001good evening everyone uh welcome to the north rose wolcott central school board meeting um i am lucinda conyer the president of the board and i will call the meeting to order please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all there um the first order of business is for us to approve the agenda i do need to add one item under number three the reports and correspondence please add a fourth bullet for a report of the safety committee by john bogard our board member with that addition is there a motion to up to approve the agenda um isaiah ii linda any discussion all in favor for hands
002all right i see everyone thank you that is approved um it's nice i see regent norwood here thank you for coming i will turn this over to michael poland our superintendent to introduce you thank you mrs collier so it's an honor and a pleasure to have regent wade norwood with us this evening um you may have recognized him from his work as a regent for new york state i've had the pleasure of interacting with regent norwood over the years when he visited my high school got a chance to walk down the hall take a little bit of perspective away from him and it's clear to me and i i would venture to guess anybody who interacts with him that he is a tired ad tireless advocate for all children regardless of their background whether it
003comes from rural suburban or urban areas he's he's a staunch advocate and a heck of an ally for us um most recently i believe in 2018 he became the ceo of common ground health and tonight's presentation i i'm thinking is going to focus a little bit on that and i think as you hear from bridget barr community schools administrator a lot of the work that regent norwood has been able to share through common ground health is is present in a lot of our practices when it comes down to community schools and advocating for our side of the county in terms of offering our students and our families equitable opportunities for services so i'm really appreciative of mr norwood coming in tonight spending some time with us i know he's a busy man and it's taken
004us about a year and a half to get his schedule to align with ours so it just speaks to his commitments around the state and his commitments to education and to common ground health so with without any further ado like to turn it over to regent norwood and let him get started thank you regent norwood superintendent pulling thank you very much for that gracious introduction it is an absolutely delight to be here and i hope that we figured out how to get my slides in the hands of someone uh to bring up and if that can happen uh as i do the throat clearing would be wonderful uh and i would just uh say by way of introduction to uh president collier and to the honorable board uh how much i really appreciate this opportunity
005to visit with you this evening uh rose new york is where when i was a child my family would drive uh for us to uh worship on sundays and so in many ways i feel very connected to wayne county uh to those sunday afternoons uh spent at sodas point uh and as uh the superintendent noted uh i have uh found as many opportunities as possible in my current work as a region and at common ground health to make sure that i and my team members are very much engaged with wayne county and with north rose wolcott in particular uh and i would be remiss if i did not spend uh a couple of my few precious moments just saying thank you to you all um without a doubt these have been uh challenging times for
006not only evolving education but for the administration and operations of school districts uh and i want you to know how much i am aware and how much my colleagues in the state education department and in the world of health improvement are aware of how incredible pioneers you are have been and if i can move from thinking institutionally to thinking individually i spent 16 years of my life as an elected official and i am incredibly aware of the fact that what we're doing right now uh as my wife is sitting at the dinner table eating without me what we're doing right now is what i did for a window in my life but it's what you guys do now and on behalf of a grateful finger lakes community uh please allow me to say thank you
007to you all for your service for your commitment to serving the north rose woke up community and for the sacrifices that you make every day in order to be the public servants and the stu servant leaders that you are i'll i'll move to my short presentation to you this evening uh by first of all introducing common ground health which is the regional health planning entity for the nine county finger lakes region uh we see it as our mission to bring focus to the region's health issues through our research data and analytic through our community engagement and through the community partnerships like the wayne county family partnership in which we participate uh i would say that the secret sauce the magic to our work isn't really the data but rather the over 700 volunteers from across
008the region who sit on the 24 different tables that we convene ranging from our african-american health coalition uh to our workforce consortium it is that breadth and depth of leaders from all the sectors of our community at every level that really allow us to transform next slide transform our data into information and into understanding this slide's animated so you can click as i talk through uh we we really believe that the major part of the work we do and i want you to know how much your community schools program is an important part of what we see occurring in this community we really try and make sure that we are focused on how it is that we might inform the community and leaders like you in your action how it is that we might be
009better collaborators uh with you and how it is that we might make sure that our collective work aims towards transformation of ending status quo business as usual and moving to next level and one of my mantras for the last 22 months has been a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and we should be aiming to move from this pandemic mode not back to normal because normal wasn't good for everyone but to the next normal figuring it out what are the lessons that we might learn and how might those lessons be applied towards ensuring that we wind up in a place that is not less not the same but better and more beautiful than that which we left in march 2020 when the world went sideways and my hope is to further introduce thinking about
010health and public health in your deliberations so that you might have more information more research data and analytics to bring focus to your work next slide please when when i uh speak to the community about public health in the finger lakes region i want you to know that most folks are really fooled by the data and tend to think that because of the fact that our overall regional data does such a great job of presenting us as a community of affluence that most people do not understand how widespread poverty is within our region how poverty is not relegated to the inner city of rochester and how the face of poverty does not look like my face but rather looks like our faces and i've been doing this work since 2006 and i want you to
011know that audiences to which i present are still stunned when they are confronted with the data to realize that the tale of two cities of our region is a palpable and real story that cheek by jowl with our prosperity are folks who are living in poverty and quite honestly maps of wayne county and data of wayne county are incredibly powerful data points for me to share because of the fact that you all by the very nature of wayne county live with that duality as residents of wayne and within north rose wolcott you all understand the challenge of how is it that we maintain uh the sense of prosperity and affluence and the attractiveness and the high quality of life our region provides while at the same time acknowledging the reality that it is not a
012prosperity that's shared by all households next slide please this is the reality of wayne county that if we map wayne county by zip code by socioeconomic status with scs being a composite measure that my much brighter than my colleagues at uh common ground health have crafted as a way of capturing the unemployment rate within the zip code the types of jobs held by adults in the zip code the per capita income the poverty rate the age of the population household composition and if we take those indicators and we place them on a scale from high to low with the lowest on the top bar map being the essentially the poorest in our community and the lighter the color the higher the scs the wealthier what we are able to share with folks is how incredibly
013palpable this tale of two cities is for wayne county and for my work in health planning the second map is the same wayne county divided by zip code but here the color coding isn't about class here the color coding is about premature death the rate at which residents of wayne county die before life expectancy and here for our purposes life expectancy at age 75. it's an amazing picture that allows us to see quite literally how poverty is killing us and madam president i could share maps for the region and you would see this exact pattern played out across the region from lake ontario down to the pennsylvania line from seneca county to shimon poverty has real impacts on the health of our community and i dare say and it is this incredible gift that i
014have as a member of the board of regents who works each day in the world of health to understand the absolute genius of franklin roosevelt and francis perkins and their colleagues who when the federal government created the bureaucracy they created it as the department of health education and welfare in many ways we've made a mistake by trying to think that those are three different policy areas health and education are inextricably linked and what we do in health and education determines the general welfare of the community next slide please and so as we look at wayne county and think about eastern versus western wayne what we begin to document is what you all have always known that there is a vast difference between the two and thinking and analyzing at the county level is insufficient because
015when we look at eastern versus western way we see profound differences in household income we see profound differences in the poverty level next slide please we see profound differences in the rate at which children are living in poverty and consequently we get to see the impact on school operations and the incredible obligation that you and your sister districts in eastern wayne county have to meeting the simple human needs of the students in your classrooms and i really appreciate this opportunity uh one of our mantras in community organizing is nothing about me without me and so i appreciate the chance madam president to make sure that you and your colleagues are aware of the fact that we carry this slide and we have been carrying this slide since the pandemic struck across the region to make
016sure that this community understands the special obligation that you all have had the special ways in which you've needed to extend yourselves and lean forward during this crisis and my opportunity is to make sure that folks understand that predates the pandemic that this is the nature of work when educators take ownership and stewardship of how is it that we're going to meet the needs of students who are being raised in households that are below the poverty level and the special work that you do the incredible achievements that you've made are really my whole purpose in spotlighting tonight and i am incredibly grateful uh to be on your agenda this evening uh knowing that your experts uh are here and will follow me sharing some of the things that i just want to say to you
017are greatly appreciated by me and my colleagues in health improvement next slide please uh this is a charting of childhood overweight and obesity uh which has really been the impetus for common ground health uh involving itself in partnerships with school districts and i am incredibly grateful for the manner in which uh your team uh the superintendent the wayne county uh family partnership the boces have really been uh welcoming partners to our bringing the health sector in to support your work uh if we look at and these are small changes but small changes are meaningful in short time windows if we look at the rate at which uh children in eastern wayne have reported being overweight or obese we can see that the work you all are doing is making a difference you all are concretely
018contributing to better health for your students which means better health trajectories over the course of their lives uh and although my son is uh and my daughter uh 23 i am still able to remember how the lessons of wellness individual and community wellness that they learned at school were brought home and they changed our behavior i absolutely know i started recycling because my children were absolutely heartbroken if i didn't i really posit that the things that you all are teaching and that you are doing with your students and have been doing over the course of the last 10 years are not only making a difference in the lives of your students but in the lives of their families and i just want to share data with you to let you know you are making a
019difference and this is where i easily migrate from being a health planner to being pastor norwood and just simply say to you be not weary in well-doing i absolutely am appreciative of the incredible uh crucible in which you all work and are doing your work and i know that for every laudatory statement i'm making tonight there are members of your community who would substitute my laudatory comments with 50 uh criticisms but i would just say to you as a colleague of yours as someone who serves on the state school board endure stand rest with the confidence in the rightness of your work and we will continue our best effort to bring to you the data to allow you to see the results and the fruits of your labor and we will join with you in
020sharing this information in your community so that folks can know what you are doing is meaningful and why it is that as your regional health planner and as an at large member of the regents uh i'm grateful and appreciate what you and your colleagues are doing next slide and i'll move to my home stretch and get out of your way because i know you have a lengthy agenda i i would just share with you this slide is an incredibly important slide in my work because of the fact that we have surveyed the region 6855 people in the finger lakes region talk to us about health and health improvement and what is incredibly clear is it makes no difference where people live what color they are how much money they make how much education they have
021every adult in our region wants to live healthy and wants their children to live healthy and everybody aims for individual health improvement but there are real barriers between our aspirations and our actions and those barriers are incredibly responsive to household income and what we know clearly and these quotes are from folks who live in wayne county what we know incredibly clearly is that if you live in a household with an income less than 25 000 a year money is a real problem eating healthy is expensive and we may not think that as we go grocery shopping but the reality is if you think about how much food you can buy with ramen noodles or taco bell versus buying uh ingredients at a grocery store it is very easy for us to understand why healthy eating
022although it is an aspiration commonly shared it's a reality achieved only by those in higher income households so what you do to support access to healthy meals through your district based food program is incredibly important and how it is you responded to make sure that your students who are in food insecure households were able to gain access to food in the spring and summer of 2020 is something that history will know because of how important it was next slide by the same regard what we find are real differences not in people's desire to be physically active but in the reality of being physically active and so that's why your county partnership is important because it gives us the ability to talk to town village and county government about how it is that we make resources
023available in the built environment for folks to be physically active without thinking about the fact that they need to buy a gym membership in order to improve and support their health when we make walking a safer and more pleasant experience when we make sure that playgrounds and parks are available to children and families those are things that offset those barriers that stand in the way of people being physically active and improving their health and their general well-being next slide and i've only two to go and i'm almost done i will just share with you out of our regional health survey uh which we released in 2019 um i want you to understand the extent to which we have talked to the health systems and the insurer community to make sure that they understand that for
024your neighbors and this isn't unique to wayne out of pocket cost is a huge barrier to people accessing health and health supporting services and we think well we provided insurance for more people that 20 that 25 co-pay is more than enough for many families to decide well i will just delay care because i can't afford that co-payment outside of cost so that you're aware weight body weight and mental and emotional health really jumped up as serious issues of concern for the folks who live in wayne county and i hope that you'll know that the bottom right we ask people when it comes to health what's your major concern when it comes to the health of your children what's your major concern and with no prompting whatsoever other than that general question in wayne county when
025adults were asked what's important for children i hope you note education made the top five people in your community understand education is a health issue and this was a screaming finding for my board of directors to say to me as you all say to superintendent pulling on other matters my board said to me we don't want you to think about being a region as something you do on the side of your job we use my board said this data to say as a region you must connect health to education and as the ceo of common ground health you must connect education to health and that's why you and the work that you do and the fact that you have such a highly evolved community schools program that is data driven and that has data to
026prove its value is of incredible importance because you prove that these issues of poverty the importance of school districts addressing the mass laws hierarchy that's not an issue for the inner cities of rochester and elmira that's an issue for all of us and as a result i just wanted to be present to tell you that what you are what you do your work and the incredible success of your staff is of immeasurable value to those of us in the health world one more slide and then i'm done i i i want you to know that when we surveyed the region in the summer of 2018 to release in 2019 when we surveyed the community and asked them about mental and emotional health 90 of the adults who live in the finger lakes region who responded
027to our survey told us that their mental and emotional health was either good very good or excellent and 90 is a chamber of commerce number we can use that in marketing ourselves as a great place to raise a family but it leaves the fact that 10 percent said that their mental and emotional health was fair at best if not poor and that 10 becomes when we zero in on those adults who live in households with incomes of less than 25 000 a year who rate the neighborhood in which they live urban suburban or rural as unsafe and who report that they have barriers transportation barriers that they have to confront every day and this slide zeros in on wayne county and what i am incredibly possessed of every day is all of this data was
028gathered in the summer of 2018 pre-pandemic and i live every day understanding how compromised my well-being is because i'm not with you personally and i don't have the chance to hug those of you that i know and to be in physical relationship with my new friends i'm making this evening i know that when the world opens up again although i sit here and zoom in necktie i'm very comfortable doing that i have lived the last two years without wearing socks and the day i have to go back to wearing socks uh for 18 hours a day seven days a week i am going to have to struggle through that this is pre-pandemic data how much differently how much more challenging how worse is it going to look when we recreate this survey in the sump
029god willing in the summer 22 and this is just the adults if this is what the adults are telling us you know the reality of the children because children learn what they live and this is what the children are living final slide and so we are very dedicated to making sure that this and all of our other data are available on our website uh we just released our color of health report which focuses in on african-american health within the region but all of our data can be found on our website i invite you uh to take a look i invite you to share our link with colleagues uh we've redesigned our website so it kind of has an amazon feel uh if you google and say i want to see smoking wayne county new york
030uh we have paid the price for google analytics so that our site will jump up at the top and give you that data and when you land on our website it will also say if you're looking at this you might be interested in these other things as you all work with your staff if there are points of data that we're not making available that will help bring focus to your work i ask you as your friend please let me know and at no charge we will take on that task because that's why we're here and my aim is to make sure that you and your colleagues on all of the school districts in our region understand that we are a resource available to you my final slide is my ending slide and let me just
031end by thanking you and your community schools team let me in by thanking the superintendent for the incredible leadership that he's showing with regard to telehealth services and how we might bring them closer to the lives of our students and uh president uh collier i just thank you for your indulgence this evening uh the courtesy extended is much appreciated and i will uh proudly report at the february meeting of the board of regents uh my appreciation for and admiration for the work that you and your colleagues are doing in the north rose walcott district thank you ma'am well thank you for being with us it was very informative and uh a lot of it justifies our thinking for for certain of where we're trying to head and where we're trying to support our superintendent as
032he moves forward uh connecting our families to better health services throughout our district so thank you so much very welcome ma'am and i will excuse myself so you all can conduct your business but please feel free to call on me and i'm happy before i sign off to respond any comments questions or concerns any board members want to comment ask a question jason would like to all right i want to thank you mr norwood for a great presentation um ironically uh we had a presentation a few months ago uh from our uh from megan paliotti um that touched a couple of the points that you made and it kind of got me more in tune and more interested in learning more about the health of our area um there's a vast inequity of access to
033public health health care providers between wayne and monroe county it's uh i don't remember the exact numbers but i do remember that wayne county's health care providers had a virtually a double of the caseload of um patients that monroe county had and the number that sticks in my head was three thousand to one in wayne county and around fifteen hundred to one in monroe county as a rough number so i guess my question is how are communities uh combating the inequity of access to healthcare providers in rural areas and in areas of economic where there's room for economic improvement jason i could kiss your brother for the question first of all let me use it as a chance to say gold star to megan polioti i megan is incredible and the work she does is
034deeply appreciated i think that we have to really start wrestling with the fact that the educational and health professional practice system does not seek to place practitioners in rural areas uh it really incentivizes being in the metro where the quadrennary and tertiary care centers are located and we have to really say we're not providing continuous open access to comprehensive care for people if they have to travel outside of their community to get to their care provider health care workforce located in rural communities is a justice issue and again a crisis is a terrible thing to waste what we are experiencing right now is a huge workforce crisis in every sector in every community we need to be you all need to be and i am on your behalf very involved in responding to the governor's
035budget her proposals for how we address health care workforce shortages by saying it is not an absolute issue it's an absolute relative issue and the state has got to think about what are the incentives to encourage health care professionals to locate in rural communities uh that's the answer we're not it's not changing the numerator it's changing the denominator we've got to get more professionals who support and embrace working in a in a community outside of the metro seat and the blessing of rochester is outside of monroe county in the finger lakes if you want to be urban if you want to be suburban if you want to be rural you find that in the other eight counties it's not limited to monroe there are urban and suburban communities outside of monroe that are great places
036to live work play and pray and that's the message we've got to deliver and i'm trying to argue in albany that's the message for the state survival it's not convincing more people to go to new york city it's convincing more people who are tired in this has proven tired of living in the megalopolis of philly and raleigh and boston come to the finger lakes high quality of life good living and great schools i'm going to spend a lot of time on your website because i've been looking that for the information that you showed tonight and it's kind of hard to find on the census's website so i hope you don't mind if i shoot you an email once in a while with uh some questions and thank you you are very welcome to and that
037is the fuel that will keep my staff going to know it's hard to find on the census site but boy you're making it easy to find on the common ground health site thank you jason thank you sir madam president thank you thank you very much mr norwood before you go i just want to say thank you again deeply appreciate your time your commitment everything that you provide for us locally and at the state level um you know your presentation was shared with us about a year ago and as mrs collier said a lot of the work that you have fostered and put into place we took that and we use that as part of our new teacher orientation so we want to share the data but we more importantly want to tell the story so
038that when we build relationships and we we uh foster a community people are aware of what we're getting into and what we're trying to do and and think about the pathway that you've carved out and that you continue to advocate for us so really appreciate your time and and thank you i hope you can make it to the table so that mrs norwood and you can enjoy a little bit of dinner together so thank you for your time tonight thank you sir good night and michael thank you to your team for the incredible support we had in setting this up deeply appreciate it good night good night thank you michael for making this happen that was um great to hear and um it justifies what we're aiming trying to do with the health of our
039families absolutely uh we can move on to gary's presentation of this section of the budget okay and thank you and good evening so uh tina uh you can go to the next slide these first couple slides are what you have seen before just uh want to show these again remind ourselves and the public uh about the district goals and and our budget guidelines so next slide please again our budget goals just the the major goals that that we have and you saw this last last time again these presentations will will be uh up on our website for our public next slide please okay so uh since the last meeting here's the update we we did receive the governor's aid proposal she did her state of the state address uh last week and that really uh
040helps shape our entire budget so it's uh although on the revenue side um it we know we have to have a balanced budget we present to the voters an appropriation budget authorizing uh the the total budget that we're allowed to spend but it really has to be supported by our revenues and so the reason this state aid proposal is so important for us because state aid represents roughly 65 of our budget or of our revenues to support our budget so um we we do have some good news tonight and i want to say that um and as you've um seen over the last few months with the new governor there is a new tone at the top it is a is i think a more friendly tone from the governor's office a tone that says
041the governor is more committed than we've seen over over the last several years two public education right so uh we're very uh thankful for that so uh more specifically uh governor hulkel has committed to fully funding foundational aid over the next two years and her proposal does include a minimum three percent increase in foundation aid okay and that's exactly where we are with her proposal we're right at the three percent level our overall aid um is coming in between um four and a half and five percent increase so a um very um healthy increase in our state aid from one year to the next that will help alleviate um some of the pressures that we are dealing with as as we put the split budget together okay so she is committed to fully um funding
042as they have been not threatening as we've seen in the past a reduction in expense based aids categories such as boces and transportation aid and instructional materials aid so those will will continue at the same level in terms of um aidable uh pieces to our to our expenditures in those areas next slide please okay so what is the impact of the governor's proposal for us as i just mentioned it'll help alleviate some of the pressures and i just want to remind the board that and there is a slight about our major cost factors um that we're dealing with and in particular uh the huge increase that we're facing this year and health insurance cost so the as i mentioned the four and a half to five percent increase that we're looking at um is almost
043um a million dollars increase to our budget our total aid uh is is going from uh 20.6 million to roughly 21.6 million so um just under a million dollar in increase in in total eight from one year to the next and we're going to need that to support our budget okay and uh the bottom section there really goes to what regent norwood was just talking about at least in terms of providing a higher high quality education and addressing some student mental health needs so these are just some general areas that i threw in there that are coming out of the governor's office part of her overall proposal we'll see how that plays out directly for our area and our school district so next slide please and here's what you've seen before uh not much of
044an update we still don't have the final increase for our retirement rates for trs we know the range between two and seven percent increase we're ready to deal with that we expect those rates uh to come out in the next couple of weeks and at health insurance rates that's the big line item in our budget so um we hope that and expect that those rates may come in just a little under 25 level but nonetheless it's going to be uh that is the biggest challenge to our budget to budget uh expenditures okay and again salaries and benefits we are a people organization that represents 60 of our budget so um that's that's the big factor so i'm going to just wrap up kind of quickly here next slide as i will remind ourselves with each
045presentation as we get closer and closer and cross some of these key dates on our timeline so the first one was was this governor's aid proposal so that's really helping shape our budget we're working on that that will have um a a key effect to um where we come in on our tax levy and our tax rates and also our ability to support the programs that we intend to support so that's the presentation for tonight before uh future slides we'll start seeing some more um specific information on our budget in terms of charts and more detail so that's what we have to look forward to so this was a good starting point for for us seeing the state aid proposal any questions carrie a fundamental question is um what is foundation aid and instructional materials
046aid and the foundation aid is basically everything i know but can you explain well there's many different aid categories i mentioned some of the the larger expense based aids based on our expenditures uh such as our boces services our transportation expenses um those are big expense case uh categories but the foundation aid really represents our general aid those are that's what all districts receive general state aid and those that aid is um series of calculations based on several uh wealth factors for the district wealth and um enrollment factors are the key indicators that drive that aid but that's a general age right there so and then the instructional materials um amount to about a hundred thousand dollars or actually a little bit less and in total aid that is computer software aid computer hardware aid
047library materials aid and aid for textbooks those aids are largely based on um our enrollment count a certain dollar amount we receive in those categories um for for each pupil that that we have so that's not a significant or a huge material amount but it's a it's an important uh piece of the overall aid picture okay thank you okay last monday night i i listened to a presentation by dr rick timms and he was discussing the foundation aid and um the formula and um he was saying how uh inadequate and how wrong the formula is it really is uh one of the things that i did not know was that to determine the wealth of a district they they combine the an average of property value and income value for the district but the problem
048comes with the property value what they're used for that would be the um the lakeshore uh if you're close to a ski resort some of those that really skew the uh the the idea of what the wealth of the district is and it really um does make it a very bad thing for areas like us uh when when we have these late we have of course the lake frontage um and uh that it skews the the formula terribly and it's not in our favor no no it's not that's why i think it is encouraging to hear uh that the governor is at least um at least acknowledging false with the foundation aid formula and has committed to a minimum increase from year to year to help help rectify that so uh three percent minimum increase
049uh across the state i think um with her just being in office for a short time it it's a significant commitment and um he he did not feel that while the three percent increase is good he did not feel that it would the the increase of three percent will not equal the increased costs that districts are facing because you're right it doesn't because of inflation and student need right it does not we know that the inflation factor for us is um about four and a half percent for for for this year so you're right it does not cover it there there are winners and losers across the state when it comes to how all the state aid formulas run uh so um so we're not there yet but our our overall increase is positive it's
050more than the three percent so um so it's something i think we can hope for uh changes to improve that formula and and help districts like ours but you're right there's a lot of improvement needed with the formula and there was he talked at length about the tax cap and its calculation and i have to say he was going faster than i could process at that point um so i really do want to go back and and look at that more carefully when i have a chance but he was cautioning districts to always ask let's see let me think about this make sure that we use all that we can of the tax cap because if you don't in the future you never get that back because it's always based on last year uh that
051is true and exactly but that that is true uh and uh superintendent paul and i have been talking about uh where we are with our tax levy limit this year we've gone through those calculations we're still ironing those out there are some caveats to to that there's uh there is if you don't reach the the maximum limit which um in our case right now we're looking at that maximum limit at about four and a half percent so it does present kind of a challenge for us in one way but an opportunity and another to um take a look at what the text levy limit is for us and um and reach a point that is um uh fundamentally sound for for our districts and our and our taxpayers so uh that's what we're working on
052over the over the next month and we'll be talking about that some more okay and the other thing that he he uh said is going to be quite detrimental is because taxpayers as a whole hear about all this wonderful funding that has come in from the federal government due to the coven and so they think that we have a lot of money and while that money was spent on expendable things you know maybe maybe the um chromebooks were purchased and things that you needed to have to do the virtual uh school those things are going to need replacement in a few years or soon so that you're going to have to have money for those and those are going to end up out of your budget i would encourage all the board members to take
053time and go to the four county website and spend spend an hour and listen to that presentation because i think it'll give you some background that will really enable you to understand what gary and michael are really trying to do and what they're dealing with i will say that he has been a huge advocate for schools across the state he's he's uh been advocating on our behalf and trying to rectify the the issues particularly with the with the forum list yeah yeah okay thank you thank you very much um do any of you have a question linda am i hearing you yeah i wanted to make a comment uh i thank you gary for talking about you know the the big issue with foundation aid and how it just is not well done it's not
054well thought out it's not well done it's something that has been a thorn in many districts side for a long time it's something that i know our four county legislative committee is pushing for change superintendents are pushing for change so hopefully we're started in that direction yeah i hope so and i hope we have someone at the top who's listening now yes all right thank you very much and um if i can here's my agenda um i think we can move on to our reports and correspondence thank you gary uh first report um [Music] michael do you want to introduce the the high school sure absolutely thank you uh cinda gary nice job so it's a pleasure to have scott bradley amanda johnson and uh amy plow with us tonight um they're gonna be presenting
055uh idea for a club and this really goes back to a lot of what we've been focused on with our strategic action plan and how we value diversity equity and inclusion it's something that really i think you're going to find really forward thinking on their part in something that's in response to a growing need for students to feel safe regardless of their background and i don't want to steal their thunder because they did a great job presenting this club proposal to our uh administrative council so i'm going to turn it over to scott let him get started before amy and amanda jump in thank you you see that screen is that did that come up yes okay um appreciate the opportunity to speak with everybody tonight um and and being able to present this idea
056so this goes back to the last year um we had jeanette adams price come in and do some professional development for our staff and um amanda johnson amy plow came to me part way through that presentation with the idea and said this is something we'd really like to do to start a gay straight alliance club here at the high school through that they we talked about how it really ties in and connects with the district's strategic action plan and our school improvement plan for the building and the goals that we have in there really specifically it connects to the equity promise of creating a safe honest and welcoming environment that appreciates diverse backgrounds experiences and perspectives so they did a great job in putting the work together to come up with this proposal so i'm
057gonna have them share some of the great ideas that they've put together thank you we just want to start off by saying thank you so much for the opportunity to present about this we're hoping it becomes a really successful chance for students to develop a bunch of different skills um as well as supporting the mental health of a lot of our students so i think our our main goal with a creation of the gsa is just to create an environment where everyone can feel safe and protected and understood and give everyone the ability to kind of find people who are like them or who support them or who you know just want to learn more about their lifestyle so our mission statement is pretty you know just open for everybody so why gsa at nrw
058um like mr bradley had mentioned we have gone through the training with uh jeanette who is amazing if you ever have the opportunity to take a training with her uh we highly recommend it she's she's phenomenal um she showed us some stats that really kind of hit home they're on the screen in front of you um it really was just kind of eye-opening for us to see how much students who are within the lgbtqia community really struggle with finding their place and finding people who are like them and just having the ability to to meet to you know get together with other people um so that really kind of sparked amanda and i to want to start a group right and if you look at those statistics um it really matches with what um the
059first presentation about um the included information on mental health within our our county um these statistics are a broader look not necessarily just our county but um you can see not to read the slide to you all but 7 of teenagers who are in the lgbtqia community struggle with depression and we can see um that that's an issue with our county as a whole but we're hoping that this club might give an opportunity to maybe help our students with those things so we're hoping that we can just add resources we can address some of the gaps that are missing for our students who are already members of the community or who are allies for those students we really just want to make sure that everyone feels included that it is an inclusive environment that you
060know we can kind of help down that path of empathy and understanding what other people are going through and where they're coming from um our main goal i think amanda and i feel very strongly about this we want the kids to feel empowered and we want them to feel value and just learn to to be able to stand up for what they think and how they feel and advocate for you know the safety and the um just the how everybody is you know just kind of blending everybody together right and like amy said it's about the members of the community but the lgbtqia plus community but also the allies give them the opportunity to really step into the roles that they may already be trying to play as advocates and leaders within the school community
061so the empower word um it really kind of stuck with us when we were working with jeanette um you know it going through the trainings with her it really empowered those of us who were in those trainings to feel like you know the things that we're doing are right and we're on the right path and how to it really made us feel as if we were empowered enough to take the next step and that's kind of why we're here and we really just want to give the kids that same empowerment and the ability to you know advocate for themselves and for others and to just just find their place i keep saying that but it's really kind of important we've we've had a lot of conversations with students about how they just want to find
062a place that they fit i think that amy and mr bradley did an excellent job at this this part at all of it really but specifically this because they had great insight about starting off um with first steps you know i have a tendency to jump all the way to the end of the line and what i hope to happen is the big picture but these are really great um ways for us to be able to make change by starting like right at the beginning creating safe spaces for the people who are in the lgbtqia plus communities and the allies um giving them an opportunity to participate in activities that might make them more aware or help them spread more awareness and inclusivity and then i think that we'll end up doing a lot of
063discussions about important topics within our community and the lgbtqia community so mr bradley already read how this connects to the the framework but um you know it's really just about diversity and equity and inclusion empowerment those are really the key factors for creating the gsa so again just the schooling community just building the bridge to to bridge the two um we have a lot of amazing things that happen at school and we have a lot of amazing things that happen in the community and sometimes there isn't a connection between the two so we're hoping that the gsa will be the connection between what's happening at school and what's also happening within the community we're hoping to take those initial steps within our school involving people from these targeted communities and their allies focusing on media
064like books documentaries different video media to help us delve into those important topics um within the school and then eventually as a longer term goal down the road um doing the same for our larger community so the how is really kind of the fun part for us um you know amanda has some phenomenal ideas she has a bigger reach with the amount of kids that she sees in the library and a lot of the kids have been very forward and have come to us and have specifically asked for things that they would like to see the gsa do and and be a part of um our biggest goal though is to really create an environment for allies and the lgbtqia community to come together and learn from one another that's really our main goal um
065of course we want to do you know other little things along the way and then eventually lead into bigger bigger type um activities but to just start our our first main goal is to just create an environment where everybody feels safe and welcome and free of judgment so that is pretty much it um if you have any questions our emails are on there um we are happy to answer any questions now as well if you have anything so i'd like to really once again just thank amanda and amy and you know the success of the club i think is really going to be predicated upon the fact that these are two teacher leaders that have excellent relationships with students and who that students feel safe comfortable and that they can trust because without that it
066wouldn't matter if we had it in place because the students wouldn't go but knowing how well they're connected and how they're able to work with students i see that really being the foundation on which we can build something pretty great board members do you have any questions comment i don't have a question i have a comment i just want to thank our staff it just seems like every time we have a meeting or every time i engage with someone they have an idea or a way to include another segment of our student base and make them feel more uh part of our community and i just want to thank everybody for doing that because with all the social emotional issues that we deal with every day i think it's more and more important to for
067the inclusiveness of our district to be uh reach as far as it can so thank you guys i don't hear any other questions but i have one senator well you do where paul i've lost you i'm i'm waving i don't know oh i okay you're not in my go ahead paul i'm not i'm not on your radar i'm hurt you are now okay first of all again thank you but i do have one question on the quick stats slide i'm questioning oh i'm just curious what are the demographics was that our district was that wayne county was that state i just wasn't sure if you mentioned it i'm sorry i missed it no that's okay i believe that those deaths so they come from the human rights campaign um and i believe it is a
068nationwide stat okay so we don't have any uh yeah that's that's good enough okay thank you so paul i think that the heart of what you're getting at is the need right like making sure we're filling the void for students because there's a need is that what you're looking for well that yeah i was just kind of looking at where we fit in that big picture that big quick stat slide but it may be anyway no i would say our our population in terms of our our specific percentage we haven't drilled down deep enough to get into that um really this this does fill a void that's existed here for a while and they mentioned jeanette adam price and the response of our staff and the response of our students um when we went through
069the staff development really was the catalyst for this and as scott said you know amy and amanda brought it forward right in the middle of the training so i think it's something where in time we'll be able to report back to the board in terms of percentage of participants i don't know that we'll ever have um the specific populations that are listed in the national data but um i i kind of got the sense like you you know we're we're proposing a club to fill a need and and i would say that that is very much the case and i think that what scott elaborated on in terms of the trust and the willingness to move forward with these two adults is really indicative of the relationships they've fostered with our children so we i
070i think we'll report back and i think the the goal and the intent is if the board approves the um club you know we'll use this as a pilot year and then report back next year and say hey here's what we were able to do these are the accomplishments and here are some of your numbers we did take a very unofficial poll by just asking kids that um you know i had in class and that were in the alc and kids that were in the library and out of the kids that we pulled 65 percent of them did say that a gsa was something that we needed um again very unofficial very you know just kind of us talking to kids and asking you know do you think that a gsa is needed and 65
071of the kids that we did ask did say that it was needed and i would like to this is very anecdotal so take it as you will but um in the survey we did leave an opportunity for students to make comments and i won't read them all back to you but i was extremely proud of a lot of our students who um with the way they phrased things were both allies or in the lgbtqia community we got like a wide range who said really insightful kind wonderful things so i just was very impressed by their feedback about the need for this too linda i just want to say that it does sound like it's something that students are reaching out for and i think it's wonderful that that kids that have been felt marginalized in
072the past may not feel so marginalized with this group our hope yes thank you that's very informative and sounds like we're uh moving in the right direction very good thank you so cindy speaking of the right direction i'm going to segue right into our next presentation if that's okay with you um we're fortunate enough to have bridget barr sarah mclean and fred prince tonight presenting the school improvement plan from community schools human resources and our special education pupil personnel services so i'm going to turn it right over as soon as tina can get their slides up and let bridget kick this off foreign bridget are you are you muted let's start that again sorry thank you so much for this opportunity to present on the same evening as regent norwood the information that he shared
073certainly provides context for the work we're doing through community schools to support the district's action plan and i want to first start talking about our community promise that focuses on partnerships so our parent liaisons are the hub of partnerships between the school families and our communities and beyond providing information on school and community events and listening to parents staff and community feedback in order to problem solve our parent liaisons are creating morale boosting activities through activities such as staff shoutouts and the welcome back survival kits that they created for staff but they're also very instrumental in helping to prevent the strategic action plan in the community so they went out into the community to see who would be willing to host cougar values posters and at this point we currently have 25 businesses or community
074entities that are willing to participate 17 of which will also be posting spanish language posters to include our spanish speaking community the wioa and steady work programs engage at-risk students and youth in work experiences to develop work skills in a safe environment while developing relationships at this time we currently have seven students who are participating in these programs on a regular basis whether they're working in the district or at changes which is a new local youth development center our second promise is around equity and as regent norwood just shared there is a disparity of resources and barriers to accessing resources in our region those barriers could be financial they could be a lack of providers or they could be geographical in nature so in order to offset these barriers and ensure our students needs are
075met we have co-located wayne behavioral health network family counseling services of the finger lakes delphi as well as multiple mental health school counselor and social work interns from a variety of local institutes of higher education within our buildings this year we'll also be providing free dental services for all three buildings we also have multiple resources to ensure that our students and community members nutritional needs are met the cougar cupboard which is a 5013c that is run separately from the district but is housed in the high school has provided support to an average of 56 households over the past several months families with food insecurities can also have the food link food boxes delivered monthly by various volunteers such as our parent liaisons we have retired staff who do that parents of students in our communities
076and even a few board members have participated as well so our social emotional pro promise is supported by several grants that are allowing us to integrate new programs this year so teen mental health first aid is a primary focus of our mental health awareness training grant and it helps students to develop an understanding of mental health and signs of mental health disorders and then how to assist their peers who may be experiencing this type of distress at this time we have two trainers who are trained and they are going to be getting implementation in our high school health classes but realizing the need for this for as many students as possible we're also going to offer after school sessions through lyft for students who may not be currently enrolled in health but are interested in
077participating in the program through our optimal health grant we have the opportunity to educate students in the safe dates curriculum and this program supports healthy relationships and communication skills which are meant to reduce relationship violence and primary project is designed to help early elementary students who are apprehensive about school feel good about their school experiences the children will work with a specially trained child associate and engage in child directive expressive play activities and while playing they're learning skills such as expressing feelings and problem solving so we admit administrated the administered sorry the behavioral screener to our kindergarten through second grade students and our primary project team selected 10 students that they thought would be a good fit for the program and communicated with their parents and at this time we have seven students who are
078ready to begin the program in the first round of primary project next week so we're very excited to see that our academic promise is meant to increase access to accelerated learning and enrichment opportunities and to expand early exposure to the school environment this fall we opened a three-year-old upk half-day program to provide early exposure to our programming and curriculum through play-based learning we currently have nine students enrolled in the morning class and nine students enrolled in the afternoon class so both classes are full and if you are ever feeling sad just go and take a few minutes in the three-year-old class it's pretty amazing through the new york state school violence prevention grant we have expanded the alternative learning center to allow for increased participation of at risk disengaged students with an integrated social emotional
079curriculum through this program the alc staff develops individualized plans for students and works collaboratively with families our teaching staff the guidance department and administration to meet our students needs students have participated in the alc this year there have been 15 9th graders 16 10th graders 14 11th graders and 25 12th graders 12 additional students have completed their credit recovery and have exited the program this year through 21st century we are very excited to be able to return to in-person extracurricular programming and since july we've had 157 participants in the elementary school program 165 participants at the middle school and 50 participants at the high school and additionally we also added in the early morning discovery program at the elementary school which provides programming daily from 7 a.m to 9 00 a.m before school starts and
080we have also created tutoring positions through the 21st century grant that'll allow us to hire in-house tutors that lead one-on-one or small group lessons for students requiring targeted assistance as identified through our mtss process and those tutoring sessions may be provided virtually or in person and then finally our financial promise talk a lot about how important it is to braid funding from multiple sources and for multiple grants because it's important that if we are dependent on those funds if that fund should end or that source of revenue should end we don't want to have to lose whatever programming that it was supporting so this is something that i focus on with every grant that i pursue and write so for example at this time right now i'm really focusing on including funding for out-of-school time
081opportunities whenever that would fit the grant objectives just to ensure that we continue to provide these experiences should the 21st century grant not be renewed after june 30th this year and through this process of utilizing these multiple sources of income to support programming we have guaranteed that we have approximately four hundred and thirty thousand dollars available for each of the next three years to continue to provide out of school time opportunities such as academic support and enrichment and youth development programming and lastly i'm pretty excited about this last month we were informed that we won a bja bureau of justice assistance stop school violence grant and that will allow us to continue to expand the alc we will receive approximately three hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year for the next three next three years
082through this grant and when we combine that with the new york state school violence prevention grant that i mentioned earlier it provides us with resources to continue to develop and expand the alc program so again i want to say thank you for this opportunity and i will turn it over to fred prince our director of human resources thank you bridget and thank you board of education members for giving me the opportunity to highlight some of the roles and responsibilities of the human resources director this was a new position that was just created this year i started on july 1st so i'd like to just for a first report on this position just show you and highlight how this uh this position functions within the organization and some of the things that i've been able to
083accomplish so i've broken it down into five different categories and i'll go through and we'll talk about each one next slide please so first and foremost i i serve as a member of the administrative team working on um the cabinet of the superintendent of schools in this position i can work through issues strategically looking at things through a broad-based district-wide perspective and assisting the superintendent in advancing the school's mission vision values and initiatives i have to ensure my interactions with all stakeholders is professional at all times and reflects our school district's values next slide please i oversee the recruitment and hiring process prior to this position being created the service side and the professional teaching side were handled in different areas of the school district by combining these under under one umbrella we are able
084to um to really realize some um some opportunities to really be more responsive to our building and department needs these days in regent norwood touched on it a little earlier about the health care industry but really in all industries we are competing for candidates for quality candidates with other schools and outside private industries if we don't act quickly we found that people will accept job opportunities elsewhere you combine this with recently we enacted uh we raised the the starting rate for our service employees to 15 an hour this was very insightful and i can tell you it has had a huge impact on our ability to attract people uh to come into our schools into these service positions on the professional side the in on the teacher side we are paying a premium uh to
085get teachers to come out we are a little bit uh geographically challenged but the foresight with with where our salary range lies has really benefited us and along with this having everything under one umbrella so i know what all the positions are i know what jobs are coming up there's a lot of instances where i'll have someone approach me they may be looking for you know say a food service position we don't have one open if they sound like a promising candidate i could say well you know we have this a cleaning position open would you like that so um just doing this we're able to get more people into the into the pipeline here i've also started bringing in people as subs these are people who have a lot of potential they would like
086a full-time position but we just don't have them available because right now all of our our service departments are fully staffed which has not happened in a while so i've started to bring in people as subs and when we do have a position open they would be ready to to jump right in we've switched our advertising from local papers to an online platform because people are not looking for jobs in the penny saver anymore they're doing everything online my main vehicle for this is indeed.com it's the the number one job search engine out there it allows us to cast a wider net so i can sponsor jobs in both rochester and syracuse when people apply the the first thing i do is i i reach out and make contact with them because of where we
087are located geographically just want to make sure that they're okay with a 45 minute to an hour commute i get to highlight all the great things we're doing at our school and see if you know and see if it sounds like a good match if it is i send them a link to our website and we initiate the process uh from there it's been very timely for us and it's it's really helped us move things along next slide please so this is it's just the listing these are the positions that have been filled since july first i have uh put them in as uh as categories for you to see in total there is 62 positions people that we have brought in and we have onboarded since july first hopefully uh by tomorrow this will
088be 63 positions as we have a special ed teacher with high school certification uh 7 through 12 coming in next slide please mentoring uh this is something that megan and i do together we work with our directors of transportation food service maintenance and facilities and technology and we're trying to develop leadership in those in those areas and we do this by modeling leadership to them we set goals we do we provide honest open feedback we hold them accountable for results we encourage them to take risks if we if you get it wrong it's okay just learn from it if you get it right they gain self-confidence to do it again and then we encourage them to do it better the ultimate goal is to get our directors to think like chess players we want them
089thinking three moves ahead next slide please so part of this position there is business office and district-wide duties i am one of the title ix compliance officers i would be investigating um incidences or reports of harassment or sexual harassment i'm the civil service appointing officer civil service is a somewhat archaic program but it is governed by a strict set of rules and regulations we have to dot our eyes and cross our t's and that's where a lot of our our service industry um positions come from i'm also the deputy purchasing agent i have the ability to uh to issue and approve purchase orders i'm the deputy tax collector although i will say i can't claim a whole lot of credit in this area because roe does about 90 of it but i have been able
090to assist several taxpayers at tax time with with questions i oversee the district access and badge system approve attendance and payroll ensure that evaluations get done in a timely fashion ensure that new employees and existing employees get safe schools training and i have completed transparency and equal employment opportunity commission reports so that one is a state report and the other is a federal report next slide please and lastly revolving are resolving employee issues this would be more in line with what you would think of the traditional human resources position listening to employee concerns answering questions conducting investigations intervening in matters that escalate beyond the building so this would be say a grievance when it gets to a step two that would come to me or certain acts that are egregious enough that uh it would
091rise to the to the district level uh proceed over disciplinary matters write counseling memos deliver them and consult with the school's attorney quite a bit good evening everyone i'm very excited for the opportunity to present for my first time about our special education and pupil personnel services department and how we're working towards achieving the goals of the strategic action plan and fulfilling our promises to the community so that first promise is partnerships and one of the ways our department is looking to do that is continuing to utilize zoom as a means for parents to attend cse cpsc and 504 meetings and also offering parents in-person meetings if they prefer we have found that zoom allows more families to be able to participate because it minimizes the amount of time they have to take off from
092work or child care to be able to attend right now we're at about 62 parent participation so we'd really like to get that number up for the second half of the school year and we're going to do that by making sure that my office is calling families and emailing families the day before the meeting and also having case managers contact families to remind them of the importance of having them there at the table with us another exciting piece is that our 12-1-1 students um two of them are able to um go out into the community again through arc to get some real-life work experiences they've not been able to do that because of kovid so we're very excited to be able to partner with the community once again to provide them with those amazing opportunities
093as far as equity as we know we're still in the throes of a pandemic and so we've had to deal with quarantining and classrooms going remote and we've worked very hard with our related therapists to provide related services while students are at home via teletherapy which has been a great way to ensure that our students are still getting what they need when they can't physically be at school in addition to that we're participating in a um technical assistance with the state um based on some data from a few years ago we are identified as exceeding the cap for our alternate assessment so that's at one percent so we don't want more than one percent of our students um in in that category um and so what we've been doing is just kind of looking at
094that data and what we realize is we don't really have a problem with that we're not over identifying students to do that it just happened to be a year that there were it all falls into birthdays and it just happened to be that there was a lot of kids are on the same birth date and that kind of put us on the list but the important piece with that is that it continues to force us to look at our processes and make sure that when we make those decisions for students that we've exhausted all other options for them and ensure that that's the appropriate decision to make for them next slide please as far as social emotional um bridget did a great job talking about that um so we're certainly looking to um continue to
095partner with those outside agencies and utilizing interns and utilizing our own in-house staff to make sure the mental health needs of our students are being met in addition to that something we're working on this year is getting the mental health team together on a more consistent basis so that we can develop some consistency across all three buildings and also give that team an opportunity to work together collaborate get to know one another better and review different types of curriculum that might be beneficial for the entire district as far as academic we've instituted monthly special education department meetings to ensure consistency across all three buildings we're working on making sure that our appliance are our ieps are of high um quality and also compliance um and then also working to create a continuum k-12 of a
096you know very robust continuum of different programs we can offer students and again to help with that consistency so that families are aware of what's available to students at each building and across the district and next slide and last but not least financial so this year um we had a teacher at the middle school resign which left an open position um we realized that we had only two students in our 12-1-1 class so we were able to successfully move them up to the high school class to provide them an opportunity to be with more students and have that opportunity to learn from other students and get to experience the things in a larger class setting and that allowed us to then move the teacher that was teaching that into the eighth grade position to cover
097that as well as move the ta that was in the middle school class up to the high school to cover that position as well so that we didn't need to add any additional staff and that we were still able to meet the needs of our students which is always our top priority we're also looking at i've also asked all staff to provide projections for students so that we can make appropriate programming decisions for students in regards to program services and aids so that we are being fiscally responsible and ensuring that we know exactly where our students need to be and what they need and then you know to help with that budget piece because we know special ed takes up a significant portion of the budget and last but not least um we are working
098really hard on our medicaid reimbursement and so just to give you an idea so far this year we have claimed one hundred and ten thousand dollars um and we've been paid about seventy two thousand dollars with a net of thirty six thousand dollars to the district and why that's really important is that last year total um we were only paid out sixty four thousand dollars and a net to the district of thirty two thousand dollars for the whole year so we've already exceeded what we did in a whole year last year with the first part of this school year so we are on pace to be able to claim and get money back to the district um to reinvest in our students um to date back to like the 17-18 school year and we're hoping
099to exceed that number um which would be a more reasonable amount for a district of our size very informative all of you uh thank you board members do you have any comments or questions or you have questions for uh the presenters linda just comment for all of the directors just outstanding uh one thing though that i did want to comment about is how well we're doing with grants and the grant writing and i think bridgette earns a gold star for that thank you anyone else paul specifically the brit first of all i thought all three presentations were really feel good presentations and you really enjoyed them bridgette um thank you for mentioning that we've been able to provide dental care i'm sorry mike you probably have told me that but somehow tonight it just really
100struck me that's fantastic the other thing i'd like to applaud is that uh you are aware like you mentioned the 21st century grant will expire in july now i i do have a question there's an opportunity for us to renew that but i'm i'm really pleased to see that you're aware that as these grants terminate we don't fall off what we were kind of i've learned to use this the cliff when all of the uh expand when the expenditures continue but the funding just stops so thank you jason i just wanted to say thank you for uh keeping the focus on um taking advantage of opportunities a couple years ago i remember when bridget first came on board with us she was really energetic about um offering programs to students through grant programs more than
101what we were doing in the past and i wondered if it would fizzle off a little bit but it doesn't you never seem to surprise you always seem to surprise me i guess is my point when your focus is on how can we maximize uh grants and aid that's out there for our students to offer things that other rural schools don't offer so thank you to everyone for doing that because it takes a it takes a load off for taxpayers and it provides our students with things that other rural schools wouldn't necessarily have so thanks paul you're muted okay go yeah i didn't i didn't hear that i was on okay go great also to sarah i wanted to mention again well done on the medicare that was something that i wasn't even aware of
102so so pleased that you're pressing on that and another applause is that how you were able to maneuver there when the one teeth were resigned and we were able to fill this floss perfectly so great thank you anyone else all right thank you uh we'll move on to the policy committee report paul we just have the one policy uh cut for the board tonight the 73-13 for a first read and then we just changed what we became aware of the fact that our code of conduct and our policy were out of sync so we've changed the 30 days to 15 days in the paragraph on the last page that's all we changed we read it thoroughly we thought it was a good uh policy the way it was so all we've done is aligned the
103dates and uh just again warning next meeting we're gonna we're gonna throw some more policies several policies at you so be aware of things i will be getting the second read of the ones that were presented last meeting for our first read right at next meeting i'll ask tina i think we're all done with the one everything was we approved the we had the final approval last meeting this is a start of new ones now at our last meeting we approved policies that we did for the first read at the november meeting i thought we pulled one we did we pulled 15 10 but they reviewed it and i did not have an opportunity to fix it but that'll be coming back for the second read right the first read again yes okay thank you
104all right and i'm gonna ask that you allow me to dismiss the administrators we're we're getting close to that eight o'clock hour so if you don't mind but just wish them all a good night thank them for their presentations and then because i sit with john on the safety committee i can answer any questions that he may have so thank you to the administrators [Music] all right john we'll move on with the safety committee report ah john john is frozen up i think i'm not receiving any response from john are you there john we're getting a delay from someone's computer i'm not sure who everybody is muted um i'm not sure what's going on so senate because we're crashed i mean if john comes back do you want to keep moving and we can you
105know yeah we can always do the report on the safety committee at the next meeting as well thank you i came in i came in the last couple or i missed the first few minutes of eating can you hear me yes john we're gonna move along to the next one because you're cutting in and out okay uh we'll move on to public access there was no oh um i'm still here it's interesting i my computer says he's muted but i keep hearing him me too i'm not sure but there is no public access okay all right no one is signed up then we'll move on to the consent agenda is there a motion please put to approve the consent agenda tina and jason discussion questions all right then all in favor of approving the consent
106agenda thank you the motion is carried um we are moving on then to page the four um is there uh good news or shall we all right paul do you have some good news i do um we we put up an increased emphasis on some of the alternative learnings and here at the wayne county uh career center we had several students that were on first quarter uh award winners uh mackenzie the wolf katie camp maureen luffado seth uh mark martiner clayton reed and aaron youngman so i just wanted to give them credit for their uh their awards one more the um alfred state uh dean's list we have a paige shipley from uh north rose wilkin on their dean's list also uh lauren bullard well one more too alexis perkins so well done to all
107of them and then a quick uh some of you may have seen this out of the lake shore news our own linda eggnore and part of the float and we have several of our local uh individuals on the debt float committee so i just want to say well done thanks thank you paul um our agenda oh john did you have some i don't hear you john i was just you can't no we can't do it no uh sorry about that we'll have to get get you fixed up for the next meeting jen uh the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's update um i think we were going to move along and not do one tonight um because we need to get on to the discussion the board member discussion with uh jason jason
108and they asked to speak to the board last meeting and uh couldn't be with us and so he's with us tonight of course so jason take it away i'll try to make this short and sweet guys a couple weeks ago i had sent out an email with some information on electric school buses and whether or not anybody would consider the discussion of possibly uh looking into it and how it could benefit our district i've done quite a bit of research and from what i can tell um without knowing our exact route the mileages of our roots i think there's a lot of positives one being that i think this is probably the most important one it gives our students a little pride in the fact that they're taking into consideration future generations and how we
109impacted the environment secondly it's going to decrease the maintenance in the bus garage you know we always want to do more with less and things like oil changes transmission services things like that that take up time out of our mechanics day could possibly be a benefit to the district monetarily i even went as far as thinking about how long it takes our bus drivers to fill up a gas tank or a fuel tank on a bus and i figured it was probably on the average of five minutes uh with the size of them 30 buses that's 150 minutes all of those things wrapped into one i think that we would do be doing ourselves a diff service by not considering at least investigating it one of the biggest things that caught me was the average
110school bus gets about 7 miles per gallon the average electric bus has a 25 to 34 mile equivalent to miles per gallon which uh if we looked into it i think would be a substantial savings on fuel um so if you haven't had a chance to look at it i'd love for you to at least take a few minutes and look it over and tell me what you think if the board believes it's worth exploring or asking our administrators to explore great if not we can put it by the wayside um so jason has proposed that we consider looking into electric buses or instruct our superintendent to do some investigation with his people um board members it's up to the board um what is your opinion linda i i'm thinking it's not a a terrible
111idea to explore the one thing that did pop into my mind was what kind of infrastructure we would need to have for the power supply and so on i mean those are all details and information that i think would be helpful as well as what jason forwarded to us so we can take a look at that as well i think it's good to be more green in terms of of what we're doing and i think it would give a sense of pride but i i'm hoping that we get more information so we can make a good judgment in terms of what's back i apologize linda i thought i sent that out with the packet and i may have missed the attachment but i have that and i'd i'd be glad to send it to the
112board okay that would be helpful well yeah because i know it's not just the cost to the bus but the things that we're going to have to have to support uh their use i don't believe that it would be a all-in uh scenario i think that it's probably something you'd start with a few and see how they work with our uh with our community but either way i just uh came across it and it caught my i want to caution the board that isn't just a decision that we would say okay we want to do this superintendent go do it i think well what we would be doing here is to say to the superintendent we'd like we'd like some more we'd like you to look into it and make a recommendation to us on
113what you feel would be would be in the best interest of the district yeah that we're expressing interest is good uh isaiah i had two things one is if everything is going to go electronic as far as cars and everything else is the electronic grid going to be big enough to handle this and two this is how what is the state how does that look for reimbursement for buses do they reimburse for electric buses the same as state or do they or diesel buses do they not do it where's what's the state stand on where their money goes that's a great question and that's one of the first things that actually got me on to this was i came across a state program that was incentivizing uh electric buses so i started thinking about it
114and looking into it so there are additional grant programs for uh electric buses i'm sure they're on and off throughout the year throughout the years i should say um as far as the electric grid is concerned that's another great question but i don't have an answer for it right everything's pushing oh next year we're going to have all electric or next two years or whatever and that's a great incentive a great idea but are we as a nation set up to handle that and i'd hate to find our district caught in the middle on that one yeah it's long ways for the poor kids to walk [Laughter] all right board members i'm going to ask you for for a an opinion is this a subject that you would uh like our superintendent to look into
115and to do to some degree and if he wants to include a board member or two on looking into it that's fine but leave it up to our superintendent this is something you'd like the superintendent to do jason says yes isaiah are you i i see thumbs up from john is that as a yes tina's a yes linda's a yes paul i say yes but in a you know and a relative priority uh our superintendent has a lot on his plate but absolutely i'm sure he'll farm it out to jeremy but yeah it's pretty interesting question for downstream right okay and just if i could just add one more thing and i want that to be abundantly clear this is by no means in my eyes a huge priority i just think it needs to
116be on our radar um because i think it's coming no matter what the state has a couple laws that are being enacted as far as outdoor power equipment now it can't be gasoline operated i think 2035 is the years that they're outlawing um outdoor power equipment from being gas so i think this is uh gonna happen no matter what and michael i know that you have a lot of things going on right now between covet and um capital projects so this this is not dire it's just something i wanted to bring up to the board right now so it's on the radar definitely something we can explore so i don't mean to be short but we have uh other pressing matters so if we i i will definitely take that and run and we'll get
117back to you with a timeline because um i will work with fred and jeremy on that and we'll present something to you because i know a few neighboring districts did try electric buses out and i know for metropolitan areas that's also something so we'll we'll kind of put a skeleton together and get it back to you um at some point this spring yeah no problem thank you michael thank you all right at this time uh we need to go into executive session uh to those anyone who's uh sitting in tonight we will not be returning to do business we will be returning to uh adjourned that will be all so at this time i would like a motion please to go into executive session to discuss a legal matter isetta and linda all in any
118discussion all in favor motion is carried you can stand up and stretch but don't go away