Amityville BOE Mtg 4/1/26

001I'm calling the meeting to order now at 6.02 p.m. This is a special meeting to go over the budget. In attendance at the meeting tonight is myself, Board President Lisa Johnson, First Vice President Juan Leon, Second Vice President Chris Neering, Trustee Megan Messman. Carol Seahoff will not be in attendance tonight and is anticipated that. Leslie Kretz will be arriving shortly. Also in attendance tonight is our superintendent, Dr. Gina Talbot, our assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction, Mary Stevens, our director of human resources, Dr. Landau, and our interim assistant superintendent of finance and operation, Mr. Joe Dugon. At this point in time, please note where the exits are clearly marked. in the event of emergency, and please silence all cell phones. And Leslie Kretz has just arrived. And at this point in time, could you please join

002us in the Pledge of Allegiance? At this point in time, we're going to turn the meeting over to Dr. Talbert. Thank you, President Johnson, and good evening once again to the members of the Board of Education, members of our community. and any colleagues. Tonight we will be presenting our second draft of the proposed 26-27 school district budget. And tonight's presentation will contain changes as requested by the Board of Education and will be facilitated by our interim assistant superintendent for business and operations, Mr. Joe Drago. Thank you. If you're ready, and we are ready, all board members have, pardon me, all board members have a copy of tonight's presentation? Okay. Thank you. So I just want to make sure you have a copy of the presentation that I just handed out because there were three or

003four slides that I added to the presentation at the request of Dr. Halbert. And we just finished adding them just a few minutes ago. So let me start by finding my clicker. Thank you. So I want to return to what's new in this new version of the budget. Some of these items you've seen from last time, but there are one or two changes that I'd like to highlight for you. The first thing is that we replaced the five-hour proposal with the port in place proposal. So that added about $92,000 to the budget. We also changed the estimated increase of foundation aid from New York State to 2% from 1% because both of the one-house bills in the legislature contain a 2% due minimum. And it is our best estimate. confirmed by my colleagues throughout the

004county that that's a safe estimate to use, 2%. That increases the amount of money that we have available that we don't have to raise in taxes. We changed our estimate of the increased cost of health insurance in the second six months of the year from 10% to 9%. Once again, I consulted with my colleagues throughout the county. Some are using eight. Most are using nine. Some are using ten. We reduced our reliance on applied fund balance and reserves. Approximately $300,000 less will be needed from applied fund balance and reserves. The overall budget increase dropped from 2.29% to 2.27% as a result of all of these changes, but the proposed tax levy increase remained the same at 1.56%, which is the levy limit. Trustee Messman and I were having a conversation right before the meeting, and

005I want to say this up front. You may have read in Newsday that our tax levy limit is 2.23%. The reason why we're referring to it as 1.56% is that the money that we had to reserve, the $436,000 that the comptroller said we levied in excess of the limit last year, has to be returned. And therefore, instead of 2.23, it's 1.56. Here are the new items in the budget. Nothing really has changed here. I'm just looking through it. except for the last item. The last item, as you can see, is $94,000. That replaced an item that was $2,000, hence the budget increase for that line item by $92,000. On the second page, we made no changes except to clarify, and I'm going to ask Dr. Talbert or Ms. Stevens to please help me. to clarify

006that one of the instructional coaches is for special education and the other instructional coach is elementary with a focus on multilingual learners. I said that right? You see, I'm not just the business guy. Everything else on that page is exactly the same. The next page, we still have a new teacher for class in district instead of out of district. I'll remind you that Dr. Talbert mentioned at the last workshop that we held that this is a requirement because the CSE has already determined that these children will be educated in district and the board has accepted the CSE's recommendation and therefore we have to provide the staff to do that. There is a new speech teacher in place of a contracted provider. That is because we're using a tremendous amount of contract services at a much

007higher rate than it would be if we had our own speech teacher on staff. Yes, we need to budget for benefits as well, but... I have put into this budget allowance for 10 new staff members to get health insurance as well. And that's included in the proposed increase. We have nothing else on that page, except that I made note of the fact that one of the requests from the students. actually three of the requests from the students were for new clubs at the middle school, new clubs at the high school, and new opportunities for athletic competition. So we have, this was in the budget already. I don't want to make you think that I've added this since the last time we spoke. But we have now identified that we have money set aside for new

008clubs at the middle school, new clubs at the high school, and for a coach for the volleyball team at the middle school. So once again, here's an overview of the revenue budget. You'll notice that the total fund balance. that we're using is only about $93,000 more than this year, as opposed to last time when it was $350,000 more. It's increasing by 3.17%. That is somewhat of a concern, but it's manageable. And I will talk to you when we get to it about how this budget really is sustainable. That it's not, we're not doing this in the hope that at some point in the future, we're going to have to pierce the levy limit or anything like that. This is a sustainable budget for the foreseeable future. We won't drain our reserves. And I'll give you

009some very specific information about that when we get to it. So the next thing I want to address is the question that many people in the community have on their minds. And I've heard over and over again from Trustee Leone and others in the community, all of the board members are concerned, I am sure, about where $10,382,265 went. Because last year, the budget... under-expended appropriations by that amount of money. Now, I'm not going to go line by line. You do have the auditor's financial statements. I've taken some highlights from it so that you can see what that $10 million consisted of. For example, Special ed instruction we under-expended by $2,770,863. Why? Because Jen found more efficient ways of providing services, the same services, if not better services, to children who have special needs. You'll notice

010that one of the big reductions was in contractual services because she found in looking through the IEPs of children that some services were being provided above and beyond what was suggested in the IEP by the Committee on Special Education. You'll also notice that BOCES services were greatly reduced. Why? because she found that we could educate those children in district at a lower cost with better services than putting them on a bus and sending them to BOCES. Similarly, with regular instruction, we reduced, we underexpended in the teacher line in all areas, 7th K through 12, pre-K through 12. by $2,591,000. That had an impact on other areas of our budget as well. For example, you'll see that Social Security expenditures were under by $212,000, reflective of the fact that the $2,591,000 we didn't spend on salaries,

011we also didn't have to pay payroll taxes for. Or as another example, the teacher's retirement system bill was much lower. Why? Because the salaries were lower and our contribution is based on salaries. Even the business office reduced its expenditures by $133,000. I'm going to have to talk to that business official. We never do that, but we did here in Amityville last year. Hospital and medical insurance was lower than anticipated, etc. And these are just some lines. There are obviously 10,382,265 reasons why we came in under budget. But I picked out the highlights for you. One of the things you should know about the teachers' salaries, why they might be lower, is that teachers who retired were replaced by teachers with lower salaries. So we were able to have what we call breakage in the salaries

012of the new teachers. The next slide shows you where that money went. If you look, whoops. I thought that that was a pointer. If you look at the line that says total fund balance and reserves, at the end of 24, we had $8,382,420. At the end of 25, we had $18,974,000. $460. Now, that's not an extraordinary amount. In fact, that's 15% roughly of next year's budget. And when you compare us with other districts, it is relatively low. You'll notice also that there were two years in which our unassigned fund balance was 0.61%. and 1.14%. There are two problems with that. One is two special needs high-cost students move in, we don't have the money to pay for them. And we will have to cut services in other areas in order to accommodate them if we

013only have a very small amount of money available in the unassigned fund balance. The second problem is that when banks look to lend us money, they're going to compare us with other school districts with healthy fund balances. And they're going to say, I'm not going to take a risk on Amityville when I could lend money to a district that has 25% of its budget in reserves and fund balance. So you will find one of two things will happen. banks won't bid on our loans or banks will bid at a much higher interest rate than other districts are enjoying. So how do we compare to other districts? Well, our fund balance of 15.71% of the subsequent year's budget is low. And thanks to Trustee Messman, I actually put together a report. of our fund balance and

014the fund balance of every other district in Nassau and Suffolk County. And we found that other districts on Long Island range from 4.2% to 76.3%. There are very few districts that have 15% or less. Most of them have at least 20%, 25%. and some of them, as I said, have as much as 70% in reserve. The average district on Long Island maintains a fund balance of 24.13% of its subsequent year budget, 24% compared to our 15. Our unassigned fund balance for fiscal year ending 2023 and 2024, as I said before, was only 0.61% one year and 1.14% the following year. That is dangerously low. The average district on Long Island has 4.79% in their unassigned fund balance. Now, you probably are going to say to me, how could that be? Doesn't the law say they're

015only allowed to keep 4%? How could the average be 4.79? And the answer is that there are some districts, Brentwood, most notable among them, and a bunch of others, that got so much money. from the increase in state aid that we all enjoyed during those three years when foundation aid was coming to fruition, that they had no place to spend that money and not a place to put it in reserve. So they took a chance and they had 20% in their unassigned fund balance. There are also a number of districts like Amagansett. Fishers Island that have very, very small budgets. And for them, it's very easy to put only a few hundred thousand dollars away in their budget and exceed the 4%. So the budget plan we are proposing now will result in a total

016fund balance of about 16%. We're not going to be changing it much, but it's sustainable. And if you would please, 18, is it on? Oh, really? There you go. So view full screen. Probably if you, I guess we have to shrink it just a little bit. I think it's at 125. Maybe it's good to put it in 90. And now go back. There we go. Perfect. So what I did was in response to Trustee Messman's question, is this going to be one and done or is this sustainable? What I did was to project over the next five years what the impact of this budget would be making some assumptions. The first assumption I made was that the budget was going to increase by about 2% per year. That's slightly less than the budget is increasing

017now. The second assumption I made was that state aid was going to increase at about 2% per year. State aid this year is increasing by 4%. The total amount of state aid we're getting is increasing by 4%. We're projecting foundation aid will increase by 2%, but the total amount of state aid that we're receiving in 26-27 is actually increasing by 4%. So in what I call the out years, 2027-8, 2028-9, and 2029-30, I am predicting, projecting that state aid will increase by 2%. The budget will increase by 2%. The tax levy will increase by 2%. Local revenue will increase by 2%. I just use those numbers because they are the numbers that are common parlance about school districts. Everybody thinks of the budget as the tax levy limit is 2% when you know, of course,

018that it's not. But if you asked me to modify those assumptions, I can do that right now and change it to anything you would like. For example. i'm sorry that's laid plans are fighting that right because we don't have no it's less it's different it's not enough No, this is the one that I handed out tonight. I handed this out tonight. Yes, you did. Yes. The one that I handed out tonight. Oh, you know why? Guys, what you have in your packet tonight, you don't have this slide because it would not make any sense to have a slide that just says projection. That's what it would say. Oh. It would just have a line that says projection. So. And what we received on Friday is slightly different. Stay in the middle. Thank you. For those

019of you at home, this is the commercial break you've been waiting for, so you could get another cup of coffee. No, it's not here. No, no. So I thought I was okay in Excel, but I will tell you that Mr. Leon stretched my ability to use Excel to demonstrate what I'm about to demonstrate to you. Because every one of the numbers on this page could be changed. For example. Instead of setting the levy at $68,011,079, we could set it at a zero increase, 028, right? I have an extra zero, 66,964. Thank you. 66,964, 028. Now, before I hit enter. I want you to know that there will be a number of things that will change on the screen. The one that I want you to focus on is the far right bottom number that currently

020says if we levy at 1.56% this year and maintain those assumptions 2% a year, we will have $15 million still in our fund balance five years from now. If we, this year alone, not changing anything else, set the levy at a zero increase, we will have $5 million less in our bank account five years from now. $5 million less. Why? Because reducing the levy this year... reduces the base on which the tax levy increase is imposed. So it's not just 1.56 that we're losing this year. We're losing 1.56 next year, the year after, the year after. So we're losing at the rate of approximately $1.25 million a year every year going forward with the same assumptions, exactly the same assumptions. So that is why I say to you over and over again, we must set

021the levy at 1.56%, the levy limit this year. Otherwise, we'll be in trouble five years from now. I won't be here, but you will. And I don't want to leave that as my legacy. Can we start asking questions? Go ahead. So in 20, I know it's hard to predict, but in 2020 when we did a 0%, Actually, I'm not going to go backwards, but I wonder if that was some of the things that we saw down the line over a period of years. Because in 2020, when you did the 0%, a couple of years later, you had almost 0% in your unassigned fund balance. Remember? 0.61, 0.01, 0.14. You should not be in that spot. You should not have... So little money that one special needs child could throw your entire athletic season at risk.

022So how do other schools do it, though? How do other schools do it? They set the levy at 1.56. Oh, how do some districts do a 0%? Well, there's two different scenarios. One is you're a Jericho, and you have $50 million in your fund balance. and you could afford to return more of it. That's one. Another possibility is that you're a Hempstead, and you think they're poor, but last year they got a $31 million grant for charter schools specifically written for Hempstead, and they're setting their levy at zero next year. So, yeah. So I have questions on the spreadsheet because we can't see the calculations. Right. So I appreciate that you have this. I'm going to start a little bit back. I appreciate that you have the spreadsheet because I was thinking the same thing.

023That would be helpful to see a stress analysis, which I think is what you're trying to be able to show us right now. Yes, ma'am. Because you've just projected flat lines of all of the surplus funds for the future four years, and you're very tight on the percentages that you're assuming. Yeah, except for one. Let me show you the one that I didn't project the flat line. You see the ERS pension reserve, which is where we're going to propose to you, you put that excess money that's now in unassigned fund balance. You see that $5,909,000? Follow that out for five years. Look what happens to that line. Well, it's fairly... It's dropping to $1 billion. I'm sorry, on your screen, not on my paper. No, not on your paper, because your paper has 1.56% levy

024on it. So why does that line get impacted so drastically? Because I could not figure out a way to apportion. the additional money from each of the reserves. So I just picked one and said, let's see what happens to that reserve. And at the end, it's going to be only $2 million. It's going to be less than we have this year. So, okay. So doesn't that show that we need to reduce our projected spending because we have such a reliance on our fund balance? We're still carrying a $4 million reliance on fund balance to balance the budget year on year on year. Well, actually, in this scenario, you would have to rely on fund balance. But in the other scenario, where you levy the 1.56%, you could carry that and still have $15 million in

025your fund balance five years from now. What did you do in 25-26? You still show $8.8 million in unassigned fund balance. Where did you put that? Because is that correct to show it that way if we're not allowed to have that much money? It's what's in your financial statements now. But where did you put it? I put it into the ERS pension reserve. I put it into the employee benefit accrued liability reserve. I put it into the workers' compensation reserve. And quite frankly, you guys already did some of that work. If you remember last month, you assigned to those reserves from the $2 million grant, you assigned some money to those reserves. But the big move was to move almost $4 million from unassigned fund balance to $4 million. ERS pension reserve 3.5 million. That

026was the big move. And you're doing that just because your spreadsheet has limitations or you're saying that's what you would recommend? No, that's what I would recommend. Absolutely. Yes. And I'm recommending that the $2,415,517.10, which is approximately 2% of your current budget. That would every year generate the funds that are necessary to keep the ship afloat. Let me put the levy back so we're looking at a real situation. In excess of expenditures, you're saying. Revenues in excess of expenditures. How was the long time? So I took... From that unassigned fund balance of 8.8 million, I reduced it to 4.9 because that is 4% of the following year's budget. Okay. Okay. Then I took the remainder of the money and put it into the TRS pension reserve and the ERS pension reserve. This money, the $742,267

027in the EBOLAR and the $1,684,219 in the workers' comp were all done by you in March. March 18. That's what I thought the spreadsheet reflected. I didn't realize. I was questioning where you put... The excess from the unassigned fund balance. We have to get it out of there. We don't want the controller to cite us for having in excess of 4% because that is, in accordance with real property tax law, that is the limit. You can't have more than 4%. This year, we have more than 4% only because at the end of last year, for whatever reason, You just left it. It was not assigned. So, apply to capital reserve. I thought we had $688,000. Does your screen say $250,000? No. What that is, is money that's left over at the end of the year.

028We could either put it into other reserves or... you could use it to fund your capital reserve. You know, you have a capital reserve that you created. Yeah, so you're saying in 26-27, we would end only with $250,000 in excess? After we apply $2.4 million to the following year's budget, yes. That's a good thing. It's a good thing. We're going to have enough money left over to not only fund the next year's budget, but to put some money aside for capital projects. We've got $100 million worth of work that's been recommended to us. $250,000 is not going to go very far, but at least it's a start. Don't look at this. I'm sorry. Forgive me, but don't look at that sheet because this, I know, I'm sorry. To give back the $450,000, but not anything

029else that we had levied in excess of our expenditures. You had to give back the $436,000. I think it was because. You set the levy limit assuming that you were going to have debt from the energy performance contract, which you never incurred because you never did the energy performance contract. So as a result, the Comptroller came back and said... Guess what, guys? You levied in excess of the limit. Did we levy in excess by ending the year with $8 million in excess? Well, we're talking about two different things. Levy in excess of what the controller says the limit should be, or levy because you didn't need all that money. Okay, that's the difference. Those are two different things. That's the difference. Okay. So I still, so I appreciate the spreadsheet and this is very helpful

030so that we can try to understand where we're going. Thank you. I still understand, like I still, from a taxpayer's perspective, like it would be nice to not have to go to the top of the tax cap. Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. It would be wonderful if the state gave us the money that we deserve to educate our children. It's a lot of money. Do we need to think about declining enrollment in a projection like this? How would that factor in? If declining enrollment comes with needier children with fewer numbers? You're still going to spend the money. It's just going to be in different ways, in EOL services, in special education services. You're saying like needier students, but just like in general, like the general enrollment, how that declines. Yep. Does that impact the

031state aid? Not basically, no. Because, unfortunately, you are no longer on formula. You are on a status called save harmless. You're only getting 2% because of the, forgive me for saying it this way, but the good graces of the legislature. You're entitled to nothing by the foundation aid formula. If the number of children increased dramatically, you may be entitled to more. But even if the number of children decreases, You're on a status called save harmless where you're not going to lose any money. And you're going to get the 1% or 2% due minimum going forward. That was an issue last year about the safe because they wanted to stop it or not do it last year. I don't remember if you were on save harmless last year, but I know you are this year. Yeah.

032Hold harmless, yeah. And there are a lot of districts in your position. There are nearly 500 districts throughout the state for whom the formula means nothing. They're getting the 2% due minimum. And one of the things that I'm trying to do... Did you say why that applies to us? Did I miss that? Yes, it applies to us because... You ready? Yeah. Because the foundation amount is based on the cost that the state estimated it would take to educate a child in 2006 as $4,950. And then they increase that amount every year by a cost of living factor. So that amount is now $8,273. For next year, they're going to increase it by a cost of living factor again of about 2.7%. But in addition to that, we live on Long Island, and the cost of

033living on Long Island is much higher than the cost of living in other areas of the state. So not only will we get a factor because of cost of living, we're also getting a factor because of regional cost. That factor is significant. Our aid number is increased by 42.5% just because we live on Long Island. And then, in addition to that, they take a look at the number of children that have extraordinary needs. Children who live in poverty, children who are English language learners. and children who live in what's called sparse districts. We're not a sparse district. We're more an urban district than a sparse district. But those are the three factors they use to determine if students have extraordinary needs. That is applied to the base number as well. So you're entitled to about

034$17,000 per child. But... the state says, okay, $17,000, that's great, but you have to pay a share of that. You have to pay a portion of that. And they subtract from the $17,000 the portion that they think belongs to you. The balance is what they pay per CAFPU, it's called, Total Adable Foundation Pupil Units. which is simply the sum of all the children enrolled in our school district plus 12% of the children who attend summer program in our school district. That's an additional factor. Plus the children who attend charter schools, plus a weighting factor of 1.41 for each child who is in special education. That TAFU is multiplied by the state's share of foundation aid, and it comes up to about $33 million. But $33 million is less than what you got last year. So

035the state says, okay, we won't give you $33 million. We'll give you what you got last year. That's hold harmless. And then in addition to that, the state is saying, we'll also give you a due minimum amount of the governor proposed 1%, the legislature has proposed 2%. So, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Is that okay? That's a long-winded but thorough answer. Okay. I just have one thing I just want to clarify. When you did the 0% for 26-27, when you projected out for 27-28, 28-29, and 29-30, that was with a tax levy at 2% for the following years. These are the... are the out years, right? Okay. So we could change those as well. If you want to see what this would look like, let's say that we got, instead of 2% state aid, let's say

036we got 3% state aid every year. Let's say we got 1% state aid. Well, if you get 1%, you know what's going to happen. I was just really kind of questioning about the tax levy. You don't have to do it. No, it's simple. It's just pushing the numbers. Look what happened. Now we only have $12 million. Your scenario, 1%. Let's say that it's going to be 3%. So as you're putting those numbers in, this takes into account just a general... In our budget, we know that our employees are one of the biggest area of cost. So when you do something like this, it's taken into account an increase in... In salaries and whatnot? Yes. Okay, that's what I'm doing. What we're assuming is that salaries... Traffic increases. Yes, salaries will increase. Some people will retire.

037Some people will be paid lower because they're new employees, etc. On average, the budget will increase by a total of 2%, which is not way off because this year it's 2.27, and we're adding 11 positions. within that 2.2 70 in our proposal so as we move forward if we were able to maintain a fund balance and reserves of let's say roughly 15 million dollars or if something happened we got more in state aid then a decision could take place. Right now you have $250,000 for capital reserve. A decision could take place that do we want to put, instead of $250,000, do we want to put $500,000? And that will depend on what's happening in the next year. Or a million, sure. Or you could also, Ms. Johnson, you could also decide that year the tax

038levy shouldn't go up by 2%. The tax levy should only go up by 1% because you got the additional state aid and you want to give relief. Okay. Right? But the bottom line is you should keep your eye on that lower right-hand corner. You don't want that to drop to $10 million, which it would if we set the levy this year at zero. Excuse me, at zero percent increase. One question. Just bring your mic closer. Sorry. The pension, you took money and you put in the pension reserves. Okay. We can take that out anytime? Yes. The way you... I think Olivia did that one year, yeah. Yeah. So the reason why I chose those particular reserves to put money in, EBLA, ERS, TRS, is because those reserves you can any year you would like. Take

039money from those reserves to pay your ERS, TRS, unemployment liability, right? And in fact, you did that when you had a retirement incentive and you paid teachers out of the EBOLAR reserve for unused sick leave, and that was the incentive, remember? That would come out of the EBOLAR reserve. The only thing you can't do is you can't take more money out of the reserve than the liability you're funding. So if you have a $1 million bill from ERS for pensions, you can't take $2 million out of the reserve. Okay, thank you. Chris, I'm sorry. It's okay. Thank you. So if, say we did the 0% levy this year. What would we need to do in the years after in order to get it up to the 15%? That's a great question. So let's try that.

040Let's see what would happen if we set the levy going out years at 2.5, right, and the zero this year. Of course, before I do this, you have to sell a 2.5 next year. This year you only have to sell a 1.56, right? But if you did set it at zero increase this year, then you're setting yourself up to have to sell a larger tax levy increase in the out years. But let's do it. Let's see what happens. So the tax levy going out will be 2.5. And the tax levy this year. And you're going to reduce the state aid to 2% again? Yeah, we'll keep the state. There's so many moving parts. Oh, leave it at 2. Yes, I set it at 3. You're absolutely right. Thank you. But this year, the levy is

041going to be $66,964,078. Zero to eight Fifty dollars come on. No, that's interesting. You got two million of it back You didn't get it all back, but you got two million of it back. So instead of 2.5, maybe you have to set it at three every year for the next five years 14 we're good. We're getting there. So we'll set it at 3.5 Ah, there we are. Okay, we're back up. So a zero this year, followed by four consecutive years of 3.5, gets you right back to where you would be if this year you levied 1.56. Why do we have a table that has a total fund balance of 18.9 million, but yours has 15.6? Well, because you applied $2.9 million of that to offset this year's levy. So out of the $18 million that

042was available at the end of 2025... Any other questions? Yes. Mr. Dragone, thank you again for this presentation. I take it with a grain of salt because there are, like you said, many variables, including some of the incoming grants that we hope to receive but don't know of them yet. If you don't mind, would you be able to go back to the screen where you show our fiscal position at 15.7, please? No, it was during the presentation. Well, you had the screen before you changed it. If you have the presentation, can you just flip through it? No, I think it's past this. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. No, it showed it as a, you had a sentence. Here, this page. Okay. Our fund balance of 15.71% is low? Right. So

043our fund balance of 15.71% of the budget is low. Amityville hasn't had a higher one since 2010, 2011. I'm looking at the 15-year history. The only time Amityville has ever done better than that was 2020, I'm sorry, 2010, 2011, in which it was 17.9. And then 11, excuse me, 2011 to 2012 was 15.7, exactly where we are, followed by 12.6, 12.3, 12.5. Fast forwarding to 23, 24, 24, 25, where it was at a dismal 7.3 and 7.1. And that's because of the fiscal meltdown that took place here, which the auditors have clearly said it was due to poor controls. So what this says to me is that 15.7 can work, and it has worked for us for at least a decade and a half with good controls. So I agree with you. If you stay

044at 15.7 forever, that's fine. But if you drop to 10, which is what would happen if we set the levy at zero this year. 10 million out of 120 million dollar budget is like 8.3 percent. If you set it at zero and keep the same scenarios, yes. But the scenarios can and probably should change. No, no, no. We can control some of those outcomes. Like? Give us some examples of what things you would cut out of the budget. in order to not lose $5 million over the next five years. Because if you could identify those things, and this community wants to live with that, we're working at your pleasure, not ours. This is not our community. Understood. So my point being was that 15.7, while it might be low across Long Island, the average is

045around 21, correct? 24. 24. 24. Okay. The average is 24. For Nassau and Suffolk or just? For Nassau and Suffolk. Combined. Okay. The point I was trying to make is that 15.71 is actually one of the better positions Amityville has ever been in. Probably because of that business issue you had in the 21-22 school year. I think it had something to do with it. Right, but then 23-24, it... 24-25, we were hit with some of our worst deficits Amityville has ever faced. And anyway, we're not here to discuss that. Well, 23-24, we had a fiscal position of 7.3. 24-25 was a position of 7.1. No, as a result, yeah. Okay, either way. So, Mr. Dragone, you started off by giving a recap. of some of the, you can call it cuts, or you can call

046it savings from the budget that led to a surplus. So we received the district, we had a board meeting in October, I believe October 15th, where it was clearly outlined where some of this surplus money came from. And just a quick recap. $2.7 million from special education. $2.5 million from regular education and instruction. $209,000 from custodial line items, which include pest extermination, janitorial supplies, student furniture. We're in those lines. $80,000 in health services. $79,000 in social services. $74,000 in grounds and maintenance, and we set aside minor building repairs. $72,000, psychological services. $42,000 from the guidance department. $37,000 from the district-wide school library budget. And what that means is that essentially this school district operated... on a budget of $117 million budget. And I will assure you, and I won't speak for our superintendent, but I

047assure you, she will probably agree that on that budget, all of our students' needs were met. I think a lot of those things you just mentioned are like the janitorial supplies and all those types of things are things that we're trying to catch up on now. That's exactly right. And I think, Chris, you hit it on the head. And that is, if we were to restore, we can argue if it's 10.3, if it's 8 point something or other, if we were to restore those funds alone, it would be a substantial increase, budget to budget, and we would still be able to accomplish a 0% tax levy increase. I think, though... Well, I'd love to hear from Mr. Dragone. I have no idea how we would do that. I'm sorry. I wish that I could. I

048wish that whenever a board member says to me, can't you find savings in administration and operations and keep the money in the classroom? I wish I had a good answer for that. But I will tell you that we have looked very hard at this budget. We have identified person by person the salary that they will earn, the stipends that they will receive because of longevity, the health insurance we'll need to pay for them, person by person. You have it in front of you. The only way we're going to find that kind of savings is for you to tell us we could do with larger class sizes. We could stop providing ELL services. We don't need to provide special education services. And then we'll find the cuts for you. Well, the cuts that I mentioned, $2.7

049million in special education, $2.5 in regular school instruction, those were cuts that someone deemed we could do without. So we found those. I'm sorry, let me just disagree with you just a little bit. They weren't cuts that were made to the budget. They were efficiencies that were found by your administrators. Transportation, you saved $886,000 in the transportation budget because Nate found routes that could be consolidated, stops that could be eliminated. services that should be provided on a different way, he found $886,000. That's part of that $10 million. And I think also, too... I'm sorry. And that's excellent. That's excellent. But here's what I said at the last meeting, and I'll reiterate it again. Coming out of two of the worst fiscal positions, at least in the past... decade and a half, before we start adding

050on to a budget all these extra things that we would like to have, I would like to see stabilization first. Can I just ask what you feel is an extra that's being put in the budget and not a necessity? I know I see there's some things where requests for more clubs at the schools, but I... For the most part, I feel like most of these things are necessities for the buildings in the district or better structure for learning for the students. Yeah, I think so. Just to go on that thought, Chris, I think that what is so upsetting is that we cut 36 staff members. So we ended the year with a significant savings. But now here we are and we're adding 11 positions. We're adding 11 positions. So to Juan's point, like that's not

051how the board, I sat on the board last year and we thought we were going to rebuild our fund balance slowly. We weren't expecting to be like, boom. Oh, wow. We have like great financial reserves now. That wasn't the intention. That wasn't what we thought was occurring last year. So I, too, was very upset when we ended the year with $8 million in excess because we cut all of those staff. And now here we are, and we're adding different staff back in. And to Juan's point, it's just like... We didn't, we're not giving the taxpayers a break. We're just jumping right back in and we're just adding new roles. So I think there is, there are things in here that I've identified, Chris. I don't know, you were asking Juan specifically. One of the things

052that you did want, and... a few other board members, did want to hire back some people, some staff members. And that's what I think that Dr. Talbert and the administration is trying to do. We got rid of the instructional coaches. So they are trying to bring back, and this is all mostly is academic and curriculum. So I think the other thing, and please correct me if I'm wrong in terms of Dr. Talbert and someone else, but in terms of saying cutting staff, there were certain staff members that were under a grant. They're under grants. And when the grants ended, the initial intention was to allow those individuals to go. into our own account and we we were not able to do that there were some there were some staff that yes that were cut but

053there were others that were being paid under the grant I think that's that's number one number two in terms of and and I do hear about not going too far in and doing too many things but I feel as if that and even like with the special education there were services that were reviewed by the individuals that came in and they looked at everyone's services. So we didn't cut services. And I think that needs to be understood. Services were not cut. Services were reviewed. And after being reviewed by the PPS staff, from that point there were decisions that would determine what individuals needed for those students. So we didn't cut things. There were savings that occurred from looking at what students needed. There were individuals from staff, like I said before, that were under a

054grant that were no longer there, but there were other individuals that were cut. So it was a combination of both that occurred. And I think my question that I have for the board is, what direction do we want our school district to go in? If we're talking about that, we've had conversations about improving the academics within our district. How do we improve the academics in our district and sustain that improvement in the academics if we don't have certain things in place? So I think that that's question number one. And to me, that's the one thing that's most important is how do we continue to improve the academics in our district for our children? So therefore, instead of students going to a charter school. or going to a private school, they will come back. There are

055some individuals that will always go to a private school. There are some individuals that will always go to a charter school. So my question is, at the list that's here, what are some of the things that we really want to look at to make a decision? Do we want to keep them all? Do we not want to keep them all? And I think that's what we need to look at. That's just my perspective. I agree with you. So let's look at what we're adding. I don't think that it's just like a direct bringing back. Like I think you kind of indicated, Leslie, like I don't like these are new roles. This is not these weren't roles that were cut. These are different roles. Maybe not all of them, but there are new roles in here.

056Some of these roles are saving us money. There are a few that don't, on the surface, they look like new, but making the district clerk full-time is just restoring a position. Adding a purchasing agent. Purchasing agent is restoring a position that is now being filled by a part-time clerk. Putting the accountant in is new, yes. But the plan was to hire an accountant. We had talked about an accountant last year. Yeah. Does anyone want to go to page three and start going down the line? Well, Lisa, I just want to address one thing real quick. You talk about academics, and I really hope that our newly hired director for curriculum is going to play a big role or a role that we've never had in increasing our academics. So, I mean, that is a new

057addition that this board made, and that's a very smart move. But we've been receiving increases in funds from the state and from the taxpayers year after year. So the question isn't the money. The money might be here already. It might be tightening up our... you know, whatever it is that we're trying to achieve academically and having the right programs and getting everyone on board. I think that's where we will find the greatest jump in academics, initially, at least. So, Juan, I'm glad you brought up the new director position that we created this year, because something that I said last week was just, really, if we're going to go forward with all these new positions, to have real measurable... understanding of the performance of the new positions so that we can decide year on year on

058year if we're going to continue with these new positions because that's something that I'd like to see this board establish as just measurable goals for these new positions. This whole sensitivity analysis is very interesting and helpful, but you can sit here and play a bazillion different iterations. We're never going to know exactly what we get hit with year to year to year. So yeah, okay, right now it looks like we're going to have $15 million in our fund balance and 20 whatever, but really we don't know where we're going to be. have a lot of excess money and we're just immediately turning around and adding a lot of new positions instead of considering that maybe the community would appreciate if we went out with the 1% increase and not a 1.56% increase or anything along

059those lines as a, we're going at a 1.56%. I thought I said one instead of one. I'm just throwing a number out there, right? Just like not going to the top of what we can. And perhaps for me, when it comes to budget planning, let's just take my own house, for instance. I don't look at the price of new siding and adding a new room extension to my house and then try to make my income fit it. I don't do it like that. I start with what I have and build forward. So something I would love, I would have loved to have seen is the budget to budget exactly what the costs will be that are built in with the ranges, see where we are as far as a baseline, and then see what the

060board's comfort level is to add things. Like I said, You can find a million things to add. There's always going to be more additions that we have money for in a school district or in our own homes, in our own lives. So that's where I would like to start. So I think that, and I'll let Joe answer in one second, I think after Joe answers the question, what we need to look at here, what's been provided to us, these are suggestions that have come to us from Dr. Talbot, Mary Stevens. Dr. Landau and Mr. Dragone. So these are recommendations. Now it's up to the board to decide, do we keep all the recommendations that they provided, or are there certain ones that we feel that are not needed? So that's the reason. They're not saying

061that we have to do it. They're saying we now want your feedback on these items. So go ahead, Joe. I want to defer to my superintendent because she has the mic in her hand, and I know that the last thing I want to do is to step on her toes. So, Dr. Talbert. Oh, you're fine. You're fine. Thank you. I just wanted to give some feedback on some of the commentary that has been shared. In reference to the 15-year look-back regarding the Amityville budget, as we have shared before, That budget has been fragile for quite some time. When we look at post-COVID and the $3.6 million that was overexpended during the school year 22-23 budget, the district was overstaffed for the enrollment that we had. So when we talk about restoring positions, we're restoring positions

062based on data, based on enrollment, based on need. We're not restoring positions just because they once existed, because they may not be the immediate need that the district has right now. We were in a situation in 23-24 where the district was not going to meet payroll. due to the excess staff that was on payroll. And so if the accessing had not happened, the district would not have been able to meet their payroll. Because as you recall, we had millions of federal dollars that had expired and we had staff still on payroll, still viably employed, and we did not have those federal dollars to meet the needs, as well as the benefits that accompanied those salaries. So those were very sound recommendations that were made to pull the district out of that situation. We also want

063to share that, as we have discussed previously, the district has an operational deficit. Operationally, we are not as efficient as we need to be in order to meet the growing needs. For example, our HR office is staffed with one director and two administrative support personnel. As you can see in some of our corrective action steps, as well as some of the recommendations, realigning roles and responsibilities. is very important to having an additional person that would give the right accountability to the expectations to meet what is in the corrective action plan, to meet daily operations. For example, the person who is doing attendance is also doing benefits. We have people wearing multiple hats, and as we're analyzing the roles and responsibilities, We're seeing where there are gaps and there needs to be a separation of duties

064in terms of what's regulatory, what's payroll, so that we can have those clearly defined lines between certain personnel with certain responsibilities. We also have to remember that overall amount, for example, $120 million in a budget. the lines within that $120 million are going to fluctuate because nothing remains the same. When we start out in August or September with one intention, there are decisions that will be made throughout the course of the year where lines are going to fluctuate. Thus, transfers are necessary based on different decisions that need to be made. Regarding CSE mandates, we've talked before about how one student may go before a judge and is placed at a very expensive place of learning. That was not budgeted for because in September, that child did not go before that governing body and receive that

065judicial placement. That is at the expense of the district. So dollars are going to come and go within the line items as long as we do not exceed the overall amount. I wanted to share that big picture. And as you look at what we are recommending to be added as new items to the budget, our recommendations based upon our conversations with our administrators, with teachers, with union representatives, with parents, with students, everyone had a voice to give some feedback as to what's in the budget. And it is up to the board to make that final decision. But as the superintendent, I am bringing you my proposal for what I believe will put the district back on a footing to begin to build and get to the place of academic excellence where we all would like

066us to be, as well as operationally be efficient in governing the business of the district. So as you look at these items, I hope that you would keep that in consideration and let us know how you'd like for us to move forward from here. All right. So let's go to page three of what was provided and we'll just start again. If I may, I'd just like to answer Juan's question because Trustee Messman asked the same question last time. And I did make what I think is a good faith effort to answer that question. But I'm not presenting it to you because I cannot guarantee that this data is accurate. But let me talk to you about, in general, trying to build a budget that just rolls forward our staff. No new staff, right? Right. We're

067adding $1 million approximately in staff. The rest of the staff costs are consumed, are offset by the more careful budgeting that we've done in terms of identifying every single employee. We are not coming to you and saying we think there are going to be 17 people in this line. Steve and I have looked at that line. We've identified the budget code in which each and every person is being paid and presumed that that person stays on staff next year in that same line. With the exception of the new staff that we're talking about, there may be some transfers. there may be a need for an additional kindergarten section and one less second grade section. That's possible. But we did the best we could in predicting accurately what the staff is going to be like next

068year. When we did that, because of the more accurate prediction, I came up with $88 million. worth of personnel costs including the 1 million dollars that we're asking to add and without the 1 million dollars it would be about 87 million dollars. Now that's staff and that includes benefits but what I can't tell you is Will we need to replace three sinks next year because lead testing shows that we have to modify the sink? Will I need to replace a boiler or a burner next year? That's in those lines which I can't predict if it's going to be the same next year or less or more. So the rest of the budget, $32 million worth of the budget. is, I don't know. We're predicting as best we can that it will be approximately the same

069as it always has been, but we can't be sure of that. And we built this budget, if you notice in the line by line, when you do look at it, we built the budget telling you in detail. every dollar we spent in each of those lines for the past four years. So if you see a budget code that says we've been spending $10,000 a year and we put $20,000 in that line, point it out and we'll fix it. But that's not the way we did it. We took a look at the expenditures and we said, well, best guess, we're going to spend the average of what we've been spending for the past four or five years. That's the way we built this budget. And I wish that I could tell you I know what it's

070going to be like next year. I don't. Well, Mr. Dragone, I do appreciate that, too. But I feel like the next part of that equation is the controls, having good controls, because the past couple years in certain budget lines, overtime has been busting the budget in various buildings, various positions, things like that. And I just wanted to mention one more thing, because it was mentioned three times. about when that time when 30 teachers and 47 employees were laid off, that was one of the most atrocious things I've ever seen as a board member. And to Dr. Talbert, not against Dr. Talbert, it was before her time. But what I'm saying is this is one of the worst things I've ever seen. We talked about that we received federal dollars. Yes, we did. But then for

071administration, they're not here anymore, the players here. But for administration to put together programs, put salaried, tenured teachers, taking them off of where they're funding source in the budget and putting them onto a grant. And then when that grant running out, having to see. Having to see where the tenure was. I'm sorry, Leslie. Did you see it different? No, I don't think there was any tenure teachers that were moved to the grant. There were some teachers. Yeah, the teacher's representative says yes. He says yes. All right, so listen. If you don't have the same recollection as I do, speak up. All right, you don't. I understand that. You're correct, but let me just remind you that the teachers who had to be moved back from the grant to the general fund. Then we accessed on

072the basis of reverse seniority, which is the law. The least senior person in the tenure area lost their job. It wasn't that tenured teachers lost their job. The least senior person in the area. was accessed. Right. My point was that there were tenure teachers that were also being paid from the grant. And then they had to be lined up as far as tenure. So anyway, my point was this, that it was one of the most atrocious things I've ever seen. And the reason being is that we took individuals, put them on a grant. Administration failed to calculate things like paying health care out of the grant, paying for retirement out of the grant. The grant only covered salaries. And then to exacerbate the situation, at the end of the year, we were told we had

073excess grant funds, and we threw a party outside of the Edmund W. Miles Middle School. And then we let go of 30 teachers and 47 employees. That was one of the worst days I've ever seen on this board. That's all. Thank you. So let's go to the presentation to page three. And I'm sure each person may have an opinion about what they want to keep and what they want to let go. So I will start at the top. So page three where it says... new refit which is bringing it back in again. So I'm just going around the table. What is people's perspective? We're keeping it in or taking it out? Is anything on page three that people want to, we don't have to go line by line, but is there anything on page three

074that people want to keep? Or actually anything that we can get rid of? Yeah, just go by what we want to get, if we want to get rid of anything. Yeah, right. For me, I definitely want to stay with the full-time district clerk. I definitely want to stay with accountant, purchasing agent, custodian, the meditation room furniture for the students, the playground, and the clerical staff. Can I ask Mr. Dragone something? Just so I understand this scenario here. If all of these things were taken off, where would that leave us? Would that bring it to a zero? $1,270,148 less. That's what it ends up to on page five. So what does that mean as far as a tax levy increase? If I just may clarify, minus the three mandated services. Right. As far as the mandated

075services, because I know we talked about that. Can we just go back to page three? Because we don't want to go line by line, but I think you asked one question about the tax levy, so let's get that question answered. But they were talking, so I... I know, but let's go back to... I'm sorry. Steve reminds me that there are offsetting costs when we reduce... the staff members we've proposed. For example, if we eliminated the full-time district clerk, we would still have a part-time district clerk. And we're budgeting, it's not 75,000 more, it's 75,000 that is partially offset. The example with the northeast. I mean, we're paying that money in overtime. Right. Because we don't have a person in that position or in subs. So that's just a reallocation. So this $1,270,000 that I'm referring

076to is not all an addition to the budget. Thank you, Steve. It really is identifying the costs for these positions. Some of that cost is already in the budget in the form of overtime, substitutes, etc. Thank you. And Mr. Dragone, do these scenarios also assume that our reserves are going to be funded to the 4%? Yes, sir. That chart that I put together showed 4%. That's the first thing I put in. 4% every year of the subsequent year's budget is in the unassigned fund balance. Okay. And the other reserves added up to the $15 million in the end. Okay. So it's under the assumption that this also... fills our reserves to the max and... No, not at all. I'm sorry, to the 4% allowance. This fills... The unsigned fund balance. This fills our fund balance

077to $15 million, which is roughly 12%, 13%, 14%. When, in fact, Mr. Snyder put together for the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee, he put together a report that showed that we could... easily put $25 million into reserve and that would fully fund our liabilities in the reserve. We're not asking that you put another $10 million away in reserves. We're just asking that you spend a little more on instruction while we maintain the $15 million in reserves and fund balance so that we're not taking out of our savings account to pay for things on an ongoing basis. That's what we're recommending. And which transportation scenario is currently budgeted for? Can we just stay with the... Can we just stay on page three first? And that way we can decide... I'm asking about a built-in cost before we

078ask for an additional onto it. That's common sense. Right now we're staying with the transportation that we already have in place. We're not looking at any other transportation. So right now we're just staying with what we have in place. We're not looking at any other option. So let's just... We're staying with the transportation that we have in place right now. Let's address what we want to keep or not going to keep. And then from that point, we can make a decision, well, you know what? We don't want any of the options for transportation. We want to stay where it's at. So I'm going back to page three. And I'm just waiting to hear from other people in terms of if there's anything on page three that they want to... Get rid of it. Okay, refit,

079you recommend to stay with it for $600, but that's something that's important, and I know we've heard from the administration. The refit, the organization has been in existence for 50 years. I keep hearing the president of refit saying, isn't it ironic? Reform educational financing inequities today. And 50 years later, they have still not been reformed. It is the only organization I know in all of New York State that directly addresses the inequity that occurs in districts like Amityville because of the supposed wealth. That we have in this community, you know, they look at the million-dollar homes in South Amityville and they say oh these people can afford To pay more and they give us less state aid That's inequitable It's inequitable. We should be getting much more in state aid refit is addressing that inequity

080so Yes, I'm passionate about it. I've been with, even though I've worked in Manhasset and Cold Spring Harbor and Roslyn, I've been with ReFit for 10 years now. They are the only organization that really speaks for you, for this district. Okay. Can I go down? Yeah, go ahead. Go down. The district clerk full-time, I mean, that's, of course, going to be up to the new board next year. Just speak more to the mic. Oh, sorry. Full-time position, we've spoken about it. We would love it, you know, but next year with the new board, they're going to have to make that decision. I'm okay with that. Accountant, I'm definitely fine. The training workshops, yes. Purchasing agent, I can go either way, to be honest with you. Clerical staff and HR, yes. Night custodian, that's saving on.

081Over time, which we need. Meditation room, I'm all for the kids. And what kind of furniture do they have in there? What are they needed? I don't think there's anything. Oh, okay. Then I'm okay with it. Yeah, no, they're not asking for upgrades. They're asking for furniture in a meditation room. Right, okay. Replacing softball benches. Oh, it's at the middle school. What does their field look like at the middle school? Because I haven't been up there in a while. So why do they want to, are they playing on the softball field up there? Yes, unfortunately. Okay. Yes. Because the high school looks. Worse. Which is worse? Okay. So a whole bench is fine. And the playground, yes, we discussed that the other night. And I think that's important for safety. Yes. So we're leaving page

082three intact. No, no, not yet. So I'm not 100% on the purchasing agent or the clerical staff at HR. And I want to talk about what's the threshold for... capital because ninety four thousand dollars I Really want to talk about capital as like a separate thing like what why do we have to have this in our operating budget? So make just put just for clarification. You said purchasing agent and clerical staff, right? I'm not you're not sir. Completely sold on. Okay And I want, I have other capital project questions, so I'm just flagging that right now. I don't need an answer right now unless. Yeah, the basic answer is whether it's transferred to the capital fund or general fund budget appropriation, it's the same $94,000. We may be able to do it not as a

083capital project if it's replacement in kind. If we can do just the pour in place and no structural changes to the playground, we may be able to do it through the general fund. The advantage is we don't have to pay an architect for design work. We don't have to pay all of those upcharges that go, and we don't have to wait for the state ed department to approve it. So it could be done more quickly. And at less expense. Okay. So that, okay. Thank you for that explanation. So I'm just not sold on that. And I also was interested to talking about the fact that we don't have a permanent assistant super of business and finance, the option of the assistant super of operations with a business official. And would that, where did, would that

084option leave us? Or does that. open the pool of candidates because we talked at length about the challenge of filling that role with somebody with experience. So I was interested to understanding that a little bit more. Can we... Suggesting that we have instead of the assistant superintendent for finance and operations... and a purchasing agent, as an example. We instead have an assistant superintendent for management services, whatever you want to call it, and a business official who takes care of all of that kind of stuff. Right. I think it's going to cost you more, not less, to do with that. But I was more interested in the whole concept of how do you fill this role, because we're having a hard time filling. the assistant super of finance and operations. So for $280,000 and guess what?

085You'll get a lot. So that's a good point though, because we should talk about what we have in the budget. We have $210,000 in the budget, which is probably. would be, if you get lucky to fill it, one of the lowest assistant superintendent salaries on Long Island. So that's interesting. So why would we add a purchasing agent and maybe we need to reconsider the salary that we're including for the assistant super instead? But the work still has to be done. I mean, you could pay an assistant superintendent for business $500,000. There's only 24 hours in the day. That's the problem. So going back to operational efficiencies, the purchasing agent responsibilities are being provided by a substitute, basically, who's providing 17 and a half hours a week. This position really should be considered. We're trying to

086bring compliance and proper alignment in the business office. And with all of the transitions we've had, we need to stabilize it. In terms of the accountant, of course, we heard the conversation of transition, which has been our recommendation for two years with that. If I could add, Dr. Talbot, if I could add one other thing, we have a process now in the district where there are five people who approve a requisition. I am technically your purchasing agent, but the real person who starts this process is the part-time clerk. She puts in the information about, her name is Marianne Guglieri. She puts in the information about what we're going to buy, where we're going to buy it from. A purchasing agent would spend time looking at various bids, cooperatives, other methods for procuring the same goods.

087Right now, believe it or not, you have your superintendent of schools signing off on every single requisition. I am sorry. That is not a good use of her time. It is not a good use of her time. No, it's not. It's because she's worried, as the superintendent, that we make a mistake in the purchasing process. She's reviewing that, and then I get to sign off on it as well. That would be eliminated. You'd get more time back for the superintendent to focus on leadership and instruction. And less time focused on purchasing. Okay. Any other questions on page three? Because I want to keep going down the line. Just real quick. Refit, I think that's, listen, it's only $600. It's a fraction of 1%. But when times got tough, that was one of the first things

088cut. We don't, you know, I believe in their cause, but I don't see any benefit that we really receive from them. So that's the only one you're saying? Okay. I don't see any return on our $600. I mean, we have plenty of other advocacy things. We can go up to Albany and do all these other things. I've been to several refit meetings, and like I said, I don't see the return on investment. All right. Chris? No, there's nothing that I wanted to remove. Okay. We're going to page... So just to summarize from what I'm seeing... So for refit, it's Leslie, Megan, Chris, and I'm on the fence for that one right now, and Juan is a no, so I'll come back to that. Then everything else down the line, everyone is, yeah, everything else down

089the line, everyone was good with. Megan is still not sure about purchasing agent and clerical staff. Go into page four. Go into page four. Does anyone want anything on page four removed? So I am not on board with the strategic planning partner for the $66,000. The building level lead teacher, there was a question about could that be UPK funded because I'm not fully on board with investing more. The northeast level. Which one you're looking at? Am I on the wrong page? You said build the list. The most recent presentation doesn't have that. I'm on a different presentation. Okay. The one that was handed out tonight. Okay. I'm sorry. I was looking at this one because it was the one from the other day. Okay. So I'm looking at the wrong page. Okay. So the $90,000,

090if I match it up, and the... The class for in-district instead of outer district. Wait a second, we're still on page four with the strategic planner. Strategic plan, I'm not on board with. I don't know if anybody else, I'm looking at my comparison, comparing my two versions here. Dr. Tauber, would you mind explaining more of the reason for the strategic planning partner? Sure. With our strategic planning partner, We're looking to cast out a five-year vision. And in that process, we're looking to engage stakeholders from the community, students, the Board of Education, of course, parents and staff. Having a trained facilitator and a team to be able to navigate and facilitate the process would, one, accelerate it. Two, validate the process because you'll have neutral facilitators ensuring that the data that we're using and the persons

091who are involved are having the voice of impact necessary. As you know, we have goals that are centered around increasing... reading, increasing math, implementing the portrait of a graduate, expanding our artificial intelligence across the district as well as portfolios. And we would start with that with the POG as a hub. And when I say POG, our portrait of graduate, as a hub for every aspect of where we're going in the district to spring from that launching pad. We've been having talking sessions, touring sessions, engaging with staff around this. And just as Mr. Draygold pointed out. me reviewing and approving every purchase order because of the transition in that office, wanting to ensure compliance. Once again, your superintendent would be tied down to the process rather than the leadership and the implementation of the process. So

092I'm asking for the board's support to allow us to have a strategic planning partner to lead it so that we can, to facilitate it so that we can lead what. our goals as they've been outlined. Just for clarification, is this something that BOCES could do or no? That's my question. We've been in conversation with BOCES around strategic planning partners. As of now, there's no one who's available to do it through BOCES. We have been in touch with two... We've had meetings, exploratory conversations. We've been acquiring quotes from these companies to see who would be the best match for Amityville and how we could move forward. But we did make an inquiry through BOCES. Thank you. What would the length of this partnership be? This amount would be for the year. And usually the partners will

093stick with you for about two to three years, depending on what parts of the roadmap you would like for them to help you walk out in the process. So for the first year, it would be $66,000, so it may mean that if this was put in the budget, that for the second or third year, there would be an additional cost. Could be, but we would determine that based upon our partnership for the first year, our commitment to them would be one year. I had written down the last time, special ed in northeast and northwest. No, not yet. We're not doing it. No, that's it, the strategic planning partner and support Title I. I don't know. I have it written next to mine. No, that's the instructional coach. Okay. No, I'm just trying to understand. Okay.

094I know Megan had said that she wasn't too sure about the strategic plan importance. I'm just trying to find out, is there anything else on this page that anyone else is not in support of? Sure. Well, Madam President, here's the thing. All of this stuff is good stuff. Okay. I don't think anyone's really against this, but what I think is important is what we want to fit in the budget. Okay. With regards to strategic planning, I'm sure it's great. We don't even have a director of technology. Trustee Neering, a couple days ago, brought up how even on our website, things are very, very outdated. So we aren't exactly the top of our class when it comes to reaching out and doing that kind of stuff. That's not a reason not to go with them. But

095back on principle, before we start adding and adding new things, show me a balanced budget. One that's... Looking at the past three years, deficit, deficit, record surplus. Show me some stability first before I'm on board with adding a few things. Go ahead. If I could, just to point out to you, that's exactly what I tried to do with the sustainability chart. Assuming 2% increases in the budget, 2% increases in state aid, 2% increases in taxes, This would be a stable budget. Would the budget increase by 2.1% some year and the local revenue increase from 2% to 4% because we all of a sudden get a new pilot? That's a possibility. But at least you have a roadmap one so that you can see that this plan will land you five years from now, including all

096of these additions and an estimated increase of 2%, which is not far off from the 2.27 that we're proposing this year, and the budget will have included all of this new staff, so the increase should be less than 2.27. You'll land in five years. exactly where you want to be. You still have money in reserves. You have all of this new staff, new programs. You have some capital projects that you're doing, and you have money that you could put into capital reserves. That's what we tried to do. We listened to you. That's what you asked us to do. That's what we presented. So I just, thank you, Mr. Jordan. Juan, like, I hear what you're saying, and I'm thinking, like, We have where we're suggesting that we're adding additional staff to help central administration. And

097on top of that, we're going to partner with somebody to do a core role of central administration and develop a strategic plan for this district who are central administrators should be the ones that know this district the best. And I would. say that I would prefer to use some of that $66,000 and reconsider the assistant superintendent of finance salary that we have currently in this balanced budget as an example. I also noticed, and I know we're not there, but we did not increase the charter school. projected costs. Yeah, we did from 1.7 approximately this year to 1.9 next year. But that's what we're spending this year, $1.9 million. So I want to project it even more. You want to add to the budget? Somebody record that, please. I do. I do. I want to, because

098we spoke about that, and I still see that it's still 1.9. So that's just something that I call quickly. Like, I want to... So I guess we can keep going, Lisa, but no, I do not agree with a consultant when we have a central administration team for that role. And that's why I'm trying to get through the pages to let everyone know, everyone's given their opinions, which is great, so therefore we can get through the pages. People don't want certain things. It allows us to now move over to other parts of the budget that we want to address. So these are recommendations that are being provided to us. Either we need to say yes or no. and then move over to other aspects that we would like to add in. Because if we're saying no

099uncertain things, and the money that's left over, we can now maybe put it to another area. That's what my point is. Agreed. So on page four, you said for strategic plan and partner was no. So my question is, anything else on page four is a no for you or yes? That's all I'm just trying to figure out. And so when I come around, I don't. Okay. So the instructional coach for special education, I have an asterisk next to it. So is that one of the roles that we're saying was coming out of the CSC recommendations? Is that my, is that the correct understanding? No, the instructional coach is not. The classroom teacher, the speech teacher, and the psychologist came out of the CSE. The instructional coach is being recommended to assist teachers with pedagogy, delivery

100of instruction. The landscape of special education has changed drastically, and we are trying to support the classroom environment and instructional support. by having coaches to assist us in the transitions that are taking place, particularly in our STRIVE programs. Can I ask, how many instructional coaches did we have before we did the excess? Was it three? Yeah. Okay. So we had three, now we have none, now we want one. Is that what it is? It was two. So we have none. We have none. We're looking to reinstate two. for the explicit purposes of helping with students with special needs and elementary and multilingual learners. So this is supposed to say two times 75,000? It's two different lines. Go down three lines. Okay, got it. Okay, the Summer Bridges Program, the... I don't, I'm not like fully

101on board with the, again, at the pre-K level, I think. But again, I have it marked up in the line by line. Is this the only opportunity to talk about it? So the summer bridges is for rising kindergarten, rising first, rising third, and rising sixth, as well as rising ninth graders to help them in the transition to their new schools through procedures, through protocols. and foundational academic skills. And that program will take place the first two weeks of August. Right now there's nothing in place? Ms. Stevens has been working with SCOPE. That would be a paid program for parents at option. So it's not been secured though, right? For SCOPE. So my question is, if this was not done, then what do we typically do if we don't have these bridges? So in the last

102few years, we've been using grant funding to run summer programs. I do believe the scope plan is secure. I'm just waiting on the document from them. That's great news about scope. Great news about scope. I'm trying to find it. I thought that the note said that it was for 20 students in five rooms, so it's 100 students. And I thought... I don't know, like, again, with just what are we asking for and what are our priorities? Is that like one week for that, those students? And how are we ensuring that it's like definitely the students that are most in need of the transition? So we would open it to all students at those grade levels. And the focus would be helping them to acclimate to their new buildings, learn about procedures and protocols, and then

103identify the key attributes that we would expect them to be entering that grade with. So we could work on starting some sharpening of skills to prepare them. It is just a one-week program. But it's a jump start to get them ready for that new grade and new building. So on my notes, I have down two weeks. So is it one week block for each? But I think Megan had said something before, but it was a limited number of students. So it may be open to everyone, but there's only a certain number of students that actually can go per week, if I remember correctly. Right. We're anticipating that it would be 100 students per week. Per grade. Right, per grade. So we would be able to accommodate all of the students for those grade levels over

104the two-week period. So this cost is based on the cost of having five teachers work five hours a day, four hours a day, for 10 days. In the first five days, they'd have one group of students. In the second five days, they'd have a different group of students. Again, sorry to be the Debbie Downer, but this is a great program, but I would rather have the $125,000. No, I'm sorry, is that $1,000? $125,000. I'd rather have that in our budget instead. Again, great programs. I don't remember ever doing something like this at the middle school or in our school district, but, and you know what, we all still made it. You know, we made it through life. We're all here today without these nice programs. I think probably the best asset that kids have are

105their friends and what they do in the summertime and things like that. And then they all just... come into the new school year together. I think that that's money that could be spent elsewhere. Okay, so can I ask one question about that also? Do we have data on this, that this is why you're having the program? You know, is it based on something, or is it something that we're just going to try for, you know, we've never had it before? So previously, summer programs have been run through grants. And we realize that grants have come to an end. And so we are trying to launch our own summer programs incrementally each year. So looking at the funding that we have, starting on a smaller scale, one, we want to acclimate them to the procedures and

106the protocols of their new building. Many of them are transitioning to an intermediate school. to the middle school, to the high school. It's important that they enter correctly. They understand the expectations. They have an opportunity to engage in the processes of their buildings, get to know the staff, have assemblies, get oriented, as well as lay the foundation for academic expectations and exploration and exposure and to send these... kids home with additional preparatory work before they come back in August. And we're also looking to get work to them before they enter the program. So we're doing what we can to elongate our instructional ability to reach them before they enter, while they're with us, and then after this program is over as well. Thank you for speaking to that. So I found my page, because I

107have a few versions of this, and what I was crossing out was the rising K students. So that was my suggestion. I got that we were going rising first grade, they're going to the Northwest, rising park, rising middle school, rising ninth graders, but I don't want to invest in pre-K to K. There's some districts that don't even offer pre-K. So that was the thought process. And I do appreciate that we're saying if we start to build this into the budget now, we can build on it year to year to year and actually be able to offer a summer program that maybe is beyond scope, which would be full out of pocket from the families. And then how does some, are we considering, or can we consider, because I thought some districts do a summer program

108where they fund some portion of it, and then parents do still pay into it. Are you aware of that? I think that if it's an academic program, that would be illegal. What we could charge is $3 registration fee. There are some districts that run a summer music art camp. and parents pay for it through a booster club or something like that. But this is meant to be an academic program to help children get acclimated to their school, to catch up on skills that they need. We would not be allowed to charge tuition for that. But if it was recreational or something like that, you could. Even or not, if it was recreational, we would be able to say, yeah, we'll run that program, but you'll pay for it. The law is really clear that children

109should not be charged for academic services. And SCOPE brings in their own staff, right, to supervise. Correct. Right. Okay. Yes, if I may just give you a little rationale on the Rising K program. We are currently in districts serving only 85 pre-K students. So in other districts, there are more students who are eligible for pre-K, or there are students who are able to take advantage of outside pre-K. So we're anticipating that there'll be a large number of students. who are entering school for the first time. And so that's why that bridge was important for that grade level. Okay. Any other questions on this page? So just asking again, is there anyone who does not want anything on this page? So Juan, you didn't apply two things or is it everything that you don't want on

110the page? Just so I know. I was trying to keep track. Let me know how to plan. Sure. Well, Madam President, look, we can slice this up and dice it however we want. Again, my point is we don't need to add new things at this moment. That's my position. And I'm just asking. on this page if you don't want anything. So we don't, so that way we know what we're going forward. So therefore, if it's a no, it's a no. Okay. So in that vein, because I, like I said earlier, like I have other things that I would add into the budget. Right. That this would, I would consider maybe postponing this or reducing this for this upcoming year to make sure that we have, that we're funding things that are in the budget. appropriately.

111That's why I'm asking if what people want or don't want. I think they are doing like a yes or no right now and I'm kind of like. Well even if it's like I'm not too sure then that's fine. I'm on the fence on the summer bridges. Okay that's fine. So therefore if we're looking at adding something else in we can say well this was one item that people were on the. on the fence on. This is the amount of money that we have. Let's look to see if we can add something else in. So that's what I'm just trying to figure out, where we're going to take the money from to use. That's all. So the summer bridges, you're on the fence, which is fine. Is there anything else? And you said with the strategic

112planning, you're on the fence. I'm a no for the strategic planning. Anything else for anyone else on this page? I'm on the fence for strategic planning. And everything else you're okay with? Yeah. Leslie? I'm good. You're good for everything. Right. So that's fine. Just so we know where we're starting from. Now, Madam President, before you just take me to be a no down the line, like I said, these are all very good things. And like Trustee Messman said, these are things we can start to bring in slowly. or bring in next year, or some of these things you might even be able to implement them throughout the year if you find that you're doing better in some budget lines than others. But for me, the main thing is to find and see stability because the

113past three years have been turbulent. I got you. I understand you. And I understand that, you know, as we look, as we go through this, that people may change their mind on certain things because we look at other things that we want to do. So I'm looking at... And just one more thing on the Bridges program, because now I'm even further going. I don't know. Like, how would we measure the success of it? How would we measure the success of it? So I'll start. The measurements will vary. So, for example, with rising kindergartners, There are diagnostic instruments that teachers would administer during the time that they have these students. And so that would save instructional time once school starts. So we wouldn't know the measures of those until they give it again. So they would

114probably give that again in six to nine weeks, perhaps. With first grade, the same process. So the measures of effectiveness would come later. It would certainly help to save instructional time once school starts because you will have gotten a jump start with majority of the students. And we're hoping that only those students who are new to registration would be those who had not had an opportunity to come in. So the measures, they vary grade to grade based on the instruments that are used for reading, the instruments that are used for math. Okay. All right. So I appreciate that. I'm still not sure how I can like truly understand as a board member how that helps and how I just want something tangible that I can. But you don't have to, I don't. I just want

115to give you an example. Let's say, for example, a teacher is giving up her gans to a student, an instrument. So she has 17 kids in her class. Once school starts, she's doing a one-to-one assessment with this one student. Right. So she's relying on the teaching assistant to keep the class moving while she's diagnosing. If given the opportunity to do that over the summer. Then when school starts day one, that may leave you with a minimal number of children who need assessment. Therefore, you're able to maximize your instructional time. The children know their routine. They know their protocols. They know how to enter the class. They know how to sit in a circle. They know how to pay attention. You've gone through all of those self-regulatory skills, and it will allow the maximization of instructional

116time, which will certainly increase the measures. that they utilized over the summer. Okay, so you could then track how many assessments you get done in the summer versus how many are remaining in the new year, and that's something that you could bring to the board so that we could understand. That's what I'm trying to get at. I'm not really like, I understand what you're saying. I'm more trying to understand how can we, as the governing body, see the success of the implementation? And that seems like something that could be tracked and understood. And then are the students paired with their homeroom class teacher? I assume so, based on what you're saying. They may be. Maybe. It may be. We can't guarantee. Perhaps those teachers are not available to teach that particular week. But in our

117conversations, we've made it clear that our preference, if you teach kindergarten, we want those teachers to have the opportunity to have the kindergarten students for that summer. Okay, thank you. I'm going to page five. So am I in the same with page five? that the teacher for the class and district needs to stay, the speech teacher needs to stay, and the psychologist needs to stay. So after that, is anything else on this page? Does anyone? So the one said need to stay. I just wanted to speak about that. So just before, just one second. With the athletic trainer, I don't see last week there was a salary that was there for athletic training. Yes, and we realized that. The current cost of the athletic trainer is in the budget as a contract service. So we

118didn't take out, it's not an additional cost, it's just a reallocation of cost. from contract service to employee with the understanding that the employee would then get benefits and I put into the benefits line an allowance for that. So what would be the difference? Is there going to be a difference in cost if we internalize? Yeah, it would be whatever the cost of health insurance is. would be added, but it's already built into the budget. If you told me to take this person out of the budget and leave it as contract services, I would, it would not change the $85,000, but I would be able to remove one person health insurance. And the health insurance is? Roughly. $20,000 for a family plan, $12,000 for an individual plan. Okay. But I think you put it in

119as individual, didn't you? Yeah, I did. I put them in as individuals because what usually happens is when we hire people, we're hiring younger people, some of whom are under the age of 26, and under the ACA, they're entitled to keep their family health insurance. as opposed to coming on to our insurance. So I said, you know, I can't... No, you can't predict. I can't say to HR, you can only hire single people. No, I would tell you that that's a violation. Yes, I'm sure that he would. You can only hire people that promise not to get pregnant. I think that that would be a violation of law. Yes. So... So I did put in for single people. Go ahead, Megan. Okay, so the positions that we're saying we have to do are coming out

120of the CSE recommendations, but the board did not approve the CSE recommendations yet, right? No. Okay, so we don't necessarily, I mean, I understand that it's a recommendation of CSE, but we have not seen that list of the CSE recommendations. That's correct. They have not been presented. So where we would be getting them on April 15th then? Is it in the packet for April 15th? No, you would get them at the conclusion of the annual reviews, which is more likely the main meeting. But if I may just add to that, my background as director of special ed kicks in when I hear this discussion. You have very limited flexibility. You can tell the committee to reconsider. You cannot deny. the committee's recommendation. And the superintendent does not have the right to intercede. Those recommendations come

121directly to you. So you can tell the committee, great, go back to the drawing board and think it again. But when they recommend that the child be served in district, you must. abide by the CSE's recommendation. You don't have the right to say, no, we don't think that's a good idea. Have that child educated at BOCES. You don't have that role, unfortunately. That's the way the law is written. Okay, so that's why you're saying we have to do it. Because I was just going, we hadn't seen the CSE, CPSC recommendations, and we hadn't adopted them yet. So I just, that's the clarity that I was looking for. I also noted that the athletic changer was no, after the fact said, what's the savings? The staff member to manage the school website, is there also a

122savings from Syntax then? Or what is it, ParentSquare? Where's the website now? So our website is SmartSite. SmartSite. Yes. And Syntax will assist with uploading some things, but they no longer manage the website. Our technology department assists with managing the website. And this proposal is to have one person at each school. who would be trained to work in tandem with our technology department to upload to ensure the information is accurate and updated for each of the five schools. And to address something that Mr. Leone pointed out, that there are issues with the website. There are some things that are out of date. And this would help us make the website more accurate, more up-to-date. There'd be somebody who would be charged with that responsibility and would be able to say to them, hey, you're getting

123paid to do this. So just... No, these are stipends for each of the five. So let me just ask a question. I think someone brought up, and I don't remember who, if there was a... Director of Technology, would that be part of that person's responsibility? Can I speak to that? You've got to speak to the mic. If I might. In my experience, if there's a district-wide director of technology, they might do district-wide things. However, at the building level, in order for things to be kept in a timely basis, in a manner that keeps people informed, channeling everything to one central location and having it go out might be slower than one might want in terms of keeping things up to date for events and other things that are happening in a timely way. In my

124experience, the dollar amount that's put here is one that would be used well and probably a good bang for the buck. So, Lisa, I went back to the director of technology that Juan had brought up, too. And that was something that we had hoped for. And I think that there's probably other efficiencies that we would find in having the director of technology. reinstated, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. Especially, especially with the cycle of technological equipment, cycling out new and bring, you know, cycling out the old, bringing in the new and everything else that comes with that department. Sorry, didn't mean to take away. No, that's no, I, so I guess, you know, going back to like what's in, what's out. I thought that that was something that we were hoping to eventually be able to bring

125back. Not necessarily saying that I don't agree that we should be handling in-house the websites more regularly. I think that's definitely something that needs to be addressed. So I would say as we're looking at things that potentially we may not or we want to re-look at to see whether or not we want to keep them or not keep them in, that... We already talked about directive technology. Let's see if that could still, if that can come back in again if there's something else that what's recommended that we did not do. And still, even with the directive technology, having someone at each of the school manage the website, that could also be very beneficial, I think, as well. Yeah, so I just have a few questions about this page. For some of these positions, for me,

126there has to be a net financial gain. Like, for instance, new speech teacher in place of contracted provider. Another example, new athletic trainer employed to replace contracted services. Is there a net savings there? Yes, and in fact, we already built that into the budget. If you remember, the first time you saw this chart, there was an asterisk next to those items. And what I put as a footnote is that these positions would be funded by a reduction in contracted services. And in fact, Jen came back to me and identified $180,000 worth of contracted services that would be offset by this $180,000 addition. So even with... the school district taking on paying the premiums for health care? Yes. For new employees? Yes. Now, under contract services, we wouldn't be paying that? No. Okay. May I just

127elaborate on that a moment? With contract services, when there are IEP mandates and we're unable to secure an employee, we would contract the service until such time. But this is a union position? that would need to be filled by a member of the ATA as a speech teacher. So we could no longer continue providing a speech service through a contracted consultant. Okay, now I'm getting a little bit lost. Are you saying that we cannot have a contracted provider? You can have contracted providers. So for example, if there's a CSE and there's a mandate for speech services for a student, but you do not have a teacher readily available. So to avoid being out of compliance, you can contract someone to provide that service, but the district must do their due diligence to find an employee

128who can provide that service. And so that this is what we're doing, providing a speech teacher who is an employee rather than a contracted provider to provide their service. The other thing you should know, one, is that contracted service providers sometimes charge $175, $200 per hour for their time. you may be able to hire your own employee and pay health insurance and actually spend less. That's where I was just going, how does that cost less? Once you add in the benefits and the retirement and everything like that, it feels like you're paying for this employee for the remainder of their... Let's say that the employee works 180 days, five hours a day, at $200 an hour. That's $180,000. The employee would cost $90,000 in salary and $25,000 in benefits. That's $115,000. You just saved $65,000.

129So if we can't find an employee here, we'll go back to the contracted services and we then don't have the cushion in the budget? So wouldn't we carry the contracted services instead of assuming that we're going to fill the role? No, we must, with intention, take the necessary steps to fulfill the role. We can contract OT services, PT services, because that's not a position that we provide in district. but we provide speech teachers. So then it's incumbent upon us in good faith to post and advertise for a speech teacher to fulfill the mandated role in district. We cannot just continue forever with the contracted service. Okay. I was just saying to carry the cost of the contracted service in 26, 27 until we fill the role because we're saying it's a savings. Yes, we'll. That's

130all. That guy was. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, yeah, Madam President, moving down the line, same thing with the athletic trainer. Same concept. For me, there has to be a net. Right. There has to be a net savings for me because, you know, contract services, you can you can alter that as needed once that once they're on the books and and an employee, it becomes. It becomes difficult. We asked Mr. Farkas this exact question. Aren't you hamstringing yourself by having one employee versus the flexibility of having contractors come in? And his answer was that the contractors that we hire are people who are working in other school districts. and therefore are not available until 3.30, 4 o'clock. And therefore, we can't use their services when they're really needed, which is preparing kids for

131the game, being there at the start of the game, etc. Hiring an employee gives us the flexibility to say, your day starts at 1 and it goes till 9 when the games are over, as opposed to... having a person come at four when the game has already started. That was Mr. Farkas' explanation as to why he wanted this instead of a contract. So for this particular item, the board just, not just, but it will still have the $85,000 if we were doing contract employee. The difference would be adding in the health insurance, which is roughly about $25,000. So we just have to decide, do you want to stay with contract or do you want to... You're going to spend an additional $25,000 to have someone on full-time. So I think that I just didn't hear

132from Leslie or Chris in terms of this particular page. I have questions on some other lines, but just on the athletic trainer. What's the difference in hours worked with... the in-district employee compared to the contract services. If this contract services don't show up until 4 o'clock, what time are they working until? And how many hours work are we getting out of that $85,000? And with the contract work, they only get paid for the hours they work, correct? Yeah, that's true. Yes. I think what Evan is doing now is he's using contract employees at different locations. I really don't know how he's covering it, to tell you the truth. But he said that in his... opinion, he'd rather have an employee than spending the money on contract services. So with the contract services, he can use

133more than one person with athletic training? Sure. If we can find a company that could provide more than one trainer, because I agree with Juan that, you know, it seems to me you'd have more flexibility. You may need three trainers one afternoon and nobody the next day. So, right. So for me, it really comes down to what hours do we need them or would like them to work? I mean, obviously we would like them after school because that's when the athletic events are going to take place. And. You know, I mean, that's probably the most important. There's a high salary for just a few hours a day. You want him to or her to be part of other things also, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, if you're going to pay a higher salary, you

134expect more work. The question is, do we need more work? Also, considering that some of these events happen on Saturdays as well. So would this person take off on a Monday to work a busy Saturday? Is there, where could we see what we're spending right now for the athletic trainers? In our, like, current expense, like, where is that? Oh, sorry. Okay, so, yeah, duh. I guess, yeah. You want to keep going? As it's being looked up, because we've identified some things that we don't possibly want to hold on to. or potentially not, depending on some of the things we want to look at. I have questions on some of the other parts. So the addition of the boys, there's just curiosity, addition of the boys volleyball team at the middle school, is that feedback from

135students suggesting it to improve the volleyball team at the high school, or is that something that middle school students have asked for? Because I know we just recently created the boys volleyball team at the high school, so I'm just wondering how that developed. So from our conversations with the athletic director, it's a combination of both to prepare the high school team more efficiently, as well as the interest that has drummed up now from middle school boys. So is that $5,000 the amount for the coach? What about assistant coach? I don't think there's not assistant coaches for all the middle school sports. Okay. What's the additional cost because there'll be uniforms involved and additional transportation is that also built in? So the athletic director included that in his uniform code. Okay, so that's all budgeted. This

136is just the only part of it that's being highlighted. Okay. The new clubs at the middle school and high school are there specific clubs in mind or is that money just going to be set aside to then develop different clubs? So there is a process for students to propose new clubs to generate a charter where they talk about what the scope of the club would be. They have to get signatures of students who would be interested, present them to the principal, and then move it forward. So both schools have a few clubs that they're already recommending. I know high school is looking at a Model UN and an English Honor Society. middle school is asking for a step team and a science club that they haven't had before. So they do have ideas that the

137students have generated. And so then it would be just a matter of establishing based on the number of meetings or if there are competitions, what the stipend would be working with HR and ETA on that. Has there been any mention of the awareness weekend or whatever form that was? Recently? So that was part of a club that is on the high school list that they would like to offer it. So that's not a new charter. It's an existing charter that is on the list of what they're interested in bringing back. Okay. And would they go through clubs just to make sure something has not been very active? They would remove the club or just put it on pause? They put it on pause, so they look at the budget and determine which clubs they'd like

138to run based on student interest and the attendance. They do submit monthly attendance to the building principals. Chris, you had more questions on this? That's it. Thank you. Yeah, Chris, you had questions that I had down too, but the athletic trainer, I just... There's pros and cons to both. So we don't know how, you know, it's not on the budget right now, how much we spent last year on the trainer. Yeah, it's folded into one of the contract services line. And unfortunately, we did not break it out. Okay. So if we look on last year's budget, we would find it. Okay. I would like to hold that open. Yeah. Could you advise on what we're spending currently then? Like right now? What I'm saying is that the detail. that's in last year's budget I don't

139have access to right now. That's true. I'd have to go back and look at last year's detailed budget. Many schools do have full-time. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a number of schools do have full-time athletic trainers. Some schools have certified athletic trainers who are teachers. So they work during the day as a teacher, and then they spend their afternoon and evening as the athletic trainer, and they get paid a stipend to do that. That's another model. I would be interested in seeing that option. But for an athletic trainer, you have to go to school. You have to get a master's degree. So the teacher would have to have a master's degree in athletic training. Because the athletic trainer is at the master's level now. Thank you, Professor Johnson. So real quick, I've had a lot

140of run-ins with the athletic trainer. And the way it seems to be working is that that athletic trainer has certain days and hours posted on their door that they're here providing services. So they must be getting the hours from us. We tell them the amount of hours that we would like to contract them for, and their office hours is on the door. So really the question is, really the core question is, are we looking to increase those services? Is it warranted? Is it needed? Or is it just nice? The increase would be the... The benefits. Well, it would also be an increase in hours because then they would be full-time salaried. Yeah. You'd have to increase their hours. You'd have to find something else for them to do other than just being a trainer on

141the sports, on the fields or the courts. It's not enough hours. Usually what would happen with the athletic trainers is that if there's different sports that are taking place, they go from one team to another in terms of making... Making sure that everything's okay. So they may start their day like at one o'clock in the afternoon, hypothetically, and go to when it's over. But if there's a day that there's a game, their day may be longer in hours to go with that team. So that's how they're going to probably make up their hours. So whether it's a Saturday game, away game, or whatever, those may be the things that the athletic trainer may be responsible for doing. But I think that, honestly, I think... I think this is something that let's just put a hold

142on it and just leave it as is and let's move on to some of the other things that we've been talking about that we want to look at. Because this is something that we just want to leave it as is, then we leave it as is. It's still going to be $85,000. So let's just maybe move on to something else that other items that people spoke about that maybe they want to try to put in the budget if there's something else that was recommended. So let's kind of address those things. Okay, so I'll move on to the student request clubs. But real quick with the athletic trainer again before I move on is that I don't believe that they travel with the team. I believe if we're home. That other team that visits us, if

143someone, you know, twists their ankle or something, they would be using our athletic trainer. Likewise, if we go away somewhere, there would be a certified athletic trainer there in that district. But I think what we would need to find out is this, is that once they're hired. as an employee of our district, they may be required to travel with the team. As a contract employee, they may not be required to travel with the team. So that's what we would have to find out. So that's very important because then we might need the contracted. athletic director if our full-time athletic director has to travel with the team you might need both no i think but to cover the same afternoon right so that right so those are questions that we would just have to find out

144definitely need to understand this right would it be required that the athletic trainer travel with the team if they're hired as an employee or It comes down to what we need. We have to identify the need. I don't know if we've identified the need yet. That's why I was saying let's just leave this alone right now to get the answer and maybe address some of the other needs that people were thinking about. With regards to clubs, again, good stuff. Everything on here is very, very good. You have to remember, too, that we have a declining student population. So we have less students adding, and now we're adding more clubs. They may be very valid clubs, but you might want to take a look at some of the clubs that maybe are underutilized. Those students have

145moved on to high school, and maybe that middle school doesn't have the same amount of students that they once had. It's about following the trend here, right? If this is student-driven, it's following the student trend, what they want. And that also means, you know, ending, you know, clubs that really aren't interesting to or appealing to some of our students. Right. So like in the club balance report, like there's money in there for many different clubs. So which clubs are we proposing would be active next year? And what, if any additional funding is even needed, or are some clubs going to be closed and that funding moved over to support a more desired club moving forward? Right. So that's kind of the approach I would like to look at instead of just adding more. Want to

146add more. I'm just saying, they requested this and that's why it's here. Right, this is student request. And there is a process by which student voice is heard. Yes. Right, but do you understand that? Maybe some of those other clubs, you know, we can't run 30, 40 clubs. There's a process for making a club, putting a club on pause if it's not actively running. So the principals monitor attendance. Club advisors submit their attendance monthly. They do work with the shared decision-making team. They do get student input on what clubs they want to run. I just also wanted to let everyone know that the club budget was cut, and so some of this money is to restore it. We have been able to run some of the clubs through leaders of tomorrow. So losing that funding

147means that some of those clubs won't be able to run. Not every club runs every year. And certainly when you add new ones, the attendance shifts. So when the principals are making their recommendations, they're looking at that as well. Thanks for the reminder about the club getting cut for last year, right? We cut it last year. And the fact that you're saying it runs through Leaders of Tomorrow, we're not going to have Leaders of Tomorrow. I'm over here going, well, what do we have at Park Avenue? So we won't have anything at Park Avenue. And I know, just to finish my thought, I know that the, I'm sure there's other Leaders of Tomorrow that is great, but the Girls on the Run is a very loved program at Park Avenue. And, you know, could that

148become a club then? And why aren't we thinking about, yeah, doing that, I guess? So I believe there's money for park clubs in the budget. And there were recommendations for five clubs. Girls on the Run was one of them. And again, that was based on student interest. So I know Student Council was on the list. Girls on the Run was on the list. A coding club was on the list. And I can't remember off the top of my head the others. Okay, so that's line by line. We've raised for you to make it. at your conscious level, we raised these because we're actually adding back the funds that were cut last year. Okay. That's adding another 10,000, 15,000 to meet student requests for increased opportunities for clubs. We didn't do that with park. Park has

149the same allocation. We're not cutting park. We're also not recommending that we add clubs to park. So. Okay, but the existing clubs are in there. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to just go back to my original question. There were some suggestions that were brought up about other things that people would like to see in the budget. So can we discuss those items now? There were a couple of things that people weren't too sure on, so we have some money to play with. Not play with I don't like that word But we have some money that we could potentially utilize for other things that people would potentially like to see So if you kind of bring those Those suggested reallocation is someone like if you want to bring those suggestions forward then let's look at those

150items now, please So we're looking at the line by line then. Yeah, there was people had some suggestions on some items. So, okay, so Can okay? Okay. I'm on page 10 the It actually says that the bleachers at Northeast are condemned. Am I looking at the correct version of this? Maybe it's changed. And it has a false next to it. It should say at the top left-hand corner, it should say draft budget 329.26. Okay, so I'm looking at that version. So page 10, the Northeast bleachers, yeah. Are we going to demolish them? What are we doing? So we're saying it's not in the budget, right? It's false. So we should just at least remove them. Are these bleachers that just don't get pulled out? I feel like I remember going to that building for certain

151events and there was a section that just didn't get pulled out for people to sit on. Is that what this is? Yes, and that was the case when I was here last time. The whole section of bleachers that we cannot use because they've been deemed to be unsafe. So they keep them in the locked position. They don't pull them out. But in the locked position, they're not a hazard to anybody or anything? Absolutely not. So there are folding chairs placed out for parents and guests to sit on. Okay. Can I just say something on it? It said false on there. So that means it's not in the budget, right? Correct. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. I tried. Last time I gave you F or T, nobody could read it. So this time I

152decided, let me spell it out for you a little bit. So yeah, I'm raising it because it's a problem. And I was just questioning. I did. I highlighted it because I was, it's important. And I don't know. I mean, if you demolished it, couldn't you free up more space for seating? Or is that just we don't see the need for that right now? And just from what I remember, when they're folded in, you maybe get one or two more rows of seats. I don't know if it would be worth the cost to remove it. Or is the logic to replace the entire bleacher? Yeah, I mean, I would almost think that that could be a priority. That's why I circled it. And it's the same for the Northwest because it's also really bad. And that's

153also not included. So when you have these events, when you invite families in, it's, you know, they're climbing on those bleachers. A question on that page before we move on. The way this budget was built was Algalina. listed every item that in a perfect world he would include, you'll see there's a lot of false because I directed him to come in with a budget no higher than $3 million. And then in addition to that, I gave him the ability to identify those projects that are health and safety concerns that are high priority and to put those into the transfer to capital fund. So you'll see, for example, shoring up the floor at the high school under the kitchen because that really is a dangerous situation that we want to take care of. These items we'd

154love to take care of, but we wouldn't be able to do it under the current parameters unless you identified a corresponding $65,000 reduction somewhere else in the budget. Yeah, I understand that. I completely understand that. I'm just going through what I highlighted because I was asked to kind of do that. And I was thinking, too, like we have money and I brought this up and I know, you know, you're catching up and you're doing a nice job, but there was still money in the capital. funds. So I'm still interested in this board seeing a proposition, if it needs to be a proposition, to close out those historical capital projects and use the remaining money in there because there are issues in the buildings. And the bleachers are definitely an issue in these buildings when we're

155inviting our families in to celebrate the students. I could offer to you one... piece of information you may not have yet. Okay. Which is that our auditors also noticed that there was a cost overrun for the 2016 bond and we needed to apply those balances that you've identified in the old projects to close that overrun. So what we're doing What we did, excuse me, last year was we actually, you actually presented to the voters a proposition to move money from the general fund to the capital fund to cover that cost overrun. And in return, we took money from, yeah, that was part of the transfer to capital last year. It was a separate line. That said yeah that excuse me. It wasn't the proposition It was a line in the line item budget that said

156Transfer and I've forgotten the amount forgive me to the capital fund for the purpose of covering the additional expenses incurred in the 2016 bond and the way we did that without impacting the taxpayers was to go through all of those old projects that were finished, complete, and there was still money available in them and transfer back to the general fund those funds. I believe it is something like $630,000 we transferred back. from those old projects and $590,000 we transferred back in to the capital fund. So in essence, we received from the capital fund about $30,000, $40,000 more than the expenditures we had to incur to close out the bond. Can you show the Board of Education the capital? Fund summary, because that's not what we saw in the external audit with Colin and Danowski. Yeah.

157And even for the end of 25. Yeah, it is actually in the it will be in the order for this year. It's going to be this year. Yeah, because the proposition was in May of 25. So it will it will show up. in the financial statements for the year ending June 30th, 2026. But I can certainly show you the proposition that people in this community voted on, which included a transfer to the capital fund in the amount, forgive me, I don't have it off the top of my head, but something like $580,000 to cover. the costs of the bond that were in excess of the authorization given by the voters. And the voters approved the budget, and therefore they approved that expenditure. And the way we funded it was to do exactly what you suggested.

158We looked at all of the old projects, and if the project was complete, but there was still money in the capital fund, we moved that back to the general fund. So that we had an interfund transfer and then moved it back to the capital fund with voter permission. I know it sounds very complicated. Yeah, I would like to see the summary, I guess, of that account, if that's what it is, the capital fund. Okay. So the casework for the middle school on page 11, there was discussion of money being left in the allowance of the existing project. So, Megan, before you go to 11, you mentioned on page 10 about the bleachers at Northeast. And one of the things that I know that we were looking at. the playground poured in place surface at Park

159Avenue. We're looking at a couple of things. I'm just making a recommendation that maybe for the bleachers at Northeast that have been condemned for a number of years now, that maybe either some of the items that they recommended for us to do, that maybe we take some of that money to replace the bleachers because it's been like that for a long time. I'm just asking the board to take a look at some of the things that we had said, well, we're not too sure about. Is this an item that we could put in there and maybe take something else out? Like, for example, whatever it may be, I'm just saying this, let's just kind of look at that. That's one. And then I know we can't do it this year, but I think we really,

160at some point in time, we need to sort of plan out replacing the bleaches at the high school. Those bleaches at the high school are... You mean the ones at the football field? The football ones, yeah. It's on here, so I'm just saying, I don't want to, but I'm just saying that right now on page 10, if the board can think about, is there something else that was recommended that maybe we want to remove? or remove a couple items that could come up to the $65,000. And that's what I'm just saying. So, like, for example, if we're not too sure on the athletic trainer and hiring the athletic trainer, that would say roughly about $25,000 right there. So now we're looking at another $40,000. That's what I'm just saying. That was one thing I was

161going to ask because on page 9, we're also... I know, but on page 9... Okay. But on page nine, we're purchasing a goose dropping cleaner for $7,900 and the geese removal service is $12,000. So I'm sure there is some level of effectiveness on the removal service, but I've personally seen it where the field is covered in geese. The dog shows up, the geese fly away, the dog leaves, and I'm sure they come right back shortly after. So maybe it's a brief relief. It's just disgusting. What? The droppings? Yeah. But I don't know that the existing service we have is effective enough to justify it. I don't know if anybody else has witnessed anything. It's a change for years. Yeah. You said something on page nine, too? On page nine, it's equipment and grounds. It's the

162second thing. Yeah. Tow and collect, boost, profit, cleaner. The tow and collect, but not the service. I would definitely think that we still need the... tow and collect because they're there regardless of the service being used or not. So I'm not suggesting to take that off. Yes. And then I have one more thing on that page if we're done talking about the geese. Tow and collect, it's... Okay. You see it? Yeah. I'm sorry. I see the removal. My question is this. Right now, it's not in there. No, it is in there. The geese removal service. So my question is, if you take that out, then what are you going to do to help get rid of the poop, the geese poop? That's what I'm saying. Assuming that's all in collect is the way to collect

163it. Well, we don't know. We're taking something out, and we're not too sure. Well, maybe we can... investigate that maybe he could investigate that for a little bit because it's not working there is it's definitely you know not working I don't know what will work. I have no idea. But can we... We're exactly catching the geese. Well, you can't do that. Then do what? Catch the geese and do what with them? Put them on the other side of the fence and let them fly back? All right, can I just make a suggestion? Let's move on. Can they just look into this a little bit more? But more importantly, there's a couple of items that people had mentioned that they wanted to potentially see. whether it's a line by line or whatever. Can we just stay?

164This is the geese question. We can look more into the geese question. I'm proposing once again about the, I'm asking to look at fixing the bleaches at northeast. And northwest or just northeast? I'm sorry, what is the cost associated with that? So 63,000 is not an easy amount to find. We just went through everything on the pages here, and there's certain things that people said that they don't or they're not too sure about. So what I'm saying is that if we're looking at these items. then potentially if this is something that we want to do, and that's what we're trying to get at right now, if there's things that people have seen in the line by line that they potentially want to add back in, we have to see what they are, what they add

165up to, and then we have to go back to what was recommended and make some decisions. That's what I'm saying. So are we done talking about the PA system at the high school? Has that conversation passed? No one talked about the PA system at the high school yet. Oh, well, at the last meeting we did. And we talked about how important it is. Well, Mr. Dragone did, at least. So all I'm just trying to find out is, what do people potentially like to see back in the budget that was identified as a false? I know that... Megan was saying one thing and Chris was saying some things as well. So I'm just trying to get that. That's all. So what I was going with, I wasn't trying to add the capital, like the construction type

166work necessarily back in. I was trying to understand if we had the ability to move it into capital, but it doesn't sound like we have the funding in capital anymore. It sounds like we moved the funding into operating. Yeah, we moved into operating, but then backed out to capital. So there is some half a million dollars in there, but you have at the ends some items identified for that. Yes, we did list 600 and something thousand dollars worth of items that we think, in our opinion, float to the top because of the safety requirements. The ventilation in the high school basement needs to be improved. We have, you know, the danger of possible mold. We have that structural problem. Those things have to be fixed. That's why we're putting those at the top of our

167list to do this summer, if we possibly can. And by the voters approving this budget... With those items in it, we could start planning for that work on May 20th, as opposed to waiting for the capital reserve or another bond to do that work. That's why we put it into transfer to capital, so we could do it immediately. Okay, but you also have like $260,000 in paving. Yes, because the paving, the parking lots at Northeast and Northwest. are literally dangerous. They are potholes or mints. It's damaging cars. Again, in our estimation, that's an important project to get done. If you said to us that you want to do this instead of the paving, if that's your priority. So on the parking lot subject, so I see they're all labeled as false, or at least most

168of them is from what I saw. The drain cleaning in like every parking lot is not, it's included in the line by line, but not as a part of the budget. Is there? If you go to, keep going to page, just for the moment, towards the very, very end, page 49. Page 49. Page 51, page 53 is a list of six items that we want to do through the mechanism of a transfer to the capital fund. Those six items are the remove, the repaving of the south parking lot. the repaving of the south parking lot at Northwest, the ventilation and basement cleaning at the high school, including exhaust fan installation, the ventilation of the serving area in the kitchen, and the shoring of the basement ceiling below the dumbwaiter. Those are the items that we

169want to do through capital projects. All right, so my question is if there is there an issue with the drains in these parking lots where it's a concern of water pooling when it rains that hard and which if we isn't there a possibility if the water not draining properly they would if we repaved everything but the drains weren't cleaned. that it could cause issues with the newly paved parking lots or issues with the existing parking lots. Yeah, we would make sure. We would have to make sure that as part of this repaving project, we make sure that the drains are clear, that the catch basins below the parking lot are functioning. So it would be done just not as a separate line item like it's listed here. Okay. Thank you. Any other? I'm sorry to

170bring this all the way to page 53. No, that's okay. I'm just asking the board because people have looked at the line. We all looked at line by line. We have different things. So I just want to make sure that we can see if they can go back in again or not, if there's something else that we want to remove. That's what's most important. Well, at the same time, if we're trying to add things, we need to look at what we want to pull out. One thing that's included in the budget is a 40-foot storage container for Northeast. I'm just wondering what the purpose of that storage container is. Still on page 11, or back on page 11. It's the sixth item down. It's only $5,000, but I'm just wondering what we're... using a storage

171container for and why it's a priority to be in the budget i'm sorry i don't know the answer to that question it could have to do with athletics believe it or not because i know that there was a request on the part of athletics for storage to put athletic equipment in that i don't know yeah i don't know why it would be at northeast That could be too. Yeah, we may be able to clean out some classrooms that are filled with stuff and then use the classroom again. What's this? I'm sure you might not even know this, but what kind of stuff would be in those classrooms that's worth that we need to... Store it rather than throw it out. Exactly. All right, I will ask the question as to why that rose to the

172top of the list. Anyone else in terms of items that they were thinking about? I'm just interested to know what the remaining allowance is in the middle school project, because I see the casework still there for the middle school. So is it possible to buy the casework and install it? ourselves with the allowance. That would be my question. That's page 11. With the high school lighting and auditorium theatrical controls or whatever, if we were to invest in that, is there a possibility that we could rent out the use of the auditorium? For revenue purposes. Yeah. Section 314 of education law requires that When you rent facilities, you rent for the cost of the facility. You should not be in the business of competing with other venues to provide auditorium spaces. It's, I'm sorry, section 414.

173Because we're not-for-profit, essentially. Exactly. Because we have an unfair advantage then because we're providing these facilities at taxpayer expense and the local theater down the street that wants to rent his or her theater for the same purpose is at an unfair disadvantage. So that's the purpose of the law. We can't make money. Got it. I would love to find room to get those things done, but obviously that's a pipe dream right now because that auditorium was very, very, very, very outdated. And during this performance this past weekend, one of the curtains fell off the track, and during half the performance, the curtain was supposed to be closing, but it was... It showcased itself that it needs to be repaired. They were able to, fortunately, do some sort of a repair between the shows, but it

174was very evident to people that didn't already know. Yeah, and at this point, I agree with President Johnson. There's lots of things that we'd like to add to this budget, but we're tapped out in terms of the levy, what we're recommending in terms of the levy. And we have to be careful that we don't do these things and put our fiscal house in disorder by having an imbalanced budget. So my next comment is on page 27, so I don't need to go. Yes. I'm not sure if anybody had anything in between there. That's why I was saying that. I'm flipping through to see if I had anything for that. I already addressed mine. So I guess my question is just for the bus monitors. Are we budgeting both ways for all the schools that we

175would have monitors on the buses? I know that there was, I had queried this this year, and I was told that we can't find people to fill the roles. I want to know, is the budget there to cover both ways? Well, this budget, what you're looking at now, is the current staffing roll forward. We don't have any additional monitors in this budget. So I guess the answer to your question is no, there's not additional monitors budgeted. We're just hoping we can hold on to the monitors that we already have. And these monitors would fit? Go ahead. These monitors would fit the current structure that we have with the busing right now. Yes. So I would be inclined to ensure that we have budget, that we have monitors both ways. And I understand that we might

176not be able to identify somebody for that role, but that we are at least striving to have the round trip covered. For all the buildings? Yes. monitors actually riding on the buses with children? Yes. As opposed to monitors who are managing dismissal, having children on the bus. Do we actually have monitors assigned to buses that ride with the children in the morning and in the afternoon? I'm sorry, I've forgotten whether we do that. We do. And for what great levels? Isn't it just, I wouldn't say just northeast and northwest, isn't it? In some park every month, but not for the middle school or the high school, no. Megan, you're talking about the northeast and northwest. And park. Fine, we can say northeast, northwest, and park. So Ms. Stevens is saying we do have a monitor

177both ways? Because I've heard differently. No, I'm sorry, I can't speak to both ways, but I know all three buildings have bus monitors. And it may not be every bus that has a bus monitor both ways. Right. That doesn't come out of my office. I'm sorry. Okay, that's fine. And it actually, to tell you the truth, I'm looking at, we have seven monitors at Northwest. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I guarantee you we have more than seven buses going to Northwest. So there's no way that we have a monitor right now on each bus. Right. So they must rotate. Yes. Coverage. Based on need, based on... Yeah. I hear about incidents on the bus, and I think that bus monitors would be value-added for the community and the students. I think what probably

178has to be looked at is what would be the cost, like how many additional monitors would be needed and what would be the cost. Well, you can see that the salary that these people earn is... Very minimal. And at, you know, $12,000 a year to up to looks like the highest paid person is $25,000. That's why we're having difficulty hiring them. Is there a possibility with having bus monitors that work on the bus and then also fill the need? in our schools as a hall monitor or something else. Well, if they're full-time staff, they're not just riding the bus. They're also coming into the buildings and working as monitors. But you said a salary of $12,500. Yeah, that's what they're paid. For a full-time position? Yes, sir. How many hours a week? Yeah, there could

179be. I'm sorry, can you speak into the mic? There could be part-time monitors. That's what I'm getting at. As I'm looking at this, to my memory, some of these are three-hour monitors. We have three-hour monitors. We have three-and-a-half-hour monitors that these salaries on an annual basis would seem to be more consistent with. Some of those three-hour monitors also work additionally as... bus monitors, but I'm not completely familiar with the structure. And I would want us to check to see whether or not monitors are actually provided with our contract with ETS as opposed to through ourselves. It's possible that some of our monitors work for us during the day and then for ETS as bus monitors. And I'm... I am, I don't want to use the word guessing. I am thinking that that may be the

180case, but I am not certain it's something I would need to look into, along with Nate. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Listen, that's just an idea, because I understand why it's difficult to... get individuals to work for three hours for a very low salary. That's why if there was a need, it always for me starts with the need. If there's a need for a hall monitor or some other duty, then some of these positions, not all, but a couple of them, might actually be better served as full-time positions if they do other work. When the positions move past a certain level, they... they become eligible for benefits. And in many cases, the benefits add significantly to a budget. So part of the reason that school districts, not just Amityville, have monitors that are three-hour monitors is to

181maintain within the cost of the budget certain economies. All right. I see. Are there cameras on the buses inside? Yes, there are cameras inside the bus. There's a camera outside the bus. There's a camera on the stop arm of the bus to catch people who pass the bus when it's stopped. I just the other day was investigating an incident and I saw one camera that was trained on the driver and the entry door of the bus. another camera that was in the middle of the bus and took a picture of the students riding, and a third camera that was outside the bus videotaping the bus as it was driving down the street. So yes, they're fully equipped with cameras. So I'm wondering if the visibility of the cameras being evident to the students riding on

182the bus, if that has had any impact on their behavior. I hope so. Like knowing that people are watching. Yeah, I hope so. I know years ago, we used to put boxes in buses with holes in them and told students that these are cameras. And there weren't any cameras in the boxes, but they behaved much better as a result of the empty box being on the bus. Okay, so but I still would be interested to see and understand if we have the round trip bus monitor coverage for northeast northwest and park avenue in the budget. I understand what you're saying about the video, but I like it's just A real person there makes a difference on student behavior. And also just, are you sitting? Are your seatbelts on? We get the notices. We have a

183bus accident. It's just... Yeah, no, I'm not trying to say that a camera replaces the work of a real person. I definitely understand that that provides better value. of service to the community but if we're i'm just i was bringing that up as if we can't find room in the budget are the cameras there and if they're making any sort of impact on the behavior if i may just chime in on that some time ago the board had asked for a breakdown of monitors and number of monitors that were on the elementary buses for Northeastern Northwest. We did provide that information, but also in providing it, we shared the challenges that come along with that. So in order to have those monitors, most of those monitors work during the day at a school and on

184the bus in the morning and the afternoon. And the logistics of trying to find someone who can go both ways is challenging based upon the comments from our director of transportation, our conversations with EBT about it. If it's the preference of the board, we can certainly put it in, but just realize there are some logistical challenges to filling those positions. With personnel. Yeah, you were out of the room, but I said that. I said I would just like to see that we have the budget allocated and with the attempt to fill it. That's what I was asking. Okay. I don't know what that budget is. I don't know. Like I'm just saying. So that's a follow-up item. But I think, you know, to your follow-up, I think looking at that amount and then the board

185has to decide if that's something that they do or do not want in the budget. I'm one person. I get that. I'm just saying that we need to get the information, so therefore we can make an informed decision if this is an item that we want to place within the budget. Because if we place something in, we have to also decide what are we going to move out. And just realize, placing it in... could mean that it may not be spent. It may not become an expenditure just based on the challenges that were articulated back to us about the possibility of that. Understood. So on page 29, our instrument costs are going up to $18,000. I just based, you know, as a pair to like $5,000. Is there something going on there that are we...

186really projecting that need or is that why are we increasing it so much she's looking at her notes okay no problem um is it that we're purchasing more replacement oh well one thing looks like it's the additional set of coral risers so it doesn't have a an amount listed next to it but that looks like it would be a significant purchase yeah the original budget that I inherited had just $18,000. So I asked Dr. Fernandez, and what do you want to buy with that $18,000? I will tell you, she will not be able to get much more than coral risers out of $18,000. Coral risers are expensive. So she gave me a list of other things that she's looking at as a possibility, but she knows that the budget is limited to $18,000. Okay, so

187that could get used. in your eyes to either choral risers or to purchase other instruments? Right. For example, a bass could be $8,000, just one instrument. Yeah. So. Okay. Okay. The charter schools, again, I would, like I. Shouldn't we, don't we know who's going to go to charter schools based on the transportation forms? I guess they would do today. Oh, we do know. But if there's any like new students going, so could we just look at that or otherwise create a projection here because we added, I don't know how many students, but roughly $200,000 between 25, I'm sorry, 25, no, I'm going back a couple of columns here. What did you want? 31. I'm sorry. I'm just trying to get through. 24, 25 was $1.3 million. 25, 26. is 1.5, but we're spending 1.9. That's

188what we've spent so far. The 2526 column is expended to date because we're in the middle of the year, but we have a budget of 1.7. And we're really going to spend 1.9 according to our, so this year we're spending 1.9. So next year we should be increasing what we're carrying. I know we want to call the resolution to try to stop construction of more charter schools, but just the reality of some handful of students may choose or vice versa. But I would like to include some contingency there, increase what we're carrying there. I think also, too, that if someone goes to a charter school, let's say they start at the beginning of the year. and then a district makes a payment, and maybe mid-year, the student comes back to a district. But the money

189doesn't. The money does not come back. So what we don't know is that could be one part, but I do agree that this is one area that if we're spending 1.9 right now, then I think we need to go up to like 2.2 just to cover ourselves, to cover an additional number of students, but also look at... who's making requests for transportation for charter schools. And we're trying, as we put this together, one of the things that we're trying to do is not to featherbed the budget. You know what I mean. I don't want to put money in just because it might happen. And then at the end of the year, we've got a lot more money left over in the budget, and people look at us and say, why did you tax me when

190you didn't spend it? So we're trying to match those two. But would there be a room in the budget if not in this line but in another line? I'm sure there will be. That's my point. Let me just give you a secret that business officials don't normally tell their boards of education. This is built on the current staff staying. There will be people who retire. There will be people who get replaced with lower paid employees. If a teacher retires at 120 and we can hire somebody at 60, I now have $60,000 that I could put towards charter school tuition. I don't want to make the assumption that we're going to have more children enrolled in charter schools than we currently have. Well, could we just check the transportation forms then? Sure. Yeah. At least do

191that. Yeah. I don't know if every I'm just going I don't know like I'm on page 42 I don't know if anybody has comments in between that page and the next page I already gave my comments okay um I already said it before we talked about it already the summer bridges program I'm on the fence is it some portion of it or at all this year um then I go to I I didn't have it marked up earlier so I didn't All right, whatever else. But I think, if I recall, Megan, when you were saying about the Summer Bridges program, you were questioning about the pre-K to K. So my question I have for you is that there's still the same concern after what this name can explain? I'm trying to understand. I still have

192the same, yes, because I have other things that I've noted as we've been discussing that... might need more funding allocated to it. So I don't know where that really would land, the summer program. I think that's what I'm just trying to find out. What are some of the things that people were thinking about adding into the budget so therefore we can at least kind of address those items? Because that's really my question. Was there anything else people wanted to add into the budget so therefore we're looking at? We're going over different things that potentially someone may want to maybe remove in order to add something in. So that's the other part of what I'm just trying to find out. Is there anything else that someone had in mind about, like, for example? Yeah, that's what

193I thought we were trying to do. So I guess on page 46, and I brought this up last year, the remote monitoring from Land Rover and the on-site engineers, those are big line items. that are being carried again. And I guess if we did want to pursue an in-house director of technology, like would some of that scope that's addressed through Land Rover be addressed that way? And my other... So before you go, let's just see if we can get an answer on that one. So as it pertains to a director of technology, we have a network, an engineering network engineer. His services would still be needed due to the behind-the-scenes work that takes place with his role. Ms. Stevens, if you want to elaborate on the support staff that works with the data. Right. I

194think... There are different types of directors of technology. There's the technicians, the technical part having to do with equipment. And then there's instructional technology and data analysis, which would be completely different. So if we were looking at someone who was just doing. the technical part, and we hired a director of technology who was doing that, then certainly that might shift our Land Rover. But I think our needs are more in the area of the instructional technology and looking at aligning curriculum and technology purchases to make sure that we're aligned with statewide initiatives, with goals within the district. I think it's a different person with a different skill set. Okay. And that amount there encompasses a number of people, correct? Yes, it does. So just like that I don't have on the line-by-line, I had can

195we move to electronic timekeeping and what would that cost? Do we know? That's something that I'd like to see included. We actually have equipment in-house. that we are attempting to get up and running to do exactly that. It would be wonderful for us to get it off the ground. The implementation has a lot of front end, I would call it, work. Like, for example, setting up tables within Envision so that when somebody punches in as the night custodian at Northeast, that he has the right job code so that the system knows that he gets whatever the bump is in salary for being a night person versus a day person. It also could be used for... teachers who are assigned to supervision where they would put in vouchers directly into the system and it would be

196electronically approved by the athletic director and then by mary and then by payroll we're we're trying to implement that So we have the hardware, you're saying, currently? We have. And there's nothing else that we need to purchase? We just need to implement this? Yeah, we might need, Steve reminds me, we might need one more. Oh, we have it. Okay, so it's not the equipment. It's the implementation of the system and the clerical time it's going to take to set up the tables so that we could use it properly and envision. Okay, that's. exciting to hear. Is there any change with our cell phone policy? Do we have to buy more pouches or what are we doing next year for the cell phone? I just knew that pouches were expendable, so I was curious what the

197plan was. I don't know that we have a need for more pouches. We're not changing the policy. I mean, it's a state law. I guess I don't know how well it's working. I don't know how many are broken. I don't know how many we've purchased. If we have money in here to buy more, I'm sure kids have lost it and damaged them. They have to pay for the replacement. Right. Or is it a policy that they have to pay for the replacement? That was down the line. I don't think it's right away. Okay. Right. If I recall correctly. So if I recall correctly, I do believe there is money in the technology supply code to replenish the replacements that are needed. For example, for the fifth graders going up to the sixth grade, they did

198not need the Med Park, so the allocation was made through the technology supply code to absorb. those and replacements. What was the question? I said they're not taking them home for the summer even. They're not? Aren't they like assigned to the student? They have like the clear pouch where they just slide their name into it. So it's not like. So at the end of the year you're collecting them again and then we're going to give back the same used pouches to new students the next year? Okay. Do we use Yonder? Yes. I don't see a line for replacement yonder pouches. Okay, maybe we can just break it out just so we, because that'll be interesting to track year to year, how much we're investing in that. Sorry, I know it's late. So going back, I

199didn't touch on the assistant super finance salary. You know, if we wanted to talk about bumping that up a little bit in the... budget. I don't know what page that's on. Charter school, you're going to go back and check the transportation requests to see if we know right away if there's any increases there. Director of technology, you've talked about a few times. Steve did a little checking while. Okay. We were talking about this, so maybe Steve could tell you about the salary. I pulled up the administrator's salary to close disclosure from New York State, which I just keep a file all the time. Okay. On the low end, you'll see some districts are at 175 in Elwood, 174 in Carl Place. These are directors of instructional technology that tend to be more on the learning

200end rather than on the technical end. I saw up in Arlington, New York, which is... not even close by, they were paying 180 for that. There are a good number of districts that pay over $200,000 for their directors of technology. And the districts that are paying at that level are typically people that a director would have a dual expertise in both the... the physical plant and the materials end and the instructional end. However, they also tend to be supported by a significant number of other staff, some that are on the technical end, a la Land Rover, that keep up the infrastructure, and others that are on the technical end that provide staff development and other things. They can't do all of it alone. a bare bones minimum on an instructional end that the lowest I've

201seen anywhere is 174. Contractually, our director would be minimally 172? I believe contractually the director... At or around? At or around 170. I think it's 170 plus 2%. So 173.4. Okay. Okay, so now I didn't have the understanding that we were talking about two different, like last year I think we were talking more of the hardware type technology work that Land Rover provides right now, but now we're talking about a director of instructional technology. Yeah, I do recall a little bit of conversation about instructional and data technology, just a little bit of conversation. Go ahead, Dr. Tong. Thank you. So in terms of the hardware, I wouldn't see a need for us to change. We do get a reimbursement back on Land Rover through BOCES for networking and the infrastructure. Instructionally, I think would be

202the way we would be looking to... in Graft, a director of technology to address instruction and data. Going back to the finance person, personally, I'd rather stay with getting an accountant and purchasing agent because based on what I heard, the accountant would be replacing one person, but that purchasing agent would take off some of that responsibility. that the assistant superintendent of finance and operation currently has to be involved in. So therefore, it would allow that individual to be more focused on what they have to do. So having them at a salary, whatever we have right now, we probably would be able to get someone that would have the ability to do it, especially if we had a purchasing agent. So I'd rather stay with the purchasing agent and stay with the salary. If we went

203up just a little bit in salary, I'm okay, but I think we definitely need this purchasing agent, you know, within our district, and we definitely need an accountant because we're going to be losing someone who has a long history of expertise within our district. So I think these are two people. I think that purchasing agent would be beneficial. We want to look at increasing the salary a little bit. We can, but I think that we definitely still need to keep with the purchasing agent. I'm not in favor of limiting the purchasing agent just to increase the salary of that finance person. That's just me. So I have one question. I'm sorry, did you want to say something? No. Okay, so it's a little bit off this topic, but what can we do or what will

204we do to better control overtime costs in various positions? Because it seems to be it is ballooning, it's growing year after year, I think I would like to better understand what is the process for overtime and how is that approved? When is it approved? And when you see it going over, how do you do a hard stop and say, listen, we're at capacity? Joe, can I just, and then I want you to answer the question, but I think we just also have to remember that we made a lot of cuts. last year in the budget for different areas and that that had like for example just take um Custodian area, that made an impact. And even with security, we made some significant cuts because we had to tighten the reins. So it's a good question,

205but I know there's also controls that were put in place when we were in that financial situation when Dr. Talbot had came in. There were a number of things that were put in place that they look at now. But go ahead, Joe, just answer the question. So just so that you know, the process right now is no person is entitled. to overtime. A person must request overtime and have the reason why the overtime is necessary and have that approved by his or her supervisor and then approved by the assistant superintendent for finance and operations. And there are times, I think, when Steve and Mary also get involved in that process, but I'm not sure about that. Forgive me. I know that it is a process that up... In advance, people are supposed to apply, give

206a reason, and we say yes or no. Sometimes overtime is to our advantage. Quite frankly, paying somebody a time and a half versus hiring a new person and paying health benefits. in maybe in the best financial interest of the school district. It's certainly not in the best health interests of our staff. One way to cut back on overtime is to eliminate exterior groups using our buildings on Saturdays, Sundays. I don't think we want to do that. I don't know what our policy is on charging outside groups for the use of our facilities. But some districts have a fee schedule, and they say if you're going to use our building at a time when a custodian is not normally assigned, you're going to pay that custodian's overtime and that security guard's fee for being there at

207that time. That would be a big change if you don't already do that. There are community groups who use our facilities and rightfully feel, hey, I pay taxes. I should be able to use the facility. But that goes back to Trustee Messman's question about can we rent out the facilities? We can, and we could cover the cost of that overtime by charging community groups for the use. And that would save a tremendous amount. Also, implementing the electronic timekeeping is going to really give us the controls that you're talking about because we're really going to know who's where. But the controls are already there. Like you said, they have to do prior approval. The controls are already in place. The electronic system would help, but the controls are already there. Well, I'm not sure if they're

208there in the sense that Trustee Messman's talking about. Controls in the sense that, yes, there's a process in place. Maybe there could be a more efficient process in place. I don't know what you mean by a more efficient process. Okay. Like digital timekeeping. Yeah, but how does that make it more efficient? It just, it means a different method of recording the time that the person is in. Right now, they put down the time they start, time they end. They write it. And they sign it to indicate, I'm telling you the truth. I started at four and left at 730. I deserve three and a half hours of overtime. That's fine. I'm not arguing the point. But with what you see or what you have seen in these budget lines with overtime in most buildings exceeding

209what is budgeted already, is it your... Is it your belief that a majority of this overtime for custodial staff and security is caused by after hours and other outside groups using it? Is that where the majority of the overtime overage is coming from, is it? And caused by the staff that was cut that we had to fill, backfill with substitutes and with overtime. If somebody is out sick, custodian is out sick. somebody else needs to cover that section of that building that's overtime so I don't know I don't know what you mean by more efficient. If you mean, can we train our custodians to work faster and better? I'm not, I'm not, no, that's not what I was inferring at all. Okay. No, no, no, no. Well, it's two different points. One was just, as

210far as efficiency, I think there are areas that our school district can improve in overall. with efficiency, as far as technology. We've talked a lot about timekeeping. We've talked about, you know, she's not here tonight, but the district clerk coming into the employee timekeeping. All kinds of different scenarios. So that's one thing. But the real, real main point here was how do we curb and control overtime? That's really what I was getting at. Well, I think, in my opinion, I think a good way for the board to see what... is a controllable overtime because as was previously stated not everything is within the district's control um could we get a breakdown of the expenses that the district incurs from using the facilities after hours sure i'm sure i'm sure we can't it would require some

211research but i'm sure we could yeah all right thank you because i feel like that would better separate what percentage of the overtime is based on something that we have control over. All right, so I'm going to circle back to the original thing of the line-by-line. There were a couple of recommendations that have come forward. And with some of the items that have come forward, we just need to find out exactly what Director Warren is going to do. So I think I may have to pause because I won't have a quorum. It's okay, as long as you don't take a vote on anything. Can I just ask a question? Are the attendance clerical still in the latest budget? Because I might have missed it, but it was in my binder version. Yes, the attendance clerical

212has not been removed. You're speaking attendance clerical located where? Middle school, I think. I don't know where they sit. Middle school or high school? Yeah, the attendance clerical in the schools are still intact. I just want to circle back just because I think they just need an understanding about what they need to keep in and what they need to look at. Sure. So just going back to the page three, four, and five, I think... If I recall correctly, we were okay with, I think Juan was the only one that said refit. I think you had said yes or was too sure, Megan, about refit. So if I understand correctly, you were okay with everything on here, except that you were still not too sure about the purchasing agent and the clerical staff for HR, if

213I recall correctly. If I'm wrong, please correct me. That's correct. Okay. All right, so that will give them a direction. I'm not too sure where Juan stood on these, so I have to wait for him to come back in. I know Leslie was okay with those two. So everything we're good with on page three, except for the purchasing agent and clerical staff member, I have to wait for Juan to come back in. I'm not too sure where he stood on that. On page four, I think there's not a consensus for the strategic planner. I was one of the ones, Megan said she was against it. I said I'm not sure. I would say leave it for now, but that might be something that I'd be looking at later on. Right, that's what I said. I

214don't have a consensus for that one. And we can certainly look to lower the cost and perhaps merge it in at a lower cost just to get the support in getting it going. And I believe, if I recall, I think for the new instructional coach, the high school department chairperson, the guidance lead, and the instructional coach for special education, I believe we were all okay with it. I think Juan was the one that was not too sure which way to go. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I believe Juan said no to everything on this page. Yeah. And for the summer bridges, there's not a consensus for summer bridges because there's still some question about exactly if there's anything else that we can do or lower the course for the summer bridges. So there's not

215a consensus for that one. And for page five, the new teacher for class and district, the speech teacher and the psychologist is a yes. I think the school website, I don't think there was consensus on that. I don't think there was a consensus for the athletic train. I think there's more information that wanted to be obtained. And I think we were okay with the wrestling mats, I think. And I wasn't too sure about, I think we were not decided on the new clubs, if I recall correctly. I don't think there was a consensus for the new clubs. I just have a question on the wrestling mats. I don't know if anyone here would know the answer, but do we know how old the existing ones are and what the life expectancy of the new ones

216would be? I don't know what the life expectancy of the new mats are, but I do know that Mr. Farkas tells me that the old mats are beyond their useful life. I'm just curious as to how long we would be making, how often we should expect to be making this purchase. Good question. Just going back to the staff member to manage the school website, I don't think we had a consensus on that. Am I correct? I'm in favor of it. I think I was. I know I was. I didn't know that anybody said no. I think we mostly spoke to what we were questioning, and I know definitely we said we wanted to understand better what we're spending right now for the athletic trainer. Right. So that one needed follow-up. Right. That's why I said

217that one's on hold. It's not a no. It's on hold. I think the website, I think we were okay with it. I think we got a better understanding. And I think the clubs, I wasn't too, because we went back and forth with the clubs and the volleyball, so I'm not too sure on that one. And honestly, I don't think we addressed the mats. So we may have to come back to those items. I'm not saying it's a no, but we may have to come back to those items. This is just my assumption, but I'm thinking that the mats needing to be replaced, if it's not now, it will eventually be a liability. Yeah, I agree. Dr. Landau and I have just discovered that 12 years, depending on the mat, you should storage with vinyl coated

218mats such as Resolite can last over a decade. While world standard mats, such as Dolomor, last five to seven years, average warranties are one to five years, according to AI. Thank you very much, AI. So I'm not saying no on these items, but I just said I don't recall that we had a good discussion on it, but I just don't recall what the consensus was. So I guess just holistically, I would have been interested to understand a way to not go to the top of the tax cap. So just holistically. So that's what, you know, $12,000, $10,000. It was more just higher level. Could we just not build everything in on this wish list this first year around and not go to the top of the tax cap? And I'm pretty sure that everyone is

219clear that one is doesn't. want to add anything new. He wanted to see a 0% tax cap or, you know, a 0% increase. So I don't need to really, you know, debate the new clubs at the middle school, particularly. It was just more, we had so much in excess at the end of this year. And was there, could we find a balance that we were still supporting? the academic growth and achievement of the students with some of these new roles, but not going to the utmost, the last penny that we needed from the taxpayer. Would you give us some sense of where you are, Megan? If we were able to reduce this so that the tax levy increase was 1.49% versus 1.56, would that... I'm just trying to get some sense of what it is

220that you mean by not going to the limit. Yeah. Or are you looking to maybe use it with this existing budget but not move those funds into reserves and utilize that excess for this year? I am not wondering if that's part of the thought process. We are using the reserves to lower the tax. We are using the reserves to balance the budget. We are, yes. We're returning. The way we're balancing this budget is by counting on having excess available, unexpended appropriations in this year's budget of approximately $2.3 million and... if necessary, taking money that we're now putting into the appropriate reserves instead of unassigned fund balance and using that money to fill the gap. And that would be with the 1.56% levy. But if you said to us it had to be 1.49%, well, we'll

221find seven hundredths of a percent in one of the reserves and... present a budget that does it that way. You know that in the long run, what I'm concerned about is not next year or the year after. I understand. And I understood your spreadsheet. It's just the nature of having ended the year with so much money and going back and saying, we still need to ask for the top of it. And so we obviously have gotten by without... this $15 million in reserves, whether or not it was good, bad, or indifferent. And we could have been making our way there slowly, but instead we made it there in one year. And now we're just saying, we just want to keep going to the top. So that's where I'm not fully on board, you know, and

222I don't, we haven't necessarily really talked about your recommendation here to put. the good percentage of the unassigned fund balance to the ERS and the, just, you know, the thought process of that and why we aren't maybe moving some of that into capital or why are we not, I don't know. We really haven't talked about that. There's a very simple answer to that question, if I may address it. If you put it into capital, you can't use it for future reductions of tax levy. you can only use it to do capital projects. If you put it into the TRS, ERS, unemployment insurance, EBILAR reserves, you could use that money on an annual basis to reduce the burden on the taxpayer because capital must be spent on capital. It can't be spent on anything inside the

223general fund budget. Thank you. So, but is that something that we should ask the taxpayers then? Like, would they want to use some of this money that we have and put it in? Like, I know you said that we can do it without a proposition. I don't know. It's like there's so much that needs to be done in the buildings too. We have only carrying of... very bare minimum of the trues versus the falses in here. So that's... But I also think that we tried to do something in terms of addressing the needs of the buildings, and there was a decision not to move forward with that. And even like with the TRS, it's also a situation that... we were predicting that it may only increase a certain amount, but sometimes we get blown out

224of the water and instead of being 9%, the increase may end up being 12 or 13%. Right now it's on the way down because the market has done so well in the past two years. I'm sorry, what did you mean by we made a decision not to? With the EPC. Well, that was, okay, but that was, the scope of that project wasn't necessarily the priorities of the building needs. Yes, there were certain aspects of it that I'm not going to go into right now, but there were certain aspects of it that we were looking at that would have addressed the long-term. conditions of the certain aspects of the hallway at Northwest. Certain aspects of the buildings were going to be addressed with the EPC, but I'm not going to go down that track right now.

225I think that what we, all the questions that are being, and trust me, we all live in a district. We all want our taxes to be, we don't want them to go up. But we also need to look at how do we continue to maintain an adequate so therefore we don't go back to where we were. And I think to me that's most important. There were years ago that was like 10, 12, 11, 13. It was okay. And we had a big jump this year that was not expected with the money that was not utilized from the last budget. I think that... We're looking at some items now that we said that okay, we're not too sure if we want to these items We know that we don't want to keep in other items were

226not too sure there's certain things that came up in terms of having a increase in the finance salary we have to have everyone back here at the table because People need to agree to do that and maybe not do the purchasing so there's certain things in here that we can't decide tonight because we don't have everyone here to make that particular decision. I think they have a starting point from us. And everyone clearly has heard different perspectives. Let me just remind you, April 15th. I know. You technically have until April 21st. Technically. Right. So right now we're at April 15th because there's not a clear consensus and there's more things that need to be discussed. And I think that's the key right there. What you're saying is that if everybody was here, the board majority

227would say go to the top of the tax gap. I think that's what you're saying, right? I'm not doing that. I don't appreciate that, Megan, because I'm not saying that. Everyone has a difference of opinion. So you want to go to the top of the tax gap. I don't know right now. You don't know right now. I'm trying to see. I don't want a 0%. I don't want a 0%. So my thing is right now is that we have identified items that we would like to potentially keep in. We've identified items that we want to keep out. Where we're at right now, we're talking about a director of technology, but we're not too sure. That requires more information. We may not be able to do that this year. We're talking about... the finance and operations.

228We want to increase the salary, but we're not too sure how much we want to go for the salary. So the key is this. At this point in time, there's questions that need to be answered, but we have to be able to answer these questions in a very timely fashion because we have April 21st to do it. So there are certain things on here that... that I didn't want to, certain things I wanted to keep in, but other people wanted to take it out. So no, it's not that. I think we just need to make some decisions. If we want to increase the salary of the finance and operation person, we need to see what that looks like in here, being that there's certain items that we said take out. So that's number one. I

229would just say plus $20,000. Right, but so we took out a couple things that people said that as a consensus we did not want. So we may be able to add that increase in salary. Now coming back... Plus $12,000, minus geese removal, and you put it... But not only that, but guess what? Remember, if we don't do the athletic training, depending on the information that we get back, then that's $25,000 right there that would have gone for health insurance that would come out. That could go to that particular line. So should we go through our list of where we are right now? Just because we're not, I don't have an answer, right? I say, you're asking me, what would I want as my tax levy increase if it wasn't 1.56? I don't have the answer

230to that because we're having this discussion. And I think that there's some things that could be postponed for next year and carried maybe the following year. that might be able to bring us down a little bit below. But that's what I just went through on pages 3, 4, and 5. That was what I just went through in terms of the items that, based on what everyone had said before, which items that people wanted to keep, which items they weren't too sure on, and which items they definitely did not want to keep. So we just went through that. But there's some other things, right? So I'll just read my notes, okay? So I would say add some money to the assistance super finance. Charter school, we're going to double check if we have any additional students

231because we're opposed to carrying additional funding, even though we went through last year and we carried additional funding, and that additional funding didn't even cover this year's. Potential to scale back on a summer program, no strategic plan, no clerical staff HR addition. We need more cost information on what we're paying for the athletic trainer. Geese removal. probably eliminate since we don't think it's effective. I had asked the query about the bus monitors round trip and the yonders. What are we carrying and to have it be broken out separately. So that was my note. Yeah, I mean, I think so that everyone, so those are things that were being, a lot of things were already addressed. I think that the key thing here is this, is that with the clerical staff or HR and the purchasing

232agent, that's one thing that we're not too sure on still. So I feel like I... took the purchasing agent off my list of cuts. But I still left the clerical staff HR. So I think we have a direction in terms of where to go right now. And I think with that... No, but I think before, when I went through the list, when I went through page three, four, and five, I re-went down the list on page three. And one thing that was still not certain was on page three was the purchasing agent and the clerical staff. So Megan just said that she's okay with the clerical staff. So now it's just the purchasing agent that we're not too sure. No, vice versa. Now you're okay with the purchasing agent but not the clerical staff. Okay.

233So now that's new because when I went through it before, she wasn't too sure about those two. And may I, Ms. Johnson, ask, is that the direction of the board or is that? No, this is direction of the board because it's not just me saying it. So it's based on what happened earlier when I went down and I asked people what they wanted when everyone was here. And being that I don't have anyone else here, I can only go by what's happening right now. So based on what happened before what people said, on page three... Everyone's okay with everything except not everyone, but we have a consensus that everyone is okay with everything except for the HR clerical staff. So that was on page three. Did anyone else besides Megan say that they didn't want

234to go forward with the HR clerical staff? Juan wasn't too sure. Is he sure now? Okay, still not. So that's what I'm saying. On page four. That was, I know the strategic plan, there was not a consensus with the instructional coach, the high school department chairperson, the guidance lead, the instructional coach for special education, there was a consensus on that. The Summer Bridges program, there's still some question about the Summer Bridges program because there's some more things, information that we may or may not want to do. So on page five. So what information do you want? I think there was. I think for... Is this Thelma program a no? It's not a no. I think there was a couple people that still needed to decide. I'm not too sure what additional information is needed to

235make a decision. So I know one is no all the way down, but I wasn't too sure with Megan. I think her, I don't want to speak for Megan, so go ahead, Megan. I was, yeah, I had crossed off the rising kindergarten. So that would reduce the cost by nine. $19,000, $20,000. Right. So you're okay with the rise in 9, 1, 3, and 6? Are you sure? Because did you hear the rationale? I think that's one of the more important components. So this is not like, am I sure about each individual item? I was interested in seeing... That we could come together and not go to the top of the tax levy. That's what I'm interested in. So I it's I the idea of a summer bridge program. Sure. Okay. It sounds nice, but we

236I just I can't get behind yet that we ended up with all of this money and we're still going to ask for the most for next year. That's I can't get behind that. So I don't know what it is that. you know, we can agree to disagree to carry this year and postpone it to the next year. I don't know what that is. But those were just some concepts that I had marked up as I was going through of, well, maybe we can't do the whole every rising class. That was just a concept because I do still interested in the bus monitors round trip and the whatever, other things. Like, are we covering charter school correctly? And there's a give and take. So I think what I'm trying to do with this is from this

237is figure out what are we keeping in and what are we going to take out. That's step one. Step two would be all the other recommendations that have been suggested in the conversation. What happens if we, items that we took out... Could we put them in replacing some of the things that we said there's not a consensus to do? So that way there's a direction that they can go on. And then from that point, when we meet on April 15, we're going to have to look at this again. So that's all. I'm trying to help give them a direction in terms of where to start. So the questions that have been brought up about the monitors, not the questions, but the discussion about the monitors, about the geese, about increasing the salary for the assistance

238to finance the operation, all those different items, they can now say, all right, if we've taken a couple of these things out or we're not too sure of these items, if we put them in, we're still going to be at the same point. Or we're going to be higher, we're going to be lower. So it gives them a spot, it gives them an area to start with. That's all I'm just trying to give them. And we're not, on April 15th, I don't see us approving the budget on April 15th. We're going to probably have to do it on April 21st because we'll probably have to have a little bit more discussion on this. That's all I'm trying to do. A clarifying question? So when we go back, we just want to make sure we are

239on the same page with some direction, and I appreciate you trying to give us that direction. We can go back and make some adjustments with some of the figures that are here. But bottom line, when we look at the 1.56, is the board comfortable with giving us a number so that we can hover around that number if it's 1.5, 1.4? taking into consideration all of the items discussed and working the budget down to where there will be a differential of maybe one point, whatever you all would propose. And I know that's not, that's difficult as well. So, for example, like with the strategic planner, you know, that's a real passion of mine. We're not all on the same page. But if we were to reduce that to $25,000 to start the launch, to start building

240this vision and this five-year plan so that we will have a roadmap to where we're going on paper with stakeholders buying into that. Is that something we can go back to the drawing table and do? With the summer program, perhaps reanalyzing and looking to see what kind of reductions we can make with that. With the athletic trainer, I do want to let you know we are contracted for $85,000 currently. So the $85,000 was a wash either way, just plus the benefit. Right, so it was the benefits that really were behind that. I mean, we could just say, listen, with all things given, at this point we want to remain with the consultant, with the flex schedule. $85,000, that particular company can give us three, two or three a day based on whatever our schedules are

241and needs are. We can go back and have those conversations. Are we comfortable with perhaps giving us a ceiling not to exceed and we can go back and take these items and rework them? You're saying not to exceed like the 1.56, are you saying? Well, we're at 1.56 now. Is it a consensus that the board is not comfortable at that? And you would like for us to decrease it and bring it back at what? Percentage. For me, I want to, two things. One, I want to, and I know not to drive you crazy, for me, I want to see still at the 1.56 and what does that look like, but also what would it look like maybe at a 1.5? Would that make any significant difference? But in terms of, do you want, Steve came

242up with a brilliant idea. If I translate that 1.56 or the 1.5 or the 1.4. into what the average homeowner would see on their tax bill. Would that help you to make a decision as to whether, I know it wouldn't help you one because you wanted zero, I understand. But would that kind of information be helpful to you to see, hey, it's $20 if we reduce the tax levy to 1.49. $20. It would probably be helpful. I don't know what it is, to tell you the truth, but would that be helpful to the rest of the board, not one? Well, there's not a consensus, so you can't even do it. Is this something that we need a consensus on? It's just data that he's going to be showing us. I don't think it's something that

243we can censor. I think if you do it at the 1.56, don't go higher than that. 1.5, you just do 1.4. You can't go higher than 1.56. I know. But I could certainly tell you what every 100th of 1% on the tax levy decrease would mean for the average homeowner. That's fine. And that, for you, would give you some sense of what it is that... We're discussing here. So, I mean, I know that ideally, look, every one of us would want to provide a better educational program at no additional cost. Every one of us would want to do that. We don't want to raise taxes just for the sake of raising taxes. You know that. But we also don't want to put you in jeopardy five years from now. And that's what we're trying to

244balance. Juan's point is very well taken, that we need to right the ship, to keep it running smoothly. And every time you talk about a big dip, you're talking eventually about a big rise. You can't do it any other way. Costs are going to increase, guys. Health insurance is going to cost more down the road. Salaries are going to get bigger. You cannot do it. Keep going down. You can't. So we're just trying to keep it as level as we can. Well, I'll just say this, and I'm not going to say anything new, but to Trustee Messman's point, for me, it's at least a little bit difficult to understand the amount of money that we had. I call it a surplus. You don't. But the surplus funds that we have had, record surplus and then

245to be able, you know, I mean, Joe, you said in a conversation or two ago that... Here's what you have to keep in mind. The year before we had a record deficit. Yes. That's not the way to run this ship. You're right. You cannot have a deficit followed by a big surplus. If you put that money back into those reserves, you'll be back to where you were. three years ago. That's all. You're covering a hole that was created. You're not keeping money that you don't have the right to keep. You're just replenishing money that you should have never had to use. That's the way to think about it. Well, like you said a couple conversations ago here tonight, Sometimes when situations like that occur, some people feel that they've been overtaxed. I hear you. So

246the sentiments that I'm expressing to you are my own. No one else is influencing me. No one else is saying this to me. But just on paper, yes, we had two very difficult years, followed by a surplus. To almost restore some faith. I know it's probably in this case more is more. But to restore some faith, I need to see something. And like I said before, it's not about adding and adding more things. And the way I look at budgets is maybe a little bit different to some individuals. All these things that we talked about tonight, for me, none of this is really on or off the table. It's how important are these things? Do you want to work them in? Do you want to put them in and find the funds for them somewhere

247else? And that goes into a more bigger physiological, you know, psychological kind of thing is what is the overall direction that you are trying to do? Like Trustee Messman said, if... if increasing what we pay to our business official, if that's well worth the money and that's going to help us in the long run. That's not a liability. That's money well spent. So, sir, if I may, that's exactly why we made the recommendations that we did. We're recommending to you a purchasing agent because we believe that a purchasing agent will be able to procure goods and services at a lower cost than we're currently experiencing. We're recommending to you an instructional coach because we believe that our teachers need... coaching. It's not that they're poor. It's not that they're underqualified. They just need some leadership,

248some guidance, and that's what an instructional coach would do. So everything that we've recommended to you is exactly in line with what you've just asked for. Right. But like I said, there's a longer list of things that we need or would like to have than there is money. It's the way it always is. So you have to focus in on what really matters. So I'm going to go back to a question that Dr. Talbot just asked not too long ago. We know we're at the 1.56. What do we want to see Joe go down to? 1.5, 1.45? So they need some type of direction so we know. I wouldn't go below 1.5, but I would like to see the analysis, the impact on the individual household. I think I owe you that, for sure. I

249owe you that at least. mad at myself that I didn't think of that before tonight. Even if you're able to go down 1.45, just 1.5, 1.45. It's going to be a straight line. Whatever one hundredth of a percent mean, if you want to look at 1.45, that's 11 hundredths of a percent. I'm not necessarily looking at it. It's just the principle of the matter. It's not necessarily like it's $100 per family. It's just the principle of the matter. But yes, run the numbers. Sure. But 1.45, Lisa, I guess, as a target? I don't know what that means as far as what would not make the cut. So what I'm looking at is if... to give them some guidance, if it's a 1.45, what would they have to remove and also take into account some of

250the things that have been suggested? So if we put this in, if we put it in like this, if we do this, it brings it down to 1.45, hypothetically. If we do this, if we do that, do that, it'll bring it to the 1.5. And at 1.56, this is what it will look like. So therefore, we can see. and address the different things that have been brought up tonight. Not just what's on page three, four, and five, but some of the recommendations that have been brought up as well. So I think that way it gives them some direction on where to go. So therefore we as a board have a direction and an idea of what potentially we would like to do. Because we meet again on April 15th. And by that point, by the

251time we finish April 15th, we have to be pretty clear. So therefore, by April 21st, we can vote on the budget. Because April 21st, we have to meet to vote on the BOCES budget, but we're probably going to have to do our budget on April 21st as well. We're not going to be, we can't, there's nothing that we can present, I don't think. on April 15th that we could try? No, what we can do is in news and notes at the end of this week and, well, no, not the end of this week. Hopefully at the end of next week if we have an opportunity to put some of this together for you so you could see some scenarios. I will tell you that one of the scenarios will be we can cut this, this,

252and this. Another one of the scenarios will be we'll end up with a million dollars less five years from now. That's a scenario. No cuts. Just take it out of fund balance. That's the scenario. I don't recommend it, but that's one way to go. I think we should keep the services that we think are necessary for children to have in this district. and keep the impact on the taxpayers as minimal as we can, but I'm not on the board. So I don't have to make that tough decision. All I have to do is tell you what the impact would be. And I do want to point out to you that we have one last thing to do tonight. We'll stay with option one. Option one is status quo. Status quo right now. Because we can't

253decide. I agree. So we're not going to present any resolution to you. No proposition on the ballot, right? No. Thank you for the efforts to put the information together, though. Yeah. Actually, this was Dr. Talbert's suggestion. She really. She put the pin in it. We've got to let you know, here's the five choices you have. Give us direction, because if you wanted to go to option five, we're not talking about $10,000 here or $20,000 there. We're talking about $805,000 to go to option five, which is every child gets more service. And that's, I know that that would be a goal, but it can't be. We're staying with option one, status quo. Got it. It's 1031. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Motion. Mr. Mayor is first. Second. One moment, one second. All those in

254favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries 4-0. Good night.