4-13-2021 Board of Education Meeting

001aol um they include ourselves in swbr and new engineers at that meeting the full assessment was reviewed the previous approved variants was reviewed and it resulted in a an amendment that was reissued to the previously approved a variant so an amendment was issued by low engineers and several days later the department of labor um approved the amendment so long-winded story the latest approved amendment has um they've backed off closing the building wide closure at this time the first floor the auditorium in the west adjacent corridor is still closed and it requires an abatement project the ela rooms where there was an incidental disturbance that is closed pending an abatement cleanup and then the adjoining corridor between the gym and locker rooms in the arcade corridor moving out towards the old east entrance that is still

002closed that is pulled off that is not going to receive a full deep abatement it's going to get what has been been classified as a osha cleaning so it's similar procedures it is done with osha um asbestos trained staff um but it's not under a negative error and containment situation so in the proceedings um once we got that clarification from uh the department of labor um we had a contractor come in and build hard barricades at strategic locations uh one on the first floor and two on the second floor to amp up the um the security and the isolation of those spaces to um to better the security so that further incidental disturbances were not uh are not as likely or we should avoid um on the abatement side of things that amendment was sent

003out by addendum to the contractors that were holding bid documents because we had started it as a reminder we had started the bid process for that those cleanups prior to the building closure so the bid process was um postponed it's set it's now since been uh an addendum has gone out establishing a new bid opening date with the new criteria that was established with that variance so our new bid opening date for that work is scheduled currently for april 20th and we hope to have a board award um at your meeting on the 27th that will then initiate the notice to proceed and start of um start of the cleanup um the total cleanup will run uh most of may and june it's for between mobilization and cleanup we're anticipated to be completed by the

004end of june which will allow the remaining auditorium component to be finished so before i jump into the other updates is there any questions specific to that it was um i know i provided a lot of information and maybe steve wants to jump in if there's any clarity yeah just um uh thank you kevin just to add to um what kevin has said the um the amendment that was um issued to the department of labor um was um accompanied by by some fairly um extensive uh testing and sampling that was one of the um the you know the dialogues the communication that we had with the department of labor and um the district's uh leadership team was was very involved with that the sampling that occurred was both bulk sampling and air sampling and it

005was through um not only the visual inspection but the bulk sampling and air sampling that the um that the um the current um areas for cleanup are were established the areas that are getting the osha clean you know all of the sampling in those areas was was negative so i do want to let folks know and and be assured of that so the osha clean is really kind of a a conservative approach that the department of labor is taking just to make sure that those areas um are um are given some special attention because they were adjacent to the areas of contamination there will be air sampling that is done both as part of the um the abatement cleanup and the osha cleanup so the the the district and the the board will have you

006know that analytical documentation to um to support that um you know not only were the um the requirements of the department of labor followed but the the record will show the um the cleanup that was done in the the um analysis the you know the testing and analytical information will become part of the record so we feel uh confident that um that the right approach was um arrived at again uh thanks to the the leadership you know your leadership team and um and um you know the um the response and testing that that was done so if there are any questions about what kevin had described or or the um the you know the the abatement sampling that was done to date um we can we can hear that now looks like jason has a

007question you're on mute jason thank you um you had stated you expect completion by the end of june does that mean for the project with the exception of the auditorium yeah that's what we're working towards and i was gonna jump into um the first floor like i said the uh auditorium and moving south is isolated so the rest of the project is has been reopened the building's been reopened as of middle of last week we're currently working on getting the contractors re-mobilized most all have been responsive so second and third floor to recap is in the punch list stage so there are still some remaining items to get back upstairs to uh finalize there and we're we are in the middle of reorganizing a final another walkthrough to just make sure that the lists are

008accurate and up-to-date um on the first floor we do have good news that last system the um the fire rated glass system that isolates the uh secure vestibule from the main office that arrived on site yesterday they actually started today that was one of the significant components that still need to happen and then the kitchen and cafeteria are close to 95 done anyways but they're accessible too so we anticipate having that section in the second and third floor done and ready for occupancy by the end of june we're starting to work through a plan with administration to have like a phased um occupancy turnover for those spaces i will be clear that asbestos process will take towards the end of june for the auditorium so the auditorium will still be under construction moving through the

009summer that'll be the last space finished thank you i know that was a long answer for you but is that does that make sense jason yeah what do you anticipate uh for a completion date on the auditorium uh we're re looking at that right now but um there's about i think four weeks worth of work in there after it's reopened so it'll be towards the end of july early august before that on calendar would be conceivably done i have one question kevin yes punchless is that punch list is that where our representatives from our administration are also going through with you or is it just a campus that's doing the punch list no we're gonna have a collaborative effort so it was established with the entire design team and campus included and but um to

010cr to do a final sign-off and acceptance we're going to include the district uh staff thank you anyone else i will don't go go ahead no you had said the uh auditorium is going to be done at a certain time but then the punch list follows that do you anticipate how long that would take for the auditorium or not um it will be a several week process once the construction is completed it takes a little bit of time to get all the parties through to do final inspections and that has to be issued to the contractor it that will take several weeks for sure um we we would be confident it's occupiable and substantial complete but um we'll there will be two punchless items chased around that building for several a little bit of time

011okay will they be able to work on the cfo while they're working on the auditorium yeah i we haven't talked that through with everybody to be be perfectly honest but um often you can do uh partial certificate of accuracies for the spaces that are ready i can i can follow up on that too jason um that that would be the approach if the um substantial completion for the auditorium um you know was was later we would issue what's called a partial certificate of substantial completion it doesn't you know re uh relieve any of the the rights that the district has but it does establish that the remainder of the building other than the auditorium is safe and available for occupancy and that would allow the fire safety inspection to occur in all of the other

012areas and then both of those things together the fire safety inspection and the uh the partial certificate of substantial completion would go to state ed and they would issue a um a partial certificate of occupancy and that would be in in hand you know prior to the beginning of the school year we would then follow up with as soon as that um auditorium were ready for substantial completion so when we do the punch list inspection say that for example that was the third week of july we would do um the final certificate of substantial completion there and then there would be a fire safety inspection that would be done for the um for the auditorium itself um so that would be what i would imagine would happen a partial for everything but the auditorium and

013then a final for the auditorium only so that's your plan just to get working on that while they're working yeah yeah once so for example the um the second and third floor uh swbr is going through next week to do the final um inspection um it's my understanding that those um punch list items that are on that comprehensive list are gonna be um accomplish that so so we're scheduled to come out on tuesday um which i think might be the 20th um and then um the first floor would follow we wouldn't issue a partial for the second and third floors because you need that first floor um egress system um to to to really have a partial uh for everything but the auditorium so once the abatement's done that would uh and i'm sure kevin

014and brian will will know more about the schedule but that would allow the flooring you know to be completed in the in the um in the hallways we would make sure all the doors are are hung and functioning um you know the life safety systems including fire alarm uh would be would be complete and tested the um the electrical inspection would be in hand and those would be the the documents we would need to do that um partial so um i i think i would rather get the partial ahead of the auditorium so that the whole building is not kind of held up by the auditorium uh that doesn't mean that um you have to move in it just means that we've we've um we've met that hurdle of having the the valid certificate of

015occupancy which is needed of course for students to get back in the building and i apologize if it was in the update i might have overlooked it but where we stand on those writable surfaces for the walls so the um the district has received we have um we in campus have assisted the district in receiving um a quotation for um white boards and there have been um credits that have been identified for that writable surface on the wall so um mike i don't know what or or how that update would would be um otherwise communicated but that's the option that's being um considered now as i understand what happened with the writable surfaces that that's a conversation that you know has been an ongoing for several weeks in terms of the actual finish coat and

016the aesthetics of it versus what the functionality was so with steve we've asked steve to go out get a quote with respect to whiteboards because the finished product that we saw wasn't up to the standard that we felt we needed to see in a brand new building okay thank you okay just real quick um the exterior of the middle school has been reinspected in fact a couple of um i think a couple site features have been put in since we last spoke a couple benches in a railing um there are plantings and things of that nature that need to be either replaced and or um revisited this growing season to make sure they are going to establish and then we haven't lost track of the top coating of the student drop off on the north

017end still needs to be paved so currently it's still a little bit early but it is on the list it's not gone lost or forgotten as weather breaks that those items will be completed and then before we jump off and i'll turn it back over um two quick uh um updates for the other buildings at the elementary school the flooring contractor is scheduled to be on site tomorrow it's a virtual learning day for the district so they're going to be they have the right free reign of the building they anticipate finishing the punch list tomorrow so that'll generate a final inspection from our behalf and we could look forward to closing that contract out possibly and then the high school the um the corridor fire doors that showed with the wrong finish on it the

018replacement doors have been back ordered there was a little bit of delay in manufacturing but our latest information has those being shipped this month april 23rd and on site by the end of the month for installation so um we'll confirm that and install as we get close to the end of the month but that's our current um information that we should get the new doors by the end of the month okay any other questions anything else anybody all right thank you um we thank you and um glad that we're getting going on that building again um have a good evening if you want to leave us more okay have a good rest of your evening and meeting thanks um and now we're moving into the budget bob you're going bob and michael are going to

019take over on that and walk us through and uh hopefully we'll end the evening with a budget thank you i'm going to attempt to share a couple of different documents tonight currently is there one showing up for you but i see some heads nodding okay this sheet this is where we ended a couple weeks ago the last time we talked about budget and we had estimated our revenues for next year and we'd estimate our expenditures and at that time we were identifying a gap of a little over 500 000 and that was without any changes in the tax levy or anything like that and we were awaiting some changes in state aid once a budget was finalized so we're going to pick up from there and we'll put a different document up now okay if

020you could let me know are you looking at it says fiscal year 22 general fund this is difficult when i can't see it it should be expenditure starting right out with the board of education at the top and so on yeah so we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the expenditure side of the budget we went into quite uh in depth the last time that we talked and we identified where there were major changes and why they were to be honest the expenditure side of the budget from what we talked about last time has only changed because of a couple little tweaks here and there the total dollar change is only a little over seventy thousand dollars from where it was when we talked last and i can tell you that

021sixty eight thousand dollars that is specifically due to a change in an iep for student placement so other than that there's just been a little jockeying here there but ultimately when we go to the bottom we're looking at estimated expenditures being at thirty two million two hundred forty three thousand nine hundred and forty six dollars as you can see that is an increase of a little bit under a half million dollars and a little bit over one and a half percent of the entire budget okay that's comparing our current adopted budget 2021 to what we're estimating our expenditures for next year to be moving along to the revenue side again not a lot of changes i have highlighted a recommendation that we are recommending we do increase the tax levy 1.9 percent which does generate

022188 000 towards that gap that we previously identified there's been no change from the last time in the other payments in lieu of taxes or what we call pilots but i do just want to point out that our pilot revenue for next year is a little bit less and i want to review that the way a pilot works is when certain business properties are on a pilot agreement it means they're not part of paying the full tax levy they have a separate agreement and they pay directly to the school district and other municipalities are usually in there also but that's not part of that levy amount that we collect from all of the property owners across so because our pilot revenue is lower this year that's because there is some property that used to not

023pay part of the levy they paid us a separate payment but going forward they will be paying part of the levy so in theory right off the bat it would almost make logical sense that you're levy you would want to increase that much so that that property owner can still maintain their share of the burden that's actually how the tax cap formulas work that when a pilot falls off it increases the amount that you are allowed to increase the levy so i just wanted to refresh on that and the only other numbers that have changed on here really are just updated state aid numbers so everything that's in yellow here these are the most current figures we have after the state did adopt a budget a little bit late but that did come through middle

024of last week excuse me when we roll forward and look at that summary page again again with the recommended tax levy increase of 1.9 percent and new revenue numbers we are able to show a budget gap of zero which is ultimately where we need to be now i know there were some questions about what kind of increases we saw in state aid and i did want to spend a minute or so just reviewing the state aid runs that are released by state education department because you'll see that if you add up all the numbers i have here for state aid and building aid they're a little bit different than what's on the run from the state and those of you that went through fiscal training in our four county here will remember we probably talked

025about that that the numbers that come out on those state aid runs are just projections and that right off the bat we automatically always know that some of them are not going to be accurate numbers so i'm going to stop this share for a moment attempt to share another document and what we're looking at now is an actual state aid run maybe over the years you've heard me reference that term but never seen one so state aid run basically shows the top half for our district north rose will get our current year they're showing what we should be getting in aid etc and then the bottom half is always the most current estimates towards next year and it goes down the different categories that we've talked about starting with foundation aid and then through our

026different categorical aids i do want to point out if you look at the bottom here i have crossed out this 21 million four hundred twelve dollars i'm sorry four hundred twelve thousand four hundred and two and replaced it with a smaller number of twenty million six seventy one eight thirty nine it's seven hundred forty thousand dollars less so why is there this discrepancy first of all the largest piece that has to be taken out is this third line here universal pre-kindergarten 609 000 is on our state aid run that shows up there every year however in reality upk is not part of our general fund it is part of our federal fund it's a grant everything associated with our upk program salaries benefits materials and supplies that's all funded out of the upk grant in

027the federal fund and so neither the revenue or the expenditures show up in our general fund so you have to remove 609 588 from what they have as their total additionally i mentioned last time we had done some more current updates on the high cost excess cost aid and the private excess cost date this is the aid that we generate through the stack system for our students with disabilities and specifically high cost excess cost aid is for students who have costs associated with boces programs and in district programs the private excess cost is aid generated for special ed placements that are at a private school maybe something like norman howard etc whenever the state does these runs they go off data that's collected in november as we go through the year changes occur we sometimes

028have students come in students move out so every year when we do an estimate for our state aid revenue i reach out to the cse department as well as our our third priority provider for stacks management advisory group and they look at our actual costs that we're paying this year to do a more current estimate of what our aid could be for next year so that's why the 592 has been changed to 461. that's based on what they truly feel we should get based on our costs at the current level and the same thing with the private excess cost so between the two of those there's a decrease of about a hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars from what the state's initially reporting moving down to transportation aid you can see that initially there was

0291.4 million almost 1.5 million dollars projected and i reduced that by a hundred thousand i know we've talked about this multiple times but again they look at numbers that are submitted in november so in november they look at what our current budget is and they say okay if you spend all of that money it will generate x in aid well we certainly know that we don't want to spend every single penny that we've ever budgeted in transportation we've talked about last time how we've got some contingency in there for fuel as you know for our current year we had a sizable amount budgeted for contracting out of district runs we've talked about not having the need to spend that hundred and sixty five thousand dollars on out of district runs if we're not spending it

030we're not going to get aid on it next year but the state doesn't know that so what i do is i look over many multiple years and try to compare their estimates to where our true aid comes in and a number of years ago we would get about 300 000 less or so i think our current year we're going to get about 70 000 less than what we projected last year so there's a reason why that number is going to be reduced every single year last of all building aid actually our projection here that we're using working with fiscal advisors who helps us with all our financing and payment on capital projects we're looking at about a hundred thousand dollars more than what the state is and that again is due to lag time back

031in november there's certain paperwork that's not submitted with capital outlay project and some of the changes um currently going on with the current capital project so that's not a current accurate number whenever we build our budget we want to use the most current and accurate numbers that we can so that's how i arrive at total aid including building aid of just under 20.7 million dollars any questions on that at all [Music] yeah bob so again uh it isn't exactly what the state said but that's because it changes literally as the year goes on or what does it change for the next year it literally changes it will change it'll change between now and next year too so for example especially when we talked about those special education costs we may have students that are enrolled

032today but won't be enrolled in may so we'll have less money we're spending less we're getting back or vice versa we may have a student come in the next week or two if we start spending more that will generate more aid so that's that's how it changes on a daily basis almost for the special ed aid the transportation aid um that's just knowing that we will not expend everything that is budgeted and they base their number on if we spend our full budget so if we don't spend it we don't get it is that what it amounts to well well correct okay but it's not it's not like textbook aid where we want to make sure we spend it all to get it transportation aid it's it's put against your actual expenses so we get

03383.5 give or take back it fluctuates from year to year so you know we spend a hundred thousand dollars in fuel we'll get 80 some percent of that back the next year we're not going to get it all back so we don't want to um needlessly spend money because we're not going to get 100 reimbursement of it but they make the assumption because they have to they have to come up with something they don't know what we build for contingency every school district's different so they just base the transportation aid number on full expenditures of everything that's in your transportation budget did that clarify yeah i think so so then we make up the other 20 correct of whatever we spend we yes we just don't get reimbursement for it okay okay going back to

034the same document again okay so when we left off as i said when you apply a 1.9 tax levy that does balance with the new estimated revenues and our current estimate expenditures to close the budget gap of zero and the rest of the information on this page was shared before also our current tax levy limit or our tax cap as it's referred to would be a 3.71 percent increase we are recommending that it just be 1.9 we don't see that it's 100 necessary to go to the 3.71 although definitely it could help the district um you know our fund balance has you know depleted from where it is a number of years ago and of course we're working very carefully with our funding and use of reserves policy to keep those well-funded so we do

035have to constantly be planning for the future for example you know that when we go back up to our revenue budget we appropriate almost five hundred thousand dollars of reserves every year we strategically do that a large bulk of it four hundred 000 comes out of the retirement reserve um but the thing is if we are relying on that every year as we plan to because we want to show that we do use use our reserves in a fiscally responsible manner in accordance with our funding user reserves policy you can't keep taking four hundred thousand dollars out of it every year without it some point replenishing some money so every year in june we do recommendations to the board to replenish some levels of reserves in order to do that you must have an operating

036surplus at the end of the year so we want to be working towards that how does a 1.9 tax levy potentially impact an average homeowner so the picture of the two houses here this piece of information this will be part of the budget newsletter that goes out basically when we look at this analysis we look at a situation where someone should have the star exemption or rebate which in a nutshell if you have star on your home it means that approximately thirty thousand dollars in taxable assessment you don't have to pay the tax on the state does or the state reimburses and if you're on the enhanced or senior star it's around seventy thousand dollars of taxable assessment that you don't have to but the scenarios we've got here are working on just the normal

037star which is a thirty thousand dollar reduction so of a household assessed at fifty thousand dollars and you take away the 30 000 worth of assessment that will be covered by star that means the actual tax rate only has to be applied to 20 000 worth of assessment our proposed tax rate if it's a 1.9 percent increase is 1493 that's what i have to put down to be ultra conservative this is a worst case scenario as i'll show you later but basically taking your 1466 inc if you increase that 1.9 percent that's what you would get so worst case scenario the tax rate would go up approximately 27 cents per thousand when you multiply that 27 cents per thousand times the 20 000 of assessment that the homeowner must pay tax on that does mean

038that worst case scenario the tax bill for the year would go up five dollars and forty cents similar scenario if a house were assessed at a hundred thousand again take away the thirty thousand dollars of star deduction leaving a net assessment to be levied or sorry to be taxed of seven seventy thousand dollars again we said if the rate went up one point nine percent which the rate itself will probably not but if it did that would have an annual increase of just under nineteen dollars now i keep saying this is worst case scenario it probably won't go up one point nine percent this shows the years where we have done 1.9 levy increases for the last five years again these were all under the tax cap or the tax levy limit which was on

039the sheets the summary sheet and we reviewed that last time so what i've done is i said okay in 1516 our true value rate was point 14.8 three seven eight five five and that is how we do calculate tax rates to six decimal places so for easy math we say it rounds to fourteen dollars and eighty four cents when the levy went up in the 16-17 year by 1.9 percent the tax rate did not go up 1.9 percent it went up right here one point seven seven two four cents per thousand which is less than a one percent change it was a point twelve if you applied that increase that year to a 50 000 home the annual increase was 35 cents for the full year on a 100 000 home the full year increase

040was a dollar 24. excuse me that would be um you know at the same assessment level as before but because there's growth across the whole taxing jurisdiction it takes that rate and does not let it increase at the same degree that the levy does in 1718 again a 1.9 percent increase on the levy equated to here it was actually more was a 2.15 on the rate and i'm sorry it was it was it went down to 2.15 so not only did it not go up to 1.9 it went down and a tax bill if your assessment was the same as the year before actually would have decreased in 1819 1.9 on the levy this did see a little bit over one percent change in the rate and this was the biggest increase we saw in

041the rate during this whole span but during this five-year span the largest increase without a change in assessment on a hundred thousand dollar home would have been under twelve dollars on an escrow payment that means it would have changed less than one dollar and you can read the formulas and for 1920 and 2021 again there was a large decrease in our current year here very minimal change now i have to publish this piece though in the newsletter as showing what it potentially could be but we know the real impact on the tax will not even be as high as what we're showing here i know that this in general the difference between levy and rate can be confusing are there questions at all about that bob can you put that slide back up please yep

042i took it down so that i could see if anybody had their hand up well you've probably you know you've definitely got it memorized anyway there you go the numbers in the lower right hand corner annual change so that's that's per thousand no that that's on a 100 000 house the total tax bill well i'm confused here i mean you pay more than 32 cents on a 100 000 house so again no i'm saying that's how much the bill would have gone up from the previous year's bill yes what would the payment be get my calculator out or is that is that too hard no i i can do it um yeah i was trying to figure out whether that's you know per thousand or though so that's the change that's the change correct so

043to to make it simple we'll use the hundred thousand dollar scenario so if you apply star and you're working on seventy thousand dollars worth of assessment at the old rate the rate from 1920 was fourteen point six five zero eight four four and the tax bill's not a million dollars i can tell you that hit something wrong that's good seventy thousand dollars seven thousand thousand so it's just seventy times fourteen point six five zero eight four four the tax bill in 1920 would have been a thousand twenty five dollars and fifty six cents okay so it's pretty hard to correlate you to do your math yeah well so go through the next year and when we're at 14.655418 times 70 it's 1020 it's that 32 cents difference okay thank you more questions on this at

044all please speak up if so because i can't see everybody but i know that this can be complicated linda bob isn't it is it it is also true that it does depend a little bit on which township within the district that you reside in in terms of what the rate is going to be as well it absolutely does and that's why whenever we publish information because there's seven different towns within our district we use what's called the true value rate which would be if that every district i'm sorry of every town we're at a hundred percent equalization rate meaning that the price that you're being assessed at is equivalent to the price that you would get if you sold your house on the current market that's the only fair way to tax people not according

045to what their assessment is because assessments in a town can get outdated and not current so that's why they have equalization rates so you're taxed on what your true value is on the market great point linda thank you you can see everything with assessment it depends on what your property is assessed for therefore probably the most important people in our towns to us taxpayers are the assessors absolutely yep you want assessors that are good at their job um when one thing houses self or way beyond what the assessment is things get out of whack and then you're not at a hundred percent anymore so that's why the towns will work to get property up to a hundred percent because then it's based on what property in the area is selling and that's why your assessment

046goes up just a couple other things i wanted to touch base on quickly tonight this is a sheet that i had shared uh back in february and you may have remembered i talked about how excuse me at the time the governor was proposing doing away with a lot of these different types of aids such as hardware and technology aids software library textbook transportation and was lumping it all into one big categorical aid called services aid those proposals did not go through and also at that time there were two other lines that i've got here in blue that we talked about there was what's called a local district funding adjustment which was just a big negative where they were adding up all our state aid and then deciding we're going to take a million 71 back

047but they were going to plug that hole by giving us some stimulus so those two numbers were awash with each other our current estimates do not show that put together the same way so i'm going to pull our current state aid run back up again okay going through here you don't see the addition of a million seventy one thousand or the deletion so that has gone by the wayside however you will see at the bottom that there are some stimulus numbers here those of you that i know attended a four-county presentation the other night on some federal money um coming through from stimulus right now the biggest thing i can say is that there are a lot of unknowns about stimulus funds these look like some sizable numbers however i need to make it clear

048that these are not numbers that are factored into our general fund it's anticipated they will be in grant form excuse me and this will be over several years the first number the million it's anticipated that that may be money that we can use in the next year and into the first part of the following year however this is to supplement what we do that's the planet and if you haven't heard those terms in a while supplement means it's for us to pay for other new extra things there will be strings attached as to how we have to spend that money we just don't know yet what those strings are i know one of the things that they're proposing is that a certain portion of these stimulus funds will need to be spent specifically for offsetting

049loss of education for students during the covid crisis excuse me so for example it may be at some point they want something like additional schooling maybe in the summer maybe on the weekends i we don't know any of this yet but that money is not part of our regular general fund for regular operating expenses this american rescue plan we anticipate that that is going to be made available over potentially up to four years we're not sure exactly we know that the applications will be due over a four-year period they have not defined the spending window for that yet so i just want to emphasize that that is money that we are anticipating at some point the district will be able to use but it needs to be used for new expenditures one-time expenditures because if

050it's just around for a couple of years and then it's suddenly gone we can't be using that for things that we need on an ongoing basis so you know the biggest message that i hope that they displayed the other night in the four county presentation was that we need to be patient with this because we do not know excuse me the specifics yet um places to look for spending is you know if we're behind on technology hardware or something where you could do a one-time purchase to put some things in place maybe we need fiber optics run something like that those would be great ways to look at spending a one-time revenue source but you don't want to use them to pay for employees salaries and benefits or materials and supplies that you're going to

051have to pay for every year the only exception would be if there were like a specific program that maybe you didn't need to add a teaching position for just one or two years for a specific targeted need but not from supporting our normal pro normal programs on a daily basis the last thing i wanted to share was there is one other document on the agenda for your approval tonight it's called the property tax report card and this is a form that needs to be submitted to the state education department every year within a day of adopting the budget so after the board adopts a budget tonight we will go online and submit this to the state tomorrow and again it's information we've already covered it talks about what our current budget number is what we're

052potentially proposing for next year which is there's that 1.5 percent i'm sorry one point five six percent increase we talked about it's talking about the tax levy our proposed tax levy being potentially a one point nine percent increase and it shows again that we are below um by 179 thousand dollars below what we could levy it's got our student enrollment it goes into just our fund balance at year end last year what we anticipated to be coming into this next year and it does detail each of our reserves which we fill this in specifically with information in line with our funding user reserves policy which we reviewed in february and we will update it finally in june so that's a document that some years i know you haven't even seen before you've had to adopt

053it simply because the state has not put it out on the website early enough for us to have it but that was there and if anybody had any questions from that document because i know you did get that last week i'd be happy to answer any questions on that bob i just have a a two-part one question um obviously our enrollment is declining what's the what's the effect on state aid that that's uh that's having with us or giving us um is it substantial is it noticeable in theory it should be in line with the declining enrollment um you know there's a lot of things to factor in of course your enrollment is part of it and actually not even just enrollment but your attendance also a lot of your formulas for state aid are

054driven off the what they call the average daily attendance so having students in school makes a difference in our state aid foundation aid they have if they follow the formulas all the way it should be not necessarily reducing because it's scheduled to go up every year but it won't go up at the rate that it's projected to if our enrollment's going down all of our expenditures are linked to student enrollment in some way probably the most direct place that you'll see a change would be in things like hardware aid textbook aid etc those ones that are specifically linked to dollars and cents per student but it's not substantial if i were to go back to our our revenue from year to year which you can't see what i'm flipping through right now but just to

055give you an example so our textbook aid we're projecting it to go down by three thousand five hundred and ninety two dollars we're projecting computer software and hardware aid to go down one thousand six hundred and eighty nine so is it a large decrease no it's in line with the enrollment and i know that we can kind of track or predict future enrollments with upk um is there another tool that we have i don't know if you guys use maybe um um births when it within a year i mean do we have any idea of forecasting further down the road than next year what our enrollment might be not with any type of accuracy really okay um but yeah generally our biggest piece is to look at where we are with maybe three or four

056year olds especially when they're involved now that we have expanding upk programs that does give us a better look than ever but yeah going forward next year you know we're looking at an incoming kindergarten of maybe 60 at the largest and our outgoing senior class is substantially larger than that so we will go down thank you sure thank you for all the time you put in this budget too i appreciate it you're welcome in your team i should say are there any other questions in reference to the budget paul yeah going back to the stimulus so um i was expecting to be able to use some of that stimulus and and you made it very clear and so did that presentation we must not use that money for something that has to be sustainable otherwise

057four years from now we you know we fall off the cliff as they said so i get that um but i was thinking that we that we should have some items in the budget that were where we could use that as and as a uh what uh forget the words you used not to supplant it but i mean you could take it out of our budget and and uh and pay for it with um stimulus money is it my understanding that because you're uncertain of what the stimulus money is you're also uncertain that you can do that 100 inaccurate okay but the next year we should have a very good feel for it do you agree with that i would certainly hope so yeah i mean we should have a real dollar figure yes so

058so i was very frustrated that we were unable to reduce the tax levy and i understand that if you don't know what you're getting it's hard to try to make an estimate hope hopefully then next year we'll be have a better feel for how we can use that stimulus money and hopefully come down off 1.9 that's my sincere hope and you know i i tried to think through in my head what what kind of one-time expenditures do we have in the budget that our potential and the first there was only one thing that really popped into my head because it was a new cost that we had to take on this year and that was the cost of hot spots that was a large cost however if we think about this i'm not sure that's

059a one-time we know it's not a one-time because we're going to need a second it may not even be a two-time the way that we are educating students and the platforms that are being used very well may rely on a large cost for many many future years going forward to provide internet to our students yeah i can't remember now i know we got a pretty good deal from boces but are we renting those or leasing them or did we buy them the hot spots um it's basically a lease we we pay for the service by the year and the device comes with the service it's kind of like when you get your phone they'll give you the free one if you're subscribing well if you can't find a place to use that we can always

060do bonuses for the board of education 100 increase one time do you think there's a way that we can that i know you mentioned fiber optics what that would be like in the buildings because we can't do that in the county in our area that that was just you know spitballing and iver an idea so for example we have fiber running between the elementary school linking it to the high school to establish our network and they don't last forever and we've had a couple breakdowns that we've had to repair over the years may potentially be looking but those are the types of things where we want to look at our infrastructure and make expenditures that are are large and to put in a budget in a year would be very difficult but it could also

061give us we could reap the rewards for many years from it yeah a perfect use of stimulus money from what i can understand but i i think i must say what you said previously bob is that we might decide on certain things but the federal government might say you can't use it for that you must use it under very confining restrictions which is not make us as happy as we think we would be that's correct yeah the 4 million this it's still undetermined how that's going to be spent the 1 1 700 or something like that or 70 uh 74 000. that was actually pretty open-ended i thought that they had kind of a last caveat how you can spend it and it's pretty broad john yeah they had like three major categories they suggested

062and then kind of a catch-all at the end what we don't know is what percent's got to be used for different things we have we have the same type of thing with any of our title funds that we get in grants every year etc there's parameters where we may get a chunk of money but a certain amount must be spent in certain areas i want to echo jason's comments about thank you for the very thorough explanation and if there's no additional questions i'm done unless mr poland wanted to add anything or i would turn it back over to ms collier i think so i mean we've got a group ready to roll and present present um i would you know echo the opinion that's been shared that bob did a great job preparing the budget

063and i would also say that the administrative team as a whole worked really hard to support bob and and really scrutinize every expense that we have to give the taxpayers the best possible option to keep our program intact so very pleased with what we presented to tonight and you know i would highlight if you look at the tax rate history there's no secret there's a correlation between bob's arrival and the tax rate correlation uh showing a reduction in the tax rate so kudos to him kudos to the team and uh cinda i don't mean to piggyback on that but if we could turn it over to the elementary school to get their presentation going because i know many of them have other commitments um and you know since we're talking about data i think it

064could be a great segue for christie and her team to jump in okay sounds good okay [Music] can everybody see that yes okay awesome here we go well good evening and we are very excited to be here to present the elementary updates for our school improvement plan i would like to introduce to you again to the building slt team who'll be helping me share all the amazing work and progress our building his witness over the last few months um i want to start out by saying how much i appreciate and enjoy working with this team of dynamic educators they're always willing to be a sounding board give constructive feedback around next steps and be have become true teacher leaders in our buildings so i'm so grateful for each of them and their collaboration with us

065um nice so um without further ado i would like to introduce you to megan penikov don mcintyre lucia copeland adam bishop joanna samar and sarah patterson to say i am proud of the work and dedication of our students and staff as an understatement as a building our overarching goals have remained the same and have helped keep us focused and what's truly important as we have navigated this year i have personally observed a shift in our responsiveness as a building our narrowed focus on relevance and striving for opportunities to build positive relationships in november we shared with you our fall aims web data i would like to give you an update on our most recent winter data this chart compares our fall from 2020 to our winter 2021. each row represents a grade level and the

066percentage of students who fall within the per um proficient or above range so from a quick glance you can see that every grade level saw an increase in their proficiency scores in both math and reading i would also like to highlight a few exemplary results in our data the increases in first grade reading are especially notable due to the oral reading fluency being a main focus measure of the composite score in first grade so to see a 24 increase for our first grade graders is really amazing i would also like you to notice the increases in grades three and four reading so you can see here that grade three went from 48 proficiency to 76 percent proficiency and grade four went from 65 to 83. so our the fact that our fourth graders are at

06783 proficiency in both reading and in math is another highlight area because obviously they are not very far away from our 90 goal that we sent set for this year the next piece of data is just a little bit of a deeper dive into oral reading fluency so you've heard us talk about the importance of oral reading fluency so here we can look more specifically at this data for each grade level the oral reading fluency is a way to temperature check our reading progress as a building since reading development is so complex orf or or reading fluency becomes a gateway for us to examine if students are able to put all the pieces together and are on their way to becoming fluent automatic readers we also know that fluency is the gateway to comprehension which

068is pivotal in our work and growing literacy in our building so one way we decided as an slt team to dig deeper was to look at orf scores and to compare the national norms for oral reading fluency with our current north revolt elementary or freight so this allows us to focus our attention on grade levels who may need some extra support and allows us to track if we are closing the gap as time goes on so the white column gives you the words per minute rate set by the national norms within ames web and the green column gives you the current words per minute rate for each of our grade level cohorts and within on the winter column you can see that we saw increases in all grade levels around oral reading fluency so this

069data will be we will continue to focus our attention on and build it in instructional components within tier one to support our students in this area now i'm going to turn it over to the team to kind of update you on where we are with our goals and our actions plan so our first goal pertains to curriculum development and professional learning at nrwe we are currently focusing on continuing to increase student engagement encouraging both students and staff to use more social emotional strategies and the effectiveness of our student-focused team meetings action steps we are so so excited about our new ela curriculum through collaborative classroom it is building consistency capacity and continuity from class to class throughout grade levels and between the elementary school and the middle school so i'm going to go through each

070of the components of collaborative classroom making meaning is our whole group comprehension instruction which teaches reading strategies through read-alouds discussions and written responses there are also separate vocabulary lessons that connect to the text being a writer is our student student-centered writing curriculum that uses mentor texts to teach skills and strategies we have a video of a third grade teacher using being a writer in a research writing unit the teacher begins each lesson by introducing the learning targets with the students and in this lesson the students have already chose the animal they're researching they completed a chart highlighting what they already know about the animal what they would like to know and what they've learned through research already and now in this lesson the teacher is modeling how to take those student questions and the questions

071that they created about their chosen animal and generate more specific questions that will guide their research moving forward so we're going to show you a little clip um the sound is a little hard to hear so hopefully you can get the gist of the lesson but i can always send you the video at another time um if you want to watch it in its entirety but we're going to watch about the maintenance of it so i hear the sound is not coming through so if it's okay i would love to have this video emailed you um to you because i would love for you to see mrs hake present um this writing lesson to you go ahead megan okay so moving into being a reader this focuses on foundational skills instruction primary at the primarily

072at the kindergarten first and second grade levels it also includes small group reading instruction with students at their reading level and then sips is our reading intervention also through collaborative classroom which focuses on phonemic awareness phonics and sight words phonemic awareness involves separating words into sounds and blending those sounds into words phonics involves matching sounds with letters or groups of letters and by learning to blend those sounds kids can decode unfamiliar words and then sight words are those words that kids should know automatically that appear frequently in text sips and being a reader have the same scope and sequence so the reading teachers and our special education teachers are using sips while classroom teachers are using the being a reader program so the kids are really truly getting a double dip of the instruction that

073they need collaborative classroom also takes into account the social emotional development of students caring relationships between the teacher and the students as well as between peers are fostered through the regular opportunities for conferencing classroom discussion and share that are built into the making meaning being a reader and being a writer component of the curriculum social skills are developed for the students through the discussion protocols that are taught and used throughout the curriculum students participate regularly in collaborative learning tasks students are taught through modeling and regular practice how to share their thinking teachers use assessment protocols for social emotional learning to monitor student growth weekly these protocols help students to reflect on their work and why creating a safe and fair learning environment is important for all students in order to improve the effectiveness of student-focused

074team meetings and strengthen learning and instructional best practices we created opportunities for deeper discussions around building grade level and classroom data some of the ways we accomplish this is by giving teachers the opportunity to have one-on-one meetings with the instructional coaches to look at their class data and make a plan for whole group and individual instruction teachers also looked at grade level skills analysis at their weekly tier 1 meetings to see trends and successes within their grade level teachers coaches and administrators collaboratively reflected on their classroom data and set goals based on classroom needs our second goal is focused on community engagement we are continuing to foster strong relationships with our various stakeholder groups and we are continuing to intentionally celebrate student and staff accomplishments some of our action steps include an exciting partnership with

075our local libraries the wayne county literacy volunteers and local businesses to present our community reads the students were all given a card that they can take to the local libraries and get it stamped every time they visit and when the card is fully stamped they can present it at local businesses to get some kind of treat or trinket or something at that local business the students are also logging how much reading they're doing a month and then returning it to our librarian so that they can get a brand new book and we've been having virtual literacy nights with um derek poole each night the students are really loving this and so excited to be visiting the library and to be showing returning their calendars to show us how much they're reading the local girl scouts

076donated planter boxes as part of our stem program we've been having various student of the week celebrations and different classes and grade levels and we've had some other special celebrations of learning including some writing galleries some research projects some steam projects as well as continuing to build stamina during our daily individualized daily reading time our third goal focuses on multi-tiered systems of support with a focus on improving outcomes for all students through implementing evidence-based practices our focus with this goal is also to identify students who need additional support these students are monitored weekly and are the focus of weekly team meetings to reach this goal we have taken many steps so far this school year in upk an evidence-based tier one curriculum has been implemented and tier two supports are in place for students who

077need them intervention groups were revised using the current winter benchmark data to ensure we are servicing the students who need reading and math interventions mtss coaches are supporting teachers with additional resources to help them meet the needs of all their students in their classes students are being progress monitored through aims web and curriculum assessments the data is reflected on at team meetings so that we can be responsive to each child's growth and needs lastly systematically as a staff we engaged and professional learning on function based thinking to further increase our understanding of and ability to meet the behavioral and social emotional needs of all of our students our fourth goal is finance and we are continuing to be fiscally responsible during the pandemic while still aligning with the core beliefs of the district strategic action

078plan we've continued to meet with principals meeting with tier one teams meeting with the slt teams and just the grade level teams to make sure that the supplies that are being purchased are definitely needed and they align with all of our goals i think one of the greatest things that we're doing right now is being able to celebrate and pursue the seo for the students and make sure that they are getting the best that they can with the budget that we have right now all right we just want to know if you have any questions that is our presentation for this evening i don't have a question but i want to congratulate you all i am just uh delighted overwhelmed happy uh just to see what's going on with the reading and the writing i'm

079i'm so pleased that we're i think we're all moving in the right direction and well done to all of you and all of the teachers at the elementary uh other board members yes speak up i don't see you all so and i wanted to just make a comment too along the same line in terms of the reading and the fluency and how important it is uh i was really pleased to see that in addition to to give kids a little bit more of an advantage or a better understanding and comprehension that there is a vocabulary component that's been added because many times when students are having to concentrate on figuring out a meaning of a word it really uh disables quick comprehension so i think that's a wonderful addition but also the way it's it's

080all works together so that they're doing every single area that needs to be addressed to improve comprehension overall and it really is nothing better for a child than to feel like they really understand and they can answer any question and it's great it's exciting i'm glad to see the mtss is finally being woven in and is not just a separate piece that you have a meeting and you talk about these kids that this sounds more like that it's really a whole part of the system so it's going to be a lot more effective in other pieces the function based thinking so that behavior is really addressed rather than just being treated as a single behavior that doesn't have or play a part and why these kids are frustrated with some of the learning that's good

081thank you i won't be as technical as everyone else but i really enjoyed reading the book that came home with my daughter the one and only ivan um and i hope that we uh we get more books like that because everyone here enjoyed that so thanks everyone for everything that you do um i know that my daughter's having a great year and i know there's a lot of other students in that uh that building that are that are feeling this and it's uh it's because the group of people that we have working with them so thanks a lot guys thank you i have a couple questions and a couple comments so well let's go with questions um and i'm sorry that i don't get into the school more often in fact mike and chris if

082you allow me i'd like to go in and sit in a couple of the classrooms to find out a little bit more about the school homework but collaborative classroom is that something that's in every class or help me out a little bit is that what we're doing throughout the entire school so yes that is our new ela program that we adopted this year and we have implemented it k through six so um all the components that megan talked about today are in every classroom in all of our building but also in fifth and sixth grade as well okay good i remember getting a presentation on it last year so i'm i'm a little bit knowledgeable i'm glad to see that it's in every classroom um i a comment was that uh i noted strong upk

083support and i i could feel our superintendent's influence on that one uh question uh christy do you feel like and perhaps uh for adam do you feel like you have adequate support i know you're talking about finances is the board adequately supporting you for what you need i would say yes most definitely we feel very supported again the materials themselves i know that was quite a financial investment but we are already in year one in the middle of a pandemic when half of our building only comes two days a week seeing the benefits of that decision that was made last year um so we thank you enough okay and i just wanted to make a comment on the 83 percent and grade 4. when you get up into the 80 category i've done some homework

084across the upper upstate new york that's among the highest performing schools when you get when you get much above 70 you're here with the brightness and the pittsburgh's and and the fair parts of life so wow well done thank you i want to take the credit but i'm telling you these teachers they are spot on they're doing amazing things i just want to piggyback and compliment and i know i've used that phrase way too much tonight but i want to compliment this team and the rest of the staff down at north rose wolcott elementary as well they have fully embraced the early intervention approach and i think the fruits of their labor is definitely evident tonight and the presentation that you've seen and the climate of the building you know i think when you take

085a look at everything in totality you see that there are a lot of special things happening on behalf of our children and north rose wolcott elementary is certainly in my opinion a top-notch elementary school and this team here in front of you tonight is really working very hard collectively they bring a very diverse perspective in but it's certainly paying off and i would echo that the group there as well as their colleagues and the support staff everything from maintenance and cleaning to food service teacher aides teachers they're doing a wonderful job of creating a culture and a climate where every child sees value and what they do daily so i'd like to just say that publicly and lastly i'd like to talk about the collaborative classroom approach and to remind the board that they probably

086saw in megan's update that collaborative classroom is going to spotlight north rose wolcott elementary on a national platform based on the evidence that we've shared with collaborative classroom the approach and the professional development so this group really should be proud and i can say with certainty we do thank the support the board of education has provided to north rose wolcott elementary north rose middle school and the high school when it comes down to bringing our students the very best yes and i would like to say that if if that great big leprechaun there at the end of your presentation has a pot of gold um as as you know as big as he is i don't think our district has a financial worry in the world always on the right side of the rainbow oh

087i'm glad to hear it it's our most liked that's our most liked picture ever posted on social media i can't believe it i need to print it off and have it autographed so it can be on the wall forever [Laughter] wonderful thank you all so much did you have a comment yes i watched the video of the lesson and i thought it was excellently done the teacher did a great job and the kids responded in a very positive way to her and it was well done uh are the k the question are the kids who are the result of getting up to 83 percent are they rewarded in some way are the parents notified or somehow are they something done to paddle on the back um well i would say there was a lot of

088celebrating um within classrooms and um the cheers probably could be echoed through the halls i know any time i was having a rough day i would just look at our data and say we are in the right place so i feel like the teachers themselves definitely gave feedback from a parent perspective no but it's something that i could definitely consider yeah i think it's worth be sharing yeah the parents need to be uh encouraged as well uh and that's great that uh you're rewarded with the students too because that's that's what a real real achievement is for sure yeah these are the best results i think i've seen in a long time the huge increases thank you the whole team very good all right thank you so much it was wonderful hearing all that good

089news have a good evening everybody thank uh you move on in our agenda to the board of education liaisons to the building um jason i don't think you can add much to that i don't think i can either do something um i feel like our district i've been comparing it lately to baking a cake and you never know what you're going to get when you first start putting the cake together but growing up in this district and going through school and having a daughter that graduated and now having another one i feel like our cake is almost ready and uh it's such a good feeling to see the progress at north rose elementary school and as importantly the enthusiasm from the uh from the staff it just you know it makes all the rough times

090worthwhile and uh i i'm so excited to see what this next next uh generation of north rose will get uh students is gonna be because um i think our cake is there and i think that uh we're real close today so what we all need to do when we uh when we join this team um so like you said i i can't top anything that they've said all i can do is give the shout outs to the people that uh that are making it happen there were a few this week that christy wanted to recognize um one being christy king and scott baker for being so flexible and uh willing to to jump around to different positions to make sure things go smoothly we don't want them to be forgotten or overlooked um jen kerr

091and christy bradford in the main office for everything they do to make interactions with parents and students and and make things easier for christy you guys are appreciated as well and to tammy avery and and the rest of the the cleaning staff that uh have been put to the test as of late um with covid and ensuring that we are we're providing clean and sanitary facilities you know we've got the whole package down there and uh i'm excited to finally be able to get into the building here soon hopefully we can nail down a day or two that uh that i'm not making more work for for christy but uh in the next week or so i'm really excited to get in there so thank you guys for everything that you do we are super

092super impressed with the with the uh progress and uh just keep it up and we'll see how we end up at the end of the year and send him another great book because i really like that book i think i think we're seeing um i think we're seeing already in the 10 months that michael has been here i think we're seeing his vision starting to already come to fruition and i think we're seeing uh the implementation that megan is putting in to making sure that michael's vision succeeds between the two of them i'm just very thankful and impressed so thank the two of you and thank you bob for the finances to make sure it happens so well done can i request one thing yeah when they come in to study our um implementation of

093a collaborative classroom are they is that going to be a publication or video or what are they going to do because i don't want to miss what they write up is my point um it's going to be a blog and then i've been told that we're going to be in the next newsletter so there will be a publication down the road great good all right we'll move on to the middle school tina on teachers and administrators are working hard to prepare for students to be coming back into the building there's some apprehension but they're certainly looking forward to it and just hoping they can work out the kinks prior to them entering [Music] tough year it is and they recognize it but they're also ready for the challenge they're realistic yeah so they're a good

094group yeah yes the whole district is good um paul how about the high school i was at the high school on monday morning and that it was like it was a classic monday morning the students came in they they didn't want to talk they didn't want to say hello some of them grabbed some breakfast they were just like heads down i'm going to class staff was really uh fun to talk to and then all the ed the admin also so three things that i wanted to highlight and by the way i have a lot of good news tonight a lot of it comes from the high school so i'm gonna save that for the good news part but three things at the high school um and where i think we're all aware of mrs lavelli's

095class the visit down to the wayne county public health department that was a great hit got a local publication on the tv the house design contest for their banners what an awesome program in fact they're on display in the uh in the front room there when you come into the school really well done and i think you'll enjoy when you when you get to get into the school then the last thing was uh and these are on the website too our district website the chorus concert and art and technology virtual gallery please i encourage every one of you and get the word out to the parents that is awesome you really uh will be rewarded when you listen to that will do thank you for telling us good thank you um linda you're going to

096report to the board on the four county legislative committee that you're you're a member of in addition to our school board you represent us there yeah the in a couple months ago we talked about how the push was statewide from uh all legislative boces committee meetings committees about the equity and predictability of funding which i i'm sure bob would like to chime in on that because there hasn't been a lot of improvement but there's been certainly an elevated awareness that that's a top priority across the state and for mental health of students and adults and equitable internet access all of those areas really are starting to be addressed with some of the funding that's going to be coming across from the federal and i did not well i had the opportunity not at our legislative

097meeting but at another program that comes on weekly about state news david little who is our representative for the new york state board association for rural schools did make the comment that the way funding is being parsed out this year rural schools is not really getting the most generous end of the stick so that's something that i'm sure the legislative committee is going to be a lot more aggressive about in the future so keep tuned all i have to say is what's new when it comes to divvying out to rural schools yeah there's a little bit of an increase of awareness you know legislators certainly made that comment we just need a stronger effort across the board for us getting there right there were two other programs last week that the 4 county put on

098one was monday night and we did have some of our board members attend that while others viewed the recording later on and that one was dismantling the systemic racism in schools does anyone want to say anything about that that you watched i know i learned a great deal and was kind of shocked in some instances um well synthetic not about racism but about bias in general so i'll go ahead and try to summarize but um that's a good introduction right there uh ascenda uh so a quick uh differentiation between the discrimination which is actually intentional and control and controllable and the implicit bias which was about pretty much take care of the whole presentation that's at the subconscious level and and implicit bias isn't necessarily bad we use it every day in our in our

099lives you know whether you buy fuel with sunoco or do i buy at a fast track i mean based on our experiences we use implicit bias to be helpful the danger is when we try to use it to categorize people now the presentation i think it used the example of black racism in the united states but it does it isn't limited there so in other words that was a good example but it wasn't necessarily all about just uh of black racism in fact as i went through the presentation i was thinking a couple of things one is i'm not so sure this applies to our district and the other was wow the united states navy is like 30 years ahead of the rest of the population on this we went through some of this a

100lot of it back in the 60s and 70s and and i can tell you from my navy experience i became colorblind and i never could differentiate an accident we were all just pulling on the same rope but i realized that certainly isn't the way with all of society but now it but at the end of the presentation uh vicki ramos came on and said now replace color with socioeconomic status and wow that one got me all of a sudden i was perked up again and went yeah now that applies and so and i know our superintendent mike pullen has been pushing this and i and we all back him don't prejudge look at each individual we want to be looking at i'm working from my strategic action planning here too mike but look at the

101individual every student has potential so that was my takeaway socio-economic status for this district be careful of implicit bias thank you thank you i i do want to say also that i thought the way they when vicki brought that up dr ramos and i think that's something that rural school districts do have uh more awareness of i guess you know brought out the awareness of us that sometimes there's subtle bias against someone depending on their socioeconomic status that that's indicates they're not going to be as successful when that really isn't true and as you said every person needs to be uh given the opportunity and respected for their abilities and their talents there was a great little classroom uh experiment that a teacher did in this presentation that they showed with blue eyed kids and

102brown eyed kids and it was and of course the the uh emphasis was on how do you how it makes them feel well worth seeing we belong to the four county it's on um this pro presentation it was recorded and if you go to the site um the four county site you can watch that recording it's well worth watching and it might even be of interest i would think to uh principals for teachers to to look at because that that bias that you don't even realize that you're you have but it's there so well done the second program uh that some of us also went to zumways and others watched later in the recording was the um understanding the cliff effect is in falling off a cliff if you spend too much money in a

103few years you're going to fall off the cliff does anybody want to say about anything about that that too was well done i think paul alluded to it earlier which was as federal money comes in you know don't don't spend it on something just to start something you can't finish later on that you're going to have to get rid of yeah i'll jump in again cinder that's really the crux to that presentation was stimulus money we're getting millions of dollars even in our district to stimulus money but you've got to be very careful how you spend it and bob i see you're still with us you know we already addressed this um one-time purchases in fact uh superintendent paul and i'm thinking of the ada bleachers but but kind of big items like that but

104yeah you don't want to start paying salaries or lighting or heating that is a disaster waiting to happen if you do that and of course the program was geared toward board members warning the board members not to get a little pet project that they want to get started and pushing their administrators into something that maybe the administrators in their wisdom do not want to do so it was good for us and not that we are going to have a report but we also had board members this week attending the strategic action plan group with megan and it was a busy it's been a busy time for board members people who think board members spend a couple of hours each month sitting at a table saying yes yes are sadly mistaken in addition to all of

105that the budget was sent to us early and we were expected to study that budget and and have some appropriate questions which we did during the week as the week went out so that we do have a thorough understanding of of what's being presented for next year um we'll move to the policy committee that's another busy committee on the board and john your chair of that um you want to take over uh we had a very interesting and complex meeting with an attorney and our superintendent and our committee members on the gender-based uh policy 75-52 and it seems to be getting uh a great deal of play in the whole country now and it specifies what rights um transgender students have and what they can expect when they come to school it's a very complex

106policy and it's a first read so i would encourage board members to read it in depth because there's a lot of information in there i'll tell you i learned a lot from just reading it and listening to the attorney and the other policies on web publishing and that is up to date spells out the standards and the way of the road as far as students and staff members uh publishing on our website on our web the network there is not as easy as you might think there are copyright laws there are privacy laws you have to make sure everything is accurate uh so i would encourage you to read that one too for our first read and the second read the next meeting that's all i have i know some of you did have time

107to read these um does anyone have any questions uh if or if you do need clarification by all means email us email john and he'll go from there this is a first read and the next meeting will be the second read and the vote for approval of the policies as updated cindy could i offer one comment sure on the student gender identity one of the key phrases in here is a participation in accordance with the gender identity that is consistently considered at school so my the real key word here is consistency i know some of us have had some concerns about all of a sudden uh somebody just you know jumps up goes hey i want to do this today no that's not the way it operates the superintendent is involved the principals are involved

108it's a process it isn't uh it isn't a spontaneous kind of a thing true okay well um in the next two weeks um look them over and um [Music] if you have questions by all means ask for clarification we move on to the consent agenda next uh you will recall that number i 2 has been deleted so a motion to approve the consent agenda please linda and jason discussion jason jason are you speaking if you are you're muted i'm muted i'm sorry okay i had a question about uh e the cooperative bid for wayne finger lakes boces yes paige that doesn't tie us into uh using them exclusively if we were able to find a product or a service for for less money elsewhere does it no it does not it just gives us an

109option okay perfect thank you yeah i'd like to pull item f like to pull it you mean eliminate it entirely or i'd like to pull it out of the consent agenda so that it can be discussed separately or voted on separately all right the agenda has been approved if you want to uh if you want to make a motion to pull that we'll have a vote on it um and see if the rest of the board wants to pull it okay okay i thought we were in the discussion phase i didn't think it had been approved yet you can't you can't just pull an item out of out of the agenda you need to um i need to have a vote i need to have a motion a second and a vote to pull it

110out then we can put it back in you know so if your motion is to pull it out of consent for um vote later in the agenda after the by itself that's your motion okay some move is there a second i'll second it jason all right i'll need um a two-thirds vote um john do you approve to pull f out is there discussion i better have a good discussion i'm not sure i know what this whole idea is to pull it out and vote on pulling it out or not i don't know why they're doing that right what's up well we have to we have to pull it for discussion that's all we're doing right now um to my understanding no we can discuss it now we can talk about you can ask questions um

111i don't want to vote on it separately if you ask to be pulled yeah was that what paul wanted to say what you want to do paul no linda pardon me no thank you tina i guess i don't understand so i'm gonna go with no jason i think there has to be a reason why he's asking to pull it so we should give him that courtesy so i'll vote yes um john asked why he and tina asked and he didn't tell us well i'll be happy to explain my beautiful viewpoint um when you look at item so do i have the floor all right now let's keep going i guess um isaiah well he was trying to explain it we're in the middle of a vote we can still talk about it isaiah no all

112right then it's not it it is not past however we can talk about it and return to it so paul go ahead with what your concern is yeah there's uh there's no reference to the north roads local school district than this it keeps talking about the central school name below but there's no central school name below and it isn't at the end of the minutes so i guess we're supposed to assume and i was taught in the navy you don't assume anything so if i were signing this as the chief of staff of the enabler training command i couldn't sign it if i were signing it as the manager of the of the flight safety international training center i couldn't sign it it's incomplete are you saying then that that under be it further resolved

113you would like to substitute board of education of the central school listed below that that those words speak change to the board of education of north rose walcott central school district absolutely if we change them you may get a motion yeah i'll move that if that's the way we do business all right and a second jason again um is there any discussion to that change when i read it i thought the first paragraph is clearly said the north rose wilkins central school on behalf of the board of education is authorized to participate in cooperative bidding i think that pretty well says it it doesn't say it john i know just because it doesn't say below i think i don't know it doesn't say there's emotion on the floor um the motion is that the words

114under be it further resolved the board of education of central of the central school listed below be changed to the board of education of north rose wilcox central school district that's the motion to change that okay any other discussion all right john approve yes tina linda yes tina yes paul yes jason yes isaiah yes yes so that's the change that's the amendment okay is there any other discussion on this consent agenda all right for approval of the commitment agenda as amended john yes linda yes fina yes paul yes yes jason yes yes me yes motion is carried constant agenda is passed hello susan has been a long staff member has done a wonderful job a number of uh positions in our district with students she loves kids the kids loved her and she's very effective

115and congratulate her on her retirement but i think the district will miss her thank you thank you jen it's uh always good to hear one of our people are moving on to retire but it's always sad too to lose them the children will miss her yes thank you all right now we're on page five no we're on page six number five um and paul is going to abstain from this motion seeing it's about him uh is there a motion to put um five a coaching and athletic department appointment on the floor for approval isetta and tina any discussion allen faber john yes linda yes tina oh i'm not supposed to be doing this tina is supposed to be taking the role here i'm sorry i bought it in tina to call the roll cinder yes

116linda yes john yes tina yes jason yes um and vote you say i'm saying yes thank you motion is carried thank you and now we move on to number five b the adaption of the 2021-2022 budget spending plan is there a motion to put it on linda and atina discussion hearing none tina will you call the role yes linda yes john yes tina yes jason yes oh yes yes thank you emotion is carried all right and now five c approval of the real property tax report motion make a motion a second isaiah yeah paul was waving all right uh discussion tina would you call the role cinda yes linda yes john yes tina yes jason yes yes um yes hi zada yes thank you emotionless uh we move on to good news and palm you

117said earlier you had a lot gotta get the mute button yeah i really do um article in the newspaper about our pre-k a universal pre-k there was also one in there um about our budget vote if you want an absentee ballot so those are good things for our school the wilcott rotary club announces the march student of the month is brady jones a sophomore at our high school you know that i always take pride and pleasure in announcing dean's list from our former students uh samuel matisse is at rit dean's list kiara takati uh is also at mooresville on the dean's list skyler fox in biology is at the dean's list on lemoine college this is an article in the lakeshore news about north rose wilkins students that received the central new york scholarship art

118show awards so two students uh chelsea chatfield and connor umizak received honorable mention for their work submitted in photography category and there's a nice article there about them moving on to sports wow we've got some volleyball teams that are really doing well and and i think it's just exciting to have northwest wilkins teams that are have winning seasons the boys are five and two and i don't know if mark's still on if he wants to update that at all but the boys are five and two coached by daniel hahn david han and the girls are eight and two they're coached by alex richwalder and they're just doing fantastic job i kept reading that the girls who beat this team the girls beat that team so finally i said hey what's their record eight and two

119doing wonderfully you probably recognize these two really nice article in the paper about quentin and eva norris now you know you know that from our past uh conversations that they both have scored a thousand points i'm not sure all of you aware that their brother tyler norris also had scored a thousand points for north rose wilkin so those two have made um wayne county league first all-star team so both eva and clinton eva also and clinton both also made the finger lakes one sports terrific all-star i didn't even it was a terrific 21 program but they're both on the terrific 21 all-star team then um she goes by hannah more often than anything else hannah waterman wayne connie of the second team and also she received the sportsmanship award for our district so fantastic for

120her eva also got a ronald mcdonald house all all game section so those fabulous representation for our school wrestling logan caves finger lakes central wrestling first team all-star clayton reed first team all-star finished second place in the section five championship another championship uh section five nate wazinski finger lakes the wrestling second team and finished second place aj anthony finger lake central team uh finger lakes central wrestling a second team all-star so uh students really doing well and then something that i think we can all be very proud of i want to see if i can put this up there [Applause] the boys swim team and the girls varsity bowling team so boys varsity swim team and the girls varsity bowling team both got scholar athlete team awards you may recall it requires a gpa average

121for the team of 90. so that is some fantastic news that's it for me folks that's plenty and it's great we've had a lot of good news tonight anyone else linda i i don't know if this was brought out at the last meeting but that we have installed a new safe school helpline for students and families and and teachers or anyone that wants that kind of support or needs that which really is great they it can be used by texting tips to a certain number or by calling an 800 number and that was listed in the uh finger lakes times in march at the end of march so that's a great thing a great resource for our students staff and families yeah anyone else all right we've we move on to our superintendent who has

122not really had too much of an opportunity to talk tonight but we're anxious to hear from you michael so if you don't mind i'd just like to say that the administrators here have been working extremely hard and you know really if you think about what we're talking about that's most pressing is really this this component here um you know which is the return to school new york state finally um finally gave us some guidance last friday evening you'll recall at 4 30 i sent you one message at 6 30 i sent you a different message so really what with the new york state education department new york state department of health adopting some changes that's caused our administrative team to really scrutinize our practices so in particular we know that the transmission rate is really

123low in the county for students you know at the kindergarten through eighth grade level so if we were to include pre-k through eighth grade those students can adhere to a three-foot rule due to the low transmission rate and due to the fact that the cohort is um basically stays put the teachers trying to transition around them so that's one thing what what came out friday that most people don't realize and and maybe i misspoke a second ago we're talking about the transmission rate wayne county is considered a red zone which means that we still are a high transmission rate and so the fact that our high school students so grades 9 through 12 are not in a cohort model which means they transition based on class so for example a student may transition from algebra

124into earth science or that same grade level counterpart could be transferring from algebra into biology let's say so they don't stay in a cohort model the the department of education and department of health have not agreed to reduce the six-foot rule for those particular circumstances so grades 9 through 12 won't be able to return to in-person instruction four days a week so this afternoon administratively we spent about four hours working on different things whether it was in a group of pairings whether it was the entire administrative team for two hours megan and myself the principals of myself the principals of megan have been talking about the return to in-person instruction so we've targeted previously april 19th which we realized would not give our families enough information or time to make a healthy decision our new

125target date is april 26th we are actually planning on getting a district-wide communication out to families tomorrow explaining what the circumstances are going a little bit more in depth in terms of what the return four days a week may mean for their child and then differentiating it based on age level we are really looking at using best practice for transportation we feel confident according to mr barnes that the two-thirds capacity on school bus with kids 100 wearing masks 100 percent of the time utilizing hand sanitizer that we can transport students safely and then food service is the other big one it's going to impact all of our students so all of our students will continue to receive the food service treatment that they've received since last march which is on wednesdays we will be doing

126delivery but we are anticipating um that grades two through eight will return with a large capacity to the four days a week very similar to what our pre-k k and first grade students have been doing most of the year uh we're eagerly anticipating that we're excited to do that and although our nine through 12 students may not be returning in person um we did start our weekly department of health update meetings with the regional superintendents again today and you know i i won't feel comfortable putting our students or our staff at risk um and and kind of going off on our own so we're going to continue to update the guidance based on what we receive from the department of health but currently the 26th is not an option for nine through 12. they will

127stay in the hybrid model the other part that i do take comfort in is they are starting to rock some of the social gathering activities for that age group so no problems um will be able to take place our our seniors are planning their prom they do have a date they have a venue graduation may look different than it did last year so we may actually have a more in-person presence based on some of the updates that are being provided so it's not all bad news that's that's been delivered to our nine through twelve population and we are feeling pretty confident that we'll make the most of whatever we have to do um so really over the course of the next several days the administrative team will be continuing to plug in details and communicate

128it out with families and staff as far as what we're doing but again we do know with several people receiving their stack of vaccinations we do have an abundance of staff returning to work we do know that our transmission rate is very low in our particular community um and we'll continue to monitor that and be very diligent so that i anticipate will consume a lot of time and energy over the next several days but we are anticipating that we will be able to hit that april 26 return date uh should there be any variation or changes i will be certain to communicate that out to you as a board and i will also be certain and communicate that out to the public um but within the first hour of the survey that we put out

129to parents yesterday we had over 300 results with about 85 percent of our family saying yes bring our kids back return some sense of normalcy so that's positive and again as you've heard me say previously our goal would be to hit that five day mark with our summer school presence so regardless of what happens nine through twelve we'll follow the guidance we'll continue to educate as best we can and we'll continue to strive for that five day a week return to in-person instruction for the summer time and then lastly it was alluded to earlier this evening and it's been mentioned several times throughout the course of the last several weeks our strategic planning committee met again thursday very happy with the work that's been produced by that team very organic process very thorough process i

130think that when you as a board of education see the work that's actually being produced on behalf of our students and our community you're going to be thoroughly pleased with that i do want to complement megan again for her efforts with that and again she and erica eber the staff developer from boces who put the ideas of many collective people together and came up with a very linear prescriptive plan and we're going to try and narrow that down early may and have an unveiling and then get it to the board to adopt so a lot of good things happening in north rose wilkins central school district very excited as i said earlier with the progress of many many areas and just very thankful to the board of education for your support and really feel like

131tonight is a true representation of when our finances our academics and our extracurriculars are all in alignment just how great our district can be so thank you thank you mike could i ask you a question about the the dates of return are they going to be the same for all the wayne finger lakes or monroe county or is it no that's varied across the board i mean we had originally targeted april 19th but based on what we started to see friday night and based on the different restrictions that each population has it's a little bit different some area schools that have larger facilities without space restrictions have returned to a four day a week program already unfortunately we're at capacity in both buildings while we wait for leavenworth to be turned back over to us

132had leavenworth been in service during this pandemic i think we would have been in a very good situation to have four day a week instruction throughout the course of the year and really for some people um they really put their plan out there and put everything into motion only to have it come to a screeching halt friday night because the conflicting message messages from you know three feet universally applied to now six feet for the the adolescent population that's a significant change for people so yeah it really has been challenging and again i i want to commend the administrative team for being very solutions or solution based with their thinking and really trying to figure out the best possible and healthiest possible way to bring our kids back yeah you have to balance the safety

133of everyone the staff and kids uh with the education so i congratulate you for thinking it out in such good detail great thank you john further to your question i'm seeing a lot of schools popping up with the 26th on that we on that daily nisba a briefing it very well could have changed i know last thursday i was at a regional meeting with superintendents and the two topics were budgeted and uh the restrictions and and again i feel very good about where we are and you know thinking about what our staff has been able to do um logically we want to keep our program intact because you know should we see a spike you know and we need to go back to hybrid we know we already have a model that works you know

134so in the worst case scenario we fully implement pre-k through eight four day a week construction you know we wanted to keep that wednesday deep clean and sanitizing day in there but we also want to know that if we have to back out of our in-person instruction we have a model that works and and the adaptability to make sure it happens great jason when do you think we'll be able to get back to live meetings well the governor just extended that again today um tina was it may 6th that he pushed it out to but that that's optional right in terms of the public participation it's not in terms of us as a group coming together you know we certainly could do it but the feedback that we had before we decided to go fully

135to zoom and not meeting collectively as a unit was probably back in november we made the decision because we saw a spike in covert 19 cases in the county but in terms of public participation he just extended that until may um what was the date tina may 6 may 6th yeah i thought so so as a board if you decide you want to come back together and meet together we can certainly look at that but when we made that decision in november it was very cognizant of the increasing cases of covert and that was also technologically a problem too with a really poor um audio and at that time well we were so truthfully i like the zoom for two reasons one i can see your faces and i could not see anybody and we

136were we had to be spread out across the whole front i couldn't see anybody i couldn't hear anybody i didn't i just felt we were so uh isolated each of us i can look at my screen and i see you all and look at paul is smiling and i said and once in a while tina frowns and you know i i like that and i like that people can zoom in too they probably have a better view and hear better than here than they do when we're in the auditorium which is very hard well and i think depending upon what the the situation is with this particular pandemic one of the things administratively we've talked about is if we do go back to an in-person board meeting where the board is actually present you know

137we might mimic some cameras that we've installed in our gymnasium which will allow for 180 degree panoramic view with continuous movement and that's something that we've talked about adopting to give us a better camera quality as well as a more effective approach to the public seeing us and that's something that we're going to talk a little bit more about internally in researching because again um we've installed that camera system under mr blankenberg's leadership in the gymnasium so that we could stream games and you know give parents the continuous view of live action and we talked about how our performing arts may benefit from the similar type of approach remove a camera person give a high quality picture and then also um provide people with the opportunity to stream in if their grandchild is performing here

138on stage and they live in florida yeah that would be yeah yeah okay all right thank you um that concludes our agenda i want to remind you all that our next meeting uh is not on tuesday night it's on wednesday night the 28th and that that was a change because that's the night that we vote for the board the boces board members and that vote is everybody in the in our boces votes on wednesday night that's the night we have to vote so that our so that will be a change so for board members and people zooming in uh wednesday april 28th at six o'clock and i was just asked to put a plug in for pam pendleton she was a former teacher that worked with us as a special ed teacher for a number

139of years and she is running for the boces board and was hoping that we as a district would support her so well i certainly would well yeah on the board she is on the board presently isn't she she's on the boces board she's not on the wayne central board any longer right yeah yeah yeah so she's going to encumber yes okay first they'll be probably the first order of business uh at our 20 meeting on the 28th so uh i will entertain a motion to adjourn isaiah and linda uh is there any discussion all right john yes linda yes tina yes yes yes this meeting is adjourned thank you everybody