Board of Education Work Session Meeting on Monday, March 9, 2026, at CES at 7 00 P M

001Thanks for your patience. If you could join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, we're going to start this evening with public comments. Do we have anyone who would like to make public comment? Okay. Recognition of visitors for any item on the agenda or any concerns. The Board of Education welcomes comments from the public. Each person wishing to speak is asked to speak into the microphone, identify themselves, and respectfully limit their comments to three minutes. Two opportunities to speak are available, one early in the meeting, which will be limited to 30 minutes, and one at the end of the meeting. Each speaker may address the Board only once at both the opening and closing portions of the agenda. Please remember there will be no cross-dialogue between speakers and between members of the Board. So if

002anyone would like to make a public comment, the microphones are over here by Lofton. Good evening. Greg Roby, Mineral Springs. I need to walk back a comment I made on the 26th about the town board meeting. I may be guilty of dyslexia. As I'm getting older, whatever it is I might have is getting worse. So I got March and February confused. So they did not meet, and they are not considering the petitions that I submitted. and that's the bottom line that I can report. The library is not going to consider the petition, and on the agenda tonight, it is not on the agenda tonight here, so the Board of Education is not considering their version of the petition, and the Village has a very consistent, we're not talking about anything, we're silent approach to it.

003So the effort that I have been doing to exercise my right to petition for, it's not so much a redress of grievance, but this is a great way to perfect our union, is a work in progress. And I had a good chat with your secretary of the board, which is not the clerk of the Board of Education, and I'm starting to dig into the law. This is a long conversation that I don't, I want to handle appropriately. And Linda, because of your role, you can summarize for people as they're interested. but our district clerk would need to have a stipend, his salary is part of his appointment by law, and that did not happen in July. So we are doing something that we've been doing as a tradition, as a district, as a town for

004a long time. Has it served us well? And this is kind of the same question I opened the town board with. We haven't had a town charter. Has it served us well or not? Let's have the conversation. And so I don't... I want to add this to the Board of Education's agenda, especially now. But I would ask you to, between now and the next meeting, reconsider the decision not to appoint the ninth member and know that I am available to be appointed to serve until the next election and appointment, because I can, from the inside perhaps, lay out a lot of this so it would be structured for another board to consider. So just an idea among many. And at any time anybody wants to change, you know, move, what do you do when you

005amend the agenda? You suspend the rules. Know that you have a willing person to try to help. And I genuinely mean try to help because I found the ET. website that I did for technology in this district that I presented in 2000 either two or three and The district clerk has a copy of it. Thank you Thank you other public comments No, okay. So our first order of business we have two presentations this evening Our first one is updates in PPS from miss mrs. Nicole Triasi So all set do you need the microphone? Is it one there? Okay. Okay All right, good evening. Tonight I want to talk about how we support our students with special education needs. And many people find, I'm sorry, went too fast there. Many people find that it's easier to

006learn a new topic when you can relate it back to something that's a little bit more familiar. So I would like you to think about our district as a community aquatic center. And in this center, our goal for students is to learn how to swim. So in the analogy, the academic standards of reading and math and science, those are the strokes, right? The backstroke, the breaststroke. And that's what we're teaching. But as we know, not all students are going to be able to jump into the deep end with the same speed or with the same level of confidence. So we need coaches and others to be able to support the students within our community aquatic center. So that's how I'm going to phrase how we're going to go through as I talk about our pools

007and our swim instructors and the specialized equipment that we have. to ensure that every student stays afloat and learns how to swim. So before a student can even master the different swim strokes, they have to come in with some foundational skills, right? And when students enter our aquatic center without those foundational skills, we provide them through related services. So for example, speech language therapy. You could think about this as teaching a child how to blow bubbles or how to hold their breath, right? Some foundational skills that they're going to need to even be able to access their instruction or begin the lesson. Occupational therapy, physical therapy. These therapists are going to work on the core strength that the student's going to need to be able to stay upright in the pool or the motor skills

008that they're going to need to be able to climb the ladder to get in and out or the sensory regulation skills that they're going to need in order to be able to modulate their kicks as they're swimming. Another related service that we have is counseling. We can think of this as pool etiquette. What are the do's and the don'ts? How do you learn to swim in a lane with three other swimmers? how do you cope with getting splashed water in your eye, right? So we have a number of different related services and those are provided to students in any program as needed and you will find these services in all five of our district schools. So at the elementary level, Most of our students with IEPs, over 70% of our students with IEPs, spend the

009majority of their day, over 80% of their day, in what we would say is the main pool or the general education classroom. If they need special education support, the special education teacher will pull them out of the classroom into a small group for no more than 40 minutes a day and or push into the classroom to be able to provide them support within the class. So sometimes you got to think about it as the big pool is just too loud or too crowded in order to learn a new skill or strategy. Sometimes the kids are swimming too fast and students need to be pulled out of the class where they can really concentrate on learning a new skill. Maybe it's some pre-teaching related to diving or practicing their kicking. So the resource room teacher will

010pull students out of the general education classroom into another classroom that has less distractions, less students, and they work on pre-teaching skills, re-teaching skills, and really breaking down the explicitly instructing the skills that the student needs in order to continue within the general education class. So then they go back into the classroom, jump into the deep end, and continue participating in the lesson. So, consultant teacher services is like having an extra swim coach on the deck there or in the pool with them, specifically for the students with IEPs who need additional strategies or coaching, maybe reminders on how to use some of those skills that they were taught in the resource room. So you'll see this model of resource room, consultant teacher in all three of our elementary schools. Some students just have resource room.

011Some students just have consultant teacher. Some students have both. Some have consultant teacher for math or for ELA. It's whatever the student needs beyond that which the general education teacher is able to provide. So most of our students with IEPs at the middle school and the elementary school, I mean the middle school and the high school, also spend the majority of their day, more than 80% of their day, in the larger pool or the general education classroom. And as students get older and their strokes get more complex and the students need to start generalizing what it is that they're learning and they need to start applying that to more complicated tasks, we support them through a co-teaching model. So as the students are getting older, they are no longer learning to read. They are reading

012to learn. They are no longer learning to tread water. They're learning to dance in the water. And in the co-teach classroom, we have two teachers, a general education teacher and a special education teacher. So one is the... content area specialist, the master of the strokes per se, and the other is the master of the student, the special education class, or special education teacher. Both teachers plan the lesson, and both teachers deliver the lesson to all of the students in the class. So you'll see this model in our middle school and our high school for our core subject areas, English, math, science, and social studies. Okay. So now I mentioned that the majority of our students in our elementary, middle, and high school spend the majority of their day in the big pool. But for some

013students, the big pool, even with an additional swim coach or even with an additional instructor in the pool, is overwhelming, right? So we have special classes. And these are our smaller pools, right? They're right there in the same building. They share the same pool deck or the same hallways, but they do have different supports built in. It might be shallower water. It might be more swimming aids or flotation devices. There might be more instructors per swimmer. And the instruction itself is more specialized to match the needs of the group. So for special classes, You will see those defined in a ratio. So you'll see something like 15, 1, 1. The first number, the 15, is the maximum number of students that you can have in that class. And all of the students in the class

014have IEPs with similar needs. The next number, the one, represents the one special education teacher. And then the following number, if it's one or two, it represents the number of paraprofessionals or teaching assistants that are in the program to help support the class. So the students are still working toward those same strokes or the state standards, right? They're just in a more controlled environment and at a modified pace. The goal is still that the students in these programs are going to be graduating with a regents diploma. But the state also allows safety nets for students with disabilities, which are not uncommon for many of our students in the special classes. And so maybe instead of having to swim 500 meters to pass the test, it's 250 meters. Or maybe instead of using all four strokes,

015you're able to get your diploma by using the two strokes. So at the elementary level, you'll find these classes here in this building at Cornwall Elementary School. And then we also have special classes at the middle school and the high school for the core subject areas. And then we have some students who are still learning to get in and out of the pool or just need a lot more support or taking more time learning to float without the life jacket or whatever it may be. Some students with more lifelong disabilities that might impact them in other areas outside of just swimming or just education. And for them, it would be... unfair for us to measure their progress through a 500 meter swim or even a 250 meter swim if they're still working on getting into

016the water or whatever that may be. So these students are assessed in an alternative way. New York State allows for what's called an alternative assessment so that we can really tailor the assessment to those students' specific needs so that we can see how they are progressing in relation to themselves as well as the standards in terms of their safety and academics or their swimming in this case. So oftentimes these programs are provided out of district and out of district programs. We do have some of these programs within our district. So you may be familiar with our community-based instruction or CBI program at the high school, our success class at the middle school, and we have two classes at Cornwall Elementary School as well. So finally, there are some students whose needs are so specific or

017maybe medical in nature, possibly highly therapeutic. and our community pool is not able to support the student safely or to help them to progress toward their goal. And if we cannot meet the student's needs within our own district, we have a responsibility to find a specialized aquatic center, right? To find an out-of-district program for the students. So these programs may have specialized hydraulic lifts or lifeguards with specialized training that we don't have within our district and students from our district will be transported to these programs so that we ensure that even our most vulnerable students or those with more significant needs are still able to enter the water and learn how to swim. So every year we reevaluate our programs and what our needs are. So the continuum that I just went over is what's

018outlined by New York State in regulations and a lot of that is specific to what New York State says it has to be but district does have some local control in terms of Which programs are going to be offered within their district or where those programs are going to be located the? the ratios the number of sections and things like that we are actually a relatively small district and especially for programs that have a like if I said a 1511 that's 15 students or an 813 that have a low number cap if we have two or three students move in or out of our district with those similar needs or at a similar grade level that can really be significant in terms of having to change our programs to accommodate those needs or to change

019to accommodate different needs so every year we have projection meetings to look at what the needs are anticipated to be for students for the following year. Obviously we have annual review meetings where those needs are fully determined and recommendations are made. And then we also have meetings with staff throughout the year as we're seeing different students and what the needs are to help define what our programs are gonna be or to help determine what kind of... professional development we're going to need. So projected changes for next year based on current information is that the K1, the kindergarten first grade special class that we currently have here at Cornwall Elementary School has a ratio of 15-1-1. Next year we are looking to change that ratio to 12-1-2. So again that would be a maximum of 12

020students, one special education teacher, and two teaching assistants. We are also looking to change the specialized class program ratios at Cormelon-Hudson Elementary School from 1214 to 813. It better reflects the needs of the students that we are anticipated coming in from kindergarten, from preschool into kindergarten, in addition to the needs that we're seeing currently within the program. we're going to reconfigure our alternatively assessed classes we're going to suspend the success class next year due to low enrollment and we will increase expand the formal other community-based instruction program at the high school to be offering two sections and we Always look at our program locations. So we have to look at with any of these changes Do we need to reevaluate building space or caseloads? obviously such as if we're suspending the middle school section and

021we are Expanding into the high school. We have to look at our spaces in those program in those places as well One of the specific questions I was asked to address in tonight's presentation is why doesn't Cornwall have the co-teach program at the elementary level? So actually in order to answer this question you actually have to go back several years for the history. And I have that history. It was prior to my tenure here, but it was actually right prior to me coming in and taking the job that the district had discontinued co-teach in the elementary school. Because I came in and I was like, what? And I came from a program with co-teach, so I was trying to learn that and understand it. So what happened is that Cornwall Elementary School had the co-teach

022programs located here. And there was a New York State audit. And during that audit, it was recognized that students were being pulled out of the co-teach class into another classroom to work on skills. And co-teach does not allow you to pull a student out of the classroom. So there are six approved models for co-teach, and pulling a student out of the classroom is not any of those models. So pulling a student out of the classroom is more closely aligned to the resource room program that I had reviewed earlier where we had the students diving and practicing their diving and things like that, their kicks in the smaller environment. So the district was faced with the decision. You either have to... all the program what it is which more aligns with resource room and consultant teacher

023or you have to change your instructional delivery to match co-teach so there were conversations And the staff had advocated that the reason that they were pulling students out of the class is because that's really what it was that they needed in order to be successful. So at the elementary level, they were working more on foundational skills, rote skills, reading to learn, math calculation, things like that. And elementary students tend to be more distracted. the teachers were finding more success with students being able to learn those skills with the pre-teaching and the re-teaching in a smaller environment, smaller ratio. And so because it was being successful and because that is ultimately what they were saying that the students were needed, there was a decision to move to the resource room consultant teacher model. By moving to

024the resource room consultant teacher, model students were also able to stay in their home school. So prior to that when there was co-teach, if a student was able to be successful in a general education classroom, and again that's over 70% of our students with IEPs at the elementary level, if they were able to be successful in the general education classroom but needed some level of special education support within that classroom, the students were moved to Cornwall Elementary School to be able to be in the co-teach class. So students at Willow and COH had to move buildings. When there was a change to resource room consultant teacher, we were able to tailor when that consultant teacher was going to be pushing in, and then students were able to stay in their home school. Additionally, prior when

025you might have say for example three students at third grade at COH and two students at Willow and five students at Cornwall Elementary School all in the same grade would come in to the same program there would be one special education teacher meeting you know the needs with this general education teacher within that class and then by having students being able to be in there home classroom or their home building the Consultant teacher that was pushing in had a lower ratio of students. There were less identified needs within the class and The teachers felt that they were able to support the students better the students are making progress toward their goals So it's certainly something that can always be reconsidered But I will say that it's not just a quick change to add like a

026co-teach program So we would be considering budget scheduling space So there are a lot of different considerations for that. So I think that's some of the history. That's the reason why that is what we currently provide. So the students who are in the general education classrooms that are able to support it that way are being supported with the resource room consultant teacher model at elementary versus co-teach. If we were going to add back in the co-teach, I think that's something that we can discuss with Ms. Arginio. She can come back to me and I can provide more information like cost-benefit analysis and any other data that we would need. So our goal is always the least restrictive environment. It's not only a goal, it's a mandate. So every year, at least annually for every single

027student, we will be having an annual review meeting and one of the required components of that annual review meeting is to determine what goals the student would need to meet or what other things are necessary in order to have a student move into a less restrictive environment. And some students, as they build skills and they... You know, some students, they wind up moving from more restrictive, maybe a special class, to a co-teacher or resource room consultant teacher or whatever it may be. And some students, based on their needs, require a certain level of special education support throughout their school career. But we are looking at every single student at least annually. New York State provides the continuum, the continuum that I discussed. because what is considered the least restrictive environment for one student is not

028necessarily the least restrictive environment for the other student. So we have to have a variety of programs in order to meet the needs that the students are presenting with. FAPE is Free and Appropriate Public Education. So if you look at the federal law, there's really two main components. We must provide a free and appropriate public education, and it has to be in the least restrictive environment for that particular student. The appropriate part of the public education is saying that the student is progressing appropriately. They are making meaningful progress. So an overly restrictive program causes negative outcomes. We do not want students who can be successful in a less restrictive program to be in a more restrictive program. If you think about if you had a child... and you were bringing them to swim lessons and

029your child is an intermediate swimmer, maybe they are able to tread water, they're able to do some of the strokes, but they occasionally resort to the doggy paddle or floating because they're not quite that strong yet. You're going to bring them, you want to get more swim lessons, and if you go to do swim lessons and they put that child in a beginner level class that is not working on stroke development, it's not gonna be beneficial for your student or your child and in fact they may, you know, they may lose, they're losing time. They could have exceeded and gone further. So there are negative implications to having students in programs that are overly restrictive. And at the same time, there are negative implications to having students in a program that is not supportive enough

030to meet their needs, right? So in the same example, if you had a student or a child who is a beginner swimmer. They are not able to tread water yet. They're just holding on to the side or whatever it may be. And you bring them and they put them in the intermediate class with the children who are in the deep end working on their stroke development. It's not going to be a meaningful hour of lessons for your child. they're in a life jacket, they're not really able to do the strokes the way that they're supposed to do, or they're hanging onto the side and they're not really receiving the same level of instruction, and so they are not receiving an appropriate education or a swim instruction either, and that can have a negative outcome. So

031it's really trying to find the least restrictive environment that is appropriate for each individual student. Although some students are not necessarily integrated for their academics or for their swim strokes because that is an area where they really need a specialized program or pool or instructor, swim instructor, there are... opportunities for all students for integration whether it be at lunch or recess whether it be specials assemblies field trips after-school clubs best buddies unified sports at the high school integration is super important it's really beneficial for students with disabilities as well as students without disabilities. And it's most meaningful when it's done at the times that it's going to be most meaningful. So go back to that same swim instruction and yeah, now swim lesson's over and it's recreational swim at the pool and your beginner swimmer,

032absolutely, it's going to be beneficial for them to go over to the deep end and see another child jump into the pool with confidence and then jump into the pool with that life jacket on. So there's definitely value to integration and things. We also just have to make sure that we are providing the appropriate instruction to meet the students' needs where they're at. I'm also going to take this opportunity as a little plug for our unified sports. So if bowling just ended, they did great. If you as a Board of Ed member have never been to a unified sport event, or even if you have been to a unified sport event, I would invite you and strongly encourage you to attend the next event, which is basketball. Season hasn't started yet, but I did write

033it down, April 28th. The unified varsity basketball game will be at the high school against Pine Bush. I believe it's at 4.30. I'm not positive, but it's on the calendar. So hopefully this is enough advance notice. I'd really like you to come. I mean, we certainly have many great things going on in terms of integration and inclusivity throughout our school day. in different programs, but this one is a scheduled event after the school day that I'm hoping that you guys will be able to attend. Questions? Well, everyone's gathering their thoughts. Nicole, could you send us a copy of the schedule for the basketball season? I absolutely can. Because if we can't make that particular day, we might make another one. Yeah, there's a few other games, yeah. Sure. Thank you. Any questions from the board?

034Christian? So I just want to start with... I think you get a lot of unjust criticism for a lot of things and partly because you're in a very difficult job and when you're in position of saying no and people are dealing with you, no one's happy about that. I think anyone in your position doesn't appreciate that and I want to, in a sense, endorse that personally because I'm going to ask, I'm going to say some critical things but they're really critical, I think, of the school district, not necessarily of you. You're the one presenting so it's going to be me looking at you. So let me just state that out front. When you presented three years ago, and you just also presented to the board about indicator rate, and I just want to indicate a

035rate on social education. It's devised IDA. Every school district in the country reports on this. And three years ago, it was 90% positive parent involvement, and it was presented as a glow, as a positive number. really actually not a positive number. And I said this to you, which is that we think 90 is a good number. If you got a 90 on a test, you're doing really well. But in fact, that actually doesn't meet the standard on that indicator. And as I said to you, I've looked at pretty much every district in the Hudson Valley going back to the mid-20-teens when this new indicator came out. And there's only three districts that did not meet it. Only three times it wasn't met by a school district. Two of those three times were Cornwall. One of

036them was Wappinger. And when it was presented, it was presented as a positive thing. And 2023, we, as a board, were at the time, sent a bunch of questions to the administration. We asked them, so what is your take on why we're not hitting not just this indicator rate, but a lot of them, and the response was, it's because our general education kids are so wonderful that our special needs kids look bad by comparison, which is not how the indicator is. And as I said, the other time was Wappingers, which is the district that I work in. And I just want to compare the reaction because Wappingers got that negative rating. They made it the central theme of their next budget. They hired five or six additional teachers, district-wide, larger district. I'm not saying we'd

037have the ability to do that. They made it a point in their capital project that part of the reason why we're asking for some of these improvements is to better support our special needs students. I wonder whether we are actually, you know, the response that we got from the administration at the time, and this wasn't in the public meeting, we've had a series of questions, just doesn't seem to have the same urgency. Because when we asked, say, what is your wish list, we got an additional CSC chairperson, which I'm glad that you applied for a grant, and we now have that, but also an instructional coach. And I just think that we probably need to do more. And what that is, whether, I mean, or it seems that our reaction was, were misunderstood, were actually

038doing fine, and that would not be, I think, the way that indicator. And just one other thing about the indicator, just to emphasize the point, because SUNY Potsdam collects this data from all the districts in New York State, and the standard deviation, so the norm, depending on what you're saying, what was the average for all the surveys on this indicator, or what was the norm for, like, meeting the standard? we are like six to eight standard deviations depending which central tendency you're using below. So the difference between an A and an F student is five standard deviations. So when it's presented as this is a good sign or that there's nothing to see here, if I told you the kid who dropped out at 10th grade at 16 was your valedictorian, you don't need to

039know the numbers. You should be able to qualitatively understand the difference between those two students. And it seems that we're not doing that. And I would hope that in your position, but also ask the board for the resources so that, you know, if there is something we can do more, that those needs are addressed. And I'm saying this mostly, I think, is that this is not something that started with anyone here. I think there's some things, and I think you've done good work on some of these things. But I think the point is, when I've talked to parents, They don't complain about any of the teachers. I think actually a lot of our teachers, as an education professional myself, are doing a fantastic job. I think sometimes we need to have the resources so that

040the work can be done. And so as a board, we're not the ones who are going to be in the classrooms. We're not the ones dealing with the students. Our job is to provide you with the resources. So I would ask you and all the other people who are asking for what you need, be ambitious and ask for more. the board will be able to respond to that thank you i could just take a quick thank you for your comment um i agree that you know i think that there were some good things that come out of that survey i think that there were also some recognized needs and to your point um christian After that, I did put through a wish list of things that I asked for the board to consider to be

041able to help us to improve our programs, one of which was the CSE chairperson. And I asked for that for every single year, and it was not part of the budget. And I did get one funded this year, and I think that that has really helped us because, as I've shared before, we're doing intake meetings, we're able to have longer meetings, we're able to... problem solved proactively, there's a lot of benefits to that position. But since you put it out there, there is also a psychologist position within that budget because that was cut last year and that is not a wish list, that is a need. And if we want to be able to support our students in the least restrictive environment and meet our mandates for testing, that is a need. I know that

042there are a lot of needs and I'm glad that I don't have your job, but because you specifically asked, I want to make sure that that is noted. And I appreciate that, but just because you just mentioned that, my understanding also behaviorist was cut in last year's budget. It was. And that's not the same as a psychologist, correct? It was a psychologist slash behaviorist position. So the same position is not too, I'm just clarifying for myself that those. That was one position, different titles. Yes, it was one position. One position, yep. Any other questions specific to the presentation? Other questions? So I actually have a comment. So thank you very much for coming. I always think it's an interesting analogy, you know, to help people understand the varying needs of students that fall within, you

043know, your services. I do think that, you know, when we embarked on our superintendent search and we did surveys of the community and we had forums, special education concerns were at the top of the list. And I think to Christian's point, you know, what the board can do to support that. and then how we can partner with parents to meet the needs all around. I would offer that we are doing strategic planning. And so again, back to Christian's point around how Wappinger's responded to survey, this is our opportunity to really look at the big picture as a community, not just on your shoulders, but to say this is a priority for us and this is where we want to spend time and energy to provide different you know, more robust, whatever the whatever the need

044is, levels of services. So I would just employ the community to take the time to take the survey, take the time to attend the forums, because that will help inform how the board and how our strategic strategic plan is crafted for the future. We I know that I'm not the only one we hear quite often concerns with with related related to special ed. A lot of times they're very personal. So they're not something we can discuss here per se. But I think in general, we can put a focus on how to better support that function of our school district through the work of the strategic plan. So I would just encourage everybody to take part in that so that we can put some muscle behind it. But thank you for the presentation. Okay, so up

045next, we have our next presentation, which is the budget presentation. Mr. Fink? Okay, we're ready to go. So welcome. Here we are, March 9th, budget presentation. We'll start with our mission statement. Cornwall Central School District is committed to working together for the community to provide a secure and nurturing environment of diverse learning opportunities for all students. It is our goal to help students achieve their dreams and aspirations and to prepare them confidently to face challenges while promoting the strength of mind, body, and character. So we've conquered February 9th and our pseudo-February 23rd, which became February 26th. We're here at March 9th, and we have a few more meetings to go until our April 21st budget adoption, and then our May 5th budget hearing, and then our May 19th budget vote. So a couple things here

046on our agenda, the budget goals, first steps and next steps. We're going to talk about our process expenditures, preliminary expenditures and preliminary revenue. We're going to talk about some revised expenditures and revenue projections, preliminary budget summary. budget recap, budget goals, fund balance, reserve accounts, and then our capital project. And I'm just going to highlight that picture. If you can see it in front of you for the board members, that little child sign says, Be a Smart Cookie. I thought, I don't know, it just stood out to me, so I'd like to put these pictures in there. Whoever took that picture, that one's pretty killer to me. Okay, so just a reminder about our process ongoing, re-evaluating ourselves constantly. The budget is not just this season where we start in January, February-ish, and then go up

047to May in the budget vote. That it goes through the summer, it goes through the fall, and all throughout the winter. Our preliminary budget summary, okay, we came out with last week. We talked about having a $97 million, $97.6 million expenditure budget for our rolled budget. We took a look at some assumptions, which was a 3% tax levy increase, getting us $55 million, $55.5 million. State aid at about $36.9 million, so just shy of $37. Miscellaneous at about $1.5 million for a total of $94 million in revenue. So comparatively, we are about $3.5 million short. We assigned, as an assumption, a $2.5 million fund balance. which gives us about a million dollar shortfall, a little over a million dollars. We talked about some of our budget goals as we went back into this. So we

048want to maintain our current programs. We don't want to have any reductions to programs or staff. We want to continue to support and grow instructional and operational programs. So continue to develop our instructional and operational programs. Lowest possible tax levy and stay within the tax cap. And then... accomplishments. So we've been trying to reduce the reliance on that fund balance. So more to come on that. But again, we're assuming in 23, 24, we had 2.5. 24, 25, we had 2.8. 25, 26, we reduced to 2.4. We try to hold steady at that 2.5 and maybe chip away at it. Today, we're going to talk about fund balance and reserves. We did this last year, so we'll go in detail. And this is all our fund balance and all of our reserves on one spreadsheet comparing

049the past several years. So our unassigned fund balance, our appropriated fund balance, and that's what we use to reduce the tax levy. Tax certiary reserve, ERS pension contribution reserve, TRS pension contribution reserve. employee benefit accrued liability reserve, unemployment insurance reserve, and then our capital reserve. And again, I'll go through each one in detail. My clicker seems to be sticking today. My apologies. There we go. Well, it's really sticking. We're not all the way at the... This is terrible. Hello? We're going to pause for a TV timeout. All right, there we go. Nothing like a good crash out to get us where we need to be. Holy moly, we skipped slides like crazy. I'm sorry about that. Okay. It's you, not me. Okay. Preliminary expenditures. Let's reset. Okay. Because I was really blowing through this. And

050you're all looking at me like, hello. I do trust you. We have some budget experts. Let's go back to the budget development process. As we said, it's a year-long process. Okay. And all throughout our winter here and up to the budget vote, then during the spring, and then all the way into the fall again. So here's our preliminary expenditures budget. Wow, this is much different than the other slides that I was reading. 97-603-490, as I said, as compared to 92-986-803, $4.6 million difference year to year. Still have a number of open items, special education, out-of-district placements, preschool moving up, and contract negotiations, our CSEA, that's our buildings and grounds crew, our custodians. Power professionals, those are our TAs and our monitors. And our cafeteria unit, we talked about the cafeteria unit not being in the

051general fund but separate, but we still talk about negotiations with them as well. On the revenue projection side, about $94 million as compared to $90 million or $90.5 million, a difference of $3.5 million year to year. We assumed a couple things here. Maximum allowable property tax levy is a 5.36, which would get us about $2.8 million. We assumed a 3.0 tax levy increase, which gets us about $1.6 million. Our state aid increase looks at about $409,000, and we are going to see some increase in building aid to the tune of about $1.3 million because of our closing out of our current capital project. We still don't know what our state aid figures are. The state budget's supposed to be due in April. Ha, ha, ha, joke's on you. That doesn't really come on time for

052the most part. And UPK, which is tied to that state budget. So here we go. Here's a familiar side that I've already tackled. So I won't re-tackle it for the sake of boredom, but I'll run through real quick. 97.6 on the expenditure side, 94 million on the revenue side. Difference of $3.5 million. Fund balance assigned would be $2.5 for a shortfall of about $1 million. And then here's our summary slide all into one. Okay. The rolled budget at 97.6 versus our revenue at 90.067. Shortfall of 3.5 with a signed fund balance of 2.5, we'd be at a little over a million dollars. And again, put everything kind of on that one slide so we can see. We kind of held strong there and said, where's our goals? We don't want to reduce our programs or

053staff. We're going to continue to develop instructional and operational programs. We want to keep our tax levy low and under the tax cap. We also want to reduce our reliance on the appropriated fund balance. So then I jumped into all of our reserves and I read them off. So I will not bore you and repeat them again if that's okay with everybody. All right. So we were getting into the thick of it where we were looking at each one individually. Unassigned fund balance is the district's rainy day fund. We're allowed to keep 4% of our budget. That's as per New York State. The current unassigned fund balance is $3.7 million, and we're at that full 4%. Each year we stay at that 4%, just in case. The appropriated fund balance, so the amount we use

054to reduce the tax levy. So this is the amount the district will help to fund the budget on the expenditure side. In doing so, it reduces the amount of total tax levy on the revenue side. This amount must be kept sustainable from year to year, so we talked about that just a little bit in the previous slide. Appropriating too much fund balance also impacts the amount that could be dedicated to specific reserve accounts. And looking at the district's financial history and borrowing, unforeseen expenditures or revenue abnormality, a sustainable amount is that $2 to $2.5 million. Just a little bit more history on appropriative fund balance. I walked it back a number of different years. You see we fluctuated. 4.1 million, 2.2 million, 4.1 again, 2.4, 2.3. So some of it we've been staying in that

055range, which has been great, and then some outside that range at 4 million. Fund balance and reserves to balance the budget must be carefully managed. It could potentially put a negative hole in your budget later on. So we just want to be mindful of that. Should not be used as reoccurring expenses. So some of that one-time help, yes, we can do that. Cover some of the gaps. But again, be mindful that the next year you could be creating a different problem. If there's an unanticipated increase in expenditure or loss of revenue, these gaps may need to be filled through borrowing or budget freeze. So, again, we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we have to borrow money in order to cover some type of gap. Tax tertiary reserve provides funding for school

056tax relief for the district is ordered to pay upon a taxpayer's successful challenge of their taxable assessed value. So we keep a reserve. On the side, in case we have a big liability, our current liability rests at about $1.25 billion on tax certiorari payouts. Not all of that will be paid out, but that's kind of like the max where we are. And so our number is actually pretty close to that, that $1.25 billion. So our reserve is considered to be in a healthy spot. ERS and TRS, these are our pension contributions. So we are required to make yearly pension contributions to both of the ERS and the TRS fund. And we have reserves in case there is some fluctuation there. So this will provide funding for future pension obligations to staff a part of New

057York State teachers retirement system and New York State employees retirement system. Budgetary stability in those years where we have dramatic increases. Both retirement funds are tied to volatility of the stock market and global economic picture. A continuous funding strategy for the reserve would be favorable position, the district, for any kind of downturn. So we are in a very good, healthy position with both ERS and TRS. And you can see over the years we've added slightly. Employee benefit accrued liability reserve. Provides funding for contractual benefit obligations when staff retire. So unused sick time or unused vacation time. Based on the historic level of retirements each year, the current reserve level is deemed adequate. We had a lot of retirees last year. We had 10. So this year we do not have a lot of retirees, which

058is kind of... anomaly for us because we think that we're gonna start to see a lot more retirements. So maybe we're gonna have a younger staff and we're not turning over as much anymore. Our unemployment insurance reserve for New York State unemployment insurance claims from former employees, we have to repay 100% of all unemployment claims. Adequate funding for this reserve would be about $150,000. $150,000. We do have some money in the general fund each year that we do protect ourselves with this. So currently, while we are low, our claims have been relatively low as well. So again, at a healthy level, could it be more? Yes, it could be more. But we have protected ourselves with a little bit in the general fund. Our capital reserves, see up there, I put capital reserve number one.

059That was established in 2018 and was used to fund the capital project, which is wrapping up now. All right. That was during the 2022 budget vote where we had a $23 million capital project that has since been expensed. Capital Reserve number two was established in May of 2022 with a max amount of $5 million. You can see up there it is fully funded. It's actually overfunded because it does accrue some interest. And then Capital Reserve number three was established last May with a max funding amount of $5 million as well. And we were able to set aside $2.6 million in that right away last year. So healthy reserve amount levels. And the plan is to use Capital Reserve 2 and Capital Reserve 3 to help offset the costs of the May 2026 capital projects. So

060I used this analogy last year. Revenues, expenditures, fund balance, and reserve accounts. I call it operationalized. Because what I tried to draw up there in my very simplistic PowerPoint way are silos. It's the Cornwall Central School District farm analogy. And you have up there four silos. And those silos feed our farm. And while they stand alone, they do work in conjunction with each other. So I'll just start explaining each silo and how they operate and help each other out. The first one on the left is the revenues. So we take in tax levy. We take in state aid and miscellaneous. We talked about that at the beginning. This is the funding to pay all expenditures. Without taking in revenue, we can't pay expenditure. So surplus revenue. accumulates into fund balance. If we get too much

061revenue, it goes to fund balance after all expenditures are paid. So we have to cover our expenditures. Deficits of revenue must be funded by fund balance or the reserve. If we hop over to expenditures, I think most people are well equipped in understanding our expenditures because salaries and benefits, debts, capital work, any benefits, program work, they're all funded by our revenues. So it'll come directly from tax levy, state aid, or miscellaneous. Surplus expenditures accumulate into fund balance as well. So deficits and expenditures must be funded through revenues through fund balance. So again, working backwards. Our silos have to communicate with each other. In fund balance, we have some titles. Assigned, restricted, appropriated, and unassigned. Those are your four titles. They're funded by surplus revenue and expenses. So whenever there's a surplus on the revenue or

062the expenditure side, it will filter into the fund balance silo. Assigned, pay year-end expenses. Appropriated, designated to lower property taxes. Restricted, set aside for legally allowed expenses. And unassigned, that 4% limit for emergencies. And then our reserve, which we talked about all of our different reserves. Tax certiorari, ERS, TRS, employee, employee accrued liability, unemployment, and capital. These are restricted. They're set aside for legally allowed expenses, funded through fund balance, and accessible through established rules. So some of them have different rules in order to access them. So just a little quick analogy about the Cornwall Central School District Department. Each meeting, I'm going to talk about our capital projects. So I know it may be redundant, but I'm going to keep doing it every time. On the ballot, we're staring down a capital improvement project for

063May 19th. Proposition 1 is $44.5 million, and it's various improvements throughout our district and some additions. It's a tax-neutral status, so no additional tax responsibility. Proposition 2 is $21.1 million. That would be classroom additions at three of our buildings, middle school, CES, and COH. Proposition 1 must pass in order for Proposition 2 to pass. There's a partial effective tax rate, so there is some tax rate implication for Proposition 2. And then Proposition 3 is $14.6 million, and that would be some athletic fields at the high school. Proposition 1 and 2 must pass in order for Prop 3 to go, and there's full effective tax rate implications. I break them down each in all of our slides for you to read here. I won't read them to you or bore everybody to death. Here's your Proposition

0641, the continuation of Proposition 1. Proposition 2 spells out exactly kind of what's going in and where. Proposition 3. We did launch last week a little capital project website so you'll see that on the home page. You can click on it, provide you a little bit of information and some overview of the capital projects. Budget information goes up after our budget presentation so this presentation will likely go right up tomorrow so that everybody can see. I thank you for your time and ask for questions. And my apologies about my clicker and PowerPoint. Resetting my computer skills. All good. Questions? Christian? So this is not so much a question as a comment. I wasn't here at the last meeting. But I do have, you know, I think some thoughts on the budget. And, you know, just

065I think some things need to be said because we're facing a $1 million shortfall, even with a 3% tax levy increase, which would be a higher tax levy increase pretty much. with nothing additional to just, you know, in the sense, say, you're going to pay more and you're going to get exactly the same. There is no, let's say, extra. And it's predictable. Like, budget shortfalls are not natural disasters. They're a product of our choices and our past choices, which, as I said this two years ago, the one thing we won't have in the future is a time machine to come back and redo our choices. And I just want to... I think several things need to be said, not because it's that I told you so, but because if we don't make different choices going

066forward, this is just going to get worse. It means it's going to get tighter, it's going to get tighter, and some of the things that are allowing us to float through are going to get thinner and thinner and thinner, and eventually it's going to hurt. And I just want to review some of these things because I think it's important that we understand how we got here. And this is... As I said to Mr. Triasi, John, I'm talking to you, but this is not you. This is the district and how we made choices. And I just think for the public, I think it's important to think about some of the choices we made. So last fall, we went to our pockets and we found that we had $2.6 million carried over from the last year budget,

067and we put it into the capital reserve. I voted against that because, as I said at the time, this was ridiculously going to be a difficult budget year. And $2.6 million, which we could have used to, in a sense, fund our program this year, is now being spent for a capital project. And some people, that's a choice. But the point is, is that... The tightness we're facing in the, or you could say our budget this year, is a product of a choice we made earlier this year when we put that money, which is a spending decision to put it into capital reserve. And so when we talk about it as being tax neutral, it's partly tax neutral because the taxes are going to be paid to raise for the tax levy for our regular budget

068because we made that decision to put that there. And once again, we don't have a time machine to go back to that point, but boy, it probably would put us in a better position for some other priorities we have in our district. And then some other choices that things that we voted for as a board in the past, but if we had done it through the tax levy, we would have more money. So you weren't here in 2023, but we voted for improving the AV equipment at the high school auditorium. And originally the number was around 256,000. I think we didn't do all of it, but then we made a very curious decision to do that through the fund balance and not through the tax levy. If we had done that through the tax levy

069in 2023, if we had done the entire AV system, we would have $260,000 more, or that gap of $1 million would be reduced by a quarter. This last year, we were considering putting the strategic plan into the budget. That would have increased the tax levy. Instead, we passed it this year. Once again, something we voted for. Not something like, you know, hey, I like some things and other people don't like things. It got universal support. If we had done that in last year's budget, that's $40,000 more. Now that we've reduced that million by $300,000. And I'm just going to make this point, and obviously people are in this room. If we had just raised central office salaries by the average for the state, over the last five years, we would have had another $100,000 that

070we don't have now. That's another $100,000. And so the point is, we make those choices, and I'm saying we, because I'm one of the people who made those choices at least for the last two or three years, is that that's what happens. And I think the other one, and this is really the biggest one, is, you know, we went under the tax levy. So if you look at the tax cap error, for the first five or six years of that, we got a tax cap number, and we basically went up to the tax cap number pretty consistently every single year. The school board basically said, we're gonna spend this money, and that's the investment that I think allowed us to be some success in our district because we were putting the money there and that

071allowed us to have, let's say, I could say the running path to have that. And then the budget philosophy changed roughly around 2018, 2019. And then for four or five years, we went dramatically under. And three years ago, that tax cap, our tax levy was increased by less than 1% average over three years. What if we had just gone to the tax cap in those years, like we had done previously in the five years, our budget would be $5, $6 million larger, which means we would not only be able to cover this budget, but we would have been able to pay for every single identified need in all the budgets that wasn't funded in those years. And that was a choice. And what's happening now is a tax levy is, you know, so the point

072is that decision. And I'm saying we should have gone up to the tax cap all those years. What if we had just done 2% or whatever the max tax cap was, because some years it was less than 2%. We would have another $2.6 million available to cover some of these needs and perhaps address some of the needs that we haven't addressed that we're probably not going to address in this budget. And so we find ourselves in a situation where... Whether we, right now we're at 3% and we still have a million dollars, but we have to figure out what's going to happen. That's approximately another 2% in the tax levy. And whether we cut to get to that point, or we raise the tax levy up to 5, really a 5% tax levy increase, either

073because of reduced benefits or increased revenues. And if we look at what has Cornwall supported, so different tax levies, what was the support in the budget vote? and you do a simple regression since 2014 when the tax cap got started, we hit 50% at approximately 5.1% tax-offee increase, which means this year we're putting ourselves in a position where we're really jeopardized, we're putting some programs in jeopardy because of some of the decisions we've made fiscally. And the point is, if we don't, we just say, okay, we're going to push it down the line, deal with it later. I don't think we can anticipate because Albany has been telling us that this is actually the last good year as far as foundation aid, that the years ahead are going to be harder and harder. And even

074if we had the same foundation aid increase that we had last year, we would still have a gap with what we have now. And so I think this is not, as last meeting, this is not great news, but it was predictable because it was predicted. And I think the point about it is we have to make a choice whether we like the things that we have decided for because we think they're worthwhile in education, or we're going to decide, well, you know what, we can't afford it, and we're going to have to give up some of the things that we valued and we've cultivated. And that's not just for us, the board, because we're going to propose that budget, but also us as a community. And the point about this is I think I've been

075pretty consistent. And last year, I think I said to you, If you push down the tax cap, you are putting your, you're not really going to maintain your programs. You're making them less and less stable by, let's say, crunching down the revenue. And we have increases built into our budget, whether it's teachers' contract, which I voted for and I support that. I think it was a good decision. But there's a lot of other things, as you know, that increase. And, you know, we don't have a choice about that. But the point is that revenue might be flattening out unless we raise it. And I think for our community is that, I think our community would rather have like a 2% raise per year, which is basically what inflation is in general in normal times, rather

076than have one, one, one, five, because that makes it a lot harder for them to budget in terms of what they're paying for the schools. And so my hope would be is we need to get back onto track, because if we don't, we're going to put ourselves into the situation more and more in the years ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions, comments? Go ahead. Just to follow up on where we were two weeks ago, I know it wasn't part of this presentation, so I assume that there are no firm answers yet. But you said that you would be exploring different options for bridging that $1 million. Is there any update now? Would you rather wait until there are more specifics for a future presentation? Can I ask a question? companion question to your question

077Brendan because I think you can answer them both at once I had the same thought as Brendan as we covered a lot of ground we covered last time we have a hole we haven't started working to plug that hole I think part of the reason I haven't seen the the one house budgets from the assembly or the senate have those come out yet So, I'll answer both questions? Yeah, that's why I tagged on his. So, one house budget should be out this week, if the timing serves properly. I think I just read an article while I was sitting there that we might have some news. So, I expect UPK to be as the governor proposed. I think we talked about that last time. In discussions with colleagues and advocacy groups, we might get a little

078bit more foundation aid as well. So that might be news. And again, whether this gets hashed out over the next couple of weeks. Brendan, to your question, yep, we started working right away. Megan and I met. We talked about a number of different things. We engaged Kathy and Brent here, as well as our building principals. We're going to turn to our principals and directors and say, what can we do here? So it's our goal to come out here on March 23rd, which is our next meeting. And that would be the superintendent's recommended budget based on where we are. I think we'll have a little bit more indication, like you said, from our legislatures and their budget and give the board some time to chew on it because then at least there's the first meeting in

079April, I believe April 10th, to have some more discussion and then the adoption on the 21st. I hope that answers all the questions. Yeah, just at least when we get the one house budgets, assuming they're not radically different, sometimes they are. But, you know, if they're close to the governor's budget, we can go, okay, great, everybody's going to fight about different issues this year. We've got kind of a good feeling of what we can go for. But even if they are radically different, we can pick, okay, the worst case scenario between the governor's budget. and kind of go with that, or we can say, hey, we think they're gonna compromise in the middle, but at least we can start to have those discussions and work on it, which we're at a point now without having

080that data. We're throwing darts blindfolded when we get that information. And that might be the 23rd where we're coming out with the superintendent's recommended budget here and saying this is the best. what kind of forecasts we can give the board at this point in time. You know, here's some discussion topics to talk about, food for thought, and then go into it. And then what are some of our kind of backup plans? Kind of what, I think I presented that last year with kind of what happens if, you know, we undershot the budget or we overshot the budget. What can we do? So just to kind of piggyback on Brendan and Jim's point, the governor has to propose a balanced budget. they do not have to pass a balanced budget. And so every year, what happens

081is the traditional budget is going to be smaller than what the final budget is likely to be, absent some, you know, catastrophe that happens between. So I think that it, we don't know what that is. It probably will be higher than the 1% of Foundation A that we received. It probably won't be 3%. And so the point about this is that that's not by itself going to fill the hole. It will make it a little bit smaller, but... I think we can anticipate that that number will be slightly larger, but more in the range of tens of thousands to maybe 100, 200,000 at the highest. So I think that's part of it. But then the other thing about this is that while there are things we can, the budget is, as you know, is not

082actual spending. It is a projection of our spending based upon what we think might happen. And judging by how we recharge our unallocated or unassigned fund balance and how we've had this extra money pretty consistently in the capital reserve for the last five or six years, there's probably a fudge factor for about four to five million dollars built into our budget, which means if we change our assumptions about what our projections are, we can actually bring the budget number down. But I think you probably do not want to do that too much because a lot of those are ad hoc one-offs and once you do them, they're not going to be available again once you scale things down. And if we go over or something happens, and then we put ourselves in a really bad

083position. So once again, I hope that we are not closing it too much by, okay, we're not going to spend as much on Xerox copy or paper this year at the elementary school. Maybe there's probably some left over at the end of the year. We can assume we're going to use less and we can budget less. But the point is, once we do that once, that's a small thing. If you bring it down, it's going to, in a sense, reduce our buffer and reduce our buffer and reduce our buffer. So eventually we end up in the same position. Yeah, and at the last meeting we talked about our budget drivers, right? They're right up there in that rolled budget. Everybody can see them on the sheet. What are the largest increases? And we'll review them

084again on March 23rd. They're still going to drive the budget. As you say, the small stuff is still there. It adds up over time. But we don't want to leave a hole for us next year or the year after, whoever's on the Board of Education. in our community. So, John, I'm just, can you just confirm my understanding, the fund balance and reserve account for the tax reserve, that money is rolling over year to year? Correct. So, we haven't had to pay out on the potential risks? That's correct. Okay. All of our tax tertiaries have come in, they're small. Again, we have a budget allocation for tax tertiary relief, so the small ones, and we do approve them. December, January timeframe-ish, I think we get them in and they're small increases generally that we can handle.

085Do we have, so what I'm getting at is, I don't want to put us in a risk because I see the ideal number is 1.25 million, right? But if we looked at the last however many years and we saw what our actual payout was, is there any cushion to budget less there? And I'm talking, you know. not to cover the gap, just a little bit here and there. That's all I'm asking. So I'm not asking for an answer right now. I'm just wondering if that's too risky or is that possible? You're thinking all along the right lines. I think that's why we have these. This is part of the budget discussion. I work in a division of work that I've got to find every penny I can. Capital Reserve number two, the interest that we

086gained, $130,000, where does that go? Sticks with it. Oh, it does. Okay. Sticks with it in the reserve. Okay. Those are my two questions. We're positioned really at that $7.7 million to go towards the capital projects, and that's what's really offsetting all the costs for the capital projects. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you again for a very thorough and easy-to-follow presentation, John. Really, really appreciate it. And I know it's a lot of hard work, so it does not go unrecognized. All righty, so now we move on to our committee updates. I'm going to start really quickly with Oxpa. Last time we were here, I was talking about the AI presentation. I was very excited to attend, and that was the snow day. So they did not want to do that remotely. They want to do

087that in person so that the rescheduled date is TBD, so I'll keep everyone posted. But I was really excited about that. Would anyone like to go first for committee updates? Sure, Brendan. Thank you. Communication Committee, we have a second capital project forum next Wednesday. That's the 18th at 7 o'clock right here in this room. So take a deeper dive into some of those line items. So really give the community more information as we get closer to that May 19th vote. be pushing out more messages through Parent Square and et cetera, Facebook, all that, so that we get the word out as we do. And then I guess I'll just jump into policy. No meeting scheduled. We'll be getting on that soon since we used to have that winter meeting to check off. Jim, facilities? No

088new updates since the last time I've seen the fruits of our labor. Nothing new there. Carl, visitation? Visitation. I'm going to give that to Jamie and you on your reports. I just want to let you know that so far this has just been a fantastic thing to do. Okay. So a few weeks ago I was invited to attend the high school program where the 10th graders read night in a day, which was... It was really impactful, it was really well done. I know this is what, the 14th year that they're doing it? So they definitely have it, it's a science at this point, but it was just really interesting seeing the ways that the students take current events and can be really critical thinkers and bring it back to the Holocaust. It was really cool.

089And then watching them react and just, you know, I feel like you hear so much social media. you know boggles your brain and that you know children can't read anymore and you know and then you like watch these kids read this super impactful book and then they're like okay now stop and journal or talk about it or think about it and you see it really moved them I don't know it was it was very cool and then I had the um I was able to meet the unified bowling team before their big game which was awesome and they uh they told me a lot about bowling and it was really it was great Carl you're right. It was like a really really great day really sad impactful moving day, but it was Mrs. Wilhelm was

090like maybe you want to end this with bowling and not go back in the auditorium. I was like, that's probably a good idea We had Richard myself and Jim visited Cornwall and Hudson Excuse me. We had a great visit. I Had never been there. I hate to admit but I had a great tour It was it's just a great building And we got to see first and second grade had an Olympics. So this is in the heart of the Olympics. And there was different activities related to the Olympics, tying in things like, you know, reading, science, math. There was ice skating with magnets. There was ice skating on paper plates. My favorite was the, they were all great, don't get me wrong, but I would like to purchase the one that was the, what was

091that? No, not luge. Curling, yes. They had this curling where you had to get it in the, it was about the friction and how the thing rolled, and I thought it would be a great family game at the holidays, so I think there's a business idea there. But it was great. The kids just, you got to see the team spirit, them cheering each other on, helping each other out at the different stations, and just a really creative interaction, so that was really good. I don't know if... Richard or Jim want to add anything and then we got to meet with some teachers and take some of their feedback and yeah it was a great visit overall it just it was really nice if I could just bring up one thing too the group I did

092run it by Megan and we're going to meet up with the maintenance department That was one thing. I think this group is, it's just, it's been great. I mean, especially working with Megan, I haven't had any, no stop, go, you know, we just enjoy it now. And so this year we want to bring something in and we want to bring in the maintenance department and let them know, you know, what we think and everything like that with them. So I'll be straightening that out with Megan when I get a chance. All right, great. Thank you. Audit's complete. I think that's all the committees. Did I miss anyone? Okay. Thank you. Moving on to our consent agenda. Would anyone like to pull any of the items? We have items 2 through 11. I am going to

093pull number 9, the calendar. Would anyone like to pull any of the other items? Christian? I was going to pull 9 as well, and I'm also going to pull 7 and 8, but they're connected, so I think that they can be discussed together. All right, the use of the consent agenda permits the Board of Education to make more effective use of its time by adopting a single motion to cover those relatively routine matters which are included. Any member of the board wishes to discuss, we can pull them, which we did. We will vote on those separately thus preserving the right of all board members to be heard on any issue It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the following consent agenda agenda items as submitted by the superintendent of schools items 2 3

0944 5 6 10 and 11 may I have a motion, please Thank You Brendan may have a second second Thank You Jim all in favor of approving the consent agenda I Opposed any abstentions Thank you the motion passes, okay Item number seven approval of the CCTA moa dated to 27 20 26 which I know you said we could talk about them together This is where I get tripped up a little like can we just do it all at once seven eight nine? Um, I don't know what your concern is with nine. I'm not sure if it's connected mind is separate Go ahead. We'll start with seven and then we'll see if you want So number seven is about, obviously, the remote instruction in the event that we have, let's say, more snow before, let's say,

095summer comes. And let me just preface this with some background. So every year I start, I talk to my students, and I walk them through a calculation as what is the economic value of coming to school. And I base this on MIT Nobel Prize winning economist Joshua Angrist. And it works out to be every day of school you miss is about $1,100 in your future earnings lost. And there's a very clever way of how they figured that out. But I'd say if I gave you $1,100, would you come to school? And if you want to think about that in terms of, let's say, what is it, one less in-person day, and in-person is the key distinction here, is that's about $3.3 roughly million in future earnings for the students that are currently in our district.

096That's kind of the setup because part of this is to how we're going to deal with this remote instruction day and basically it said emphasize that we are going to do asynchronous and that you know there would be limited availability and communication and I just want to preface this that I do not blame the CCTA for asking for this but I don't think as from the district side that this represents the best interest of the district. And I want to refer reference to, and even though this is not our snow, but the emergency remote instruction plan that we adopted in 2023, which in our memo, which was sent by the previous superintendent when it was adopted, NYSED has made it clear that synchronous instruction is a priority for remote instruction for extended periods of time.

097Therefore, our district will continue to provide live stream synchronous instruction to our students to the greatest extent practical during extended school closures due to emergency conditions. Again, this instruction will be primarily synchronous with asynchronous instruction as a supplement. So we adopted that plan. And this is one of the first times that we've had to deal with this. And we are kind of, in a sense, departing from our plan on the first opportunity that it might, or at least that principle would be applied. And so I guess my concern here is that if that is our plan, and we've kind of now realized that's for extended pandemic, extended remote instruction, but it does kind of apply to this, especially because we still have days in our schedule that we could use for in-person instruction, whether it's

098the Friday before Memorial Day that's in our schedule, or frankly, all the days in spring break. And I think that that would be in the best interest of our students and our families, and that's what I think we should be aiming for. And just to close, I just want to... maybe as a demonstration of sincerity, just talk of my own situation. So in the 2017-2018 school year in the Hudson Valley, there were a lot of snow days. And my marriage was the day after school ended, on the Saturday after the last day of school. And because we had used all of our snow days, the district basically converted a conference day to an instruction day, and then all the teachers came in the Monday after. And because I knew that was coming, we actually scheduled

099our honeymoon for the day after, and I came in and I went to work because that was what the job was. And once again, this is not about the teachers, because the teachers should ask for what's in their interest, but our district, representing the district side, is that we should stand up for what is in the best interest of students and families, and at least, in a sense, ask for maybe synchronous instruction if it's going to be remote. And so while I respect the... desire here and the intention and I don't question anyone's motive I just can't bring myself to support on this item so I'm going to be voting against it so in an effort to not have our students stay home one more day with basically hanging out and not doing anything other

100than enjoying a snow day. In the event that we have a one-off remote need, we've worked very collaboratively with the CCTA and our CAA to develop this plan for those one-off situations. It's also understood that if we needed to go remote for a series of days, let's say we have a blizzard, right, we would then pivot to the live instruction that we're talking about. This MOA is just codifying the ability to be able to go remote. You'll notice in the number eight, the student calendar for this year is readopting it to take off the line that says that the first day to give back would be, I believe it's May 21st or 22nd, it's the Friday before Memorial Day. And in lieu of that, our teachers would set up plans for our students to do

101instruction now instead of waiting and giving back that day back in May. So that that's the thinking behind that. Oh Hey, Chris, if I may just it's not necessarily response, but I think you know because this is gonna lead into I think item number nine Oh, sorry, but but I'm saying there's several different things I think we want to talk about on number nine, but you know, it's about planning our future schedule and You know because we have some of these things we don't schedule as many days as some of any other school districts in their area which is why we have five snow days and then we're out. Where a lot of people have five snow days, just to use my own experience, we schedule, I think, five more days than Cornwall schedules. And

102that's why we are not going to be going to remote instruction. Even if we have that, we're going to give up a day, and that's already planned into the schedule. And so why this leads to number nine is that in Cornwall, we had an extra long winter break. I was at work. because our schedule is different, because it took that into consideration. So when we make our schedule for the following year, there are things about where you put time conference days, what days you decide to schedule extra long breaks, because that sets you up for success, because we can't predict the amount of snow or weather that's going to interrupt. We were very lucky that we had a very mild hurricane season in the Northeast. That could have been quite a few other days if

103something had hit. as it did, let's say in 2012 with Sandy and schools were closed for two full weeks for most of this area, not to mention Irene, which particularly hit Cornwall hard. And so when we go into planning, just remember like those days were already taken because of those days where Cornwall was closed, other school districts were open because they planned that. And so that goes into once again, the planning process. And so that's my, obviously we're gonna vote on seven and eight. because obviously eight is just basically adapting, is reflecting the decision seven and putting it into this year's calendar. But I think as we go into nine, we should maybe think about some of those decisions when we plan next year's schedule as well. And I think, Christian, your point's well taken.

104I mean, I don't want to give up $1,100. I was thinking back, like, how much school did I miss? Because I don't know. But I do think we also, there are people in the community that, you know, they have plans for spring break. They have plans for the Memorial Day. And so then we have, you know, you... the potential is you have a classroom that is only 50% full, so you have kids who are missing half the lesson anyway. I just think it's a tough situation. It's a this or that on either side of it, honestly. So I think that's some of what's also taken into consideration sometimes for that. Jim, you have your finger on the pulse there. Yeah, just a question for Megan. In general, our scheduling philosophy on snow days has changed

105after COVID and remote instruction became more than a possibility, but a reality that people got used to. And I feel like in the past, and you correct me if I'm wrong, we used to schedule seven or eight snow days into the calendar. And we moved that down to like five saying the snow days are out of passage. It's important to have a snow day, but at a certain point, right. And also, Beyond just, okay, you have to get instructed. What's the average number of snow days that you use a year? It's probably once every seven or eight years that you go over five snow days. Correct. And this year we're sitting on five right now. So technically we still have one left because they did waive that. They waived that one. But I mean, we've

106used five. One was waived. So this was even a particularly snowy winter. It just so happened a lot of the snow came on the weekend and not the week, but, you know, like even in a snowy winter, we only used five this year. It's kind of an anomaly. I mean, to your point, Jim, like I think the days of taking off in spring and the kids staying home longer, we have the opportunity to go remote if we needed to. And that's in the instance that all of our days were absolutely exhausted, which thankfully they haven't been. And this has been a big winter year, we all know. I just wanted to confirm sort of my understanding of the philosophy. Thank you. And just to point, I was only talking about this year, Christian, not, I

107understood your point about planning for the future. I just meant this year. That's how he took it. Okay. I pulled number nine because I had someone ask me, and I thought it might be worth just covering quickly. People were shocked we were starting before Labor Day, and they thought it was crazy. And then I saw that that was actually, you know, worked out. So I just, I wanted Megan to speak to that so that the public knew. So just as a background, when we first meet, as a county-wide superintendent's team and we look at the calendar. So BOCES gives us our calendar. Then each district goes back and they kind of solidify their days and you have some movement around it but you can't really move it too much just because we can't. We don't

108want to shortchange the time that our students who go out to BOCES are getting their instruction. So if we're off the schedule by a lot, then we're actually taking a lot of instruction time from our kids who are getting special ed services and CTECH services out at BOCES. So we do have some flexibility to tweak some days. I meet with our calendar committee. So this isn't just an isolated move. This is a collaborative process that happens. And there's representation from our CCTA on there, our administrators unit, our teaching assistants unit. In addition, we have our clerical and our custodial. We had to reschedule our meeting twice, so our clerical and custodial were not able to do the final meeting with us, but they were conferred with. When we sat down at the table that August

10931st was actually brought to us by one of our unions as a request because December 23rd was the date that they wanted to switch that for. So it is kind of a surprise because, you know, it's kind of the unwritten rule with August, right? But I think because it fell on the Monday and everybody knew that they were coming back on the Tuesday anyway, it was just kind of shifting a day that later on I think families will benefit from. And just to be clear that those first two days, that also gives us two days to open. So we're using two of our four conference days in September, which is also a big ask to get things started and get planning while also opening our schools on the second, which is consistent with the rest

110of the county. Any other questions or comments? I have a few. So you pulled the item, so I had to make sure that you just were talking about the first. So these would be the amendments that I would suggest, and just as for consideration. My understanding was the request for two conference days as opposed to one which we had two years ago and last year we had two conference days at the beginning of the school year and What I would propose it and since we are not going by Orange County since we are departing from that on the 23rd of December I'm not sure what the value is of you know, completely linking up in that first week and I would move the conference days to the 3rd and 4th of September Start school the

111day after Labor Day and the advantage there and what that really is trading off with is the extra long Mid-winter break in February because the three days that's where the three days are going make that a full week I can end up comment a little bit more but i think the point about is that would make more sense because it also gives more time in the summer to get school ready do any repair work and there's an advantage for having a longer summer period because it just gives more time to do any type of maintenance cleaning i don't know how much is left of the capital project all those types of things it gives you a little more time and if you remember two years ago that here in this building the bathrooms were not

112ready and moving it back and during the summer There was, at least I proposed, maybe we need to give an extra day so it's one less day where we have students here with modular bathrooms as opposed to give them a little more time to finish. That's the first thing that was addressed, which would be moving that to the third and fourth, and then the February break, the three days, probably the 17th, 18th, and 19th, because I believe the 15th and 16th are President's Day, and I think Lunar New Year is on the weekend this year. The other one is just, this is a proposal. So in April, we have Passover as a day. Other counties and other districts, sometimes that is the Monday after spring break that makes it a longer spring break. And it

113kind of consolidates that and allows things of that sort. So that's another alternative that I think we can consider. Passover is April 22nd, and that is a non-school day. So what other districts, they do not have a day off for Passover. They've taken the Monday after spring break. So I'm pointing out variations between other district schedules that have been coming out already in the region. And that might be an alternative to consider before we adopt this. And once again, these are some of the changes or things that we plan in. I'll just say this, that as a teacher, usually there's very little variance between my children's schedule and my schedule because more or less I'm in school when they're in school, and if they're not in school, I'm not in school. And generally, the variation

114between Orange County and Dutchess County is about maybe two or three days total because of conference days. And this one is going to be nine days variation between us and a neighboring county. And that's a huge difference. And it's not like my personal situation, but like this does, This is a schedule that is people who want to take two week-long breaks, midwinter break and spring break, and kind of puts a lot of, let's say, parents who work into a situation because they have to, in a sense, child care and they don't have a consolidated period of time. So I think we could solve that by having a slightly different schedule. So that's what I would propose, and I don't know if there's any other support for it, but that's the schedule that I think would

115make more sense. So I just want to clarify a couple of things. If we were to shorten the February break, that plays a role with our kids going to BOCES. This is the Orange County-wide calendar that districts are looking at. With us taking a day or adding the September 31st and changing that December 23rd, yeah, that is different than the rest of the county. But the majority of the county is sticking to this schedule. And with this schedule, we go until June 25th. I understand what you're saying in terms of depending on where you're working, but we don't have a ton of flexibility if we need, because we're aligning with our Orange County counterparts for services for our students. Megan, if we just hypothetically, if we did not take the 17th, 18th, and 19th, students

116that go to BOCES would not have a program to go to, whether that's special ed or high school students that... Because I remember my daughter went to Boise's. If they didn't have it, they'd just be sitting in the library, right? They would be closed. And a lot of thought was also put in with the calendar committee because, again, this is all the unions are coming together to discuss this before it comes here. You know, we didn't want to look at certain religious holidays and pick and choose. We were really consistent. Passover is not typically on the calendar for this. This year it happens to be where it's falling. So being thoughtful and trying to be inclusive of all the holidays that are coming, we're not going to pick and choose between religious holidays. So that

117was another piece that was part of the plan. I think, and forgive me for not knowing, some districts, at least, maybe not in Orange County, but there's two days for, is it Passover or Yom Kippur? I'm sorry, I don't mean to put everyone on the spot, but I know that we're only taking one day for that holiday. Bless you. Yeah, I wouldn't want to take that off. That's just my personal opinion. Any other thoughts or comments? I would like to take a motion to... approve items seven, eight, and nine. Is that okay? Can we do it that way? I think we should vote on them individually. I think we should. Or pair seven and eight, do nine separately. Okay. I don't think we should do that. Okay. We'll do them separately. Just make it easy.

118Could I have a motion for, excuse me, consent agenda item number seven, approval of the CCTA MOA dated 22726. So moved. Thank you. Brendan, may I have a second? Carl, thank you. All in favor of approving the CCTO MOA? Aye. Can you do a show of hands just so we can see? Carl, what do you? Okay. Opposed? Question, thank you. But the motion passes. Number eight, may I have a motion for readoption of the 25-26 student calendar? So moved. Thank you, Brendan. A second? Thank you Jamie all in favor of adopting the readoption of the calendar All in favor aye opposed Okay, the motion passes and then number nine May have a motion for adoption of the 2026 2027 student calendar three for three Thank you Brendan. Second? Second. Thank you Jim. All in favor

119of adopting the 2026-2027 student calendar? Aye. Opposed? Okay the motion passes. Thank you. Okay moving on to old business. John, Mr. Fink. Updates or any information on the proposed 2026 capital project board referendum? Not too much to share with the capital project. Again, I'm including it in all my budget presentations. As you heard me this evening, I included it on the website. If there's any feedback, please share that with me. That is my little cultivation and collaboration project on that website to get more information up. So all of our residents know. On the agenda here is our capital project propositions. They're currently in draft form. They are... being reworded as we speak. It's going back and forth amongst the OACM team and bond council. So we should have really a finalized version by the end

120of this week, which I can share with the board. And that will be on the board agenda on March 23rd for the board to adopt. Those resolutions will be what the voters will see on the ballot. because we have notification period really the following week. It's like April 2nd. We have to get that public notice out regarding not only the budget, but the propositions as well. Any questions for John? Okay, thank you very much. Our second discussion from Old Business is the polling site discussion. The board received a lot of detailed information. So John, thank you so much for all the research that you did around that and then for laying it out so clearly for us. And it was posted on board docs for anyone in the community that also wanted to see what

121we are looking at as it relates, just to bring everyone up to speed. We had discussed in the past an additional polling site. We talked about moving the polling site, and then we talked about an additional polling site. And we just wanted to have more details around those two things so that we could have an informed discussion in terms of what direction we want to go in. So I don't want to put you on the spot, John. Do you want to give us this, or do you want me to just walk through it? I think ultimately it comes down to, you know, the last where we last left us was we were going to seek legal guidance on the polling site. And that's really where the rubber meets the road here. And the board would

122have to decide if we do go to polling locations. where are we going to draw boundaries for those polling locations? And that has to be noticed as well. So I said the first notification for our budget is on April 2nd. That goes out publicly. We would have to share publicly where our two voting locations are and then... who is voting in which location so that was a change nts the company that can do the it's going to do the sign in for us the ipad procedures no problem they don't need boundaries we don't have to but as our district is structured and set up um per legal counsel we need to create those boundaries so just to just to reiterate or just to restate that in my own words um we would have to create

123the voting boundaries and then every individual or household would be assigned to one of the two polling stations and they could only vote at that polling station. I know everyone's gotten the information. So any thoughts, comments? I got some thoughts and comments, but they're going to be relatively long. Yeah. I mean, if permitted, I'll jump in. So I think this is a significant change to the lift. that would be required um because it's it's obviously not just changing or it's not just assigning it's educating people on where they're assigned um and there is a lot that this board and district has to communicate to the community between now and may 19th i i just don't i don't think it's wise to add another thing and i'll be clear i still support a second polling site

124For all the benefits that Christian has articulated throughout this process, I don't think that it's worth what it would take to educate the people this time around. And what I'm really worried about is that it's just too late to start this process. And we're going to have, I mean, just put yourself in a position where you've shown up to vote. you're told that you're not registered to vote at this location. I mean, most busy people give themselves exactly the amount of time it takes to vote. I don't think that you're going to lose people that are not going to then carve another half an hour out of their day to go vote at the correct location. And especially since that's going to be 50% of the... The electorate, you know, that's because I assume it

125would have to be two polling places. We'd be splitting it half and half. How many of that 50 percent would know where they're going? I don't know. So I mean, just to cut to the chase, this is an unfortunate this is unfortunate news. I would have much preferred that it was just you can vote at either one. But being that this is specific, I think it's too. Too bar too high of a bar to clear this late in the game for us I think if we had more time Even you know, I feel the capital projects. There's a lot of nuance to them. I feel like there's a lot of information so That worries me in doing that properly and then also oh we have new points. I also you can't vote It's a lot

126of information very nervous and it would kill me just knowing that people are gonna go to the wrong site and then just be like I have to go back to work. It's a huge bummer. So I would love to still, any feedback, I would love to still do this but have much more time to educate people, figure out how we would draw the boundaries, like, because I feel like this is a whole process we have to talk through and not just kind of circle on a map. So unfortunately, I agree. And I think we have to just stick with the bond for this year. Sorry. So this is going to be relatively long and, you know, maybe educational. And why, you know, this is sort of how I thought, you know, Richard, we had a

127conversation way back. So you think, well, they're probably going to vote for it. You know, I think it's done. And I said, no, it's not going to be done because something else is going to be brought up. And, you know, there's going to be an additional, let's say. you know, twist on this. So let's just kind of look at the legal advice. And let's just start with like last year on legal counsel advice. We were told that if we had an electronic poll book, we could have two polling sites and that would allow us to vote basically to vote anywhere at either site. And then legal counsel, which was different at the time, gave that opinion. We have a different legal counsel. We have a different legal opinion. We should also, so I'm just going

128to leave that. Just as like say clearly people who have credentials in education law have different opinions about what is required. Second thing is what was the foundation for our legal advice that was based on your opinion? It was section 2017 of education law, which is about union-free school districts. I'll just point out just right now that Cornwall is not a union-free school district. I'll get back later to what that is. And on that basis, supposedly there were all these requirements. If you read section 2017, you would see it's not a restrictive part of the law. It is an enabling part of law. It basically says, here's how you do districting for dummies. You know, basically it's like you need a certain number of people. You need to have a location. You have to have

129to do certain things. Basically, it also is not shalls. It's may for the board. And that kind of indicates the language there. The other thing is that there are other sections. So Section 1906, which deals with central high school districts, has very different language on how do you create districts. And I'll explain why the logic behind that, which also indicates the overall intention of education law. The second thing about this is that for central school districts, which we are one, It's section 1803-A. And you might say, well, 1803 says, well, all the powers, the board of a central school district, basically it's everything else in the union-free school district except what we cover differently in this. And there are some differences like the composition of the board or the size of the board that are

130different. And for the most part, they're the same, but it does different for, let's say, how do you subdivide districts and what is the difference between a union-free school district. of which central school districts are composed out of in a central school district. So the second thing is that there's assumption, and in the educational law it says, you know, basically it's a face-to-face meeting was the original thing, which is why you need to have a physical school location. It says you can do it in other ways, like you can use a polling, a voting machine. It also says that if you could do it like an election, and it's not an election, it's a meeting. that you should basically hew as close as possible, if not required, to the election law, even though election law

131doesn't govern the budget votes. But what does New York State's election law say about polling places? It doesn't say that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the polling place and the creation of an election district. Nor does Section 2017, which doesn't talk about polling places, it only talks about the creation of the election district. So what does election law, Chapter 17, Article 4... Article 4, Section 104 , which is titled, Registration and Polling Places, Designation of. First paragraph. Obviously this is different, but this is what the understanding is in the state and what someone that basically probably should be part of the guidance for what is the requirement. Every board of elections shall designate the polling places, plural, in each election district, singular. And that would probably be the common reading, and because this does

132actually exist in some places, you can have more than one polling place per election district. And it does exist in New York State, and that kind of indicates that there isn't this one-to-one requirement. Now, what we also didn't get from our legal counsel is that in the last 30 years, there have been 50 commissioner decisions regarding elections. In 49 of those, 49 of those, the commissioner said... The assumption of regularity, or the presumption of regularity, means there is no reason to change the election. What were some of the things that they thought did not affect the election, which would indicate the standard by which they interpret these things? In 1998, Mount Vernon had over 900 people incorrectly in their poll book. 900. That's a very large number. They looked through it again. They said, okay,

133well... 500 of these, we can account their voters, their typos. They still had about 450 that they couldn't account for and people who voted in their election. So how did the commissioner look at that? He said, well, 450, we don't know who they voted for. It's less than the margin of difference between anything included. And therefore, there's no reason to involve in this election. In another case, they set the voting machine to have a third choice where a board candidate, basically there were two board candidates. But they created a third choice because a piece of metal fell out of the voting machine. And so people had cast, I think, somewhere between 10 and 20 votes for a blank. The difference between the two candidates was six votes. Once again, the commissioner decided the presumption of

134regularity meant that that was not a major concern and therefore not involved. And the other thing about this is that our own legal counsel's firm has been involved in many of these cases. So in the election in 2015, and I believe the commissioner's decision was 2016, where our councilor's firm represented Pine Bush, and the petitioners were represented by Cornwall's own Jonathan Chase, who is very conversant in election law. And our council, not necessarily the ones that represent us directly, but our council's firm, basically said, look, there's a presumption of regularity, and even though, yes, this would be a violation under regular election law, it would not invalidate the election because the same standards don't apply. And in that case, it was because someone had discouraged someone from observing the votes. The difference between the two

135candidates was six votes, and therefore they were prevented or they weren't able to see or not encouraged, and the commissioner once again decided. So there's one case where they actually changed the election, and that's because not only was there enough of a margin of difference, but they actually, when they opened up the voting machine, could attribute the difference because the voting machine said there was only 42 votes. It actually was 142, and they actually could attribute that to a particular person. and that changed the outcome of that election. Despite that, and knowing that, the Board of Election took the initial result and put the person who got lower votes and installed them. And so then it was challenged. It's the only time the commissioner in the last 30 years has overturned an election, which indicates

136that the standard that has been applied pretty consistently is that the fidelity to the poll book or having it perfectly is not actually a major consideration as long as you are carrying out an election or carrying out a process in good faith. And so that kind of gets to some of these things that are more restrictive requirements as opposed to we have to meet these requirements to do this. And I would say that given all those decisions that are pretty consistent and all in the same direction, would indicate that that would not change the outcome of the election. So I want to address some of the logistical details. And I think that this... Christian, may I just make one comment? Sure. Respectfully. I wish you would have shared this with us prior because you had

137this information a couple weeks ago, and you're bringing up some things that we could consider, but unfortunately we didn't have time to do that or to go back to legal counsel even. So I just, you know, I'd ask for your understanding as well that, you know, we're going on legal counsel. I'm not a lawyer. I don't read law very well in terms of understanding it all. So I just wish you would have shared all that with us, you know, prior to leaving. But can I just rejoin her on that? So we have been discussing this now for a year and a half. And the first time I brought up, it was delayed because we needed further information. And I don't want to go through the whole thing, but the point is it's not, there's been

138a lot of information. And some of these things I have said before. So it's not like this is the first time in this discussion. And my concern here is that when I bring up certain things, I bring this, it's like, okay, and then there is this thing that makes it seem, and my concern is not so much that. Hey, if you want two districts and you want to have people in different districts, I'm kind of agnostic on that. Where I have a problem is where that to me, you know, basically uses a reason to keep and maintain what, at least to me, is an unfair system. And I'll get, you know, one basic thing every political scientist would say is that every unfair system has advocates because they create some advantage for someone in the

139political system. And so someone will get behind every unfair system. Fair systems don't have any advocates because no one has an advantage and therefore there are no advocates and it becomes a public good and it doesn't get supported. So the point about this is that when I have brought up... Can I say something too? Christian, with respect, you have points to make. You don't get to filibuster the entire meeting. I mean, when you bring up a lot of points, I think it is wise to let us and fair to let us respond to them. There seem to be two accusations here, one implicit, one explicit. The explicit accusation is that the lawyer is just wrong and that you are correct on the narrow legal matter. And all I can say to that is I. It's

140a very difficult position to put us in to say you have to trust someone who's not a lawyer about legal matters over our paid legal counsel, especially when that information could have been provided beforehand and maybe legal counsel could respond to it. The implicit accusation is that this is being done in bad faith, that from the very beginning there was always going to be some sort of coup at the end that would take the wind out of the sails of the pro- a second polling place and that you know this was all kind of preordained and i i don't think that that's fair i i don't think that that's accurate um and ultimately it's not helpful so will we uh you know i think we should keep this to a discussion that is germane to

141our decision about whether to proceed with a second polling place and you know anything that that If you have specific legal questions, I think that should maybe go to our lawyers, but it's not something that we can decide here when I don't know the veracity of everything that you're saying, and you're not really giving us enough time to look it up, verify it, or run it by our legal counsel. That brings to the thing about this, because this was initially brought up this year in December, and I just asked for, would you allow to leave the date blank, basically the location blank for that? and then pushed and pushed and pushed in the previous year as well. And so every single time new information was brought forward that somehow changed it or the calculus or

142the cost involved in this. And so the point about this, having lived through the appointment of council that lasted two years, which then finally was voted on the last meeting and then it was a 4-4 vote. And then so, okay, we have to keep our counsel because, well, we can't, we don't have five. And even though we knew what the opinion was of the absent member at that time. Christian, respectfully, this is off topic. And I think to Brendan's point, I'm just going to ask that we stay on topic with the polling. Sure. Because I understand that you're upset about some of the things. But the point is about what, it's responding to the point about what my intention is or my characterization. And so if you want to know why I feel that way,

143I think it's germane to that. Let's get to the actual logistics here, because these aren't legal points. So I don't know why we have all these different steps, because some of these things aren't major logistical things for, frankly, someone who can operate a spreadsheet. Defining geographic boundaries. So defining geographic boundaries, you can go basically very simple. This would divide the district. Put our south along I-87 to the intersection of Orris Mill Road. East along Orr's Mill Road to the intersection of New York State Route 32. Route 32 southward until the intersection of Quaker Avenue, Quaker Avenue East to 9W, 9W to the southern part of the southern boundary of the district. And that would divide it pretty clearly with very easily. You could also do that with Mudna Creek from the northern boundary to 32.

144I'm not hearing that's anyone's concern. I think everyone's concern is around communication of the districts and where people would be assigned. So in an effort to just, you know, I don't think anybody is saying that defining the geographic boundaries is the challenge we have to overcome. I mean, that would be a step we have to take that's significant, but then the communication is, you know, the main thing that we're talking about. So I would just, you know, we're of two sides. It's the fact that we have to now educate everyone on where they're allowed to vote, which would make it difficult. So we have to educate about a lot of things, about the nature of the capital project, what's in the budget. There's a lot of information that the public is going to have. And

145we could make it very simple by having one voting site that might have, at least in my opinion, a more, let's say, fair location, and less, let's say, distortion in terms of the vote, or have a higher likelihood of that. So the point about this is that... We have, you know, educated the public about different voting sites and there has not been a drop off in turnout in the recent past. And so while people might feel that way, I'm not sure what the foundation or the belief on that other than the fact is that we're refusing to do the job to communicate and therefore we're not going to do something. And there is obviously another alternative there for how you want to communicate. The other thing about it, it's relatively simple to actually communicate this

146because this is how you would do that by the proposed boundary. If you would use the New York State Board of Elections, what's my polling site? You can put in your address. And because these are also the boundaries of election districts, you could easily do that and put the applet or put the, let's say, utility into our website and allow people to easily locate and look up their polling site by just putting in their address, which is what Newburgh does for its different polling sites, as well as Wappinger's, which has multiple polling sites. And so there are easy ways to do this, even if you want to do that. And as I said before, I'm not convinced by the fact that you actually need to assign voters to a particular polling location. And there are

147different ways to do that, but that would take longer to explain that, but it's also not that hard to do because obviously people in political elections show up at the wrong polling place. And there's ways to do that in affidavit ballots and things of that sort, which are not particularly onerous to do. So the question about this is that... You shouldn't so anyway the point about this is that this has been ongoing for a while and delays have made it to that at this point You know running out the clock which is I was talking about and why I was making the analogy to the county council decision Is that by innocent getting to that deadline? Then we're saying it's sort of like it's the idea that you pushed it to deadline and say well

148now we don't have time to do something because we took a vote Okay. So. It plays into your narrative that there's like a coup going or something. I think we've spent a lot of time talking about this. Characterizing as a coup is equally a narrative. And, you know, I'm not sure what I'm talking. I never use the word coup. And coup means something different than what I'm doing. Okay. So I used the wrong word. I apologize. But your insinuation earlier about this was a predetermined decision, we've spent a lot of time giving this thoughtful consideration. I don't think, I think every time it has moved the ball forward, it's because we needed more information or we had more things to consider. So to insinuate that it's stalling is not a fair accusation. The context in

149which I said that was relating a conversation that I had two months ago about what I think how this would play out. Let's just say this. I insinuate nothing, but I also think that this is possible. I think the reasons are straightforward, and I'm sure this will not be taken up in future years. Other thoughts? comments i mean i just want to review like basically the option is to follow our legal counsel advice or not follow our legal counsel advice ultimately i choose to follow our legal counsel's advice other thoughts questions comments we just have this as a discussion item correct i would say the path forward would be to take christian's concerns about comments maybe better word the concerns of can we fact check this and do we really need to do, can we

150have two polling sites with one district? Right now the entire school district is one voting district. Can we have multiple polling sites within one district? In light of what you shared this evening, bring that back to council for review and further opinion, I would say is the path forward from this evening. At this point, even if that's possible, Is it logistically feasible to run two polling sites in the district at this point? I want to be fair to the process and not say, I still think we have to investigate, yes, but if we come back and we have the answer that you can do it that way, can we pull that off in the time? Because I don't want it to seem like we're delaying it and we're going to get there and say we

151don't have time, right? So I just want to be true to the process. We should investigate it and we should see. I don't agree. I do think this will be brought up again next year. I think a majority of the board, I mean, it might be a different board, but I think a lot of us are in favor of two sites. So I don't think that's the issue, but I just want to make sure we're. I mean, if we get a positive answer. it can either be done this year or for some reason say it's not good this year this board can vote to say we want to do it this way next year okay so it doesn't have to be bought up the decision can be made that's how we're going to do it

152next year that's fair okay already i just want to be fair to like can we put that on the district for this for now if that's if they say you can that's all but we could vote on it for next year that would be great yeah so i don't think we can bind a future board We can bind up to, like, for contracts, up to five years, but I don't think we can make a decision now for what will happen next year. I mean, we can make a commitment. Every vote that we take binds a future board in some way or another. I mean, every budget binds the next year's board. You know, everything we do. So what I'm saying is, like, there's a reason why there's a limit on contracts, because that's basically, if

153you do a contract loan in five years, it's considering, like... It's a legal contract. So if you pass a policy this year, next year's board can have a different policy because it's a different group of people and reconstitute and reorganize. So I don't think, in a sense, adopting this policy or resolution would be binding on next year's board. I'm saying this as informationally, so I appreciate the offer, but I'm just thinking we would run into some legal problems with that. Well, it would be up to the next year's board to change that policy. So, I mean, which they would have the power to do, but I mean, but that's true of any policy. That's true of any policy that we have. Okay, so Christian, perhaps you could forward some of the law that you were

154referencing so that we could share that with legal counsel. I didn't take copious notes, so I wouldn't be able to represent it well. I will forward it. I'll try to put it in an organized way. Obviously, these are different points. If you would like, there are different points made. Some of them are about logistics, some about the legal requirement. Just about the law specifically, because I think that's our critical point right now, about the multiple, about the districting and having to assign people to sites. Sure. Is that an unreasonable ask? Okay, because I want to be able to go back and get more information. I just don't know. Yeah. Any other comments or questions? So that rounds out our meeting. Any public comments? Hung out this long, right? All right. Thank you very much. One

155second. No board comments. Okay. All righty. So may I have a motion to adjourn our meeting? So moved. Thank you. Second. Jim, thank you. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Have a good night, everyone.