001States of America which it stands one nation under God indivisible we'll share the good news Tom Inglesby special education teacher from VHS the VHS Model UN Club attended the 46th annual Hilton Model UN conference students participated in a variety of committee committees Gretchen Weisher was the first Batavia student in more than a decade to chair a Model UN Committee, so congrats to her and congrats to everyone who participated. Karen Wood, the VHS musical drama director. They're presenting a comedy play, Game of Tiaras, at VHS November 21st at 7, November 22nd at 2 and 7 p.m. They've worked really hard to bring this to stage. It features well-known Disney princesses and a Game of Thrones style dramatic power struggle. In case anyone is wondering about that. The students are doing a fantastic job, says Ms. Wood.
002We hope our audience find it as hilarious as we have during rehearsals. Tiffany Fye, Teacher's Aid Jackson, Sarah Whitehead is doing amazing as a first-time teacher. moving on to the presentations first up dr. crime BMS update mr. language is here in this campus hello everyone thank you for having us tonight to give an update about the table middle school we're really excited to share all the wonderful things that we're doing this year and last year missing on is our master schedule professional learning community and MTSS And the MTSS is a multi-tiered system of supports for attendance, academics, behavior, and social-emotional learning. All of our goals are aligned with the Contamia City School District goals, and we're going to just kind of break down how our goals are aligned. So first of all our leadership team
003is our guiding coalition as we have entered our journey of becoming a professional learning community last year establishing our guiding coalition of school leaders and teachers that were really invested in helping us become a professional learning school. We worked This group came together and they really are making a lot of the decisions on our systems and structures for implementing our PLC. And our main focus last year was to strengthen this team and build a common understanding of academic and behavioral needs or focus for our Batavia Middle School students and faculty. Our guiding coalition helped shape several professional development sessions with our faculty to develop our mission, vision, values, and goals. our collaborative work and our faculty participated in several collaborative discussions to articulate what qualities and or skills would you want for your most beloved
004child in your life to develop while at our school what is the single most important purpose of our school and what must our school become in order to accomplish the mission This year our collaborative work has focused on shaping our vision for how to accomplish our mission and our faculty has explored some of our priorities for what do we hope our school to become, what behaviors do we want to see in our team, and what values will help us achieve our goals this year. And I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that our mission statement is our BMS school community ensures that all students will grow academically, socially, and emotionally at high levels. And then our vision statement is, we strive to build a consistent, safe, and collaborative school community where every student feels valued, supported,
005and empowered to achieve excellence. Through integrity, respect, and accountability, we foster academic success, strong character, and inclusivity. Our top priorities for our professional teams is to have a safe and orderly school. And following our creed, we are... Our creed is what is our overall... foundational statement that students are determined to be respectful, responsible, and safe. And all of our work is resolved, is around our creed and our behavior matrix. And we are continuously shaping our school assemblies, classrooms, and small group lessons around the creed and the matrix. We have purposefully, we have purposely have regular team building activities throughout our Gather and Grow days with students each month. and given the unique students of our school this year our student support team has really focused on crisis team responses and creating support plans for individual
006students classrooms and targeted for each grade level also part of our safe and orderly schools is our cell phone policy i know that might speak a little bit about that So I'm Mike Langers, the grades five and eight assistant principal at the middle school. And one of the bright spots this year for sure for us related to safe and worldly schools and student management has been the transition to our new cell phone policy. So we currently have fifth and sixth grade students coming into the school, keeping their devices in their lockers. That's going really, really well. The seventh and eighth grade hand them in every morning and receive them back at the end of the day. That has drastically reduced. just about any and all issue related to a cell phone. Additionally, far fewer instances
007of issues that happen outside of school are brought inside of school and students, you know, in the past share those videos, share those TikToks. That's virtually non-existent at our school this year. So this has really been a bright spot for us. So back to Dr. Kine for some more. How do you reward? So implementing positive behavior reward system at BMS it plays a vital role in shaping our student behavior and building a supportive learning environment. When students are recognized for meeting expectations demonstrating kindness putting forth effort making good choices it reinforces the behaviors that we want to see more often in our school and instead of solely focusing on corrective negative actions positive rewards proactively teach students what appropriate behavior looks like. and some of our positive rewards are that they earned rewards to be
008able to slash the principals and we got doused by 75 of our school last year with hysterical pictures but that kind of captures it all up we have several assemblies that we are focusing on respect responsibility being determined to learn last year we did a ticket like catch you doing good and you would earn tickets and then all of the tickets were put into the offices and students were pulled at random and we had 25 students each week come down for a hot cocoa and candy sugar and little party so that went over really well and it just really showed us how much the students will respond to the positive rewards we also have student of the month each month we're highlighting students for either overall demonstrating our creed or specifically each month you know
009like we're demonstrating respect or responsible or determined to learn or being safe we brought in outside assemblies mr peace to come in and talk about bullying and acceptance and just understanding that everybody has their own unique needs we also have popsicles with the principals to welcome our fifth grade students and our fifth grade orientations. And for positive rewards, we have Barney Drinks, which is a therapy dog that comes to our school, as well as Tilly Time. Some of our challenges that we experience with a safe and orderly school is that this year particularly we're seeing severe mental health and behavioral needs. There's not enough mental health supports to meet the needs within our school currently and few students are receiving significant time and attention from our student support team. Our student support team is our
010counselors, social worker, administrators, SEL liaison and psychologist and our social worker. And large amount of students we're seeing at each grade level not able to access these supports because the severe needs are taking up our crisis team. Our primary focus is on our master schedule and improving the process for creating the master schedule. We had some challenges this year with our schedule and we spent the last few months gathering feedback to help shape what our process will look like for this upcoming year. And our master scheduling team will collaboratively develop and finalize a comprehensive master schedule that balances class size, maximizes instructional time, ensures equitable access to core and elective courses, and aligns with our MTSS. supports and We are creating master schedule that balances students needs course offering and staff availability We're also having
011a collaborative team of administrators counselors and department leads that will help guide this process And we'll have a detailed final draft by June 15th and then our finalized student schedules by July 31st so that we can share with families earlier than we did this year and then we want to have an open house where there will be evening hours that kids can come and walk their schedules and look at and set up their lockers if they would want to. So that students can just be able to envision what their year will look like before the year begins. Our primary focus this year is to gather regular feedback from stakeholders throughout the school year. Each month we ask three guiding questions. What's working well? What challenges or issues are we facing? And what do students and
012staff need from administration? So this is some of the positive feedback that we've gotten about our schedule is that we have a lot more team planning and collaboration and common planning times are appreciated. We have an increase in academic supports and students have more opportunity for interventions and win time, what I need. There's organizational improvements. We like the career attendance tracking and the addition of iReady Labs. iReady Labs replaced our learning labs, which we found we had a lot of, they were very unstructured and we had a lot of behavioral needs coming out of that. So we switched it to, it's still like a learning lab, but the first half of the time. On ACE days, they'll do a 15-minute ELA lesson for MyReady, and on BDF, they'll do a 15-minute lesson for IReadyMath, and
013then they have the remainder of time to work like a regular study hall on any academic needs that they would have. Also, teachers like the collaboration between teachers and administrators, and schedules have improved as well as class sizes. So this is a focus for us with the collaborative culture. So the challenges that we face with our schedule is that we're understaffed primarily in special education AIS and mental health our large class sizes Specifically special area teachers and we have too few teachers having difficult covering all of our Supervisories and that leads to a lack of available teachers to monitor halls and bathrooms Which is where we're seeing a lot of the behaviors persist in our school another main focus for us this year is to grow our MTSS and our professional learning communities and our
014for professional learning communities we are really working to define roles and responsibilities for our leadership team our intervention team and our teacher teams our purpose is to enhance collaborative teaching and practices and improve academic and behavioral outcomes and our goal is to develop a comprehensive multi-tiered system of support framework with tiered support systems and create intervention plans for students who require additional support Why is our school becoming a professional learning community important? We have an increased focus on using data to drive our decision makings and supports this year. Our fundamental purpose of our school is to provide a guaranteed and viable education for all students and having regular data-driven conversations through our PLC process will help our students academic achievements and growth as one of the fundamental aspects of our professional teams. Our iReady diagnostic
015is administered three times throughout the year and this is our primary system for tracking academic growth at this time. And currently our fall data shows that 59% of our students in math are Where they should be in the beginning of the year students should be one grade level below and one grade level below because you're measured with the growth that you're supposed to make at the end of the year So 41% of our students though are two or three grade levels below in math currently And for our reading, 47% of our students are where they need to be or exceeding those goals, but 53% are two or three or more grade levels below. So we do have a goal this year to create a data profile and not just rely on one measure of data.
016We're using our... Our state assessment data as well, but we need to have a more comprehensive understanding of our developmental needs of our students with their decoding, their comprehension, and their mathematical understanding. Our academic intervention team is working closely to help administer several different additional assessments three times a year to help us understand the specific academic needs of our students, and this helps shape our classroom and small group interventions for students in our school. Part of our celebrations from our teacher feedback is around professional learning communities is that our colleagues are supportive, creating a strong sense of family and teamwork. There's a strong focus on learning, collaboration, and building positive relationships with students. There's engagement in the new curriculum, homework routines and independent transitions are improving, contributing to a productive and encouraging environment. And overall,
017teens are experiencing positive collaboration throughout the school year. So this is just a quick... Just a picture of one of the strategies that we learned when our guiding coalition went on our three-day solution tree training that our Conference this summer and it's called the 15-day challenge and it's where you're mapping out your units I think they did a little bit more than 15 days, but using your power standards Using your pre assessments to drive your instruction and breaking it down throughout the year and our fifth grade is really taken off using this 15-day challenge to kind of shape their cycles of looking at how students are growing according to our power standards. So next I'm going to turn it over to Christine Cameron. Good evening. I'm Christine Cameron. I am the assistant principal for grades
0186 and 7 at the middle school. So one of the things that Dr. Cryan has tasked me with leading this year is MTSS. MTSS stands for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. And MTSS provides targeted support for students who are struggling behaviorally, academically, socially, emotionally, and with their attendance. So the purpose of our MTSS team is to provide a proactive data-driven framework that supports students in those areas that I just mentioned academically behaviorally socially emotionally and their attendance our MTSS goals this year are to cultivate a shared accountability and high expectations to improve outcomes for student success. We want to develop whole school initiatives that lead to a positive culture and climate, improved behaviors, increased attendance, academic success, and social-emotional growth for all students. We would like to implement next-level intervention plans for individual students that focus
019on targeted intervention, progress monitoring, and follow-through. Then we would also like to support students mental health and ensure a welcoming and inclusive environment for all Something that we've implemented this year is a base document. So our team consists of Megan myself and Mike our school psychologists school counselors our school social worker an SEL rep our nurse and sometimes when we need a teacher and our interventionist each week our team comes together And one week we discuss our building or grade level needs and then the next week we discuss individual students who have been referred to our team. Our agenda on the left hand side keeps us on track and then the spreadsheet pictured on here helps us organize our data. Our data is put into buckets. Behavioral, those are our office referrals. And Mike is
020responsible for bringing that data and disaggregating that. Our next bucket is attendance. We look at daily attendance, tardies, grade level attendance, and school-wide attendance. I'm responsible for that. Megan and Karen Shusky come with academic data and they are looking at progress reports, quarter reports, benchmarks, New York State assessments, and our region's results. Then our social-emotional learning consists of our counselors, our social worker, and they come with risk assessments, threat assessments, and general updates. And then our nurse comes with medical updates, physicals, immunizations, and anything that's happening within the building. So like I said, we meet weekly, but these are broken up. So bi-weekly we talk about our whole school and we look at, we review attendance, grades, referrals, SEL reports, and it's on a broad level. We begin to bucket our student concerns by grade
021level and whole school. We look for patterns and trends. We analyze data, discuss and ask questions, reflect and interpret what's going on. And then we kind of discuss and communicate what we're going to do from there. Are we going to have an assembly? Are we going to have a gather and grow? Are we going to have SEL lessons? Or do we need to talk to specific grade levels? And then the next week we have our Tier 3 meetings. That's where we are talking about individual students who have been referred to us from a teacher, a counselor, an administrator, or a team. We review that particular student's attendance, grades, behavior reports, and then we communicate with their teachers to get more information, like anecdotal notes. And then we begin to bucket that student's concerns where we
022think the student needs We analyze that data and discuss and then we create a next level intervention plan for that student with tiered supports We communicate that plan with all of their teachers And support staff and then we progress monitor and we review that every four to six weeks So I'd like to share some behavioral data with you related to how our students are doing at the middle school And so this shows our data over the last four years, our referrals for the months of September, October, and then overall combined of the two. So this data in and of itself doesn't specifically say anything, but when you look at really what's going on, our students come to us, many of them come to us with the need for more skill development. skill development in problem
023solving, in managing frustration tolerance, in managing conflict and disagreement, how to respectfully show that disagreement, and how to respectfully articulate that frustration, whether that be in the classroom or otherwise. We have some great partners that help our students with this at the middle school, as we talked about our social-emotional learning teachers. They provide circles, lessons, mediations, our counselors, and we do a lot of one-on-ones with students to help them through this. We also have some outstanding partners, whether that be DSS, Horizons, Uconnect, STEP. They partner extremely well with us and provide a lot of support to us, specifically after school and outside of school. We're at a current pace to be kind of set some records this year. And it is difficult to really get to much other than behavior on a daily basis, whether
024that's counseling staff or administrators. So this is the overall referrals by the first couple months. Next up is something that we are very, very proud of. Last year we had a significant increase in actual fights to students or more in actual physical education. This year we have dropped that significantly and a large part of the success there is due to our staff, whether they be teachers, teacher aides, counselors, devoting the time to build relationships with students. And that does a few things. That makes them feel safe that they can come to us and say, I'm having an issue with this person. Can you help me with it? And also, to be perfectly honest, brings other students that say, so-and-so and so-and-so are having a problem. You should probably go and talk to them. So those
025relationships are paramount. As I mentioned earlier, the issue with the cell phones bringing issues in from the previous night is almost nil. And that has also been a huge factor in dropping this down. This is something that we're really, really proud of. One thing that is up this year are the number of threats to staff and students. While this... Looks not so great on paper here again. These are not turning into fights. They're not turning into necessarily physical altercations Students are coming to us and saying I'm having some trouble With somebody that just threatened me. I don't want to get trouble. Can you help me with this situation? While our fights are down. We do have more students that are expressing their frustration through pushing somebody else or hitting someone else Here again, these are
026not turning into fights. This is another indicator that we struggle to support our students that are struggling with mental health or with behavioral needs. that we really need to devote extra time to getting to know them even better and to building those skills, whether they be with our counselors that push into classrooms once or twice a month to teach specific lessons, or our social-emotional learning teachers, or those one-on-one conversations that we talked about with, that we have with our students and the meetings that we have with parents. So these are the traditionally the top three offenses that we see at the middle school their disruption insubordination and unacceptable language this to us here again shows the need for us to continue to build those strong relationships to for students to continue to understand the job
027at hand when it comes to being a student and that's the job to come to school to be respectful to work on expressing that frustration tolerance in a positive way and and figure out what it means to make it through a 42-minute class period Just wanted to show that you know we have some similar numbers with the current 10th grade that's in the high school, so You know we have We have some struggles you know at the middle school some challenges But we do have some bright spots in that while the data that you just saw you know, is a little bit of a challenge. We do have a great majority of our students that are rising to the occasion or exceeding our expectations. And staff feedback has been positive, especially with the cell phone
028policy and our attempts to limit fighting at school. As I mentioned the volume of referrals, you know, we're on pace for for quite a number this year and it's hard to quantify mental health needs because sometimes you don't know what they are until you need them in that moment. So we are doing we're currently doing a time study for our counselors and administrators and other support staff to see exactly what they're devoting their time to in terms of the health needs behavioral needs and how we can best utilize the supports and further build up the supports that we have. Related to the community, one big challenge that we have is that one of our partners, Horizons, for example, they come into the school, they do a wonderful job. They're overbooked. We could use significantly more
029mental health direct counseling, but they are overbooked. Another issue that we've always had struggles with is getting students to STEP. The STEP program is a wonderful partner of ours. They do a great job. You will have some families though that might be homeless for example living at the hotel on the far side of the thruway that are doing everything that they're being asked to do but they don't have a vehicle to get their son or daughter that's struggling with behavior to stop. We've worked with the SS and we have some ideas to try to pull that off but those are some of the challenges that we have with you know the folks at the middle school and the partners that we have. Thank you. Sorry. One thing we are incredibly excited about and very, very
030proud of is that we obtained a grant to have peer mediators. And 25 of our students this month participated in a three-day peer mediation training at the Y. They developed essential skills in active listening, open-ended questioning, reflective statements, conflict resolution, and peer support. And this group will pioneer BMS's new peer mediation program, serving with neutral facilitators to empower their peers to resolve conflicts independently. And our kids are very excited about it. Sometimes kids... respond better to working through thinking about how what their choices were why were their choices a concern and how are we going to move forward in a positive and productive way to have those conversations with your peer sometimes has more of an impact than on adults or administrators so after our three-day training Our student feedback from our 25 students is
031that they believe that BMS needs a peer mediation program because so many middle schoolers struggle with conflicts and they don't always know how to solve their problems on their own. Peer mediation can help prevent fights, keep friendships together, and make a school a happier, safe place. It gives students a comfortable, non-intimidating way to express their feelings, especially since some of them may prefer talking with peers rather than adults. Overall the program can help students handle disagreements in a better way, a calmer way, and support those who feel overwhelmed or upset. And we're excited to start that this month with students helping to peer mediate. We've done a lot of activities, our overall focus, and again, we have some really great positives that have come. We've had some challenges that we're working through, but overall, our
032kids are coming into the building. They're happy. They're engaging. We're building a positive community. We had our pep rally this year, which was... you know, absolutely fantastic, very well behaved, a lot of excitement and enthusiasm. We have some team challenges that we are using in our win time where... Teams are coming together to work together to solve problems and a lot of STEAM type of activities. We have had several different theme weeks and dress-up days. We had our community fall festival, which was heavily attended, and it was a wonderful event. And also, we had on one of our Gather and Grow days, we had Batavia Police Department come in and do several demonstrations. I can't ever remember the name of that truck, but they brought it to the school. We did a demonstration with the
033drug dogs. We did a demonstration with drones. And we're looking to partner with More of our community services to bring in like our fire department state sheriff's state police County sheriffs and the Tavia Police Department to do more of this because it was so well received by students and overall We are building a positive community kids are happy walking down the halls I know our referral data shows that we're having a much, you know, we're having an increase in issues but if you look at it our issues are disruptive they're not unsafe and we'll take that any day of the week because we have changed our view of our school in the past two years and and i think kids are enjoying coming to school so one thing i want to share is that our
034theme for this year is for our school for our pms is to shine and we made a fun little video in the beginning of the year to just encourage kids to this is going to be a positive year our year to shine and Teachers just a little fun way to start off the year. So that's all we have for our presentation. Just know if you have any questions I do yeah So It can mean a lot of different things we have some students who are not having their base needs in their life met. They might be homeless, they're living in a hotel, they're hungry, they're whole family members in the hotel. So they're coming into school completely dysregulated. And to walk into the school and learn isn't their primary focus. So they are causing disruption.
035They're fleeing from the classroom. They're fleeing from adults. We're seeing a lot with our fifth graders. They haven't built... the trusting positive relationships that they left JK with. They had multiple years to build that. So relationships is our key focus for building these relationships and having trusted adults. We have other students who It was referred by community special education to have certain programming's that we don't have at the middle school So we don't have the proper supports in this proper programming so again these kids are just Not acclimating to this to their current situation and fleeing the classroom or throwing things yelling making threats And there's some kids that just sometimes adolescents bring out some mental health issues that weren't seen last year and for a variety of different reasons We're working closely with their
036families on support plans and getting them the medical care that they need and really having a team approach but another factor in those referrals is some of the threats and the unsafe behaviors it's a few kids with many issues as opposed to a holistic problem where it's the student population as a whole but we have We have nine to eleven kids that are taking up 90% of our time with their mental health social emotional behavioral needs medical needs as well and You know, we have a great team of student supports But it's just taking all of us all hands on deck just to get a handle of our nine to eleven most media students Another question I have, my first question was going to be how students referred to the MTSS team. But then you
037answered it. And then I have a question, are parents ever involved with them? So we just started the MTSS process. So like I said, the... way that the students are referred is through the rfa process and anyone can utilize that rfa i would love to put that online so parents can refer as well but because we just started that process and it's new to the middle school it's taking our team a little bit of time just to get like the process and procedures down but yes i would like more teachers involved like a parent of like a student involved on the teacher The only other question I had, and this would have been a question for the high school too with the new cell phone policy. How do you know that the kids are putting
038their phones in those? Well, the best thing about middle schoolers is that they are very transparent. So in the beginning of the year, we did have some kids who had them in their pocket. But again, they're walking out, the bell rings, oh, school's over, and they're pulling out their phones. So we had to have a couple of corrective conversations. I'll be very interested if an amber alert or a weather alert comes on because that's really going to tell, give us the true answer to that. But I think a lot of kids are not bringing their cell phones to school at all. Again, the first... Couple of weeks we might have had to have some corrective conversations and reiterate and I think some parents had a hard time with it But we have virtually no cell
039phone issues whatsoever And that the fifth and sixth graders they don't quite understand why they don't have to turn it in but they're very good about following that you know and It's been a positive addition It really it has been our kids are so much more engaged when you're in the classrooms and engaged at lunch and at recess and the hallways They're just kids being kids, which is really wonderful thing to say some issues that our middle school kids have, but that because of certain situations, they can't get their children because step was before and after school. Is that something that the school district could help with providing those? We're actually working on a plan for that as we speak. Oh, really? Okay. You know I have to say coming from Monroe County and my
040experience mostly being in Monroe County this county has far greater Community resources and supports for the school and we have DSS coming with two or three individuals They're coming on an almost everyday basis staff comes on an almost every single day basis. We have our That you know the probation youth court officers coming in regularly to meet with us So I am you know new to this county news in this area I'm incredibly impressed by the local supports that we have here and we are utilizing them completely Finding out more ways to utilize them as well Yeah, you talked a lot about being understaffed and then when you shared those those test scores It's kind that obviously that's a huge challenge and how many you don't probably don't have time tonight But how are you
041gonna you know raise those scores? And help you know there's some students that you said 47% that are two grades behind Yes, so how can you tell at that level we have? You know we can look at tier one what's happening in the classroom We can support kids at a tier two level where we virtually have zero that's your three because we can't support them, okay? so The professional learning community process is the vehicle to do this. So not only are we becoming a professional learning community, focusing on academic and behavioral, but part of that is the professional teams and working on their academic cycles to look at power standards, differentiate instruction for where you need, because half of our kids, roughly, are... are two or more grade levels below in math and ELA. We
042do see a correlation with how many failures we're having. We haven't quite worked through that data for this quarter one that just ended, but there is a correlation. So we're going to have to realize that half of our kids are not coming prepared to work at grade level standards, and we have to attack that through a tier one approach through our curriculum instruction, building in interventions and supports along the way, using a lot of assessments to... tailor our needs to that so we're just we're seeing the social studies departments actually i think ahead of the game they've been working with the boces consultant this summer to really look at their units their enduring understandings their standards i'm walking into social studies classrooms they you know they're looking different by how they're preparing them for what
043the end goals are in high school um it's again it's very data driven it's you know they walked in and gave the final exam is a pre-assessment and are going to work their way backwards to help get them to work. You begin with the end in mind is the most important focus. So as we strengthen as a professional learning community, as we strengthen our MTSS, as we improve student relationships, reduce conflicts and issues and problems, all of these things are all pieces to the puzzle that we need to really... strengthen and we did a puzzle in the beginning of the presentation there are teachers working on puzzle pieces we took a puzzle with 22 of the main pieces of the of what we need to focus on in our school to improve our school holistically
044and again there's 22 aspects that we need to take exam and build processes systems build understanding along the way so it's a it's a it's going to be a journey but The teachers are fantastic and very open and very responding very well to saying we need to build relationships. We need to focus on having a safe and orderly school so that we can then focus on our curriculum and instruction and then in turn provide our interventions. And without the faculty, we wouldn't be able to do anything. And we've got outstanding teachers and support staff at the middle school. And I'm very excited to see where we will go, you know, as we... As we build this together. Do you think some of these results education wise with math and reading are code related? We're in
045that tipping point where Half of our school wasn't really impacted and half of ours were. And I think the seventh grade and above are definitely the kids that were impacted the most by COVID. They did not have the early learning skills that you get in kindergarten, first and second grade, which are crucial to everything. Working together with each other in a way that's not all about you is one of the most essential things that you can build at the primary level. And they did not have that. I do think we see different needs. with our fifth and sixth graders versus our seventh and eighth graders. And we definitely see academic preparedness. There's a stark difference between seventh grade and above versus sixth grade and below. So I think the districts, not we, because they're coming
046to us better prepared because they've had a full kindergarten through middle school experience. They're coming to us better prepared, which is, again, another reason why the professional learning community is so important because... half of our school is raising the bar for our achievement levels and we need to be able to meet that bar and keep the you know keep the trajectory going so we're very happy how the kids have come to us in the past two years and we're going to be happy to prepare them in a better way to go to the high school but we're still growing through this bubble of the covet bubble so those test scores are based on this year correct That I read it was our fall down. Are we using any data points to say okay? You know
047Susie was on grade level last year, but she's not Yes, she's been two grades below since she started school and then my question being why yes Why is she she she spent two grades behind this whole time. Why are we failing her? Yes We are looking at all of that, you know, we have good data profile systems, but we don't have a lot of We don't have multiple assessments to understand students holistically. I ready is one data point They could not have put in effort that day, you know the state results They could not have put in ever although our state results were fairly decent, but a lot of kids also opt out So it's not a tote It's not there's not one measure that we have that can give us a total picture I
048ready is the best version, but we've actually been working with dr. Corey quite a bit where We spent a lot of time this fall assessing in multiple measures in ELA and assessing in multiple measures in math so that when we're coming and looking at a student, we've got five or six data points or two or three in math and ELA and we need to build in one for writing as well, which... It's all a growth process. But we need to have a full, complete picture of students and their needs more than they had a bad day where they didn't put in the effort. As a parent, if my son was behind last year and is falling further behind. What can I do to help? And if he was on level last year and now is
049behind, what is change? It's one where I look at it as, again, if he's continuing to fall, what are we doing and what can I do as a parent? I think that's a great question. And I don't know if they actually went out yet, but the iReady results, the fall. results. But when we get them, all I'm getting is this year. I'm not getting based on anything else. So we have to do that work, which is why MTSS is so important. We started a lot of this, built some foundational kind of silos for attendance and social, emotional, and behavioral and academic and intervention. But the work that Christine is coming, kind of putting it all together, we've accomplished more in this first 10 weeks than we did in, granted last year was new too. We're
050all new, but. We are having more poignant conversations about kids in totality than we were at last year at this point. So the work of the team, our student support team, is incredibly impressive to see where we're at and where we're going. The work of the teachers and their professional learning teams, particularly the content areas, are farther along than some of our special areas. But to see the work and see the results and see the conversations, we've got the ball rolling. So we can... It all takes time though. It all starts with the systems and processes. I have a couple questions. So first I just want to say thank you. You guys are doing a great job. I think about you last year trying to discover what is the culture here. And then this year
051you're like thinking about how to change the culture and what's the pathway. So the change that you're looking for and some of the things that you had mentioned are to help bring those changes. But we've got to get them up and running. And once they're flowing, then later on. Not too far off from now we're going to start seeing changes that are going to be like a great benefit to our students and then our community and so on. But think about peer mediations. I think there was 25 students that went through that which is phenomenal. My question would be how do we make that, how do we flow that throughout maybe every classroom? Where now all these students, let's say in fifth grade are understanding what the skills are. How do I lead myself well
052and then my peers well? so that when sixth, seventh, and eighth grade comes, they're already understanding and then building and having opportunities to experience the how-tos with people that taught them how to do it. Yeah. Well, we're one month in. Yeah. So it's a process. Yeah. Again, we have a diverse group of kids that were trained that touch a lot of that. We have a diverse population So it touches a lot of different groups that are there and there's multiple leaders within Within multiple different groups in our school, but I think we have to get them up and running We have fifth graders through eighth graders that were changed We had Jeremy Mattler and Kristen Gomez who were also part of the training just you know The middle school got this grant where we're setting
053it up to be able to have it grow through high school as well, but Yes, I think the more peers learn from peers, the more impact that it has. So we want to grow it. We're just we're going to get up and running and we've got 25 solid kids who are super thrilled and we went over to the Y to go see them and they were just so excited to show us what they've known, what they learned, what they can do and you know and I asked them for a reflection just you know ask a couple of questions about why we need it and what's most important and what was impactful to you and I think the kids are going to do a really great job. Yeah, that's exciting. Just think about how your leaders
054Second question I have is the students that are selling so we've talked about a lot of the ones that aren't yeah when it comes to the students that are selling their top of their class they're shining brightly what support do they have to be pushed to go to their next level? Yeah that's a great question and implementing when what I need which has very much been prevalent at the elementary schools being able to look at our kids from our neediest to our highest achieving we're breaking those groups up into bands to be able to give them what they need we do have quite a few um enrichment opportunities that are built in with accelerated courses we want to beef that up we want to be from experience also some of this team although that some
055of the examples that i showed it was everybody in grade levels but We need to challenge our higher kids. I think we need to do a better job with them and we will continue to but right now having part of our win groups and as we're developing our schedule for next year we're really thinking about how can we build in choice with specials and our tech programs which has really taken off quite a bit in the district but how can we build research and arts into engineering into STEAM. into higher advanced reading and we do have some of our teachers teaching higher level math classes and higher level like novel instruction for our higher kids so we're in a start but again we're hoping to we're trying we're trying and we're i think we're succeeding
056but again it's not because of the three of us it's our teachers our teachers are the ones that are doing the crux of the work and if they didn't have buy-in and they didn't believe in it and they didn't want a better school, we wouldn't be able to get anywhere. So really, the credit goes to the teachers of the middle school, who are really fantastic, and we're proud to have them. Agreed. Anything else? Okay. Thank you. The next speaker, Samantha Stryker from the Richmond Memorial Library. Good evening everybody. I am the month in director of the Richmond Memorial Library. I've been there for a while so you know I think it's in good hands. So if you're not familiar I think you probably are the school owned the district owns our building so we have
057an interesting and unique relationship because of that. I do want to give kudos to this team though. We have a fun after school crowd that comes over and sometimes it carries over behavioral things from the day into the library. One day there was, I don't know if it fully escalated into a fight, but before we even knew what was happening outside, these three were there with a dog and I didn't know what was happening. Just the communication has been awesome. you know, we're able to kind of express if we see behavioral things. They obviously can't give us information back, which we don't need, but we can say, hey, this student had this happen today, and we think you should know about it. Just the communication has been awesome, and we can see the change in
058the culture. The behavioral issues after school have gone down significantly. They tend to be in, like, clusters, so if we do suspend kids from the library, it's just, like, a little group that was... having a problem. And so I think that's this team, all the credit, they're amazing. And then I think just improved communication with them, the SRO, all of those things. So just wanted to say that. And thank you. Thank you. Panicked call from me after school one day And after all they deal with you know still answering the phone for me is really nice so So I wanted to talk about our boiler project as you know, we had a fun emergency request for a boiler I should have, they asked if there were slides, I should have brought the picture of our
059new boiler. It's really nice. So if anybody ever wants to see it, you're welcome to come into our really fun basement anytime. Very smooth installation, everything's working great, so we're very grateful for that. That was a surprise for everybody when we couldn't put the old one back together again. In terms of projects going on at the library, we have applied for a New York State construction grant through the Department of Library Development through the state, or New York State Library Construction Grant. And we'll find out next year if that project is approved. That project will essentially help us renovate our lower-level restrooms, which are not currently ADA compliant. I think they're original to the 1979 addition. They're vintage. So this project would help us bring those up to standards. We also have a designated area
060of refuge that's not currently accessible for somebody in a wheelchair. So that project will address that as well. I do want to say thank you to Jason and Andy for helping make that grant process so smooth. The school, because you own the library, we do all have to work together on projects like that to get SED approval and to work with the architect and all those fun things. And so I just, I don't think it could have gone better because we had to push that through pretty quickly. So I just wanted to say thank you for that. And then another exciting thing we have is that we recently received a $35,000 grant from the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation. So their funds are pretty specific in what we can use the money for. We're going
061for a project that relates to after school and parks and trails, which are two of their focus areas. So we have decided to develop a library of things, something we've wanted to do but have not had the sufficient space for. And so a library of things is basically what it sounds like. Things that aren't books. Some libraries have power tools. We're not going down that road yet. It's a little bit too much to start with. But sports equipment, long games, fishing poles, telescopes, metal detectors. gardening tools, non-power tools we're going to start out with. And so something that's held us back in the past from building something like that is that we just don't have the space to store the things. And so to that end, we're going to have the doors on our existing
062carriage house outbuilding, which is probably as old as our original part of our building, which is... 1889. It's a very solid building, but the doors are 200 years old. So we are getting those replaced. So that's a bulk of the funds to weatherize the building so that we can store the things inside of it. So that's an exciting thing we have going on. Any questions about library things? So the library things, like people will be able to take them out? Yeah. So we're still working on the whole process of how you'd actually place them on hold and that sort of thing. But yeah, we're excited for it. They were a great organization to work with and made it really easy. And so in the second 10 years of their 20-year grant cycle, so when Ralph
063C. Wilson sold the bills, he gave all the money to this foundation in a 20-year. all the money should be spent in 20 years essentially. So they're kind of ramping up for the second decade of giving. And we were approached by the Greater Rochester Community Foundation to see if we wanted to work with them because we've worked with the Rochester Foundation before. And so that's been a great partnership and we're excited to see what we can do with $10,000 to buy things. It's a unique opportunity a lot of libraries have them we just haven't like I said haven't had the capacity to do them so Any other questions? I just want to commend the library board on their selection of you as the director they made a fantastic choice and I say that both from
064a perspective as a library user and also a superintendent so Sam I just want to thank you for saying yes and accepting the opportunity and we're excited to have you. Appreciate it. Thank you, thank you very much. Next up is Mr. Lang for the long-range financial plan and reserve plan. All right. So today we're just going to go do a summary of the long-range financial plan and reserve plan. The reserve plan is on board docs. The long-range financial plan you should all have as well through board docs. That is the comprehensive plan, the total plan. It stays in draft format because those are just projections. So there's nothing really finalized in this report. It's just in regards to long-range financial plan, it is just a projection of both revenue and expenditures in the following years
065based on a set of assumptions that we'll kind of briefly go over today as well. So again, what is a long-range financial plan? Well, it's a road map. Just like in personal finance, you may have a long range financial plan through retirement. This is a much shorter plan. A lot of times, just because some of the variables that we look at, some of the assumptions that we make can only be seen, you know, three, two, three, four, five years out in advance. So this plan seeks to identify some of those assumptions and then apply that prospectively moving forward in future years in both revenue and the expenditure side of the budget. So again, basically it says where we are, where we are right now, and where we want to be, ultimately to support the educational
066programming of the district. So how do we get there? We look at our current financial condition, so we review all of our financial statements. We analyze strategic initiatives and goals. We look at the district's goals, how the budget will support those goals, if it can support those goals. We determine major assumptions. So there's a series of assumptions we have to go through. For example, right now we are negotiating several bargaining units. We have to make certain assumptions based on those contract settlements. We make assumptions based on benefits, health insurance rates, all of those things. We have to make assumptions. A lot of those assumptions are based on known knowledge right now or else we look at trends from the past. so we look at how on average how much we spent in this area and
067then we just project that moving forward so again once we do all that we have to plan accordingly so this is a tool strategically we have this presentation at the beginning of the budget development season just because we want to use that as as you know sort of a compass or a tool that we can use as we move through the budget development process for fiscal year 26-27 so some of the support activities that we want to accomplish and that are listed in this long range financial plan kind of themes is that we want to ensure that we remain as little as possible dependent on the appropriation of fund balance. And the appropriation of fund balance, as you can think of, is how much we're going to use out of our savings account each year
068to balance our budget. That's something we don't want to increase significantly. It's not something that we want to rely on because obviously those are finite resources. Our savings accounts will eventually dry up. So we never want to rely on appropriated fund balance as a revenue source. It's there as like a crutch, for lack of a better term. We want to ensure compliance with the 4% unassigned unappropriated fund balance amount. That's real property tax law 1318 and it limits public school districts from having no more than 4% unassigned unappropriated fund balance when comparing it to the subsequent year's budgeted appropriations in the general fund. We want to maintain a level and predictable debt service, and that's something that we work very closely with our municipal advisors on, which is to plan appropriately for debt. We don't
069want to have a significant fall off of debt because that impacts the district's tax cap calculation, and we don't want to assume a great amount of debt because obviously that impacts... the general fund and debt service payments as well. So we want to plan as much as possible in regards to debt service so that we don't have that negatively impacting the district's budget moving forward. We want to fund reserves accordingly based on the district's reserve plan. So that reserve plan that you have prescribes different ways that we can use our reserves as well as funding limits within those reserves. So again, that's another tool that we should be utilizing in order to ensure that we are protecting district funds in those areas. And then again, we finally want to align the district's finances with the
070strategic plan of the district. So that's one of the important factors in a long-range financial plan. I'm not going to bore you with the accounting definitions of all these areas of fund balance, but fund balance, which is at year end, any revenue in excess of expenditures is fund balance in fund accounting. And we have four different types of fund balance. Non-spendable, restricted, assigned, and unassigned fund balance. Really the three that we focus on are restricted, assigned, and unassigned. Restricted you can think of, those are your savings accounts. Those are your rainy day funds for maintenance, for capital projects, for unanticipated liability. Those are for employee benefits after they retire. Those are all of our savings accounts that we can fund and put money towards to utilize for those expenses. those future expenses. Assigned fund balance
071or appropriated fund balance is what we use in the following year's budget to fill that gap of any revenue shortfall. So when we put our budget together, we look at expenditures, we look at revenue, and then if there's a difference, we plug that hole with assigned fund balance. then unassigned fund balance is a fund balance that does not fit into any of those other three categories. This is literally the definition of that. So that's that is the amount that is that we cannot exceed 4% and that is the amount that's based on real property tax law 1318. So, in looking at unassigned fund balance, again, this is the 4%. You can see the district remained compliant in fiscal year 2025. Our total amount of unassigned fund balance at year end was $2,532,406, which is 4%
072of the current year's budget, which is $63,310,108. As you can see in previous years we have remained mostly compliant. There was one year where we were just slightly over but we have remained and project to continue to remain at 4% unassigned unappropriated fund balance. Appropriated fund balance is again the amount that we set aside from the previous year to offset any revenue shortfall in the following year. And you can see back in 2024, we appropriated $3.6 million to fill that budget gap. And as you recall, at our Audit Committee heard, our auditors really didn't like that there was a significant increase in the amount of appropriated fund balance. Because even if we appropriate that much, we are at risk of potentially becoming reliant on that fund balance to balance our budget. And we're also... We
073don't want to be reliant on that amount of fund balance. So we have worked diligently to try and reduce that amount by adjusting revenues as well as expenditures in the following years. So in 2025, we were able to drop it to $2.5 million, which is just under 4% of the total amount of the subsequent year's budget. So we are really doing a pretty good job at that, and I think moving forward, we'll continue to try and... appropriate only two and a half million dollars during the budget development process but again that's something when we look at all revenues and all expenditures that's one of the last pieces that we put into the budget so these are a list of current reserves now reserves are restricted forms of fund balance so they can only be used
074for specific purposes employee benefits accrued liability reserve can only be used for post-employment benefits related to our staff Capital reserves can be only used for capital projects. Reserve for retirements can be used to the district's contribution to the ERS, same with TRS sub fund. Unemployment can be used to offset any cost that we realize in unemployment. Repair reserves are for unanticipated repairs. Insurance reserves are for unanticipated liability. And then reserve for debt, after we have a capital project, and if we incur interest on any borrowings from our capital project. those interest funds are put back into a reserve for debt and they're used to pay for future principal of that project. So it's a way of accounting for any earnings as a result of borrowing and then utilizing it to reduce the total amount of
075principal that we're paying on our outstanding debt. So looking at revenue. So again, we're looking at the current year, 25-26. We are projecting year-end revenue because we don't know exactly how much revenue we're going to receive in the 25-26 school year. And then we're projecting 26, 27, 27, 28, 28, 29, and 29-30. So state aid, we're projecting steady increases in state aid, although just around 2%. which I would say is a conservative estimate for state aid. Again, as Mr. Smith would probably agree with me, it seems like during every budget, New York State budget process, there's always discussion regarding state aid, how much, if any, districts will receive in additional in regards to foundation aid. So I feel like that's a conservative, again, appropriate estimate in the amount of state aid. Tax levy? For the
076purpose of this projection, we're showing a 2% increase in the tax levy. Again, the district has a tax cap that's calculated annually. So this could be different, but again, for the projection, we are just going to say 2% increase in tax levy on a yearly basis. And then all other revenue, that's sales, scrap, that's admissions, that's tuition from other districts. So those are all very, very minor amounts of revenue that we add together for other revenue. Fairly stable, but a little bit of a decrease in subsequent years is what I'm projecting based on prior years. Overall, as you can see from this bar graph, it's interesting. It shows the amount of revenue in regards to state aid, tax levy, other revenue, and appropriated fund balance. Our major components of revenue are always state aid and
077the tax levy. So those are the biggest pieces of revenue that we get on an annual basis. And so that's why it's really important as we go through the budget development process to really focus a lot on state aid. That's the largest single revenue source that the district received over 60% in state expenditure projections again This shows the current the previous year and then current year of 2526 again We don't know exactly how much how we're going to end up But we're doing what's called the fund balance projections or projections as we go through the year to estimate how we're going to end up at your end So I'm estimating just a little under $60 million in total expenditures in 2025-2026. When you apply all of the other assumptions that I'll talk about here shortly,
078we're looking at an 8.3% increase in expenditures next year, 9.3% the following year, 6.4% and then 6.2% in the final year of this projection. So I just want to spend just a few minutes talking about some of the assumptions that we use on the expenditure side. So one of the big factors that we're looking at is in regards to collective bargaining. We do have a teacher's contract that is expiring at year end, and we're negotiating with that bargaining unit now, as well as the clerical staff, which represents our aides, monitors, and 12-month clerical staff, or teacher aides and our 12-month clerical staff. So those are factors that I have included in the projection, but again, those are just conservative estimates at this point. And then... The second thing is the district's preschool program. We run
079a preschool program. We have been running a shortfall in the past couple of years, which means that our revenue is not keeping up pace with our expense. So in this projection, we've had to budget in the district's general fund an appropriation for that shortfall expense, just so we capture that in the general fund budget. And then the third factor is health insurance, which is something that we are going to monitor very, very closely. Right now we are experiencing a much significant higher amount of claims in our health insurance program that we have and we feel like there's going to be a significant increase in health insurance costs in the district next year. This is something that is industry-wide that we're seeing and we are going to be monitoring it very closely. The Janissary Health Care
080Plan, which is the plan that the district participates in, We'll be finalizing rates in February and so we won't really know until late in the budget development process so I have built in a conservative estimate in regards to the total increase in costs for the district's health insurance in these prospective years. So when we compare the two, general fund revenue and general fund expense, we look at a surplus or deficit in each year. So as you can see, I'm projecting a surplus in 25-26, slight surplus in 25-26, a slight surplus in 26-27, and then subsequent years, 27 through 30, looking at... some increasing deficits in those years. Again, these are just based on projections in both the revenue and expenditure side with some of the assumptions that I've talked about today. So this graphic is
081just a representation of the expense and revenue. You never want these two lines to touch. You want to be parallel in perpetuity. But unfortunately, as you can see, starting in the 27th, 28th school year, I'm showing that those two lines cross, which means the expenditures will exceed the total revenues for that fiscal year. So in summary, some of the supporting activities and some of the themes in regards to the long-range financial plan, we want to stabilize the increase in the tax levy. We don't want to have those major fluctuations in tax levy. And that's why in this projection we did say a 2% increase per year. It doesn't mean to say that it has to be that, but just for the purpose of projection and stability. We want to fund reserves accordingly. We want to
082very closely monitor projections in revenue and expenditures for subsequent years. So I start that now for this year. I very closely look at revenue and expenditures for year end because that determines how much surplus or deficit we would have at any year. So that's something that we continually monitor and the business office will continue to do so as we move forward. We want to update the Long Range Financial Plan annually, which is why I'm here in front of you today, and I will continue each year. And then we want to ensure that future developments are developed and adopted in accordance with the district's Long Range Financial Plan. The plan is put in place, again, as a tool for the Board of Education and for the public, so we want to make sure that the plan
083is consulted during the budget development process. So any questions from the board? Yes. How detailed in your analysis of future expenditures do you get when it comes to something like what we heard from the middle school representatives that additional staff might be needed for counseling or... you know, the mental health issues that some of our students seem to be having and the support that they need. How detailed? So, great question. I, in regards to staffing, I use the current snapshot of staff and then apply any contractual increases based on the current staffing. So, this projection includes no additional FTEs in any of the areas. As of November 17th, this projection considers the staffing that we have today. In regards to all the other areas, I go line by line projections. So I project based on
084literally every object and function throughout our project. increase or decrease percentage-wise. It could be one, it could be two, it could be three. It's all dependent on either prior years or us known factors such as settled contracts or individual contracts and things like that. So if our unassigned fund balance is supposed to be 4% of the budget, What happens if that unassigned fund balance goes over 4%? Where does that money go? So it's a good question. It goes nowhere. It remains unassigned. Yeah, you can exceed the 4%, although it is in violation of real property tax law. It's your hands that have to do that. Yes, you would get mentioned in a comptroller's audit, but there is nothing that... There there's no mechanism for those funds to be stripped away or taken or reduced from
085state aid or anything like that It's just you it's a violation of your property tax offer to you. Okay, and what do you do is that this is administrator about complying if it's if we've been cited So as business administrator, I would never allow the assigned fund balance to exceed 4%. And there's areas, there's things that you can do. That's right, and what typically happens, the things he's talking about, you usually do in June or July, if there is a surplus in the budget, you as a board apply a recommendation and reallocate some of those funds to those, what do you call them? Reserves. No, but you have a specific name for them. Reserves. Restricted? Yes, they will be allocated to those restricted reserves to make sure we don't fall ahead of that or get
086ahead of that 4%. So if you go back and look at your history. You've been asked to reallocate some funds to those restricted reserves so that doesn't happen. Yeah, year end usually. Prior to the fiscal year end, because we're projecting from now until I probably know that there would be a surplus. I would ask the board and ask the superintendent to allocate excess funds to those reserves. And then after, and it's not to exceed amounts because those are estimates at that time. And then after, usually in July or August, I would also ask the board to... finalize those amounts based on the closing of our books by our auditors. So yeah, we would ensure that we would don't exceed 4% on the sign-in. So I have questions about future years, like 27, 28, 27 through
08730. I know you don't have a crystal ball, but you're projecting that... there's going to be some deficits. So the first year being $271,000, then $3 million, $6 million. Is it too early to talk about how is that going to be covered? Well, so yeah, great question. So again, these are just projections and we're looking at assumptions both in revenue and expense. So I think the goal is to take that information and, you know, through subsequent year budget development and understanding that, for example, staffing decisions maybe should be taken into consideration or programmatic decisions should be taken into consideration. We're looking at those future surpluses or deficits. But again, you know, those discussions can start as early as this year's budget development process as to what we can and cannot do to curb or not
088any of these surplus or deficits. So you're saying that starting possibly at this budget session that we'll have starting in February, that because we have a deficit with our pre-K program, And our district is covering the cost. That will have some decisions to make as to whether that program continues sure I mean that can be that's that's one of many areas in the expense side of the budget that you know we could have a conversation on very much about the process. I just want to clarify that the preschool, pre-school is the other. Yeah, not UPK, it's the other. It's funded, but preschool is where the deficit is. Is there a possibility that the state aid is gonna just increase so much? to cover a lot of this. That would be great. Absolutely. I mean, that's
089the hope. Yeah, that would certainly be the hope. Not only cover that, but have no need for tax levy increase. That would be ideal. But from what we're seeing in regards to NSBA and ASBO, our groups, we don't see that for this budget year. But again, we never know until the budget's adopted, hopefully in April, April 1st. You know Mr.. Smith and I are continually looking for updates especially later on in the budget development process We're going to worst a date is going to land will receive our first Stayed run it's called so our first projected amount of state based on our claim forms that we submitted over the summer in very shortly like within the next week or so and that's kind of you know timely in regards to the Development of the budget
090because we start that process here in December and January And so, you know, we'll continually update you as we get more information through the budget development process, especially in regards to state aid. But didn't the state aid formula get revamped this year? Yeah, this is the first year of a revision of the foundation aid. Foundation aid, right. Yeah, so the district did realize some additional based on census data and based on pupil need, so wealth ratios in our district. So you don't expect... that to continue i don't believe there was one time they fixed it last year and the process will continue but i mean how it was adjusted was meant to be somewhat permanent so we expect to see so but that adjustment wasn't like a percentage so that if your budget went up
091that you would get a bigger percentage? No, no. It was based on other factors in the foundation aid formula. Good question, yeah. We don't anticipate any significant change in the foundation aid formula. We have, yeah, today. I mean, you know, the amount may increase. Just as it does every year, or usually does every year. Yeah, that could be as a result of old harmless, whereas if districts are fully funded, they receive just a nominal percentage increase, so it could be 2%. Which it has been in the past and that's why we use that moving forward in the amount of foundation aid increases. Any other questions? All right. Next up is Elijah with a student report. My turn. The National Honor Society is asking students to help donate food for Thanksgiving. to give to families in
092the community. To encourage the students, there are a few teachers who will collect the donations and then whichever teacher has the most donations will have to wear a turkey costume the entire school day. This past Monday at the high school was the Veterans Day ceremony. It featured music performances by the Chorale Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. Local veterans and others from the community were in attendance. And then high school staff members were recognized for their military service. As previously mentioned, the Drama Club is performing Game of Tiaras on Friday and Saturday. And then some... Early preparation for the musical has started. Two VHS seniors won awards for their graphic designs in the Genesee County Stop DWI poster contest. One of the students won the grand prize and their poster will be featured on the billboard in
093Genesee County while the other student placed third. And then a fall sports have wrapped up. Fall sports have wrapped up with several students earning post-season accolades. Winter sports are also starting this week. Thank you very much. Mr. Smith. Thank you, Eli, for that. I'm kind of, I'm getting a little bit of something. Veterans Assembly, as Eli mentioned, we had that last Monday. Our veterans there are pictured in the bottom center. We had a nice turnout of veterans. Thank you to our teachers, music teachers, Jane Palladino, Colin Martow, and Dan Rowe. If you haven't been captured, there's a letter to the editor on Thursday's paper from Don Weir, who's one of the... veterans there thanking the staff so that was a very nice event and only all sam was there yes it was nicely known steve
094paulie was the keynote speaker so thank you to our staff and students for that as a great event i want to recognize some four athletic honors uh on the left being ella champ just go right here if you can see ella champ was division four i believe Division four from our own comedy for girls soccer player of the year so congrats to Ella We had some tennis recognition, then I have a special video there I was at the cross country meet and go to the cross country second every fall It's a great event and I happen to record Mallory Boyce her Finish to qualify for states and try to get that to play for you right now So she went to States this weekend. She came at 39th or something. So we're very proud of
095Mallory for that event. Cross country is a great event to go and watch because it's always so positive and fun. So I just always enjoy going there. I want to recognize our coaches and Mallory especially and our students for the events there. Here's our list of fall athletics special honors footballs. I don't know yet, they're always with the way their league runs, they always come in later, but we have several students from all our fall sports teams, soccer, tennis, etc. We see some on this week, so I want to recognize them and their coaches for that. Robert Morris Capital Project, there's some pictures there. The progress is happening. And Andy and I met with the staff last week and we talked about a transition plan. So essentially one half of the building now is occupied,
096the other half is. And Jessica Corzillos and her team have done a great job making the school look very welcoming despite all the construction happening. So our plan is to have the move take place in or around February break. Then we're also proposing a calendar change just for Robert Morris on February 23rd. It's a Monday we get back from President's break to get the classrooms all ready to go. But we're going to work with the teachers and use some of our capital project funds to compensate them for the time to move either the week before February break and or the week of February break to get the classrooms ready and then giving them time on the Monday of the 23rd of February to get the classroom ready for students on the 24th. So that's well
097underway. And I just toured last week and see some projects, some progress being made there as we speak. Anything to add to that? No, I know. So that's full steam ahead. We'll notify families probably after the holidays about the February 23rd date to give time for the move to happen. The rest of the project is happening there as well. There on the left is the high school. We have some new doors in the high school and that's phase 1a. In the center is Robert Morris. The roof is done and then the roof restoration of the high school is happening as well. Of course the Robert Morris playground is all done. It was there last week. We saw kids playing on it and it looks really cool to see it happen. So that's happening as we
098speak. Unified bowling team, always a great thing to see. They were in Mancuso's last week. Great kids, great group, and they always do well. I want to recognize them and their coaches. Halloween was a great celebration. We had board representation there from John and Rebo and Alison Benedict. Of course, my favorite costume is Josh Allen on the bottom right. But we had our community helpers in there, Robert Morris and Jackson, Jackson and John Kennedy. Robert Morris had a fall festival that we had some good participation as well. We had our SROs there. We had post office workers there. you know, like a couple church groups came, so that was a great event last week or so, and this year for Halloween, as Eli mentioned, the Game of Tiaras, always a great event to come and
099watch. It's a black box style, so that's what I do is black box. We're on the stage with the kids, and it's usually funny, and this year we're doing Game of Tiaras. It's just slapstick comedy, as Eli mentioned in his notes, so I'm looking forward to that. Recommend you check that out if you can. And Eli also mentioned our Stock DWI poster. Eli and I make a pretty good team. We have our first year graphic, our first year graphic is our student, Aaron Hosich, came in first. And second year, Sincere Jackson came in second. They were recognized at the Stock DWI luncheon recently. And I did send out last week in my update a snow day protocol that I do every year. So it's on Parents Square, not going to read it to you now,
100but I did send out updates on the Parents Square on November 7th regarding storm day procedures, when and where to look for them, how decisions are made. Joy's a good topic for Facebook, so I was going to get out ahead of it. So the update's out there for the world to see on November 7th. Nothing is secret. The process is outlined right there for you. And then PLC updates, Molly and I have been working on this. We have all schools are working right now through their essential standards and making a video to that as well. Really exciting. I'm sure Jenny will talk about this, but the high school, we do have wind time happening at the high school. How do we respond when students don't learn? how students are not able to learn, how do
101we extend time. There's some pictures there of wind time happening. I had lunch last week with the senior class officers and I asked them for honest feedback on wind. And they gave Molly and I some good suggestions on things they like about it, things that go wrong, change about it. So we're continuing to monitor that with respect to our work with the PLC process. Some upcoming dates, I mentioned the drama club show. Next week we have early release day on Monday. to leave time for parent conferences and then we have the superintendent's conference day the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and of course best wishes to a happy Thanksgiving for everybody until the 12th Thanksgiving next week. Any questions? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Is there consent grouping? Is there a motion to approve consent items F
102through M? Dan. Dan. Yep. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? There's no old business, new business. Is there a motion to approve? There's a request for a student club chapter. I don't know if I need to abstain from this because my son is in the recovery. I wasn't sure. So just to clarify as try and we ever try in the high school. It's a music society the proposals that I'm not the middle school Is there a motion to approve? Second Any opposed, all right, okay, then and then reports from the curriculum and instruction and business offices Okay, you can check them out any board member comments reports concerns questions Motion to in to go into executive sessions to collective motion to move to executive session to discuss matters relating to collective negotiations pursuant
103to Article 14 of the Civil Service Law and also to the medical, financial, credit, or employment history of a particular person or corporation or matters leading to the appointment, employment, promotion, demotion, discipline, suspension, dismissal, or removal of a particular person or corporation. So, second. And you will not return to public session