Board of Education Meeting May 14, 2025

001Mike. All right. Thank you. Good e good good evening and welcome everyone. I'd like to call the Wednesday May 14th 2025 board of education regular meeting to order. Um Kim Mauricio is going to lead us in the pledge this evening. I allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right, welcome everyone. Um, next on our agenda are uh comments from our student representative, but I see that Aaliyah's not with us this evening unless she's somehow in the crowd. Um, so we'll move ahead to our superintendent's update which includes some interesting information about our high school robotics team. Mary, take it away. All right. So, good evening everyone. I I think the theme of tonight is about teamwork.

002When you work together as a team, much can be accomplished. If you want to go fast, you go alone. But if you want to go far, you go together. And that is the theme of our meeting tonight. a board of education together moving forward with all things centered about students, our robotics team. Uh we have some important team recognitions for members of our board of education. And then we have our team responsible for the um $210 million bond project and capital. So we have a great report based upon how a team of people can come together to move forward with a very strong vision. Uh, so it's an exciting night tonight. So in spite of the ugly weather outside and everything else, there's a lot of positivity, tremendous energy in the room this evening. So

003let me just give you a couple of quick shoutouts before we hand it over to our students who are here this evening. I want to give a huge shout out to Austining High School and the staff and students involved with the Adams family. It earned four Metro Award nominations. Four. That is huge. Huge. Outstanding comedic performance and a role identified for a female. Outstanding comedic performance for a role identified for male. We're talking about Grandma and Lurch. And those of you who saw it, right, I mean to totally agree with this nomination. It they were fantastic. Uh we had a great um nomination on set design and hair and makeup. So congratulations to the staff and students on that. Our Austining High School track team brought home six league championships. That's three times more than

004they did last year. Six. So congratulations to the students and staff. For the 18th time, Austining has earned best community for music education. So, thank you to Kate Matthews and to all the staff and all three schools and our wonderful students for the celebration of music. So, congratulations to everyone. Um, this Saturday, just to remind people, we have our explore and learn from uh 9 to 11:30. Uh we have uh touch a truck is which is part of it. Climb aboard town in vehicle trucks. I would have loved this as a you much younger, right? I would look awkward now doing it. I'd probably fall. All right. And discover how these mighty machines help keep our uh community safe and clean. Um we want to meet our community partners and again it takes a team

005to move and to educate. It takes a village and we have so many here in Austin and our community partners will be at this Saturday's explore and learn and our educators those who are here they're here to help help parents ask your questions about hey do you understand the NWA report are you having trouble with the parent portal our team will be here to help unpack and discuss um ouring high school and here's another very exciting event I want to thank Angela for her help with this Our Austining High School stu students will host the first ever TED X event. Please mark your calendars for that. That is May 22nd. All right. We are uh I want to thank our terrific PTAs for the thoughtful celebrations last week. I mean, some of them look like

006they were done by professional caterers. I was just blown away. The tremendous food, tremendous energy. So, thank you for that. We have a family workshop navigating parenting in the digital age and it was a huge success. Families came together to uh share stories, connect and explore practical tips for raising kids in today's digital world. I'd love to hear from our robotics team about that. How do how do you manage your brain and functionality when you're being bombarded by so many inputs from technology? I a big shout out to uh Claremont teacher Jill Anderson and I heard it was such a success parents want part two of that. So thank you to Jill for her efforts along those lines. Uh the art show if you didn't get a chance was amazing and we have incredibly talented

007students. Um thank you for the fabulous art show. Thank you for that celebration. It's on display at the Austining Public Library through May 27th. Please, if you haven't had a chance, go take a look. incredible works of art. And last but not least, I want to give congratulations to Olivia Wallace and Frank Murphy who won an all expenses paid trip to the 2025 NAACP AXO National Convention this July. They earned first place in the STEM competition last week at the regional ACTSO event for their outstanding science research project. So very, very exciting times. Thank you. Just a reminder to everybody, our budget vote and the uh Austining public library, all of that takes place next week, May 20th from 7 to 9 in the Austining High School small gym. So with that, I'd like to

008turn my superintendent's report over to the Aening Engineering Robotics Club. And they have a special robot here who will be joining us this evening. So come to come on up. It would be nice if the camera could c get all of you. You can stand behind just so we can all see you. First, before we start, let's just make sure their mic is on. I can't. Their mic's not on. Okay, good. Uh, before we start, I just want to say thank you to the school board for having us tonight. Uh, we're always excited to talk about the team and talk about what we do here. So, we hope you enjoy. All right. So, to start off our season every year, we or for the past two years, we've started a kickoff event in which we

009host eight teams from all around the Hudson Valley region to watch the kickoff video, which explains what our game and challenge is going to be for the year. So, immediately after this kickoff, where we get to watch the video of what we're going to be doing, we start strategizing and planning. For the next eight weeks, we'll be in our build season in which we begin prototyping our beginning designs and our all of our ideas get put into some sort of process in which we're able to see how they'll work and then put them towards our final design of a robot which you can see here. Then we bring this robot into our first competitions of the season which this year was Hudson Valley Regional. So to talk about the competitions this season, uh we competed

010in three overall. Our first one was the Hudson Valley Regional at Rockland Community College uh where we ended up placing 15th over overall and we won the innovation and control award for our unique uh control scheme of our robot. Uh after that we went down to Pittsburgh uh where we actually did really really well. We were second overall and we were event finalist. So we made it all the way to the final round of playoffs and we won an additional award for our robots uh outstanding autonomous routine. And our third regional of the year was the Tech Valley regional in Albany, New York at the MVP Arena. and we ended up being placed fourth overall there and we were the captain of the third alliance during the playoffs. Um, our performance throughout the season uh

011landed us a ticket to go down to Houston for the World Championships. And this year our team had an amazing time going there, not only competing but learning from other teams and seeing what everyone is doing uh differently and the same and seeing what we can uh learn from them to grow and make our team stronger. And our performance this year was also raising a new bar for our team as it was the first time in team history that we had advanced to the playoffs. And being able to do that had shown us a whole new world of competition that we don't see here. The amount of uh focus that the teams have there and the amount of pressure that you know we were under competing in the playoffs was unlike anything we'd ever seen.

012So this was an amazing experience for us and we ended up ending off our season the eighth best team overall in New York and the 30 236th uh best team worldwide. So deserves a huge thank you. So for the future uh there's some things that we some goals that we've set and some things that we need to continue our performance. So something that we really want to establish is a pipeline of students because something that we find is that when students come to the high school, uh they really don't have an idea of what we're doing in the team and it's kind of a whole new world and it's something that you've never seen before and the uh organization that we work with first actually has competitions for younger students. So the first Lego League

013and the first tech challenge which are geared towards students in elementary or uh middle school can allow students to kind of get a foot into this world of building a robot and competing with a robot. That way when they come to OS they're better geared for being in an environment where you're expected to learn on your own and it's a very rigorous um uh place with other students who are really passionate about what they do. Yeah. Um so coming into the Austining engineering room at first can be really overwhelming and really intimidating because you come and you see all these amazing people working and you get to see all these mass these robots and this crazy mechanism that's being created. And when I first walked in and I was lucky enough to be able to

014join in my eighth grade year, it's just crazy. I was so overwhelmed. I had no idea what to do. I was walking around, but everyone was all friendly. They were able to teach me. And now I've come so far as to where in sophomore year I was able to play a bigger role in the team. And seeing this experience having coming from eighth grade, seeing how that extra year, even just one, gave me that extra knowledge and ability to work with the team in a way that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to is something that I want to be able to give and that we all want to be able to give to all of the students in our district. Something else uh that's really important is that at the engineering club, at the

015high school, we have an open door policy. So, any student is able to join. We don't have any limits on the amount of students in the team. And I think that that is something that is very important that we need, you know, to establish with the younger grades because in middle school I applied for the robotics team and I didn't even make it on the team because there weren't enough spaces. But, you know, now I'm here part of a team with tons of other students. So clearly, you know, it's not just it's not has nothing to do with the students and we need to make sure that we're providing these students who are curious and passionate and have a desire to learn about engineering and robotics that opportunity to do so. uh so that when

016they get to the high school they can make the most out of this four-year experience because often early on in those in those early years it's difficult to kind of know what to do. Uh something else that we are establishing now is that we're chasing performance. So in in the past we have kind of just been building our robots to go to a competition and compete and you know we've been competitive but it's mostly been with the idea of having fun but in the past especially the past 3 years we have seen our performance is greatly increasing and now the limiting factor is our ability to keep up with the latest technology and we find that no matter what we do we are always like about one to two years behind the late the leading

017teams in the area and no matter how much time we put in if we don't have the same technologies and the same abilities as these teams, there's not much we can do. And the two best things that we can do to improve our ability to keep up with these technologies is to have students that are passionate and willing to learn, which we have plenty of and which we will get more of with these pipelines from the younger schools, but also the funding to have access to things like CNC machines, like we have one in the in the school right now, but we've pretty much outgrown it. and our ability to purchase parts from manufacturers and access to materials rapidly because oftentimes we find ourselves making a decision based off of the availability or the cost

018of something and rather than the performance of a new motor or a new kind of sensor that we can put on the robot to make it the best that we possibly can. And that's a decision that we don't want to have to make and that will limit us and prevent us from building the best machine that we can. Uh before we end, we just have some really important thank yous that we want to give out because there are some really uh important people who are instrumental in our success this season. So namely the business office and the transportation office allowed us to go to all these competitions overnight and in other states which was really amazing and some key players in the OS administration namely Mr. Shikapasha, Miss Langley and Miss Morona. Without these people

019our season would not have been possible. So we want to make sure that we give them uh you know worthy shout out and we want to thank you for having us here tonight and hearing us and hearing our story about what we do at the Austin Engineering Club. So there are a couple of points before we see the um robe. First of all um uh we could we this was but serendipitous but it couldn't have picked a better night to for you to be talking about this because we have a team here of architects, engineers, and construction managers. And one of the projects that they're going to be talking about is a robotics room, a new room for all of this designed exclusively. And if you overheard the conversations we were having, uh, this needs

020to be on the ground floor. We need these type of doors so the robot can go outside. We're looking at height. What's what's the type of concrete we're putting in here? What is the airflow and ventilation? So I think what you're doing is you're giving living inspiration to our team who's designing the future space. But but the uh thought that that needed to happen comes from this board of education. And I want to thank the board for that and it's it's adjacent to uh our renovation of a building that used to be a church to be now a performing arts place as well. and that is considered right now in New York a career and technical approach towards graduation. So those two things merging together. So I couldn't couldn't have picked it Doug I I

021Doug I give you a huge shout out for the timing because that was absolutely perfect. And I want to thank in particular at the last board meeting we accepted a donation. Roger's been out there trying to raise significant money and help us support that and the board has included it in all their budget pieces. So if you want Doug, you want to talk about the adults that are here tonight that volunteer of their time to make all of this happen. So the program really runs on mentorship where you have a relationship between an adult and the kids and that bringing in that community is such a huge part of it. Uh we have the teachers. We have the computer science teacher back there, Mr. Apachella. Uh we have Miss Portillo and Mr. Cinta. Um but

022we also have adults who come in and just volunteer their time. We have Mr. Tom Hannon who's been with us for years. His daughter came through the program and he stayed behind to help. Um he's been instrumental in helping with mechanical. We have Mike Lima who graduated Austin High School in class of 2012. He was a founding robotics member. He was the president of the club back in the day. He was Masimo. uh 13 years ago. Um but now he's back living in Austin and he comes in, he volunteers his time and he's made a big difference in just helping us build better machines. We have a number of other adults who volunteer their time. We have parents who are helping with things like transportation, chaperoning. It really is a huge community event and we

023appreciate all the support we get from all the adults. I think it's great and thank you Doug for your leadership. Thank you so much. So, do we get to see the robot? Uh, yeah, I think so. Okay. I mean, it's impressive just to look at it before [Laughter] I love it. One of the things they're planning on doing in the next two weeks is the technology department with Miss Bacon has arranged a tour of the robot with all the elementary schools in the district. Oh, I love that. So, they've kind of slowed down the programming to make it a little little safer for public consumption. Um, but that's uh part of the fun of the seasons. They get to show it off to all which is great. Now, now who moves the robot? How do

024you get it to You want to take it away? Oh, go ahead. Sorry, what was the question? How do you move that robot from school to school? Oh, so we uh the students take uh one of the short buses that the district provides for us and then we're able to either fit the robot in the back of the bus or we uh get help from some of the custodians to put it in the back of a pickup truck and we unload it there and bring all of our equipment. So Eric and Steve are back there with our laptops and our control sticks and uh we bring our game pieces that they were just moving around now and we're able to take it into either the gymnasium or run it through the hallways and show the

025kids up up close. And that's another important piece of the team piece. Jared, I want to thank you and your men for making that happen because I know that that doesn't happen from building to building without the support of your team. So super important. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks board questions. Yeah. The board have any comments? Just one thing. I I think that it's also great to to call out that this uh team will be going down to meet with one of the largest consulting and technology um companies in the world. Uh that has over a million people working for them. come down and spend a day to kind of really understand careers in engineering, technology, consulting, problem solving, all the things that you guys are doing to ultimately deliver upon what will be your

026career in the future. So, um that's really exciting and I think you guys I don't know how you did what you did, but it's pretty amazing, you know. So, really great job. Thank you. Um I just wanted to thank you guys for being here this evening. I was very fortunate a few weeks ago to meet some of you on the weekend. Um I think Doug, you saved our destination imagination team when we got locked out of the high school and you let us in. And then of course the elementary students were immediately enthralled with robotics. And so um you guys were so kind to welcome them into your gym space and teach them all about your robot. And then you were so kind to go and see their hovercraft. And I think they got such

027a kick out of meeting you. They're already talking about robotics and a bunch of them are are definitely going to be joining next year at AMD. And they were so just you were so kind to them, really genuinely kind. And it has stuck with them. You should know that. They've talked about it multiple times since then. So I really appreciate your stewardship of the high school and the robotics club in that moment. It definitely made an impression on them and on me. So, thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Um, I'll just continue in this direction. Melissa, do you have anything? I'll say that that was a very impressive demonstration. It shows um just all the hard work that you all have been doing. I like hearing you talk about just how you are just

028conceptualizing broadening this out and making sure other students have opportunities for these experiences. The younger kids, I like the mentoring aspect. I can't wait to hear how the rest of the students in the district react when they see this and I sure you'll inspire more people to want to step up and and challenge themselves just like you all did. So, great work and thank you to the all the adults who support um the students in their efforts and um very impressive. Thank you. Um I'm going to echo Melissa and say that I love the pipeline idea in the younger grades. I've seen them do the um little mouse robot coding and that's very simple but it provides a sense of what they can do later in their school careers and I like the sounds that

029you put in. They were very cute. So I imagine all you do is engineering during your time at Austin High School, correct? I can't imagine how you do all your other subjects and all your work. You know, it's really impressive that not only you carrying those workloads, that you're supporting one another, collaborating with one another and doing all these great things on top of everything else that you're doing. And so, it's just infectious for the adults that are in the community that participates with all this. You raise it for everybody. And so, I just know our board meeting after this tonight, we're all raised, we're all sitting a little taller in the chairs because of the work that you're doing. So, keep up the great work. keep the pipeline, get the students, get more students

030in and really just keep raising the bar like you are from not only collaboration but competition as well. It's really fantastic. So I think I think Trusty Schnicker I think we see some band members here that were here before. I think we see people doing a million things. It's just so it's so impressive. So impressive. So thank you. Thank you so much for coming this evening. um my children were part of the destination imagination team that got to see um the your robot in action in the gym at the high school and um like Katherine said they were very inspired and thought that it was very cool and I was very inspired by all of you and the kindness that you showed and the support that you showed and and I don't think that the

031words on that we heard tonight are lip service you were kind of living that in in that moment living that goal so um I appreciate how inclusive of a group you're you're aiming to be. Uh there's a lot of kids here and that's great. I love to see it. Um how many K that you can just be in it and uh if you have a passion for it, you should be able to do it. And if you grow up to be engineers, great. And if you don't, that's great, too. You're still going to use the skills that you're building here wherever life takes you. So, um I appreciate all the work. It's clearly a not just the kids, but a huge community effort um of all adults, administration, um school community. Uh so I hope

032you feel that love coming from us to you guys and that support. Uh and we look forward to seeing more great things and I'm sure we'll hear about it from our kids, my younger kids, when when you uh make the tour around uh around the elementary schools, which I we'll make sure that all the administration gets the schedule. So, anyone that has a moment to go over and capture that, board members are invited. We'll make sure um you find out when. Um the other piece to it is that you mentioned some uh goals for us um um as an administration, as a board. So, I'm going to make sure Doug puts that together in your presentation so it becomes part of our work this summer as to how we frame and clearly a good chunk

033of it will be part of this design team for the new space. So, thank you for that. Thank you. Fabulous. I'll just add just one last thing here. I think the pipeline just to you know what Annie said the pipeline and is what you definitely need to really make sure that you have sustained continuity. But also the other piece of it is what you described as being overwhelming when you first start. You want to start that sooner and earlier. So we want to try to get that in the younger grades. So I think we as a board need to to think about how do we make the spaces so the the point of entry is much sooner rather than it being at the high school. Right. Right. Thank you. Thank you for having us. It

034was just great here. Thank you. Thank you. Did we get a photo? Did we get a photo? We get a photo. Let's get a photo. Oh, we have to. Thank you. Thank you. Along with 4122, whatever. Can we get the board administration to Come on. Anybody? [Laughter] [Applause] character bear. It's very understandable. The weather's been so awful. At least you you didn't come with like a little bucket hat. That's why you wear a little bucket hat. So, so the last part of my superintendence report I have um to congratulate um team BOE. So, we have some special shoutouts for individuals. I want to present this award from the New York State School Boards Association, a board of excellence award to Christine Manglli um through NISBA's board of excellence recognition program, conferring more than 150 points

035for your ongoing association professional development and accepting additional leadership roles. So this is the award, right? So congratulations. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Next. Okay. Um I have a uh NISSBA board mastery award given to Melissa Bant. Really? Yes. Uh Melissa, in addition to that, you get goodies. Okay. You there's an additional complimentary training um associate. Well, I wish. But no, it's not a gift certificate for food. But there there you go. Uh through NISBA's board of excellence recognition program, you have conferred more than 250 points for your ongoing association professional development and accepting additional leadership awards. So and they for this you also get yes beautiful portfolio. So okay for the cameras. Thank you. Not even a cruise. Come on. Okay. And we also have another board mastery award. Um, this is presented to

036Katherine Crossing again for NISBA's board of excellence recognition program for conferring more than 250 points for your ongoing association professional development and accepting additional leadership role. And you also get a certificate for one additional complimentary training and a beautiful the leather polio. [Applause] You'll be the bells of the ball at the Nisba convention with your leather folio. Oh, that is such a flex. So, thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. This is going on LinkedIn. Yes. All right. Uh I believe we're ready for our work session item 2.1, our construction update. Oh, okay. All right. Okay. Yeah. Everybody still you, Mary. All right. Yes. I'm sorry. Thank you. All right. So, a good evening and I um tonight Alita and I felt it was really important that we um outside of just

037giving the community and the board an understanding of the layer and level of work that's been taking place um you know in um two 2000 in September of 2024 we passed a historic um bond referendum and right now sometimes people ask us when's the shovel going in the ground when is the ribbon cut like everyone wants to see can we see what it's going to look like and um and as anyone who's undergone like I I even equate it to like preparing a lesson you know it's all the work behind the scenes it's all the work you do ahead of time you know a terrific paint job in our homes you spend most of your time prepping for it to come out really well so there's been a lot of preparation work this year um

038so Alita and I felt it'd be really important to bring our team together and to give an update to the board and the community. Nicole Reese is going to take some of this from tonight and then create a little video on it and then to put out a publication to share the work. But tonight's um broken down into two areas. The board's ongoing commitment to capital projects that are incredible and many of those are small bond projects in and of themselves and other districts. and then to the 220 $210 million bond. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Alita. Okay. All right. So, so if um can join us um probably here. Yeah. Yeah. Just so we can talk to each other and maybe add a point or you know. So, for those of you who don't

039know, CPL is our our architects and this is David Hunsburgger who we meet with frequently and um also joining us um as needed is our construction manager uh Paul Tazzy of ARIS Contracting. So, I'm going to turn it over to them. Thanks, Alita. Thanks, Mary. All right. First, like to start talking a little bit about your capital projects, give you an update since I was here last in January. A lot's happened since then. Um, we'll start with the park second story edition. Uh, we have occupancy. The rooms were being used this week for some testing. That's great news. Um, congratulations to Jared and his crew. It's It's all yours now, Jared. Um, also at Park and Claremont, there's a project for some site work, repairs to the loading dock, and some repairs to some boiler

040flu. Those bids were opened this afternoon. The numbers look good. The low biders were within the the range we were expecting and hoping for. Um CPO will do an analysis, talk to the biders, review the bids with them, and hopefully have a recommendation for the board shortly. So that's good news. That work is planned to get going this summer. Um so park the second story edition was a larger project. This the the park and Claremont job is a little bit smaller. Another large project is at Brookside. uh the Brookside classroom edition and fire alarm work. Um you'll see before you tonight some recommendations for contracts to be awarded. Um ARIS has uh vetted all the uh low bidders and that recommendation is before you now. There's a kickoff meeting scheduled for Monday. Hopefully the board

041will approve those contracts and that project will get going. Um that's an exciting project. classrooms, bathrooms, and because the numbers were good, they were able to take the alternate and um fit out the basement space, which provides additional classroom space, additional bathrooms, and some support spaces as well. So, that's fantastic news. Um AMD driveway and cooling. So you'll remember that this project was being done before the bond work for the 78 building and the idea is to provide access to AMD kind of a second route in to relieve some traffic coming up the hill in Vancland. Um that project is still under review by the Army Corps of Engineers and the uh environmental uh department of environmental conservation. Um they've been looking at everything the uh habitats, the wildlife, uh the impact. Uh we've received

042some comments. they're still going through their process and we hope to have some good news for you shortly. So, we'll keep our fingers crossed and, you know, keep the pressure on. Uh Mary's done a great job, you know, writing letters to kind of move the process along, but it is a process and these are, you know, federal agencies that take their time to review things. And finally, the last capital project is a smaller project. It's some doors at the uh student entrance at the high school. So, that project's up at the state education department being reviewed. We've reached the last hurdle, which is fiscal review. Um, the SED has also been taking their time reviewing projects, but we know that they are back online. Their computer system was down for two weeks or so. So,

043they're back online and we should be hearing about that shortly. That's going to be a small job. Hopefully, we can get that done over the summer and maybe into September. U, but that's great news. The capital projects are moving along. The bidding climate's been good and the numbers have looked looked encouraging. So onward just so people can see just give you an idea of some of the nice bright classrooms at um Park. They're beautiful spaces, sunlight, nice big windows, bright colors. Uh the furniture is really great and comfortable. Uh the outside is fits in well with the rest of the school and respects the historic traditions at that school. It's really a great addition over there and blends in nicely. Uh and likewise, you can see the orange outlined space is the scope of work

044for the driveway project. So, there's additional parking for AMD and the driveway access along uh Stormytown Road. So, you know, the the plan and you'll hear about the phasing and scheduling that's going to go into that. Uh some of the issues with the town have been great working with uh the school district. Mary's had great leadership um and being able to respond to their concerns and I think it's been a very positive experience for all the parties. So, we're hoping to get our environmental reviews completed and move forward with that project as well. All right. So I think just just based on that slide alone, I mean I want to give a shout out to Jim Minan who head of transportation, the level of intentionality that goes into basically talking about how do we move

045buses? How many buses line up? Um like where do we have the lineup lane? What's going to happen here in order to when we bring them out, we line them up? What's the impact of traffic here? What's the turning radius there? Where do we have food coming into the new building? The level of detail and conversations we have has been incredible. And again, it's having Jared at the because Jared will see something in a very different way than Jim will see it than what the principal will see it than what Alita will see it than what I will see it. So, it's just having everybody there and first iteration, second iteration, third iteration coming back and taking a look at this. So, we are very happy with where we are. And of course, we would

046always turn to Paul. Can you build it and does it fit within the budget? And his if Paul's not happy, none of us are happy. That's pretty much where it falls. Okay. I And now this brings us up to the capital project. So, we're here um to talk about the bond. Um and I just again want to thank Jared for all of his work. Um there's so many projects that are going on that weren't even spoken about over the summer. Um so again, his team does a wonderful job in getting these projects done. Um, but we're here tonight to focus also on the bond and provide an update to everyone. Um, like Mary said, we have been working diligently since the bond was passed um to get our preliminary review to SED and we did

047submit what we feel is an A++ paper um to SED um and it took a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of pouring over documents and uh even with administrators, principles, directors uh it just took a lot of time. So, we are hopeful that um we will we know we will be meeting with SED to go over that document um so that they can um get us to where we want to be with building aid. So, again, I just really think it's important that we recognize that um this work is a team effort and it really cannot get done without everybody on the team. We literally spend um a significant amount of time on the phone going over everything in quite um a significant amount of detail. So that team

048consists of the director of facilities Jared Mance, our architect who's represented here is David Hunsburgger, obviously our construction manager, Paul uh Tazzy, our fiscal advisors that are on um on the line, so they'll be joining us later. and me and of course our our fearless leader the superintendent of schools Miss Mary Fox Alter. So what is written here is that every person on the team is a piece of the puzzle and our goal is to ensure that the capital project meets the district's programmatic needs is on time and within budget. So the team members are listed here and um I just want to start with the director of facilities because we talked about um the capital projects that he is a part of above and beyond the bond. So his role as far as the

049bond is concerned is he's monitoring all the capital projects to see how they um impact um summer school to see how they inter interact the use of our facilities and our grounds. Um he's also the liaison between the CM the architect and me and Mary. Um he works and he provides like like Mary said a different eye. He sees things differently um from the facilities and operations and maintenance lens that we may not necessarily see. He he helps us to understand that the existing structures and how our new um programs, our new facilities are going to impact those structures. So he's a crucial part of the team and he's not coming up here. He is in the audience. So if you have questions for him, he'll he'll be up here to answer them. So again,

050I want to thank D um Jared for being part of the team as the director of facilities. Our next representative obviously of the team, a big part is the architect and they're basically responsible for making sure that the the program that the the board that the community, the superintendent wants for our students, the instructional pro program is basically done in a way that meets our needs um is sustainable and um within budget. Um, so they do the construction administration. They're responsible for the obviously the design development and some of the schematic design that you'll see here today. So again, representing um for as the architects for us is CPL and David Hanssburgger Hunsburgger. So I'm going to turn it over to our architect to go over um the different um phases of the bond um

051and our status um to date. So we had spoken about the phases for your bond at the January meeting and you may recognize the five phases here. You'll remember on the very far left side we had preliminary submission as Alita has mentioned that preliminary submission has been completed. It's been sent up to the state in its place. We now have phase zero. And to hear to talk about the new phases and the kind of the reorganization and the why it's reorganized is Paul Tazy from ARIS. Hi, I know I'm a little ahead of the program, but um I wanted to go over the phasing in and greater detail. Like David said that um a phase zero came about and the way this came about um was a almost like a team effort. uh as the

052preliminary review was starting to be put together and during the it being put together, it came out that um we really needed to connect the main campus to the uh church to basically maintain the aid on the church. So that made us go back and relook at the uh sequencing, rerun a cash flow on the whole bond, turn it over to the fiscal advisors to make sure that the cash work the cash flow and the sequencing worked into their program as it worked out and Alita was a big part of that and and Mary was a big part of that. Um it worked into our fa favor. So now we have a new sequencing. So we start out with phase zero and you usually don't start with a zero but we weren't changing the other

053phases. So we have a phase 0 A and phase 0A is uh really dealing with the rectory building and the rectory building is being removed and taken down. We want to do that because of the materials involved. We want to do that during the summer. So we broke that out and made a separate submission Dave did to state ed so we can move that up on the program. remove it this summer, back fill the foundation and get out of the way that and the oil tanks which are there. So, we're trying to get rid of some of the hazardous materials right out of the gate so we could just work on the project. Then we started in looking at the overall project. The phase one was always the locker room, the locker room, the two-story

054edition above. But the difficulty of working on that campus is how do we get to the locker room and how do we build this three-story structure uh on the existing campus. So in doing that what we decided is we need to basically create a zero uh B which is the foundation or the uh the grading and site work associated with the u the CTE edition. So that creates us a level platform that we could bring all our trucks, cranes, and everything else to create the shell without ever walking onto really the property. So we're not interfering with the way you're operating the building because we're going to be working for the from the adjacent property over top of the you know the directory comes down and we use that space to basically stage and move

055into the u move into u to build the the structure of the u phase one. So if you look at it then we go into phase one which is where the program started out. The difference in phase one now is that to make this work, phase one used to be standing alone, just the locker room and the two-story edition above. It now incorporates that building and the CTE edition. So, we're going to start with the locker room and the two-story building, build that shell back out of that, and then start on the addition right away. Um, so that brings us into uh phase two. Now, this is where some of the change is made. We used to go right from that building right into the church, which is the CTE renovation, but we can't do

056that until we connect the buildings. So, we're moving over to the music area. So, we swap the music area with the um with the CTE with the church, actually. So, we'll move right into the the music area. the second floor of the uh of the locker room edition where the fitness center is is where we'll we'll temporarily move the music program. So that creates a home while we're renovating their uh spaces. So when we complete with that the building the um building CTE addition connects to the church. Uh we refile where David uh will refile for um creating that whole property as part of the as part of the high school campus and then we get aid on the church edition. So that's how the sequencing broke down and everybody was a part of um

057you know there was a lot of discussions a lot of meetings we're having uh you know basically zoom meetings uh twice and three times a week on these projects on each piece of it to try to make sure it goes smoothly. This is a great team. It really is a team approach. uh your theme for tonight is u uh correct in that this is a team approach and um you know I really appreciate this is a fun project to work on. So it's uh I'm appreciative there. So it reminded me a little bit Paul about the kids from the robotics club earlier right because engineering club I should say because this was a real problem. Yes that how do we maximize aid? How do we fix the phasing? How do we construct this in a

058way there were many variables to it and then uh and then iterative back it really was and it it came through um on timeline costs are fine maximizing aid and taking a different path to get what we need but um just it was a great problem solving. I enjoyed the puzzle part of it until the best part Lita comes into me. She goes, "All has an answer for us after working together with everybody." So, we appreciate that very much. Just wanted to uh show this, zoom in on this so everyone so we're all clear about what we're talking about here. Everyone recognizes the church uh the location right here. When we talk about the rectory building, that's this existing building right here on the corner. Here's you can see the existing gymnasium, the high school

059gym. This low area in front is currently the locker rooms where as we go through and show you, that's where the addition is going to be for the locker room renovation. The fitness area is going to be above that and then science labs above that. The CTE building is this piece right here. Right now, this is was built as an educational annex for the church. So it was built maybe in the 50s 50s construction CMU block um asbestous nothing as kind of historically significant as the church itself. So in our discussions with the state historic preservation office they said it's not historically significant and that was no problem um with removing that part of the building. So, um, our consulting with Shipo is something that is going to continue throughout the project and I know

060there's a resolution that the board is going to be looking at later on this evening. Um, that letter of resolution is pretty much saying the district recognizes their responsibility to work with Shipo and we'll honor that as we proceed through this project. So, um, that is a responsibility that, you know, as architects we take very seriously and the district has made a commitment to honoring that as well. So that's a great kind of dedication to the heritage and historic nature of this church and this area. So congratulations on that. I think the district's really doing a great job taking the the lead on that. All right. So now we understand kind of where we are in the existing high school. U the yellow orange parts of this building are the phase one that we're Paul

061is talking about. So you can see on the left as we zoom in, this is going to be the renovation of the fitness room or the high school locker rooms. Across the alleyway is the new CTE building. We'll look at a little bit at that in depth. And then the church itself becomes phase three. Um again, we can't work on it until we've made that link with the high school building. So that's kind of the reason for realtering some of the the phasing that we've we had planned previously. So, what is the CTE building? I wish the robotics club was still here. They're getting a prime location over on the uh right up here in this area of the screen. That's going to be a new robotics lab with outdoor access to a nice paved

062area, rollup doors, high ceilings. It's going to be a fantastic space. But the CTE building in general is uh going to be dedicated to technology. There's going to be um CAD computerated software design. Um they were talking about CNC machines. Um right now in the in the design work, we're kind of at schematic design, design development. We're meeting with user groups discussing, you know, possibilities for the spaces and really kind of narrowing down what goes inside the box. We understand where the spaces need to be. We understand the code requirements now and how we can fit everything on the site. So the process now is to refine all that. So there's a lot of leaning on Mary and her squad to kind of give us information, give us everything you need in these spaces. And

063you know, the preliminary design, we kind of fleshed some of that out, but now we really need to dig in and go into detail about all these spaces. Uh the fitness fitness room we will get to on the second floor. The locker room layout that was great in consultation with the athletic department and Jared and his crew really understanding what their needs were there. So, everyone's feeling very positive about the way these spaces are fleshing out. There's still more design work to go. Uh, but we wanted to give you kind of a glimpse of what's on the board and where we're going with all this. So, you can see this is the first floor. I'll move up to the second floor now. Second and third floors. So, this is where the CTE building is linked

064to the high school. There's actually a bridge between on the second level. You can see the fitness center right here. There's going to be a bridge across to the CTE building. Um, and that bridge will actually eventually take you into the church itself. So, even though we're not renovating the church yet, we're preparing for that. Um, everything we do, we're trying to look ahead and you'll see that as we talked about the AMD driveway and the 78 building. We're trying to knit all the early construction with the later construction. And whether that's tying in utilities or footings or, you know, foundations, anything we do, we are aware of the next step. in a long project like this, it's really been great to have the direction, guidance from the construction manager, kind of lay out the

065steps and really be thinking ahead every time we we make a move here. Uh again, on the third floor up here, we have three very nice classrooms which are going to be science labs. Um we are working now with uh some of the users and talking about how they're going to use the classrooms meeting tomorrow. Mary's looking forward to that. But we have had constant meetings and uh Alita and Mary and Jared have been attending all of them. So they're putting in yman's work doing all of this. Part of uh the work now is what we call massing studies or massing models. We're looking at the volumes of the shapes trying to figure out how those buildings are going to fit into your campus. So you can see the addition as it's going on top

066of the uh high school locker rooms right there and then the CTE building. how it's going to occupy that corner. So, the team's now blocked out the shape. They're working on the elevations, how things are going to respond. And one of the responsibilities we're going to have is in dealing with Shipo. They're going to want to see how the historic context of the church is reflected or honored in our building. So, that's something that, you know, as we pro progress, they're going to want to be part of that conversation. You know, the team has been thinking about materials as we go through. Um, you know, is it stone that's going to match the tones and colors of the stone at the church? It would be great to be able to get our hands on the

067stone that was actually used to build the church, which came from a quarry right down the road here. I don't think that quarry is active right now. Well, it's I think it's a shopping center, but um yeah, but you know, they're they're the team is looking at the brick, the color of the brick that's on the existing building, the window patterns, and some ways to tie the entire facility together because this, you know, the fitness center and the new classrooms are going over your student entrance of the high school. So, it's really a gathering place. It's really an important part of this building. So that pathway and that area coming in is something that that we're going to be developing as we move along here. You know, some of the ideas for the CTE building,

068there's the talk about the stained glass. Um we've been looking in and we'll talk about that and when we get to the church, maybe we can use that idea of colored glass going into the the CTE um building as well. Um, so maybe we can use those elements in the windows on the facade and make the windows uh kind of work with the colors and tones in those uh historic windows and tie everything together that way, too. So, it's a really exciting project because you're you're not only adding the programmatic elements you want, but you're creating spaces around the campus, spaces to to meet, to get together, and to enhance the uh educational environment of the school. All right. So, the church CTE renovation, Paul had mentioned that that's not going to happen until a

069later phase. So, once we are tied in, and you can see up here at the top of the page, there is going to be a connection to that lobby. So, you will enter in if you're coming to a public event at the church art center CTE building, you'll be able to enter into the CTE building and go directly into uh the lobby and walk into your CT your renovated CTE building. You the idea is to come into a lower space and have it open up into that grand big space. So, this area right here is going to be a mezzanine with a lower entry and storage on either sides. Uh the mezzanine will be used for the AV equipment, lighting, soundboards. Uh but it'll also provide a sense of entry as you come in through

070uh these doors and a a lower kind of compress compressed zone and open up into that great hall that I think everyone is familiar with and seen the pictures of. So um what's important I think in that volume of space and I I think the board has done a great job and made it very clear that that space and the historic character the woodwork the ceilings it's the desire is to keep that the structural engineers been there uh he's been crawling around the catwalks in the attic and looking at the trusses in the ceiling trying to be able to understand how the loads are coming down and any changes that we make uh don't affect any of that structure. So um right now we are in design development working out the basement which are you

071know the foundations are logs sitting on big pieces of stone. So is that a viable solution as we move forward? Um the engineer is looking at that and we'll have some pretty solid answers for you very soon. But the I think when you begin to look at the interior of the church, understanding how it's built and the robotics team and the engineering people here would enjoy this and appreciate this. You know, even the way the church was built is part of the history and historic character of this building. A lot of that is above that ceiling, which is so amazing. But to see that craftsmanship, it's really something and it's something that, you know, modern times it's very hard to replicate and hard to find. Um as you look at this space and the CTE

072edition um um I just want to highlight how team and partnerships work. So fiscal advisors again reminding us trying to maximize our aid in these spaces and then to find out that um we could get or apply for additional CTE credit. So that you go through all you need your um Bosey's DS approval for this. Who's um Neil Bole, right? So Neil um Neil spoke with me multiple times. Um the bottom line though is if they sign off on giving us additional CTE aid on our structure here. It's something they can't claim for all the other components. But after going back and forth a bunch of times, they found four classes that we have four identified in this that would give us and maximize our CTE. And keeping in mind that the performing arts now

073with the state that is a CTE space. So you'll see very explicit names associated with rooms. They actually associate with beds codes which associate with us as CTE when we submit all the paperwork. It enhances our building aid. That's the whole point behind it. So again, without Neil Bole, without PNW, quick response, um you know, they when he called up to the state, they were like, "Who's asking for this? This is very unusual." And they were like, "Well, Austin, Mary and Osning." So somebody knew me or remembered me. So I was happy about that, too. But at the end of the day, it's just this is the in intentionality behind all of this. When we were looking at the locker rooms, we had Jared there. We were talking about which surface is easier to clean,

074how many cubbies, what's the height of the cubby, where are we putting the athletic trainer, what's the type of floor given the type of activity. You know, we're not putting a dance floor here because that's a CTE in this building, which is a performing arts place. Right. So again, it it's that level of detail what you see here taking place. Right. Thank you. Mary, we talked about puzzles and you know the financial piece has been quite a puzzle to resolve that as well. Okay. So, let me just speak of puzzles. Okay. So, we would love to show you the outside of the seventh and eighth grade building. But right now, this this every single space, every single room, every single turn, every single hallway that you're going to see here has been looked at odd

075infinitum. And I want to give a shout out to Kim because we we have to focus on what we I I want the uh the special education program to play a role front and center. So I asked Kim if she in her dream if we had program that we would love to bring back in district and we talked about having a program for our most vulnerable kids that a therapeutic type program that have to attend an alternate environment. So we were able to sit down. Kim has the part 200 regulations sort of memorized. So we sat down and we figured out which rooms would be an ICT claiming it naming it. uh an office for a psychologist is really a related services space. And then we also highlighted which room and and actually on the

076form for the preliminary submission they asked which programs will you be bringing back into district. So we were able to identify one at the middle school and one at the high school level which which I'm thrilled about thrilled about to be able to educate our own kids within within district. So again, great deal of intentionality behind every space. I mean, um, Kim will tell you that, you know, a resource room is 500 square feet. We got into it like, all right, 770 square feet for a general classroom. You got 1,000 for a bolab. How much how much graph footage do we get for casework? All right, what's the square footage on the career the home and career skill room? We were in the reads on all of this. So, every single box you see here

077throughout this was looked at, identified, and talked about. Where's the servery? Where does the truck pull in? How much how far is someone going to have to walk? Well, Jared, when we have to close off the gym, where are the bathrooms? How far are people going to walk? Can they get in? So, again, the nice part, the fun part will be be the design on the outside, but this made me very, very happy. It's a good great point, Mary. It has to work. You know, it can look great, but it has to work and has to meet the needs of the district. Uh there are specific meetings that are coming up for food service. There's meetings that are coming up just to design the cafeteria. Um you know, seating, how many kids are going to

078be in there, how many uh how many uh classes are cycling through there. Um there are a lot tons of the details are driving how this thing is going to look and how it's going to operate. So, um we're gathering all that information and you know, we've got it laid out now. So the next step is really honing in on each space. So you can see the cafeterias uh and food service area on the left side of the building here. The the middle zone is uh some guidance and office space. We have a nice great size auditorium with a stage. And then we have a fantastic gymnasium, locker rooms and bathrooms over here on the right side which is going to be fantastic with its uh separate entrance for after hours and access to the

079parking lot on the other side. So even how the building is going to be used, when it's going to be used, that's all being discussed. And how the building is going to lay out to really work with the way Austining is going to use it. Jared, where should we put the janitor sink? How many square feet, how many feet is it away from the last month? Does that add to someone's time? The level of detail that went into this and you know, the idea of buses and drop off that that's been a huge driver of a lot of decisions. Um, you know, the business of the school districts is not just education, but it's transportation as well. So, um, Jim Minan's been fantastic. A lot of input. Um, and we've really enjoyed working with him

080and his crew as well. Um, just as we go forward, these spaces will be fleshed out. We will have some more renderings and flashy graphics for you. Um, we didn't want to jump the gun and show you some things. The design team were pulling their hair out, not not wanting to show anything before it's done. Temperamental artists that they are. So, um, thank you for your your support and your, you know, patience with all this, but it a lot's been happening. So, we're on to the next member of the team, which is our construction manager. I've known Paul since I first started here, um, 11, 12, 13 years ago, and I remember walking into a construction or bond meeting, but at that time was a $41.5 million bond. um and just admiring his work and

081his commitment to keeping things within budget. Um so he actually was very instrumental in designing that bond um several years ago decade almost over a decade ago. Um but even working with him from big to small projects and and this project um he is truly the uh gatekeeper of the funds. uh when we talked about uh changing the um the phases, I just waited till the end and I waited for Paul to say it's within budget, there's no additional funds and we were done. So it was all we were all fine. That's all I was waiting for. And um so he does do that work. um he's there from the beginning to he was there for the bond and helping up preparing the pre the pre-referendum work um and coming up with some some of

082those estimates and he'll be here till after the work is done and looking at those these things that still need to be done be done on the checklist. So I'm going to turn it over to Paul who's going to talk about one of the most important things that actually does impact money um which is the phasing and the timeline and he'll introduce Chris. You know, one of the things I'd like to start out with is I appreciate all the accolades everybody's given me, but I don't do this alone. And uh some of the U team members that you'll be seeing and have seen. Uh Chris Hannenburgg is the uh senior project manager on here. So he's um right under me on controlling what's going on. And then in the audience is Fred Abhard who is

083the project manager on this project. So you find that, you know, when we're talking about teams, we have individual teams in our office of the three of us get together to discuss a lot of these items and what our approach is on how we're going through the design and the budgets and everything. So it's kind of like, you know, a team within a team as we're going through. But I'm going to uh let uh Chris because he was the one that is really uh working on the scheduling and you'll you'll get to know him intimately as we go through this project, but he's going to go over the schedule. Yep. Thank you, Paul. And and certainly just not me is working on it. Fred's working on it. Paul's working on it. We're all working on

084the schedule uh intimately like Paul had said. So um the planning schedule that you see before you uh very similar to the planning schedule that we had put together at the bond time frame minus the phasing that Paul and David had mentioned. uh earlier. Um there's a lot of information behind this. Each individual project, there's let's call it seven projects up here. There's a project schedule uh uh behind this. Not only is a project schedule behind each one of those project, but there's also a planning schedule behind this. So the planning schedule has about seven documents to it. Each individual project schedule has about 10 to 15 uh pages to it, so to say, and lot of information that goes into it. So this is kind of a a collapsed version that CPL as a

085team uh put this document together to help us out. So uh little tough to read here but top left um we have the um demo the rectory the 0A that Paul had mentioned uh earlier and that is going to start the summer uh this coming summer. It will be completed this summer. Uh as Paul had mentioned earlier and then zero B which is just underneath that uh is the CTE demolition and the site work and as Paul had mentioned earlier a lot of that is the um uh education annex that is going to be demolished and then we're setting up that site to enable us to get to the uh phase one uh which is the locker room. uh that locker room two-story edition and the CTE edition uh is going to start in October

086of 26 and run through uh July of 28th. And then we're moving into uh the music wing which is in student commons which is going to run from summer of 28 through uh January 30th or January 230. And then the uh CTE renovations which is the church uh that would run from summer of 29 through summer of 31. Uh running concurrently you can see down the from the second from the bottom is the 78 building that will be running at the same time as the uh music wing. Uh and that will be running from uh spring of 27 through um summer of 29. And then we we finish up the project with uh Claremont which is again uh summer of 28 through the summer of 30. Uh Claremont six classroom edition and then music rooms

087and the cafeteria renovations. So uh just one quick note too is the left-hand side there with the dotted line is the current data line. Uh so you can see again uh working eras working with CPL with the district on uh all those design phases that they had mentioned uh earlier. So that's the that's the planning schedule and again many many many sheets behind this to uh get this to collapse to uh show this here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um and finally we have our next team member and they're not present here but they are online. So, I'm going to ask uh Mike Viscanti to uh be prepared to uh go over the next slide. Um and Mike Viscanti uh Jeff Wells and Andrew Watkins represent fiscal advisor and they are our fiscal adviserss.

088Um so they've been very instrumental with helping us come up with the debt schedules. uh they've been working with our team and um identifying uh ways in which we can ensure what we promised our taxpayers that there'll be no impact on the tax levy. Um so that that what what affects that is the timing. Um what affects that obviously is the borrowing amount and most importantly making sure that we get the aid that we were anticipating at the beginning from pre-referendum. So I'm going to turn it over to them. Um, again, their role is to identify our cash flow needs, analyze the tax impact, and of course, maximize our building aid. So, Mike, good evening. My name is Mike Piscani. I'm uh the director of accounting and state aid services for fiscal adviserss and marketing.

089Um, I've been the firm now for just about 18 years. And uh my sole purpose with fiscal advisors is as uh Lita said is to maximize building aid and uh make sure that the aid that is projected uh which we had been projecting uh preref uh comes through as the project progresses and as it wraps up. Um also part of my team um is Andrew Watkins and Jeff Wells. Uh, and I'm gonna let Andrew introduce himself. Good evening everybody. Good to good to see everybody again. Um, sorry we can't be down there in person. I would have loved that dinner at DD's before coming up to the meeting as we normally do, but uh, we'll get down there soon. Great to be here. All right. So, um, I guess what we want to start out

090with is uh, I want to say thank you for uh, having us as part of the team. you guys have a great team down there. Um, and part of the value of having a fiscal advisor, um, as a team member is that we look at things a little differently. Um, I mainly focus on maximizing building aid and the different components that go into maximizing the building aid. Um, and I guess where we want to start building aid units. And we hear these terms being thrown around and you know people say oh PR, ISR, BA use. Well, what a building a unit is is it's a measurement almost of the capacities for any given building within your district. And it's the buildings that you actually have educational spaces. So with the educational spaces, so for instance,

091you have your elementary schools, your middle schools, your high schools, they will sed they will look at the square footage and how each square footage is utilized and they will calculate the amount of BAUs each building will qualify for. Now this project that you're looking at and and really now well underway with uh is a massive project and with this magnitude SED requires a uh submission for it's a preliminary review and that's the process that we are underway. Um the preliminary review is really a submission of plans and specs to SED for them to review and look at and calculate the available uh capacities. And they don't just look at the existing, they also look at the new square footage. So what we need to do is we need to look at those cost estimates

092and we use those BAUs to calculate the maximum cost allowances or MCAs. Now, they don't just look at it, as I said, for just the renovations. They look at it for additions and renovations. And they split those out between the cost of construction and incidentals. Now, your incidentals are everything outside of your contracts, architect, construction manager, your fiscal advisors, legal counsel, all that other good stuff. Um, unfortunately, site work also is included with the incidental cost. And why I say that as unfortunate is because most people when they think of site work, they think of it as construction, but SED views it as actually an incidental cost of construction. Those incidental costs are just a pure percentage of the construction maximum cost allowances. So what I do is I take a look at those this

093actual scope and how it's broken out costwise construction. We're looking at renovations, additions, site work, and the incidental costs that go along with it. Then I pair them and analyze them against the available cost allowances. because this project is so involved and it's going through that ISR and we work with many districts across the state. So, I'm exposed to all kinds of projects. And in one of my prior projects, uh it's actually still going on. It's about to wrap up. Jamie Byron. She's a um she was a fiscal advis uh fiscal associate at SED and I was working with her on this old on this other project and she said she was coming up with a new methodology of calculating maximum cost allowances BAUS for CTE space and you know it kind of piqu my

094interest and as we got going down this road she she knows and sed understands that the CTE curriculum and the classes that are held in these classrooms, it costs more to outfit these classrooms than it does other typical spaces like a math classroom or a reading classroom or an English classroom, right? So, knowing this, she wanted to formulate a new calculation to basically churn up more BAUS, higher aid ceilings for this type of curriculum. And when I was brought in and started looking at it and hearing the type of work and the type of program that was going into it, I said, you know, this is a lot like and it's Udica City School District. This is a lot like their project. And with working with the, you know, Aerys and CPL and the district,

095we're able to determine, hey, you know what, some of this work that's going in here and what Mary had discussed earlier would qualify for CT program and it in order for SED to calculate and use the higher I guess BAU methodology of calculating, they would need the um Boseies to sign off on the classes which mayor was able to get four of them uh certified by PNW Boseies which is fantastic because that means more BAUs which also means higher aid ceilings. So that was a that was a huge benefit. And other areas that we looked at was, you know, how are we how how are those submissions going in? You know, uh Paul mentioned, you know, marrying that some of that site work with the uh addition and the other work that's there. And we

096look at that and had, you know, maybe that site work gone in by itself, it wouldn't have had it wouldn't have qualified for building aid because you need to have little things like $10,000 worth of construction to qual to tap into your maximum cost allowances. So by working together with the team, we were able to put together um this project that has and is qualifying for what we had originally projected as the building aid, but now trying to go above and beyond what we had originally projected. trying to do as much as we possibly can because again my purpose here in this in this project is to not only maximize the building a but alleviate any local share right and with this you have building aid ratios each district across New York state has a

097building aid ratio it's assigned to the district it's based off a number of factors but mainly the wealth of the district your district uh qualifies and is has a B bar right now building aid ratio of 68.1%. So that means for every dollar spent, so long as it qualifies for building aid, you'll get 68.1 cents back on the dollar. So with that, that's my goal is to make sure that if any of these costs come in, we get that qualified for the 68.1%. So you're getting the most bang for your buck on these projects. Now I mentioned that there was uh a recalculation of the existing BAUs. That's a process that again sometimes with redistric redistricting SED uh requires this projects of this size it goes through. So with this with this preliminary review um

098and the projections that uh CPL has provided we are right on track with the original projections and the cost allowances are looking fantastic. Now the other piece of this that we have to consider are the uh rules and regulations that go along with these projects and what fluctuates uh from year to year. So when a project goes into SED and receives SED approval, that's one step. The next step is going out to bid. Once the contracts are bid, SED will look at the specific month and year in which the contract was awarded. That then locks in your construction cost index. It also locks in your regional cost factor. your construction cost index and your regional cost factor will lock in the same month and year in which the uh general contract is signed for any

099given project. That's one piece of calculating the maximum cost allowances. The other piece of this is the aid. So when these projects are closed out, the aid's going to flow over a certain period of time. Uh renovation work aid flows over 15 years. new construction uh that pure new construction that's 30 years additions with renovations it's 20 years um so long as the additions are uh exceed the cost of the renovations so when I mentioned fluctuations in the building aid that building a ratio can fluctuate and it's the only piece of that equation that fluctuates from year to year and it's not like a huge fluctuation it's really if there's any changes within in the wealth of the district. And you know, I look back uh and there's been slight ups and downs with your

100building a ratio, but it pretty much hovers at just below 70%. So, that's our goal, try to get as much of this project to qualify for the aid that's available and out there. Now um as we go through this we these the rules changed a bit from uh the build 4 to where the chapter 97 rules and we don't see or foresee a new tier of building aid coming out before this project wraps up. So what that means is we have to look at a couple of components that go into generating this building aid. I mentioned submission SED defining what your B what your building aid uh units are looking at your maximum cost allowances getting your contracts awarded. After we get that contract awarded we have to submit SA139s. It's a form that goes

101into SED that cues the project for building a project progresses. Once the project is wrapping up, your architect will provide and prepare a final certification of substantial completion for that project. That project, that CSC goes into SED. And at that point in time, we can start to prepare the final cost report and make sure that it goes in a timely manner so that when we submit that final cost report, it aligns with the debt that's associated with the bond. So, I'm not going to get too far into the bond weeds, but that's the process that we really shepherd the project right through to the end. So, that when we are projecting at the very beginning, that's the track to be on and that's the track that we need to stay on. And that's what we're

102trying to ensure happens with this project. And it works through its way through to completion. And when we get to completion and we submit those final cost reports, we aren't blindsided by any takebacks in building a because we've already projected, we've already taken into account. We built in cushions to make sure that if there are any, you know, unforeseen occurrences that come up, the project budget can can sustain some shifts in costs. So because you like anything, you know, you have uh a project that you want to do at your house, a small renovation, and I think if anyone knows, if you try to do a renovation of your house, there's always the unforeseen costs that that pop up. Well, you know, with efforts from the construction manager and your architect and the team at

103within the district, we take that into into account and we build that into the budgets so that we ensure that building aid is going to flow not only in a timely fashion, but what we have been projecting pre-referendum all the way through projecting out when we submit those final cost reports. I know there's a lot there. Um, but uh if you guys do have any if there's any questions, you know, there's a back and forth, feel free to re ask me now or if you want to reach out later on, that's absolutely fine and we can get into the uh building aid weeds. So, while Alita brings up the next very positive piece, um, and I want to thank Michael for that. It's, um, this is public money. We needed to present to the board

104of education the level of respect and intention we've had behind public money and to fulfill the promise and commitment we made to this community. So there was a tremendous amount of effort and ongoing but key words there is that we are on track. We are actually when you see this chart which will be explained we the level of detail here is respectful of public money and the commitment the board of education expected of us to this project itself. So um I'm going this is Mary's favorite slide so that's why she um came over and made sure I showed it. Um but I'm going to turn it over to Andrew Watkins who you'll remember who was part of the pre-referendum um presentations. This chart is no different um than the chart that we showed at pre-referendum,

105which is good news. Like Mary said, I just want to also say uh my um we're confirming also that like right before um the bond, there was a a slight dip in the building aid and that number went back up, the building aid ratio. And then also the um the amounts that we use for the um interest rates are also um consistent with the amounts that we um are projecting going forward. So I'm going to turn it turn it over to Andrew who's going to just go over this slide once again. He did it uh again pre-referendum, but the most important part I'll leave it to him which is at the end of the chart. Correct. And and once again great to great to see everybody. Um, and so we've we've put a lot of

106work in with Mike and and Jeff um here in fiscal and with uh the district and CPO and it's been great uh and Paul and his team. It's been great working with everybody on this process. Um, so as we as the district moves through the process of submitting the SED forms and the preliminary review process as Mike uh discussed, we monitor and and hone um the projection to ensure that uh where we had projected it uh pre-referendum is coming to light with the correct u buckets being filled in SED's uh mind to generate um the appropriate amount of building aid. Um so on this slide here the on in any borrowing the cost of the project in any given year uh or any project the cost of the project in any given year um is

107going to uh generate or cause the need for expenses need for funds from the project. So on the slide here the red uh ink shows expenses of the district while the green ink green numbers show uh funding. So working from left to right as the as the chart shows um or the chart flows the costs are going to create the need for project funding. The first funding to utili be utilized is the capital reserve. Um and after that is utilized, the district would need to issue bond anticipation notes as the project is continuing um or under construction and then permanently finance at at the end of construction or near the end of construction with serial bond issuance. Um now that's great because it allows the district to pay the pay the project cost in the

108year um or you know at the time they're expended, they have the money, they can pay the bills, the district can pay the bills. However, uh in borrowing, obviously, they're debt service costs that come along with that. Um and so those are shown in the uh next table of the that are red that's titled debt service costs there. Um and those need to be funded uh in some way, shape, or fashion. And in in this scenario, they're being funded by the building aid um as well as the transfer to capital line that's being moved to the debt service line. Um so as this uh preliminary review and the SEDD submission progressed, we worked closely with the district CPL um to gather the VAU count, analyze it and generate uh the building aid uh flow, the

109estimated building aid here that you see um in the first column under debt service funding uh in order to create a debt service plan or a ban and and serial bond borrowing and appropriate paydowns um in order to generate the budgetary impact which maintains um as no impact. It's also a positive. So the debt service funding is above the debt service cost um at at this juncture with the uh updated BAU counts as well as this plan that has come into place every year every single year. So again, we are utilizing the 6.9 million in the transfer to capital line and building a to fund this project. Um so there's no impact on the taxpayers as we had promised prior to the bond vote. So thank you fiscal advisors. So we're going to wrap up

110here with obviously you know my role um as the assistant superintendent for business. Um my job is to construct the most economic financial plan that meets our instructional needs. And um I meet with the team as you know and I work independently with fiscal adviserss. I'm on the phone sometimes just with um Paul, just with Dave, just with um uh Mike. So it's it happens almost every day that I'm interacting with one or some of them and Mary. Um so that happens all the time. And of course, our fearless leader will end with her. Uh she's a superintendent of schools, obviously, Miss Mary Fox Alter. Um the biggest part of the team um as she develops a fiscally responsible reasonable um project that meets instructional needs. She's basically the brains behind the making sure what

111we discussed and promised taxpayers from the instructional space um actually happens and turns out and shows up in those plans. Um, so again, it's been a great honor to work on this project. We want to thank the taxpayers. We want to thank the board of education. We want to thank our administrators um for helping and and supporting this project and approving it. And we hope that we will uh the team will uh deliver on its promises um and on time and within budget. So, thank you. [Applause] All right, let's open it up to the board for questions. Does anybody have a question? No. Do Do you have a question, Mar? You can go ahead. I always have a question. Um, could we just go to the middle school um chart just for a second? I

112just um I think there was like a you had like a first floor, second floor in there. I thought I saw and I don't know if it's still there because I know there's been a lot of conversations and a lot of um work that's been put in there. Is there a CTE room in that middle school somewhere? I thought there was. There is. Okay. Is there something that pre that any rule that prevents you from being able to get any kind of CTE credit for this for that middle school building at all? Um it's a great question. Um we are allowed because um that um career home CTE space is a requirement under stateed. we we are allowed a space with that special unit set aside just because it's part of it just like a

113home and career skills classroom. So we spent a lot of time making sure that the square footage was maximized to get the maximum bu building aid unit for that space itself. So yes, and where does that live in this in the schema? My eyes aren't that good. Roger. Is it like is it like this? Is it like a much larger space than we originally Yes, they are. like a lab in a home type space. Okay. And because there I thought there was I I know at one point when we had um a little bit more of a simplified sort of a sketch out there was a um there was one that said something about vocational and there and I was wondering if that was the same space or did we add to that space or

114we augment that space? We maximized what we are trying to get our aid on. So there was a lot of intention placed upon because that's part of a grad a commencement credit for kids in middle level education. So that space we talked about the height of the room we talked about the type of equipment in the room. We talked about you know ventilation in the room but be to being used for that purpose itself. Yes. Gotcha. And just for clarity because the these are things I just want to make sure I it didn't pass over my head which sometimes these things do. um the the driveway itself. If you go back to the chart that actually had the the the driveway carve out that you were showing, it was an orange theme there. So, just

115I want to make sure I this sunk into my head. So, this is kicking off this summer in addition to the CTE building. Is that correct? This uh the site work two there are two different projects. One is a one that got voted on by the taxpayers. Yes. and another one um the actually the green area which is the field that we're using to play on top of it and then the extra drainage that's this year and then the um the building itself is part of the bond right so so we're building the driveway but in order to build the driveway we had to design the space around the building Paul and then and to go over when it's going to start um the project really starts out with the uh tree clearing and under

116the summer. No, that's we can't do that during the summer because of a nesting bat in that area. Remember the bat? Oh, yeah. So, this moves us to the timeline that we need to to um do that is is November 15th through I think it's March 15th. Okay. That's when they clear. So, that's when we're going to start clearing and that's when that project will be able to kick off. So, it will be November of this year. That's correct. Okay. Got it. Okay. So, that's now we're we're still awaiting Army Corps of Engineer and DEC um approvals. Okay. I'm I'm assuming we get all those in and we're everybody's pushing for that. But then, yes, we will start in November. So, you you won't have the most amount of fill to move to that green

117shaded area. Now, that most of your fill is going to come from the foundation work that's in the where the core building is. Well, uh you get a lot of fill generated from where the parking lot is. So, that is being lowered at the same time. So, the area in and I'll show you over here. Uh, this is the parking the new parking lot area that um is u next to AMD next to next to this building. This area that's above it is a fill uh storage area. It's where we're going to stockpile the material that we're generating throughout the rest of the site. So, um that'll move into here and that's what what you'll use to kind of do the grading. That'll help us on doing the grading. And then this area in here

118um and and the rest of the um uh hillside uh the the material will be generated from the building in the other parking lot and just moved over. So we we're under another regulation of 5 acre disturbance and the disturbance of the um drive is about 4.8 acres. So we have to open up that and then stabilize it before we can open up another section. So right now we're sequencing all that out on which area that we um address next. So the staging of this really start kind of like flows into the spring of 2026 um because because you're the so again this is me trying to understand this. So you're clearing the trees in the fall for the for the sections which you're going to be allowed to starting around that November 15th there.

119And then in the spring of 2026, we'll start the staging. So this way you could start to do the carveouts and the clearing toward Stormytown Road. That would be correct. And it would move into the summer of when we'd be be completing that uh roadway. Okay, that that makes complete sense to me. So I I know you mentioned about the conversation around shovels in the ground. When is that first shovel in the ground? Well, we start with the U rectory um taking that building down which will be during the summer. We don't have the exact date because we don't have full approvals on that yet either. Okay. Um so CPL is waiting for the shipo approvals and soon as we get that we can then start scheduling that and bid it out. But the real

120shovel in the ground from there, you know, from there we're going to go into the um zero B, which I said, you know, I told you that we're going to take that area and create a staging and a and a working platform so we can work on the u uh locker room building. And then the locker room building starts when you keep too many dates in our head. October 26. So October of 26 is when we start. So really uh we're doing a lot of preliminary work until then on the site, but if you're going to do a kickoff on the project, it would be in the October of 26. Okay. And one other question, I mean, this is a little bit more um given the nature of what's going on today, how are the

121these tariffs impacting the materials of what you guys are are procuring to to uh do the buildouts, especially lumber, steel, brick, everything else? It didn't start out well, okay? But it's sort of stabilizing now. And right now, um, we're not exactly sure where it's going like everybody else. We're, you know, playing it along as things happen, but our numbers are still, um, looking good. And, uh, so right now, um, it is going to affect our material cost, uh, you know, but I believe, um, right now I'm comfortable that we're covered. Okay. that I think that is all I have. I just wanted to have some clarity around that and just understand the opportunities and just really if I think this is a great plan. Seems like you guys have a really staged out and well

122thought out. Um, you know, and I'm sure that as you're making progress on this, you'll look at where there are opportunities to move things up when possible, where possible. I mean, don't get me wrong, I this was a tremendous lift that's gone on here. So, I certainly appreciate all of the effort that's gone into this and a lot of the thinking that's been put into all of this. So, um really big hats off to you guys for just some amazing work and and I didn't say this, but I I want to call out Jared. Jared, thank you so much for the work. Your your work is super super important. Thank you. Any questions from anybody else? No. Thank you for your time. I really enjoyed it. I think I could probably get an update like

123this at every board meeting. Um, just because I don't have any questions doesn't mean I'm not excited. Um, can't wait for the ribbon cutings and the shovels in the grounds and the plaques on the rocks and and the kids happy in the schools. So, keep it up. Yeah. just a just a couple of like obscure questions. But first, I just want to thank um thank you all for the presentation. Alita, I really liked you just breaking down everyone's role and just reminding us of the important puzzle pieces that you all are coming together to um help this enormous project come to life. Um I too was going to be curious and ask the question about how you know materials might be affected. If I'm not mistaken, I think we had kind of built in like

124a buffer. Not expecting, you know, what we what we're having, but I think we had like a buffer built in already to the materials cost of somewhat. That's correct. We we built in an escalation factor into the project based on uh from when the the beginning when it was estimated in the beginning through the midpoint of construction of each phase. Okay. So, yes, we we try to plan for uh the escalation in the marketplace. Thank you. Um, I was curious about the the walkway that connects or is going to connect the church to the to the school. Is that enclosed, open, elevated? Like what does that look like? So, the walkway between the high school and the CTE building uh is on the second floor and the third floor. So, it's actually an extension of

125the corridor that goes across. So, if we can call it a sky bridge, I'd like to do that. That would be great, too. Um, but it is it's going to be above uh if you can see right now between the uh gymnasium and the the church right now there's an alleyway. Okay. Uh that Jared uses to get to the front of the property. So that's going to remain there on the first floor so it trucks and access can go there. But on the second and third floors, that's where you're going to have that walkway and that connection. So okay, um that's where we see most of the traffic coming across. Um the kids could go around and get in on the first floor, but it's primarily the second and third floor that they'll be accessing.

126Thank you. Um lastly, it's not really so much of a question, but just an observation. I'm always reminded every time we do talk about the church about how um how delicately we're treating that and we're actually preserving a part of history um like like it was pointed out earlier. And I know the community is eager for us to to see what, you know, we make of that space that we bought some time ago, but I think just hearing how meticulous we're being about both making sure that is a robust educational space and also making sure that we are um respecting the historical factors that go into that building and just the fact that we we have those two things coming together. Um I think, you know, I'm in awe every time I hear it spoken

127out loud. So between that and just just the meticulous nature of how you know the the cost analysis, the you know what materials we're using to build the stuff and how that impacts longevity. Um I think the time it takes um to do this is is worth it because we're really building a quality um model here. And so I just want to thank everyone for the hard work. Annie, do you have any? I don't have any questions, but like Melissa, I was really pleased to see how you're keeping the integrity of the building intact. I think it's really beautiful, and I feel that way about the high school, too. So, it's nice to have some modern elements, but not have it feel out of place. Frank, so I do have a few comments and questions.

128Um, I want to highlight just from the from the presentation just the amount of effort and time that's going into accurately representing the spaces that we have and how we're translating that into the uh to the b uh the building aid units and the maximum cost allowances. That is vitally important work. If you get it wrong, it costs you millions of dollars. And if you get it right and it sounds like we have the potential with some of these recalculations and getting support from Boseis and others for the CTE, we may actually get more than we initially projected in that front and just I can't state enough like from seeing lots of projects throughout the region. This is a really important element and just want to give you a lot of credit for the work

129that you've done there. Um I have a couple questions around park and it's really more about students and the work and safety. So I don't know Jared or maybe Fred you guys can come up. I have two questions really around the park work because park's an interesting project, right? I think the first floor of that building that we did. Yeah. Come on. So, and I don't know if Fred has in this as well, but student safety, right? every with all this work going on with all these buildings. It's a big question and we have this great experience of park and elsewhere, but could you talk a little bit about park and kind of how you made sure we had recess for kids, how we didn't have the trades stepping on on students and instructions on

130top of classes and how do you coordinate all that with the project manager really for me and for the community so that people know how we're maintaining safety while we complete a project during the school year which is pretty remarkable. Yeah. and and building a second floor on top of an occupied school building. Right? So, it comes down to planning and looking ahead and working with ARIS to come up with a good plan for staging construction materials, but also working with the building principal to communicate what we're doing and why we're doing it this way and and being intentional in how we're thinking about it. But yeah, it um park in particular was a was a was a bit of a logistical challenge and we're going to see similar challenges with what's going on in

131the high school and the other buildings, especially the high school in doing the renovation work. But um we've done a good job of of making sure like like a park, we put up safety scaffolding around the entire building. We put up screening so that if if there was some falling material that it didn't like impact the building or or or impact the student that it would fall away from the building. So, thank you for recognizing that. It it it went really really well um in the overall. I'm sure we disturbed some of what was going on in the building at times, but it was really minimal. I I actually I don't think I ever re reached out to Chris I think maybe twice with minor things that happened uh during the construction of park but

132um it came out well. It worked out well and and we will take similar steps and similar strategies to make sure we're successful when we're doing these other renovations. If I can just add Chris so but but to add to what before they're going to say here's here's how important that question is. Okay. So they're constructing, they've got a door closed. That door is a fire exit drawer during a drill. That level of attention has to be given. You have to work with the building team. This week, you got to go a different way. Pay attention to all of that. Everyone on their walkings, making sure all of that is communicated each and every day. So a construction project in a building, why it's going go while it's going on, a lot of attention to

133detail. And I'm so glad you asked that question because because it came up. I think Christine and Annie were there when we were at the early elementary PTA. That question came up. That question came up. It's on parents minds. So that pre-planning that Jared mentioned, we we go through those plans. We show where egress is at, where where the protections are at, all those items. We sit down with staff. We go through with principal. We make sure that it's all going to be accept acceptable. Uh then we put it more importantly into the bidding document so the contractor is able to see those those items. And then we follow suit with whatever we came up to plan is we follow suit with that plan all the way through the project and make sure that it

134it's completed. No, I appreciate that. I mean, I think the only way you get projects like that that scale and this scale done in a reasonable amount of time is you can't wait for the three months of the summer. And so you have to do this, right? But you're also trying to, you know, work on things when you have a thousand young people in a building, right? And so just really, really remarkable work. I I think the park is like just such a great example like you know the value out of that project. I think we started that with a first tier building and Paul you were involved a lot and Jared I know and Alita where we we planned for a second the potential of a second tier and now this is the potential

135of that second tier. I think the first tier was if I'm not wrong paid with state funds entirely and so that was a value ad for the community without any addition taxes. And then we put the second tier on. And Paul, I've learned from you, anytime you stick a shovel in the ground, it's at least a million dollars, right? So, so you want to build on top of your buildings, right? And to do that then with an aesthetically pleasing way, the way it matches the park building at the end of the day. You've seen a lot of additions go up, which are very base bones. And so to get all that in a very attractive space to while we're doing the work, doing it all during the school year so we don't pay overtime and

136raise costs up like it's just a really remarkable project and I just you know it's why I think we have to applause a building opening during the school year is like you know there's there's so much that goes into that. Um it's air conditioned and it's air conditioned right? So just really perfect timing for that. Um I guess the other qu the the questions I had really the two questions really one around the high school and it's just like an observation and kind of in light with what we saw with park. It looks like some of the additions are kind of tiered there for the, you know, for the stem going into the other in into the main buildings. And I just wonder as we're doing those, do we think about the potential of building

137so that another floor could be thrown on those at some point? Like, you know, one of the advantages we have with this is new construction and we're not set to those footings. And I know there's cost involved and all around that, but just anywhere where we can plan for the potential of another level, I think would be great. Um, if we could just look at that. And then the last one's kind of just question around the high school is the bell tower in the church. I don't know. I forget or recall if there's any bells in it, but you know, if you've been if you've been around to go ahead, Paul. Yeah, there's no bell. The bell was removed. Yeah, it was it was removed before we purchased it. I I don't know if there

138was even ever a bell up there. I was actually up there um cuz the structural engineer uh uh needed to get in this week earlier this week and um I was up there with Giani Valardo maintenance foreman. So um it's a very basic structure inside that tower and it's not meant for um being like occupiable space. Yeah. Yeah. If you see the high school in the mornings, you see all these students walking in and descending on the space and you know it just kind of begs the question of and I know when I was up in Buffalo they put up a bellless bell tower right at the end of the day and they were ringing bells beforehand and I'm just wondering maybe 15 minutes before the start of the high school day if we could

139have some speakers that point out those windows and ring those bells or celebrate graduation or something just it's just a food for thought to make it functional, you know. But yeah, it's a great idea. It was something we can look into with the architects. Absolutely. Yeah. I know Buffalo they had this steel structure and there was no you could see that there were just speakers but like this nobody would know, you know. So just a thought. So but appreciate the efforts and all the attention's going into this project. It's it's not your typical project. So thank you. Just curious about that bell tower. Thanks for bringing that up. Is there something that's like at that next level up or something that that below where it's kind of like more like louvered? So, there's there's a

140couple of tiers with like um some like shift ladders going from tier to tier. Okay. That's what's that's not like any kind of space of some sort. No, no. It's very rough. It's very raw. It's just rough uh uh framing and ships ladders going to platforms. Got it. Okay. Lot of pigeons. at the moment. At the moment, yeah, there's a lot of pigeons, but you could hang some speakers in there. Yeah, Once we evict the pigeons. Yes, fair enough. I actually think it could be pretty cool to kind of add something like that. I like that idea, actually. I like it. I have one more question I forgot to ask. I was curious about the outside of the church and how um are we changing anything to the parking structure, how it looks now, or

141is that all remaining the same? Do we anticipate any changes externally with how it's structured right now? So, you know, externally we are trying to keep as much of the original as we can, but we do have to provide handicap access into the building. So, there are some provisions for that, but you know, you're going to see the window openings. We're going to try to maintain as much of the shape and character of the windows as we can. We're looking into the stained glass windows now and trying to understand the costs of, you know, um, we've had some experts out there. What does it cost to preserve and to keep these giant windows in good shape and give you efficient, modern windows? So, the we're kind of putting together a whole package and we'll present

142that to you all so you can make a decision about that. Um, but the the windows, the doors, the stonework, you know, the stonework is going to stay the same. Uh we're going to restore the woodwork that's out there. You can see a lot of it's rotted and needs painting and everything. So that's going to be restored. So the church is really going to be cleaned up and it's going to look great at the end. I think the tower I think the idea of you know maybe some bells or something lighting to make it kind of an iconic point of view for the because it's important for the town too. This is a historic district in Austin. You know as much as I'd love to put a big giant O on the building. I don't

143know if that would go well with the community, but I think lighting the building and really highlighting it and you know it's an investment the the school has made in the community I think is great idea. So, I guess my more specifically my question was um and thank you for that because I'm I'm glad to know like that just surfacely we're going to make sure we maintain that but like the parking outside of it. There's a little parking lot now but it's basically going to look the same in that area, right? We're not we're not doing like any structural changes to the parking structure, right? No, the there's no the only difference you'll see where the rectory is. That's where the CTE building will be and it is planned to be an open space. So,

144you know, it could be used for parking. It could be used for student gathering like a plaza out front, but you'll need some parking in front of that church, you know, for handicap accessibility for after hours, that sort of thing. So, you know, we we'll look into that more and if the decision is we don't want parking, I know it's heavily used now for parking. That's what I was curious. The kids are getting very good parking skills and working in that lot. That's for sure. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. This is the the level of detail in every consideration from every person's kind of personal point of view and their personal contributions to this work uh are so impressive to me. I appreciate how much has gone into this and also Alita

145just the review of like who's doing what here because it's a many hands um have are are working on this and I don't have many questions or really any questions at this point that my colleagues on the board haven't asked because um first of all it's like all pretty much all good news right like at the end of the day any changes uh that we've had to make we've been able to weather the storm without it impacting either the overall timeline or the budget. So that's all great news. Um and then also uh everybody's ability to explain their portion of the work in a way that is understandable to me who does not do anything that any of you do for a living. Um and uh the consistent communication on on Mary's part as far

146as how things have been going. So there's no surprises here and everything's going um really well. I'm proud of the work that you are all doing. I'm happy to to be hearing about all the great things that are going on and I just appreciate the time and appreciate the work. So, thank you so much. And then I think you guys can go home and enjoy what's left of your evening. Thank you for coming out. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, the we're ready to move on, right, Mary? Yep. Okay. Um, the next item on our agenda is uh public comment for agenda items only. I see we've got no audience members in person. Do we have any online? All right, then we'll second. Sure. Do we have a person who wants

147to make a public comment? No, but I don't want to lose. Okay. I just asked because I could get a head start on reading the public comment guidelines if it were necessary right now. Okay. All right. Uh, looking to item four, consent agenda, business of the board. Um, does anybody have anything they wish to break out between 4.1 and 4.3? All right. I'll take a resolution for 4.1 through 4.3. So move. Uh 4.1 resolution designating the officials to act at the special district meeting. 4.2 Resolution to approve an affiliation agreement with Pace University. 4.3 Resolution to approve the minutes of the special meeting of April 9th, 2025. Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed abstensions. Looking at consent agenda, business office matters. Does anybody have anything they wish to break out between 5.1 and 5.12?

148All right, seeing none, I'll take a motion for 5.1 through 5.12. So moved. Second. 5.1 Resolution to approve the treasures reports for February and March 2025. 5.2, Resolution to approve the budget reports and the revenue reports for February and March 2025. 5.3 resolution to transfer funds from student council to the cultural arts club. 5.4 resolution regarding award of bid Brookside classroom addition general construction work. 5.5 Resolution uh regarding award of bid Brookside classroom edition mechanical construction work. 5.6 Resolution regarding award of bid Brookside classroom addition electrical construction work. 5.7 Resolution regarding award of bid Brookside classroom addition plumbing construction work. 5.8 8 Resolution to dissolve the art club and transfer funds to the cultural arts club. 5.9 Resolution to dissolve the dance club and transfer funds to the cultural arts club. 5.10 Resolution to dissolve

149the class of 2023 club and transfer negative balance to the student council. 5.11 resolution to authorize a letter of resolution with the New York State Education Department, NISD, and New York Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. Uh, OPRHP 5.12 resolution regarding interfund transfers. Any discussion? Just a quick question. How do we transfer a negative balance to a to a student council from a class of 2023? How does that work? There was a um negative balance remaining in that um club and we basically have to resolve the negative. So, it's basically taking money from the other club to resolve the negative uh before the next uh audit. Are those two are those two related in those two clubs in any which way, shape or form? Well, they were um I do know that um Kate

150and Latoya were involved in the conversations with that and this was approved by the student members of it and it got flagged I think a leader right in by our auditor. Right. So most of the time the those clubs um the money goes to the stu the larger um club which is student council. So any remaining funds usually goes to student council um and also student council is resolving that negative debt. Okay. So this is just a a once and for all settlement. But I mean in theory I I asked this question because I if a negative balance usually means that there's you've gone over your purchase order amount. But you in that case there from a purchase order perspective you you technically would have reject any invoices that would go over that that would

151prevent a negative balance. Correct. There shouldn't be negative balances and um again it was left over from the previous audit and we're resolving it now. So going forward there should not be any negative balances. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor? I I opposed abstensions. All right. Consent agenda curriculum and instruction. I'll take a motion for 6.1. So moved. Second. 6.1. Resolution to approve recommended placements. Any discussion? All in favor? I. Opposed. Abstensions. Does anybody have anything they wish to break out uh from 7.1 through 7.10? All right, I'll take a motion for 7.1 through 7.10. So moved. Second. 7.1 Resolution regarding rescending staff support uh support staff appointments before after school program. 7.2 Resolution regarding rescending staff staff appointments summer program. 7.3 Resolution regarding professional staff appointments. 7.4 Resolution regarding professional staff appointments before

152after school programs. 7.5 Resolution regarding support staff appointments before after school programs. 7.6 Resolution regarding professional staff appointments summer programs. 7.7 Resolution regarding civil service staff appointments summer school programs. 7.8 Resolution regarding support staff appointments summer school programs. 7.9 Resolution regarding AR annual professional performance review accountability. 7.10 10 resolution regarding approval of school volunteers. Any discussion? All in favor? I I opposed. Abstensions. Uh next we have our board policy section 8.1 resolution to adopt new policy number 8636 artificial intelligence policy as a first reading. Um would we like to discuss this first? Do we get a little bit of an update from the committee? Sure. Um Melissa, do you want to update or do you want me to update? You can start as well. Okay. Um so Mike Hannah came in and basically um gave

153us his recommendation. we had nothing um for this and he started with the NISMBA policy which he basically liked and made very little changes to um that's those are my it's a brand new it's all spinking spanking spanking new the entire policy and it's just going off inspiration from the NISPA template so there's you know room for dialogue if the board feels like it's you know missing that Jennaqua But for the most part, it's it's um it's a bare bones just kind of started a starter, right? Like of course there's room to re-evaluate it if we start to as our understanding of just this technology grows, but I think it's a good start. He gave it a really good thorough kind of um you know overview and as we know he's part you know on

154the forefront of doing this work out in the community. Um, so I'm pretty confident he gave us, you know, our best, what we know best at this time. Yeah. No, I appreciate the the insights to that. I think, you know, this is something that's being discussed all throughout the region. And I think districts are falling into a few different camps. Some are kind of taking a wait and see approach. Others are kind of putting something out there. And so I think it, you know, it makes sense to have something out there. It sounds like Mike, check this out with the principles. the the the concern is is that your policy is so out of line with what you're basically doing in your buildings that you just put yourself in a bad spot. And I really

155didn't see anything in here that was that. But sounds like that's the process that you went through. And so instead rather than having nothing, we're putting in something that's the state guidance and all of this will probably change 10 minutes from now because that's the way that things are moving with AI. Um, yeah, and Allison Bacon didn't attend any of our policy committee meetings, but it was clear in discussion with Mike Hannah that he was in consultation with her as far as to your point of kind of assessing what we want as a district and what we're we're doing and what the kind of what's in the atmosphere about our general attitude towards it. So yeah, I mean I think as we have new policies like this or even enhancements to this, it's just the

156question I'll ask is did we ask the principles? Like did we go to anybody just because like I said, you just don't want to be out of line with what sounds like a good idea here but is impossible to deal with at the building level. So appreciate that. But I'm good. And there there's a general understanding that this is just kind of going to be a moving target. Yep. So Okay, good. Um um I have brought up previously the environmental impact of AI and there are now more options that don't use quite as much energy and don't have as big of an impact. And um I just ask that we keep that in mind as a district when we are deciding what tools to use. Like one chat GPT search is 20 minutes of electricity

157or pouring out a bottle of water and that's pretty significant. Um in our discussions originally some language included specific models like chat GPT for example but we made the decision to remove references to specific software because things evolve and change so quickly. So instead of saying chat GPT, we said generative AI um in those cases so that we can be we don't want a policy that says chat GPT this this and that and then we're not even using chat GPT because a year you know and you we're not we're doing something else instead or whatever. So we try to keep the terminology as broad as possible. Yeah, that's why I don't like say a specific program that is um lower impact, but just something to keep in mind, you know, so we're not contradicting ourselves

158with some of our goals around the environment and everything. Noted. All right. Any further discussion on this? All right. Um in that case, I'll take a motion for uh 8.1. So moved. Second. Um, we've had our opportunity for discussion. I'll read it. 8.1 Resolution to adopt a new policy number 8636, artificial intelligence policy, as a first reading. Uh, all in favor? I opposed abstensions. Just want to say that's another board goal. Check. Check. Yeah, that is another board goal. All right. [Music] Um, our next section is for audience recognition. I see none in person. Um, is there anybody online who may wish to speak? Oh, I just heard somebody do something. No, heard a little blink. Okay. Uh, we'll move ahead and our next section is for board reports and dialogue. Um, now it's only

159been a week since we met, but I know there's one or two things that we need to discuss. Um, has the policy committee, I think, met. Um, but we've discussed basically what we've discussed there. Anything else? Oh, yeah. We talked about this policy, but I think we al we're continuing to um analyze the best approach for the um cell phone ban. We're also um analyzing um just kind of building up of the what the curriculum um committee would look like. So we're those you know we're having those discussions and trying to just bring the best you know document forth for the board to of course then engage in dialogue around that but just trying to do all the back work and especially around the cell phone trying to get um as much stakeholder input as

160well. um much like to um Frank's point, just making sure we recognize how our policies impact the the school community, making sure especially around the cell phones that we get parent perspective as well. So just, you know, keeping with the model of how we do things um here in the district, just making sure we give it give it a thorough outlook. Yes. And I think um something important to people say cell phone ban, cell phone ban um it is referred to as internet connected devices which I think is internet enabled devices which is a all the Chromebooks I know right so I mean it's it it's an important distinction uh so we also have to you know smartwatches and you know whatever other gizmos those kids could come in with and uh devices from home

161and um etc. It's a big one and so it's not ready for prime time yet, but there's work being done there. Um question related to policy. I know some districts are getting out in front. I think there's a deadline of sometime in August around building temperature policies and school and closure and things like that. That's something we're looking at and working because I think we have to put something in, don't we? Right. I mean, um, um, we have the option of a separate policy or include it in our district safety plan. So, the district, it's a great question. Uh, the dirt team um, has been on it and you'll hear about it in when we look at the annual approval for the district safety plan coming up this summer, early this summer. Okay. Okay. Good.

162To be continued. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay, thanks. All right, any other com committee related updates? First, I know um I'm going to throw it to Katherine. You mentioned uh we have to discuss uh retreat dates and objectives. Um and Katherine, I'll let you start off that discussion because you had emailed the board. Yeah, I know that um when we were at our retreat um this past year, we found it maybe a little bit too late in the sort of summer season to do the work of brainstorming to set district goals. I think the way that we have would ideally want to do them. So my recollection was that we had discussed this year looking at brainstorming session either with recommendations from our superintendent or along with cabinet and maybe some admin to try to discuss

163you know what if we're looking at goal setting for 25 and 26 what would that like let's brainstorm what that would look like. Um, so I know we had been looking at August 20th for a retreat date. It seems like if we were hoping to do our board self eval and we were hoping to set board goals, I don't see why that would couldn't be done on August 20th, but if we were looking to set wider district goals in conjunction with our superintendent, um, I think that's running up to the wire. So, I guess I'm interested in our superintendent's thoughts on it. If I'm misremembering all of this, please let me know. Um, I could have gotten things jumbled. I I do remember that we we did have a conversation about trying to move this

164up earlier and sooner. Um, and you know, I I don't know what the temperature is like with the board here about doing something in June, which I'd be amenable for doing. Um because I think honestly we did when this last year we were like very late in the game and I think we need to be a little bit more up in front. So just representing my own uh availability I am available to be able to do something sooner than later. Um and I'll leave it to my colleagues to express their interest in doing something like that. Happy to do it in June very much so before we start our work with the administrative team and our retreat. So, yep. I think the thing to keep in mind is that it seems like we will have

165the same board and so June would be a possibility this year, but as a practice, you probably want to do this if you want it like where we've done this in the past and others you would do it after your reorg date. And so, you're talking about typically mid July. Um, I would say yes, we should do this. If you wait till August, you're you're you're losing a lot of momentum. My experience in the past has been this has always been sort of a mid July thing at the end of the day kind of lets the end of the school year because remember everybody in the building is going to be very busy up till graduation and through and so that's going to be busy. So I'll let the admin weigh in but where we've

166seen this in the past kind of being out front is like that beginning of July. So you have um and correct me if I'm wrong like we have a retreat date for my evaluation. So I think in parts of that you know giving me goals would would be your goals which helps set the work I do with the administrative team. Um we already picked the dates for our district administrative work and um we those dates everyone else then built uh the intention behind it. it that was our goal but apparently it doesn't work for everybody but I can't change that ship right now because everyone else the entire administrative team made plans accordingly what are and that date is July 7th 8th and 9th yeah I think that was a challenge we that's why we

167couldn't do it because that those dates were a challenge and I don't I think that's the reason why that ended up getting kicked to August so I would prefer to have that done sooner than later I don't want to wait well then so let me ask the board. I mean, if we can't all go, but some of us can go and report out and and those dates are set with cabinet, it seems to me that we should we should have a presence from the board there if we can make if some of us can make it happen. Also, I will say I when we have done stuff like this in the past and we've had an election and we have new board members, we have been able to sort of invite them in um to

168listen in on some of these sessions. So if we did want to have a practice of doing this, you know, be if July was always going to be difficult, if we did want to have a practice of doing this a little bit earlier, I think there's precedent for doing that before the reorgarch meeting. I get that it's not ideal, but I know we've done it. So I mean I can 7, eight, and nine. I I can make a combination of those dates work. Um, but that is that the admin though that's the admin's retreat. That's not ours. Yeah, we wouldn't that wouldn't be our do I take, you know, do I take a portion of one day? We have two days that are already planned, one not so much. We can move stuff around. We

169have a spot at PNW Boseies, you know, like it's it's about the intentionality behind it. And since we picked the date because it's right around the reorg meeting, it's after the 4th. So that was the thought behind it. Um but whatever you all wanted to do, we'll make it work. I mean, and if if there was a separate like I even said to the principles because we're we we have the principles involved and just engaging that conversation that if if you I don't know you want to go we'll take you out to lunch sometime or dinner to talk about it, but whatever would work. We haven't had any precedent before with actually doing it with the administration. So there I don't know. I think there in in the past and this may be different now

170there's been hesitancy for there to be a mixed board and and um the admin staff on that one. I don't know how that's changed. I've done that. We've done it in the past where we've had them in the morning and then we've had just us in the afternoon. The overlap not that was the typical practice leading into the pandemic and the pandemic changed everything. Okay. That that was before people did that. I did that for years, decades actually. Yeah, it's just a matter of the temperature with the with between, you know, with board and admin and having that. So, there's a comfort level with that. I don't have any issue with that. I mean, I think it's just probably sooner just to get our ourselves together sooner. So, you know, if you when you walk

171into that, there a lot more thoughts been put into everything rather than it just being, you know, things that we talk about off the top of our head. I would just say be much more prepared sooner in June. And if you if you want to do a part one with me first and then we it it sets the template for a part two in early July that probably will be more I would love that. Yeah. What? Okay. So what about this during our superintendent evale which is already in the books for June 11th. Um we can obviously do your evaluation and also kind of talk you know meet up and kind of talk about what we expect for July. How do we feel about maybe the board joining or whoever is available to join for

172like a half a day on one of those days perhaps? Does that sound Which day? Which day is good? The July 7th, 8th or 9th. Um and then um I know Rob made the request to move to do an evening instead. I think if we're already going to do some time with um administrators in July, we can keep that August 20th date maybe as an evening date and then do our own self- evval and goal setting. So one more time. So what would be in June besides the besides the eval Mary's evaluation and then we can talk a little bit about what we like agenda setting for that July. Okay. Uh yeah. So we could set some preliminary goals. Brainstorming, right? Give them something to work with. Gotcha. Um and then on one of those

173dates, July 8th and 9th, come in for half a day to consult with administration and then do August 20th in the evening. Sounds like a plan. I I I sign on to that. Just I want to make sure I understand like what would the role our role be at the presence at the actual administration kind of retreat because I think technically we don't I don't remember like actually attending their retreat. So what would we do in that space? Well, we have well we've been trying to co-current plan because of we didn't have a date yet. So I know that the first day it's pretty well detailed. I mean we we'll we'll create the space and we'll create it but I think what happens on June 11th sets the tone about what you want to do

174on June 8th and 9th. So, do you set off with, you know, a brief overview about how the year ended from everybody? Every administrator can give an update on things like that. Um, and then circle back on what they're challenged with this year and what they're looking at as a goal that feeds information for you to take a look at. Helping giving me specifics when we meet in June will be really helpful for the next part. the right I understand the part like help set district goals to give our input towards that because we had talked about oh we want to be part of our district goals and last year Mary was like well that that ship has left the port right we've had to set our own goals um so we had to kind

175of backwards engineer that so it would be an effort to kind of join forces at the point during which they're setting their goals so that we can contribute to that yeah district goal our board goals that we would have part of an annual treat that all lots time to meet alone as a board as well as with district and with build building administrators. So this would be the part of that that would be meeting with the building administrators. Right. I get I get that part. But if we're going to like only portions of us be there. I'm just trying to figure out how that works. I guess we can figure that out. But I'm just I just wanted to visualize like what that looks like because it would be our first time kind of approaching

176it in this way. It sounds like it would be the items that we discussed and agreed to as an award on the 11th that would basically tie into that day like that that you know that and it sounds like we would find a time in the retreat. I don't know if the first day is the right time or the second day is the right time or whatever, but like we're gonna you're gonna we're going to rely on you Mary to tell us when that time frame is. could be Monday through Wednesday of that week. And it sounds like it's a half a day where we're half a day at some point, not one of the period of time. Okay. Probably Tuesday. Yeah. I'm just knowing the schedule in my brain. I believe that Tuesday, which

177is the 8th, right? Okay. All right. And then so we've got to figure out my to-do list includes sorting and Illie's too now. Sorry I the sorting out super evale so that we can open up our ability to evaluate Mary on super evil so that that's done before June 11th and then later in the summer for I think I have to fill in some parts of that. Yeah, we I it's all it's all got to be up the other day. Illy. Oh, she got Did Okay. Illie asked me, "Did you get an email from Super Evale to like with your password and stuff like that?" I did not. So, I emailed her and said I didn't. But Mary, you did. I'm not sure whether it was Are you the person who's supposed to I just

178saw a ton of emails today. I was like, "Oh, super val. There it is." But I don't remember what I what it was about. So, yeah, more to come. Super avail. All right. board meeting days and cabinet days. Sometimes I do a triage with my email. Um, that's all I had for uh dialogue. Did anybody have anything else they needed to bring up? All right. We do not need to have an executive session. So, I will take a motion to adjourn the uh Wednesday, May 14th, 2025 board of education regular meeting. So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Absentience. This meeting is adjourned. Thanks everyone for