001good evening and welcome to the april 13 2021 guilderland central school district board of education meeting would you all please silence your cell phones and recite the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states and to the republic okay so first on the agenda tonight we have two public comments and the first public comment um is for me it's uh in two parts one second here um this first part is from an email exchange i had with mr mike duluth he asked me to read a specific part of my email to him and i agree so here goes quote when mr deluxe letter was read i said i was invited i decided i invited mr duluth to attend a meeting and he declined what actually happened is that i invited him to
002work with the subcommittee and he said yes the subcommittee um didn't reach out yet because they're just getting organized i misspoke because i did not remember our email exchange correctly my mistake is for responding on the spot i apologize for misspeaking and any extraordinary distress this has caused mr duluth the second part of my comment is on the support of the diversity equity inclusion and anti-racism work of the school district with the exception of a few leaders in this district there's this lack of strong leadership in addressing racism there are many there are many articles and letters written in the altman enterprise in the summer of 2020 addressing the change that was supposed to come and there is no doubt that this work is challenging however there was an understanding or at least i thought
003so that we would need to be strong in the face of pushback there are quotes from the district like quote if we do not seize this moment to make real changes shame on all of us unquote there's another quote i think we need this is how we move forward as a nation and as a community i always talk about we're here for all kids i want to make sure we're here equally for all kids unquote the enterprise also stated that they've written many times about black students who felt the discrimination against them wasn't recognized by the school staff building in response to questions we are now receiving about the importance of this work i ask how many incidents have to take place until the gilman school district starts to be proactive beyond performative activism the
004district needs to ask itself why is this existence of this work perceived as a threat in a speech from tony morrison in 1975 he talks about racism and how it distracts you from doing your work let's stop being distracted and start doing the work the second public comment is from i apologize let's make this bigger um this is from kelly of rosie is she frozen do you want me to read it get started go ahead if you have it right in front of you gloria i do uh dear board members i am writing to you as a concerned parent in the guilderland district about the proposed changes to the school's start times for next year during the pandemic start times in our district were dramatically altered to accommodate transportation and social distancing and those changes
005excuse me had a significant impact on a large percentage of our student population before yet another change is bestowed upon them i would encourage the board to consider the following concerns first many families were negatively impacted by having the elementary school start earlier than the high school because they had planned on older students being available for after-school care some of these families had already endured financial hardships from the pandemic and this only exacerbated their situation two young students were getting picked up on the bus before 7am during the winter months before even daylight when they were just adapting and acclimating to school just as kindergartners three high school students had limited opportunities for employment due to such a late dismissal restaurants and other local businesses have struggled to provide them with opportunities because they are
006not available at the needed times many many times students with food insecurities rely on these this income for their next meal four students who needed additional help were unable to stay after or had limited times to ask for additional instruction five student athletes were having to leave earlier than normal and missed crucial in school in classroom time in order to participate in games or meets especially when they were at suburban council schools who did not modify their stock start times and typically started before 8 am six later start times created conflicts and overlaps for high school students who participated in extracurricular activities which forced them to make difficult choices between them although they were encouraged to diversify their involvements for college applications i understand that previous sleep studies about adolescence have been evaluated but have
007those studies been updated to include data from the past year isn't the board obligated to consider all students in the district before making such sweeping changes that impact so many and not in a favorable light why would our district not want to be in a more alignment with other districts in our area in reading the thought exchange after the new start times were proposed as part of the budget i believe by the responses that many other families in the district share the same questions and concerns over the course of this past year the students have had to adapt to these changes virtual learning and too many other things even to list why would we want to create yet another upheaval in their lives by making changes to the start times when the original start times
008were working fine for generations before covid instead of trying to make this type of change at the end of the school year when the community is unable to meet and discuss i would encourage the board to return our district to the pre-covet schedule for the next year and allow our children to get back to some normalcy thank you kelly abruzzi thank you gloria um are there any more public comments that came in no no okay thank you next on the agenda we have the consent items these include the minutes um from the march 16th and the march 23rd uh board of ed meetings the cpsc and csc recommendations uh personnel action and the financials a through three you have a motion to accept the consent agenda second um judy is not here oh i'm sorry
009thank you gloria uh passes eight zero thank you um next on the agenda we have information items uh curriculum and instruction uh dr singleton thank you dr rivera uh the first i'm the only item i have tonight is that the university at albany recently launched the capital district leadership award which is designed to recognize students with a passion for leadership and noteworthy service experiences after interviewing finalists 10 students were recognized as capital district leaders receiving seven thousand dollars per year and twenty freshmen were recognized as capital district fellows at three thousand dollars per year in addition all of the finalists were recognized with a one thousand dollar annual scholarship the selection committee was inspired while reading the essays and recommendations for all students who applied for this distinction and i am pleased to share with
010you that three guilderland students have been named as recipients and they are jessica arumbuwa who has been selected as a capital district leader to receive the seven thousand dollars annually equivalent to twenty eight thousand dollars likewise for shashank champion who has been selected again as a capital district leader at seven thousand annually and an equivalent of twenty-eight thousand dollars and kerry yamaguchi who has been selected as a capital district fellow to receive three thousand dollars annually equivalent to twelve thousand dollars the ualbany campus community looks forward to the contributions these students will bring to you albany and the role that they will play as peer leaders so congratulations to jessica shashank and kerry well deserved thank you dr singleton next we have board president information the first item i have is voter registration required for
011the may 18th uh 2021 board of election the school budget board of watching vote voter registration is required in the gilroy school district to vote you must be 18 a u.s citizen is in a resident in the gilman school district for at least 30 days prior to the vote if you are not registered with the school district or albany county board of elections you must do so prior to the vote there are links there for albany county board of elections or you can do that for the dmv the district has established three registration dates for residents to vote at the may 18 2021 budget vote and election you may register anytime between 8 30 and 2 30 at one of the elementary schools or from 8 30 to 4 30 at the district office on
012the following dates thursday may 6 monday may 10 and tuesday may 11th if you are not sure which elementary school to vote please refer to our webpage link budget and taxes and use the link that drops down to voter eligibility and absentee ballots you can see if you're registered and where you vote for school elections the next item is the capital region both seats posted budget and board election vote that will take place next wednesday april 24th april 21st started 2021 there are two seats up for election and our special board of ed meeting will take place at 8 a.m for that um that meeting and lastly the upcoming board of education election the petitions are available through the district clerk for any district resident who might be considering to run for the board of
013ed 82 signatures of eligible district voters are required based on the two percent of voting in there are three three-year terms on the board that will begin july 1st in order to run for the board of ed you need the petitions with 82 or more signatures from qualified voters and they need to be returned to the district office or the district clerk by april 19 2021 by 5 pm anyone who has questions about the duties and response responsibilities of a board member may contact the superintendent board president or any current member of the board of ed to be a candidate you must be able to read write be at least 18 years of age a qualified voter and a district president for at least one year prior to the vote on tuesday may 18 2021.
014further information you can find from the district clerk and the district office next on the agenda our action items first up with school business meal nail your mute doing well until now sorry about that um uh first item this evening is an internship agreement and that's with grand canyon university to accept students for internship and practicum experience hey can i have a motion to accept the internship agreement then second gloria any questions you all in favor class is 8-0 uh next title in this agreement to approve the agreement with saint catherine's center for children can i have a motion to approve the service agreement with st catharines uh blanca second barb any questions all in favor why classes eight zero uh next is a recommendation to appoint dr warren silverman of access compliance llc as
015medical director for a 36-month term effective july 1st 2021 to june 30th with the option to extend the agreement for two additional years upon mutual agreement between the parties can i have a motion to approve the appointment of the medical director gloria second wonka i just have a question about that go ahead um well how does that work do we get more than one applicant or how does that work uh we solicited um vendors and we had identified four that could provide the service some that have some that reached out to us and others that we were aware of they received a packet of of requirements obligations that they would have to complete under the contract and only one of them was returned we did have one returned that did not meet the deadline so
016we did not open it we returned that late one to them i was just curious as to the process thank you next we have an installment purchase agreement with capitol region boces for the purchase of computers this is a program that we've initiated between our fifth graders and our ninth graders where they will receive a new device upon entering those two grade levels and they will keep that device for four years so this is an ongoing process we have where we're working with an installment purchase agreement to buy new computer equipment over time and equip our students with one-to-one devices okay can i have a motion to accept a purchase agreement for the computers ben second rebecca any questions yeah i have a quick question did the computers for our grade school children ever come
017in i know they were back ordered and like people that had multiple children were suffering because you know each of the kids couldn't be on did those ever come in we just got them about two weeks ago and they're ready to be distributed so that was a long back order from july 1st up until a couple of weeks ago so they have just come in thank you you're welcome other questions all in favor classes 8-0 uh next item is a resolution to prove budgetary transfers totaling 71 hundred and eighty two dollars as identified in your materials hey can i have a motion to accept the general fund transfer kelly beck and gloria any questions uh next we actually have three scholarships that are being established so we'll do them one by one the first one
018is the summer lee smith scholarship and that would be awarded to a student pursuing a career in the human services field or social work that has demonstrated compassion to others and is active in the community hey can i have a motion to improve the lee smith scholarship block a second rebecca any questions okay all in favor motion passes eight zero uh next is the approval to form the martin eifenberger scholarship that would be awarded to a high school senior who is kind compassionate hard working and enjoys life to the fullest recipient of this award exemplifies compassion toward others positivity and a desire to make a positive impact in the community around them can i have a motion to improve this scholarship gloria ii barb any questions we're all in favor he passes eight zero and
019then finally we have an initial from ten group insurance a scholarship that will recognize the senior will be entering into a four-year college or university degree program recognized students should be well-rounded shows a drive to work and give back to the community while maintaining good grades and academic involvement can i have a motion to approve the 10i group insurance scholarship blanca second rebecca any questions all in favor classes 8-0 and we certainly thank all of those donors who have established scholarships really appreciate that for our students next we have internal audit reports so it's a resolution to accept the annual risk assessment and special area internal audit reports on state aid prepared by quest r3 boces and also to approve the corresponding corrective action plans as recommended by the audit committee hey can i have
020a motion to prove the audit report and the corrective action form up then second wonka any questions and then finally this evening we have a donation of a snare drum from randy atalagi we're very appreciative of that can i have a motion to approve the donation of the snare drum rebecca second gloria any questions just thank you for the donation you're all in favor the motion passes 8-0 thank you neil next on the agenda we have superintendent action um dr wiles okay thanks dr rivera so um this is the portion of our agenda where we'll um work on coming to some agreement on our spending plan for the 21 22 school year here's the kind of the plan for our conversation um we have a brief powerpoint presentation that mr sanders is going to walk
021us through that highlights some of the or the key features of the enacted state budget that was passed last week and the implications of those changes from the executive budget to the enacted budget and their implications for us so we'll start there this presentation also includes our recommendation for kind of where we land with the budget and then we'll open it up for discussion um i know in the intervening days many of you have sent questions to us and we appreciate those and because of that we have some guests with us this evening prepared to talk about um some of those topics so mr piscatelli from the high school mr laster from the middle school and lisa knowles our pps director are joining the district office team to assist with questions the other thing i
022just wanted to mention for our viewers the school start time topic is a hot topic and i know a lot of people are interested in it and i know that we shared that topic as part of the budget presentation a few weeks back however that is not a decision the board needs to make tonight is part of adopting the spending plan for um 2122 in response to some of the concerns that have come our way we have brought together a plan for our task force to meet and they'll be doing that next week and then we'll have some information from that task force effort to share with the board and then the board can you know deliberate around that new information shortly thereafter so i didn't want anyone to be disappointed if we didn't arrive
023at a decision on that very um you know and very important topic tonight so um having said that i will share my screen and turn it over to mr sanders so just give me one moment here okay can everyone see that all right mr sanders i will turn it to you okay well today we're going to be talking about adoption of the budget this is board adoption so when the board adopts the budget that will be the final budget that will go before the voters in may so we have a presentation tonight we're going to touch on a few topics things that have changed uh since the last time we spoke about the budget uh first thing we'll talk about is foundation aid and why is foundation aid so important and this goes back actually
024to 1993 and something called the campaign for fiscal equity when um it was argued that students were being deprived of a constitutional right to a sound basic education due to inadequate funding in new york state that lawsuit went back and forth for 13 years before campaign for fiscal activity finally prevailed and the legislature state legislature at that point moved to enhance uh funding in 2007 for schools and there was a four-year plan to phase that in started with the first two years and then the great recession hit everything got put on the back burner again as that was dealt with um and now we find ourselves 13 years from that point where we still have not ever fully realized foundation aid that was promised back in 2007. so what's happening now is an attempt to
025fully fund foundation aid after all these years the way it's been designed in the enacted state budget is that it would be a three-year phase in so in the first year which is the year that's coming out 2021 what the the total amount of foundation aid that the school district is owed is 20.9 million so in 2021 the current school year we received 15 just a little over 15 million dollars that means we're still owed under the formula 5.8 million so what would happen for next year is the state would phase in a portion of that in our case it's 26.25 percent we're about 1.5 million dollars that would bring our foundation aid up to 16.6 million leaving us to be fully funded another 4.3 million and in year two under the current plan again
026starting at the top our 20 million dollar target we have 16 million dollars road 4.3 at this point that remaining balance of 4.3 million in year two the state would give us half of that that's owed so about 2.1 million that would bring our total foundation allocation up to 18.7 million and leaving us with the remaining half of 2.1 million and in the third year the plan is for that remaining 2.1 million to be funded at that point we would be fully funded at 20.9 million which leaves the question of what happens in 2024 25 and again that remains to be determined the plan right now is a three-year plan the only thing that we have to be very cautious of is it's a plan we know what the funding will be for next year
027that's that's been allocated at this point we hope the state will continue to meet its um obligation in the remaining two years as it's rolled out but at this point those budgets have not been adopted so we don't know for sure how that's going to roll out over the following second and third years so we did get an additional state aid and want to show you the comparison between what we had in the budget in the current year and what that means in terms of additional state aid for next year so in terms of foundation aid as i mentioned we're going from 15.1 million to 16.6 million boces 8 is relatively flat about 1.5 million the same with text software library and textbooks around 400 000 still hardware and technologies in the same arena at
02868 000. transportation is slated to go up from 3.8 million to 4.3 million our excess cost that covers students with disabilities uh going up from 1.2 million to 1.3 million and building aid is expected to increase a little bit as well from 2.9 million to just over 3 million so our total state aid is going from 25.1 million to 27.2 million so that is a significant increase for the school district in terms of a state aid allocation of just over two million dollars as you know we also have federal aid that's been allocated to the school district and this is separate and apart from state aid so state aid we just talked about this is a separate bucket of money for federal aid they're not tied together anymore as they were under the original executive
029budget proposal the first piece is the coronavirus response and relief supplemental approach appropriations act that's 4.6 million that's allocated to our school district and it covers all costs incurred from march 13 2020 almost a year ago to september 30th 2022 and we also have the american rescue plan act funds that's 2.8 million dollars that covers costs again from the same starting point march 13th 2020 the onset of the pandemic but it goes a year longer than the coronavirus response relief package that goes through september 30th and what you'll note from earlier the the earlier proposed budget the executive budget proposal there was a new york state local funding adjustment that was offsetting this federal money at least the the coronavirus response relief amount that reduction has been removed in the final budget deliberations so we
030are no longer going to receive see that reduction of 4.1 million in the final state budget it's important to note that all of these funds federal funds must be applied for using a grant application process that process is still being developed we haven't seen that yet so this is all very new in terms of the final state budget and federal aid coming out at this time so as we understand it we'll need to submit requests for funding and they will need to be reviewed and approved before we get any money that's released to the school district so that's the process as we understand it right now and again that process is still under development we've touched on this before but i think is a good reminder what can we use the federal aid for there's
031specific items that we can use the aid for so it's not a general pot of money we can use as we wish we have to apply for the grant in the grant in the application has to comply with the allowable uses the first is addressing learning loss second is student mental health supports and then there's after school and summer learning programs and then we have some activities to address unique needs such as low-income students students with disabilities english learners racial and ethnic minorities homeless students and foster care youth there's also an allocation we can also use this to to purchase hardware and software for remote and hybrid learning uh purchasing personal protective equipment and cleaning and disinfecting supplies air quality and ventilation improvements improving preparedness efforts and coordination and then planning for hopefully what we
032won't have to do but school closures there is money in there to plan for that if needed uh there's another line item on our stated run that's for you did you have a question blanca yes thank you neil um the funding opportunity for improving preparedness efforts and coordination is that specific to infectious disease pandemic stuff or does that apply to other emergency preparedness topics um from what i've seen it's along the lines of the pandemic but we haven't seen detailed regulations so it's it's it's general but i have seen the word pandemic in in association with that item so again it might cover more than that but it seems to be the intent of the language to be along those lines i think barbara you have a question okay um this looks like it's going
033to be an awful lot of paperwork uh who's going to be responsible for all that paperwork i know uh damian has done a lot of the hardware and software stuff but my goodness you have the learning programs mental health supports are we doing this up amongst our administrators of who in heaven's name is going to do air quality and ventilation improvements i mean it looks like a ton of paperwork that's going to take forever well barbara we haven't seen any of the requirements yet so we don't know for sure how detailed that is i'm sure there's going to be some level of detail i think you're right it's going to touch in a number of areas under different aspects of leadership so i could see a number of people several of them on this call
034probably that will be involved depending on whatever the area is lisa knowles if we're talking about something related to students with disabilities or mental health issues damien certainly will have i think a significant role in some of the educational aspects and also in terms of technology i see cliff nunes our facilities director if we're going down the road of air quality and ventilation improvements uh tim murphy's involved a lot in our school district with emergency preparedness and in those types of efforts so i think as we explore how we might want to use the funding identify our priorities then we'll be tapping those individuals that are best suited to help assist with identifying the needs and then following through on the grant application process i know lisa has done a number of grant applications as
035well and is very familiar with process damien's down in numbers so we have some people around us who are very experienced with the grant application process and what's required they didn't make it easy uh no grant processors usually aren't neil so just as a point of clarification because this is a grant it doesn't directly go into our budget as a revenue because we have to apply for it later and we may or may not get it uh that's correct again as we understand that there's something called a special aid fund that we can utilize and that's what's being recommended at this point so it would not go into the general fund um so we we also have a time limit with the general fund you know you have to use it within the current year
036um otherwise we have more difficulty in terms of managing that money going forward so everything that will happen through for the through the federal aid will be out of the special aid fund the separate fund separate apart from the general fund our general operating budget okay thank you barbara has another question just just a quickie uh something like student mental health supports could we um use those funds for the new psychologist that's in the budget or is it separate from that i don't know if i can answer your question directly because we haven't seen exactly what's allowed under the different categories so again we haven't received any guidance that says these are the you know these are broad general allowable uses so we haven't yet seen anything in detail telling us exactly what could or
037couldn't be funded under a particular arena at this point as i understand it these federal funds are separate from our budget correct or am i mistaken no that is correct and they'll be accounted for separately um separate apart from from the general fund which is our annual operating budget so this is completely off to the side and that allows us to have that multi-year access to these funds barbara i think the thing to keep in mind is that these funds do run out um depending on which bucket of money one is done in september of 22 and the other is september of 23 so really the way people are starting to think about this is using these funds for non-recurring costs because if we were to use them for personnel then when the money goes
038away we would have to pick up those ongoing costs through the the general fund so those are some of the things we'll need to sort through luciana oh i'm sorry i kept it up from before nope no worries and then um sima your question do you want to just state it here i've got too many things open oh sure it just says um well maybe barb already clarified that so the federal funds already earmarked for something else and they're not necessarily something we are going to be talking about in our budget correct yes that's correct kelly did you have a question hi i do have a question um so from what i understood so far we have a 1.5 million increase in federal uh foundation aid for this year and i i have another question
039about the new york state local funding adjustment reduction that was eliminated from the enacted from the enacted budget so does that does that mean that we the budget that we saw superintendent budget uh from a couple weeks ago withholds withheld four million dollars because we didn't think we were gonna get it but now we're getting it is that true that's state money is that what that means yeah there was um there was an allocation of federal money uh the way it was proposed and then an offset that was a reduction of state money so basically the way the proposal was provided through the executive budget proposal is federal money money coming in and basically reduced the state came back and said we're going to reduce our obligation uh to fund expenses because you're getting the
040federal money in we're going to we're going to pull away some of our state funding but but they didn't do that right in the final budget which is what we're discussing tonight no they did not do that so that went on the the reduction uh the state money that was going away didn't go away so does that mean we actually have 5.5 million more than what we thought a couple of weeks ago in state money or no it's about an increase of about 2 million from year to year from what we have in in this year's budget to next year's budget so there was a mix of state aid combined with federal aid in the but in the state budget proposal so now it's separated it's separated out uh the federal federal aid came out
041and the state offset came out as well okay i may have more questions i'm just kind of struggling through it at the moment but thank you yeah the budget changed budget changed quite a bit from the executive proposal to the final enacted budget by the state so that wasn't the only change another way to think about it kelly and others is that in the executive budget the two pots of money were mixed state money and federal money so um in the enacted budget they separated those two things out okay it's complicated i'm going to keep thinking thank you okay another uh topic that's come up because it appeared on our state aid run is a universal pre-k and that is not something that the current currently the district uh offers or has has offered in
042the past but again like i said it was on our state aid run as part of the state budget a total of 105 million was allocated for the expansion of universal pre-k and this is across all school districts 90 million will be through a grant process there was another 15 million approved that that's on a competitive basis so as we understand it everybody is eligible with the nine that are part of the 90 million there's also another 15 million that is available on a competitive basis so on our aid run for gilderland we have an allocation of six hundred and twenty six thousand four hundred dollars to implement universal pre-k we didn't get any real notice that this was coming so any of the budget discussions nobody seemed to indicate that this was uh on
043the table and was something that was likely to happen so we were surprised along with many others when we got our allocations and saw that amount on the aid run so what we've been trying to do is find out more information about what this actually means um and one of the challenges we're finding right off the bat is um we haven't really received any any clear guidance from sed about this pot of money that's now allocated to us so uh that's supposed to be forthcoming so we'll have a much better handle on what that actually means when we get to see some of the the guidance and regulations around that uh the things that we do know though that the legislation only provides the funding for the 2021 and 2022 23 school year so it's
044only for two school years that we have the money it's not clear what happens after that point also there's a requirement to serve a minimum number of children and if we're not able to meet that minimum number of children we don't receive all of the funding that's been shown on the run so i think in one instance the threshold is 20 students in another instance it's 18 students somewhere between 18 and 20 students for a class and we would have to be able to to have that many students in order to receive full funding anything less we would receive less funding some of the challenges we've identified already and uh is you know having sufficient space if we were to do it in our school buildings where would we house those programs and do we
045really have that space available to us transportation is another issue some schools that have implemented a universal pre-k program do provide transportation as we understand it we're not obligated to provide transportation if we did we certainly could use money to to do so the other thing that we learned this afternoon is that we also can partner with another agency so we don't necessarily have to run the program ourselves we would still have to be the administrator of the program but we could partner with an outside agency and that outside agency could provide the building space and the program we would be obligated to provide the oversight though and be responsible for the program but it wouldn't be necessarily have to be in our in our buildings and under our direct daily control so i think
046we're going to have more information to come on that right now it's like i said it's it just came as part of the budget we haven't really received all the information we're trying to learn as much as we can and we'll have to discuss what the options are so we have a couple of hands raised um rebecca um i think you might have already answered this neil but maybe i missed it we're using the word grant a lot and in my world grants are something you apply for and sometimes but don't often get is this the same sort of like the federal funding that you you mentioned two slides ago and then this is is this like that that you would apply for and then you may not potentially get it or are these sort
047of guaranteed if you go through the application process the way i understand it right now is we're guaranteed but i think they need a mechanism to make sure that you know we're meeting the requirements of the program so i think what they want to do is have a process to follow so they can make sure that we're meeting all of the requirements and apply for it so we have the space uh we have everything in place it is very stringent as you can imagine in dealing with children the requirements that have to be met from a facility's point of view from an instructional point of view from a health and safety point of view so i think the state is going to want to see that we have all of those pieces in place that
048they would want to see and everything is adequate so i think that's where the grant part comes in is that there would be an application process making sure we've met all the requirements and are able to to do the program in conformance with the requirements of the state but as we understand it we do have an allocation for our school district so it's a question of whether we utilize the allocation or not okay thank you and then blanca did you have your hand up we're going to talk a little bit more about the recommendations for this evening and following slide but just wanted to kind of preset the board to a conversation that we've we've had in previous budget presentations and that's where we rank in terms of our fund balance as a percentage of
049our overall revenue you've seen this slide before this is from 2019 it compares all the schools in suburban council and it shows that gilderland has the lowest amount of fund balance in terms of as a percentage of overall revenue from of all 13 schools in the suburban council so um we should understand that in terms of having enough savings and this is really what we're talking about having enough savings we are we have the least amount of savings of every other council school in the area so that certainly is a factor that we need to look at in terms of long-term financing yes kelly sorry i have a quick question this this reads to me as fun balance as a percentage of rev of revenue like in my world in my thought process that means
050that we use less amount of money from our fund balance to do our operations we take that that's how that reads to me is that not that's not that's something that's opposite but that's how it is yes well we can allocate fund balance as part of us as a revenue source so tax levy is one revenue source we can have fund balance we have state aid as a revenue source so those all contribute to potential sources of revenue to offset expenses what this chart is demonstrating though is how much how many what's the amount of of resources that we have available to us for that purpose so it's the total amount of resources that we can accumulate over time referred to as fund balance and if you think of it in your personal life it's
051like having a savings account so you have your you know you work you get a paycheck you have your your bills you pay your expenses but most people also keep a savings account so uh money that's above and beyond what they need to use to meet their daily needs they would keep that aside you would tend not to use that unless you didn't have enough income to meet your expenses so this works the same with schools so if you don't have enough income to meet your expenses you got to make the house payment the car payment buy food and groceries and so on and so forth and you have a savings account you would need to start drawing on your savings account to make everything balance for the month get all my expenses but i'm
052drawing each month for my savings account because i don't have enough income to meet all of my expenses and that's the same sort of opportunity here you can use that money when you need it because it's sitting there savings but if you end up a situation where you are constantly drawing from your savings account the problem is you deplete your savings account if you don't make any other changes you don't have a way to increase your savings if you continue to draw on in a monthly basis eventually it's going to run out right so that what kind of how in my mind i'm like okay we're using 11 of our savings every month to pay our bills which comparatively to this is is really good but yeah i think i think i'm thinking of the
053opposite yeah we're not using 11 11 is what we we have available to us that's what's sitting in our savings accounts that's what i thought it just reads in my mind a little bit differently i just wanted to clarify that thank you well we've allocated in the current year budget not for next year's about 640 thousand dollars so we we've said we need to take that out of our bank account to balance the overall budget between taxes uh and other sources of revenue like state aid so as as a prelude to that we have some recommended budget adjustments based on the enacted state budget there's some changes in revenue and changes in expense so let's start in the superintendent's budget you know size have to balance so both the revenue expenditure side uh 104 million
054895 570 that was on the expenditure side of 1.81 increase but as i mentioned we did get additional foundation aid 1.5 million we did get additional aid in our expense driven aids of 89 000. the federal stimulus and local funding adjustment that piece that was married together the net of that is an overall reduction in revenue of 547 934 so the federal piece was larger than the local funding adjustment so by moving that federal aid totally out of the state aid picture it ends up being a reduction in state aid so really what we're down to is given all of that what adjustments would we recommend based on the changes in state and federal aid what the recommendation is i'll jump to the expense column first is we would have an additional eighty four thousand
055dollars added to the budget for expanded instructional coaching on the revenue side though we would look to reduce our appropriated fund balance and reserves by nine hundred eighty eight thousand six hundred and seventy two dollars so that's we have almost a million dollars we're taking from our savings to fund the budget we have an opportunity here to basically eliminate that so we would be back in balance again with our budget which means we're not constantly drawing from our savings to fund our expenses so we want to be back in that position of we can afford what we have we have uh we don't need to have additional money coming out of our savings to to meet our annual expenses so if we do that our budget would increase um by that eighty four thousand dollars
056to 104 979 570 that would be a budget to budget increase of 1.89 on important point here is down at the bottom the note tax levy will remain at 75.9 million uh that hasn't changed as a result of of these recommendations and we are at the the maximum amount that would allow for a 50 majority vote for a past budget and that leads us to an opportunity to have some discussion about that recommendation let me ask this question would it be helpful for me to leave the slides available or to close them out and go back to them if we need them i think it's easier to see people so i'll close it out and if i have to go back kelly so with the extra money it appears we're gonna not have to take
057out the 600 plus thousand dollars from the fund balance this year and then we're going to fund it more by 300 000 or so we're taking all the money and putting it into fun balance i need extra and then well besides expanded structural instructional coaching that kind of sum it up yes that's correct so in in the budget that was the superintendent's budget we had actually increased that 640 thousand dollars of savings supplied fund balance and we increased it to 938 000 or thereabouts uh so we had to increase it to get the balanced budget uh that we wanted but this will allow us again to take away all of that use of our savings to help balance the budget um so the goal here put us in a better position financially for years com
058going forward well next year when we have to spend that 600 000 again since that we have reoccurring costs that we were gonna like for next year's budget yeah we funded it a little bit we have a little bit more into our funds but don't we those programs didn't go away right for next year that we were funding with that six hundred thousand dollars yeah next year will be we'll have to see how the budget works out but it will put us in the position of being at the point where we are not dependent on using our savings at least in terms of fund balance we'll still have some for reserves to fund our overall budget we'll have to see what state aid is at that point we'll have to see what our expenditures are
059at that point and then we would need to make the decision about can we can we work and get the revenue and expenses balanced without having to draw from our savings or not so but we'll be fine for 2021-22 we won't need to do that we won't need to use any of our savings to have a balanced budget at that point with the revenue that we have and the expenses that we've identified we can meet all of our expenses with the revenue sources that we have so as far as all the extra money that we're getting we're adding an extra eighty four thousand dollars in instructional coaching that's going to go towards the students pretty much the rest yeah yeah and that was identified in the superintendent's budget there was a slide that said if
060more money became available what would be our recommended priorities and this is a line we have two priorities and that's what they wear instructional coaching and reduce our reliance on fund balance okay i think rebecca was next and then barbara again i think you might have answered this a minute ago and so i just think i'm being a little bit um slow with getting this but so does what you just presented include the crrsa or the arpa funds or any of the universal pre-k funds or is that sort of separate because we don't know for sure through the grant process of forgetting them that is all separate so that's not part of our general operating budget for next year what we typically focus on uh so all of those funds would be outside of that
061in what we would call a special aid fund so it wouldn't be co-mingled with our general fund at all and those funds are multi-year so that's the difference our operating budget is a single year all of those other funding sources are multi-year so that putting in a special aid fund allows us to have that multi-year use of those funds to meet needs over time that we wouldn't have with our general fund and so coming up with um goals for that funding would be something separate that we would decide yes that is correct in terms of the federal funds thank you i think barbara and then sema okay neil in our friday update you gave a nice explanation of why we're putting the money in the fund balance and the strange state rules that if we
062actually reduced our budget we would be in trouble in years to come um could you give a simplified explanation to to the citizenry so to speak because it made a lot of sense but oftentimes when the state does what they do it doesn't make any sense so you have to follow their crazy rules and if you could just share that a little bit um i think it would be helpful because other people would be saying well geez you got all this extra money you know why don't you don't go up to the to the limit and as i said you had a nice explanation well i think and we can treat this much like we do our personal lives and you know if you went to a financial advisor what would they recommend that you
063do they would recommend that you would get your spending back in line with your income they would recommend that you would put money away for a rainy day or an emergency arose any financial advisor is going to tell you live within your means and then have money available to you in the event of an emergency that you can access so that you can maintain your lifestyle and and work through those particular issues in the school district it's it's no different we should be working in the same manner we should be trying to make sure our income and our expenses are in line with each other but we also need we know we're heavily dependent upon state aid for a revenue source and we've seen that over and over again the lack of consistency from year
064to year in terms of what our state age is going to be we cannot draw a linear line between you know funding 20 years ago and funding today the state hasn't made a nice linear line that says you know you get additional state aid each year as your expenses increase we've had years where expenses increase and state aid has decreased or held flat so we have seen that uneven nature of knowing that we somehow have to overcome this obstacle or put us in a position where we have to start cutting staff and program and services um and that's uh you ask any other educator whether they think that's a good idea when we're trying to transform kids lives and gives them the best opportunities to get a sound education but not having the resources to
065be able to do that with so again this kind of leads us in into the same plan which is okay if we have extra money available at one shot if you will because we don't know this is going to continue or not and we decide to utilize that money for the purpose of lowering taxes that could just end up putting us back in a position where we have no flexibility going forward should stated not continue to increase um so it puts us right back in a situation which we've been through in many cycles uh before where all right in order to to balance this if we don't have savings to draw from and supplement expenses expenses then we're looking at reductions larger class sizes less opportunities for kids in kids deserve better than that they
066should have to follow the whims of an economic cycle to determine the quality of education that they receive so again what what this proposal is is just prudent sound fiscal management that any fiscal advisor would tell you to do um you can say i got a bonus at work or a stimulus check you have two choices you can go spend it or you can save it and this is much the same if you save it you have it available to you if you need it down the road if you spend it it's gone and if things don't improve then you'll be back in the same boat you can't meet your expenses with the income that you have so um you know i talked a little bit in my note about what's good stewardship from the
067board's perspective i would say good stewardship is making sure that we have enough fiscal resources not just for the coming year but for future years as well so that we can weather some economic storms we were forced to do that we've been forced to do that many times in the past and having that available to us i think is being a good steward of the taxpayers money and again i mentioned you know there is the tax cap in effect that does limit the amount of increase in in taxes and that's been in effect for a decade so when we looked at it over time the average tax increase tax levy increase is 1.55 percent over that time can never be more than 2 percent it's been as low as 0.12 but over that 10 years
068it's averaged 1.55 percent so i think we've been responsive to the taxpayers in terms of our budgets but now we're in a position where we need to regroup a little bit and try to get make sure our savings are bolstered and we have an opportunity to do that to set us up for what we know could be a rocky road still coming i mean this this budget is historic in terms of the amount of aid to education um and we should not assume that that historic rate will continue even for next year or the following year and certainly three years out well the other thing neil that um you know we've experienced is that when you don't have that savings account your bond rating is depleted and we've experienced that we've also experienced in around
069the 2008 uh recession that we had to really tap into the savings that we had in order to try to maintain uh programming so again thank you for the explanation i think i saw sema and then blanca um so i just want to clarify the federal funds and the the discussion about the the funds for universal pre-k that's not something that um we're voting on tonight so we don't have to really get further into that until we know more about it correct that's correct okay and then we still have the five how many is it five on a sign that are in the budget i forgot 5.7 and that's still the plan is to have those five unassigned and and what what's the process for that um you know how they're going to be decided
070upon where they'll go so i can jump in here if you could recall back when we shared the first draft of the budget one of the one of the charts i showed you were the uh class sizes across the elementary buildings so we had six sections across the five buildings that were uh approaching the upper limit of our class size upper guideline so what we do in the spring months is watch enrollment very very carefully across the district to see if we have additional students moving in and push some of those classrooms over the guideline and as we watch those we may use some of those unassigned positions to create additional sections to manage class size i don't have to tell any of you that low class sizes is a high priority for our community
071we hear about it no matter how we ask people really want us to work on that so that's probably the big piece of the unassigned um but then there are also um small adjustments to ftes that come along um sometimes throughout the year for example uh we might need an extra section of um spanish one because a number of students uh entered the district who hadn't met their spanish requirement or we might need a extra section of a health class so that might be a 0.2 of an fte or a 0.1 of an fte and those those things happen all year long this year when we presented the budget back in march we knew we had some enrollment driven reductions at the high school 1.7 ftes but we also heard the message that given kind
072of what we're living through right now and the uncertainty of next year that we shouldn't reduce staffing so we included those in the unassigned pool to use for unanticipated needs that may emerge over the summer or when we're back in a new school year in in september and we have a process by which um administrators they submit little proposals uh to make a case for why they need an fte or a portion of an fte and we work through that and they just through the district office team so um you know that's that's the general plan for how we use those um i have a question also about um i think ben may brought this up before about the school psychologist the money for that and then versus having a social worker um but i
073just want to clarify can the school psychologist do the same work the mentoring the counseling as a social worker and does the district decide how to because i know you know others um can't do testing like school psychologists but how's that how's that decided upon is does the district essentially assign school psychologists to do testing and not really other counseling or you know mentoring that kind of thing because it sounds it sounds like it sounds like they're um being used to fill that you know the testing piece but not really getting to the students lisa knows this has your name all over it i figured i figured um so um and i as you probably noticed from our february 9th presentation on all of our mental health providers there's a lot of overlap in what
074they can do as a former school psychologist myself i'm started my career as a school psychologist and you know they're uniquely qualified one to provide mental health counseling to students as well as complete our mandated psycho-educational evaluations so we do have the ability to meet both those needs with a school psychologist and do have both those needs at the high school level historically gilderlynn hasn't used school psychologists to provide school-based counseling there are many districts and districts i've worked for previously and when i was a school psychologist i was the lone mental health provider and did all the counseling and the testing and the chairing of meetings so we can do a lot we're trained to do a lot so the team of counselors psychologists and social workers would have to work together to look
075at who requires school-based counseling in the school who would be best to serve that particular student the needs of that student as well and also in addition our psychologists do a lot of work with our general ed teachers and special ed teachers in terms of behavioral intervention planning consultation collaboration and also discussing accommodations and modifications and really working with the pre-referral teams to deliver interventions before we identify students with disabilities so social psychologists have a broad depth of training and can do both counseling and testing and as part of their job where social workers cannot do testing school counselors cannot do testing so school psychologists we can get a greater depth of service from that position and that's why we're requesting a school psychologist i mean so they can they can do more depth service
076because they're able they're qualified to do that but the way gildan uses it sounds like it's specifically more for testing not so much counseling primarily testing consultation collaboration designing pre-referral interventions functional behavior analysis working with teams but we can expand that role with knowing the needs we have in mental health support it's for i'm just curious because i guess for years i feel like i hear from teachers who are advocating for social workers and saying um you know that students really need social workers they they need more of that direct contact help and i don't know i i would rather especially costless tune the budget to support that where it's getting support directly to students versus paying and i'm not saying that school psychologists can't do more but it sounds like the model that we're
077using is more we're paying them to do the testing and i understand other people can't do the testing but and knowing the unique needs we have at the high school and knowing that we are anticipating higher than average referrals for interventions and especially because of the impact of learning on the pandemic our school psychologists are working with school-based teams to design peer referral interventions as well as more referrals i anticipate and we're seeing it regionally not just in gilderland for increased testing so if we have a professional who can do both we are well equipped to handle multiple needs and if we only hire a professional who can target one area and it will give us an opportunity to expand the role and utilize psychologists in a greater depth in their skill set beyond just
078being a diagnostician so this school psychologist or at least the one that's being asked from the budget is for the high school correct okay so that would pretty much be for testing then and also counseling both and to do counseling as well in the high school how does that look accountability wise like because there's already counselors in high school right there are school counselors there's three school social workers in the high school yes as well um however so we would look at as we do currently for students have mandated counseling on student plans we look at what their needs are who's best able to serve them and distribute the case loads across the multiple providers so the psychologist would pick up a portion of a caseload as well and then we meet our school counselors
079who have you know other duties and more general interventions to counsel students who may not have more significant needs but our psychologists and social workers would be used to target the needs of students who have more more challenging mental health or behavioral needs in the building um and then i guess this other question is probably more for maybe for dr wiles but that um assistant principal position that's being um in the budget with the 0.3 for for diversity and equity what happens if you can't find somebody when you post that position for anybody who has is the posting going to include that they have experience in that and if um and if there's you know people that apply that don't have experience what happens is does that just change to just an ap position no
080i don't think so i think whenever we're hiring for a position we define what it is we're looking for and we keep looking until we find the person with the qualifications to do that um you know it's it's reopening a search if we need to but i think um our our commitment to um focusing on this work and having someone within our team who's designated in that role is really important so um you know presuming when we're at at the point where we do post the position um we would be very clear that it's an expectation that a portion of the role would be to uh lead this work um you know the extent that a point three can this is a starting point for this conversation um but we would look for a person
081who had that skill set in that interest um to fill that role what would you i guess what would you look for in a in a an application to show that there's interest and skill set like you know there's like the checking the box interest like they're getting it covered versus like a passion to do the work well i i don't know um whenever we're hiring anyone to do the work so what are the essential skills um and dispositions that would put a person you know as a as a highly qualified person for their role um and i think it's someone who is um attuned to the interests of diversity and equity and has done work in those areas we certainly want someone who is very much student centered interested in meeting the needs of
082you know each and every student we'd also want someone with good collaboration skills who can work across the district with you know multiple stakeholders um you know i'm always looking to hire people who are willing learners um because we uh every day we have new things we have to figure out so how does this person demonstrate his or her capacity to be a learner um you know and then with that our other leadership skills that we would look for when hiring an assistant principal so organizational skills communication skills teamwork skills you know knowledge of how schools work i don't know how um aps are a value i'm not sure about that process but so will there be some kind of i guess accountability or some plan to review that person whoever gets hired specifically for
083that point three i'm just worried that you know people can provide lip service through interviews all that you know like they always do and then nothing happens so i just feel like this is going to be you know wasted money for this position and the box is checked and nothing is done you know well we have an evaluation process for for all of our um leaders and part of that is for each of them to establish um performance goals each year and i don't imagine i can't imagine we wouldn't have a very specific measurable goal for this individual around his or her work in equity and diversity that would be purposefully evaluated that would be true for anyone that we would hire you know the other thing we do in our hiring process as well
084because we understand that it's it's one thing to be able to come in and talk about what you think you want to do or what you can do or even what you've done but it's another thing to actually do it so as part of every one of our interview processes we ask each candidate to engage in some kind of an authentic performance task where we see them actually engaged in the work now i haven't yet figured out what that would look like for this particular position but we absolutely would bring in candidates and then ask them to be able to demonstrate in some way their knowledge or expertise um in this area i do i don't have any other questions i just you know still think this is really short-sighted in the um thinking about
085this position i feel like you know comments have been made i you know mentioned that in my public comment about actually doing this work and i guess committing to the work is a point with no real accountability to me is doesn't really show that there's commitment from the district so that's i guess disappointing i think blanca i think you were next um let's see where was i i'll start with the tax cap i'm concerned that we're going back up to the tax cap again can you tell me neil how many years in a row we've gone up to the tax cap not off the top of my head i can't tell you more than five less than five to me it seems like it's pretty often and so um so just in my time one
086more time then i i i know of at least one in my time here that we haven't so we haven't i wouldn't say five years okay i guess i think this is the only time that we have ever gone right to the cap we've come close on many occasions but this is my only recollection of going right to the cap because the cap is really quite low this year mm-hmm i guess i'm just concerned about the optics of everything that neil said made sense but this seems to me like it's a unique year a year where folks have lost their jobs and i don't see the budget or the district reflecting us being particularly frugal we're talking about hiring an administrator we didn't respond to the comments calling for you know fewer administrative positions and
087um some folks who have retired were replacing them and so i'm just concerned about those optics that were one not listening to our folks out there and two we are incrementally raising the taxes like every year is what it feels like to me and then i know we consider it a success as a board or as a district that only a small percentage of people need to vote on this but i don't see that as a win i think that means less people we're seeing how they actually feel about this i'm concerned about that i will remain concerned about that probably that being said i'm also wondering why at least they did a great job of explaining it but i i think that we were selling the position as mental health oriented and so i
088sort of am in agreement with sema it feels more like the social worker will be utilized less in that manner and more in a different manner so i'm concerned about that barbara i i wanted to follow up on the administrator that uh the seymour was concerned about i guess i'm concerned in a different way um one of the questions that i've been asked by some community members are if you're asking for a diversity educator um are you racial profiling the position i mean we had amy in that position and she did a phenomenal job i don't think she had any background in uh diversity training but she had a great interest in it and really stepped up to the plate and you know did some great work before she took her new position so i
089i just really was wondering do we have to put in that point three i know sema wants it but if you just have an ap position you folks in administration can guide that person in whatever direction the needs arise uh if you're having a lot of more discipline problems because the kids are back in school or whatever you can direct that person to do that we obviously have have a serious interest with a number of activities nice activities happening at the high school uh with the various committees that have been formed by amy and the kids um and again i i just see you or your leadership and your team certainly being able to to guide that position just as an ap position a full-time ap position and you're not pigeonholing that individual or basically
090looking for particular talents that a person may have exhibited you know before interviewing with you so i'll just say that i think uh mrs herald chuck or dr herralczyk was the inspiration for this because she very much blended the two roles um really beautifully um so honestly that's in some ways where the idea came from i think the difference is that we're hoping that um the individual would have some designated time to be not just in the high school but also to do some outreach to our other buildings particularly our elementary buildings so that is the point of the designation and i know uh mike piscotelli and his team have done some work looking at the roles and responsibilities across the three ap positions so that that could happen in a way that's just not
091by chance so can i have mike jump in and maybe talk a little bit about that work because it might make it more concrete yeah one we met as a billy administrative team and we kind of reviewed all we took it as an opportunity to look at all the ap responsibilities and um one of the things we tried to do is we looked at the timing of when some of the major events happen and also consider when does professional development mostly happen in our district and if you if you think of a school year a lot happens over the summer a lot happens in the fall leading into uh like earl late winter when we get towards um april may and june and we're wrapping up the school year everybody is especially at our levels
092ramping up and getting ready for the the end of the year activities whether it be ap exams regents exams the end of the year celebrations graduation so what we did is we we assigned activities to the major activities to this system principle where they would be mostly free from a major major responsibility point of view in the fall and summer so most of their activities were going to be centered the major actors i keep saying major because the day-to-day activities obviously are the brunt of the or the brunt of the work with discipline and uh student monitoring of students but like i said so what we're doing is we're shifting the testing and and uh the testing co-curricula those kind of things into this position and some of the one the duties that kind of
093are taxing either through the year or into the summer are going to be spread out between the other two assistant principals and myself mike did you see seaman's comment in the chat no their questions ask so they will work on this point 3d um diversity equity in the summer and fall and then spend the rest of the year on testing no i guess see i guess the way you explain is like okay if you are if you're the assistant principal in charge of scheduling the scheduling team starts meeting in the beginning of february and it is weekly every week until really until the end of summer school is when scheduling wraps up um because we have to take in consideration with the success rate out of summer school and you know adjusting the master schedule
094from there if you look at the other um the other major duty that we're looking at is focus and all ted and and our cte program and all the alternative programs and intervention programs that is going on throughout the school year and demands a lot of time throughout the school year what we shifted is i shifted testing to this assistant principle which the ap testing starts up in late april early may and the regents testing kicks in big time into june obviously so there's a there's work that starts obviously in the march april time frame where you're starting to build that schedule and the special ed accommodations that have to happen for that but it is more focused towards the end of the year which should free up the person to have more time to
095vote to these activities throughout the rest of the school year um i have two questions uh i i don't remember if it was damien or somebody else said they had attended something like some program i think it was at like harvard in the summer for um diversity and it was really i think awesome if i remember hearing correctly can this person whoever's hired in this position is there a commitment from the district that they can also send this person there it sounds like it was worthwhile and probably worth the money it was i went to that it was two years ago i think i went to that sema um yeah i mean i i would definitely make that a a point of priority for this position that they get extensive professional development going into this
096i think you know as marie alluded to the hiring process itself is an opportunity for us to you know try to identify the person who has the greatest capacity to do this role but this is not a role that's going to be uh stagnant by any stretch of the imagination i think as marie said you know we need somebody who's a learner in this role we need somebody who's able to uh continue to engage in their own growth and their own reflection and their own development as they go forward and hopefully this is something that we can expand over time um but yeah good point and i think that's that's definitely a commitment that we would make thank you damian um so maria so it sounds like you can make a commitment to that yeah
097absolutely i mean i think we are all working on our professional development in this area you know all the time but i think to search out those particularly powerful learning experiences harvard is one but there are others out there and this is a good use of title monies for example or grant funds because it's one-time expenses that won't hit our operating budget um and money for professional development i think you've seen in several categories so we would have the resources in order to provide that professional development that's that's great look forward to that barb what did you mean by racial profiling you said that in your question uh people were just saying uh by making your diversity part of that position are you basically just looking for a person of color uh or are you
098looking for the most qualified person uh such as dr haralchek was who doesn't meet that definition but did a phenomenal job and you know now i'm hearing that we want to expand the position next year so first of all you know i think we have to show with our equity audit that for some reason or other our our district is in arrears and our teachers diversifying their teaching style enough to accommodate the needs of the poor the english language learner the person of color um you know we've had anecdotal evidence of a number of incidences over a number of years um but i think professional development the way amy was was setting it up and making sure that our teachers were aware of the needs of the students and i i really believe most of
099our teachers are doing a great job in in that regard with their differentiation and knowing the needs of the students i think the concern is that you're you're going to look for a candidate um you know like some of the people that are on our diversity equity and inclusion committee that have had experience in this and they just happen to all be people of color now i'm sure there may be diversity officers out there there aren't but all the articles that we've read and they've pointed in that one direction and i i think people just want to be reassured that you're going to hire a person for this position that is qualified in all the aspects that marie you know pointed out and that just the the one aspect of having had some education or
100experience in diversity training um is sort of the highlight of that position i i think as murray described it i think people will be very very comfortable that she said you know they have to be learners they have to x y and z and gave a nice explanation of what she's looking for in that position and i i think i'm very comfortable with that and i suspect most people would be but that that's what i was referring to is that what you meant dr wiles the racial profiling in the question um i i wouldn't have thought about it in the context of racial profiling um i mean i think this is a position where we want someone to focus on equity in all of its forms so um it's really when we think about equity
101it's how do we serve each and every student where he or she is and some of our students will you know need need more than others and but i think that crosses um a lot of categories it's not just race and you know we're going to we're going to put the ad out there we're going to see who we get we're going to go through our process um and and hire the person who can best meet the needs of our of our students that that's the process that we would use so there's not a priority for race i understand it's all equity in all diversity but there's no priority for race correct that's what you're saying i'm well i will say that we have a priority in all of our hiring to create a more
102diverse workforce um that's a goal for the board it's a stated goal for um in my own goals that you folks have proved for me mr johnson and i are thinking about it all the time but in the end we we need to hire the people who can best meet the needs of the district so how that plays out is a function of the candidates that we attract i would love to see the hiring um i guess the creative practices that you guys are using to try and uh recruit diverse staff and faculty looking forward to it we're working on it um kelly and then gloria hi sorry for my like blair witch project appearance here i'm outside and can't go inside um i think point three is low for uh our diversity inequity thing
103but i i like it that it's in there um because i think there'll be some accountability with that position rather than not by having just hiring somebody and assuming they were doing that i'd like to see the accountability with that 0.3 like like you had mentioned and i like increasing it for the next year um i have a lot of things to say that i could possibly say right now but i'm not i'm not going to but i don't i don't think you guys are going to racially profile the position i think you're going to find the best person i think that's one of the reasons we need this position there um it's kind of a little bit speechless but um i think we need to keep it i think we need to keep it
104in the position with a rubric that can it can be assessed too in the future and i think increasing it would be a good idea so i agree with it just being a start um i'm going to leave it at that thanks gloria i think you're next i guess i was wondering what your thinking was um how this person in the ap position would be involved with the dei committee with the task you know the committee that we have because that's going to be a crucial i mean that's basically the committee that's getting going now and i'm you know i'd like to see a bigger position too but i think point three is reasonable in terms of our committee is just getting started we're going to begin to see the results of you know some
105sort of internal audit and directing ourselves and where we want to go and that if that person's you know intricately involved with the committee then we can be pointing the direction uh helping to to establish that as a and then that position might have to grow depending on what are you confined um i'll just speak for myself i see that as a critical part of the role [Music] to help anchor the committee's work um and to be some of the engine behind the committee work because when you look at the rest of the committee it's volunteers and um i mean obviously you have you know the district office team and and me and we're doing the work but um it would benefit from having a person on staff who had a uh this is part
106of your regular job to help with that now what that exactly looks like with the committee i think is worth the conversation um but i think as the equity audit is is underway there's a ton of work connected with that i think there's some communication liaison work that could be really helpful um i think there's room to discuss with that committee how best could we use this individual to help advance its work and coordinate its work so things don't fall through the cracks that's my number one worry about the committee because it's a lot of people doing work in in small groups and it's really hard to glue everything back together um and so that's a key role that i would see the the other thing i kind of feel positive about is that as
107you've mentioned amy and you know anybody in those ap positions we have gotten tremendous results from those positions i mean people have taken on in a direction and done magnificent work so our history shows us that you know we people in those positions that we have hired have been able to balance you know some some high priority types of things so i feel you know definitely good about that that piece of it thanks gloria um barbara and then back to sema two totally different questions um is summer school in the budget i know summer school is one of the things that the federal funds could be used for but in the event that that doesn't happen do we have money in for summer school and how many um ta positions do we have uh that
108we can tap into if covet hits again so that we're not pulling out our reading teachers and all these others you know um to do cohorts so there's a couple answers to the summer school piece uh one because there's lots of forms of summer school so summer school for general education students like high school students who need to make a make up a course is in the budget that we've been presenting um lisa knowles and her team also provide extended school year programming um why don't you talk a little bit about how that works lisa well it's this typical program we run every summer for our students with significant needs who may demonstrate regression and without six weeks of programming we need would be unable to maintain their skills so it's uh the population is
109considered through each committee on special education process and students are recommended through the cse process to participate in our extended school year program and it's funded by primarily neil might have to help me with this answer um it is budgeted as well as we get um funding from the state after the fact so that is correct it's built into our current budget and then damian's been working with some of our teams to talk about some enhanced summer programming particularly this summer for our students who may have experienced some learning loss damian do you want to jump in i know that plan has been evolving yeah it's been evolving we have a task force that's actually actually meeting on friday basically what we're trying to build is a k-8 summer bridge program for both reading and
110math the program would be specifically targeting i think one of the first bullets was around learning loss um specifically targeting students who may have struggled throughout the course of this year or regressed over the course of this year um so it will be you know really directed at those students who have had a difficult time over the course of this year we have built that actually into the first round of federal funds the carers act so the carers act is going to be the primary financial support for that program it will be a six-week program and it's probably going to run four days per week over the course of the six six weeks and again it's going to focus primarily on reading and math at this point so uh we're building the ship but we
111will have that in place for the course of the summer and that funding has already been approved for uh use for that program damian does that include transportation for the students it does not we have a couple of challenges this summer specifically around the capital project and the availability of our spaces so we're going to unfortunately we're going to have to rely largely on some remote options for the summer so transportation may not factor in to a great degree because again we we have a lot of construction that's taking place this summer that's going to limit our access to our spaces actually it's not just the pandemic in kobe but just availability of space this summer and then barbara you'd ask about unassigned tas correct yes i just can i just pop in oh sure
112but i'm a little disappointed to hear that it has to be remote because that's where so much lost learning has happened with kids sitting in front of computers and not having the attention span etc so there's no way we can uh put them in tents outside or rent services i understand that but i think there's also there's another perspective with that too i mean we have a large number of students who have been operating remotely throughout the course of this year that we've actually had a great level of success with um that's not too often spoken but we have a number of reading teachers and math specialists who are working specifically in a remote environment with students who have had a lot of growth and a lot of progress with those students so we think
113we have enough to build from enough that we've learned from over the course of the summer we you know we did discuss the idea of potentially building in some in-person opportunities there but we're going to have to be strategic about that because we simply don't have the space to be able to do that so i understand that it's not ideal but again it's one that we we also have found some levels of success so we hope to be able to learn from that and be able to to build upon that but i know what you're saying and would it be available to any parent that thinks the child is falling behind or just now it would be really based on progress metrics and and you know assessments that we've had over the course of the
114year we wouldn't be able to open it up to all parents so it's going to target specific students who we have been monitoring over the course of the year um you know both our language arts cabinet and our math cabinet are working with classroom teachers and looking at all the assessment information and data right now for us to be able to uh you know identify those students that we really want to to target and then we know i've had some difficult times over the course of this this school year so it will be a targeted population not a general population we don't have enough to open it up to everyone we just we wouldn't be able to accommodate that thank you sure and the tas marie you're going to talk about um neil can i
115i know you just looked that one up for us yeah it's it's four where positions are unassigned for tas and special education aids combined um kelly do i see your hand or is that from before there she is nope sorry i had to come inside and no it's from before thank you okay thanks are there other questions ben um so i have a first a comment and then a question um on on the issue of the tax cap right you know my cons how i kind of view it right and granting that every year we need to grow as much as we can in order to be able to grow as much as we can next year because you know two percent percentages are compounding and if we had been a quarter percent less over
116the past five years we'd have you know less money in the budget now um but my understanding of the relationship between the school district and the wider community is not that we get to go up to the tax cap every year um but that we take what we need uh otherwise we would just make that automatic right automatically we'd go up one point two eight percent at one point five five percent or two percent instead we can go lower or we can go higher with with the consent of of more people um and so for me the 1.7 fte from the high school that is we're losing because of attrition we have less students i really feel like we need to give that back to the community because you know next year we might want
117some extra flexibility but if covid comes again right 1.7 ft isn't going to make a difference anyway um four fds isn't going to make a difference anyway and so you know looking at what we did this year with four extra ftes and four extra taftes bearing in mind that when that structure was suggested back last march we also had six elementary classes that were at the guideline had the little stars next to them so we still have six classes and so it's unclear to me why we would need more unused money in our budget it's unclear to me why we would be going up to our tax cap with 630 000 of unassigned ftes sitting in our budget um and so you know i feel strongly that at least that 1.7 that we lost from
118attrition because i love that we have this this flexible ft model but i don't think that like when we don't need money anymore that we can just hold on to it because you know in the future maybe we want to grow more um so so that's my comment there and then my question is uh last year i proposed some some cuts to per pupil allocations um that we have in our budget appendices and i i got a an answer um that you know we were talking specifically about textbooks textbook budget line i look back five years old budgets um that money had never come close to being touched and i was told that well that's because it wasn't always used for textbooks sometimes it was used for technology it's a broad aidable category um but
119reflecting on that question right um and this just popped in my head because i saw that um you know the per people allocation for textbooks had actually been increased uh at the elementary level um this year i'm not i was i was hoping that that could be explained again and that you know more specifically it could be explained why why the budget line doesn't show this money being spent even if it's not on textbooks it could be in technology and then if it's not being spent from that budget line why isn't that money being allocated to a different budget line in our budget if we know we're going to use it to buy computers instead of textbooks neil do you want me to start on that so ben um just i don't remember the exact
120question last year but i'm i'm kind of hypothesizing what it was um basically how things work i mean first off let me assure you this the money is spent every year and it's spent fairly intentionally because it is an aidable budget line that is based on expenditures so if we don't expend that money we basically lose the potential aid revenue that comes in the following year that is based on the previous year's expenditures so it used to be years ago that each bucket of textbook hardware software essentially instructional software and instructional hardware were their own separate categories um a number of years back i don't know when it was seven eight nine years ago they kind of put it into and neil you can correct me if i'm wrong here but they basically put it
121into this kind of broader aidable category where those three particular buckets could be interchanged a little bit so for example if you did not utilize all of your textbook money in one given year you could reallocate that money into instructional hardware instructional software but still gain the aid in the next year based on the prior year expenditures so we do that every year in fact we just did it a few weeks ago with remaining textbook money that we had under this year's budget which was reallocated or transferred into the aidable hardware category which enabled us to actually start to purchase some additional replacement devices that we desperately are in need of across our district barbara kind of alluded to that earlier that we've been you know waiting for new devices but when we have this
122flexibility across those three aidable categories if we have identified that needs that emerge that may be in the technology world but we haven't expended all of the textbook money that gives us an opportunity to number one address the need but number two at the same time not lose any aid in the following year based on expenditure driven aids um so it's it's one of those things that we're very intentional to make sure that we're maximizing that the aid that we're going to receive in the following year um but you're right i mean historically we see and and i think that's something that's been a trend over the course of the past decade or so that there's less expended not in every year and a good example would be a few years ago when we put
123a new math program in at the elementary level that basically consumed textbook right off the bat but in most years there's usually textbook money that remains it doesn't mean it's not used though that money is absolutely going to be used to address needs in other areas needs in other aidable areas specifically around hardware and software um so i hope that kind of adds to the understanding of what that is and why you know why it is that it might appear that we're not using textbook but i assure you we're absolutely using the funds that are allocated there so so there's separate line items for hardware and software in our budget yes we are aidable correct so why [Music] so again i mean just looking back at past years and how we we don't really come
124close to using the textbook money for textbooks why don't we see higher numbers in the hardware category and lower numbers in the textbook category like you won't at the beginning of the budget year but you will toward the end of the budget year when we have a better understanding of what might be still available in textbooks so i mean if you go back i don't know a few weeks ago three weeks a month ago you would see that i did a budget transfer from remaining textbook into hardware specifically for that purpose so that we could address some additional needs that we had in hardware not by using any new money but using money that was still available there so if you look at the end of the year you're going to see a very different
125picture than what you see at the very start of the budget year based on what might still about be available within those atable categories i i understand that my concern is that the the budget that is presented is is supposed to bear some resemblance to the money that we're gonna spend this year um and so you know if if it tells a story right and right now the story that this budget is telling is that we spend a lot of money on textbooks um when it sounds like we spend a lot of money on hardware and so you know my concern is that you know we're um taking a per pupil allocation number we're putting in the attendees it's going into the budget formula and that after many years of not using that budget line
126item and transferring it to other categories we haven't recalibrated the per pupil allocations or recalibrated where that money goes in the budget to tell the story of what our district's currently doing and so then you get times like these when board members are looking through the budget trying to find areas to to save money and um you know we bring it up and it's like oh we never use that money in that category we you know there's always some left over and we use in hardware and they're both aidable and so don't worry about it well then then how do i know what i'm voting on you know if the story that's being told here in this budget is not the story that we even anticipate being told this coming year um is really the
127essence of my of my question are we making those adjustments regularly uh to to what we're allocating money to in in by line item or are we just saying oh this is all aidable it doesn't really matter and if so okay but but i wish there was a way to actually combine those line items or something so that um you know we we know what's happening so it just sounds like um your question been is a lot about can we anticipate now how that big pot of money will ultimately be divvied up across those categories is that essentially what you're asking us to to be more accurate in projecting so let i'll just use round numbers let's say it's 200 000 um you know are we going to spend 75 here and 25 here and
128100 there i kept the math very simple because right now we're putting the whole 200 in one place and then as the year unfolds it gets reallocated based on um kind of the the costs we have with hardware and then other emerging needs i mean we can certainly work on that in our stage two discussions with our with our leadership team okay yeah you know um like i said i'm not doubting that the money's being spent and it's not being spent on things that we need um but i mean you look at the budget we haven't come anywhere close to even 75 percent of our per people allocations for textbooks and so last year i suggested cutting down to 75 of what we had only to learn that like that money actually isn't for textbooks
129that's it's for something else and obviously it's hard for us to do our job if we don't know what we're voting on well ben i think it's a great point and we'll we'll bring that back and build it into our stage two discussions next year and try to anticipate really where do those resources ultimately need to end up maria i think if uh over the years what ben is saying if most of the money is spent in hardware then increase that line and decrease the the textbook line i i think that's what he's saying so we we actually have done that though i i just i want to be clear that's something that again going back probably eight nine years i started doing when i came into this position because i was making the same
130kind of an observation that we weren't exhausting that textbook money for a long number of years honestly so when the state gave us the flexibility to make some movement between those three aidable categories neil and i started working together we made some adjustments on that right off the bat so we had kind of an adjusted textbook hardware expenditure plan that made early adjustments but i think we were very cautious also to not deplete the textbook category because there are expenditures that take place over the course of the year like our elementary classroom libraries for example are very reliant on that um so there have been adjustments made not to say that we can't make more adjustments with that but i think we've tried to refine that process once the state give us give us the
131flexibility to do some uh some work across the three aidable categories not just have them as you know distinct separate buckets of aidable funds but we can continue to refine that and continue to work on that are there other questions i'd like to just share my thoughts on everything um first overall i'm relieved that we actually don't have to pull any money from our reserves this year that was something that was very concerning to me so i think that's it's massively relieving that the state has kicked in enough money but we actually have a balanced budget um second in regards to the ap position uh to be blunt i'm not in favor of it you know looking at the thought exchange many people in our community were not in favor of additional administration i see
132the need for it i also i see the need for a diversity and equity position however i don't think a point three is going to be nearly enough we're asking someone to do what really should be two jobs and when we ask them to do that they're not going to be able to fully complete the duties of either one so it's going to be difficult to find someone who has that kind of expertise i'm sure we can but it's going to be difficult and having them try to do two jobs at once is going to be really difficult so that's just my thoughts on that um sema then rebecca and then blanca um i think i said it before and i agree with luciana that it's not going to be easy to find somebody uh
133that can do both i kind of think that you're setting them up for not really success i don't know about failure but not really the best path to success the second question i have is so we have money for unassigned but were there people let go this year i know at least of one teacher correct that was um that was uh not fired but like there was no room in the budget to keep them i know at least one teacher in high school i'm just kind of wondering like why are we putting money towards undesigned and not keeping them um there may have been some part-time people who did not come back yeah i think it the high school was all portions of position sema it was um we didn't have any full-time people whose
134positions were eliminated there wasn't anyone in social studies that was full-time that was eliminated no it was a portion of the position which is going to result in them having to move toward the middle school there's and that's a little seniority um issue more so there's a vacancy in the middle school that that person would be eligible for but the part-time position would have to be hired for at the high school so it went from a full-time position to a part-time position but there were people that left correct i mean that's assuming that they will apply so there's a shifting or i mean i guess you can explain however you want but i mean somebody i know that was a student who's not there anymore so i feel like we're not you know kind of
135to the bigger point that ben is making is that we're voting on things that we don't have the exact details about i mean even last meeting was pretty much a q a session that was already set so any of the question you know i think ben was actually trying to do the right thing by giving a heads up as to the questions that he was asking but i think a lot of the questions that we're asking we're not really getting the detailed answers to and so you guys are putting us in position to vote and this happens this is not the first time this happens a lot that we're voting on things without details and we ask you questions for details and we're not really getting clear answers um and you know i i also
136try and ask ahead of time but it makes it puts me in that position of i don't want to ask ahead of time because now i'm getting these like answers that are practiced ahead of time and i'm not getting we're not getting a real answer so it's almost like you know a dog and pony show when it's um being streamed to the public so it's just disappointing that you know this is this continues people have said that before they left the board i've tried to stay positive and i've tried to say positive to gloria about some of the work that's being done but i mean the last time we talked about this at an evening meeting literally the next day and we all know we can't talk about it um because some of this is
137confidentiality but a racial epithet was said to students and then we're sitting here like yeah let's we're doing a great job no we're not doing a great job and i know you want to shake your head gloria but i guess i'm getting sick of it as somebody who sits here year after year hearing about the same things and being asked to vote on things that we don't really have the details on you know and i disagree with people who have made comments and you know ben and i don't always just agree on on things but i in complete agreement here that we're asked every year to vote on things that we don't have details on and it's it's not it's not really you know it's not really right to ask the public to do that
138when we're asking you questions with taxpayer money and then you guys don't give us you know real answers it's a disappointment um rebecca and i'm happy to provide any more additional detail any of us are um but rebecca i'll turn to you for the next question it's not really a question it's just a comment and i know i said this at the last meeting i agree with um sima and luciano i really think the dei position should be 0.5 or more or more i think having it be 0.5 or less dilutes it and i realize i'm echoing what other people have already said but i really think it should be 0.5 uh gloria sorry um i mean i would love it i would love it to be full-time um 0.5 would be great as long
139as we can afford it you know if we can find the money for it i would i would support it i'm looking at this budget and saying uh what are the priorities that were set do i agree with them um and i do could we do everything no we can't do it all am i disappointed we can't do everything yes um but i'm i'm willing to give this at least a try uh and you know seem i'm not pollyanna about you know we're doing the right things all the time we try we move ahead we make mistakes we back up and and i've seen that time and time again over the many years i've been here i have to disagree with your feelings i guess a number of you have uh expressed that we don't
140get the details i felt tonight we i mean i don't know what else people could do uh in terms of giving information we ask questions i think the questions are great i mean there's i've learned a lot just by listening to that piece but i think people have been very fair in terms of being here to give to give the information if it's not sufficient then re-ask another question or figure it out i i don't get a sense that people are stonewalling us or whatever the words we use seema i'm not sure um i didn't say something i don't get that feeling but you know i respect the fact that you know i respect what you're saying and i know you're speaking you know your your feelings but i personally do not get that sense
141uh i think people have you know gone out of their way to to listen to us uh i think we've worked well together but we don't always agree and in the end we decide with the board so if we want it a certain way then we move that way um it's not going out of the way though this is part of the job is that we ask questions and that absolutely i mean i don't think we need to we need to be like extra appreciative because people are asking or answering questions but i also think that we're not always getting full answers i mean i i don't i don't see that i mean i think people are giving the answers they can some things are hard to predict you give the best you can i
142mean you give the accurate information if you found something out that was a lie or something but i think people are honestly giving us the answers that they have are they what we want to hear maybe not we're talking about this this dni stuff or the equity in diversity and equity or whatever you want to call it the same thing we're talking about the work that dr elcheck did she's not there anymore you can't depend on one person i would hope that somebody you know from the top you know sends you know this message down and gets things going i see miss muna do this from their district office from the superintendent i know there's pushback but i know they think it's the right thing to do and so they move forward with it i'm
143just you know i there have been more board members who have been on here who've left and are always disappointed with like the week uh the week motions a week decisions that the district has made and the board not being pushing enough and we keep pushing on it and we get the same you know watered-down answers not clear answers and to be honest it sounds like a lot of lip service i feel like this is going into my seventh year this is uh comments made for years and years and maybe you know like i said in the public comment there's maybe a couple of administrators who i see do the work it's one thing to say something to do the work and then there are other people who don't do anything and you know then
144we're supposed to vote on this position and hope that they care about the work um and then they're already hired it doesn't matter you know it's just disappointing and we see it you know year after year i have to laugh because it's like what else are we gonna do like i'm being asked from the district office to you know be polite to people who are disrespectful and racist to me and to probably other people in the district and then i see no support from from upper belt it's just it's just really disappointment blanca i think you've had your hand up a lot has been said since i had my hand up so um i'll circle back to that i agree with ben and luciano particularly ben um i almost feel like he read my mind
145in spanish and then said it all beautifully in english so thank you ben um and i share some of sima's concerns and sentiment i thought at first it was perhaps because i'm new but um i definitely um agree with seema with some of her points i will also circle back to the position i'm just going to put this out there should we perhaps define the position better before we go ahead and pass funding for it and post it and also i seem to recall i was not part of those that phone conversation where we had students that had had um had experienced racism in the district i wasn't part of that i had just started but i think i remember that some of the concerns from parents and students were that there was institutional racism
146in the district and so i'm this is just my question i'm going to leave that out there how can we be sure that the administration or the district that has been called out or accused of being racist in the past that they're going to be able to hire someone for a diversity inclusion position unless it's really defined really well so i'm just going to put that out there because i do remember that being a concern i think well this position would be one that would include um we would include board member or two on the interview committee and we would welcome board members participation and perspective um i don't know who was next i think maybe gloria then kelly well i i just want to say that i remember um a few of the workshops
147that i attended in nisba on the diversity uh piece one of the big points that was made was that the interview process needs to be examined and looked at i think i think you've mentioned this once before marie about the kinds of questions that are asked the direction of the questioning uh the support that's offered to people to encourage them to come because people might not be welcome you know feel welcomed uh so there there were some you know really important points made uh at the workshops that i attended and i think some of the people on our committee actually mentioned it too that uh you just can't use the same old interview process and expect to get a different result uh if we want to encourage uh you know people to apply that have
148this interest and passion then we need to to re-look at our interviewing uh process itself kelly um i just wanted to add in the diversity equity position that it came out yesterday from the state education department i'll read it the board of regents is expressing its expectation that all school districts will develop policies that advance diversity equity and inclusion and that they will that they implement such policies with fidelity and urgency so a point if you think of 0.3 is not giving enough fidelity to it then it shouldn't be decreased or eliminated it should be increased and we'd have the funding for it don't say we don't we don't not have the funding for it we have the funding for it so if we're making a decision to follow the state education department guidance then
149it should be funded fully as a 1.0 we're making a decision right now to make baby steps into this and that's what the decision is going to be if we if we enact this budget and that's and that's what decision is going to be but i hope that we increase it next year based upon department of ed's guidance that's it thanks well i am not quite sure where we go from here um you know typically we have the worksheet um that spells out kind of our the district's most recent uh recommendation for how we go forward and someone would make a motion and then um make suggested amendments and until we get to a place where uh we have um uh a proposal that can come to a vote so i don't know if we're
150ready to do that at this point you have your hand up yes thanks uh neil what would the cost be for um making the ap the ap position full-time which we do need that um and what would the cost be for a full-time uh diversity and equity and inclusion he moved in was he talking he was twice tonight sorry um give me a minute let me do your math do your magic yes uh 12-month position salaries and benefits um i come up with like 113 800 113 800 yeah with salary and benefits it's assuming 85 000 for salary okay 12 month position so that's for the uh ap or the dii well the ap would remain i mean we really have a 1.0 in there it was more responsibility so the addition would be 113.8
151so there there's our uh i mean if this is something that's what i've been hearing from people that this is an issue and if it is an issue that people feel strongly we need to move this year on then can we put this in the budget and what do we take out or what do we not fund and i mean that's that's the quandary you know i i personally would love to see you full-time but what do we you know how do we balance it does the district have ideas as to what you know should be taken out well i would suggest um that we would reduce our unassigned i mean the 1.7 came from the high school this in effect would put most of it back to the high school and it may not
152use that entire 1.7 because i know i know we're not talking about start time but um you know one of the things that we thought about with those unassigned were some programming options for our middle schoolers before school starts regardless if we move start time but that's kind of a late breaking idea but if we could have a 1.0 fte focused on equity and diversity and inclusivity that's where i would take it that would work neil in terms of the amount yes then what what's the stage now we have to motion we have to put a motion on the floor to accept the and then put the amendment in all right i'll motion that we uh one second gloria does anybody have any does anybody have any interest in taking it from the fund balance
153rather than taking away from an additional ftv i just want to throw that out there so the current the current proposed model was 0.7 for an associate an assistant principal and 0.3 for dei right so are we are we proposing two 1.0 positions so a 1.0 assistant principle and a 1.0 dei so are we adding time to the assistant principal the first thing the first is what i was thinking that's what i was thinking okay two distinct positions rebecca that makes no that you said so what you just said it was 1.6 for a assistant principal and of that 0.7 a 0.3 would have been the dei is that what the initial one was no no was it 1.0 okay 0.7 ap 0.3 um so can we keep the 0.7 ap and just we would
154make the 81.00 doesn't that save us a 0.3 that's my point yeah well i don't think you want a point seven ap i don't know what that's what we were gonna have that's what we were gonna have when we were just telling but no but they have a full-time position they would just have they'd have a 1.0 but now you're gonna just hire a point seven eight that's her point i think that is kelly's point right because that's what we were paying someone to do with a 0.7 yeah but the fact but they would be a full-time person but only part of their time would be directed a certain way they'd still be involved in the school community and with kids that's a very different situation than 0.7 person not there all the time no
155i i mean i don't agree with that so if you're making that motion foreign and take take it out of the unsigned yeah that's you know first i think we have to put the budget on first at the vote we have to what's the first vote we have to have well it's uh i think a motion to um adapt a budget and then and then we take amendments okay well i make a motion that we adopt the budget as presented in a second okay now now we can propose the amendment yes my suggestion that i i put out there for an amendment would be to change it to an ap position at the high school of 1.0 and make the dei or whatever we're calling it diversity inequity position uh 1.0 and that would be
156also reduce the um the 1.7 uh extra extra position at the high school take that out let me take it from the unsigned that's what i meant i couldn't think of the word yes i'm assigned and barb were you seconding it i seconded the motion to approve the budget and then i have my hand up to talk to them to the amendment i think we needed a second first kelly did you suck oh we're done okay go ahead barb oh if we're doing the two positions first of all again my problem is we haven't demonstrated a need for a full-time position if we want to start with the point three see how things progress and not just assume that you need a full-time position for your dei person um those unassigned positions that we've had
157it's been my experience i think over the years and marie can either corroborate or disprove my point those unassigned positions for the most part have been used over the course of the school year particularly with the class i uh the same with the high school situations they oftentimes use like a 0.2 for an extra ap english or whatever so we're tying a lot of things in here that sort of trouble me we had um mike piscatelli arguing desperately that he wanted the position uh the ap position you know to start off with it with the 0.3 as i said just as as a starting point again we haven't even had our equity audit as to the needs and how great these needs are you're talking a a six-figure salary when you add the position um
158the medical benefits the travel recruitment benefits uh miss cuyuna's uh officer i believe is definitely in the six figures and again marie may have that actual actual figure but that's a heck of a lot of money for a need that you have not really proven on paper yet and and again i i just i have even reservations about the 0.3 taking from the um ap position but i can see starting there and marie's explanation of having a point person um working with the diversity equity and inclusion committee i think is wise because they would be dedicated to that but i really can't support now doing two positions um when again there to my mind hasn't been a demonstrated need on paper that we have to have a full-time position um to me the needs for
159an additional social worker um with all the mental health needs that that we probably will see coming through to me would be far more important than a dei position at this point in time um the 0.3 to me is a starting point marie has already indicated that she next year if it goes well and you know we see a need would be proposing additional uh resources in that direction but i just i i know we need those those extra ftes and um kelly had i had a point possibly of leaving those there and maybe taking money out of your fund balance but then you reduce the fund balance so that's my point thank you sema i think i see your hand um i just think that the position would also probably address i mean i
160feel like it falls in line with mental health needs i don't think they're separate i also think it falls in line with the board goals and the superintendent goals and um dr wiles in your opinion is this some a position that this district needs i mean the short answer is yes um you know you may ask in the original budget why why is it only in there as a 0.3 i mean when we began this budget development process the financial outlook was like 180 degrees different than it is right now so the recommendation was trying to balance a lot of needs um with a lot of realities of what our circumstances are you know i'm looking at mr piscatelli and i know we need to have more than two aps at the high school so
161i mean it was all about striking a balance um long term do i think i mean i'm projecting forward from barber's point of view would i project forward that there would be plenty of work for this individual to do the answer is yes i mean even in the assistance with the equity audit and all that goes with that i mean the other p the other elements of this job like if you look at the document that sed put out today i mean it's also has a huge focus on climate and culture within our buildings which is a huge a huge part of the work that we need to do um i think the individual could help us and assist um regan in our efforts to enhance the diversity of our workforce i mean we showed
162you i uh in a recent powerpoint the just total lack of diversity in our in our workforce and how you really need to work on that it's not just happenstance like who happens to apply um i just think there's a lot of elements of our school community where there is definitely work and again it's this is not equity work is not just about serving our children with color but it's really it's really looking across all of those categories of children who may not feel um as well supported as they could so our students in poverty are our lgbtq community our students with disabilities i mean we we heard all of that and i think we can work on more of that if we had an individual who that's what they spent their time doing but
163you know there was no way in march i was going to suggest a 1.0 fte when we were in the midst of who knows what a barber i see your hand just a quick follow-up you earlier stated about sustainability in that we didn't want to put something into the budget that we couldn't predict down the line if we're going to have the funds for and again you're talking a heck of a lot of money here um as i said probably at least six figures and that sure can buy a lot of ta times you can buy a lot of computer time textbooks etc so i i just wanted to to raise that point of sustainability it's a great point um kelly was it yeah well i mean for the past how long have we been
164taking 600 plus thousand dollars out of our fund balance talking about sustainability i think this is something that we value as a community we've we value it as our board we came up with the board goals it's one of marie's goals don't you want to make that investment now what were we spending that over a half a million dollars on every single year out of the fund balance i mean we were sustaining stuff with that six hundred thousand dollars let's make a choice of what we want to sustain into the future right now is it something that we value i mean it's just it's just a decision we need to make of what our values are and and we're going to be net zero here we're going to have a balanced budget if we take
165hundred thousand dollars out of our fund balance or or whatever we choose to do it whatever how we choose to do this that's a hell of a lot better than six hundred thousand dollars that we did last year and the year before and the year before so just a choice we need to make as a as a community so seattle yeah so i'm not against having the position but i'm very concerned about where the money is coming from um i i'm really thinking back to that thought exchange and i read many times the the two biggest themes i took away from that are make classes smaller so class size and administration is too big so we're adding to the administration we're taking away ftes that could be used to make classes smaller taking the money
166out of the fund balance i don't think is a good idea going forward we already have one of the lowest ratios in the suburban council not one of the lowest so taking that money out of there is dangerous we don't know what the future is going to hold this year has shown that so we need to be very careful how we do this i'd rather wait until the the committee has finished their equity audit and made the recommendations and we can follow those recommendations next year but acting tonight like we just talked about this we've been on it for maybe 10-15 minutes here so that's not enough time to really make a really well-informed decision i i'd rather wait until next year to do it um if we need to do the principle we can
167discuss that whether it's going to be you know if we do it or if it's going to be a full time i'm just really worried about where this money is coming from and if we're actually doing what the community wants us to do cena um gloria i'll take it sorry i put put my hand down i might have a question in a second but thanks okay i'll let you go after me then kelly um things that come up from the public when the public brings up ideas i have great respect for i think we need to listen to but just because something's said whether it's by us or the public doesn't make it true so i think if we want to move ahead and talk about um heavy on administration we just can't assume that
168just because somebody says it or a number of people think it that it's the truth so we need to be very careful there um about what we do in terms of our administrators because we don't have a lot of them and they're very diversified we've got them doing like six people's jobs in one uh it's not like the old days i remember when one person did one job in administration now they've got you know five or six different departments and they've got a whole bunch of different um responsibilities so they're very complex jobs uh i think we need to be very careful if you talk about not making a quick decision i would just because it's said doesn't make it true that's that's my only point so we have um a motion in the second
169we have an amendment and a second and we've had some discussion i i just want to respond to gloria's point um you know we just because people say it doesn't mean it's true um and that's especially true of of community members who maybe don't know what's going on in our schools uh i would i would tend to think that given the amount of of work to be done we don't have too many administrators um at the same time we're still representatives of the community right and so you know if the community is pro one thing and again something else you do have to take that into account a little bit um you know for example this the school start time issue uh i'm very in favor of personally and i've i've said that all along
170um but i remember you know um debating with tim haran years ago that that if the whole community was against a change in the start time well then then how could i possibly have represented the community vote for it so um you know i i understand what you're saying but that needs to be taken with a grain of salt and remembering that you know it's not we don't ask them for no reason we ask them because it guides our actions um gloria i think your hand is up again i think that's the perennial uh problem then of a representative type of a government uh you know the role of the representative when people elect someone other are they electing someone to do their will their own personal you know what they see are they electing
171the person that they believe will act in good conscience and with all the facts and make the best decision or are they electing someone just to represent them and the public votes and then they just do that so that's i think that's been a a discussion throughout our history uh might you know we may all have different takes about that i think the public should inform us absolutely but we also have a responsibility that we were elected by them to do our own duty and make sure that we are informed getting all the information because the community will give us information research will give us information other board members will give us information and then we use that and we come i believe the public deserves us to come to the best decision that we
172believe is best for the district whether or not any constituent group agrees with it but that that i see is our role so i guess i'm wondering about next steps here uh blanca i just want to confirm the um second position would not increase the budget line it would not put a further strain on the taxpayers right not under the proposal of um taking the funds from the unassigned pool okay so is the process now to vote on the amendment first believe so yes okay um so we'll take a vote then on gloria's um you you are i'm sorry you made a motion for the amendment and rebecca seconded correct okay so um oh i'm sorry do you have a question sorry yes uh i'm new at this um did i catch something about this
173means we're adopting the budget too no that's the next it could be just the amendment gotcha i just want to make sure they weren't sandwiched together okay excellent thank you okay so um we'll take a vote on um gloria's amendment then all in favor so can i just sit here so it's me kelly rebecca oh that's five okay all um against this amendment luciano barb and ben so passes 5'3 now we vote on the other motion on the floor which is the budget if there are no other other amendments uh wanted do you have your hand up again or are you getting it done okay again i just then you can handle right yeah i would like to make a motion to cut the remaining 0.35 fpe that we're losing by attrition at the high
174school has it then made a motion is there a second i i couldn't hear it ben i proposed cutting the remaining 0.35 fte from the high school that we lost due to attrition from the budget and um i think we're still taking like 514 dollars from the fund balance i'd like to pay that back and then give the rest of it back there okay and luciano's second event so that's making the making hole the assistant principal position as a true ap right without any point three ftv uh right so it's making a 1.0 is that correct then we just made the ap position a 1.0 that's enough so this is we were cutting 1.7 we had 1.7 fpe from the high school we took some of those funds to pay for the new diversity position
175and i would like to use the rest of those funds comes out to be about .35 and give them back to the community since we have less students far better practicing yeah i have have a question on that one we're already reducing the ability of the high school to service the students who may want a course uh i don't know is is mike comfortable with that if you take you've already removed about one point something and now uh ben wants to cut the remainder does that leave anything for planning for the high school kids one of the things that we've heard over and over again uh on these thought exchanges is that they want uh the ability to you know have their courses at the high school uh this troubles me probably more than the
176other one um barbara i'll jump in just to say that the pool of unassigned is district-wide so if there was a need at the high school we could still go to the unassigned pool it's not like the high school wouldn't have any unassigned pool to go to well i i know that but if you have six i think you said six classes right on the cusp um where you want to maintain the small class sizes and it just makes me nervous because i know we've used those things so often over the years you know we don't always address all six of them because sometimes students move away right we had six classes on the edge last year with four spare ftes um and i know obviously this year didn't look more clear but um [Music]
177this is this brings us back to where we were last year four unassigned teacher ftes four unassigned pas so i think there's a motion in a second then the discussion is over any other questions no okay so um all in favor then of uh ben's uh proposed amendment that's three luciano gloria and ben very all against all right so the motion does not pass um three five sema yes i voted for but i raised my hand like super late so it would be four or five no there's only eight of them before so four four okay now what happens i don't think it passes if it's tied it doesn't sorry i'm a mess i worked all day and i'm a mess on the computer and on my face from my goggles oh it's fine i
178just wasn't sure um so at this point you can consider additional amendments or go ahead and vote on the proposed budget as amended does anyone have additional amendments for the current uh proposed budget with this one amendment okay so we can vote then um all in favor of the current uh proposed budget with this one amendment all in favor um two three four five six seven okay all again arm okay the budget the motion passes seven one okay thank you everybody that was a good discussion around a lot of big topics um the the follow-up action for this is for the board to approve the property tax report card that will follow um the budget that you just adopted it's the next item in your packet um neil i think it's going to be slightly
179amended based on the amendment is that true uh well the dollars don't change because we're using unassigned for that correct okay oh yes you're right so um that would be the next next action of the board okay thank you so the can i have a motion to approve the property tax report then second barb any questions all in favor passes eight zero okay thank you dr wiles we have board president action um there's a few items to uh vote on first is the impartial hearing officer appointment and i have a uh i'll read the resolution um this is involved at the board of ed of the gillian central school district approves the appointment of james walsh for a special education and partial hearing pursuant to the board's compensation policy and pursuant to the regulations of
180the commissioner of the new york state education department section 200. uh can i have a motion to approve the uh hearing officer appointment kelly second rebecca any questions all in favor ben did you vote sorry against your hand okay passes 8-0 thank you uh next is the board of ed policy adoption we have a list of policies there a through e can i have a motion to approve the policies gloria ii blanca any questions about this all in favor aye passes 8-0 moving on to board committee report we'll start with audit then thank you uh audit met on monday morning at 8 am to review some of the corrective action plans that we voted on earlier this evening to some of our internal audits i've discussed this before how we kind of found that we
181weren't reporting homeless students to the state for reimbursement things like that we also reserved our reserve funds um plan our our you know um the specific breakdown by capital fund and trs and unemployment um and made sure that we had our plan uh updated and um we finally recommended that that we agreed to um retain quest r3 boces as our internal auditor uh we felt very comfortable with our auditor this year from there alexis schaefer we we really relied on her pretty heavily the board and um and she did a great job interacting with our staff and our administration so we thank her for that and we're very pleased to continue our relationship with west side through both seas thank you ben next we'll have uh communications i think is that gloria yes it is
182uh we have not met since our last board meeting but we are meeting tomorrow after it's two o'clock marine 2 30 update 2 30 we'll be meeting tomorrow thank you uh uh next is policy uh we had a meeting scheduled for this coming thursday but that is going to have to be changed and we haven't met since the last board meeting thank you uh business practices is that judy is that is there somebody else that can speak um um that is judy okay we haven't met our next scheduled for monday 8 am okay thank you ben and um equity and diversity um kelly we haven't met since our last board meeting however we have a meeting next wednesday uh the 21st at 7 p.m thank you um next uh we have public comment number two
183do we have any public comments thank you next board issues ideas and sharing does anyone have anything to share okay oh sorry go ahead i i just wanted to share a couple of thoughts with the uh the lady that was talking about the school start times um this year was obviously a difficult year with the 10 30 start time for the high school kids um that was not the plan for next year if we go ahead with this there would be the 8 30 start time which is consistent with schenectadies bethlehem i think glenn falls has an earlier start time and others are also thinking about it so it's not like we're outliers here um and we're not trendsetters we're sort of in the middle we are we know what what's good and we have
184mike lester and mike criscotelli doing yeoman work on trying to deal with some of the issues that that were raised you know by the letter writer so again i think marie pointed out that we're meeting as a task force i think next tuesday and a lot of those questions i think are going to be discussed yes so thank you barb ben yeah i want to add to that um a point that i actually have heard from barb in the past um you know some of the some of the feedback that we're getting is to consider all stakeholder groups right you know so don't just think about the high school think also about the middle schoolers but i mean this is a change that we're trying to do for the high school that affects the entire
185district and i think it's important to think in terms of an entire district all of our students will be high schoolers one day right and it's in those years that they're taking their their regents their their um they're taking their electives based on their interests they're taking their advanced classes to get college credit you know that's you know elementary school and is important because it's young and fresh and you learn the basics and you make friends and middle school is important because you're changing and your school is changing with you and you're in different cohorts and you're starting to get some of those extracurriculars um like sports and music and foreign languages and things like that and then high school is really you know the model that we've had for 150 years of this is
186what school culminates in so um they're all part of the journey and so it's not really like we're sliding middle schoolers or high schoolers it's more of a this is this is the shape of the journey now that all of us all the kids are going to go through oh wonka if i say something sema oh but go ahead gloria because mine is not related oh i just wanted to say i got the um i don't know how many of you got to see the little women the virtual mass play it was phenomenal i i really kind of went into it thinking how can this be you know watching this on that little computer screen and i was just amazed how you know because i love going to live theater so not having it has
187been such a loss so seeing those kids and listening to those voices uh and watching the how the technology you know work those scene changes and i was just floored uh and i i have to hand it to those kids and and all and the staff who helped you know andy and and everybody the crew they did a beautiful beautiful job thank you oblonga um just um new ideas because i don't know how long i'll be on the board you know we have the election coming on so i want a carpe diem um i wonder if the board has ever discussed standardizing homework or perhaps doing away with homework at some you know for the elementary kids or anything like that i know other districts have explored it i know entire countries have banned it
188i just want to put that out there i do feel like there is a discrepancy and sometimes it's it almost no disrespects meal but sometimes it feels like it's luck of the draw if you get a teacher that gives a more homework than another um or if it is like varies from house to house so i just wondered if that's something the board has ever discussed before and if not i'd like to propose it's discussed at some point um so we can get back to that balance of family life and student life um and then my other topic which i would like to put out there for future discussion if possible is taking a look at what we do with our fifth graders and as they transition to farnsworth that is adolescence is super hard
189and it makes absolutely no sense to me and never has um the way we do things where we separate children from their you know most of their friends and um i think we need to look at that again because adolescence is hard enough and then when you have your support network and you're completely separated from one another it makes it all that more difficult so um it was a problem when i was in school and i see it continuing to be a problem it's it's not farnsworth is one school but it really does feel like your friends are in a different country if they're in a different house so i think we should look at that again hey barb i just wanted to tell blanca that prior to covid uh the policy committee had begun
190asking administrators uh to look at the homework policy because we've heard similar reports i went to a couple of lectures at our conventions where school districts had pretty successfully you know eliminated most homework so this sounds extraordinarily difficult but both of these districts felt that it had gone very very well so covet sort of put that on hold because everybody was just trying to survive so maybe you know come next year or over the course of the the summer or later this year um those discussions you know can begun to be had again um on the local school level thank you to talk about homework policy so oh great yeah um i just come i want to make a comment barb um i i've always appreciated that you have that institutional knowledge you know you
191you can recall discussions that have happened because you've been on the board for so long and so that's great thank you okay so um i see that do we we have executive session i apologize if no we don't okay can i have a um a motion then to adjourn luciano second kelly all in favor hi hi passes eight zero thank you everybody have a good night