001e e e I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session to discuss a Personnel matter matter and collective bargaining negotiations do I have a motion I'll make the motion thank you Don do I have a second second thank you all those in favor I that's something I would do because e for e e um I'd like to welcome everybody to the board meeting I'd like to call the meeting to order we're going to start um with the Pledge of Allegiance can everyone please stand I plge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which stands one nation under God indivisible Justice thank you we're all call I think we're all here but Dennis correct that is correct okay approval of the agenda can I take
002a motion to approve the agenda I'll make a motion thank you Trisha do I have a second second thank you Don all those in favor I I the motion passes um if everyone took a look at the March 3rd meeting minutes I'll take a motion to approve the minutes unless anyone has any comments or concerns I'll make a motion thank you Mike do I have a second second thank you thank you Cindy and Dawn all those in favor I announcements do we have any announcements for tonight oh I have an announcement go ahead this Thursday the CF basketball game is going to be um happening and it starts at 5:30 there's food and stuff in the and then at 6:30 the uh there'll be the national anthem followed by the game um and relays for
003kids and free throw shootouts um we have lots of great prizes um and thanks to all the teachers and support staff and everyone that's donated so far thank you any other announcements hearing none I'll move on to correspondence um no correspond of note since our last meeting there's no Unfinished Business board reports District ride safety team um Trisha and I attended that meeting we had two main focus items um circling back on the last meeting and setting priority safety areas for 2024 2025 there were a whole number of those um some of those included discussing after school hours and security I'm practicing drills um Global challenges that occur across the country sec measures on the mechanical side mental health um you can find the summary of those minutes on our on our website next I
004have finance committee I'll cover that James thank you Mike um so uh the finance committee met for an hour and a half roughly before the meeting tonight um was myself Don and Trish attendance a lot of the content we'll talk about actually as part of the budget presentation this evening uh but a couple items of note we did review some some of the one housee budget proposals that uh would would amend the governor's original uh budget recommendation uh not nothing that was uh shared looks like it's going to overly benefit the district and certainly nothing looks like it would hurt us from what our initial runs were which was a good news uh again we reviewed current revenue and expense projections uh we looked at uh some program implications with regards to class class size
005section numbers Etc um we reviewed the tax cap which talk about uh in the presentation tonight the calculation uh therein uh talked about and reviewed where we're at with federal grants given uh some uncertainty on what uh May uh proceed in the in the coming year as far as the funding level of those grants uh and then we uh uh we talked uh about uh communication of priorities that's about it thank you Mike CF um I was just going to announce about basketball so please everybody come on thank you Don it's a great event it is a fun event PTO meetings any updates from any PTO meetings is our last meeting two weeks ago I don't believe so Erie County Association of school board Representatives I had um an executive board meeting where we just
006talked about um plans moving forward for next year and some of the things that we're going to hopefully add thank you Don okay that closes our board reports superintendent report Dr Fram thank you thank you president B Ley we have two formal reports this evening uh the first is a budget planning update which I'm going to make my way to the uh front podium in just a second and then we'll have our student body update from Olivia Collins Olivia let me just say job well done uh the High School Musical this past weekend just incredible so we're impressed that you're here with your W your eyes open tonight I know that's an exhausting weekend and you probably had softball practice uh before coming here this evening so we'll look forward to hearing from you couple
007minutes so I'm going to head down for a budget update all right so um as you know when we move our when we move through the budget planning process to a a community vote in may we have three different Focus budget updates and conversations and then we have a fourth presentation which is recommending uh spending plan to the board for adoption that would then go out to members of the community and as we go through those three different budget conversations to the ultimate recommendation they get more and more specific so I'm going to provide some updates tonight uh give an opportunity as always for questions and conversation uh but also make some general comments about where we are in the process and and how we're thinking and approaching uh our spending plan at this particular
008point in time uh so there's a brief agenda in terms of our overview this evening and slide deck in front of you it's always helpful to sort of capture where we are in the timeline of this work that we undertake as a team and undertake together again this is our budget session number three uh we have adoption coming up in April a required budget hearing and then our vote on May 20th so we're moving right through this process and we typically begin our Sation by talking about assumptions related to revenue where we assume money's coming from and then shift our Focus to assumptions related to expenditures uh how we anticipate allocating resources and then uh some additional thoughts as appropriate some of this information will be new some will be uh repetitive and when it's
009repetitive I'll I'll move a little bit quicker over just uh acknowledging that we went in more detail in previous conversations so when we think about um anticipated revenues for public education in New New York State they come from two main sources one is from New York state in the form of different AIDS and then the second is uh locally in the form of property tax uh uh property tax if you look at this slide this gives information on our uh anticipated property tax for next year and so there's a a state calculation that exists we input a lot of information it generates what the tax cap would be for Clarance our tax cap for next year would be 2. uh 4 5% which is listed on the slide when you look at the different numbers
010and different factors that go into that calculation one component that was smaller for us than anticipated was the growth factor and you can see that uh percentage and that dollar amount indicated there our lived experience in clearance we know that this is a community where commercial and residential growth is happening when talking about the growth factor those are uh new revenues that are connected with new building and new assessments and clearance so that number is lower than it has been in recent years um unanticipated so but we've verified that it's accurate and so you'll see that our allowable tax cap for next year's budget is 2.45% and then uh we also want to take a moment just to acknowledge the difference between a tax levy and a tax rate if you're having a conversation with
011someone and they're using the terms interchangeably they're not they're different things the tax levy is what the district is able to Levy that total dollar amount in the community to get to that dollar amount the tax rate is the amount paid per th000 of assessed value and what you can see with this uh with this spending plan and the tax rate for next year is that the estimated tax rate per th000 would just be over $10.30 you can see how that compares to previous years you'll also notice that almost all of the time when that anticipated tax rate is generated it actually ends up being a little bit lower and if you want the detail Dr grupka can explain why that's the case um the big picture stuff is looking at this uh this chart
012of tax rate and recognizing that when we're talking about just over $10 per thousand that is likely um one of the lowest tax rates you'll see not just in Western New York but in Upstate New York and that really is a credit to the approach that the board of education has taken in recent years and trying to be thoughtful stewards of Community Resources uh so that tax cap for next year is 2.45% when we shift our Focus to New York State and we talk about the governor's budget and the one housee budgets that came out last week they're still in their process of finalizing a budget that would be adopted we hope by April 1 so when we met last we knew what the governor's recommendation was she had generated preliminary budget runs for the
013district which had clearance up about $800,000 over this current year last week the assembly and Senate generated their one housee budgets each recommended more in terms of Education spending than the governors they don't both give runs like the governor had given so our hope right now is that by the assembly and the senate advocating for more in terms of Education funding that that preliminary Foundation Aid uh number from the governor that we wouldn't anticipate that going lower and we may do our fingers crossed and hope that it would come back higher as it moves through their the total process we did have a finance committee meeting today we talked in more detail about the one housee budgets they incorporate a lot of different things but for us that Foundation a number really is the most
014uh the most important with regard to title grants it's not a a primary source of funding for public schools in New York state or at least most public schools in New York state it is worth just noting the amount and the type of federal funds that the district receives we received um just over a million A5 dollars in terms of fed federal funds on a regular basis as we're building a budget we don't know for sure what those numbers are going to be until we get after the budget vote so we generally assume they're going to be close to the same as they are for the current year uh there is as as you read the paper and I read the paper a level of uncertainty with the Department of Education in Washington DC there's
015some uncertainty about Federal fundings everything that we're hearing right now is that those are committed funds we do have those incorporated into our budget next year year and we hope and believe that those will be uh stable funding sources for us the ones that we believe um most strongly will be stable are the ones that are connected with special education so looking at idea grants and hoping that the federal government would follow through on its commitment in that particular area but worth noting because there is a certain amount of uncertainty that public schools are dealing with there also is the planned use of fund balance if we went back a year in time you would see that the district had approp rated $2.5 million from the current Year's budget into the anticipated spending plan for
016the next year we recommend doing the same we also recommend using a certain amount from our debt service fund that can only be in existence for a certain period of time that can only be spent on specific things that are connected with capital expenses uh debt debt related to Capital expenses and then the final bullet on this slide is Erie County sales tax so when we think about anticipated Revenue coming in there's uh the property tax ta cap here in Clarence and then uh information and resources coming from the state level from the federal level um and then uh Erie County and in the form of sales tax so that's the revenue side of the budget I would say that right now it is much it continues to be much easier to pin down the
017revenue side of the budget the expenditure side of the budget is is much more challenging for school business officials just because it incorporate so many different things so I'm going to highlight some general areas and then we're going to key in on three particular parts of our budget tonight at an overall districtwide level important to note that we anticipate a 3% increase in health care and if someone is saying wow that seems like a smaller percentage than what I'm hearing in the school district where I work or my spouse works or a friend or family member works it's important to remember that we're a self-funded plan and that uh we like any self-funded plans have some years that are better than others we're coming off a couple years where we saw greater increases so if
018somebody saying gez that 3% looks like a smaller increase just remember that the last two years have been larger than what we would have uh preferred moving through the the expenditure part of our budget you can see information on TRS and ERS that we reviewed I believe at our last budget conversation it's important to note that we also have a Bosey section of our budget and I wanted to highlight one area in particular a point of Pride for Eerie one bosies is that irie1 uh has 19 component school districts it pulls together resources and it provides opportunities for kids that you can't provide at each of the component schools one of those opportunities involves vocational uh programs for students so for example if you want to become an electrician or a carpenter aerospace engineering or
019get into education there are specialized vocational programs that students can attend uh for half of their school day we've seen a real increase in terms of interest uh for this current year and into next year uh to the point where it's on this Li is something that we need to account for it generally fluctuates between maybe 85 and 95 and we've seen an increase again for this year and for next year um so noting the expenses associated with Bose's vocational programs um our insurance increases I would just note that last year we uh we changed insurance providers so there has been a significant savings uh part of that savings will be contributed to some of our policies but when we talk about liability in schools that's an area that industrywide has been going up more
020than expected in in recent years uh and then there has been a commitment by our Board of Education to continually focus on uh health and safety in our school Community we currently have three different school resource officers uh there's one who's responsible primarily for the high school and Sheridan Hill one who's primarily responsible for the middle school and Clarence Center and a third SRO who's shared between LED viiew and between Harris Hill an important part of this budget is adding four a fourth SRO that would be shared two in our two elementary schools so that we could have uh a focused SRO at the high school a focused one at the middle school um and a 0.5 SRO at each of our four elementary schools so that has been a commitment on behalf of this
021board of education it also has some been an area where we've received a lot of support from the town and want to thank supervisor casilio uh for his support and being a great partner and a great communicator as we look at our SRO Staffing levels here in Clarence so those are some expenditure assumptions we're going to talk now about our instructional budget our student support services department and our athletic office and I'll just make this comment that if you step back from this part of our budget and you take a broad look at it in terms of schools many expenses stay relatively similar from one year to the next for example if you have an athletic department with X number of teams you generally anticipate having the same number of teams the next year and
022the expenses would be relatively similar when you look at Staffing at an elementary school you generally anticipate having about the same number of students about the same number of classrooms so you shouldn't see huge Swings with regard to Resource allocation from one year to the next what we're going to do is zoom in where you may see some larger changes and then when you zoom out uh some of those changes will really uh become much much more minimal so the first is the instructional part of our budget this is uh by far the largest part of our budget appropriately so and this is making sure that we have academic programs and services that meet e and each and every one of our students and so that may mean a student who is really pushing themselves
023and challenging themselves academically with AP classes dual enrollment courses that are taken right here at school we'd already mentioned the vocational opportunities we also want to make sure that we have programs for students who need a smaller learning environment more focused and targeted support so that they can leave here with a diploma and they have options in front of them so that's what we're trying to cover as we think about the instructional part of our budget when you look uh from this current year to next year I'm going to ask you to go all the way to the bottom line uh all the way to the right and you'll see a budget increase from year to year of 1.12% and that's the zooming out is that our instructional needs are relatively similar uh from this
024current year to next year the changes that you'll see uh reflected in here um with regard to Staffing it's fairly similar um when we purchase things for in in school buildings some of them qualify as equipment some qualify as supplies and some qualify as contractual the changes that you have seen that that amount to minus 177% minus 4% and 5% it really is moving money from one part of the budget to another part of the budget so the overall amount of money stays relatively the same which codeit in uh changes from one year to the next and that's really based on need and work that Dr grupka has done with our building principles and and members of different departments when we think about our staffing for next year at the elementary level we do a
025bi-weekly review of our anticipated enrollments and right now we're predicting uh needing to hire a teacher at Clarence Center uh based on enrollment and the anticipated need of sections we also believe that uh we can reduce at least for one year uh a particular uh teaching position at hares till doe on predicted enrollment and so this is something that we review again on a Bly basis at this point in the year on a weekly basis when we get into the summer months so there's an addition in one of our buildings there's an efficiency in another one of our buildings but essentially a flat staffing level at our ele schools with regard to our middle and high schools our middle school counselors and high school counselors have been meeting with students and their families they are
026identifying uh desired course needs for next year and then Mr Michelle has been meeting with our Middle School principal and high school principal to make sure that our program and class offerings align with our anticipated staffing needs so that's the instructional part of the budget so if someone said what are the instructional changes we don't anticipate uh many many instructional changes uh in this part of our budget and again it just reflects the fact that Clarence has a relatively stable student enrollment and wants to continue offering the programs and services that we have historically we're going to shift our Focus to the student Support Services Department so this captures things like special education mental health uh PPS support different services that students may experience at an overall level you tend to see more fluctuation in
027this part of the budget just because student needs can change uh more significantly from one year to the next I want to highlight one area though before even hitting the advance button on the clicker and that you all know over the past couple years we have been moving positions from temporary federal and state Grant funds into our general fund budget and so what that means is that every position we move in it looks like a financial increase there's a decrease in terms of the federal funding and state funding it's not a surprise it's something that we've talked about over the last two or three years and I'll highlight it on the slides uh but these aren't new additions and clearance these are how we're coding and where we're putting resources and salaries uh in this
028part of the budget so again when we're talking about student support services this is our commitment to to meet the academic and behavioral needs uh of all of our students here in the district some of the points of pride in our commitments are making sure that we're constantly reviewing our specialized class offerings that we can continue to to offer an extended school year program here during the summer and whenever possible we try to keep Clarence kids in Clarance in specialized class programming or in different parts of our uh special education Continuum I had mentioned some uh increases before that have more to do with where positions are coded in the budget and whether or not they were Grant funded so I'm going to do a quick snapshot of this page this is looking at different
029staff members in our support services department and on the next slide it'll talk more specifically about counselors nurses psychologists and social workers and again those asterisk areas when you go down to the bottom it notes that in recent years those were positions that have been uh hired with temporary federal and state funds we've had a multi-year process that we've talked about uh where we take those funds out of Grants and we incorporate them into the general fund budget so there are no additions when we think about uh mental health providers that are listed here this really is moving these expenses from uh Grant funds to the the general fund uh part of our budget the only addition that we have in the budget right now is moving a08 speech therapist position to a 1.0 so
030that represents a a point 2 addition and just acknowledging the fact that student needs can change very quickly in public education and there may be times in the spring summer uh or next academic year months where we would need to provide some additional level of service so again there can be more fluctuation in this part of the budget than some others and the third and final area of focus tonight is a focus on Athletics you can see the uh the listed teams and the number of coaches that are associated with those different programs and a relatively minor increase in again this reflects the uh the reality that in Clarence we have a really proud athletic history uh we know that this is an important part of a school experience for our student athletes we want
031to make sure that we uh support those programs as we move forward but we're essentially offering or plan on offering the same types of athletic experiences next year that we would this year so there's a fairly minimal uh percent increase there so that's the instructional student Support Services uh an athletic part of the budget I had mentioned needing um or or believing that we would have essentially the same number of teams and the same athletic programs for next year the only area that we need to uh be aware of is that when it comes to supervision and coordination of these programs it's a big job something that's unique in Clarance as opposed to other schools is that in any athletic season we may have one to a half dozen schools go deep into the playoff
032process and compete at the state level that that is not typical when we think about athletic programs at most public school districts and over the past years we have added a sport here and a sport here uh and a sport there so we think about girls flag football we think about girls VAR City wrestling we added a girls modified flag football program this year every time we add a program it becomes increasingly difficult to supervise that program and coordinate that program after hours and so for us just saying we may need to at some point uh provide some additional um supervision capacity coordination capacity just recogniz recognizing the size and scope of our athletic department and how important it is again in that experience for our uh student athletes here in Clarence so we're getting
033close to having a final recommendation that can be adopted by the board and put out to the community we'll continue to Advocate with elected officials here in Clarence we have members of our board uh who participate at a regional level with irie1 bosis we'll continue to make some final revenue and expenditure adjustments we'll prepare our communication materials to go out to members of our community and get ready for our vote day uh organization so you can see just as a final bit of information uh vote day for us is May 20th it should look like it has in recent years polls would open at 700 in the morning Clos at 9: at night uh they would uh take place in the high school gymnasium and we do anticipate um three different propositions the one that
034we had referred uh that we had reviewed tonight the overall budget uh some sort of bus vehicle purchase and then Board of Education seats we have two vacant positions um that will be coming up in May so that is our third and final budget conversation I'll pause uh to see if there are questions or feedback from our Board of Education and if I can answer it I'll defer to a member of our cabinet who perhaps can maybe just for the benefit of the full board some of the discussions we had at the finance committee and and for the community um so on instructional staff it's one of our it's obviously our largest bucket of expenditure it's not going up what you might think an inflationary number is at 1.42% uh we did talk that the
03514 retirees are out of the budget yeah and then the new hires are in but because of the wage differential that's really helping to control the expenses there correct is that correct correct yep so you you would look at where individuals fall in a step schedule and you factor in retirees new employees which Step they're hired on and there may be a difference in terms of number of positions and overall cost and then um one thing we talked about um as a potential maybe we could just give the board an update um relative to what we may expect between now and uh I guess it's 14 days before the vote so we had contemplated X number of vehicle purchases um and we were just informed that potentially with some of the Tariff activity those costs
036may go up we're reassessing maybe where we Source buses from or equipment from whether we buy less and can just talk through that yeah you bet um there's a couple different factors that are important that are important to us um at an overall perspective it's important for school districts to be able to predict what their transportation needs will be and how they can plan for them financially in an appropriate consistent manner so every now and again you'll have a convers ation with the school district and they've said you know we're going to buy a lot of buses this year and then we're not going to buy any buses or vehicles for the next couple of years and then we're going to and it's really hard when you look at Aid and you look at anticipating
037expenses and you look at a fleet that has different levels of age so we try to take a thoughtful predictable approach to that some of the things for us that are important to keep in mind is that um we have seen a change in ridership in Ju in in recent years as most districts have coming off of covid um we have an an outside partner that is providing some runs uh they use clearance buses almost all of the time but it can be bid in different ways um and we see we see a lot of unknowns whether we're talking about um electric vehicles or we talk about different tariffs or prices of vehicles so what we're trying to do is align all of those things so that when we make a recommendation to the community
038their safe Vehicles they're planned for appropriately and they account for different unknowns that that may exist so what we we've done over the last couple years is reduce the number of bus purchases when we compare to previous years so reducing the size of our Fleet that's a process that has always that has already begun we have started to incorporate different facilities uh Vehicles into that part of our uh budget that goes out to The Community for approval so that we have a replacement cycle there and we also need to be nimble enough where we can make adjustments based on larger factors whether that's tariffs that could impact bus purchases electric vehicles or or changes in ridership and so uh as you know we had undergone an audit with an outside group of experts that came
039in they looked at our ridership they looked at our vehicles they made a series of recommendations we're in the process of digesting some of those recommendations and seeing which ones fit here in Clarence and I would just say that as we move closer to recommending a budget for adoption we're going to factor all of those different things together and come back with a recommendation to the board uh that's in alignment with those different Factor so that is a long answer it's likely not as specific as some people may want but it's factoring all those uh things in and saying we'll come back with a recommendation uh for approval in April thank you additional additional questions or comments from members of our board thank you Dr F and I would just say for anyone who may
040be listening tonight or if you bump into someone and they have questions uh would encourage you to try to answer those and if they want to speak in more detail please have them shoot me an email or give me a call or do the same with Dr grin we'd be happy to make time on our calendars to connect with them uh so thank you for um time for that presentation tonight and I'll turn things over to Olivia Collins for student representative report [Applause] so like Dr Fram said there's no days off like this I'd let yesterday off but I was celebrating someone's birthday so it wasn't even like I was at home whatever um the weather got very nice for the start of spring sports tryouts and that started today for the high school and
041next week is going to be the Middle School tryouts the Clarence High School drama club Put on its performance of The Hunchback of notredam where it was Mr vell's last time directing and this was certainly the best show he could have had as his last one CU it had a significant message a beautiful set and artistic songs that all work together to go out with a bang and that was definitely the fa my favorite show I've been a part of the middle school for the Middle School the six graders dressed up as historical or famous figures and gave a quick lesson about the person at the Wax Museum here the seventh grade chorus and Orchestra hit this stage last week and this week is going to be the sixth and eighth graders and Sharon Hill
042had it sweetheart dance where the fifth and fourth graders got to bring a special person to them to the dance and also at the high school this week we are learning um AED how to use an AED and also CPR um like compressions with our local fire um men and women so yes that's all I have today thank you oliv thank you and that is it for reports this evening president bugley thank you Dr FR um Miss Sutton we have no public comment that I'm aware of correct thank you finance um Dr grupka thank you today I'm asking for approval of a resolution to authorize our data Protection Officer um for the purchasing of vendors goods and services um and this is required by bosis um I'm asking for approval of a budget transfer for
043um our athletic contract ual expenses approval of resolution to appoint chairpersons for the vote and election um and election inspectors and then approval of contracts for Medicaid and stack billing we've used mag for several years um we'd like to continue that approval of our internal controls audit this was performed by Tran uh tranon Sagara and Associates and the associated corrective action plan um and then finally approval of the tax cap calculation and Levy thank you Dr okay any questions or comments on I F1 through F7 hearing none I'll take a motion to approve items F1 through F7 I'll make a motion thank you Trisha do I have a second thank you Adrian all those in favor I the motion passes Personnel Mr Michelle instructional uh yes this evening we have a correction and a mentor
044stien prior appointments for this meeting is one regular subp position and a pum substitute P3 is notification of transfers for the next school year P4 is a request for an unpaid Child Care leave appointments for this meeting were a series of activity advisors and spring Sports P6 are three tenure appointments for approval that were reviewed last Meeting p7 Lists the second of two salary adjustments for teachers taking additional coursework to enhance their skills and p8 is changes to our substitute list thank you Mr Michelle any comments or questions on items P1 through p8 hearing none I'll take a motion to approve items P1 P2 P4 through p8 do I have a motion I make a motion thank you Cindy do I have a second thank you Don sorry quick all those in favor I I
045the motion passes Mr Michelle non-instructional non-instructional is very short this evening we have the amendment of a retirement date prior appointments we have a bus driver and a laborer uh appointments for this meeting we have two cleaning positions and changes to our substitute list thank you Mr Mel do I have a motion to approve items P9 through p12 I'll make a motion thank you Mike do I have a second second thank you R and all those in favor I I Dr frame I mean M niska special needs and Student Activities the committee on special education met for seven days and is asking for approval on the recommended services for 16 students and the committee on preschool special education met for 6 days and is asking for approval on the recommended services for 17 students thank
046you m any questions or comments on items S1 and S2 hearing none I'll take a motion to approve items S1 S2 thank you Adrian do I have a second thank you Don all those in favor I the motion passes board development policy Dr frame yes uh one recommendation for an overnight field trip uh regarding our Middle School National um group of middle schoolers heading to the National science bow in DC at the end of April and then uh would just also note uh we had a policy committee rescheduled for this week we're going to or scheduled for this week we're going to reschedule that meeting um you had noted uh when you approved Dr gre's information tonight a series of policies to be reviewed dealing with our facilities Department uh we're going to review those
047come back and we'll meet a little bit later on this winter or spring thank you Dr frame any comments or questions on the field trip just wish him luck do I have a motion to approve the field trip thank you Don do I have a second second thank you Cindy all those in favor I I um you see in your packet we have a schedule of upcoming meetings and upcoming events they're informational hearing no more business I'll make a motion to move back into executive session to discuss um employee and collective bargaining do I have a second I have motion motion thank you Don do I have a second second thank you Adrian those in favor all thank you very much