001Good evening and welcome to uh tonight school district board of education meeting January 28th. The meeting will be called to order at 6:04 p.m. Could you please stand for the pledge of allegiance? just like to uh have you please take note of our emergency exits. There's two on the side here and uh the one in the front that we came in. We would need for any case of an emergency. Can we please have a roll call? >> Mr. Jackson >> here. >> Mrs. Snider >> here. >> Mrs. Gender >> here. >> Mrs. Paradis >> here. >> Mr. Rose >> here. >> Mr. Mrs. Burwell >> here and Mrs. Geller. >> I am here. Again, thank you all for coming. Before we get started with the meeting, I just would like to recognize um we have
002Mr. Perry in the audience and we had a longst standing member of our CHO school district community um a loss this this past week. And so we just want to recognize uh Ros's contributions and thank you for bringing her here so that we could all experience the love and joy that she brought to all of us. >> Thank you for that. >> Um at this time I will turn it over to Superintendent O'Shea. We don't have any exeicio board reports for this meeting. >> Thank you everyone and good evening. So, Van Sky grade school principal Jaclyn Nera received some good news lately and been in a ship. >> Good evening. Yes, I'm happy to share with you that um I was contacted by a group called New York Kids um which works out of um
003Sunni Albany. They're a research group. Um they focus on outlier research, school improvement, and they track performance of school districts around the state. So they reached out to me to say that they're doing their outlier research to look at schools who do better than expected um in academics and in attendance um as compared to the um schools of similar demographics. Um so they are going to be here um spending two days with us. Um they'll be here in school district tomorrow and Friday to do um interviews um with central office staff and then they'll be in advance tomorrow afternoon and then all day Friday um interviewing um students and teachers um to see what goes on at Vansky. So we're really excited about that. Happy that um we being recognized um for what the team
004at Vansk does. >> Great investigation. >> Thank you Mrs. to sheriff and and your team and uh we'll share any information we receive after that when we receive it. Looking forward to it. So, um Assembly Member John McDonald will be joining us. He is going to be uh a little late. So, we're going to start off today with our technology um committee report and BJ will be giving that tonight. We had a recent technology committee Thank you Mr. D Rose for being in attendance and uh a lot of lot of good stuff discussed there. All right. So we had our technology committee meeting on January 13th. Uh this year we have to review and um submit a new uh technology IT plan to NISAD. Uh we also identified priorities uh for 2627 which included updating
005um an update to the high school science rooms. Uh team planning related to integration of a PA system. Uh over the summer we visited Gilderland to take a look at the system that they have which is aga IPbased system. Um then we're working with the architects uh on a plan for the public address system uh renovations. Uh we also discussed a need to transition to Windows 11 uh since Windows 10 is end of life. Um, we'll be doing a small scale transition before school's out just so that we can work through some of the kinks at a low like a little bit of a downtime um before we do a full transition over the summer so that we when we come back to school in the fall, we don't we're not running around trying to
006resolve a lot of issues at that point. Uh we also talked about device management and needs um other hardware Wi-Fi maintenance which we uh upgrade our Wi-Fi uh access points our switches and some other systems through a federal grant that occurs in a five-year cycle called -ay. Um so we're doing some Wi-Fi upgrades through uh during this fiveyear cycle. Um we also discussed spare devices. Um Chromebook cart usage and cameras. Um again the technology plan. Uh we're there's some meetings that Eric holds to help us de with the development of that. Um so we'll be attending those. We're also going to review the disaster recovery plan for the spring. Uh data and network security. Uh we're going to be working with some resources through NERC uh to do a security audit uh this spring and
007summer. Uh there's also secure the call pass which was pushed out at the high school middle school. Uh cell phones with the yonder pouches. Uh metal detectors which were ordering through our camera vendor >> have been ordered. >> Yep. Have been ordered. So we're just waiting on shipping then. And then uh waiting on feedback from buildings and status. Go for it. Next page. >> Before you go on to the next page, just so you know, we did have our we finished up all of our building needs assessments and our department needs assessments with the exception of ENL. And um so a few of the things that came up um at at those meetings were the needs for classrooms to have a few additional chargers. So students might bring their Chromebooks but then they're charged to
008have a few additional Chromebooks or um if students either forget them or sometimes maybe they'll raise in the in the middle. That was a pretty consistent theme thing theme thing theme thing theme thing theme throughout. So that's why the the device management piece. Um also talking about cameras in terms of some additional cameras and we think of some other cameras that came at the needs assessment too. So between the technology committee and the needs assessment some of the things were reiterated and there was a question don't want to put you on the spot but if we go to 2011 what does that mean for our Scott what is the >> Windows 11 >> what does that mean for the other system yeah there's your question you get to ask have like as long as they
009support it's just really >> it's going to be a graphical user interface to press >> your start button is going to change your icons are going to change Microsoft's going to break stuff like they usually do >> so it's it's gonna be the same what is it uh new boss is the old boss >> thanks thank you >> all Uh technology committee will be meeting again in April. Um we're going through the budget process right now and then uh there's a couple priorities that were identified. Um but aside from that uh there's also a committee that or subgroup that's working on artificial intellig exposure governance automation and integration. Uh there was a uh they did cover computer science and digital fluency standards. We also um there was a change a year or two ago to
010how we do data privacy agreements which are part of Edlaw 2D and are intended to protect the personally identifiable information of students to make it easier for districts uh across the state. New York uh joined a consortium and so now we are able to piggyback off any data privacy agreements consortium has um which makes it a lot easier. Before we would have to send our homemade agreement uh to a company hope that they signed it and sent it back without any revisions. If they revised it would have to send it to the lawyers. So it was a long drawn out process uh prior to the consortium. Uh then also about ongoing security and device improvements, maintenance, um looking to uh aside from the PA system and then the minor camera needs looking at uh ways
011to uh meet some additional needs. A couple of the buildings want batch swipes on some of their doors that haven't had them. Uh door system itself is outdated. So looking to integ uh update that and integrate it with the camera system to meet current security standards and then just some uh refreshing of the camera system itself for some of the older cameras that are end of life or having issues. And to uh close, we're also um looking at uh changes or updates to the device life cycle management. We have a plan for Chromebooks where we are uh deploying new Chromebooks funded education. David do initiatives from time to time but really most of it comes from the state. However, Governor just introduced a budget a couple weeks ago. Overall, the budget is about total increase
012of 0.7% which is very modest. Now operating fund increase which is about 145 billion to the 263 billion is a 5.7% increase but where we're seeing a significant drop off is we're losing not just in education across the continuum of the budget $10 million cut from the federal government. So the reality is we have to try to backfill things and we're trying to backfill, you know, nutrition programs because we don't that's important. You know this better than I do. You you feed most of the children in this community. Um we're trying to make sure that our hospitals and nursing homes stay home because whether you have Medicaid or you're just an person like you and I who has commercial insurance, at the end of the day, you want them to be there and quite frankly
013they're struggling. So, it's a very interesting budget in that aspect and everyone has their own little news outlet that gets their own perspective. I'm trying to be very straightforward that we're just going to have to do more with less one way or the other. Now, education funding and health funding which is SL health right now about even they're both about proposed to be about $39 billion in the budget. So, let's round up to 40 billion 40 of each 80 and that's 80 out of the whatundred what did I say earlier on the operating funds under 45 the good chunk of our operating funds is going to fund education and and obviously healthcare um there is a overall like a four four and a half% increase for education in total out of that $39 billion I
014talk about so it's about a $ 1.7 billion increase which sounds like a lot of money but when you start to look at all the hundreds and hundreds of school districts it doesn't go too far if you recall A couple years ago, the proposal by the governor, which we were able to fight back, was they actually were putting through education funding and based on the criteria, if you didn't meet it, you could actually see a loss of aid. Now, Coh never really experienced it. I represent 11 other older districts and many of them were seeing four or 5% increases. This year, she puts in a floor of 1%. Now, sadly, the majority of districts I have are getting the 1%. Co-host is one of them. So Stacy, with the $238,000 in foundation aid you're getting,
015good luck, right? It's tough. So we're off to a tough start. That being said, what's not reflected in I wish there was a better term for this. We call them the runs, right? In healthcare, we know what that means. But this this is the the eight formula, right? So I've got the old neighbors Saratoga County ones because that's where my districts are. What's kind of interesting when you read the Ronza you'll see the 1% like and I'm sure Peggy was nice to respond but I'm sure there were some expletives when I saw this and Stacy I'm sure expives what's not calculated yet and this is why it's a very interesting budget is for years and I've talked about this when I've come because districts like co water Troy and all were always very early adopters
016with UPK aka childcare. And because we were early adopters, this goes back probably 20 years ago. Shelley with Silver was the speaker, Rockstar Trey was the member. I remember Ron and Shel going over to Lancings and doing an event about it. 20 years ago, I was there at the time. You got in at whatever level they were providing. So, say it was $4,300 a seat, which 20 years ago probably made sense. Well, as other districts came late to the game, they came in at higher levels, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000. Meanwhile, your seats, and Peggy share with me, I think you have about 108 seats maybe in the district are kind of at a little bit of a lower. They're still at some of the early adopter levels in the budget proposal which is not reflected appropriately
017in the runs the a runs the more instead of being 4500 is 10,000. So inherently if you're at 4500 and Stacy can correct me on the numbers I'm I'm using just hypotheticals. Say it was 5,000 it's going to be at minimum 10,000. There's a $5,000 per se windfall or I call the catchup to the district. So, there's a potential there. If you run the numbers, maybe $600,000 in additional aid to help support the overall operations. Just because we're raising the seat level to the district after 20 years doesn't mean you're restricted to spending on it. because of all affairs for the last 20 years, you've been using other taxpayer money and aid to support those cities that are there in the first place. This district has been very committed to UPK. And you know, it's
018kind of funny because, you know, as you know, there's a new mayor in New York City. Everyone has their own opinion about that. But, you know, everyone's talking about New York City, but the reality is we're focusing on upstate to make sure we get our fair share as well. And quite honestly, whereas New York City actually participates and actually funds a lot of they fund most our UPK program. We provide a little bit of resources. The state will partner with them 50/50 to do that. We're still looking to do 100% for upstate New York. So I I try to sometimes explain some of the misnarratives that are out there because to be honest with you, as somebody who spends a lot of time focusing on it, it's quite complicated and I'm sure some people who
019see a little headline probably get find it to be even more complicated. So we've got a ways to go. Uh we haven't even had the education hearing is tomorrow and for those who follow that I just always caution you. It's a very long day. And the education department usually starts it off and understand one thing. The education department is going to be grilled by all the legislators on the governor's budget proposal which the education department has nothing to do with. The education department has their own budget proposal which obviously looks for more money but we are responding to the governor's budget because the education doesn't government doesn't have the ability to pass the budget. They, as you know, set all the guidelines and rules and all those type of things, but that's the way the
020constitution is established here in New York State for over 249 years as the legislature is now in his 249th year. So sometimes a lot of you have the education department and the chancellor will answer the questions as only the chancellor will. But then we will also deal with the fact that the executive has her proposal and quite frankly the executive's proposal is what the legislature has to work with and trying to find a happy landing space. I know that um I've been meeting with the different you know with you guys are part of capital region Bosei so I meet with Capital Region Wishy and Questar not surprisingly they all have the same agenda which is a good thing because that way we don't have competing agendas and obviously they talk about continued sustainable funding which
021listen we still are adhering to the foundation aid which was only maybe five six years ago we finally started to get there and we're doing that, which is good, but we always know there's greater needs and demands and and we still focus on community schools, which is $250 million, which CO gets a piece of, and that helps give you the wraparound services, particularly for behavioral health, whether it's mental or substance use, whatever the programs are. And we've always been very clear not to put restrictions on it, to give you the ability to manage it to what your needs are, not what we think your needs should be. Um, but the only other item that's out there, which it's a new acronym, so I'm still a little fresh with this. I guess we call it FRAP,
022right? This deals with the children that are 21 years old that are still in the system. And it's, you know, now we want to expand the age from 21 to 22, which actually helps particularly individuals with significant disabilities to help move them into an adult program. But unfortunately the districts have been picking up a lot more costs on this. So we're trying to make some improvement on that. Now I get numbers I don't have off the top of my hand. I don't think a host has a huge amount of students but we've got probably 25 to 28 if I remember correctly. If we can actually help put another dent into that area because these are kids for the most part probably you don't see in the schools but you're you're paying for them to go
023somewhere to do something. So we want to make sure that if we can block any more expenses we will do it. Otherwise overall the budget is not terribly controversial this year. Usually it's been controversial the last well since the pandemic everything's been controversial but it's not horrifically controversial. Actually you know every governor if I was governor I do same thing. I put as many policy items in as possible knowing that I'm not going to get everything, but I get something. She actually trimmed it down significantly. So, it's actually good because we can actually focus on the meat and potatoes and the dollars and cents. Um, so there's no guarantee we'll be done by April 1st because that's always the next question. So, you know what you can bring out to the voters. But I really
024don't see a reason why we shouldn't be done by April 1st except for the fact that a lot of people just like to fight to the bitter end and sometimes the speaker will just let it drag on a little bit. I think our most controversial topic really has nothing to do with the school district and its seeker state environment quality review act which will get the environmentalists understandably concerned and energy policy. I just, you know, they're still, they started at 9:30. I just left. I'm going back to a the energy hearing where, and I just testified about the fact that, you know, we've got to do something. We got to do continue to do something try to reduce the energy costs. You know, just natural gas and this district will not natural gas and and
025electricity have almost gone up 3 400% in the last two or three days. And it's the supply that has nothing to do with national grid. It has nothing to do with the government mandated charges. Has everything to do what market does. You know, when wells go out. Sounds crazy. When oil wells go out in Texas, I know a lot now because I watch land man, right? But when the oil wells go out, that shrinks supply. When you shrink supply, you create demand. When you create demand, we don't regulate the power companies. Nobody in this country regulates the power companies. We regulate the utilities that transmit the power. I'm getting into a very large conversation about this because it's always exciting to me because most people call up and scream about their bill, understandably so. But
026when you start to peel away at it, we you have to understand what's driving the problem. At the end of the day, depending on your contracts, you guys are probably want a cooperative for your energy production. You know, you may be protected. Sometimes you pay for that protection. But you know when you have you know electricity was probably 8 cents a kilowatt hour what a week two weeks ago tomorrow's pricing because I looked at today at pricing is at 16 18%. And it's going up to 25% since that's a significant percentage increase. So when they come to you and say we got to play with our utility budget going. Any questions? a little bit too close to that mic I think. >> Uh first I just want to thank you for coming. We always love
027you know a face to face. It doesn't happen you know once a year. So thank you very much and with anything that I'm going to say I just want to preface like we really appreciate your advocacy host millions of dollars have come into this community at your hand and at your voice. And so really want to thank you for that and you touched on a lot of the things that I was going to ask. Um so when we're talking about foundation aid, it's such a large part of our state aid. Um the 1% you know now second year of a 1% increase overall 4.3 um you know it doesn't touch our healthcare expenditures increases and our and our um you know education costs for some of our students who have special needs. So you talked
028a little bit about um you know the 21 to 22 year olds right now. some of those calculations for reimbursements only include um school-aged kids and and it identifies school age death six to 21 and so those are definitely missing in that calculation. So that unreimbured um special ed costs for like high cost um threshold, it it hasn't been looked at and reviewed in a long time. And districts like ours, you know, we certainly have a have a challenge. Um it's hard to find a placement to begin with, but then they're upwards of $100,000. So to sustain those types of costs without having appropriate reimbursement is is a real hit to our budget. So I mean I'm speaking the words out just because you know we have to advocate for ourselves. Um so you know
029it's it's something that we see um as an increasing need and yes we've looked at some pieces and parts of the aid process but I feel like the high cost reimbursements you know are something that you know in the future it would really help districts of our size and our need to look at. >> I agree I I don't disagree with what we just said. I think I'll carefully offer this as as just commentary districts like Lancenberg's not getting choice getting 1% which is amazing to me because they had a huge huge amount of needs over there but districts like Berg and Renelier and even water leaks had a very interesting dynamic I don't want to play one against the other but I think it's important um the formula is always weighted on highest need.
030Now I we review we have a lot of high need students. However, in comparison to other districts on a percentage perspect perspective, our high needs may not be as high as the other districts are. And that's why the formula tends to skew that way. I'm going to try to, you know, we we do this every year. We try to play with the formula and try to make it work for everybody. It's not easy. You're working with a larger pool. One of the goals is to increase the overall pool of funding. So that way you're not slicing the pie too much. You're just slicing out of a bigger pie. >> And that's that's always the goal. Um so yeah, your job and responsibility and my job is to focus on what we can do to help
031commerce. That's that's our job and we're going to try to do that as best as possible. And I'm really anxious to see and once again this phase in on the seat seat charge that I talked about with UPK that could be very helpful because I know Coast was one of the earliest adopters. I know that there's always efforts to make sure that we we provide it because we know the value of starting education early. I don't pretend to think that that will actually jump over the two or 3% that another district's getting, but sometimes, interesting enough, when you run the numbers, it actually comes out a little bit closer than you actually think. So, it's I leave that to Stacy to make it a numbers game, right? And we'll go from there. But thank you.
032No, I appreciate what you're saying. I I always, you know, it's always funny because time for you don't do this as much anymore. I may be sorry because they may do it tomorrow. But when I was mayor, I used to always follow it. Not I had no interest in going to the state, but I was always interested because at the end of the day, you know, it's partnership, the city and the school district, right? And you always worry about I always worry about, you know, at the end of the day, people complain about their taxes. They usually don't figure out which is the city and the county and the state or city, county, and local or schools. They just complain. So, I was always sensitive to that and it would drive me crazy when I
033say, "What the heck?" and they could always put in the numbers after backing out capital projects. So if you weren't doing any capital projects, you really look like you were getting nothing. Uh now we try to focus just on foundation because that's really gives you the ability to run run the district, make sure that we're paying our professionals what they should be paid for to make sure the benefits are working and also make sure that we're financially sustainable. >> So you mentioned UK that was also one of my bullet points. You know, obviously we've had conversations about, you know, the first seat um you know, reimbursement, also the flexibility in our programs allowing us to move seats around should we need, you know, we've got a number of three-year-old seats, we've got a number of
034foury old seats. You know, I think we still struggle as a district to make sure that we're getting the most out of our funding. And you know with this charge to expand access in in the next two years, I think that we also need to think about the flexibility of these grant funds and and you know you you mentioned capital project reimbursements. Where are we going to put these classrooms? We don't have space. They're maxed out and right now even with 104 that wouldn't be a normal cohort. So, we're talking one to two more classes if we completely max out. Where are we going to put them? >> Yeah. I This may not come across the best way, but you know, I mean, everyone's focused on what they're reading in the New York Post. And
035to be honest with you, you got to take that with a grain of salt, just like you take with the New York Times because they both come from different perspectives. You know, Madani and and and and the governor want universal child care tomorrow. Well, the reality is if you actually read what's going on, they're looking at this over multiple years to get there. So, this is kind of like a down payment on this. >> Yeah. >> The one thing I've been saying overall is, you know, let's not ignore reality what's going on in this state and in this country. Interesting enough, even in China, families are not getting any bigger. Family sizes are continuing to decline. So, let's be strategic and thoughtful about how we build this system. Don't overbuild it. Right now, I've been
036very much involved in the city of Troy and Wid and Skill School District merger. It's going to happen more than likely. >> It's going to be a significant several hundred million dollar windfall to those districts because the state focuses on consolidation aid. I'm not here saying you should be doing that. That's not my business. That's not my position. They came about this on themselves. But what is happening and what's going to be clearly happening over the next 5 10 years is that districts are going to have to start making some decisions about how they want to operate. You saw that Healey moved their high school over to Waterly. It's working like a charm. And I would not be surprised in a couple years because of the large incentive that the state gives that eventually you
037may see another step towards a greater integration. In other words, we can't ignore that the student population is declining. >> Yeah, >> we can't we have to take that into consideration. That's why I'm saying at least with child care, don't overbuild the system. >> Build it that's going to make sense and that we can actually support financially without hurting the districts. I obviously also as a stay-at-home mom with my children, you know, have my own opinions about, you know, forcing all of our children into a child care. >> Well, I don't think we're talking about don't want to get into that. >> There's obviously people who choose homeschooling. This district has more than you would think number of children in homeschooling. That's a whole another conversation. >> Absolutely. >> Very interesting conversation when you incorporate
038the city of all and city of Toronto. Some of those grants are limiting though in in that they have to be in the same educational environment as as school age. So, you know, just considerations when when we're looking at, you know, the increase in UPK funding. The one thing that I didn't hear you talk about is the cell phone ban. So now that there's actual money attached to this uh distractionf free school, you know, I'm just wondering if you have any idea what that's going to look like, especially for school districts like ours who have already implemented this. So we have costs that are in, you know, involved that we have spent um for both materials, you know, the yonder pouches and also for staffing to support this um cell phone free environment. And so
039some of us who have already kind of started down this pathway now there, you know, this talk of funding, we don't know what that funding is going to look like, whether it be >> it's $15 million is what we included last year in the budget. I don't know. I we'd have to talk deeper about the roll out of it and and the timeline. >> Um, listen, districts like East Greenbush, Try Troy started two or three years ago. they're just happy that they don't have any grief anymore because they're getting grief from certain pockets of families. That being said, if you're incurring expenses, you know, the problem with the education department when they roll out these programs and and don't get me wrong, the professional budget is part of the problem here. I mean, how many
040times in the technology grant programs we be hustling to get you the money for the technology for the Chromebooks you put out and we're hustling because they're about ready to go out of date and you haven't gotten the money yet. The programs are extremely slow. And yes, you can always show it as a receivable, which your auditor likes, and it's helpful to the board, but the truth of the matter is money in the bank is what comes. So, we we should I I don't know if I have a full appreciation of what the financial impact is the district. I'm sure tomorrow morning Stacey or Peggy will have an email in my box to tell me and we'll see where I don't know. I just don't know where it is because the education department once we
041approve things, the education department doesn't get back to us unless they have a problem. >> Understood. >> And then we reach out to them only when we have a problem. But I I would like to think I would like to hope that overall the implementation because we work together with the teachers union with a variety of different administrators and boards board organizations throughout the state overall the feedback I'm getting I'm not hey listen people like to complain about almost anything trust me overall with some limited exceptions I haven't gotten from my district I can tell you that they found their way. It appears that the good news is students are paying attention. And just as importantly to me, I remember talking to my governor about this. As one who's been married to a teacher for
04237 years, thank god teachers are finally getting paid attention to. It's been a shame. It's I don't know how they teach in that environment. When it drives me crazy when I'm talking to someone, they look away. I can't imagine it's like when you got 24 of doing the same thing, playing with their gadgets. So hopefully it's going to lead to better outcomes. Okay, my last um topic I just wanted to kind of point out is, you know, we have received a lot of funding through some of the pandemic stimulus grants for for mental health supports. Those are expiring. Um our mental health issues are not expiring. Just curious if there's been any conversation about um implementing any kind of supports for, you know, a lot of us did use funds for staffing um because they
043were kind of regulated to support staffing. Um so with those being, you know, coming up to expire, of course, we're planning the best that we can to absorb that into our overall budget. But just curious if if there's been any conversation about, you know, that that piece expiring and going away and then what hole that might mean for people. >> Couple things there. First of all, as I've said before a long time ago, with the pandemic, you're going to have a lot of money. Be very thoughtful and careful how you spend it. >> Yes, we were. >> Right. I I didn't say you weren't. I'm just saying. and and same but but but as many of the superintendents and boards have told me it's an opportunity to kind of see what works and what doesn't.
044two years ago. Now, last year's budget, there's been a significant investment not in the education side, particularly for mental health, but there's been more investment in the mental health side of the budget with a lot of the nonforprofit groups that actually provide either on-site or off-site care. So, that's probably where we need to have a little bit of a deeper conversation of what the true what worked here, what didn't, what the true needs are, uh, to try to figure it out. uh whether there's a specific set aside for men halls in the budget. I don't see that in the education budget, but I know listen I work with Northern Rivers. I look for Community House. I work with all these non forprofits that are actually providing a lot of the services. A lot of time
045they're providing you don't even know what's going on. But admittedly, there's nothing more convenient than having somebody, whether it's your own staff or a nonforprofit who's using the space in here, to be able to provide that discreet and available mental health for a child who needs it. >> Thank you. >> Anybody else have any questions, comments? Thank you, >> Stacy. Here we go. I just want to clarify because I think I heard one thing and I want to make sure I heard it correctly. >> Um, for the UPK catch up, I think that I heard that the spending would not be restricted to the >> That's what we're being told. And to be honest with you, we still have a lot more to find out about this because they're also talking about fees and over
046a couple years. So, I we need to get details and as I get more details, I will make sure you know. I personally don't think it should be restricted. Just like, you know, back when the former governor introduced community schools, he wanted to use them specific services. We said, "No, that district's figure it out." >> There's a lot of any kind. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We want to give you as much flexibility as possible because every every district's different. >> Is it phase in through 2020? Is that >> they're talking about a three-year phase? Now, once again, we haven't actually we won't get briefed till next week. The hearing's tomorrow. more is going to come of it and that's gonna start to really do the the sausage making as we call it. >> Excellent. Thank
047you. >> All right, listen. Thank you everybody. Thanks for your work and >> thank you. >> We'll be in touch. >> So, since we're on the topic, this seems like a good time to turn this over to you and then we'll come back to So we received the preliminary state aid rounds and I just want to talk a little bit about um the state of the state. So the governor had our annual state of the state and the good news was uh the state is in good uh position financially as far as reserves. Uh so they're in a gold standard. They've been very fiscally responsible. They're stable. um and their revenues were better than anticipated. So that's on good news from the state's perspective, but there were a lot of challenges that that Governor Hok
048talked about uh specifically um as member McDonald had shared the uncertainty around federal funding uh particularly for Medicaid. um inflation has also been um there's been slow growth in inflation and then the um the tariffs um and that impact on the market. Um but overall uh Wall Street has performed well and so their initial um their initial projections were a lot lower and they were able to almost just just about break even. They talked about a 07 increase. So that's much better than what was originally anticipated um for 2026. So we talked about what that means for us here in Cahose and as you had uh heard our board president say foundation aid is up 1%. That doesn't mean a lot for us. That doesn't go very far but we are grateful for the 1%.
049Um, and the other aid categories where we're seeing growth are really reimbursement, right? It's the expense driven aid categories. So, it's our booies expenses, it's our transportation expenses, and it's our private access costs uh which is our students uh in special programs that are privately placed, which is another point that the board president talked about. So, an overall increase of 4.3%. Um, but a lot of our other areas of expenses are trending obviously much higher than that. Um, we'll get to the expense side of of the budget later tonight. We're talking about preliminary state aid projections. So, it could be it could be worse, but it's it's not we're not knocking it out of the park as far as where we are with state aid. tax cap. So tax cap is uh due to OC
050March 1st. There's several different factors in the property and tax cap calculation. uh the tax base growth factor is basically the growing our growth in our assessment or property values uh based off of what was uh provided uh to the department of tax and finance uh with the assessment in July. Uh so that's 1.0118. So that is higher than prior year. So there's some growth there. The allowable levy growth factor is the lesser of 2% or inflation. So that's 2% for the current calculation. There's no ERS or TRX exclusions. And then a large factor for us will be the changes in pilot revenue. Uh so I have contacted uh our council German fazo for some updates because we have a um a material uh pilot that we're expecting to come on the books uh for
051next year. So that'll be a material impact to the tax calculation. And then the capital exclusion I'm working with our financial advisors uh rectang group to calculate that. So that's still being determined, but the next time we meet, I'll walk through the actual projection, but I am expecting it to be low based off of the pilot uh delta. Any questions on either of those two items? >> Thank you. I wanted to other sensor. Yes, >> I have an update for um capital. So, we met with our architects today and for our phase two construction project, we have uh two main items that are remaining before we can close out the project. So, we have some fire alarm um punch out lists um which is the she she is the contractor. Uh so, we expect that
052to wrap up um this month through February. And then we'll have Shaker Flats returning in the spring. There's some work that they need to do uh related to the dugouts for baseball and and softball. Uh so once that work is complete then we can uh pay out other contracts and then we can do the final cost reports for those for that project. Next item to talk about is the HVAC audit. Um so that's started this is the preliminary phases. uh gathering information. They have um a spreadsheet that they shared, some drawings that they shared. They're going to be doing a walk through. Um, we'll have our staff join them as an open GCI uh to the walkth through as well to make sure that we have a comp comprehensive list of what exists today, not
053just on paper, but what actually exists uh in the buildings because a lot of times some additions or things that are end of life aren't necessarily reflected on drawings. So, we're going to make sure that they're they're accurate for the audit. Uh so CSR will be joining us on February 11th to to talk about that go through that with you. As far as we have the two million um that's remaining for the capital reserve and we had uh say three main items that are included in in that work. Um that is the walk coolers at the middle school and Lancing to open up space in our cafeterias so we can make some improvements um and make the space more comfortable for our children. Uh the storage uh building and site work for um the athletic
054storage at the at the high school for our our turf and our track um equipment as well as the courtyard work. and then the auditorium lighting which is the most expensive uh item and probably the most time consuming as well. Um so we have a preliminary schedule here. Uh we do expect to submit to SED next month in February. Uh the per permits take about six weeks they're estimating. So, we're thinking uh early to mid April we'll have permits and then we will be going out to bid in May and well actually we're going to go out to bid in middle of April and then receive the results in mid May. My apologies. And then we expect to have a contract award uh towards the end of May. So, we're hoping to um do preliminary
055work in the summer and into the fall. So the important item to note here is for our auditorium uh we would have basically a a blackout where no one would be able to use the auditorium uh for September October um so that we can make all the improvements that we need um with an 111 um date to to have have that available again. We did talk uh to Christian God today to make sure that that was going to fit the schedule and that would be manageable as well as the uh high school principal to make sure that was going to be feasible. >> Yeah. How does that affect the elementary place? That's usually the first. Right. >> Right. So, um, Christian was talking about a plan to the cafeteria and other areas as they practice
056it for the play, but he felt confident that they could do that. >> It wasn't going to be easy, but it was going to be manageable. >> Listen, neither was the science improvements, right? I mean, outside the class. >> Yeah. So, uh we'd be uh expected to be substantially complete with all of the projects for final class reports to be submitted next December. >> Stacy, you mentioned that they have to do some more work on the dugouts for the baseball field. Will the baseball field be ready and usable for the spring season? >> Yes. Make sure that's the intention. Thank you. That's it for the updates for CSR. Is there any other questions or >> Thank you. Uh so some updates uh on my part. Um as you know announcement went out for elementary principal
057forever blanking will be holding committee February 23rd and We're working with CTA to get some teacher representatives of obedient committee and I'll keep you updated. That will be round one and then we'll have performance task. Um we completed our first round of assistant superintendent reviews and we'll be into a second round the second week of February. Uh then athletic director a draft job description for the athletic director. Um you know feel feel free to send me any comments or suggestions. Um, we also going to ask Jeff to review this and we updated a little bit to see if there's there's other areas we plan on uh posting the week of February for this and then I'll give you the same time frame and speaking with both Jeff and Turlo they do feel six weeks for
058um you know arrangement with athletic director assistant principal would be would be sufficient. Um and um so the posting will will go up school administrative certification preferred. Um but with the teacher certification and coaching experience um required just in case there are a number of that searches just so that we're able to um question on that like size districts across not only this area across the state is that 6 normal or are we along or do you most have a full-time athletic director? >> Talking to Jeff, it appeared to be um you know normal, but what I can do is get some specific um places and I can share. Thank you. >> Did you say for assistant principal for students? >> So, uh at first this would go out through the for administrative certification. Uh
059it used to be part of the post principal association athletic director. So that might be that would be the first but then if um we aren't able to find you know certified candidate or certified that uh uh works for us. This then gives me the ability to, you know, not have to start the search all all over again. We've already had a larger pool. >> That's and that's why. >> Okay. And we have a few other updates. So, um, metal detectors. So the order was received from the company uh week ago from last Friday. Originally the time frame that they gave us was four to five weeks. Laura spoke with them uh to try to firm up a training date. We have to have two days training which is scheduled right before the go live
060date two days before. Um they said they would have a better idea next week. they can when they can actually be ready. Right now we have we have about a March 20th date, but we're thinking it might be moved earlier based on your conversation today. But we'll have they say a firm answer next week. Yeah. And we have a parentformational session that we're going to plan on February 24th uh to give parents plenty of time and we're working as well. Any questions on it? And then uh finally we did the is that correct? The voting machine. The um quote went out to Merrick today because they work directly with them. Um but there is no wait time. Essentially they have them in stock ready to go. Um so once they receive our PO which will
061essentially come from Boseies um they're available and can be to us within a week >> and we have communication. We're just reviewing the communication um to make sure that it is still working and then go back. >> Okay. And that that is specific to the machines themselves or to some electronic software that we will be using. >> That's both um machines. the correspondents went out today to neric um for them and they're the same machines that Alb County currently uses. Um so there will be no change um in the voting machines and the appearance and how they work and anything. Um and then the software that um that's been educated already. They've looked at um they're right now they're looking at um our voter lists, our maps. Um, so they're generating uh a visual for
062us right now. They have um the conversion's almost complete and they're working on voter history now. So once that done, we'll have clear maps to be polling locations. They did have a couple of questions regarding some of the locations for some of our streets. Um because when you pinpoint them and actually put them visually on a map, there's a couple that um they mentioned Gateway Drive, Rock Alley, and Tits Place. um that on a map look like they should go to one building but are currently right now at a different building. Um but we'll be able to look at that more in depth once we have the maps on hand which he'll share um hopefully in the next week or two and then I can share them with you guys too to see. Um and
063as of right now it appears that we don't actually have anyone who lives on those streets who has voted in the past. So, if we were to change the location to make it make sense, um it really shouldn't impact anybody um that has voted previously like say at Harmony Hill would now go to Abram Lansing shouldn't be a huge impact on them. But we'll look at all of that more in depth once they're they're done. And actually the data communication that was shared to go out to the parents and community that both the voting machines that that no longer providing by county and about the soft yeah we just want to look at it could make it >> right and and what about the full worker like where where are we with that? I know
064you know it might be a little bit early. I'm not really sure when when we try to get these but you know part of the conversation was are we sure that you know there's going to be training and support for um people who are going to be working these machines understanding that the company has offered to have some sort of on-site indist not sure if that means every single building and or what the training leading up to it um looks like. So they would meet with everybody a week prior to the election um do a full inservice training um at one location and then day of they'll come they'll do a debriefing to kind of touch base with everybody again and then they're available um to go between each poll site all day long. So
065they said they'll be no more than than five five to 10 minutes away from each location throughout the day if we have any issues or any questions that arise. >> Okay. Has is that a posting? How does that work? Or or or do we just go with you know what we've had in the past as far as you know people who were >> So there's a letter that typically goes out to previous pole workers in the past. Um so obviously that will be revised. It would be updated. um we would let them know in that correspondence what the changes are and then if they decide based on those changes that maybe it's not something that they want to do and then we will look at other either reaching other people or we've Stacey and I
066have had a few discussions of um other alternatives of what we could do if we don't get enough workers >> but we have a timeline that we are comfortable with if we should need to do that. >> Absolutely. And then finally from my end, I did mention that uh we went to the Gil County Athletic and Community Center last week. He Laura and I were we were surprised by Dan McCoy being there with some of his staff. Um so the classrooms look very favorable. Our next step is to support alternative learning. um and they they were in agreement that um you know that would be a good partnership and there's some other collaborations that we could do with them as well in terms of career experiences. So our next step is on either February 3rd
067or 4th depending on which date works best for them. uh CSR will will go there and it means I'll have more information to share at the February after that after that visit. um you know they were classrooms before for um prek uh now there's exercise multiple uh waves of the egress so we got lot more pieces in place so play >> I was going to say I do and and Rick I don't know if you participated but we did have a tour at one point and it was found that those classrooms needed a lot more work than what we could afford to do so I'm glad to hear that there's been some improvement in that way. Um, you know, curious to see what CSR says because the regulations for state ed are very different than,
068you know, if we were um contracting with what's a group, you know, community senator at that point, I think we were contracting for services but didn't necessarily have our kids in the building. So, it's very fun. >> Any questions? Unless I miss something. So >> So for upcoming events, so there is a communication slide. So the student nomination form that we discussed was sent out on January 21st. Um Mary Beth informed me that we had 19 responses that she's now going to be going through and um deciding which are the appropriate venues to post. We're going to be sending it out again after that um to make sure that we can get all the schools represented out through the building principles. Um, and then if uh I share the clip with you, but the new
069science channel news channel 13, January 22nd. So for uh the upcoming events, I asked Ashley to check this twice. She did. There's two lancing family dances within within a week of family danc we certainly done it um at night and uh prior to the pandemic we did great attendance after the pandmic those attendance fall off a little bit from a parental level you know great families to come and engage but it wasn't widespread. The purpose of the curriculum fair and the curriculum night is to expose students to courses they can take in elective and for uh groups to just further their education is to go over their course study guide curriculum guide. So we're going to try during the school day this year during all lunch periods and run it like we do fairs where
070we're going to run it as curriculum fair for exposure for students. At the same time, probably Beth Barn will be there um doing some filming and interviewing students and teachers to put out a short video to families to capture their engagement through social media so that they understand as well. But we're hoping we'll have higher student engagement having it during the school day, higher parent engagement, getting out on socials with the ultimate goal of students getting major schedules which begin on Monday, February 2nd. coming up. We start with juniors and sophomores into freshman year. Um so the idea is that they really have a good idea of what they want to see for classes. So we're going to try it. Um see how engagement looks and see if we can try to just get more
071information out. Parag's great, but if it's not well attended um then it's not serving this purpose. So we want to try something different. >> Sounds like a thoughtful shift. And uh at the next board meeting in addition to CSR Tim and I will be doing the state of the district presentation in terms of where we are with various initiatives sharing and looking at data. Um some quick uh preliminary data. So it's looking like I is trending upward. I know the middle school has seen some significant improvement in their ready scores. I know elementary is still not quite finished up yet, but I did get some good news on that today's shedding shedding a little. Uh so I folks on tonight's agenda, we have a number of retirements that I just want to uh mention and
072thank for service to our students. Christine Brooks who has been a longtime kindergarten teacher at Harmony Hill. Maggie Deer who was a special education teacher at Vans Skype. Deb Fitzgerald teacher at Vans Skype was a third grade teacher for many years before that. Laura Gearhart, school psychologist at Harmony Hill. Courtney Valente, CMS special education teacher. These are exemplary teachers, psychologists. Not only have they served their children so well, they have mentored many staff members over the years and we will definitely definitely miss them. We will be inviting all of our retirees and all of our attending recipients to the reception in June. So at that point in time the principles will be appointed to mention the building. >> Thank you. >> So with that does the board have any discussion of agenda items? >> No.
073Just congratulations to all the retirees and to Miss Brooks especially. She was Charlie's first teacher in Harmony Hill. >> A lot of very familiar names and the list. Um, you know, it looks long. I'm I'm not sure. M. Fitzgerald gave Josh his first uh assignment when he was in first grade to do a research paper and he still knows everything about blue whales. I'm telling you right now, if you ask the kid, he will know it. But a lot of a lot of um you know really tenure faces that are going to be leaving us really hard shoes to fill. So thank all of them for their service and again we'll be able to see them in June. Um, anything else on the agenda to discuss? Any community discussion of agenda items? Okay. Can I
074get a motion that the board of education adopt the following resolutions of the January 28th, 2026 agenda and agenda 7 A through J, 8 A through W, and 9A. >> I'll make a motion. >> I'll second. >> Mr. Jackson, >> yes. >> Mrs. Mr. Snder, >> yes. >> Mrs. Gender, >> yes. >> Mrs. Paradise, >> yes. >> Mr. Dro, >> yes. >> Mrs. Furwell, >> yes. >> And Mrs. Geller, >> yes. >> Any comments from board of education members on anything else. >> Miss Snider, you thought >> I couldn't remember if we already congratulated a great play or not. >> That's right. The the middle school. >> Yes. Great. Great job and and and an excellent job on the set. The whole play was great, but I was thrown I was blown away by the
075set. The set was amazing. So, excellent job >> and the fact that it was student centered, you know, um and run was really nice, too. >> Yes. >> So, thank you to our team for that. Any uh anything else from the board? No. >> Any comments from the audience on anything? No board policy review tonight. Dates for future meetings, uh, February 11th and March 4th, right here at Coast Middle School Library at 6:00 p.m. Can I get a motion to enter into executive session at 7:15 p.m. to discuss matters leading to the appointment, employment, promotion, demotion, discipline, suspension, dismissal, or removal of a particular person or corporations? I will make that it >> I will make the motion. >> Mr. Jackson, >> yes. >> Mrs. Snder, >> yes. >> Mrs. Gendron, >> yes. >> Mrs.
076Paradis, >> yes. >> Mr. Dro, yes. >> Mrs. Burwell, >> yes. >> And Mrs. Gillard, >> yes. Thank you very much for coming tonight. We do now plan to return to public session. Have a great evening. The time.