001Can you hear us? Thank you. We're good. All right. All right. So just need a motion to come out of executive session at 628. So. Chloe, the second. Abby, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. And then I'll make the motion just to reconvene the public session at 628. Say a second. Second. From Katie. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. We will stand for the pledge to the point. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Is there anyone in attendance who would like to speak? And I'm thinking that the board will be voting on tonight. Not seeing any, we can go to our swearing in of our new board member.
002You can just sit here and do this. It's going to be exciting and stand. Raise your right hand, please. Repeat after me. I'm Melissa Kimbrell. I'm Melissa Kimbrell. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will support the Constitution of the United States. That I will support the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the State of New York. And the Constitution of the State of New York. And that I will faithfully discharge. And that I will faithfully discharge. The duties of Board of Education member. The duties of Board of Education member. To the best of my ability. To the best of my ability. Congratulations. Thank you so much. All right. We will jump right to our first presentation from our friends at Ohio. Hello everyone. All right. Thank you for having me
003tonight. I'm John Stexter, Principal of Ohio Elementary. And it's an honor to be here tonight. Thank you for having me. So I prepared a video like some of our other principals had. And before we start the video, I just wanted to say that all the kids this year have done nothing but wonderful. The staff has done a fantastic job. I think the video is going to illustrate and highlight many district initiatives. Some of the things also that are homegrown right in Ohio as well. And at the end of the video, I'd be happy to answer any questions anybody may have. A year full of fun, learning, and lots of school spirit. That's right. At Ohio Elementary, we're so proud of all the cool stuff we get to do. We celebrate our school pride in lots
004of ways. One of the best celebrations was TMT. And guess what? Our football team even visited us. They shared some awesome tips and cheered us on. They keep working hard both in school and on the field. It was so cool to meet them. We also had some great teamwork, you know, like the middle school facts students teamed up with us to make these adorable bears and yummy cookies. Oh, and we can't forget about the fire department. visiting us. They taught us about fire safety and showed us cool equipment they used. And the teacher was a total kid. We got to see our teachers working at McDonald's and we even got to eat there while supporting our school. It was such a fun night out. Recently, Ohio began a new pilot program with Lumber City Church.
005Hi, my name is Erin McLaughlin. I'm a teacher at Ohio Elementary and I'm also part of Fox Torn. This is an important partnership effort between school and community that ensures our students have adequate nutrition throughout the weekend. Welcome to Ohio, Terry, I'm Mrs. F. And I'm Miss F. Here at Ohio, we have established our new tradition with our self-study classes, the kindness card. Each month our students take orders and package them and deliver them throughout the school from our staff. This provides life and social skills while creating positivity and promoting inclusion amongst all of our students. This year, we were excited to learn about and attend our first holidays around the world assembly. That's right. In our assembly, we explored how different people celebrate holidays all over the world. And it was so interesting to
006see how diverse and unique each tradition is. But the coolest part, even though the traditions are different, A lot of these holidays share similar values. For example, many holidays are all about thankfulness, caring for others, peace, and forgiveness. ThinkTag has been a game changer for me. It gives all of my students a voice in their learning and helps me drive instruction. When I use ThinkTag with my class, I have the ability to monitor what my students are thinking in real time. They get to draw, sort, throw ideas up on the screen through word cloud. We take polls regarding their opinions. They get instant feedback and so much more. My students are so engaged and begged me to create more Big Tech lessons to keep going. With the students producing the content and the increase in
007conversation and connectivity in my classroom, our learning has become a shared experience. It is incredible how this platform has reminded me why I love teaching. Our little buddy program is where our third graders get to spend time with kindergarten students and help them learn to read. What does little buddy's program look like? Great question. Twice a week we make our kindergarten buddies. We read stories to them, help them with their letters and sounds, and play fun games that help them practice reading. Hi, I'm John Stexter, principal of Ohio Elementary and the parent of an eighth grade lumberjacks. In North Tonawanda, we honor our traditions and celebrate our community's partnership. Our schools are inclusive learning environments. We're engaged learners continue to thrive under Dr. J and the leadership team. We will continue to strive for excellence
008as we invest in innovation and prepare our students for the workforce with 21st century skills necessary to succeed. Oh, thank you. Yeah, so from the video there, we were able to see a lot of the district initiatives that are in our buildings, not only Ohio, but every other building that we do have, but we're able to highlight them here today. And some of the homegrown efforts that we're trying to build, get built in capacity within our building as well to help throw that out. And, you know, with the staff, the students, the community, to be honest with you, it's bomb. It's, you know, easy is a word I reluctantly use, but it's, you know, it's been really friendly and kind to me. So I'm very appreciative of the opportunity. Be happy to answer any questions
009that anybody may have. I have one for you. I saw obviously our SRO in some of the pictures. How's that going with that pushing into the classrooms and working with kids? Fantastic. That is a big win. So we're with Officer Smith. Officer Smith is really perfect for the job. And I've been able to work with a couple other of our SROs as well. But working with Officer Smith, he really embraces what we're looking for. So there's security that Stander really watches out and makes sure that we're safe and is armed. And there's an SRO. that is there to educate our students, build relationships with our students, because this is a long-range vision, as I see it, for the community and for our district. And when you're in the buildings, as Officer Smith is, and you're
010building relationships, he's on his knees, he's in the chair reading books, he's building relationships where our students are able to have a healthy relationship with people in law enforcement. And to be able to take that forward into life, whereas we don't know exactly what the relationship is potentially with that area of society, law enforcement. So he's able to really instill positive relationships, get to know them. And then on my end, every now and then, you do have to connect and you have to draw some connections really quickly to keep people safe. It's happened recently in the last month, and he did a fantastic job. and he was able to get a hold of Officer Herber and we were on it within seconds. Whereas without an SRO and having that ability, it changes a little bit
011and times of the essence sometimes in these cases where we need to make sure somebody's home, somebody's safe, we're able to do that seamlessly and without any type of delay at all. And you know he's certainly absolutely wonderful to work with and the kids love him, parents love him. The only thing I don't like about Officer Smith is that I think he gets more Christmas gifts than I do. So I'm going to put something out to the community and try to curve that back where it needs to be. That's great. How about anybody else? I don't have a question, but them singing that song was adorable. Yeah, it is a fantastic piece of Ohio's history. So every assembly, we have our third graders stand up, and then they lead the entire school in it. Now,
012a fun note for everybody, I play bass guitar. And at the end of every year, I do the national anthem on the guitar for Flag Day. This is the year I'm going to play Ohio on the bass. So I've been practicing. I got it. So I'm going to do a couple practice runs. When it's done, I'll send one over for the end of your board meeting so you can see a little bit of that addition. But it's a huge part of the fabric. It's played every Friday in the morning, right, as a rival. At lunches, you can hear our school monitors getting the children up and singing it. And my daughter, I've got a video of her singing it. We just watched the other night. So it's been, you know, a huge part of our
013fabric. And, you know, that was something I inherited. uh so uh very thankful for it and uh uh i know mr killer had worked with a music teacher at that time to put that forward so it's just been a huge part of the stable moving forward John, what about one other thing that you've really done a nice job with is during your award ceremonies or recognitions, you've included your special needs children and some of our L students. I think that's something that really is something you should boast about. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So historically, I can tell a couple of pieces of this story. So we started our self-contained classrooms just a couple of years ago. Grassroots movement. It started with a young lady getting dropped off at our building. The radio coming to me saying,
014John, you've got to come to the buses. And okay. And then we suddenly realized, okay, we've got to identify our ways and how we're going to work with all students. So it started off with one. It turned into three before the end of the year, into a six. Now we are thankful to have two fantastic 12-1-4 classrooms with students that are growing, developing, and getting involved in the classrooms. Now, sad part of the story that I don't like to tell, but it's an important one, is that we ran an assembly. during maybe the very first year of the two classrooms and we didn't have a plan to include the children. The children do require a plan because some are able to easily participate, some may have to have a type of assistance that can get
015them through it and we didn't have a plan for that and they didn't participate and it was really embarrassing and it was disheartening and it was, you know, it was just really awful. Great learning experience. From that point forward, that became how we run every assembly and everything we do is from that lens. How do our students participate that don't naturally have the ability or, you know, the, I guess, really an access point to get to that that's just natural, like our first grade, kindergarten, second grade, we call them all down, but we didn't have that in place. And now that we do, and you know what's great about it is, you know, Michelle can't feel her hair in the back. So Michelle Canfield is one of these people. She's a remedial reading teacher. But
016we have our teachers, we have our aides, but we have wonderful people like Michelle putting their hands up saying, we're going to go. We go out. We have a whole team of people that support the needs of our students, and they participate in every single assembly that we have. And even better, when we think about our students, the last time last year we did our 100th day celebration. We had students from our self-contained class begin the celebration by singing and dancing to a Jack Hartman video and then going through our L population, the students that are learning English. Next, right after they finished, our students that were learning English came up and counted to 10 in their native language. So it was a wonderful opportunity and it took some coaching. a little bit more excited
017than others, but it was a fantastic opportunity to be able to celebrate everybody in our building and to give everybody a voice in our building. And, you know, the inclusion that's happening within our building, when we look at our L classes, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart from any other classes, our self-contained classrooms. Now that we've done this for a couple of years, we've got to the point where it's so organic, where students are pushing into general education classrooms. I don't even know about it. They'll just happen for a month and they'll say, hey, by the way, did you see? I said, yeah, I see that he's not only in there in the morning, during the morning meeting, but also at the end of the day, hanging out with Buddy. So it's really
018going in a right direction. Incredibly proud to be the principal of Ohio here in North Tonawanda where I live and thankful for this opportunity tonight. Thanks, John. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. All right. Next, Mr. McCall is going to talk a little bit about some technology. Both of you? Both of them. Perfect. Well, it's really hard going after the schools. Yeah, you get the short end of the stick here. Josh said you're going to sing this part, right? Yes, for sure. One of my goals is I was thinking about how I would like kind of budgets to go and presentations is some of the ancillary support departments and the critical role they play within the district supporting learning and instruction. And when you think of schools, things, items such as transportation, buildings and grounds, food
019service, technology, they don't immediately jump to mind as this is what a school is because school is about teaching and learning and instruction and students having fun and being engaged as Mr. Satcher showed. But some of these ancillary areas are really critical in making some of the magic happen behind the scenes. So I wanted to highlight with Mr. McCall here, we've been working for several months now on a longer-term technology plan and present definitely the 50,000-foot view of some of this plan and where we are with major expense drivers. We want to provide the infrastructure to support all of our student outcomes in a fiscally responsive manner every single year to make sure that our teachers and various instructors have all the tools that they need for our students. So we're going to review some
020of our recent expenditures, both at the building and the district level. What we anticipate is going to come up over the next couple of years, as well as some of our industry challenges that we have that we know just are going to be facing that we can reasonably see. Of course, five to 10 years from now, there's probably going to be a whole host of challenges that no one saw coming. So an important piece that we need to focus on is the idea of a replacement strategy. And the reason why this is critical is our technology budget. versus our instruction budget, we spend approximately 25 to 30 times depending on the year on instructor salaries than we do on technology. Makes sense. We're a school. We're here to support learning and instruction. But without technology,
021our teachers are really, they're not being utilized to their greatest capacity. And the idea of a replacement strategy, getting all of our infrastructure on a five or 10 or 15 year life cycle, really for three important variables, reliability for our teachers when they come to work, that they have all the tools they need. From an equity on a student experience, we can't have students in one building having better technology. and reliable technology that works compared to another within the rotation. And then predictability from a budget standpoint of saying these are our anticipated expense drivers coming out certain years that we can reasonably forecast based on useful light. So our plan assumes a 3% inflation budget on both the revenue and expense side needed. That's just the forecast that we use to help model. So some
022of our recent building expenditures. Our instructional boards, we anticipate a useful life of approximately 10 years old. Those have been replaced throughout the entire district. The most recent ones at the middle school and at Drake, our oldest boards right now are at Ohio, and they're just about halfway through their useful life. Our desktop computers and our copiers, they have a useful life of approximately five years. And throughout the district, those are getting certainly closer to the end of their useful life. Things like copiers, they last a little longer. less use versus those who get heavier use. So a couple of big things that we have district-wide, you know, really kudos to Josh because he had to be brought up to speed quickly on like all the various technological pieces that are in a building. You
023don't realize it, but when you take all these panels out, there are so many things that we have that no one knows that no one sees because it's all behind the scenes. So access points right now are, they're about seven years old for the oldest ones we have. Their useful life is roughly five years. access points along with our circuits and switches are what the interconnectivity is between us and each of the buildings and also us in the outside world. So those roughly run about every five years. They don't necessarily die, but they do wear out their life and new products come out, new phones, new tablets that have much better signals or different signals that are required. So that is why those roughly run about five years. Interdistrict circuit, we are fiber between all
024of our buildings now. So unless there's any major industry changes, we're going to be good for a long while. Most of that's through spectrum anyway. The big thing up here is phones. So people don't necessarily realize that the phones on the wall, even though they might be color, they might look new, are quite old. So our phones are model year all the way back to 19 years ago. So we're going to be looking to upgrade those. That way we have a fleet that's fully supported that can handle the needs of our building. So some of our planned expense drivers that we know coming forward on the building level specifically. is the instructional boards, again, projecting that out on approximately a 10-year basis. Desktops, the next couple of years, a phase-out, and you'll see as we're
025trying to get into a 5, 10, 15-year cycle, some of the years are showing six years, but again, trying to line up those expenditures for the predictability of budget so we don't have massive expenses one year, less expenses the next, because that will drive different forms of BOCES aid the following year, which will then... cause issues in other areas of the budget. So again, trying to have that predictability of the expense and leveling out those expenses. And our copiers, we purchased many of them in 2019. I believe it was close to 40 district-wide. So having an idea of how can we replace them over the next couple of years and lining that up to some of our desktops. We are replacing district office. They're a little bit further behind, but as you can imagine, our
026copiers aren't used quite as much as they are at the building level. and some of the replacement pieces using from areas of the building could possibly come to the ad building or transportation or some of our boards could be used as spares. So there's a lot of moving parts so we can make sure the budget works correctly. So kind of what we talked about a little bit, district-wide infrastructure coming up here. Access points certainly being replaced. That's the goal for this summer. So we're going to be getting the new access points here, which will make Wi-Fi coverage better for all the buildings, all of the locations where the students are, making them more capable, especially now with things like state testing that's all electronic. Being able to have the capacity to make sure you can
027run 2,000 devices at once is really important and not crash so you don't have to redo a state test, right? Inter-district circuits, obviously that could be down the road when industry changes, but we're pretty good on that end. Cores and switches is the infrastructure that runs a lot of what we do. Those are just replaced on a regular cycle. So probably the coming summer up here, we're going to be looking to start that next cycle of upgrades. And then phones, hopefully very, very soon so we can get the quote. We've already been working with the company to get that done. So we're not without communication tools. All right. So the big part of the world of tech, if you watch the news at any given point in the last few months, you know, things are
028certainly progressing very quickly. Cybersecurity is at the very front of what we do. There's so much going on all the time that we are trying to make sure that we're staying directly on top of it to make sure that our students and our data are protected. So that is a huge piece that we're looking at. Obviously, safety versus convenience. Everybody now has to, whether it's your bank, whether it's your school account, whatever it is, you use multi-factor authentication. So setting that stuff up, even though it's annoying, it's a pain, we know we don't like it. It's a reality that keeps us all safe. And making sure that some of the basic things like our Wi-Fi networks are closed, so you're not able to get in from the outside unless you're supposed to be here. And
029also the elimination of USB devices where somebody could plug something in and put a virus into a computer accidentally, not even willingly, but accidentally. Redundancy, we're looking at other backup solutions that give us scenarios. If something were to go down, how do we recover? Because there's so much that goes on that if we just turn it off, we're unable to function in most cases. And most schools are in the exact same spot. Artificial intelligence, I know everyone's heard about that by this point all over everywhere. So there's two parts to this. protecting us from it, but also learning to embrace it because our students are going to exist in a world where this happens all the time. It's already on their phones, on their devices. We're all using it right now, whether we like it
030or not, or whether we know it or not. So it's here. It's how do we embrace it? And then the big part at the bottom is, you know, what the future may hold with the cost of products going up, down, and how we're going to make sure that we prepare the district to be in the best spot to meet those challenges while also making sure we can have products and devices for our students to use. Being that we haven't done one of these type of presentations maybe in a while, are there any questions? Again, we want to try to keep it high level because sometimes when Matt will talk to me, I'm like, yeah, slow down and put it in terms I understand. So we want to, again, keep this one high level with kind
031of a broad overview of our technology. The individual student iPads. Are they included in the desktop figures? Those are an annual cost, so those are not included in the desktop figures. So currently right now our plan is we replace those when students enter fourth grade and ninth grade, and then they carry those. So the second set is already built out? Yes. That is a planned yearly expenditure. The cycle of the 5, 10, 15 are the items that we're not purchasing every year. Didn't we used to have like Wi-Fi hotspots around the city during COVID times so that kids had access to the internet? Do we still service those? Do they exist? Am I imagining that? I believe Mr. Montoro was working on that plan of trying to put Wi-Fi on the public infrastructure buildings. I'm
032not sure where that ended. It was moving forward and then... Everybody came back to school. Yes. there was that and there were individual hot spots those are not oh yeah like it's like a hockey puck you keep putting through your house that those are not active anymore okay that's right anyone else no i think it looks good it makes sense we didn't get in the weeds on all the fun stuff later we'll provide them like that's all right thank you very much guys thank you He's up again now. Now the real fun starts. Now the real fun. Ohio to technology to budget. So today we wanted to give a brief update on our expenditure updates, but really focused on the revenue budget. Last month we talked about what we call the program continuation, or some
033districts talked about a quote rollover budget. Today we wanted to give a very brief update on that, but really focus a lot more on the revenue side. So again, our objective is always we need to use our fiscal resources in a responsible manner to ensure that the experience of students today and tomorrow is similar to what it was 10 years ago or 10 years from now, that this isn't an educational lottery, that we want to be sustainable. So again, we're going to give a brief update on some of our program expenses. We'll break down the revenue budget between state aid, our draft tax cap calculator, some other aids. and some revenues or some reserves and appropriate fund balance and then identify where we're at between those two figures. So we've seen this slide just as
034a brief where we're at. The blue bars represent our year-end audited revenues. The red bar represents some of our expenditures on just the general fund. And the checkered bar represents if the COVID grant funding wasn't there, what our anticipated expenditures would be. You can see the blue bar is going up slowly, but the red bar and the red checkered bar is going up at a much greater rate than the blue bar. And we saw as our program continuation changes that we went into greater detail with in January, our total expense budget was anticipated to increase about $5.3 million, which already took into account some items such as the federal grant program and identifying that we are going to have some revenue follow-ups into the 26-27 school year from buses. So as we saw that the
035expenses were going up at least for about $5.3 million, we thought it was a good idea to... start looking at everything that we possibly could to start reducing those expenses. So as we looked at what was there, what was being spent through some code funds, what was being spent through other pieces that we didn't want to affect any of our programs or anything that would affect our students. So as we went through that, You can go to the next one Patrick. We were able to identify a little over $400,000 of expenses that we thought wouldn't really affect our students in terms of their program or directly affect them. So with that $400,000 reduction, our next slide would reduce that rollover from about $5.3 million to $4.9 million. And that's something that we're going to continue
036to do. We're always going to be looking at the budget and looking at ways that we can save additional money without affecting our students directly. So next slide. So if you take our current budget, which is eighty three point five million dollars, add in the expected rollover after some of those reductions, which is four point nine million dollars. Our working budget for this year is eighty eight point four million dollars. So as we look at revenue. You can see from 1819 to 2123 and this year 2425, our revenue from New York State aid in blue has remained relatively the same in terms of the percentage, in terms of our local levy, the pink staying right around the same, and also appropriated fund balance as the use has remained about the same. And you've noticed the
037between 2018 to this year, the other piece, the other revenues. that we've been counting on has actually increased. So that's something that we wanted to take a look at. Where is that other revenue coming from? Is that really increasing? Because we know the other areas are basically remaining the same. So we look at some of the state revenues. So there was a sigh of relief, I'll be very honest, with some of these. Comparing the current budget to the executive governor's budget. This is the budget last year where our $2 million was potentially taken away from us. That didn't happen right now in the executive budget. So there's a huge sigh of relief. But we did see some increases. I want to really specifically highlight the area of BOCES aid and transportation aid. Those have been
038adjusted based on the figures that were entered in October versus what we're currently projecting right now. We do anticipate our BOCES aid going up about $150,000 next year compared to what is on the executive budget due to buying some items more strategically through BOCES rather than ourselves. That's a good thing. Our transportation aid is going down. But in this case, this is a good thing because our new director of transportation and the department has been hiring more drivers in attendance. So we're able to pull back runs from our third party providers. So our aid is going down because we're spending less currently. So we are taking that in consideration. So in this case, while the aid is going down, that's because we're spending less right now because of it. So that is a good thing
039of about an $80,000 increase we're anticipating in state revenues. based on what the executive budget has right now. Their big fall off is our building aid that is due to some past capital projects being paid off. While the building aid is going down about $2.2 million, we also know that debt expense, the corresponding piece is also going down in the expense budget. So the fund formula that is known as the tax cap calculator, I wanted to throw up some highlighting for those that are seeing this possibly for the first time. Some of the... relatively speaking, along algebra formula. Areas that are highlighted in blue are predetermined and given to us as a school district. They are either from the state or they're figures we used last year that automatically get carried over. So things like
040the growth factor, the relative speaking property wealth of the area that's given to us by the state, pilots, payments in lieu of other taxes, that was a figure we used last year, $246,000. Capital tax levy exclusions, that's something that's maybe utilized for our capital projects. If we have a greater debt payment than received in building aid, it's something called an exclusion. And a CPI allowed increase, again, that's a hard-coded number given to us from the states. The red figures are items that we are determining this year. So what we anticipate our pilots will be. And then what is that capital tax levy exclusion? While there are something items we figure this year, next year they would turn into the blue category on top. And yellow is the outcome of the formula. So the basis of
041our draft formula is our levy can increase a maximum of approximately $536,000. What does that mean as a percent? About 1.74%. So under the 2% that people hear is our tax cap levy based on various exclusions and pilots. Wait, why are pilots on there twice? So the top blue pilot is our current budgeted pilots. The red pilots is for the upcoming year they are estimated. So pilot schedules can change. Sometimes they're accelerated in the beginning and they wane off. Sometimes they're zero in the beginning if a business is starting up, but then they accelerate to try to get them eventually on the tax roll. So pilots are dictated to us and we follow the pilot schedule. So the increase or decrease of your pilots can impact your levy. And it's something that honestly that we're
042not necessarily in control over, but something we should be aware of and plan for. In terms of forecasted other revenues, we wanted to go into greater detail. In general, I want to compare what you saw last year to this year, but it was really of a challenge because last year we just called it other local revenues was a broad category of $2.6 million. I wanted to give you a... I won't go through every category, but a breakdown of what comprises of those other categories with the tax levy as well is essentially flat. There is a budget to actuals that's much more realistic than a budget to potential aspirational figures. Some of the bigger items that have... A decrease is interest and earnings as we hear about interest rates going down. And some of our larger
043categories are Medicaid reimbursement, for instance, for the services we provide for some of our students and renting of property to BOCES or organizations like our neighbors next door at Connie. Those are some of the other larger categories that make up other revenues. So next year you'll see these figures, but then you'll be able to see the net increase or decrease over. it was really a challenge to try to accurately display to the increase from year over year. What comes under the unclassified revenue? Let me go to that slide. So unclassified revenues are things, tops bonus credits, credit card rebates, other forms of revenue that's relatively speaking not. reliable per se as a set bucket, but comprised of just many other areas. Were there any other questions on this slide being a newer slide with some
044of the categories? So budget reserves and appropriate fund balance. This isn't necessarily what we are recommending. We're just indicating what is known. So our appropriate fund balance historically has been about $4.75 million. We are decreasing that to $3.5 million. That is a big difference. So I feel there's an explanation as to why. As we know, schools are allowed to carry approximately 4% of our school budget. as what's called unappropriate fund balance. So for our district is approximately $3.5 million. If all of our expenses came true, that is the cash that we truly have on hand to pay for that. So the figure of 4.75, we wouldn't necessarily have the cash on hand if all the expenses came true to pay those bills. So the appropriate fund balance is brought back down to that 4% that
045we're allowed to have. So what does that mean for our budget? I don't want to necessarily say it's a tighter budget per se, but it's just more realistic of what we can actually pay if all of our expenses were to come true. That is essentially accounting for risk that we may experience that no one in this room could ever plan for. And that part of the tax cap calculator does utilize $250,000 worth of the debt service reserve. So when you look at our total various revenue categories, our forecasted revenue budget is $81 million, almost $600,000. So looking at some of those columns in the categories, you can see fairly similar to previous years. The other revenue, again, going back to more of the 2018-2019 level, closer to actuals rather than aspirational figures to eventually hit
046as targets. As I mentioned earlier, the expense budget. If we roll everything over with a few of those cuts that we had that we already put in place, there would be 88.4 million. As Josh mentioned, the revenues, the working revenues for what we believe will be coming in is 81 point, close to 81.6 million dollars. So the gap between our expected expenses next year versus our revenues is a little over 6.8 million dollars. Now, what's important to note there. is that does not include any breakage from the district. No retirements, no resignations, nothing like that. And as we know, we're going to have a retirement incentive for our teachers. And it doesn't include any additional revenues or any additional reserves in that number. So that is the number that is there. So what are the
047next steps moving forward? We need to continue identifying the areas that we can make cuts and potentially using some spending this year to replace some of the things that Josh actually mentioned in the last program, like phones. And then that will drive aid for next year. So if we have that money, if it makes some savings this year, spend that money this year, it'll actually drive aid next year, which would be beneficial for us. And something that we mentioned in our presentation last month is... Continually looking at how we align our staffing with our aid and enrollment. That's going to be essential with closing that gap. Some of our next steps that you should anticipate in our upcoming meeting, so on March 5th, we'll have a firm BOCES budget expense projection. We did do as
048a district our participation meeting with ERIE 1 BOCES, but the ON BOCES, they do not finalize their rates until approximately two weeks from now. So we'll have a firm idea of what some of those increases are. Again, we were doing our best forecast. We have seen some significant rate increases in the areas of special education and alternative education. where some of the technology-based expenses are a lot closer to the 3% to 5% figure that we anticipated. We will be able to recognize initial staff retirements and calculate initial salary breakage, understanding that there is a room for some more positional adjustments that will be occurring based on the outcome of some of those retirements. A presentation of the initial academic program, but I really want to stress that it's the homerooms and core area classes for
049grades K-8. That's not the entire district, but the core area experience for students at the K-8 level. Finalize the tax cap limit with the levy recommendation and gather your initial thoughts. On March 19th, the presentation of the finalized BOCES budget, recognize staff position adjustments and calculate the finalized retirement breakage, and then the presentation of a full academic program K-12 with the position adjustment. And then hopefully on April 2nd, finalized budget. With that, do you have any questions? No, I think it looks good. It was good to see the executive budget come through with a little bit better than last year and appreciate the updated slide with some additional detail around some of the other super helpful. Thank you. Yeah, it was all really excited to see the executive budget not save minus $2 million. That
050was wonderful news. We'll keep an eye on it and see how the legislators go about their business. All right. So I think that does it for our presentations. We will jump into our agenda. We're going to go to 9.1. It's recommended the Board of Education approves the agenda order as presented. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes? I'm not hearing any. I will make a motion. Just need a second. Second. From Katie, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We will go to 10.17 to recommend the Board of Education approves the consent agenda as recommended by the Superintendent of Schools. Just in a motion. From Chloe and I'll second it. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We will go to 11.1 to recommend the Board of Education approves the personnel
051agenda order as presented. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes? Right now, here are any changes in motion. Okay. Any second? Second. From Gabby, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We'll go to 12.26. It's recommended the Board of Education approves all personal items in Section 12 as presented. I will make the motion. Just need a second. Second. From Pete, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. And we will have Mrs. Smith to do some second reads. Good evening. So first is a second read for Howard. New recommended policy addressing artificial intelligence, AI. So as Mr. McCall said, it is here. And so how do we teach our kids to utilize it responsibly? How do we maintain academic integrity? And then how also can we leverage it for our work with
052our students in the classroom? So if you recall, there's an overview section. It moves, the policy itself moves through definitions, also delineating the risks and limitations of artificial intelligence, including bias. that may be on some of the AI systems and platforms. There's a section on page two, data privacy, security, and copyright. So we reviewed last time the applicable laws that are called out within this section, such as FERPA, such as EdLaw 2D, and then also copyright laws. Within that section is also the reminder and re-emphasis that staff must comply with all of those laws and any other applicable laws and regulations when utilizing AI. Page three is what started the student use and describing the teacher's role in that, as well as expectation that any student use of approved generative AI aligns with code of
053conduct policies and any document that's applicable. Same for district personnel use. Also with the addition of that when AI might be used, the final review, the decision, it's incumbent upon the human employee. We're not using generative AI to make determinations for us. Training awareness and support to be provided. And then on the last page. Reemphasizing being compliant with all other documents and any other applicable laws and regulations that are out there. And I think as Mr. McCall highlighted, it's ever-changing, it's evolutionary. And so we anticipate this being a policy that we'll be continuing to revisit, but it's here. So we want to make sure that we at least have a foundational piece in place from policy perspective. When we met last time regarding this policy, we didn't have any outstanding questions at that point, but
054are there any now? Okay, we're good. Thank you. The second... policy is Title IX and sex discrimination. You may recall that we revisited this policy in light of there being 2024 amendments that were put into place. And so there were some revisions for Title IX regulation related to the definition of sex discrimination to also include gender stereotypes, as well as some changes to the process for investigating a Title IX complaint. One example was it allowed for the investigator and the decision maker to be the same person. So those changes were in effect. We moved through the policy. adopted it. And since that time, two changes. On January 9th of 2025, a federal court vacated the 2024 Title IX regulations. in effect, reinstating the 2020 regulations. And then on January 20th, there was an executive order
055which mirrored the same action. And so due to that, the Office of Civil Rights is complying with those shifts. And so we are reverting back to the Title IX 2020 regulations, which align with the policy that was in place through, I believe, November is when we had originally shifted this policy. The recommendation is that boards rescind the adoption of the policy that aligns with the 2024 regulations, reinstate the policy that aligns with the 2020 regulations to ensure that we are compliant. If we had an open investigation under Title IX at this point, which we do not, but any entity that has a current investigation that's open under Title IX. would need to shift that investigatory process back to the 2020 regulations at this point. So we are not in that boat. Important reminder, though, is
056that the New York state law continues to protect against discrimination against or based on actual or perceived sex, including gender-related identity, appearance, behavior, expression, or any other gender-related characteristic, regardless of the sex assigned to that person at birth, including protections for folks who identify as transgender. And so those protections are in place still here in New York State. So although the Title IX regulations have reverted back to 2020, We still have other New York state laws and human rights laws that govern how we respond if and when there are claims of discrimination or harassment on the basis of any of those gender identity, gender related identity characteristics. And so we would be following. Other policies such as anti-discrimination and harassment being one of them, DASA being another, and following up and proceeding appropriately to ensure
057that behaviors are addressed and our students are safe and supported and our staff are safe and supported. So these changes are for the Title IX designation. There was one policy that we did that I can't remember now where it made it like, so At one point, you had to make a formal complaint. Yes. And then it was changed to be like even saying it was the formal complaint. Was that this change? That's in this change. However, any complaint. The filter is, is Title IX, are we operating under those regulations? And it's a yes or a no once we have enough information. And if it's a yes, then we'll move through the procedures for investigating that. If it's, it might not meet the criteria of Title IX, but it certainly causes concern under our anti-harassment discrimination
058policies or DASA, or we would be following up on whether it's verbal, formal. On a post-it note, we would be ensuring that we're following up on what those complaints are. But yes, that is part of the process that has changed as we revert back to the 2020 regulations for Title IX. Anyone else on this one? The only piece that we touched on the reverting back is the address for Scott Mueller, who is our second Title IX coordinator because he has moved to Drake Elementary School. So the address was outdated. So that is the only edit that we made as we revert back to those regulations. Anyone else? Thank you very much. All right. So we will go to 13.3. Recommend the Board of Education approves all policy secondary items. And Section 13 is presented just
059in motion. So moved. Having a second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. A couple other items here. So we have 14.1. It's recommended that the Board of Education approves the BOCES budget and election and the nomination of Colleen Osborne as our BOCES rep. That vote will be held on Tuesday, April 22nd. Just seeing a motion on that one. So I will second that. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. I know Colleen's here. Thank you very much, Colleen. We appreciate your support of BOCES and all the good things you do there. All right. 14.2 is recommended the Board of Education approves the MOA of the 2024-2025 retirement incentive as presented. I'll make the motion. Just need a second. Second. From Chloe, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed?
060Motion carries. We'll go to 14.3, another MOA. It's recommended the Board of Education approves the MOA of the NTUT Sick Leave Bank as presented. Just seeing a motion on that one. From Katie, a second. Second. From Pete, all in favor? Aye. Motion carries. All right. And I don't think we have anything new on board goals, so we'll bring that back for a policy meeting. We can get into depth on that one. BUT WE WILL ROLL INTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF PUBLIC INACCENDANCE. ANYONE THAT WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK ON ANY SCHOOL ISSUE, WE JUST ASK THAT YOU STATE YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS AND LET ME HEAR COMMENTS TO FIVE MINUTES OF ASSIGNMENT TO ADDRESS THE BOARD. SO, COLLEEN OSBORN, 377 ROCKCROFT. I JUST WANT TO SAY THANK YOU GUYS VERY MUCH. I REALLY ENJOY BEING ON BOATS AND
061COURT AND IT HELPS ME FILL THAT FASHION THAT I HAVE FOR EDUCATION. SO, THANK YOU GUYS VERY MUCH. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. Anyone else? Yes. Hi, I'm . Just one quick note that I wasn't planning to say. So I'm trying to The what we discussed the theme before coming and just like as an accessibility thing I wasn't able the links didn't work in the mobile version, but on my laptop I could do it So and I actually sent it to some friends and I was like, hey, you try this go here when you click meetings It like nothing else. So just as a thing. Yes All right so A couple things that I just wanted to like in person bring up with the board. So obviously our government is having a lot of changes, right?
062And I want to make sure that at our district level, DEIA is still something that's going to be funded. for our administration, faculty, and like our students, everybody got a fix for mine. I want to make sure that that's still something that's happening, trainings and everything. And also this might sound extreme to some, but I would like For our district to have a policy around if ICE tries to enter the school buildings because we see that it's happening around the country. So, yeah, like there's some schools that are going into lockdowns. Like, they have protocols, and I don't think our district has any. So I would like there to be something, and I think that the parents should know what those are. And I think we should be able to give input if we can.
063Again, keeping our students and faculty and everybody safe. Anything else? No, I think that's good. Okay. And we'll address it once we're ready to make sure that everyone else has anything. Anyone else? I don't know if you want to touch on those two items. Sure. Absolutely. We'll start with DEI. The state, what we've learned is there looks like they're going to change the title of DEI to Uplifting All Students, but the message is not changing. The term itself, some people have an issue with it, obviously, but what is happening? statewide and what is happening within our district, we don't plan on changing. We want to continue having our students be uplifted. We want them to continue to feel like they're welcome to belong. And that's something that we've put a lot of emphasis on this
064school year at the district level and especially at all of our buildings. So that is not something we... would like to change at all. In fact, if anything, we'd like to do more of it. So that sense of belonging, sense of welcoming, that's where we're going as a district and ensuring that all of our students feel safe and want to be in our schools. That's what we're all about. And so while the title might not be DEI, and it's a conversation you've already had in terms of our policy on DEI, the policy itself. term, diversity, equity, inclusion, might have a different name, but what we believe in and what we do in our schools is not going to change. So I think that would address that piece of it. Also this week, I did send
065a letter home to our families, to our staff as well, regarding immigration and the different... changes that, you know, people have fears of the immigration customs enforcement agents coming into schools. We just want to assure all of our families that, you know, we want our school to be safe places for all of our kids. It is our job to educate everyone that comes into our buildings, but we will also follow all applicable laws, whereas if there were a warrant signed by a by a federal judge. We would go through our attorneys to make sure everything was absolutely correct and we would follow whatever that warrant would say. But we don't believe any of those things will be happening in any of our schools and we will do everything to ensure our kids once again feel
066welcome, feel belonged and safe. We want all of our families to know that we want them to make sure that they're sending their kids to school even in whatever situation they're in. It is our duty to educate the kids and we want them to be here and we know that they're going to be safe here and we're going to do everything to protect them and we do encourage if anyone has specific situations let us know. and we did mention the letter keeping contacts up to date is essential for us so we always have that opportunity to contact parents making sure we have all that information but we work closely with our local law enforcement people working with the north toronto police they they would be aware if things are going on as well and you
067know with that good relationship we feel confident that nothing like that will happen within our schools yeah i think uh Honestly, my anxiety kind of comes from other citizens in North Carolina calling people in because, like, I mean, we know the history here, right? Like, it's not the most welcoming city. It just isn't, like, to people who look or speak differently. So, yeah, like that's a concern of mine. It might be, it might not be the people in the school. It might not be, but it's like it's someone called in a family. ICE doesn't care where they are. They'll just come. So. But ICE couldn't come into a school without proper warrants and go to a classroom and take a kid. Correct. They would not be able to come into the schools and do any
068of that without all the proper paperwork and from what we've been told. As long as they're trained properly. Right. That's the thing. And sure. Because they show up all the time and they look like they mean business. They have warrants that are not signed. Like, they do these things. They're trained to trick people. And it's very convincing. So that's my concern. And really, whether it be, you know, immigration customs. Right. enforcement agents or just police or CPS workers or whoever it might be. They all go through our administration and if there's any ever any questions, they will be directing those questions to us. And especially in a case like that, you know, we would be working very closely. District office would be working with our administrators to make sure everything is in line with what
069needs to be there. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak at any school issue? um can i just follow up on sort of what you sure just your name and address kaylee gallant 94 north maryland thank you um i currently work in buffalo schools so i have like experience with things with the isu today have you ever told families about like the laws We actually sent, we did send a letter this week that went home to all of our families and went to all of our staff as well. I was just wondering if it included the laws just because I know some families won't speak English, so it's harder for them to understand. It does have the location where you can find the laws. The letter itself does not. It does have the NYSED website
070that does have all of that information. The letter itself does not include all of it. Some bullet points with some of the highlights, but not everything. Thank you. All right. Anyone else? All right. Not hearing any. We can go around and we can start with... Since our last meeting, I went to the fifth grade band and chorus concert. That was great. It's such a good job. My son is in chorus and he loved it. He thought it was so cool that it was at the Fine Arts Center this year instead of in the cafeteria. So they did a wonderful job. And then today, my kindergartner got to go outside and play in the snow and he thought that was so cool that the school was doing that. the winter mom! He was so excited about
071it. So that's really all I got. I went to the sixth grade chorus and band concert. They worked really hard and they sounded very good. So just thank you to everybody who did presentations today. I love seeing all the different schools and what's going on with them. I will thank you to everyone for the presentation. We love the budget stuff. And thank you to those who spoke at the meeting. We love when the public comes and tells us their concerns directly. Love that. And the conversation may be short afterwards, but I assure you it does create ripple conversations within the district. So thank you for coming. speaking up and separate from that the school district is working with United Way and we are putting on a volunteer fair. to make it easier for the students
072to match up with nonprofits, to volunteer with the nonprofits, to complete their service learning requirements. So if anybody listening, if you are involved in a nonprofit who is looking for volunteers and you can work with kids from 14 to 18, April 3rd, if you can send a representative during the day, let us know you're interested. We'll get you the application and it's going to be a really fun day at the high school. Thank you. I'm not going to reiterate everything else that everybody just did, but I am also attending the 7th grade game concert. So it was a wonderful job. Awesome. Melissa, I know it's your first time, but welcome. Happy to have you. Anything to go to the group? No, just thank you all. Thank you, Jeff, for wearing me in. And I just
073feel... Very happy to be here and also got very high remarks about the outdoor play. So and I I'm a big advocate for movement and being outdoors. So it was really great to hear that. And I also echo I think it's it can be very intimidating to share in in board meetings. And I really thank the public that were able to share and also for their presentation. It was really hard. Thank you. Anything else you want to say? Yes, we'll go on the music trend. This weekend we hosted the Niagara County Music Educators Association. concert number one so it included some of our intermediate and middle school kids in the first concert and the second it was our high school singers and jazz band it was the first time we were able to host it
074in our fine arts center it was just a fantastic event our teachers specifically jason ferguson and angela dray were our representatives that were running it they had everyone here for rehearsals on friday and then hosted the concerts on saturday It was absolutely awesome. Both of them were very well attended. Our kids did great. All the kids from Niagara County did great. So it was just a really proud moment that we could host that here and showcase the talent across the county. And from my side, just wanted to, again, welcome Melissa and appreciate you joining us. I know I was able to tend from some illness, but the Niagara Orleans School Board Association held our annual legislative breakfast. I heard we had a really good turnout. I heard that Niagara Falls put on a great spread.
075So thank them for hosting us this year and really good dialogues and conversations with the board members and our local legislators. We talked about the executive budget looks good this go around, but it's always good for them to hear directly from school board members and from superintendents on what's actually happening in districts so they can go back to Albany and advocate for the important funding. So I guess that being said, for those that are in attendance, we appreciate your participation. That's another thing our local legislators definitely we need them to hear from us that funding of education and public education is super important. Feel free to drop them a line, Bill Conrad or Senator Rob Ward. It's always helpful for them to hear from their constituents that it's super important. So I would highly recommend
076giving them a call or an email. And that certainly helps us as we get through the budget process that they hear from their constituents. I'll just share it. our local representatives i feel are really dialed in to what this area needs very much from or lawmaker standpoint and things like that. For sure. And I think, you know, I talk with Assemblyman Bill Conrad very often. He's on the Assembly Education Committee. He's a former educator. So I think he's someone that, you know, he really is dialed in quite a bit. So he's always the first call when there's some concern. So yeah, we absolutely appreciate their willingness to listen. But again, I think, you know, all the topics that were discussed, I think, you know, First and foremost, the safety of our students and staff is
077paramount. And I think, you know, Dr. Duglowski did a, you know, an initial pass that, hey, here's what we're doing. I know we'll have some additional information coming out around some of the safety and security procedures that we'll send out to families. But it's a wild world out there. We'll take it one day at a time. So with no further visits coming for the Board of Education, just a motion to adjourn at 7.30 seconds. So I'm going to repeat in a second. From Katie, all in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Motion is adjourned. Thank you, Barbara, everyone.