23 Budget Workshop, March 30, 2021

001good evening and welcome to the march 30th 2021 gilderon central school district board of education meeting would you all please silence your cell phones and recite the pledge i pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay so first on the agenda tonight we have two public comments first public comment is from melinda person and she writes i am writing as a parent of two students currently attending school remotely second grade and the parent of a soon-to-be kindergartner this fall at ges in recent communications from the school we were advised that the district is planning a typical school year without remote instruction presumably assuming state guidelines will change and allow for increased

002occupancy my request is that the gildwin schools include a comprehensive covid testing program in our safety plan by the beginning of the next school year as a parent and former educator i know and believe strongly that the best environment for students to learn and grow is via in-person instruction there is no substitute for the direct engagement between an educator and a child however i also strongly believe that a return to full in-person instruction must be accompanied by proper health and safety protocols in place that will protect our students and the people who serve them we simply cannot afford to get it wrong it is great that we have had and continue to have success rolling out vaccinations for school employees additionally the low infection rates in our schools is a testament to the commitment guilderland

003has made to wearing masks social distancing and proper disinfection and hygiene strategies all of this is to be commended and celebrated but the risk posed by kovid still exists there are still staff who have not been vaccinated and most notably none of our students have been vaccinated we have yet to reach herd immunity as vaccinations continue and we are now faced with new strains that threaten to undo our hard work further we still do not know what the long-term effects are upon children if they contract the virus all of this is to say that we are we are at a critical point the be 117 variant first detected in the united kingdom has begun infecting people in the united states and is predicted to be the dominant strain of stars cov2 in the united states

004by the end of march this variant is more transmissible and may be infecting young people and children at a higher rate than earlier strains did new york also just had its first case of the brazilian coronavirus variant one of a number of rapidly evolving versions of the virus according to the cdc a study completed by the rockefeller foundation kova testing works as a mitigation strategy the rockefeller foundation found that school-based screening programs reduce in-school infections and spread they also conclude that universal testing programs increase student and parent confidence as they prepare for returning to school to to in school sorry in person learning much of this additional confidence comes from knowing that with testing the silent spread of covid is being stopped in its tracks it is people who have been infected yet show no

005symptoms that can pose such a threat to our school communities what's more the federal government has provided resources to deploy multiple strategies to achieve a safe return to in-person instruction for all students for covid testing specifically the federal government through the american rescue plan allocates 335 million for new york state schools to be used for covid testing efforts now it is the time to prioritize this crucial protective measure i am confident we can return all students to in-person instruction safely if we are willing to take the necessary steps required to do so sincerely melinda person the next public comment is from nancy clem dolan she writes my teaching career in guilderland was at farnsworth middle school and i was very lucky to work there for 30 years i'm concerned about the school day schedule proposed

006for future school years one of my concerns is the transition of sixth grade students it will be a long afternoon for students who traditionally were dismissed much earlier from the elementary schools as a sixth grade teacher i witnessed students who were fatigued in the afternoon keeping students until 20 for an activity period and then putting them on a long bus ride is concerning to me as a teacher and a parent also many students participate in extracurricular activities i am concerned about student health when they are required to stay at school until 3 45 participate in extracurricular activities eat dinner keep up with their assignments and spend time with their families it's a very full day for young middle school students another concern is about the student athletes who need to leave school early to participate

007in sports it was a constant concern in previous years and this schedule exacerbates the problem half of all games in a modified season are away games requiring travel and with a 4 pm start time over the years there were frequent discussions about how much student athletes were missing in school due to the late dismissal at fms moving forward to make the end of the day even later will continue to stress the student athletes their parents and their teachers during the pandemic and while teaching from home i was very aware of this time students were working on their computers we were often reminded that students needed time to recharge their mental emotional and physical batteries i'm asking that you reconsider the fms schedule and consider the daily lives of our fms students and its impact on

008students and families thank you nancy clem dolan retired fms teacher okay i think we are talking about the schedule later tonight in the presentation correct dr wiles and then the public comment about um the testing and vaccines that will be an ongoing i think conversation so unless anyone else has anything to add we can move on to the next item okay next we have uh the personnel agenda this is under agenda items letter a can i have a motion to approve this personnel agenda gloria second barb any questions all in favor aye passes 9-0 thank you and finally we have budget development and i will turn this over to dr wiles thank you dr rivera let me um just talk a little bit about our process for tonight the bulk of our work on the

009budget tonight is really responding to the questions that were raised through the thought exchange that closed at four o'clock this afternoon so i have asked some of our leadership team to join us to assist with that so joining us tonight is mr michael piscotelli from the high school mr michael laster from the middle school and mr dr ellen lockwood from the elementary representing the elementary buildings um and also the district office team is here so we're going to try to work our way through the categories of questions as they came through thought exchange does a nice job of putting them into categories for us so we're going to start with the topics that are more strictly budget related and then there's a ton of comments and and some questions about the school start time piece

010and we'll we'll do that kind of second um obviously uh board members you're welcome to follow up with any questions that you have as we're on a particular topic um and you know obviously throughout the evening any additional questions you might have the last part of the budget development process is the budget worksheet that mr sanders sent to everyone on friday that's a one-page kind of 30 000 foot summary of where we are right now because we don't have a state budget settled at this point we're we're in no different financial position today than we were one week ago when we presented the first draft of the budget but that will be our ongoing tool for any uh potential changes that might occur between now and april 13th which is the um the night which

011the board will adapt the budget does that make sense to everybody okay um i want to start kind of uh picking up where we left off on tuesday actually with a question that um kelly person had about the um federal stimulus money and you know where where is it within the budget presentation that we had and it made me start thinking a lot about the executive budget and the interface between the executive budget the federal stimulus that's built into that plus this additional federal stimulus so i have a couple slides i just want to show you to kind of refresh your memory so i'm going to pull those up in a second here i hope um this slide is one from our presentation last tuesday night and i want to call attention to the about

012two-thirds or more almost halfway down the line that's called the local funding adjustment and it's a negative 4 million 98 557 in the governor's budget this is the adjustment that he is making uh or suggesting that be made to help mitigate the gap we have at the state level if you go down three lines more you see that a little bit more than that four million ninety eight is offset by the supplemental stimulus that is not the money that has most recently been approved through the um relief package that president biden just signed this is previous funding so i what i'd like to underscore here is kind of the question of so what happens when that covid19 stimulus money goes away because right now the the executive budget depends on that money to fill for

013us more than a four million dollar hole in our budget and the understanding that i have about that part of the governor's proposal is that it is not a one-time reduction but that it's recurring so what happens when that goes away um you hear everyone talking about the funding cliff so this is what it means for us here in guilderland should this not change so um we are quote-unquote set for 21 22 because that 4.6 million dollars is embedded in our state aid package but if it's not there in the following year 2223 we're going to have that revenue shortfall in that in that year which could be compounded if you go out a second year it to double to nine million two hundred fifty thousand nine hundred eight dollars um some of my colleagues

014over in the boces calculated these this impact for all 24 of the school districts in the capital region bozies and then made an estimation of should that cliff not be repaired how many ftes would that equal and for us it's 139 ftes i share this because it just feels so much like the conversations we had and i did reference this last tuesday following the last terrible financial crisis in the country in new york state where we had a big gap it was filled by what we called era money at the time then era money went away and we got the gap elimination adjustment and it cost us 229 positions i mean it was a terrible terrible time so i i wanted to underscore that all of this is still under the development and the work

015of the state budget and it's tons of uncertainty but i wanted to show that picture and contrast it with the 2.5 million dollars that we have just been promised in the american rescue plan act which on the face of it seems like a lot of money until you compare it with the potential gaps we have going forward if those are not um erased in some kind of a way so i i wanted to give this somewhat dramatic image because there is quite a bit of uncertainty about what's going forward we received a lot of questions in our thought exchange about why we're not adding more positions whether it's reading teachers or social workers or teach teaching assistants or you know you name the position and the reason why we strove to maintain rather than add

016is because of this um reality whether or not it pans out like this of course remains to be seen but this is a bit of the context of what we're working on so with that in mind i'm gonna transition now i'm gonna stop sharing my screen here if that's okay um i'm gonna transition now to some of the questions that came in through the thought exchange and i'm going to start kind of where we left off on this question about the rescue package and neil and i'm going to put you on the spot first if that's okay one of the questions that we got was um does this budget include the one we presented last week the distribution of the american rescue plan act it says 20 percent of the funds must be used to

017address learning loss etc is it in there and what are we going to do with the other 80 percent of that money uh that's part of that grant well thank you marie sobering introduction for sure you're welcome um well let's just talk about the american rescue plan act as everyone knows it was just approved it's still being discussed and formulated we don't have a lot of information about how it's actually going to work in terms of its implementation what we do believe is going to happen though is it will be a some sort of state grant application process because there are some rules about how the money can be spent so what we think is going to happen is the state will set up some sort of portal or some way to log onto a

018system we'll have to fill out some information what are we requesting what are we using the money for that will have to go through some sort of vetting and approval process if we get through that process then the funding will be released so again there's a big focus on making sure the money that's being allocated is used for an appropriate purpose they are defined in terms of what kinds of things we can use the money for so we have to be very careful in terms of making sure that it it does line up so there's things are about you know coordinating needs for low-income families children with disabilities english learners homeless students things like that so those those are categories of students where we can identify some funding uh purchasing educational technology hardware software and

019connectivity there's also money available for summer learning um supplemental after-school programs mental health services i was mentioned previously addressing some learning laws there is some for school facilities repair that's focused on virus transmission and in the support of student health so there's a number of things that are available to us but it's not open-ended to be able to use for any purpose so i think when we talk about the money we have to make sure what we're what we're doing is targeting the money for the purposes that they were intended to be it's not a general pot of money we can just use as we need and it gets back to the budget conversation if we have some sort of revenue shortfall it's not there just to grab and backfill a revenue shortfall so it's

020something we'll we'll certainly have to be toxic of it's also a multi-year process so we don't have to spend the money all in one year we have until 2024 to spend the money so we can target the money and the funding and our expenses and line that up with our needs over a multi-year period as well thanks neil um any follow-up on on that i think bottom line there's still a lot more that needs to be shared with us as we move forward on that i'm neil i'm going to stick with you on another kind of nuts and bolts question about the fun um the the disc uh the budget um barbara do you want to go back before i ask the next question yeah i just have a quick question fly that you showed

021with the four million dollar deficit is the executive budget correct yes as proposed not traditionally thank god uh the senate and the assembly usually do you know ignore some of the things that he has in his budget and come across a little bit better in the way of districts but we won't know that until the final budget is passed right so when you project a four million dollar plus deficit for the following year and then a nine million the following year you're basing that on the current executive budget proposal right that's right okay that's right and when pat was with us last week she um certainly um underscored the fact that the senate and the assembly are trying to do much better for us but as of today all we really have is the executive

022budget kelly thanks um the kind of follow-up to that so we're assuming we're not going to get well that cliff is assuming we're not going to get the 4.6 million and then next year we won't get x amount of million what if we do get that money does that go into a plan for that or does that go into like a one-time thing like things that maybe wouldn't need to be sustained over years or is that gonna if we get that money would it just be dumped into the fund balance or how would that work um well we we will get the the first 4.6 million that's already in the in the works for 21 22. that's um previous stimulus money that's already been accounted for by the state backfilling missing state aid um well

023it won't if we were to get it again um the question would be is it um filling a hole from missing state aid like it is in the coming year or is it on top of state aid um and i don't i mean it just seems to me that it would be really really unusual for us to get our state aid made whole and then all of that federal dollar on top of it but there is questions about um how we handle that 2.5 million if all those others are made whole you know for us that 2.5 million is relatively um modest compared to for example albany's i think getting 46 million and schenectady is getting 39 million so i think kelly it's a great question but i i don't know that we know how

024schools would be allowed to handle that at this point i don't know neil if your your group of business officials has talked about anything like that i know i you know we're in the same spot as you explain we really don't know how that money is is going to work so i would say the same thing we just aren't there yet in terms of what might happen [Music] with additional funding but it doesn't seem realistic to have a continuation of that additional funding as well that american rescue plan the 2.4 million there's well i think this is the one that had the list of like you mentioned last time 19 things or a pretty big list of things could we use that money for a one-time thing like technology or you you named off a

025couple of things that caught my ear like technology um you know getting back into getting to the century with technology school repair things that aren't a sustainable things that we would need to sustain for many years is that in there at all or is it what's the list yeah like i guess is there anything in that on that list of things that we could use that money for yes well i certainly think that there are opportunities here to address some needs that don't have long-term impact um technology is one of those that you sometimes have to come in and once we establish it wears out we have to recycle that again so we would have to make sure uh to be careful with how we approach the technology piece but there are certain elements of

026this that i think in terms of particularly addressing student needs where hopefully we'll be able to address those student needs and won't need to be able to won't need to carry that money forward so over the next course of a year or two whatever the impacts that we're seeing educationally from the pandemic if we can overcome some of those issues with some funding we wouldn't need to sustain that funding going forward so i think we'll have to look at a variety of things educational needs needs particularly but then as you mentioned maybe there's some facilities needs that we could also address uh that wouldn't have reoccurring costs with them as well so there's opportunities on both sides but without having a real look at how this money how what the requirements how specific they are

027what the process is what the timeline is uh draw pieces that we're missing at this point that would help us make some of those decisions it sounds like we had some time as well we do yes thanks you're welcome barbara uh just a follow-up process question the 19 things that neil mentioned once we pass a budget we can't generate any more funds for that particular budget so the things that he is mentioning for this 2.5 million that's hanging out there would we have to build in positions or repairs or something into this year's budget or are we talking the following year's budget in order to take advantage of those those monies you know as they come in or are they considered outside the budget if we were to get them the belief is that would

028all be outside of the budget so that would be that special grant process so we wouldn't be including the money in the budget but we would be reaching out to the state and saying we need x amount of dollars here's what we need it for here's our plan on how we're going to address a particular need and again the understanding is the state would then release that money in sort of a grant format so there would be some follow-up reporting that we would have to to do so how did we spend the money uh show us evidence of your expenditures they want to make sure that they match up with the requirements of what the money was used for uh those types of things but we deal with grants now so and they're separate apart

029from the regular operating budget they work off to the side so we're seeing a similar type of structure going forward for this money judy um having been stung a few years ago with the gap elimination is there any possibility that uh we put this money we hold on to it for later use and then the state says oh sorry we're taking this this back um money this time was it was targeted this 2.5 million uh there's an amount that has to go to each it wasn't given to the states to dole out this was the state can keep a small portion of it for some administrative expenses but other than that it goes to the schools so they won't have the same opportunity to access that money as as they have other federal money in

030the past so it really is an allocation to the school district great questions neil while i have you um the follow-up is there was a question in the thought exchange about our fund balance and um why is it low um lower than our our colleagues among among the suburban uh uh council do you have some thoughts about that yes i do fund balance is something we usually talk about each year as part of the budget development process and it's an area of discretion for school districts school districts can determine how much one balance they want to keep how much they want to apply to lower taxes that's the other function of fund balance so there's opportunity how fund balance is created is basically through the budgeting process where we're estimating expenses we're estimating revenues at

031the end of the year if we underestimate revenues meaning we have more revenues than we thought or overestimated expenditures so expenditures come in less than we anticipate it creates some extra savings and that savings is referred to as fund balance so it's really analogous to a savings account that you might have in your personal life it's just got a unique name in terms of finance law for education uh but it's money that we can put aside for a few for two purposes really one for another future need and the other is to help out balancing the budget so if we have difficulty with the budget we need to either lower expenditures or raise revenue increase revenue we can raise revenue by using some of that savings to help boost the revenue side so we have

032some choices around there over the years we had traditionally had a very low allocation relatively low allocation for a district our size of three hundred thousand dollars in what we call appropriated fund balance and that's money that we would target every year put on the revenue side uh helps lower the tax levy that we the amount that we would require from taxpayers to fund the overall budget and then over the years as uh things got a little more strained in the budget department uh that move that doubled in in one year went basically from 300 000 to 605 thousand dollars so that was part of of the budget to help shore up the revenue side a little bit and and be able to add some additional expenditures then after that it was raised uh to

033over eight hundred thousand by eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars so we went over the course of a few years we went from allocating three hundred thousand dollars to allocating eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars so if you think about that that's an annual commitment so if you once you put in eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars you have to be able to sustain that going forward otherwise you have to find other revenue sources or reduce expenses there's no way to continue we did a couple of years ago scale that back to about 650 000 uh but you can see this over time if you have this 850 000 every year that you have to come up with in terms of a revenue piece it's very difficult to to work from that in a budget

034scenario so um that's how we got low so we we used more of our savings to help fund the operations of the school district again it's very hard to back down and then again once you make that commitment it's you really got to be able to maintain that commitment so we've been in this position of really not being able to add much to our fund balance at all so we're in this position right now with the executive budget proposal we're proposing adding additional use of uh fund balance uh to help we're hopeful and optimistic that in the end we won't have to use that but again that is one of the reasons that our situation is a little more dire than others we have made larger commitments to using our savings as part of our

035regular operating budget practice thanks neil i'm going to i'm going to give you a break and and ask the next question to um i think we'll start with damian but i'm going to ask mike and mike to weigh in but not before blanca gets a chance to ask her question um i'll bring it up later i'm sure it's going to come up again that's fine okay so one of the questions that we got was a very direct question about why we have not eliminated any instructional administrators from the budget not any assistant principals why we didn't do that to save some money this writer said it was brought up in the last thought exchange and the district seems to have um you know avoided or chosen not not to make that reduction so um damian

036can i start with you to flesh out the reasons why we hang on to our instructional administrators and why they're so vital for the district um yeah i can kick it off i guess um you know it's a it's a difficult question on one hand but on the other hand it's one that i think comes with a pretty sensible answer and that is that the work remains you know the work of our instructional administrators is really very multi-faceted it's it's layered upon layered upon layered of responsibilities that they have but i would sum it up by saying that our instructional administrators are really charged with the oversight direct oversight of our instructional programs you know that includes any curriculum modifications updates enhancements new courses etc uh that's kind of the 30 000 foot view i

037would say but underneath that there are also the responsibilities of professional learning in all of our departments that are are supervised by an instructional administrator probably the largest amount of work comes under the requirements for the annual professional performance review which is the teacher evaluation process which is required by law in new york state um you know the number of observations that are required are immense uh it's extremely time consuming in most instances it includes a pre-observation conference a post observation conference an extensive write-up all of our instructional administrators are certified and trained to conduct such observations and evaluations that is a huge component of their positions and their responsibilities and it also branches out beyond just their direct department that they oversee one of the other appr requirements is that we have independent evaluators

038who also go to basically every end of our district whether it be elementary middle school high school science math language arts whatever discipline it happens to be to serve as independent evaluators our principals do that as well our assistant principals also get called upon to do that it's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of observations if not thousands of observations conducted over the course of school year so that's a huge component of their position they're also responsible for all of the budgeting including the planning the procurement of materials supplies textbooks software etc the inventory the maintenance of all of the instructional tools and resources and strategies that we need to obtain to make sure that the instruction is sound and moving forward in many instances they are coordinating substitutes which happens on a daily basis um

039you know in most instances we are aware but on many occasions we may get a very last minute notice that we will have a teacher out and and the instructional administrator would be called upon to basically problem solve on the spot um i mentioned all of the curriculum development as well uh you know we are regularly receiving uh new learning standards from the state that have to be implemented that call upon us to revise or update or realign all of our instructional programs our instructional administrators are intimately involved with student placements teaching assignments support staff coordination and then the other part of it that i don't want to lose sight of it of is just the day to today you know i think this year has been extreme in the day-to-day responsibilities but even under

040normal circumstances just the day-to-day needs to address student needs to address teacher needs classroom needs engage in communications in an ongoing and hopefully productive and constructive way with all of our parent community um yeah i mean the day-to-day needs are pretty immense and not often predictable but somebody needs to be there to respond to those and our instructional administrators are often at the front line of that response so you know those are a few things but i think just generally speaking i think they are the people who serve really as the gatekeepers for excellence for our instructional programs um you know and i i don't want to devalue that or undervalue that i often like when i hear a statement about cutting an instructional administrator i also think about well which one would we cut

041and who's going to do the work and it's you know it's easy to say to cut or reduce but there also has to be an understanding of how do we backfill that then who's going to complete these tasks and these responsibilities it's it's not just going to fall into a vacuum the work doesn't go away the work remains and you know we have a great team of instructional administrators all who of whom are certified and able and ready to complete the administrative work that is is really a critical component component of a well-functioning school district thanks damian gloria i see your hand i was wondering damian um what's the average number of staff that an instructional administrator might be responsible for so um good question great question in you know some of the larger departments

042like at the high school for example i'll take uh you know our math science administrative instructional administrator at the high school she i believe has 40 plus teachers that she is working with um when you compare that to other instructional administrator assignments for example shannon elliott who oversees art k-12 while it's a smaller department at one particular level you're not going to have that number of teachers when you spread it out across the k-12 you know you have the complexity of of essentially overseeing a k through 12 program at multiple levels but then the numbers also increase of the number of teachers that you have to supervise supervise and work with um but i would say the maximum number numbers is low 40s we have some instructional administrators who take on multiple departments simply because

043they have multiple smaller departments i'll keep using shannon elliot so shannon elliot also oversees our business department at the high school our family and consumer sciences program at the middle school you know so the combination the combined effect is that they have a fairly high number of teachers that they have to work with and supervise as well blanca and then gloria and then sema i'm sorry go ahead blanca thank you um how do we compare would you have a sense damien of how we compare to other districts our size do we have more of these folks in other districts or less um i i believe we are quite lean relatively speaking i don't know of any districts that are equivalent size to us that do not have some equivalent of an instructional administrator they might

044have a different title some call them you know just supervisors or instructional supervisors but of districts this size i'm not aware of any that don't have you know an equivalent structure of some form some might maintain k-12 supervisors who oversee one subject area for example so they may have a k-12 math supervisor whereas we also value the site-based supervision quite a bit so you know some of our supervisors will take on multiple areas so that they can be a site-based supervisor in our largest schools being our high school and our middle school of course so our high school math supervisor for example is the supervisor of math science and technology not just one subject area so there are there are nuances but you know essentially every district that i'm aware of that is of equip

045of an equivalent size to us has some form of an instructional administration component built into their their overall administrative uh organizational chart cena um i just had a question because i know that ap position that um you were suggesting as like point segment ap and 0.3 as a equity diversity uh i guess leadership piece so that position would just be at the high school so i'm not really sure how that person would be impacting all seven buildings and so i know that other districts have different structures of instructional administrators aps etc and so since we have that ap i guess hole that we're trying to fill up and you know make whole and we're also adding this other piece of a job i don't see why we wouldn't look at the structures like all together

046and see what other model could be come up with this is like a great opportunity to to see what other options we have i mean i would like to see another model people have asked for this more than once more than one person has asked for this you know we have the thought exchange for a reason people are asking about it i feel like we should be able to get at least something is an option to look at sima i think that's a great idea to look at other options we've done that a couple times in the past but we haven't done it in the last five or six years um i i guess i would just say that right now as we're coming out of a pandemic and everyone's role really has been scrambled

047to a certain extent this past year that it might be something to look very closely at in the coming year as we're coming out of it but we're kind of in we're not kind of we are in recovery mode um in terms of getting students back in place um but we've had we've had the conversation about k-12 uh administrators several times because you know the the trade-off there is you get you get continuity across the three levels but you also have people who are less visible in any given building so for example we we have a special education instructional administrator who's split across the middle in high school and if she were on this call right now she would tell you that when she when she needs she's needed in the middle school she's at

048the high school and vice versa she's never where people want her even though she's running around so i mean i i think it's worth looking at um i mean you know we're already looking at later star i mean the idea is that covet broke down so many things so we're making changes because we have to make changes for next year so i don't see why we wouldn't look at that when people are asking for it and there are other there are other models like the aps can can do observations um teacher leaders can do other parts that ias are doing there there are other options i guess is what i'm saying there are our other structures so um our aps do um observations for sure and our teacher leaders do have a role as well

049but they don't do observations they they're not certified administrators so if if teacher leaders get more leadership duties then we need to backfill with more teachers because they're teaching but you know your points well taken i just don't know that we can redo our leadership model for september it'd be a heavy lift i'm sorry sima did you i didn't mean to cut you off i'm just going to say i mean you know we have a thought exchange people ask you know we ask for people input and then several people write this more than once and then we don't even give it like consideration of options which you know i understand it's a heavy lift but you know i guess everything is a heavy lift right now you know the diversity and equity position could be

050a k-12 position as well giving it to as a high school position for 0.3 is essentially going to be at the high school they're not going to make it to seven buildings if that's less less than half their job i just i don't know i don't know how other people feel but i i i would really like to see other options you know maria i can comment i mean one of the things i that might be valuable is to have a more detailed conversation about the administrative roles that we're doing right now because sometimes as damien's explaining sometimes i don't feel like there's a clear understanding of what an instructional administrator does on a day-to-day basis and it's easy to minimize it because they are doing a lot of the work that's behind the scenes

051but it's such critical work to to support the teachers and to support the buildings they're a critical part of the high school building team and same at the middle school as well and they're supporting the elementary programs as well and you know they they cover like the building site administrators that we have there but like we have the math and science and the english um at the high school and at the middle school they serve valuable roles to help backfill things with that we have like safety if we have to do safety protocols when we have situations where an administrator is going to be out they're filling in and supporting those roles you know as damian said they are like our critical component as far as instructional leadership so when we're making plans about professional

052development plans and how are we going to implement this building wide number one they're providing critical feedback in the planning stages but then when we implement it they are taking that message and working with the teachers individually with the expertise in the content area that they supervise and i think that can get lost they're also a huge access point for parents and students in those particular areas if you talk to a music parent they're going to want to talk to the music supervisor who has expertise in how to develop a music program if you want to talk about my child who's struggling in math they go to an instructional administrator who is an expert in math and can sit down with the student and problem solve with them and the teacher or do parent-teacher conferences

053just with with that student and that parent so i just i just think it gets very easy to not recognize the importance they have to the to the district yeah and i just want to be clear i'm not minimizing their work i'm just saying that i know other models instructors exist so i just think that we should at least consider other structures and models i i don't think that they're doing nothing i'm just saying that there's could be other ways to do it seem if i can just jump in really quickly on this one too i i think it's important to note that we have looked at other structures over the years we did a comprehensive study of the administrative structure i don't even know what it was like 2008-2009 i think it was and

054it looked at really all of the you know the various options that are out there whether it be k-12 administrators whether they be site-based administrators whether you know it be a combination of teacher leadership which is essentially what we have i mean we have 50 somewhat teacher leaders in our district already um so i don't want it to be just assume that we haven't looked at over other structures over the years we certainly have um i know it's a conversation that we have every year when it comes around to budget time too is you know what's the best way for us to complete the work and get the work done and you know the structure that we have i mean you can always say that there are other ways that you can do things for

055sure but there are also some benefits to the structure that we have that we don't want to lose sight of all also uh gloria then barbara sorry thanks damian i was uh damian i was going to say the same thing because i remember uh it was a year after i had retired and got on the board that we began that look at uh and i remember the whole conversation about site-based versus you know district-wide and how we you know we kind of shaped the direction we wanted to go based on the needs of our district not necessarily another district so we ended up where we were we are now because of some decisions that were made based on what we wanted in the direction we wish to go and the positive things that we valued

056that this structure gave us whereas the other didn't so that was done and uh you know i was very happy with the way we went about it but i also agree that we always need to look we always need to come back and look if people are asking it's it's obvious either they don't understand and i go back to what mike said before i think we need to be clear so that people who are calling for a change and maybe they're not saying a change let's just look at it which is fine but let's understand what we have and why it's the way it is and then you know i agree i agree sema we shouldn't just keep something for the sake of keeping it we've had it you know for so many years but

057i also think we need to do it very deliberately and over time i don't think it's something you just jump into now for next september because i remember how we studied it and looked at it and visited and talked with other you know districts and how it worked and how long it took us to come down with a model that fed and met our needs not somebody else's but it takes time uh and i would be supportive of doing that but i would not be supportive of saying i want to do this by september um because i know i know the time and thought that went into this model that we have now and how much it means i guess i just had a little different interpretation of the thought exchange people know that we

058have a vacant ap position and i think people realize that you aren't going to cut somebody out of a job unless you are in the direst of circumstances but i think the question was you know do we need to fill that ap position and marie you explained uh the last meeting that you know with the students coming back into the building and you know obviously a year of very traumatized learning that you felt that it needed to be filled but i interpreted the thought exchange not so much the ia administrators which i think if the public are listening uh really sort of get a better picture of what these individuals do with the explanations that we're given tonight but i think the question that i've heard you know why why would you fill that ap

059position i think that to me was the question that that i heard more about rather than these you know instructional administrators mike can i put michael piscotelli can i put you on the spot this is your building we had this very conversation it's just really important to know we've been functioning with two assistant principals since dr hall check left and we're able to do that because at the moment we are dealing with pretty much no discipline problems and the minute we return to full capacity i am anticipating that will not be the case um you know it's it's it's again with four grade levels of students and 1500 students in the building there is a need for a third assistant principal when we are when we are dealing with the managing of the students now

060as we've said too they're the component that's different this year even compared to normal years is the social emotional needs that the students are going to have transitioning back into a normal school year and i think we're going to need all hands on deck really support those students and our assistant principals are really key in that they're you know as we were talking about the instructional administrators being the face of the with the teachers the the assistant principals are our big interaction with the students and and they are the ones meeting with the students and problem solving and supporting them and you know as we as we move into we've been over the years we've been moving into a philosophy of discipline where we're trying to take it more of a counseling approach than a

061a uh strict consequence approach and with that that takes time and um when we i'll just use another example when we're dealing with a significant issue that usually ties up to assistant principles for an extended period of time which means anything else that's going on in the building falls on the remaining administrators which um so if we have something happening right now that ties up my two aps basically i'm the one who's gotta deal with anything else that happens on it so anyways there's i really feel there is a need and for the third assistant principle from all the reasons i just listed like for the public's benefit uh probably not now at the top of your head but at our next meeting maybe just sort of tell what these assistant principles do you know

062from the standpoint of scheduling not just the discipline but everything else that you know that they do if we could maybe just make a list posted or whatever just so that people appreciate what these folks are actually doing you know and to sima's point i mean i'll go back to something sima said we you know it is barbie bringing up an excellent point the assistant principals um have other other responsibilities like one of the assistant principals is in charge of the master scheduling process one of our assistant principals is in charge of all of our testing programs from ap to regents and so forth one of our assistant principals is in charge of all our alternate programs including the focus program all ted and cte um you know all of these things that we're talking

063about and there's many many many more they take time and they take time to manage them supervise and oversee and um to what sema was talking about we are looking at those responsibilities now that we do have a vacancy and we're saying okay yeah we we know how this was structured in the past but are there things we can do differently to make it um to improve our oversight of these programs so but i think that's a very good idea just like the other conversation i think we can certainly kind of provide more information about exactly what we do on a day-to-day basis um mike lester and then sema thanks uh i want to just echo what damian and mike have been talking about you guys have done an excellent job uh explaining sort of

064what our instructional administrators mean to the mission of the school district i guess my my only comments in addition to what they said was i would be concerned about making any drastic changes just because of the anticipated learning loss that we're looking you know towards with the students coming back from the pandemic the support that our ias give our teachers um especially from i guess the lens of at least at least the middle school our site-based ias manage all of our ais programs um and the data analysis associated with that and the essa reporting that we have to do um i don't know i would be uh i would be a little nervous about making any changes to that right now especially since we're gonna be dealing with coming back from the pandemic so sima

065um i just had a question about the the ap position i guess uh two parts is um is the idea that that point i don't know if it's a point three or point four point three position supposed to be across the district and then also when you post it um are you expecting that the person is an ap and also has some kind of qualification or experience with diversity and equity or do you think that they're is that something that they're going to have to just you know do on their like i guess i'm trying to figure out how would that be posted uh we would like someone with expertise in that area would be a great way to do it and the and the idea is yes as a start it's a 0.3 um

066i tried to push mr piscatelli to a 0.5 but we arm wrestled and uh he's stronger than i am and it's a start so it's essentially a day and a half a week um some of which we would like this person to reach out to particularly our elementary buildings um mike and his team at the middle school have have been able to sustain a strong agenda around this topic but it's been more diffuse at the elementary buildings really just to help but it's also a starting point i don't know that it's an ending point i would love to have a 1.0 person whose job it was to be the coordinator of equity and diversity across our district um but you know this is not the time to be adding positions um you know we're just

067not at that place as things unfold you know if the state budget comes back better or how this um stimulus money becomes available to us it may free up resources in different ways that we can do something but this is a way really to start i guess i just worry that i mean it sounds like the ap job by itself is a lot of work and then diversity and equity across seven buildings is a lot of work so to put them in one position i feel like it's going to be i don't know pretty difficult to do you know great job in both and again i'm not saying that we have to add obviously we don't have anything in the budget to add but to think about restructuring and i think it's going to be

068hard to find somebody that's an ap and that has that experience mike miscatelli as far as the structuring of the work we're we're trying to keep that in mind when we're looking at the building assignments to make sure that what we are putting under that assistant principle takes into consideration that they're going to be gone part of the time as well so we're trying to consider that as we're designing the responsibilities thanks mike okay i'm if i may i'm going to shift gears a little bit we had several comments in the thought exchange about um adding teacher teaching assistants or returning teaching assistants to classrooms and also around reading and other supports for elementary students so alan can i um turn to you to talk a little bit about what tas and reading teachers did

069this year and what your hope will be for next year because it is true we we have not added more positions um our goal is to maintain not to add right right uh yeah sure um well our our teaching assistants and our reading teachers have sure done an amazing job this year and uh work that they're not generally accustomed to as most of our buildings have switched into this cohort model at most of our buildings and most of our grade levels we have more cohorts than we have certified classroom teachers so those classroom teachers are rotating from classroom to classroom to provide content area instruction but at any given time there's a classroom cohort that doesn't have a certified classroom teacher in there with them so at those times we're using our reading teachers or

070our teaching assistants to provide supervision first and foremost but whatever instruction that they can provide our teaching assistants are providing supervision they're they're also supervising recess and snack times times when our certified instructional staff don't necessarily need to be present but our reading teachers are taking advantage of that time in those classroom cohorts to provide phonics instruction or to try and work with small groups of students to provide some some reading intervention it's worked out pretty well for us so far this year but we are all very much looking forward to next year and going back to our normal roles we don't have right now the kindergarten or the first grade instructional teaching assistants that we typically have that's been balanced a little bit by the idea that we have cohorts of only in most

071of our classrooms but as we look at next year and look at going back to our regular class sizes we know that we're going to need those teaching assistants back in their more typical role uh you know working with the classroom teachers to provide small group work and to help them get ready for lessons and prepare for regular content area instruction our reading teachers likewise will be heading back to their more normal role of of just providing reading intervention services to students um and well we would you know there's always conversation about do we need more intervention staff you know i do want to point out a couple of things we are afraid of what we may see next year in terms of learning loss but our experiences so far this year with our primary

072students in particular a lot of the students that came to us in the fall that had demonstrated learning loss since march of last year quickly rebounded with quality instruction so a lot of those deficits and those gaps really resolved themselves once they were back in the normal classroom routine and receiving regular uh high quality instruction uh i also want to say that one of the differences this year is in the i would say in the quality of the remote instruction that our students are receiving um this year um the teachers who have taken on those remote assignments are really knocking it out of the park they're doing a great job working with those students and providing a level of instruction that you know last march or last april we wouldn't have dreamed that had would

073be possible so they're doing great work and i also just want to say that well a couple more points is that um one thing that one program that we're looking to expand and continuing to grow is our literacy coaching model so as our literacy coaches come online in the different buildings we're hoping that you know they will continue to work with classroom teachers to help them think through their instruction help them improve the efficiency of their instruction and reduce the need for specialized intervention staff over time and finally one thing that we've been talking about with damien quite a lot is um really being more flexible with the deployment of our instruct our reading instructions instructors and moving them around a little bit more to address the needs where they're at so instead of having

074specific staff members assigned to specific buildings if one building has more of a need than uh anticipated being flexible and deploying people in a way that's equitable across all of the buildings so i think with all those components in place i i think we're actually pretty well situated for um where we're what we need for our reading instruction for next year thanks alan that was um really very thorough kind of reflection of what we're doing this year and then where we hope to be next um one of the other topics that came up a lot in the thought exchange was class size there was a lot of appreciation for the fact that we're trying to maintain lower class sizes across the district but there's a couple spots where that's a challenge and mr laster knows

075it's coming toward him uh our seventh grade class size numbers are high um and it's hard to explain exactly how to fix that easily but i know you can do it mr laster so can you help our community understand why those numbers are what they are yeah thanks dr wells so uh two years ago actually when we were preparing to welcome that cohort into the middle school we saw that bubble coming through the system and we originally came to the board of education looking to see if we could get sections across the sixth grade level uh and unfortunately due to the fiscal constraints at the time you know we were not able to to get 16 sections uh when they came into the middle school um because of the middle school philosophy and organization and

076structure of teaming it's not as easy as just adding one teacher to help decrease our class sizes each each grade level requires more than one fte to try to decrease class sizes so if we wanted to say add another team at the seventh grade level we would need four team teachers uh but then we would also need in addition all of the encore uh teachers to teach those kids the specials so it becomes it becomes very expensive very quickly uh so so that's basically why this boat this bubble that's moving through the middle school right now is is at the upper end of the board of education class size thresholds and and you know we're that we definitely have our eye on it um it's definitely something that um you know the interventions and the

077proactive conversations that we're having about supporting our seventh graders next year are going to come into play and that's and that's the benefit of a middle level philosophy and a teaming model and that small learning community so um that's why it's it's not as easy as just adding one more teacher to decrease the class size all right thanks it is a complicated puzzle to put together um mike piscatelli we also had a couple questions or comments about class size at the high school because um there are 1.7 ftes worth of reductions that are enrollment driven and there's a concern that by reducing those ftes class sizes will be um increased at the high school can you talk about that a little bit so as you said in the in the question when you're framing the

078question our reductions were based on enrollment decreases in the high school so um to prepare for this this meeting tonight i took a look at uh all of our requests in really are the content areas where we always see higher numbers math science english social studies and world language just to see where our class averages are falling out right now with current requests and right now our regions classes are falling around a class average of 23 students um our honors ap college sections are falling in that 25 to 26 range um like as an average so those levels are pretty are pretty um typical of what we've been doing the last three or four years um so we're not seeing any kind of dramatic swings in class size average at the high school based on

079these reductions now remember different courses based on how requests fall you might have a course that's going to average out at 30 students per section but that's no different than any other year when we're scheduling classes it just it depends on what you know if there's higher demand in that grade level this year or so forth from there thanks for doing that analysis mike um i'm going to shift gears a little bit and go back to the topic of diversity there was a question in the thought exchange that said students are very diverse and growing more so teachers are still very homogenous this might be someone who saw our slide deck from the equity and diversity committee and the question goes on kids need to be able to see people who look like them in

080leadership um so and then there's a follow-up question about what are we doing to try to increase the diversity of our employees both faculty and staff so regan can i turn to you for that absolutely thank you for the question um so we've uh we've done a few things actually and and we're working on more we've revised all of our postings uh revised some of the language in there to um that are customarily associated with maybe attracting a certain gender or a certain race so we've revised our language and our postings we've got outreach going out to colleges across the state where um especially those in bigger cities where there are more diverse candidates so we're trying to attract more diverse candidates from from those colleges about a specific opening that we might have we've

081revised our interview processes we are creating a video for all of our interview teams to view and watch before the interview to to know what their role is um and uh to make sure that they understand the role of bias um and what that does in an interview situation um so we're we're doing a bunch of different things but obviously the biggest thing is we've got to be able to attract diverse candidates to our district and that's what we're really trying to put a lot of our focus on we can't hire people that don't don't apply for our position so we're really trying to to do that thanks regan one of the comment one of the comments was that um a reader was disappointed that the diversity did not seem to be a priority of

082the board and um i i just wanted to remind our community that actually working on diversity was an overarching goal for the board set way back in the summer it may not have emerged immediately through the budget process but um we know that we will be doing quite a bit of hiring in the next months because we've had a number of retirements so we are working hard at that and then one other small detail we actually got a question from a community member wanting to know the makeup of our equity in diversity committee with respect to what percentage actually have children in school right now and i looked at this today and we're actually 50 50. 50 of that committee have children in school right now uh four of those committee members are actually in

083school right now so we have a very strong um representative pool of individuals who are deeply connected um to the community i have one more for regan and this is about vaccinations um and that is will children be required to be vaccinated and will employees be required to be vaccinated going forward great great question um the answer right now is is no they're not currently required i know yesterday the governor day before the governor changed lowered the um the ages and so 16 year olds as of i think next week can start to get vaccinated so i'm not sure about that what's what who knows but as of right now the answer is no and so we can't require employees and we obviously can't require students to do that quite yet we'll keep an eye

084on that thank you rebecca you've been very patient with your hand i'm so sorry that's quite all right just about um you know what you were just saying dr wiles and regan about um you know our our goal for the year was really to enhance diversity and equity and i know you already had this conversation with um mr piscatelli but any thought about moving that um 0.3 assistant principal position to more like a 0.5 to reflect our goal i think i feel like everyone's looking at me because they are mr biscuit i think um mike i'll i'll jump in here we we did talk a lot about what the balance should be and i think we landed at 0.3 i will say as a starting point just because of a certain level of uncertainty about

085next year um and just what student needs will be when they're back in the building altogether and that's just um and that's true for you know what we'll need in terms of academic intervention supports and reading supports and math supports and social emotional supports i mean we have a sense that our students are going to need a lot but what that exactly looks like is a little bit of a mystery to us right now and then the other thing i'll just mention is that you know this um the recovery act money that we're talking about is for these uncertainties so we have to keep that in mind as well but i i think because of that that's where we landed at the 0.3 it's a start um but it's you know an ongoing conversation barbara

086just a quick follow-up um when we establish the committee and in our discussions earlier prior to establishing that we were very determined to call the diversity equity and inclusion committee because we wanted all groups special ed english language learners and all that and i just keep hearing you dr wells and sema and some others basically just saying d and diversity and equity and i i just don't want to lose that inclusion piece because that was the original intent at in in all our discussions barbara that when we created the committee though i mean it's officially created by the board and it's called the equity and diversity committee it doesn't mean we're not focusing on inclusion and in fact you know um amy peratt our communications specialist is trying to get the tab on our banner

087in the website to have all three of those words but if we're going to change the name of the committee the board would have to like change the name of the committee it's just where we landed and at the time um seema and then mike i think mike was first actually okay mike and then sema oh i just wanted to provide uh some perspective you know at the middle school we only have two house principals we only have three grade levels and there's many days that we are stretched and during a normal school year um i you know with a and having an additional grade level at the high school i i would be very very concerned about like the the just the unknown about bringing those kids back next year because the the pace

088is going to increase to back to where it was before the pandemic so i just wanted to add that perspective that's it thank you sema and then regan um i just have two questions um one is oh so is there i know you said this is a start dr oils with the 0.3 but did you have something in mind after that does that whoever gets hired in that position does that change or you just you can't know until that you hire that person i i mean i don't have a master plan here other than to get a start um and assess and see what our needs are and i think um i don't know who just brought it up but the four grades like if you had four assistant principals at the high school um

089they all can do observations correct right as assistant principals and then and ias like they were teachers before correct so they so like for example the science and math ia was either a science or math teacher so they don't have the content of the other and same with english and social studies right so if they were just put in administrative positions like aps i feel like it would be a little bit you know what i mean like the science whoever the ia is for science and math they're going to you know have experience a lot more in one area science or math so that the other you know the other academic group is not getting the same equivalent i don't think i know you can try your best to hire a person that can do

090both but they won't be a math teacher you know what i mean just like a social studies teacher will not be an english teacher that's just not who they were when they were teaching so i feel like having aps would be more i don't know equitable for all the different academic groups i mean that's another way to to structure as well yeah i i don't know i just think that that we have thought exchange we ask people to to submit questions and then we ask people to submit more questions and then they're they're asking the questions but then we're not even considering other options we're basically coming here with thanks for sending in your questions but this is this is the plan well sema i think we're talking about it right now i think that's

091important um i mean this may be the plan for march 30th but it doesn't have to be the plan forever um i think it's important to listen to what people are saying and to and to explore different options um and see where it takes us um regan i just wanted to go back i i forgot one of the other things that that i think is important that we're doing around uh equity and diversity and inclusion um we know that that people uh go to our website and so they're looking to see what we're doing and so now we've got a we've got a tab of equity diversity and inclusion um that right there we know attracts people of of uh diverse backgrounds they want to see that we're doing the work and we're talking about

092the things that we're talking about so we're looking to to make the website uh bigger in that area and so we'll be constantly adding things to that thanks freaking blanca so um i also looked through the thought exchange before tonight i'm hoping there's a couple things you're still going to discuss but with regard to the instructional administrators um i am a taxpayer and a mother of three children one of whom i withdrew from the district as you know um i have never had contact with an instructor instructional administrator so it's it's a tough pill to swallow as a taxpayer to have to you know pay more taxes even if it doesn't seem like it's a lot per person and feel like you're not getting something new and also not have to seem as point have

093that instructional administrator position addressed in some way so i do think we need to revisit it that being said tonight's discussion was extremely helpful i i have a different perception now you have damien has taught me a lot tonight about their role and i do see it as important so while i think we should look at restructuring it i don't actually think we should do that this year i would agree to with gloria and with um damien and you that marie that it's probably not a good time to do so um so i guess my point is this one i'm concerned that we are asking for folks to pay more i feel like i've been paying through the nose for a long time and i don't understand still even though neil explained it how we

094could be performing so low in terms of that that fund where we're like 13 out of 13. um and so that piece is frustrating and i think that that's where this concern about the instructional administrators is coming from i really do folks want to know why we're paying so much in taxes what we're being taxed to death and and we are low in the fund and being asked for more right after a pandemic and we're not cutting administrators which is what they said they wanted um so i'm just putting that out there i did learn a lot though and i don't think this is the time to restructure that particular piece my two cents thanks blanca um i'm going to transition us a little bit here with a couple transportation questions and then i know

095um there's a lot of interest in talking about the topic of start time and i have some um things i want to share with about that and then questions as well um but uh neil there were a couple questions in the thought exchange about transportation costs one in particular was uh what happened to savings we might have um realized when we closed down last year from march to june from transportation when we didn't have children coming to school and what happened to those funds uh sure so as everyone knows uh last march over a year ago march um schools were shut down to the coronavirus it was shortly after that that um congress passed the first terrorist act so it was almost a year ago and one of the provisions in there was that in

096order for schools to receive the federal funding they had to continue to pay their employees during the period of any disruption or closure related to the quantum virus and if you can recall at that time there was a real concern about everybody getting laid off uh massive unemployment and those sorts of things going on so that was a provision specifically put into that language that says as there's an obligation to receiving the money you need to keep these employees employed and working uh so to speak so that we don't have this massive unemployment going on through across the country uh so we continue to do that now what we did do is make sure that employees understood that um you're getting paid and you're also right then ready and available for work so in in

097back then we didn't know how long what was going to happen is this two weeks is it a month is it six weeks um we found out what it meant after a while certainly in terms of a long-term shutdown but in the beginning we really didn't know how long that was going to be uh so that was the point of making sure that you know those individuals were ready and available for work so if we did go back or go back in some form they were ready to do so they're on the payroll and ready to go and we had access to them but that also created obviously we didn't come back so that also created some savings not on the employee side but in terms of not running our buses so we didn't have

098our buses running we weren't using fuel our maintenance was much less so we did accrue some savings uh between march and the end of the school year than we would have otherwise we would have had expenditures during that time so that money then could serve two purposes uh one is if we have savings just like we do in any other part of the budget it we can transfer money to other parts where we need it so budget is a plan the plan is developed well in advance of the fiscal year in which we're acting so in certain situations we have areas where we didn't expect to have so many expenditures exceed those expenditures in other areas where we thought we were going to have expenditures and and we didn't have them so we're able to

099transfer money between accounts and and we can do that with board approval so that money was available for that purpose if we needed it in another area such as purchase a ppe which we we had to go on a shopping spree for that and didn't anticipate that in the beginning of the year when we developed the budget but the other purpose is again is fund balance so if we have savings where we don't need that money in other areas that becomes surplus funds at the end of the year we're able to accumulate those and what we call fund balance and and that becomes available for future years to help with the revenue side in as we discussed not having as much um fund balance as other school district that is another way to create fund

100balance is to have expenditure savings in in a current year which can be accumulated and then used or saved in for future years uh so that's really the two aspects to that question in terms of what happened with transportation and where did where did the funds go that weren't needed to be utilized during that time period thanks neil by way of transition um i'm going to move to the start time discussion if everyone is okay with that but there's a question here that says boy it sure seems like start and end times are extremely dependent on school buses maybe we should just have more school buses any thoughts on that mr sanders uh yeah school buses are very expensive um that's one um you know upwards of a hundred thousand dollars so um so school

101buses are one issue you know we have to pay for those uh we do get some state aid back but it's it's about sixty percent so we're still um having about forty percent of the cost uh the other issue beyond that which is a more challenging issue really is having the availability of drivers and there is a i would call it a local shortage it's a statewide shortage there just aren't enough people willing to become school bus drivers uh to have a a repertoire of people available when you need them so we have been struggling as every other district if you get the times union you will periodically see very large ads excuse me for bus drivers from various school districts it's not only us don't know all of the reasons for that but we

102certainly have seen this over the past several years where um people that used to take these types of positions are no longer interested in in doing that our population of drivers is on the higher end of the age scale so this is not um younger people that traditionally want to become uh drivers they're people that are toward the end of their career and look at this as another opportunity um so that's one aspect i i will tell you very candidly and another aspect is there's very stringent requirements for breast drivers in terms of physical performance tests that have to be followed drug and alcohol can't be consumed uh there's regular testing for that uh so there's um some things that people have to keep in mind when applying for those positions but um just we've

103we've tried many different avenues to try to increase our cadre of potential bus drivers haven't found the magic solution yet so even though we can buy more buses at this point we wouldn't have anybody to drive them and that really is becoming a real challenge for all school districts across new york state and i i asked you to finish on that question because the the lack of options that we have and flexibility that we have around transportation really has driven no pun intended a lot of her conversations around looking at different start times and many many many comments that came in the thought exchange were you know why don't can't you be more creative can't you think out of the box um aren't there ways you can problem solve this in so many of the

104places where we get stuck are with transportation and when you factor in our geography here in guilderland um our seven distinct school campuses the location of the bus garage the nature of traffic on western aven 146. these are all unique to guilderland so a shenandoah may not have these issues a bethlehem might because they're geographically set up a little bit different so while we like to compare ourselves across our neighbors it doesn't always work again because of just the geography in the real estate we need to cover so um i'm gonna does anyone have any other questions on any of the topics we've already covered because i am mindful of the time here um all right so barbara go ahead this is just a quickie um if we do get more state aid from the

105senate and the assembly versions could we consider at least putting more tas um as potential hires sort of like the ftes that we did for teachers you know the 5.7 in the event we need them um one of the things that that allen pointed out is that this year our reading teachers uh many times couldn't do their their reading duties because they were helping with the cohort and i i'm just wondering if if we do get a little more money if perhaps you would consider just putting in a few more ta positions so that our reading teachers could be freed up um you know to do the work that they were originally intended to do just a thought okay thank you for that okay so let me transition here oops sorry i got an error

106so um let me um just uh refresh a little memories and the first thing i want to show is a revised start times for 20 21 2022 this addresses some of the many uh um comments in the thought exchange about contractual issues uh we did have um the end time in the elementary schools had been two o'clock that had 10 minutes too much time taking away from teacher planning time so we have amended that a little bit so these are slightly revised to address that but i did not take the asterisk away because we're still working on this um so i just wanted to share that with you the next slide is um the teacher workday at the elementary level and alan lockwood can i put you on the spot to talk through what this

107means and how it works for the teacher day and how it fits within the teacher elementary teachers contract yeah sure um uh so with a start time uh teacher start time of 7 25 um that gives them just a little bit of buffer in the morning before students start to uh get off the buses and then uh the idea is that they're essentially with their students um right up until dismissal time with a couple of exceptions they have a 30-minute duty-free lunch period built in there and they also have at least a 30-minute special area class where their students have a 30-minute special area class that they're not required to attend which starts their planning time for the day um so our elementary teachers well teachers get 110 minutes of planning time um during the

108course of the day well four days a week except for our meeting day when it's 50 minutes so to get to that 110 minutes we have that 30 minute special area class during the course of the day and then they would have the bulk of their time after student dismissal so if students leave the building at 1 50 then they have an hour and 20 minutes of planning time after school which combined with that 30 minute special area class that they don't that their students go to um gives them their 110 minutes of planning time during those four days um one day a week we do have uh is a designated meeting day right now that's wednesday where we have our staff meetings or curriculum meetings so they get 50 minutes of planning time then

109so we have to provide for that 30 minute of planning time during the course of the day and then an additional 20 minutes after school but then the rest of that time is designated to staff meetings thanks alan and um well there's some questions in the thought exchange about well what happens with students between 7 30 and 7 45 is that 15 minute arrangement different than what we have now or different from what we had pre-pandemic uh it's no different from what we have now or what we had pre-pandemic [Music] pre-pandemic we had a drop time of 7 45 so we started to unload the buses at 7 45 and parents would start to drop off their students at 7 45 and they make their way down to the classrooms and they unpack and they

110go into their classrooms and put their things away hand in their homework and such but then the official start of the day pre pandemic was then eight o'clock so there was about a 15 minute there was a 15 minute period of time to allow that transition into the building and then at eight o'clock if students were just coming to the building at eight o'clock they were considered tardy the same holds true this year though we have the two split times our primary students are dropped off right now at 7 30 with a start time of 7 45 and our third and fourth grade students are dropped off at 8 15 with the official start time of 8 30. so this proposed schedule for next year really is no different from what we've traditionally or historically

111had we have a drop time and then about a 15 minute buffer to allow students to offload off the buses for parents to drop them off and for them to get into the classroom before the official start of the school day and alan how how did it go with the 7 30 start for those k2 children uh really it was not an issue our uh primary students come in uh bubbling with energy each and every day probably more so than than i do certainly uh but there has not really been any sort of instructional impact with starting the day at that time it's it's really just 15 minutes earlier for our students and and it has been a non-issue okay thanks thanks alan uh mr laster i'm gonna have you take a look at the

112next slide this is um a slide that includes the student day at the top and then the teacher day and you shared this with me earlier and you have a difference between monday tuesday wednesday and thursday friday can you explain kind of the thinking behind that and and what you hope that that would accomplish sure uh thanks dr well so uh basically we have we had three activity periods in previous years we're looking to preserve those three however uh in previous years we had it on monday tuesday and then thursday because we had a wednesday afternoon meeting day so i i would propose and we talked about a building cabinet last week if if we have to go with the schedule at the middle level i would say let's try to do our activity period

113three days in a row for consistency purposes for students so it would be a monday tuesday wednesday activity period um because the buses uh because the activity period you can see on the slide ends at 4 20. the teacher work day we purposely staggered that 10 minutes because if any of you have ever been to the middle school on a friday one of the challenges uh is the teacher work day and the student end day are at the same time so it creates a big jam up trying to leave campus so you can see that with the end times between students and teachers for all of the days we staggered it by 10 minutes to try to mitigate those problems so when you look at thursday friday uh i think it's unreasonable to think that

114we're going to have an hour after school having professional conversations and staff meetings and things like that so we shifted our meeting time our professional development time that we have to thursday mornings and friday mornings which we you can see will allow our staff to get out of here uh 10 minutes right after dismissal of students on on thursdays and fridays so you know if if this is the direction in which the district is going uh i want to be prepared for it and try to make the best situation for students and staff so um the other thing that we are looking at is the amount of time as a district between 7 45 and potentially 905 so you have a gap um so our community may have a need to have a morning program

115so i would be looking to to put together uh instead of our come and sit in the cafeteria have breakfast program i would like to have students especially next fall think about coming and signing up for some uh you know i call them for a lack of better words i was talking to gloria about it enrichment but targeted enrichment some interventions again we're very concerned about that anticipated learning loss so if we could put together something in the morning especially if there's a new community need that emerges we definitely would be interested in talking about that so that's basically where we are in our thinking and planning if we have to go in this direction as a middle level barbara and then blanca i just had a quick question for alan uh the after school

11680-minute teacher time or planning time i guess it's called uh what happens as in the past many teachers would have clubs with kids you know be in sign language or robotics or whatever where they you know did these after school activities does that bump into their planning time or are they giving up their planning time to do that um thanks that's a good question barbara we have had some teachers who've done that who've volunteered to give up their planning time and lead a club but what's been far more common at least at ges and i think at some of the other schools is that the pta has stepped in and provided enrichment courses we've had several sessions of courses over the last few years that have really been sponsored and run by the ptas that

117include those robotics clubs and book clubs and even just lego building clubs so they've been great experiences for our students they've also served as a fundraiser for our ptas and still preserved teaching plan teacher planning time so we have had some teachers who've led clubs and i would anticipate that that would still happen but the bulker from the pta blanca uh my question is for mr lester um are you getting clearly on the thought exchange we have a lot of strong opinions opposed to the new start time is that the case amongst your staff do you know uh yeah i think i get a sense from staff that they're definitely concerned about the the late ending i don't know how many people know what i just sort of talked about from the slide uh you

118know that was something that you know came out of our building cabinet i talked about i proposed that idea to them last thursday um you know so as this conversation continues um you know i think that the feedback i'm getting is people are you know want us to make sure we examine all of the impact on the middle level learner and whether or not the 50-minute gain at the high school level is worth the 20-minute adjustment back to the middle level and that's basically the the sort of uh conversation so okay thank you then my other question sorry marie i'm i'm still i'm stealing another opportunity um has has any thought been given to shortening the day or will that make things like a whole bunch worse because it'll be more complicated it just seems

119to me and again this is my personal experience that that seems like one heck of a long day especially for the kids that are transitioning from elementary school into middle school it felt really long to me it felt even worse when the daylight would get shorter and then when my kids started playing varsity tennis some one of our parents wrote in the thought exchange that it's it's basically madness at night when you're trying to get dinner on the table do the homework and the kids are coming home late from from um you know practice or games so i just want to put that out there has any thought been given to that well it's funny that you should mention that blanca so i'm probably going to get myself in trouble here but um i actually

120looked at the analysis of the numbers of hours of instruction at the middle school and um secondary schools need to have 990 hours of instruction in a year for state aid purposes and the middle school is 90 hours over that 1080 hours uh which is a lot so here here is the challenge i think it you know i say it would be relatively easy but i'm i can feel how people no it's not easy uh i do think it would be relatively easy to um find 20 minutes to make the middle school 20 minutes shorter but all roads lead to transportation the only way to do that is to make a similar reduction in the number of hours at the high school which has more than needed in its hours but not as much so

121then the conversation has to circulate around to would we be willing to reduce certain minutes per block at the high school in order to shorten the um middle school day so that the buses can get between those buildings in a reasonable amount of time and i i think it is a hundred percent worth the conversation even if we weren't looking at this um one thousand eighty hours is a lot yeah to echo dr wilds and we had a conversation about this today the only concern that i would have about gaining the full 20 minutes is when you think about our master schedules at the secondary level our our some of our based classes like music they're already 40 minutes if you start chipping away at the minutes of those some of those instructional periods we're

122then talking maybe only 35 i just we just have to be careful talking about how many minutes we're talking off the instructional day because i would not want to impact program an instructional program on kids so i do think we have some flexibility with the analysis of the minutes but i would be really nervous about doing the full 20 minutes because that would make our our skinnies like 35 minutes 32 minutes something like that i think gloria then blanca well i'm encouraged to hear uh at least some thinking uh beyond you know what we see on the paper uh um you know blanca asked i'm and i know mike has heard from people and i have heard from people former teachers as you heard from nancy condolen today and teachers who are today teaching at

123middle level um there are a lot of disadvantages to this late this lateness uh i mean the effect on family life alone uh having lived this schedule myself with kids uh but it was 20 minutes shorter and i was pulling my hair out i mean kids are eating in the car heading to religious ed or going here or there you're trying to get dinner in them forget family life forget sitting around and having dinner during the week that that just doesn't happen trying to get to a doctor's appointment impossible so you end up taking the kids out of school during the day um kids don't want to stay activity period because it's so darn late and the late buses are way late getting home so there are a lot of disadvantages to this late day

124and it's been this way for so long and pushing it 20 minutes more just exacerbates the whole thing so i'm i'm encouraged to hear some some thought i i respect your you're thinking mike about you know the skinnies and all but i think we need to be creative and we need to think about what's best for this age group as well as we're thinking about the high school we're making some you know tremendous changes there and i respect that we think about our elementary school but let's not forget those kids in the middle uh they they deserve uh the same kind of thinking and effort that we've put planta and then sema yeah jumping off of mike and gloria's points um so while we're thinking about what could be detrimental in terms of taking away

125minutes from certain classes i would also be fearful as a parent if i didn't bring up the point that i already feel like there's a lot of homework and if shortening the day will somehow mean that there's more homework expected or expectations of more homework or busy work in the evening that um would also be bad so i just think we need to be cognizant of both that we're not going to be like trying to fix one problem and then creating another one it is it is hard to be the parent of a middle schooler and it is it is uh it doesn't help that it's dark to top it off it's dark when the kids get on the bus and it's dark when they're coming home it's really difficult um so that was one

126point then i just want to add um i am i am pro having adolescence start later i i've seen the same research that dr b presented and i and i i believe in it but i am also very concerned with the middle school start time i just don't know that it's feasible we don't live in a perfect world i think where we could have the kids starting at 10 or what now it's just not gonna work i'm more comfortable with the high school start time but i also agree with most of the community that the the middle school start time might need some work so seema and then gloria's your hand up again okay seema um my question is i guess you know a lot of people wrote in about the middle school start time

127they did the thought exchange um at pta council um i heard that it was middle school teachers were not happy with the late start time but also high school teachers um also not happy with the late end time so i know that there's always it's not going to be perfect for anybody but knowing that we it's already uncertain next year just like we talked about before with um just uncertainty in general with the school year why i don't you know i don't know why we'd add in another factor of like this time change that a lot of people are not in favor of and i understand you know starting early is also not ideal but there's i hear pushback too from the ending late in the high school level too so now we have middle

128school and high school school uh both of those buildings upset about the late end time late end time right um so i don't know if that's something that you know is that like you do we need to throw a wrench into the time uh start time and end time in addition to all the other uncertainty that we talked about before which is why we're not making other changes i think i'm going to transition to mike here in a minute i i just would say that if we could go back to our old times and then if we wanted to make a time change the year after that would be four consecutive years with different start times 2019 no 20 2019 2020 then this year then next year and then the following year um that's a

129lot of transitions for transportation to do four separate trying times um but you know it's it's a reasonable comment let me um flash ahead here to the high school um and let mike talk about what you guys are thinking about there um let me let me start like we are we're like everybody else we're kind of uh working within the model of the transportation drop off and pick up times so as you're looking at this um block one um and block four so you see block one starts at 8 20 so we're talking about you know um 8 15 drop off from the buses they're going directly to block one with this is what our schedule currently looks like this is maintaining an 84 minute schedule um the buses get back to the high school

130and depart by 3 20 and then we've got the activity period um so if we leave our activity period at the end of the day the students would be able to stay until four o'clock and then we'd have late buses going at 405. now i give mike laster a lot of credit for this mike was when mike was suggesting uh the idea of doing the after school activity period three days a week and then switching it to the morning for two days a week we were debating this in cabinet building cabinet as well we talked about the idea of moving the activity period to entirely in the beginning of the day so all five days it would be 7 38 to 8 20. but during our discussion people are bringing out well it's hard to

131do that and give up the opportunity for extra help for students if if because students are a lot less likely to get extra help before school than they would be after school and i think it's a very valid point so this seems like a pretty decent compromise of maintaining the activity period after school three days a week and then shifting it to before school or thursday and friday where we can do our meetings on thursday and collaboration on a friday so so but we're still you know as probably every other level is we are still talking about variations of this and how we can maximize the time um and again mariano if you want me to bring up the the remediation period we're trying to explore in the middle of the day too um sure

132there's an idea floating around it's worth sharing yeah we've been exploring just an idea and cabinet to see what people think about it and we're not sure if we can do it but it's about creating a remediation period during the school day it does mean we have to shift the times a little bit to make it work shift it means we would we would have to look at a shorter instructional block and shorter passing times um but we're exploring that idea of trying to create like a 30 minute period during the day where students could get help from teachers cena um i don't know if it just impacts the high school but are there programs that are um like from boces and cte that are impacted by middle school and high school start times or

133just high school are are they impacted at all we've been looking closely at the cet times um so a typical a morning cte program goes from eight o'clock until 10 30. so if you look at our bell times what that does is that means a student who's going to bozies for their their morning program would be returning and would take two classes in block three and four so they would come back around 11 o'clock and they we would have to house them and uh study all for a half hour before they start their afternoon classes um for the morning bus run we'd have to figure that out with transportation because we would have to we'd have to figure out a way to do bus runs that would bring them directly from their house to the

134cte programs in the afternoon the afternoon has always been a challenge for us because those programs go from 11 o'clock to 1 30 and if you look at our schedule that would mean they'd be leaving block two right in the middle of block two and coming back right um in the middle like the beginning of block four what we would have to do is and actually this is a positive change for those students we would plan their ghs classes a little bit differently we would have them take a block one class and a block four class so they would take a ghs class leave for ct come back and they would come back pretty close to the start of our block four class they miss a little bit of time but we would be able

135to work with that it's actually better than it is now and i apologize i forgot to ask two um advanced classes in eighth grade that meet before school starts with that still happen or yeah so so uh in addition to we have studio art that we would still offer we would still have all of our enrichment offerings like i said if a new need emerges in the community where we want to expand some of those enrichment offerings so that kids could sign up for that i think that we could definitely do that um you know i i you know that's basically sort of you asked about the impact um on the middle level uh we don't have the same situation as high school but um you know the impact is minimal sema in terms of

136uh your your question before so um i just think that since we've gotten so many comments about the start times that i wonder is there a way to have like a separate vote or somehow detach that from the budget itself because i'm afraid it's going to hold it up yes you there there is no cost um proposal associated with this um it it was a function of when were we meeting and when did we want to have the conversation however if there is going to be a well transportation will need to know what they're doing in the fall in may so the board needs to make a decision on what to be wanting to include in the budget on april 13th but this piece can be held off for a little bit of time does

137barbara do you need to make a motion to do that how does that work okay okay uh the one thing that i wanted to point out is this the fear of the unknown remember one of the concerns that we had when we were talking about changing start times was the earlier start time for our younger students and because we were forced to do that this year um what alan and all the other um principals have told us is that you know the kids were bright and ready to learn and there was no impact on their ability to learn or behavior or whatever and i think the same thing probably will apply at the high school in the middle school level anytime there's a change um you know people fear change and yet all the data

138that we have [Music] including one that i think i disseminated to the board the other day just indicates that it is the best thing for kids and all these fears that are out there really once the thing is implemented um there's a whole change in attitude in a positive way so i would just encourage you know what you're what you folks are doing about potentially uh helping the middle school situation um you know by shaving off a few minutes you know in each period or whatever grand solutions you come up with but um i i just think i think what marie points out that if you just keep changing times you know four years in a row um i don't think that's good for kids and the middle school kids certainly will benefit when they

139move up to the high school and and that has just been proven by one scientific study after another so i i just would hope that uh with all the innovations that you folks seemingly are coming up with that you know we will continue with this thanks rebecca um i just wanted to echo very similarly to what barb just said i really like commend you for coming up with the creative solutions in response to the thought exchange that you just presented for the middle school in the high school um you know the high school and i'm gonna get the times a little bit off currently starts at i think 10 15 or 10 20. if we were to go back to 2019 time that's a three hour difference i mean that that is a stark difference

140if we were to go back to what where it was where it was um and the health benefits really have been borne out as barb said in multiple multiple studies so i really love the creativity into making it work better for students across the district but i would not really be in support of going back to what it was gloria i i don't think the middle school thing is the thing about is what barbara said about fear i have to disagree there we're we're moving in a negative direction by extending the day later that's clear i mean we've already been in this late mode for years and we know it has it has problems and so now what we're doing is we're just moving it even worse so i don't think we're gaining anything with

141the middle school time with the change by pushing it forward so i think that is an issue and that's going to be a problem i have no problem with change it's not a matter of fear it's just that it has not worked well before and it's certainly not going to work if we increase it and push it further in the day i think the biggest the biggest drawback is what it does to kids family life and what it does to family life in general and the stress on kids blanca so i think what what i'm hearing though is that at the very least we need to have more discussion about it and i don't know if there's an opportunity to have a thought exchange devoted just to this or if there's ever an opportunity to

142have families vote on this members of the community but it is it's going to be life-changing for some folks and we can make all the changes we want in the world to the school schedule but you know work schedules we have no control over so we could be trying to do something really good for kids and then making it really more difficult on parents and family life which could then in turn make it worse for the children i'm just putting that out there i think what i'm hearing though is that there's a lot of great points out there a lot of great data and we just need more time to talk about it and we also have to respect the members of the community that have voiced their concerns and our teachers as well that's

143what i think so just a point of information the task force is going to get back together i'll share all the feedback with them and encourage them to do some brainstorming i just want to point out and maybe it's obvious to everyone but i i do want to give a shout out to the task force um because this has been a ton of work um the option that you've seen before you is the 18th variation that they looked at so we did research i shared some of that last week damien led a subcommittee that looked at seven options we brought in a school bus consultant organization who gave us five more we threw all those out because they had issues they gave us five more that's 17 and then this one is number 18. so

144um just for what it's worth i don't want anyone to think that we hastily arrived at a plan that was not um really worked over a million different ways and there were a couple things in the thought exchange that wouldn't it just be easy to flip the middle school in the elementary school times and that came up in a variety of ways and i i just want to mention that i i i talked with danielle poirier about that very thing and there's a few reasons why we can't do it from a transportation perspective in the morning when we do our elementary runs those runs are confined to neighborhoods so they take a lot less time to pick up the kids within the catchment areas and and and drop students off at their neighborhood school to

145do the middle school run first would take much much longer so we would either have to start them much earlier or we'd have to push the start of the high school even later which would push the start of the elementary well after nine o'clock and now we're creating widespread child care needs for very young children so while on paper it may look like it makes a lot of sense it's it's really not a feasible solution for again our geography if if we were all on one campus it might work but we're not so um i i just wanted to say that because that had come up three or four times in the thought exchange so at this point i know we've been working here for a while um and so i guess i want to

146just open it up for any other comments questions thoughts um on any of the topics and we did not get to all of the thought exchange questions i had uh good intentions community if you're listening i had many of them highlighted hoping to cover a lot of territory i think we did cover a lot of territory but we didn't get to everything for that i apologize i'd like to just comment to wrap up the discussion about start times i think that was a great discussion that we just had clearly it's very complex there's a lot of different aspects of the issue i really believe that if we're going to do it this is the year to do it it's a great time to start fresh to me it seems like the biggest concerns from that

147is the ending time so marie mentioned that we could consider starting the school day i think that's a really good idea and we should definitely consider it right if we're going to you know go by the studies that have been presented the students are going to be more eager to learn they're going to be able to learn better during the school day because of the later start time so starting the classes by maybe just a couple minutes each shouldn't have a profound impact right uh and it will you know even if we can shave 20 minutes off the day i think that would alleviate many of the issues that were brought up so i just wanted to throw that out there for consideration ben and we can't hear you we continue to carry ta unassigned

148um neil do you happen to know the number off the top of your head i want to say six perhaps five um it would be the same number as last year we scaled it back a little bit last year so um i think it's around five i remember correctly luciano is that your hand again no worries no it wasn't sorry i kept it from last time so um just a quick thing about next steps uh we don't meet again until the 13th um between now and then in theory we will have a state budget with some updates then to the worksheet that neil shared for today and i would assume we would continue with questions answers and whatever updates we might have at that point the task force is meeting after the 13th so perhaps

149it would make some sense that we focus mostly on our the budget related topics and if i have any updates around tasks task force i can share them but that they won't meet until the couple days after that all right i want to just thank everyone who participated in our thought exchange um certainly to our board members with your great questions and um you know i think this is a really good conversation tonight so sema i'll turn it back to you sure if we don't have any other comments or questions can i have a motion to adjourn uh blanca second rebecca all in favor hi all right passes 9-0 thank you everybody have a good night thank you everyone you