-23 proposed budget which would happen on april 19 2022 so there has been no progress on that fifth action at this point and that's all i have unless there's questions thank you very much miss kasmir faulkner and our next full diversity equity and inclusion dr singh i turn to the video um in the diversity equity

085and inclusion we have two action items and most of us can see what's there and we started off the year with a great presentation by dr brown hall in september and i'm really excited to hear about the formation of the diversity committee and hiring of a diversity coordinator in our district very soon and uh we appointed the dasa coordinators for all schools earlier this year in septem in october and we actually approved three new policies related to diversity equity and inclusion i think that's the first for our school district and that's something very exciting and uh we also upload a mended code of conduct for our school district and i think it will be going back to the wellness committee for an update for 2022. and uh um dr brown hall informed us that he

086will be giving us an update in january about what's going on with the diversity committee and we're very looking forward to hearing that in addition to that a few of our board members we attended the presentations on diversity by nisba and i think i mean i attended one and i found it very informative so thanks for that and in our second action item we will continue to monitor the status of the district di committee and that's what we'll be hearing in january and we have um yeah once the committee is formed we'll have a liaison for the committee as well three of our board members serve on the strategic planning committee where diversity is one of the main topics of conversation and discussion and think this year the board appointed me as a code as

087the liaison for the district wellness committee as well right where i think diversity will also be discussed awesome so that kind of concludes the diversity part thank you dr sang and thank you to all the board members that took on the responsibility for monitoring one of the goals um it's you know be powerful when you look at all the work that has been completed thus far and we're only halfway through the year all right so that brings us to um item f of my president's report and then i promise i'll be done let's grab that right on okay so at our last court meeting we had speakers who spoke about the hindrances of excluding children from attending school when they are deemed a close contact to cove to a covenant 19 positive individual and required

088to quarantine if they are unvaccinated also within the last month erie county began a test to stay pilot program and chose grand island schools to implement that pilot through advocacy efforts with our partnership with erie county association of school boards it was shared that a few school districts around western new york approved board resolutions in support of a test to stay option for all students who are unvaccinated when ecasb shared this information with us several members of our board expressed interest in passing a similar resolution so at this time i'm going to ask board parliamentary and cosmerich boldner to read the proposed resolution which is available for public viewing in board docs there will be an opportunity for board discussion or comments before we vote on the resolution and then if the resolution passes i

089just want to ask board members to remember to come over to see me to sign it i have it i have it in front of me um to sign it before you leave tonight okay so at this time um miss casper zach bugner are calling you to read the resolution thank you president leatherbarrow whereas williamsville central school district is the largest suburban school district in western new york serving approximately 9500 students and whereas williamsville central school district is consistently ranked as one of the top school districts in western new york by independent sources that evaluate student performance data annually and whereas the future well-being of the williansville central school district community relies on providing all students access to high quality education and whereas the district is following the health and safety guidance set forth by

090the erie county department of health with respect to masking social distancing hand sanitizing stations and daily school cleaning and disinfecting and whereas the district and board of education supports vaccination against cobit 19 and encourages students and staff to become fully vaccinated and receive a booster dose when eligible even providing on-site vaccination opportunities to children and parents and whereas the williamsville school central school district recognizes that healthy unvaccinated students that are identified as closed contacts of an individual who tests positive for covid19 are required to quarantine under the new york state department of health regulations and or guidance and whereas the pilot program of tests to stay in grand island has begun successfully with students testing negative on a daily basis and able to remain in school for learning and socialization now therefore be it resolved

091effective december 14th 2021 the williamsville central school district board of education supports and encourages the erie county department of health to expand the test to stay mitigation program that allows unvaccinated students to avoid school exclusion by testing negative with a daily rapid naat test or antigen test for seven days after being identified as a close contact with possible exposure to covid19 if the student's parent or legal guardian provides consent be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution shall be transmitted to our local boards of education throughout the area niagara region the erie county department of health governor hoco new york state department of health new york state board of regents and all new york state federal state and federal legislators representing the students and family of the williamsville school community thank you miss

092bogner for reading that for us may i have a motion to resolve and approve the test to say resolution for the williamsville central school district as read by ms kasmerick bogner and presented in ford talks dr lipman thank you dr mcclary second is there any discussion on this dr lintman i'm just going to say is highly valuable and is something i think we've all all can agree on is important to our students and to our community so that uh the academic achievement can continue as we follow the guidelines mandated by the government as such thank you anybody else seeing none all in favor on this resolution any opposing or obscene okay all hands up equals this motion carried unanimously so board members i will ask that you stay and sign it before you leave today

093okay thank you very much all right we are moving on to the superintendent's report so i conclude my report and dr brownhall i turn it over to you thank you very much president leatherboro [Music] we're going to discuss health and safety first so as many of you know as many of our community members know that in partnership with ecdoh the erie county department of health the district is hosting an on-site vaccination clinic for students ages five to eleven so that clinic will be held on this coming friday december 17th from three o'clock to seven o'clock p.m parents and guardians must accompany their children and four parents and guardians booster doses will be available upon request when you walk in when you bring your child so if you are a parent and you need a booster

094dose you are able to get that also this friday from three to seven pm if you've already registered we were only allotted at this time 200 slots and all all of those slots are taken up we are always in consultation with ecdoh to try to schedule a second vaccination clinic but this one will be going on this friday and we're very happy to offer it to our students and families i want to give an update on strategic planning i want to congratulate and thank the parents that submitted letters to be on strategic planning um we have seven parents that will be joining the strategic planning committee now to get them up to date myself and assistant superintendent dr bailin will be meeting with them tomorrow at four o'clock p.m to bring them up to date

095so we've done a lot of strategic planning work and we don't want them to feel like they're behind so we're going to do a mini orientation if you will to bring them up to date and our next strategic planning meetings are scheduled for a monday december 20th so that's next monday and monday january 24th from two o'clock to four o'clock p.m so all of the parents that submitted letters we wanted to make sure that they can attend both those strategic planning meetings and the orientation tomorrow and they all agree they can attend so we're very excited about that and we're going to continue to work on goal statements and goal activities now after these meetings we will then be transitioning to developing committees at the school level and that will be an additional opportunity for

096parents to be on those committees at their schools also so this is something that you just discussed uh president leatherboro academic supports and there are a lot of supports available to our students district-wide you remember at the november board of education meeting assistant superintendent baylen did talk about the wide range of academic supports available for students and in one of my weekly updates i also mentioned it and then we showed the clip of what dr bellin was talking about i want to encourage all families and especially students that advocate for themselves at the high school to make sure you're talking with your teachers if you're having difficulty if you need assistance your teacher is your first point of contact because then your teacher is able to also let you know what supports are available so

097if you're not familiar with math lab or if you're not familiar with some of the other supports your teacher or your counselor is able to direct you appropriately to what supports would be advantageous for you to either get back on track to advance a little or to receive some remediation another thing you mentioned president leatherboro was the new york state education department graduation measures so nysec sent us a memo an extent was sent to all school districts in november regarding a review of graduation requirements and requesting feedback from stakeholders statewide so the reason that meeting is so important on the 27th from 2 o'clock to 4 30 is because it's our regional meeting and i know um superintendent len fusco from erie lomboses will be running a large portion of the meeting and it's really

098to get feedback from the stakeholders about what graduation measures mean what they should mean and what changes would we suggest or recommend for consideration from the board of regents for the future and so that's why that meeting is important so information on how to register was shared through wix and the district website so please refer to both wix or the district's website if you are interested in registering and the state at one of our meetings the state said they really want families students especially um and teachers educators to really think outside of the box right so that we're providing multiple means for students to reach graduation so this meeting is very important and i know uh vice president van sice will be attending also so thank you for that some reminders for the new year

099opportunities for parental involvement in strategic planning committees at the school level will be communicated our next board of education meeting is tuesday january 11th at 7 pm and the community forum is march 22nd following the budget work session so i know president leatherboro has explained this in her presidential update but i wanted to also my superintendent's update just put an exclamation point behind some of these we want to remind everyone that winter recess is december 24th through january 2nd classes will resume on monday january 3rd 2022 and that is it for the community update thank you very much thank you very much superintendent brown hall anyone from the board have any questions or comments regarding that update all right there are two other items um 11b is a 21 22 staffing and class size report

100so that is available in board docs so you can see um it's really important also because i know the board has guidelines for class sizing and you will see that we are in adherence in all of our classrooms also 11c is important because you just heard the presentation from dr grossman from the red group and that information is used by dr mckenna to begin the staffing projections and the report that is submitted in board docs for the 2022-2023 school year so that work begins very early so that once budget season comes around we can marry the two the budget and the required staffing so that we have proper supports and staffing in our schools so thank you dr mckenna for that also dr beaker um yeah i'd just like to comment um really um on

101items b and c combined the report in b was really reassuring to me in looking at those class size guidelines you look at those sections they're all under falling underneath the class size guidelines which is great coupling that with the staffing projection report i think that in the budget development that's coming considering staff projections it's an opportunity for our district to revisit those class size guidelines for grades three and four this is something in the past that we've heard from families i personally think looking at those the report and b we see that just the average class size is really below where our current class size guideline is and of course we saw the report we know that these numbers fluctuate i also think it's important to think about what our third and fourth grade

102look like right now our third graders that are going to be fourth graders next year the last full year of school they had was kindergarten and our second graders up to third grade have never had a full year of school in school as we consider it normal right um this has impacts on what school looks like in in these elementary classrooms and has impacts academically but also on social emotional and behavior and i think if you had conversations with educators and in these grade levels third and fourth grade looks a lot different this year than ever before so i just wanted to comment on that as an opportunity as we're working through budget development to see if there's any room in there in our budget to consider lowering some of those class size guidelines for

103grades three and four thank you for that and it's something that we would have to examine and um that will go along with the conversation we're going to have about capacity in the buildings right because once we lower class size if we have to have another class where would we put them right making sure that we have all students in a suitable classroom right and so that's why it all goes together so i appreciate that absolutely and i understand that that's easier said than done and that has been a hindrance in the past of making that move but thought it was worth mentioning just looking at the reports absolutely oh no absolutely um i have brought this up before uh when we first saw this report i think it was maybe in august or september

104the the preliminary one the preliminary september okay after school started so i brought to the attention of the board and to dr brown hall um i'm going to advocate for casey middle school when you look at casey their numbers are high so they're looking at fifth grade with average a class average of 26 and the sixth grade at a class average of 28.3 they are higher than any other and when you look at it they have more students and the fewest number of teachers compared to any other middle school so if you scroll down you continue to see that the number of students is decreased and some schools have seven teachers some even have 10 teachers so for casey to hold 156 students and 170 with the fifth and sixth grade respectively with six teachers

105only sitting at 26 and 28 i would just like to revisit that to just make it more balanced compared to the other middle schools as well as 28 is a lot in the class and both of my children have gone through casey they have both been in classes of 28. they're resilient children don't have a major issue with it but just for the balance factor when you really look at the other middle schools compared to the number of students and the teachers allocated okay um that's just something i'd like to bring to the attention thank you everyone again any other questions or comments from the board regarding the staffing or class size productions so that goes on leads us to a decision we need to make regarding the the um open enrollment question so you

106know what was recommended to the board was that we consider approving for open enrollment dodge elementary forest elementary casey middle school high middle school east high school north high school and south high school so it's all three high schools it's two of the middle schools casey and heim and it's two of the elementary schools dodging forest so we've heard some discussion about rationale for why we might want to table this so i want to check with the board to see right now if there's anyone that would like to make a motion to table agenda item 11 d at this time or or if there is the opposite of just going through with that and bringing it to a vote dr lipman i like to make a motion to table 11d until we gather some additional

107data okay there's a motion on the table to table 11d is there a second on that motion dr mclary thank you is there any additional discussion i think we've kind of like said it all it's doctor did you want to add anything i just wanted to you know i haven't seen the data how many students have taken advantage of open enrollment most recently so we have some numbers not mine to work with i think i may miss those somewhere and are there specific criteria for application to open enrollment or that's a good question are there the question doctor is are there is there specific criteria for being considered for open enrollment timetable no uh you know what i i shouldn't be so quick to answer i'll defer to assistant superintendent skanzouzo is there any special

108criteria that if if a family wants to open a role at a school and they're listed as open enrollment school is there any special criteria they must meet right thank you thank you for that any other additional comments of enough stuff um miss gizmer thank you so my understanding is we're going to get some additional information so that we are sure that whatever open enrollment schools are on the list that they have the capacity for the open enrollment do you have a sense of when we will likely be able to get that information i would say january february at the latest okay thank you very much okay on the motion to table 11d which is the resolution for open enrollment all in favor all right motion carries unanimously so we are tabling 11d we'll bring

109that back either january or february after we get some additional information so let's take a look at our policies that are up for first reading many of these if not all of them yep i think all of them are a result of the committee work that um myself dr lippmann and board parliamentarian cosmic bogner have been a part of we've had four uh planning sessions to do the work on all of the up all the policies that exist in our bylaws is there a motion for the first reading of policy updates from the 1000 series policy committee meetings for following policy numbers 12 30 resignation and dismissal duties of the school attorneys 15 30 minutes 15 40 executive sessions 1610 annual district meeting and election budget vote and 1650 submission of questions and propositions at

110annual elections and special special district meetings as presented through a motion to accept the first reading of these policies ms bieger thank you miss kasmir bogener ii again this is just the first reading and uh our district clerk mrs carey i want to thank you for all of the um work that you've done through boces to get all the updates like a list of questions for mrs carey every single time and she like within a day we emailed us back all the answers um did i already get motions on these two i did thank you for any other discussion great all in favor of approving the first reading thank you anyone in that position no motion carries unanimously moving on to item 12 oh oh i'm sorry we tabled the motion thank you so much

111the motion didn't carry the motion was tabled or the the first video oh i see what you're saying gotcha so now we're gonna bring it back in january so is there a motion to table these policies for a second reading and adoption at the january meeting i've only done this a million times [Laughter] miss colin thank you uh mr biscagelia thank you was that a second thank you very much um all in favor of tabling the motion on the policies thank you all in favor that was everybody's hands up so that that passes all right so now we're looking at the annual claims auditor report um dr brown hall or mr maturski do you wish to add anything about this i do see it's in board docs for us it is on board docs and

112i don't think uh mr matuska i don't think there's anything to add for that one correct now the information i think is uh relevant and speaks to what was done this past year thank you is anyone from the board of questionnaire comment from mr majeski on network thank you 12b the long range financial plan of the applicable to the 2022-2023 budget development cycle so dr van gaal i turn it over to you and mr mrskey to present this plan absolutely so our chief financial officer assistant superintendent uh tom maturski will be presenting and welcome mr maturity thank you very much thank you dr brown good evening everyone uh the december meeting is when we move forward with the next phase of our budget development process and that's a review of our long reigns clan the

113information uh is uh is really um a summary of what the written plan is in your um board of docs for this meeting and the objective of the plan is to provide uh information on what the financial outlook would be over the next five years it's based on a point in time but it's based upon actual information historical information and uh what we're seeing in the economy and items that would influence our budget so um with that said i i want to provide some information that really is more for our community our board is not much aware of this but um one of the things that is unique and a little bit different for school districts public school districts in particular is that although we have to have a balanced budget as do municipalities we

114also have of course our budget vote and and that's voted on by our community the uh municipalities just allow their boards to approve the budget so that's the difference as well as we have a lot of more stringent reporting measures such as budget notices tax cap compliance as well as property tax caps so all of that information factors into what we do as we develop our budget and then again uh more of an information item for our community the um the tax cap that we all hear about is as many times advertised as a two percent tax cap the reality is that there really is no levy level amount of an increase there are laws that pertain to that which are if you exceed the tax cap calculation then you need a 60 majority approval

115of your budget and if you have two budget defeats you cannot increase your levy at all it's a zero percent increase it goes back to the prior year so those are the the really major factors that impact our budget development process as we look forward uh and the possibility with inflation what it is that two percent factor that's the limit um on this consumer price index cpi that will become a factor this year and possibly in the next few years to go a little bit of background here as we look at the long-range plan i wanted to revisit what our notable revenues were and specifically you can see that really they're composed of three items you have our new york state aid which is about 23.26 of our budget and this is our current budget

116our sales tax receipts represent 5.15 and uh then you have these small items interest earnings less than two tenths of one percent medicaid seven tenths of one percent and then you also have our tax levy which is about 65.26 on the other side you're seeing that we really don't have a lot of other revenues so all those other items are so minor that we really are uh targeted into those three main items as we go through our revenue process for the next year's budget looking at some historical information this chart really shows two major items i want to focus in on the first thing is those prior two years you can see in the prior two years our state aid was really relatively minimal the other thing to factor in here is that we were

117always under the tax cap this district has always had a budget under the tax cap very close to it but under it um the other thing you'll notice in those other prior two years is that the actual expense increase was higher than the levy increase and the state aid so what did we do we had to make some reductions to balance our budgets this past year has been totally different um you see that we had a 5.8 million dollar increase uh followed by a tax cap amount of 3 million 382 572 and then our actual levy increase was three million three hundred seventy five thousand having said that we actually got 2.2 million in state aid um and yet we had a 2.8 million dollar deficit so how did that happen if you think about

118it you're adding your state aid you're adding your levy increase it almost equals that 5.8 the reason is if you remember last year we had to reduce a lot of the other revenues sales tax all of the cobit-related items went down so that's something to keep in mind as you look forward because those items as the economy comes back will be able to support our budget in the future and that's a positive item so lastly you see the three million thirty six thousand one sixty two on this chart that is the amount of federal aid that we allocated in this current year's budget so looking at the long range forecast what i have done is broken this down for presentation purposes to a couple major items in regard to state aid you can see that

119the first year includes a two million dollars in federal aid in that number uh the second year includes one million dollars and then in the third and fourth year here you're seeing that there um is no additional federal aid so it could happen it could be extended there could be new federal aid programs but we do not know that we don't have that information so at this point in time we're projecting with what we know uh so the point here that you're seeing is there's a dollar change of uh 222 000 in the first year uh point five five percent um and what we're what i'm doing is i'm adding basically um a two percent increase on foundation eight and i also do consider um the categorical aid decreases that might occur if we have

120student reductions however those are really relatively minor compared to the other major aids that we have foundation aid transportation aid student services and special ed those items are all our major aids including boces so as we move forward to that you're seeing that there's a bit of a reduction in aid in 2324 that's due to the fact that again i'm i'm subtracting a million dollars from federal aid and then you're seeing another reduction in 2425 because that's when that last million goes away and then you're seeing an increase now can we receive more more dollars may we receive more foundation aid it's definitely possible but again right now we don't have the state's budget so that is what's being projected on the tax levy um each year i keep it in the forecast at two

121percent uh for the actual cpi rate that's the maximum and i'm also keeping our assessment growth at two percent so you're seeing that uh again tax cap two percent what i mentioned earlier the actual net changes if you go through the formulas and the increases are actually a little bit more than two percent they're closer to three percent but that again is a reasonable expectation for what we currently know and what we currently have seen in the past looking at the expenditure side the notable expenses salaries as we would expect they're the highest amount 57.14 percent benefits 18.89 utilities 1.71 instructional contractuals so these are all the services that support our instructional programs in the budget they're listed as a 400 code they're only at 6.49 percent supplies um 0.08 so very very small when

122it comes to our total budget equipment 1.16 transportation 4.19 and debt service 2.37 so again when you look at all those the big numbers are really salary and benefits um and then again i i i represent 76 total salary and benefits of the budget athletic budget many times we get questions about that 1.8 million of a 205 million dollar budget uh boces budget is about 9 million and that's aided at about 59 and then most importantly when you look at the breakdown between uh program capital and administrative you see what you want to see you see program component at 77.17 percent administrative 8.39 i'm not going to go over this um i think if you have some time to review this it's really a really good history on what's happened salary and benefits the key

123items to note is how there's been a change between the percentage for salaries as opposed to the percentage for benefits of the total budget how that shifted and the last thing i'll say on that is that actually that shift is going to start reversing again so we went from salaries to benefits increasing then we went from benefits starting to decrease and salary percent increase i think with what we're foreseeing in the health insurance industry our health insurance expenses are going to be going up over the next year and i think you're going to start to see that benefit amount climb above salaries so looking at the major part of our budget what this forecast does it provides a three percent increase in each year for salaries but i need to make a specific comment on

124that that's inclusive of all step increases it's not on top of step and that's critical to understanding this and remember when we look at the next slide that shows the totals and and what the reduction process is that's what we have to be aware of new york state retirement system uh pretty much a 1.8 is is pretty close to what we're probably going to see this year and um and by this year i mean next year's budget and one percent is a forecast uh health insurance five percent that's what we're gonna see this year uh six percent the future that might be a little bit low but again based upon what we know today that's a good percentage and then social security is based upon increasing salaries facilities uh in these forecasts over the last

125few years i have never increased the other expenses the facilities the the supplies all of those because we've been able to manage them reallocate within our budget but i see inflation being something that will not allow that to happen so there's actually percent increases put in there for the facility budget that's necessary for our cleaning supplies and all the other items paper products all those items that you never really think about but are important to maintaining our school buildings contracted transportation the first the two percent are applicable to new york state education department tells us what the consumer price index amount is on an annual basis that's applied to our contract the last year 25 26 that would be the first year of what we're hopeful will be an extension a new extension but we're

126going to have a pretty sizable increase due to what we've experienced in colbit what we're experiencing in higher wages for bus drivers although we don't technically pay the drivers our contractor has increased their wages over the last two years significantly and that's why we don't have major budget busing issues here so looking at the details on the long range forecast you can see that this is really separated this is a a summary that just shows the total amounts um revenue is on top um it's showing all those items i kind of summarized already expenses are on the bottom so again i'll just stick to the key factors here the current year you're seeing a surplus of 1.5 million you're seeing no reductions um and then you start to see some deficits so why in the

127world would we have a surplus and not increase the expense budget well if you remember we have that outstanding federal aid so the goal has always been you do an implementation timeline you take some savings from one year you hold them you reallocate them to the next year and then that smooths the reduction necessary and that's what you're seeing here you're seeing that in the 23-24 year you're able to have a minimal amount of reductions based upon the the forecast and then in 2425 you've got a little bit larger a 2.3 and then 2.9 but those are actually pretty manageable when you consider what we've experienced historically the only other item i'll mention is where it says current year surplus reductions that's the comprehensive compounded amount the amount where it says yearly is the amount

128that you would have to make in a given year so in summary what we want to make sure we we all understand here but our community is aware as well as our legislators is that we really have an importance for our new york state aid that is so important to the structure of our budget next you know the the covid and the awareness that federal aid is likely to go away right now it's planned to go away in the 23-24 year but we it could be extended but right now we have to plan for what we know and then of course on the impact of labor contract settlements on our budget the compounding effect that that has and then lastly the big item we all experience on a daily basis is what inflation will do

129we've never experienced this i think what i heard the other day is um through november we're at 6.2 percent inflation this year that's higher than we've ever had i think they said since 1982 so now just transitioning i i do a little bit on reserves here and the reserves i'm concentrating on are those that are appropriated in our budget this is a compacted presentation here if you look in your a packet there's the other years are actually there i only want to address two items on these this slide the first is that you see under that first very column it's 2122. that's what we have appropriated in this year's revenue budget and then if you look to 2526 that same budget it's the exact same amount so the idea is we're not going to make

130any adjustments to our reserve appropriations in our revenue budget we're going to keep it stable what you do see the difference is is in your reserve balances 38.7 million as of 2022 which is the projection and then 35.6 so basically about a 1.6 million dollar reduction and and so that's us using our reserves as necessary and and that's how we manage it in regard to our reserves the main thing you want to be aware of is that some of them are self-funding such as unemployment and workers compensation so you do not want those levels to drop significantly you always want to go back to your third party and make sure that the third party has provided you with some facts on what you need to keep in those reserves and those are the amounts you

131fund them by um so that said um you don't want to deplete your reserves either uh the major part of the reserves is that although the comptroller may say that you have too much they they positively impact our debt borrowing we have a lot of capital projects currently underway currently finishing and some that might be approved in in the very near future and the our aa1 bond rating is probably the best in this area and we want to maintain that that provides us the very best debt service and lowest interest rates that we can we see so uh just to summarize the final items here this is kind of just a quick brief review of what we're looking at in the in the near future so we'll be doing budget requests and going through our

132sr2 gear 2 and arp programs we've been keeping you updated on that we have some approvals where we are monitoring the use of them we are using a multi-budgeted multi-year plan for those grant funds so that we're doing that appropriately we're going to begin our budget development for boces that's more toward the end of january uh we'll we'll be getting some information from the state hopefully in mid-january on the state aid that we'll receive that will be factored into probably our first budget uh review that will be expense minus revenue and then um you know going toward our budget position and the state aid run and then some initial tax cap calculations in february with the submission happening prior to march 1st and then uh that would conclude which is quite a while from here

133but march is our preliminary 22 23 budget presentation so with that i'll take any questions thank you very much thank you mr maturity are there any questions by the board dr singh i mean i just had two questions but it's probably because i don't understand as i should in uh your slide seven you mentioned an increase in tax levy this is also taking to effect that now the assessments are coming in and most assessments are way higher than they used to be so that would increase in the tax increase yeah the the assessments really don't factor into our levy the board of education's they they they provide your role is to assign the levy amount the account of amherst assessor's office is dealing with all the changes in assessed values so when i calculate the

134actual tax rate in august that the board approves if there is a higher amount of of assessments it actually drives the the actual tax rate down so if you had no change in your um in in your assessed value for your home and we say that the actual tax rate goes up two percent that's the only amount that your bill will go up regardless if your assessed value goes up but everyone's success value goes up and your the levy never changes that's basically what the board and the community approve in may your your actual bill if the other amounts of assessments go up higher than yours could actually go down so it's it's a function it's a very complicated function but it's a function of the total assessments on the town and everybody's individual assessed

135value so does it would be a dollar increase if assistant goes up or what is the percentage of the dollar value they they it's your assessed value on your home if it rises you're going to be paying based upon what the tax rate will be for that year the best way that i explain it when someone contacts me with their tax bill is i ask them to take out last year's tax bill and this year's and i say what's your assessed value and we compare it and then and then most of the concerns are well you said my tax bill was going to go up two percent basically when you do your budget and so forth and i went up four percent and i say well what happened to your assessed value and if it

136went up fifty thousand dollars that means that you got that increase that you have to pay on the full tax rate amount and that's why your tax bills may go up more but what i'm saying is that that's one function of the whole formula because if you went up just let's say that your assessment went up four percent but the town's total assessment goes up ten percent you're actually not gonna you're you're gonna have some of that absorbed and it's gonna be lower that's why i say it's a very complicated formula okay so so the net effect is if all the assessments go up would the school get any additional no no we do not get more okay yeah that does not that's and that's part of the tax cap law so and just one

137more thing that assures you that that cannot happen is when we file our our tax levy um in april i have to file it with the new york state comptroller's office we have to refile again in june and they come back and they say okay what's your actual levy going to be so they're double checking and then actually there's a third check that i get the following year that they say now here's what we got from new york state real property taxes i have to physically sign it and send it back to albany saying that yes that's correct so you cannot increase the levy once it's set by the community and the board that's all it can be it can't go up at all the other question i had is now that inflation is going

138up it's it's like you said it's over six percent would it affect the cpa in your calculations the cpi is part of the tax cap calculation but that's where it's limited to two percent unless the law will change okay and the last question you mentioned in the 2023 we have a surplus so does it mean we won't increase the tax no that's including a regular um uh levy increase at um at my at that level that i said two percent on cpi which is maximum and two percent on assessment growth now keep in mind that i'm i'm using what i consider to be realistic numbers but over the time um the growth of assessments hit from especially the town of amherst has exceeded my conservative two percent so you're probably going to have a little

139bit higher levy because what's going to happen is amherst might come in at four percent or five percent and and if amherst does a reevaluation which i hear they're talking about that changes everything the rate the rate will probably drop um dollars because again that what i described earlier it's it's the complex formula that assessments go up and that but it it will it will drop down and this has happened once before here uh i have to go back but i think it's about uh eight years ago where amherst reevalu and we saw our tax rate go down by about three dollars in that year and in that particular year i kept the um the tax rate at zero percent well actually the tax levy at zero percent and the reason for that was because

140we didn't we knew we were going to get all the questions on the tax bills and we said well we didn't we didn't change it thank you you're welcome any other questions from the board mrs bigger yeah thank you so much for your report i was interested in slide 9 where you showed the historical data about how much uh the percentage that the budget is um been a seller salary in the benefits and you mentioned you used the words as we would expect uh it was about 76 of our most recent budget i actually found it really interesting the historical data that it was high like in 2013-14 i was over 80 of our budget so i found that interesting my question to you is you know 76 percent is that a normal percent of

141budget that is spent on salary benefits comparable to other districts in the region or and you've seen is that really a normal percentage for salary benefits it really is it's in the 70 area some might be 65 um up to 75 but definitely it's not uncommon okay great thank you any other questions from the board vice president thank you mr maturski i have one quick question i see that the supplies is like .06 or so point zero eight whatever that might be just a question um i guess clarification we are hearing that there is a paper shortage here in williamsville um and teachers aren't able to have paper is this allocating money for the supplies is this due to covet impact with not being able to get it from our supplier what's the shortage and

142is it budget related or any anything for clarification yes a great question it's not budget related at all um it is a supplier issue but i i can provide a little bit of good news that um we worked out a trailer truck type purchase um and and so with that we should be um we should be pretty good in in paper in the upcoming months um and i think we're going to be okay for the rest of the year based upon some strategies we put in so we still think that um again we didn't have this information last week it was something that we were working on so we want to be um truthful with everybody and we shared the information with our principals and that that we wanted to make sure people were prioritizing

143what they were using the paper for because we were having delivery issues and technically there still are but uh that that's that's what we've been able to um to to do and it's not budget related at all thank you i just have one quick question you know we spent a lot of time tonight looking at enrollment data and we do see that like over time there's a projection of a decrease what impact will that have financially on our district to have because we're talking about long-term planning so with lungs with with that if we expect a decrease in enrollment over the long term what would the effect be um i'll just go over i'll start with the revenue side on the revenue side the impact of low enrollment will have somewhat of a reduction effect

144on state aid but as i said i don't believe it's going to be as significant because although on enrollment is an important factor the other factors are just as important you know you have your what are your wealth ratios what are all the formulas and believe it or not williamsville is not considered per sed an extremely wealthy district we're very close to 1.0 and 1.0 is average so when you consider all of that that's where we are are sitting so we're not going to be negatively impacted by that when we're looking at other revenues they're not impacted at all by enrollment sales tax there's a little bit on sales tax but remember if our enrollment's dropping that's allocated by the county based upon enrollment and some other factors every other school district's enrollment is dropping

145so ours is dropping less than theirs so there should not be any impact to sales tax revenue allocation to us and then again all those other revenues you know maybe special education might be impacted if those students decrease but it could go up um so revenue side is pretty stable is what my message would be on the expenditure side i would say that um technically if i know you've talked about decreasing class sizes and having smaller class sizes but you would have an opportunity to re-evaluate your staffing model and see what's out there and and again that's for your discussion and for future discussions but that's as we said staffing benefits salary and benefits that's the major portion of our budget so that would be the area that you would have to take a look

146at and say do you want to continue to to keep those staffing models in place thank you thank you for that and thank you for all the details and information you provided tonight you're welcome so i'm going to combine agenda items 12c and 12d may i have a motion to resolve to approve the property tax settlements in 12c and 12d as presented here thank you we have a second dr singh thank you very much any discussion on this seeing none all in favor pose or abstentions motion carried unanimously item 13 is our liaison reports if any um one needs a substitute for an assignment please let us know does anyone have awareness of that here at the table all right all the reports are in board docs um there's no legislative matters to discuss other

147than the ones we've already talked about related to tests tests to stay and um just encouraging you to fill out one of the thank you cards before you leave tonight under curriculum which is item 15a may i have a motion to resolve to approve the curriculum council recommendations as well this is merrick both there thank you miss poland second is there any discussion thank you dr valen for all the work on this very detailed appreciate it all in favor post or abstention non-motion carries unanimously no items under item 16 personnel item 17a information is in board docs regarding facility improvement and preservation are there any questions from mr motorski regarding the information in 17a he's already spoken quite a bit so we won't make him come back up to the podium um i'm going to

148also combine 17b and 17c may please have a motion to resolve and approve agenda item 17b capital project bids pertaining to the district-wide security improvement project and 17c the state environmental quality review act district-wide school building air conditioning capital project as presented mr pascalia is beager second is there any discussion on either of these items seeing none all in favor thank you opposed or absentions motion carried unanimously there are no items for 18 which is our special needs and activities are there any matters to discuss under committee of the whole dr sang i mean i just have a request i mean is it possible for a school boat to write a letter to the town asking them to opt out of the marijuana recreational marijuana which they're going to which is going to just be

149active from january first i i'm really sorry that the air blower is like blowing right over your head so i heard i heard ladder to the county right in here regarding what like the town of amherst is going to start selling recreational marijuana from january 1st and december 31st is the last day to opt out of that and the village of williamsville has decided to opt out and some other towns like west seneca have already opted out is it possible to write a letter or to request the town to consider opting out dr singh is asking if the board is interested in sending a letter asking the county to opt out of the recreational marijuana the the the stores right like okay um did you want to well first of all i need just any

150discussion on that for doctor's name i just would like to ask dr brown hall if that's appropriate that the board would even intervene or make that request that that's a good question i i guess the the question really is is when you start doing something like that are you going to take a position on anything the town does right so i guess when you start thinking about that and i know one of the questions that was asked and provided information about you know any marijuana shop has to be 500 feet away from school buildings and that's very important that we realize that now taking that further or having the district write a letter i mean that's something you really want to get a feel of everyone on the board but i don't know that you

151want to start jumping to that because then you're going to start imposing yourself on anything the town you know starts making decisions about and so i guess that's where the discussion needs to be at yeah yeah i i personally don't want to weigh in on that decision i feel like that's a decision for the town um but that's my personal view but you know dr lipman i see you everybody might be interesting to see uh if amherst schools or sweet home schools which are also part of the you know amherst uh has done anything or is considering that type of action uh because maybe a joint i mean if we decide maybe some kind of resolution with all the schools may be something are you offering to look into that for us dr lipman i'm

152sorry are you offering to look into that for us and president obama and that might be an option just to you know discuss with other board presidents if that is an issue that yeah i can tell you it hasn't come up at the east at the erie county association of school board meetings like i'm on the legislative team it does not come up for discussion at that meeting and i don't know dr mccoy if it's come up for you at all um in the delegate yeah at the delegate meetings no it hasn't okay mr biscaglia i i even if it was looked into by uh dr levin i don't um foresee me my personal view would be not writing anything i think sometimes you kind of have to stay in your lane um [Music] there's

153benefits and there's negative things to it you know we're just talking about sales revenue and things like that so i mean you have to that's a town and county and that's how i feel so i mean the thing is if you don't opt out by december 31st the town loses the option to opt out ever right i do understand that i mean are you looking to make a motion at the table right now and because we did have a little bit of discussion i don't know i mean i kind of agree with dr littman that we can look around and see what other school rich districts are doing and where we have a joint resolution if they all are in the same boat yeah no i absolutely invite you or dr lippmann to do that

154and present back to us and you know you can even you can use email sister email for information sharing so you're welcome to look into it and as early as next week you know report back to us what you found out okay all right any other items um dr mcclary just a quick question on that of looking into this and then reporting back and so forth our next meeting is not until january 13. right the town's decision has to be by december 31st or whenever their last meeting of this month i don't know when the town board meeting is in december i i absolutely hear you on that i think we just had a little period of discussion and just sort of you know my perception of that is that there wasn't board support for

155intervening um i don't know if i'm reading the board wrong but that was just my perception of what transplant i'm just saying they're it time wise yeah it's not gonna well you know if there were support there's always the option to call a special meeting um but it doesn't appear that there is support for something like that at this time and i think you know it's i think board members might be hesitant of giving their personal views on recreational marijuana and i i respect that um dr littmann followed by mrs b i was going to say the other option is is in any situation individual uh you know members of the community or individual members of the board can write or call the elected representatives in amherst and express their viewpoints yeah just like an

156individual individual not important that's really important that you do that because if you attach your name and say you know if i were to write ton of amherst and sign off as president leatherbarrow i wasn't authorized by the board to do that we just want to make sure that it's if you individual it's completely separate and our board policy states that you identify that you are a board member that you're speaking as an individual okay any further discussion on that if you were talking about you know reading the vibe of the board i want to kind of piggyback on what um mr scalia was saying about staying in our lane uh you just talked in the microphone a little bit better sure that thing is so loud oh well my microphone is off maybe that's

157why uh just piggybacking on what uh mr biscaglia said about staying in our own lane um i think that we want to be careful in setting a precedent and taking a stance as a board for town actions when something happens such as the resolution we passed tonight about tests to stay that's very specific that's something that impacts our children at school and we're looking to advocate for something that impacts whether they can be physically present in the school so you know we all i'm sure have differing personal opinions on different topics but if we're going to advocate in that way um especially for the town for me i feel like we need to be careful about what line we draw particularly when it might be a social issue that people have differing opinions on thank

158you all right that matters thought all right um under correspondence um we did receive a few emails uh regarding masking protocols still you know some people in favor of them asking some people and not not so much um we did receive a letter from a group of teachers advocating for increased school nurse pay there was um an email from a parent asking questions about how how um schools decide notifications for illnesses in the classroom and we also had um [Music] a question from a parent or concern from a parent about running the swim program during coal bed um and that parent was offered an alternate assignment during the pe time for their child um any other issues or examples of correspondence that anyone wants to discuss all right thank you well with that we wish

159to extend holiday wishes of good health and peace to all as we close out 2021 and begin a new year our next scheduled board meeting is january 11th i just want to remind board members if they would please sign the resolution before you leave and also just take three to five minutes to fill out a postcard that would be greatly appreciated is there a motion to adjourn the regular board meeting this is pieger thank you and dr sang second all in favor all hands up equals everybody thank you everyone good night and happy new year happy new year