BCSD Board of Education meeting 3/18/2026

001The board has been in executive session since 6 o'clock to discuss two legal matters, a congressional matter, and three personnel matters. We can now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Any introductions? Good evening John McPhillips. Dave Hurst. Robert Tijan. Meredith Cormier. Jodi Monroe. Catherine Natto. Ewan McKnight. John Walston. Rose Pastore. Clara Lagalle. And Holly Dellenbaugh and Lauren Gressler are not able to be with us tonight. If we have any Supa or Pig students here tonight, your obligation is stay until the meeting is over or until 9 o'clock. If we go beyond 9 o'clock, we'll take a brief break for you to sign out. Just

002make sure you sign out before you leave in order to get credit. The first item is minutes. from the March 4th regular board meeting. It is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the minutes from the March 4th, 2026 regular board meeting. So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That carries. Item number three is meeting reports. Start with the superintendent report. Sure. Two items I would like to share with the board. So we did receive our... a request for proposals back for UPK. So TSL will be our UPK provider. Next year will be the third year we've had a partnership with them. In their proposal, they indicated they could offer 105 spots next year with some expansion. So registration will open on April 6th. We'll send

003information out so families are aware of that to register. It will close on Friday, May 1st, and it will be a lottery again, and that will be held sometime in mid-May. So we'll let families know when that happens. Also today we had our initial meeting with a representative from Alliance Education Associates. They are the group that will be conducting the special ed analysis for the district. They will be on site next week. They'll be conducting interviews of staff and touring the buildings, looking at the spaces. They will also be interviewing families and meeting with the business office and transportation as part of the Medicaid and transportation analysis. One of the requests that they I attended the SEPTA meeting this week and families had asked if there was a way to do a larger Google survey

004at that meeting. I asked the representative from Alliance Education if they would be able to do that and they indicated that they could. So there will be a larger Google survey for families to participate as part of this process as well. So they're expecting that they can complete their report by the end of the year or early summer at the latest, and then the plan would be to have them present their report at a Board of Education meeting when the school year begins. So that's an update on that process. That's all for my report. Any questions for Jody? Can you remind me how many families applied for UPK last year? Or if you have that number on hand. It was somewhere around 100. Yeah. Because I think we had 92 slots. And we had a,

005originally we had a small waiting list. and then eventually some families declined and we ended up being able to fill all the spots for families who wanted a spot. Great. Okay. I was remembering along those lines but couldn't remember precisely. So 105 spots seems like it could theoretically meet the need. Correct. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Next, we have board report. I just wanted to recognize that we had our district choral festival last week. For those who don't know, the school district every year does either a choral festival, band festival, or orchestra festival where we bring in students from elementary, middle school, and high school to perform together. All the reviews were that the choral festival was wonderful. We have a guest conductor as well. So I just wanted to thank everyone who's involved

006in organizing that, especially our district teachers. It's a lot of extra work for those events, but it's so special for everyone involved. I also wanted to say good luck to our girls' basketball team who are going to the Final Four this Saturday at HVCC. Does anyone else have anything to add? similar vein to the basketball this last weekend was the Nike indoor nationals down at the armory which is you know seven hours of driving for an eight minute race but okay the team did great it was nice to see them race that The Choral Festival I went to, Echo, was just a delight to watch. I really was impressed with the guest conductor. The kids really seemed to appreciate him, and the music was amazing. And then we also have a new event, which is

007Alana is holding their first Poetry Slam. Our Voices, Our Power Poetry Slam, coming up the 24th. So if you want to note that event, if you have a chance and you're interested, go ahead and see that. For our student reports? Recently Claire and I have been involved in discussion attempts to improve the parking situation at the high school. Some of the issues being dealt with are dangerous driving, crowded parking lots, the failure to follow designated parking routes or drop-off routes. So Claire and I have brainstormed some specific problems and solutions that could be utilized to help. So we were given traffic and circulation study that was studied in 2017 and basically the school district asked Apple Osborne Landscape Architecture to look at traffic and parking at both schools and suggested ways to make it safer

008and smoother. So basically the current situation is that there is the main parking along Delaware Avenue and students and staff and visitors use that a lot. Parents drop off their students on a drive along the building. Buses use a separate area on the west side and cars mostly enter through three points. West entrance, which is one lane, east entrance, which is one entry and two leaving lanes, and Van Dyke Road, which is one lane, and Delaware Ave speed limit is 35 miles per hour. There are crosswalk signs, but there's no crossing guards in this report, at least. So some of the problems that they said in the study is that only the east entrance is used to leave during dismissal and cars often wait in two lines which can be very confusing. Some accidents have

009happened trying to turn left onto Delaware Ave and heavy traffic at dismissal makes it slow to leave and when students are going to school it makes it also slow to enter. Problems that we encountered is that parents drop off the kids to student parking spots and would wait in the lane and it causes blockages and slow traffic and confusion in the parking area for drivers and people walking. And some of the suggestions that the study said was to put up flashing 20 mph lights during arrival and dismissal and to encourage parents to use Van Dyke Road for drop off. To reduce congestion, we kind of suggested to post signs telling parents to not drop students off parking spots or lanes and have staff to kind of monitor the area to enforce it and also drop

010them off at Eagle since the staff and kids at Eagle aren't there yet. And we also suggested to conduct another study. So obviously some of those actions since the 2019-2017 report. I think that was 2019. Yeah, the 2019 report have been taken such as the flashing lights. But we really just think more could be done including letting parents know that this is a problem via email or just information blasts. So that's what we were thinking with starting ideas for that. Thank you. Thank you, and I definitely would support more parent communication because I think a lot of problems do come from parents just not quite knowing what the traffic flow is like and what their expectations are. So I think that's a great idea to increase communication. And back when that study was done, there

011wasn't anything in there about parent drop-off, right? No, it wasn't a major problem. Right, it was more about... Traffic flow and getting in and out of the parking. Yeah, I wonder if that's like a more recent problem Yeah, I don't I've heard it more recently than I did have had in the past. Yeah. Yeah At one point weren't we discussing? Whether there should be staff out there to oversee I mean they be that was a couple years ago there but there are in the front where the parents are coming through to keep the Keep the line. Keep the line. Yeah, you're not like said but That crosswalk in front of, on Delaware, right in front of the school, there's the indicator that was added. And then there was also, I don't know if it was

012in that traffic study or it was prior to, they changed the timing because it's of the lights, it stewards and it... Delaware by the high school when it's arrival and dismissal time to allow more traffic to flow. So there is a timing change. There had been, I think it's still there, that they set differently to try to prevent the backlog left or right out of. I would also support more communication if we think that that's one way to try to continue the conversation. Our next item is item four, presentations. Our first presentation is the food service presentation. Hi everyone. So I'm Claire Grodin. I'm the food service director. I'm here tonight to give an update on the Bethlehem food service program. But before we get started, I did bring some snacks to me since I

013am the district food lady. So I'm going to hand those out and then I'll tell you a little bit about what you're sampling. I'd like to support all future presenters. Thank you. Thank you. Is it ice cream flavor? It's not ice cream. It's really good. Oh, man. David's just up this. Oh, thank you. How much of this came from the middle school garden? How much of this came from the middle school garden? Well, nothing right now. Thank you so much. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. Claire, while you're passing that out, I'm going to take a quick pause because I'm not usually running the meetings. I forgot to ask if we had any middle school student reports. So if we have any middle schoolers for the student report, you can come up

014now. We'll start snacking. Thank you, Claire. I apologize for that. Did you bring snacks? The 8th grade snowflake dance was last month and had over 200 attendees. We would like to thank the health teachers and the high school sad club for sponsoring and helping out with this fun event. The 8th grade kindness leadership initiative had its first presentation at Hammer Girl Elementary at the end of last month. They are scheduled to go to Ellesmere next week. The district choral fest was last Tuesday and we would like to congratulate all who participated. It was a beautiful performance. Thank you. Thank you very much. And again, I apologize for that. Okay, Claire, if you'd like to come back and tell us about what we have here. All right, so what I just handed out, so recently we've

015been doing fresh baked muffins at the High school for breakfast. So these are whole grain apple cranberry muffins. We've been doing these every Wednesday. This is a new recipe that our cook Mandy came up with recently and I thought they were awesome. So I wanted to share them tonight. The other thing is our hummus and cheese bento box. And that is something we're always trying to do more, more vegetarian options. This is something our cook Mandy and our cooks helper Emily came up with. And what I think is great about it is the roasted vegetable hummus that is in there. Now that was created. We had some odds and ends. for veggies in the cooler. Emily roasted those up, whizzed them up with some hummus, and created this delicious roasted vegetable hummus. She typically does

016do a seasoned pita chip as well in this bento box, but we didn't have time to make those today. But this is just some of the cool creative stuff that our kitchens are doing right now, and I wanted you guys to taste it and see it. I think the bento boxes would be a really cool concept to carry down to our K-8 levels. Maybe not... the hummus box, but you know something else that would appeal to them a little bit more. But I just I wanted you guys to try and see some of the things that that we're doing this school year. Okay. Thank you. The hummus is really wonderful. Yeah, yeah, it's really good. So just to get started, I wanted to give just an overview of our school lunch program. So the school

017district C funds are separate from the general fund. The cafeteria operates its own business within the school district. It's funded by federal and state meal reimbursements and in cash sales. It's governed by the USDA and it's regulated at the state level by the Child Nutrition Department within state ed. And school breakfast and lunch meals have to adhere to USDA nutrition regulations. And as we all know, for this 25-26 school year, we operated under universal free meals. So all students were eligible for one free breakfast and one free lunch this school year. And we do anticipate the continuation of universal free meals as it was included in the governor's executive budget. Just a couple program updates. You've probably seen some of these things in the news, and they will be impacting our school lunch programs. So

018the first thing is whole milk is now an allowable offering in the school lunch program. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act was signed in January, and this permits whole milk and 2% milk to be offered at lunch only. I think this is a step in the right direction. I do think offering whole milk products is important for growing bodies and minds. As we all know, fat is more satiating. It's going to keep our kids fuller longer. But I also feel that there are some operational issues with just allowing this at lunch. So more to come on this. This is definitely something I want to explore. But I'd like to see it expanded to breakfast as well. And then we have the updated dietary guidelines for Americans. These new guidelines are prioritizing things like fiber.

019variety of dairy, fat, high quality proteins, limiting sugar, fruits and veggies. And while these guidelines are not immediately affecting requirements for child nutrition programs, some of these priorities are already established within our school meal programs. And you'll see in these current slides and my upcoming slides, we offer our students a ton. fruits and veggies. We offer a variety every day. So I would say we're definitely hitting the mark when it comes to offering enough fiber to our students. And then green initiatives. So we continue to compost in all school kitchens. We are using, all kitchens are using green compost bins to collect any food scraps that we produce from meal prep. And this is our second year of using produce from the school gardens. So we use garden produce at all K through 12 levels

020this school year, September through December. And this really just helps provide students with the most local and the most nutritious produce possible. So with the help of the green team, we used roughly 1,000 heads of lettuce and hundreds of pounds of carrots, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, and kale. And we do continue with the harvest of the month. This is something we did last year as well. And this is an initiative that highlights seasonal and locally grown food on the cafeteria menus each month. And so the goal of this initiative is really just to expose kids to different fruits and vegetables and really encourage them to make healthier food choices. So for this month, for the March menus, we're highlighting local maple syrup as our harvest of the month. And these are just some pictures of

021some of the things we've done this school year. So in September, our harvest of the month was tomatoes. So we did a corn and tomato salad with fresh basil. And then in December, we did a kale salad, and we harvested all that kale from the school gardens. And you know I've said in the past one of my goals for the food service program is to have more education around our harvest of the month and really teach kids about where their food is coming from. So in May we have the opportunity to have the New York State Maple Experience visit some of our elementary schools. This is an immersive mobile exhibit that teaches kids about maple syrup production. So it's a walkthrough exhibit. I've actually experienced, worked with the New York State Maple Experience before. But

022they can walk through this exhibit and really see, you know, how maple syrup is made from tapping trees to boiling the sap. So it's definitely a cool experience. And then also in May, we have a lot going on in May, we have the opportunity to work with Regional Roots. This is a New York State training program designed to enhance school meals and provide hands-on training for staff. terms of scratch cooking, knife skills, working with whole produce. So regional routes will be coming to the high school May 15th and they're going to actually be working with staff during the meal service. And this training will be super beneficial for staff because they'll be able to work with recipes at scale and we'll be able to get some some real-time feedback from students on these recipes. So

023we actually have a call next week with the Regional Roots team and we're going to go through their recipe catalog and choose what scratch recipes we want to execute on that day that will be served during the lunch period. So we're really looking forward to that. Menu diversity, so I'm always working towards trying to have more diversity in offerings on our menu. This school year we started highlighting and featuring more halal items. So the menu on the screen is just an example of how we're featuring those halal items. And our dietician, Elisa, who I work with at BOCES, she's the one that plans all these menus. And she's done a really great job of just helping me find some of these halal items that we can feature on the menu. So I'm hoping that this

024list of offerings will grow as we go on here. We also offer take-home meals for students that are fasting during Ramadan. We did that last year, and we offered that again this year. And like I said, I'm always trying to offer and trial more vegetarian and meat-free options. We recently started offering veggie burgers on cheeseburger days, and we actually have a day coming up in April where we're featuring a whole meat-free menu for Earth Day. And just an example is the bento box that you guys tried tonight. So this school year I started doing a food service newsletter monthly. And the reason I started doing this was because I, with Universal Free Meals, I anticipated that we would have a lot of new customers. So I wanted to highlight what our program was all about.

025And I also just wanted to, you know, most importantly, I wanted to share photos of what our food looks like so that, you know, our new customers and the community would know what we were producing in our kitchens. All right, so now we can get to the numbers here. So we've seen meal counts go up drastically with universal free meals. So these are our breakfast numbers. This is where we really saw a big increase in meal counts. So just to just to compare on average last year we were serving approximately 250 breakfast meals a day This year we're serving roughly 780 to 800 breakfast meals a day and I actually right before I came to the meeting I checked our breakfast meal counts for today and we are at 879 I think that's the highest

026we've been all school year Last school year For the whole year we served 50,570 breakfast meals. This school year we surpassed last year's meal count at the end of February. So between September and February we've served over 65,000 breakfast meals. So breakfast is really where we've seen a big bump in meal counts, which is wonderful. Because that was always the meal we were trying to get kids to participate in. And then the same goes for lunch meals. We've definitely seen a bump in our lunch meal counts. On average, across all schools, we've seen about a 30% increase in lunch meal counts compared to last year. So we've been very busy. Good busy. So my goals for next school year, obviously, I want to continue to grow this meal program. I want to increase menu diversity,

027and I want to continue to use garden produce on our school menus, maybe talk to Mark about growing some cool and interesting things that we can introduce to the students. And obviously I want to provide more educational opportunities around the things that we're serving and the food we eat. like the Maple experience that I mentioned in my earlier slides. And then just looking into next year staffing considerations. Staffing was definitely a bit of an obstacle at the start of the school year just because we are adjusting to these new numbers. As the year progressed, we did increase hours and make adjustments so that our kitchens were supported. One of the areas though that I want to continue to build and grow is our food service sub list so that our kitchens have the staff relief

028that they need if we have people out. So we did have some success this school year using BOCES subservices, and we were able to find a couple of reliant food service subs that can come in when we need them. And then we have our continuous food service sub posting just so we can continue to recruit and build that list up. And additionally, I'm looking to increase some staff hours. at some of our schools. So the middle school will be moving to four lunch periods next school year. So I will have to make some adjustments there. Some of our elementary schools as you know enrollment is changing so we may have to make some changes with with hours that at some of our elementary schools and then we've really seen a Our coffee shops gotten really

029busy at the high school, which is which is wonderful. So just looking to get some Help in the in the coffee shop in the morning. So for this school year, the program is projected Revenue is just over 2.6 million I want to point out a couple things. So we did see a dip in a la carte sales, and that's likely due to universal free meals. We don't have parents loading money onto student accounts like they were last year. Therefore, students just aren't purchasing as much. We also paused serving second meals or selling second meals K through 8. September through February just because I wanted to give kitchens time to adjust to the new numbers. I didn't want to add any additional stress with extra meals. So we did temporarily pause selling second meals for the

030month of March. We have brought those back now that we've leveled out. But those are the reasons I think we've seen a little bit of a dip in those sales. But what is most notable on this slide is that we are projecting no general fund subsidy for the conclusion of this school year. For this school year, the program's projected expenditures is roughly 2.3 million. Obviously, if you look at our fruit product line, food costs are obviously higher compared to last year because we were serving a lot more students. And if you look at our equipment line, we have made some improvements between last year and this year. So prior to the start of the school year, we did add a new walk-in freezer at the high school to accommodate the increase in inventory that we

031are expecting with universal free meals. And this year we did add a new electric steamer and a new refrigerator at Eagle just for storage and to make that kitchen more efficient due to the increase in lunch meal counts. So looking at revenue over expenditures, we are looking at a projective positive fund balance of $360,000 for the current school year, requiring no general fund subsidy in June. Recommended budget revenues. So for the 26-27 school year, I am projecting a slight increase in revenue. With the continuation of universal free meals, I do anticipate a slight increase in meal counts, therefore an increase in revenue. I do want to point out though, when I was projecting the revenue for next school year, I was using this year's reimbursement rates. we will not have the new school year reimbursement

032rates until sometime over the summer. And then for budgeted expenditures, I am anticipating an increase in expenditures for the 26-27 school year, notably in salaries and benefits per the collective bargaining agreement. And of course, I anticipate an increase in food costs. you know given you know the rise in the cost of fuel I do anticipate this is going to translate to an increase in the cost of food as well so in summary you know I am projecting a positive fund balance to close the current school year at roughly three hundred and sixty thousand dollars I will say Universal Freemails has been crucial to this increase in revenue. And this is just, it's great for our program because this is just money that's going to go back to making our program better. So are there any

033questions? Yeah, a couple. So cut me off. Okay, great. We'll take it. So just a couple of... quick ones off the rip you said that that we are that the regulations recommend regulations or law change to allow for whole milk in the schools have we therefore switched is it a requirement it are all of our offerings whole milk or is it allowed i'm just curious You just have to offer a variety of milk. So we do have a choice. So we could continue doing what we're doing, which is we offer 1% white and 1% chocolate. But we can offer, we could offer a third option of whole milk. We just have to offer a variety. It's really up to us what that variety looks like. Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. And then on...

034You had mentioned last year the importance of families continuing to apply for free and reduced meals. although even in light of universal meal programs. So I'm wondering if that's still the case and if you would remind us why that's important and are we going to continue encouraging people to do that moving forward? Yep. So we are still collecting applications through this school year. And that was important because if you recall, we are operating under what's called Provision 2. And by collecting those free and reduced applications, we were, it's important to qualify those that are eligible for free and reduced because it determines where our funding is coming from. Those for those free and reduced students Most of that reimbursement funding is coming from the federal government Whereas if a student does not qualify so they're

035under that that paid eligibility status Most of that reimbursement funding is coming from the state So it's just really, the reason it's important is it determines where that funding is coming from. At the conclusion of this school year, we'll no longer need to collect free and reduced applications. Yep. Thank you. If somebody else wants. Sure. In terms of reimbursement perspective, When do we receive the reimbursement? We get it at the end of every month. We submit our meal counts for that month, and we get the reimbursement afterwards. Food inflation. Everything I read and what I kind of based my budgeting on was 2.5%, 4%. But who really knows, right? I believe so, yes. Sure, as long as it's good. All right, cool. And then a couple questions. So you mentioned shifting toward more scratch cooking,

036which is awesome. Thank you. And just as a little side note, I once saw one of my friends had an actual recipe book. from a food service director at a high school in like the 1940s and it was wild. It was like mashed potatoes for 300 and you needed like a gazillion, like it was, and it was all marked up. It was really cool. Anyway, so as we return to scratch cooking and potentially cook things like that, I'm curious how, do we have the facilities? Is that something that we will have to kind of... keep an eye on moving forward like are we are we well equipped to do that because i know because it seems like that's where the federal government is heading as well in at least now encouraging if not eventually requiring

037more So I would say our middle school and our high school kitchen are definitely equipped for more scratch cooking. I think where we would have to do a little more fast scratch is at our elementary levels. I don't think they are as equipped as our middle school and our high school kitchens to do full scratch cooking. I also think there's a balance here, right? in terms of timing. So I think we have to balance, you know, some fast scratch with scratch when it comes to our school lunch menus. But I would say our high school is probably the most equipped to make this happen. So could you just, could you just fast scratch? What do you mean by that? So it's, it's not a fully scratch recipe. So maybe you are. you are using some,

038so for example, the roasted vegetable hummus that you guys had tonight, that was a prepared plain hummus that we purchased, and then we doctored it up with those roasted vegetables. So it's kind of using some convenience items, but also, you know. adding some things to it to make it a little bit better. And it's delicious. Thank you. We've got two more questions. Sure. I appreciated the comment on things like whole milk. Have there been any other announcements on the not always data-based food stuff from HHS that's affecting school meals in a negative way, or are we basically good? Can you repeat that question? I had trouble hearing you. Yeah, there's been a bunch of announcements about what's really healthy, you know, eat more red meat, all that kind of stuff. Has anything been a problem

039for the school meals program? Has anything been a problem? Yeah. Can you elaborate a little bit more on what you mean? I don't know how much of this is coming down as a mandate. Do we get, you know... Say Kendi says you must feed ribeyes to all high school sports athletes. That kind of stuff seems wild. I wonder how much it was actually filtering down in terms of impact on day-to-day operations. Right now, the guidelines that I was speaking of earlier, nothing has changed about our program regulations. Packaging. Obviously, at least I think obviously, this is not recyclable. Is it possible we can increase the amount of recyclables? That's something I'm always looking into. It's hard to get away from some of these plastic products and food service because there is an aspect of presentation

040and food safety, right? We want things to be packaged and, you know. contained, right? Because we have people going through lines and grabbing things and we have done a couple things this year. At the high school with our sandwiches, we did get away from the plastic clamshells. We're now wrapping everything in like a wax paper instead of putting them in the clamshells, which has been great. But I'm always looking for ways that we can use more compostable materials or just get away from these single-use plastics. Are the biodegradable plastics available in the kind of quantities we would need? The issue with a lot of those compostable products is the price. Last question for me. The breakfast increase, how much of that is the high school? Is this where it's being driven or is it really

041throughout all the schools? The high school, we've seen a pretty large bump. We're doing about 300 breakfast meals out of the high school, but some of our elementary schools we've really seen a spike. Eagle Elementary, for example, they do about 100 breakfast meals a day, same with Slingerlands. So we've really seen an increase at those elementary schools, but it's really been across the board. So the buses get students there in time to have breakfast before period one? Mm-hmm. Nice. Cool. Thanks. I know we've also talked about the Farm to School program over the years, the program where New York State provides a higher reimbursement rate to schools for procuring and using food from more local farms. I just was curious, is that something we've been able to participate in this year? how much are you

042able to take advantage of that program? So are you referring to the 30% initiative? Yep, exactly. Yep, so that is something I actually, I have a meeting next week with my BOCES team about. So for everyone here, the 30% initiative is basically if you spend 30% of your... your lunch food costs on New York State products you get an additional 19 cents in reimbursement for every lunch meal served the next school year. What I am meeting with my BOCES team about is to figure out what that magic number is in terms of spending and what the revenue would look like if we were to participate in that program. So I am happy to report back after I have that meeting. I'll meet with John and let him know what those numbers look like. And if

043that's an initiative we want to... we want to pursue. That would be outstanding. I know both the Senate and the Assembly included in their one house budget a proposal to expand that program to also include breakfast. That would be amazing. Yeah. And the Senate, so both houses proposed that and the Senate also proposed putting another $64 million at the program. There wasn't the ad that I saw in the Assembly budget. Hopefully that continues expanding because I would love to see Bedlam participate if we can. And I know there's always been an administrative hurdle there. So thank you for continuing to pursue it. Yeah. Another, kind of on the packaging thing, do we have, at the high school, do we have, are we using reusable trays or are we using disposables? We're using disposable paper trays.

044Okay. Yep. How many, so that's for every meal that? So that's a lot of paper trays. That would really just be for the hot meal. If you're getting like a grab-and-go sandwich or a salad, kids typically don't take a tray. We just have those available for the hot meal to tray it up. Do we have the ability to switch to reusable trays? It would be... a bit of a hurdle right now for the kitchen. We'd probably have to, just in terms of keeping up with the trays and having enough out for each line. It is definitely, I do want to explore some sort of reusable. plate or tray in the future because I think that that would be amazing. But we'd have to look into the labor surrounding that and probably add some staff to

045just make sure we can keep up with the dishwashing. Yeah, great great great and then my last no I just wanted to publicly as you did a new presentation Thank mr. Warford for all of his work in the gardens and all the food that he and his cadre of students are providing to the entire community that is so amazing and I don't know if it's genuinely unique, but it's certainly a tremendous asset. And thank you for continuing to just provide great food and to serve so many kids every single day. I'm sure that this is one of the many jobs in schools where you're not going to please all of the people all of the time. However, you're certainly feeding them and getting food in the belly. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, Mark's

046been wonderful to work with. And, you know, I just wanted to, I meant to mention in my... slides about the green initiatives. I put up a ton of pictures of my staff out in the garden and that was really fun this year because especially at the high school, you know, if the cook needed something or one of the staff needed something, they would just go out into the garden and harvest it and that was just, it was a fun thing to experience. So yeah, it doesn't get fresher than that. Thank you for the muffin and hummus. It was delicious. Yeah, good. It was delicious, absolutely. I just want to say thank you for this presentation and just serving food for kids and especially having a halal option and offering take-home meals during Ramadan. I noticed

047that for 2026 to 2027, you want to make increased menu diversity. Is adding more halal options kind of one idea, or what are some ways? Yeah, definitely. I think I would love to find, and the dietician that builds all of our menus, that's something she's always working on. So that's something I definitely want to expand. Do you think it's going to happen next year? I think we will definitely have some additions to what we're already serving, yes. Thank you. Yeah. Just to kind of spin that out a little bit, can you speak to a little bit, like what are the... What are the challenges, right? If it's overcoming hurdles to getting toward more halal foods, what hurdles would just give us a day in the life of trying to solve these issues? So our main

048distributor is US Foods, and it's what they stock. What we're trying to do is, you know, we are under the BOCES food service. There's a large group of us, right? So we have some buying power. So, you know, if we can find a product that we want to get stocked there, we're finding it easier because... a lot of people are looking for these halal options, right? So if we find something cool, we're finding it a lot easier to get into U.S. foods. But right now, it's finding those products, getting them stocked, and we're limited to what is stocked at U.S. foods. Thank you for spinning that up. Do we have any more questions? Thank you so much, Claire. Thank you. Appreciate it. And thank you again for the food. Yeah. Our next presentation is the

04926-27 budget presentation overview and discussions from John McPhillips. Good evening folks. I want to start where we left off after our presentation on March 4th. We have gone through a couple of meetings through starting with the baseline budget on February 25th and then working through some obvious Some components being admin transportation technologies, operations and maintenance, athletics and instructional programs. They presented some changes to their operating budgets for recommendation and consideration by the board on both expenditures and revenues. And where we ended last two weeks ago was a gap of roughly $3.6 million, which translated to a tax levy increase of just under 5%. Wanted to summarize the reductions as of today. We had a reduction in teacher retirement system, several current vacancies within the bus driver and bus attendant titles, which Ellen Dorado, our transportation

050director, recommended for removal, a reduction of a CSU chairperson, English teacher, mathematics teacher, science teacher, a library media specialist. an aid to student with disabilities for a total reduction of 1.2 million dollars. What I want to highlight with regard to the positions those are currently vacant positions in 25-26 that through discussion are not needed for the 26-27 academic year. There are a few budget neutral items. I didn't want those necessarily to get confused in the larger conversation we're going to have tonight. Aaron Chevers, our Chief Information Officer, highlighted the Smart Bond Funding Initiative, which is a budget neutral proposal for the installation of new technology, specifically Visio boards throughout the district at roughly $317,000. And then there are four... positions that are a change in tenure area that are budget neutral and those are reflected

051there. On the addition side, the Board of Education at our last meeting asked the district to pull together what those additions reflect, their priority, so those can be considered in a little bit more detail. For a summary slide, we broke those up into three main categories, being safety, operational, enrollment, and program enhancements. That's actually four. I misspoke. I apologize for a total addition of roughly $757,000. And then we can go into a little bit more detail within those categories. Now, what I want to note is how they're categories in summary does not necessarily mean that All of the individual line items are created equally in terms of importance, but it was an easier way to summarize. So on the safety needs, there were the emergency evacuation chairs at the various buildings, security camera replacements at

052roughly $20,000, radio replacement at $7,500. The annual inspection for gym facilities, which is a new add given the changes associated with the last bond project for certain gym equipment and stage equipment, certain rigging needs to be annually inspected now. Soccer goals at $11,000 and gymnastic springboard and equipment at $20,000 for a total safety need of $72,000. On the operational side, some changes and upgrades to the nursing office, tablet docking stations for the buses that are, they just get worn out. That's the first year of a two-year replacement cycle. The removal of sale of buses revenue at roughly $135,000 given the impact of the EV mandate as well as some decisions that this board may consider moving forward. We haven't sold buses in quite a few years. That is a sort of carryover revenue item. If

053there is not going to be a sale of buses in 26-27, that creates a hole in the budget. So I want to make sure that that is addressed. and a change in title for the Assistant Director of Educational Technology for $15,000 for a total operational need of just over $168,000. On the enrollment needs, Dr. Hurst can provide a little bit more information if needed on this, but roughly $365,000 in new positions associated with enrollment and programmatic changes. And then program enhancements for music, art, new equipment, some additional repairs that are needed based on feedback from both music and art supervisors. And on the program enhancements continued elementary instructional coach, the addition of modified flag football, the kindergarten kickstart program, and various clubs and the stipends associated with that for a total enhancement of $151,000. Also

054from our March 4th meeting, the board asked the business office and the district office. Just to double check the budget, were there any changes, any additional cuts that could be considered or changes from when we first started the process back in February? We went back to our stakeholders and can provide some additional reductions with regard to bus drivers and other two vacant positions. Ellen Dorado said that was doable. I will say that there are some additional bus driver vacancies still on the books for 26-27. I'm reluctant to move any further only because we budget for the full anticipation of all the routes needed and all those drivers. Given the driver shortage that we have, we use substitutes to backfill those vacancies. Those vacancy dollars are then used to offset the substitute dollars that are spent.

055So it washes it out. If I go any further, I'm going to be left with an expenditure hole at year end. Subsequent to our March 4th meeting, we received notification from a clerical position of a retirement, so we added that into the annuity. new reductions as well as a full-time special education teacher. There was a carryover item in the elementary schools associated with the old DARE program. It was sort of buried in the elementary allocation so roughly a $5,000 allocation for each of the elementary schools. That is no longer needed. That does not negatively impact the elementary schools in terms of the SRO coverage or any programmatic costs because those are covered elsewhere in the budget. Given that following Claire's recent presentation, if she's closing the books with $360,000, she doesn't need $30,000 from the

056general fund. I will point that I did reach out to our auditors to confirm whether or not. transfers in the past that the general fund made to the food service, whether food service can pay those back. And the auditor said, nice try, but no. It's just because the financial books are closed at the end of the year and the USDA and state regulations are pretty tight in terms of transfers back to the general fund. A few meetings ago, the board authorized a new contract, five-year contract with our external audit services that came in under budget from when I first proposed the budget. So that was a reduction of $5,000. And then you may recall that the executive budget proposal for foundation aid increased foundation aid by 1%. Both the state and the assembly one-house bills

057have language including foundation aid by another 1%. That is not necessarily guaranteed. I think that there will probably be some common ground reached between the executive side and the legislative sides of the House. I included that in this additional reduction. That 1% yields roughly $211,000. We will need to be prepared if that does not come to fruition that may be artificially increasing revenue. Overall, the new reductions in revenue changes equate to $595,000. On the state aid side, a side-by-side comparison over the last few years, the 26-27 executive budget you can see was at $34.9 million, roughly a $350,000 increase or 1%. The 26-27 legislative proposal reflects the additional 1% in foundation aid, gets you another $211,000, but really, despite that increase, you're still an increase in overall state aid by 1.5%. With regard to the

058tax cap and tax levy... brief look back in terms of where the allowable tax levy was versus what the board ultimately adopted in 23-24 and 24-25 not all allowable tax dollars were levied resulting in savings to the taxpayers of roughly 1.1, 1.2 million dollars over those two years. 25-26, tax cap was at just around 1%. Given the pressures that the district were facing at that time, we levied the full amount. For 26-27, the allowable tax levy increases 2.61%, and that would translate to roughly $1,928,000 in additional tax revenue. But if we were to use that, that would be no unused allowable tax levy moving forward. This is always a little bit of a touchy subject associated with the business office when there's a request for, well, what's the estimated impact to local taxpayers if at

059a tax levy increase of 2.6%? And the reason that's challenging is the school district budget calendar doesn't fall or line up nicely with the real property tax calendar. Impact of the tax rates are influenced by a number of factors including the assessed value in and between towns within the Bethlehem Central School District. It's impacted by changes in equalization rates and the calendar challenge as you can see. Equalization rates are made available in February. The taxable status date was just earlier in March. I won't have a preliminary assessment roll until May 1st and a final assessment roll until July 1st. So, for purposes of the analysis here, I had to use the 2025 assessment role. Now, I anticipate that assessed value overall will increase, which will sort of change the numbers I'm presenting to you now.

060Between, there's two towns within the Bethlehem School District, namely the towns of Bethlehem and New Scotland. You can see what the equalization rate was last year compared to what the equalization rate is now. As a quick summary, the equalization rate is the... Equalization rate is a reflection of what the assessed value is to the market value of a property. So ideally you want to be at 100% that namely the assessed value matches the market value. If you're below 100%, your assessed value is below your market value. And if you're over 100%, your assessed value is higher than your market value. So comparing the 25 and 26 estimated tax rates, you can see that there is a change of roughly 2.37% for Bethlehem and just under 6% for the town of New Scotland. Again, these are

061very, very preliminary numbers only because I'm not using the most or what will be the most up-to-date assessed value for both of those towns. So as of today, that would result in a $30 increase. per $100,000 of assessed value for the town of Bethlehem and for the town of New Scotland, $125. Part of that fluctuation is because of the change in the equalization rates. Over the course of the two years when we get to this actual meeting of the setting the tax rates we have a slide I know it looks like well Why is New Scotland paying so much more there is a side-by-side comparison when you compare the assessed value to the equalization rates the same tax dollars per thousand dollars of assessed value applies summary of our fund balance and reserves over the

062past few years I did include a reserve status as of March 2026. Just a couple of highlights there. The encumbrance reserve is liquidated because those encumbrances for something that at the end of the year we have not yet paid. We're in March, so all those outstanding bills have been paid. With regard to the 22 capital reserve, I put that as a zero only because the voters recently approved the use of the capital reserve dollars for the upcoming bond project. So those dollars are technically committed as at this point and aren't available to spend. On the appropriated fund balance, the board... chose to use $715,000 to balance the 25-26 budget. There was also the, after the adoption of the budget, there was the emergency need to replace the gym roof A, the roof of gym A,

063which was an additional $400,000, which is reflected in terms of appropriated fund balance. As of today, the undesignated fund balance is just under $6.5 million, or roughly 5.5% of the operating budget, for a total reserve of $19.4 million. Quick highlight on the capital reserves. We had several capital reserves that were available and open over the past couple of years. The 2019 reserve was just closed, officially closed by the Board of Education a few months ago and was associated with the last components of the 2021 capital bond project. Again, the 22 capital bond, $16.6 million is available, but has been committed. There is still funding room of roughly a half million dollars available to that 20 million dollar threshold for the 22 capital bond and then we have available two savings accounts that the board may

064consider moving forward a 30 million dollar 2025 capital reserve for future capital projects and a bus reserve of 15 million dollars. Presently those two reserves are not filled or do not have funding available. Quick multi-year projection here to help at least frame and provide some context of where we are. in 26-27 and how things may look over the next three academic years. With regard to school taxes, I did assume the use of the two point, you know, taxes up to the 2.6% cap. Same thing for 27-28. That $78 million represents a tax levy increase of 2.8% under the cap based on the information I have available now. Things get a little squirrely after a year or two in terms of forecasting, so I assume 2%. each of those years. Pilot payments are relatively flat and

065stable and there's a couple ins, a couple outs, but overall it's a relatively flat revenue stream. State aid, I assume some nominal increases because I do anticipate some pressures at the state level that may find their way to district impact and all other revenue sources, the all other revenue source category is relatively limited. When you compare those revenues to the expenditures, which I'll get to in a moment, you can see the deficit year to year over the next four years. Same sort of analysis, but flipped on the expenditure side between salaries, fringe benefits, supplies, debt service, and transfers. Again, taking into consideration collective bargaining agreements, negotiated salary increases, the impact of fringe benefits. Debt service, I can pretty much forecast that out because I know what debt we have on the books and there's no

066future debt coming on until after 2930. Still shows you the year-to-year deficit over the next four years. With regard to capital outlay, this is a $100,000 appropriation that's included in the budget every year for various upgrades. With regard to physical plan throughout the district, over the past several years, we've been upgrading the security systems within the school district, specifically the door monitoring systems. The high school has been done. The middle school has been completed. Hammer Grill Elementary School is currently being installed and will be finished by the close of this academic year. Slingerlands for 26-27 is on tap and we'll roll out the other elementary schools to the extent needed over the course of the next several cycles. On to ballot propositions. During the March 4th meeting, we present some additional information regarding to the

067district's recommended bus proposition. The district's recommended action remains the same at nine diesel buses for a total prop amount of roughly $1.6 million. There's a five-year payback period through state aid for a net cost of $579,800. We also provided some alternatives based on the board's request in terms of breaking those nine needed buses for the district's fleet into these traditional fuel types and EVs. You may recall that the district has three buses under the New York State Bus Improvement Plan grant program. That is, I was able to secure an extension for purposes of the board's conversation and deliberation. And this is the cost breakout if you were to do one EV bus and eight diesels. 2 and 7, and 3 and 6. So for purposes of this evening's conversation, in order to prepare for the

068next meeting on April 1st, a couple of things the business office would appreciate is are there any reductions or additions that the board wants to consider individually or change? Because ultimately I need to prepare an authorizing resolution that represents the total dollar value of the operating budget for 2627. Those reductions are and or additions will change that number. So I just need some better guidance on that. And the second component I appreciate your decision on for guidance is the allocation of the bus proposition in terms of total number of vehicles and how those vehicles are distributed between EVs, diesels, or a combination of the two. Before we get that, I'm happy to answer any questions on the other parts of the presentation as well. It may be useful just to divide those two conversations if

069you want to discuss the bus proposition first. Does anyone have any questions for John? No, I think we've... We talked a lot about the bus proposition over the past couple weeks. And for the public, I think the past couple meetings we had pretty extensive discussion about the amount of time that the EV buses have been out of service based on issues we've been having with their functionality. You know, for that reason, I really have been supporting the EV buses, but I do think it has become an issue that it's not very practical for our transportation department to have to continuously work around this issue with the EVs. And so... I understand that the recommendation is for nine diesel buses at this point. I don't know how everyone feels about that. Sorry, one question that did

070come to mind as you were speaking. Just to remind us, if I remember correctly, I thought I heard either you or Ellen say at a previous meeting that whether it's EV buses or diesel, we're waiting for about a year out from placing orders to getting them here. And I wanted to just... Sorry, let me rephrase that as a question. Am I correct in that recollection, or what is the time frame? There is a lag time in terms of placing the order in the delivery date. One is longer than the other. I can't... I can't recall which is which. It's at least a year, if I recall out, diesel. One's a few months longer than the other, but given pressures within the larger New York State community in terms of buying buses, there is a bit

071of a lag. So whatever decision the board ultimately makes, those buses probably would not be. in the lot until, you know, at least 11 to 12 months from May. Thank you. One question I have, and it was related to the budget, was you had $135,000 removal of sale buses revenue. Could you explain a little bit about that and whether our decision tonight would add or subtract to that revenue? So the... The proposed reduction and consideration of that revenue is sort of twofold. First, with regard to the acquisition of our most recent EVs, they were tied to the New York State Bus Improvement Plan program, which provided an add-on revenue stream of roughly $61,000 per EV bus if a district scrapped the bus. a diesel or gasoline powered bus in that swap. It wasn't required, but

072given the dollar value associated with that scrappage, it made sense for the district to include that, which means by scrapping it, it wasn't available for sale. So even though we had $135,000 in the budget, the EVs that we purchased, we scrapped buses on the back end of that, which means we didn't have, we could have, but Other buses weren't necessarily in the position to be sold on the marketplace. Compounding factor for 26-27 moving forward is given the uncertainty in terms of the practicality of the EV mandate for 2035 and 2027 in which all buses purchased by 2027 need to be EVs and by 2035 As the law is currently written, all buses need to be EVs, no more diesel or gasoline buses in your fleet. By selling buses, not knowing where things may stand with

073regard to that mandate, we may be doing ourselves a disservice by selling buses that we could be using on routes if another bus is in the shop for DOT inspection or waiting on parts. So that was another reason why I put that for the board's consideration. Should we just be maintaining the existing inventory that we have in terms of traditional fuel types while this sorts itself out? I can certainly sell buses. Frankly, I don't know what the market value may be in terms of buses. The last time we sold some buses, we didn't get all that much. I think we got roughly $5,000 or $6,000 per. I think we sold three of them, so that was $18,000. So even the $135,000 at the sale was probably a revenue that was... Artificially high. I assume the

074mandate itself has affected the secondary market, correct? Yes. Elementary coach. We have elementary sports teams outside school now. Oh, it's an instructional coach. Yeah. So Allison Hepfer, who's currently one of the... She's an instructional coach. She started doing that role two years ago now. She was originally hired for primary, to work with the primary teachers when we were implementing foundations. And because her role has been so well received, she's now doing K-5 in all five buildings and trying to help support. So the request came from... staff to add another instructional coach to help support that work. So there would be two individuals and they would be able to support both reading and math instruction. This is not basketball, it is math. Right. I had a small, security cameras. Are these like parking lots? Like where

075are these cameras? So these are just cameras in this building. In this room, they're throughout the building for safety and security reasons. Parking lots for sure, but Common areas, hallways, fields, and district grounds, those come to be replaced periodically. I thought we had a previous board discussion and decided not to have coverage of lots of places. Am I misremembering that? No. Why are we not looking? I don't know. We don't have... A lot of the cameras that have been installed have been through bond projects, and so we don't have a replacement plan for cameras, so when they... break or over time they just don't function well. Right. So in general we have cameras all buildings or places? Yes. Not in individual classrooms like instructional classrooms. Always common areas. Certainly not in staff or student restrooms

076but the main areas throughout the building. Because the cameras are getting older, working with Nick and Sonia, our director of facilities, We're replacing them a little bit more frequently, but there's not a dedicated line item for that, which means, okay, I may not be able to replace that until when we get to the end of the month and see where things are, and we'll do these by the each. So some of this long-term forecasting is building in these replacement plans and allocations so we can be a little bit preemptive in that. If they don't break, fine, we don't use it, right? But it's getting, because the budget is... getting tighter and we're sort of tightening things up, finding those available funds mid-year absent a distinct allocation is becoming challenging. And then I have the two

077bigger questions, I guess. I assume that we just went to the tax cap of 2.61%. I almost certainly missed it. What is the net remaining funding gap at that point? What is the deficit between the revenues we would bring in and our current budget? So some of that's based on the decision, you know, today, right? So we are... Okay, for that basis, assume we accept all of the reductions and the additions as currently... Appreciate that. So the gap, if we were to maximize the tax cap at 2.6%, accept the reductions and the additions, the... The shortfall is $1.1 million in terms of revenue over expense. Now, those dollars are available, and then there's going to be fund balance and reserves. Which is my next point. Your slide for the next four years, which I thought

078was really useful, the total deficit projection over those four years is $10.3 million. That's correct. Now, if I can just throw one caveat on that, that was based, because I wasn't quite sure direction where the board was going. That analysis is based on the initial gap when we started in February. Because I didn't want to get too far ahead and have seven or eight different scenarios here. But your point is correct in that those are cumulative in nature, meaning that they build on the deficit from one year to the next. We don't have $10.3 million. Even if we use a whole and designated fund balance, that's $6 million. That's correct. So at some point, either now or in the near future, we have one of two choices. Either we cut services significantly or we increase

079taxes over the cap. Absent some under fundamental change in revenue or in expenditures, yes. First of all, I think we should just recognize that and make it really obvious and really public, right? There is a funding gap we cannot currently fix with our current reserves. And second, if we're deciding that we don't wish to cut services significantly and therefore we are going to exceed a tax cap at some point, mathematically it's better to do so sooner rather than later. Now, I really appreciate the work your office has done trying to bring that gap down this year. So yes, we can absolutely cover it this year. That just reduces our fund balance next year and kicks the problem down the road. So let's just be clear about the choices we're going to have to make at

080some point. Those are fair observations. Now, part of the challenge with any budget process is it's a snapshot in time several months before the actual even start of the fiscal year, let alone the end of the fiscal year. So we've had internal conversations here in terms of what are next steps. And, you know, I always say that the budget process is about 10% development. It's about 90% management of the budget once it's live. In terms of the largest expense by far for the district is people. Same like any other corporation, whether you're private or public. Between salaries, fringe benefits, and other associated benefits, that's the real cost driver. So we do our best to manage with the information we have at the time. I can't tell you today how many vacancies through attrition or retirements

081there may be over the course of the 26-27 school year that may impact the 27-28. But what we've had internal conversations here is those are all going to be very scrutinized very heavily to make sure that What's the real impact if we don't backfill those positions? Because it's really the opportunities to decrease FTEs outside of position eliminations mid-year or in the budget process is really through the management of the vacancy process that occurs through just normal organic tradition. Attrition, excuse me. So I've already started having conversations with department heads. We've talked about this at our admin council meetings that, all right, you know, Everything is going to be reviewed. Questions are going to be asked. Support and documentation behind the need is going to be particularly required. It's not that it's not required now, but

082given the pressures we're facing, those are going to be heavily scrutinized moving forward. So that's there. Keep in mind that we were around this time last year. where we sort of felt these pressures building. And one of the actions the board took was to actually add additional fund balance dollars to reserves anticipating this very need. So that was a great decision because as anticipated or feared, we're using some of those dollars now. With regard to the fund balance proposed, whatever that number may be after your decisions over the course of the process. Part of that fund balance I anticipate will be restored when we close out our 26-27 books. At the last meeting, I highlighted that there was some state aid that we were anticipating in 25-26. that because of the timing of the receipt

083of that state aid, it was not available in time to record for our 25-26 financials. That was roughly $1.9 million that will be reflected in our 26-27 financials above the state aid that was budgeted already. So all else being equal, we'll meet our state aid budget for 25-26. plus the $1.9 million carryover from the prior year. Again, it's a one-time rebalancing of state aid, but it does offset any anticipated use of fund balance to balance the 26-27 budget. Two more small things, less than one to jump in. One thing is just kind of in terms of framing, right? $120 million is a big chunk of money. But it's worth noting, I think, that our district per student expenditure is still way on the low side. Like it's lower than other Albany counties. It's lower than

084the city of Albany. It's lower than the state average. So at least on some kind of crude level, it doesn't look as though we're wasting money per student. Even though it's a big absolute sum of money in terms of what it costs to educate a student in New York, you guys have done pretty well in terms of keeping that cost really down. And the last thing, at least for now, so we currently have $10 million, $9 million in debt service. Yes. When does that, let's assume we don't borrow more money. When does that expire? It depends on the bond issuance. So you may recall when we were doing our 2025 capital project, we highlighted to the community that it was a budget neutral proposition in that at the time. existing debt service rolls off the

085books and is fully satisfied there's two large debt service payments that end around the 2930 year that will provide room for the issuance of new debt. So it washes itself or balances itself out in terms of operating budget because debt service will be remain relatively flat for the operating budget. Let me just check I understand. So 2930, the current existing bond debt would be paid off. In part, yes. Because there's several issuances, right? Like there's four or five different issuances. But the largest chunk, which is associated with like the purchase of the land and building for Eagle, which was a big one, and 2016 bond, those are the ones that will be coming due. Around that time period. I don't expect you to know this number off the top of your head, but let's assume

086we didn't issue new capital bonds. How much would that debt service payment go down at that point? I would have to get you that one because it depends on what the dollar amounts are, what the term of the, and what the interest component is. So, you know, roughly if it's a, most of our building terms are 15 years. So let me get, I don't want to speak to a number only because. But at least in theory right now, you know, you've got this four-year budget plan you gave with $10 million down. But at least at the end of that period currently, there'd be a chunk of our current budget costs that would disperse. Yes, if you're looking at that in isolation, right? So the one thing I would highlight is the reason we structure our

087bond projects in the way we do and the... forward thinking we have in terms of the financing mechanism between reserves and debt service is to You know, there's a cycle of replacement here, right? So, yes, you may save on some debt service costs, but to the extent that things need to be replaced or updated or upgraded, where are the dollars for that absent a bond project that you're financing between capital reserves and debt service? So you may get yourself some breathing room for sure. I don't doubt the arithmetic behind it, but what is the backside cost of that? Yeah, I wanted to, I guess, get a little bit more information. Ewan brings up a good point in terms of the cumulative aspect of the deficit going forward and the fact that the reality is there's

088some difficult decisions coming, if not this year, then in years going forward. And the point about when, in terms of overall, I guess, mathematics, when would it be the best? to sort of make that decision possibly to exceed the tax cap. Is it, you know, are you able to, you know, calculate, you know, whether you're doing it year one, how much it would save if you're doing it year three or year two? And again, I'll say I don't expect you to have any number on the top of your head, but is it, you know, how significant do you imagine the savings would be if we did it sooner rather than later? It's not so much about savings as much as it is making sure that we've We've done everything internally here at the district office.

089The board has weighed all its options. We went through every line item. We squeezed every program to make sure that there is not additional dollars on the table, that we maximize all our revenue sources. Because I appreciate that for those at home that receive their tax bills, they're feeling the same struggles that we are feeling at the district level, sometimes a little bit more. acutely so I don't believe we're in a position as of right now That being said, I appreciate that there is a deficit, but that's why we have the fund balances to offset that. I'd like to see where some of the pressures go over the course of the year. One thing that, for example, that's not built into the budget as it presented is a geopolitical conflict in the Middle East that

090may have impact on fuel costs and other costs. So those are all things that we're going to have to take into consideration. To the extent that there's attrition over the course of several years, I suppose that's cumulative as well to the extent you're not filling them. That's correct. That's right. One thing I would want to say with the attrition, we have been able to reduce positions, particularly the last couple of years at the high school level. And that's because we've seen the enrollment trends come up from elementary. We used to at one point 10 years ago have 95 sections. or 92 sections of elementary, and we're down to anywhere between 86, 87. And we've seen that number. Middle school was impacted, and now the high school. We've been able to cut FTE due to retirements,

091but due to student enrollment being down. That's going to flatten out. So I do think it's important that the board recognize that we've been reducing those positions. I'm not sure. next year or the year after, we're going to be able to absorb those without really impacting programming for students. The other thing, just to keep in the back of your mind, that I think is potentially not a cost immediately, but there's proposals for required UPK for districts in 2028. It was part of the governor's proposal, and it's in both of the... Yeah, the proposals. There is increased funding proposed for that, but it's a requirement that you can use a community partner or you would need to offer it. And those ratios for what's current in UPK programs is much lower than just elementary class sections.

092And aside from space issues, if we don't have a community partner or partners who can provide that, we would be required to offer that. And there would be... some increased cost in a couple of years to plan for that. So I just think that kind of keep that in mind because without some additional funding for that, that could be, I would say, impactful. Okay, so just to summarize, you're saying be careful about the... historical last couple years attrition rates being able to be absorbed and we might have in addition some some some some extra things that we're gonna have to be budgeting for as well right a couple of years yeah thank you yeah are we talking about buses or either one okay yeah I mean I I think I think we've heard enough from

093you all regarding electric buses and your recommendation is to go with the diesel buses. I think budget-wise, I mean, I think based on what you're saying about the money coming over from the previous year and whatnot, I'd be comfortable with using that money to offset things. The undesignated fund balance you mean? Yes. Yeah, so transferring dollars into the fund balance. Right, right, right. Yep. Great. Those were two separate things. Okay. Correct. Just a quick question I had regarding one of the new proposals you had. proposed today was the reduction of an FTE special ed teacher. Where is that coming from? So last time when I presented, we proposed increasing reading 2.0 FTE, and that was to increase the way our MTSS process worked with... embedding general education reading support with special education reading support. So

094currently we have special education teachers providing reading for students and after looking at all of our different programming options and consolidating the way the reading worked we were able to reduce one FTE. So it's not reducing special education programming per se, it's just a shift. of the reading and we're still going to have sort of now one additional reading teacher which will keep the group sizes at a very manageable level and give us the flexibility across buildings to be able to provide those supports for students. And will that be done through tuition? Yes. And then just regarding the other, you know, I was looking through the additions and it looks like the largest addition is the addition of the elementary instructional coach. I understand from your description it would be very helpful, but if we

095are looking at trying to firm up this budget, and we're talking about taking kind of a harder line on all this, is this something that would be just helpful, or is this something that we truly feel like is necessary to provide supports to teachers? I mean, I think it's truly necessary, but at the same time, looking at if I had to make a choice and knowing that you're going to need a big dollar amount to sort of reduce, that would be the first one on my list. But I don't think that diminishes the need for it. I just think all else being considered, that would be the one that I would point to because, you know, the other ones on the program enhancement side are all small dollar amounts. You're not going to, you know.

096All together they don't come close to matching that amount. So that would be the one that I would probably point to. Again, I think we've seen extreme value in what Allison's done the last two years. And I think expanding that program would only yield sort of better results and especially with the number of new teachers we have come on the last couple of years. Having the embedded coaching has been a real benefit. But that would be, I think, the most glaring sort of choice to be the one cut. And it would be something you could consider next year as part of the budget if we felt like that was worth not adding this year. I mean, we don't have it currently, so... And my last question, just for you, John, if you could... I feel

097like we go at this every year, but I need reminding. How exactly do you calculate the tax cap? So can we predict what next year's tax cap is going to be? We've seen tax caps anywhere from like 1% to 5%. Yep. That's a huge difference. So how can we predict what the future will bring? I can do at least one year because the tax cap formula is moving, the tax cap calculation is moving forward, depend on decisions made in any given year. So it's a 15-step process that starts with the prior year's tax levy. It gets increased by what is known as the quantity change factor, which is bricks and mortar construction within the taxing jurisdiction. Their pilots are thrown in for the existing year. Pilots are then subsequently backed out for the future year.

098There's a capital component that certain capital expenditures are... exempt from the tax cap calculation. That's our principal and interest on debt service payments. It is the cost of our bus bans. There's a BOCES capital component. There's a separate sub-calculation for that, then multiplied by whatever the inflation factor is, which is 2%, gets you to that number. So for this year, the maximum amount is 2.6%. I can, based on what I assume the decisions will be here today for next year, I anticipate that the tax cap will be 2.8%. After that, you know, the wheels start getting a little wobbly in terms of making forecasts because inflation factors can be anything. We could have changes in our capital component. I don't want to go too far out. I mean, usually it's around 2%. Now, granted, last

099year... So last year we were at 1.1%, and that hurt us a bit only because you may recall at that time there was the ongoing pilot discussion, was it going to be included or not. We made some strategic decisions, the best decisions we possibly could have made at the time. The pilot came on, which was great, don't get me wrong, but that... It impacted the calculation. So rather than a tax levy increase for 25, 26, slightly higher than two, it brought us down to 1%. We're sort of rebalancing in 26-27. It's usually around that 2.5% to 3% on any given year. Now, if you have some drastic changes in pilot revenue or capital expenditures, that can put it up above that amount. But that's roughly where it'll be, all else being equal. Now, the one

100thing, I highlighted this at the last meeting, but I think it's an important distinction to make. In 23-24 and 24-25, and even in some years prior, the allowable tax levy increase was actually much higher than what the actual adopted tax levy percentage was. So, for example, in 23-24, it was just over 3% in terms of what the district could tax absent an override. The board adopted a tax levy of 2.3, which left $535,000 in available tax dollars on the table. Same thing for 2425. That's new money. That's $635,000 in new tax dollars. The challenge with school districts is once the tax levy is levied, you don't get a chance to be like, hey, remember two, three years ago we didn't tax it. We sort of definitely need it now for 26, 27. It's not the

101way the formula works. Certain municipalities, it does work that way. But for the school districts in particular, it's not. We didn't need those tax dollars at the time. We gave those as real property tax savings to residents and the commercial entities within the district. It's just, you know, fast forward a few years, because of pressures and inflationary factors outside the district's direct control, those tax dollars would certainly be welcome now. Claire Rose, do you have any questions? So I think John is looking for... direction from us. I don't know if each one of us wants to say first of all what we think we should be doing with the bus proposition. John, if you want to start, I think you already said that you support the nine diesel buses. I would go with the recommendation

102of what John and Ellen gave. I concur. I think it kind of sucks that the EV buses don't work is the short summary because I'd much prefer to have an EV bus. it seems kind of crazy to keep buying really expensive buses that don't actually function. I'll disagree with you that they don't work, but we have discussed the fact that there have been operational challenges. They work half the time. Okay, sure. Catherine? I think... Even in light of the challenges, I would support the district moving forward with putting a proposition with one electric bus on the ballot for this year. I mean, every single diesel bus we take off the road saves... impacting our kids with diesel exhaust. There's a direct correlation between the amount of time kids spend on diesel bus and the rates

103of asthma that we see and the negative impact from that diesel pollution. I think it's a health issue. I think it's an environmental issue. I think that given the lag time between the date of order and the date of delivery and the continuing ramping up of programs and services that the state is investing in, our local colleges are investing in. Hudson Valley has an evening mechanics program it's got online that we can be taking more advantage of. And the increased kind of funding and attention that the EV buses are getting at the state level. There was money included in last year's sustainable future program. There's money that's proposed for this year's in addition to other EV bus funds. I think it's good for us to take advantage of those and to continue. Slowly building. I

104wouldn't support rushing in faster or harder at this point, but a continued progression and continue to deeply appreciate all that the business office and the transportation department are doing to address these hurdles head on and to be leaders across the state, working with NYSERDA and other agencies to make sure that they're hearing the concerns. I completely understand what you're saying, Catherine, and support that. I do think at this point I would support the nine diesel buses just because of the operational challenges we've faced. And I don't want to add to those operational challenges over the next year. So I would support the nine diesel buses. I did have a conversation with Holly. I know that she said that she supported the nine diesel buses. She would also support one EV bus if that's what the

105board decided. I haven't had an opportunity to talk to Warren about it. How about you, Bob? Yeah, I think for essentially the reasons that have already been discussed, I would support the district's recommendation of nine buses. Nine diesel buses? Okay. Okay, job's done. I'm good on that. Our next job is to give John direction about the budget. We have the question of whether there are any additions that we want to say that we just can't afford at this point, or I think we should also discuss whether there are any reductions that we have a problem with. And then finally, whether or not we're comfortable with dipping into the fund balance to make up that deficit. So, John, if you want to... I would go with my same answer that, you know, I support the additions

106and reductions and use of the fund balance to offset the difference. Ian? I don't support using fund balance to make up the difference. It's doable this year. That just makes it worse next year. And I think we should always be willing to take the right action and take the pain now if that's better for us long term. So I think that's what we should do. Given that, I would accept all of the additions and reductions. I think if the board eventually decides they want to use capital reserve, unallocated funds, sorry, to make up the budget gap this year, then we probably shouldn't add that instructional coach because you should minimize the pain in that case. I support the additions and reductions as proposed. I also support using the undesignated fund balance this year. I wholeheartedly

107hear what you're saying, Ewan, and I think that it is important to to make the hard decisions. In this case, I also think, however, that we have an undesignated fund balance that is above the 4% cap that the state arbitrarily places on school districts. So this would bring us more in line with that target. And I also think that this is why we have... a fund balance, right, is to address, you know, to address needs throughout the district, and this year is a need. So I do think future boards, I think that next year we're going to have to look really, really hard, because you're right, this is, you cannot fill a structural budget gap with one-off funding. Short term, right. Yeah. However, in this year, in this case, I think it is appropriate to

108fill the structural gap with the one-off funding for now. I think I would agree with Catherine regarding using the fund balance in this situation since we are above technically what we're allowed to have in that fund balance. I think it would be appropriate to use it rather than asking our taxpayers to go over the tax cap for this year. In terms of the instructional coach, I do see that as an addiction that we may not have to do. The rest of the additions I saw were either smaller in amount and didn't accumulate as much or were necessary for safety. But the instructional coach is a position we don't currently have. I understand it has great value, but if we are thinking about... coming years and how difficult it's going to be. As we just said,

109each position that we have, those are the big costs that accumulate. So I would support all the additions and reductions except for the instructional coach. Yeah, I also support, I think, using the undesignated fund. Last year we added to it specifically to try to sock away a little bit for the rainy day, so to speak, and obviously it's raining. And so, again, I appreciate the... the cumulative nature of this, but I would support using it. This year, I also, although it's difficult, the instructional coach, I mean, obviously, you want your school to be the best it can be, but given the fact that that'll be just a year-on-year addition, I think I would support all the additions except for that. Thank you. Point of order, it's 859. Thank you for pointing that out. Just 30

110seconds. It sounds to me like we have, based on majority rules, we have said that we're going to use the undesignated fund, and three of us recommended not using the instructional coach. Is everyone comfortable with those conclusions? I mean, I think... I would reconsider the instructional coach. I just think between what you hear about the tang math, kids coming into elementary school is less prepared. I think our teachers are doing a lot of stuff. I think it's a great investment. You hear the work that Allison is doing is pretty exceptional. There's a great need for it. I think you don't pay for it on the front end. You pay for it on the back end. And I think our kids are only going to continue to be that much lagged behind. And again, you hear

111the different feedback and the different things we have. Again, especially the Tang math. You don't hear really great feedback, and the teachers could use a lot of help with that. I just think we're better off to pay on the front end than on the back end, but that would be my opinion to reconsider that. Let's have that debate, but first we'll... The PIG students and SUPA students, it is 9 o'clock, so if you'd like to leave, please come up and... You're welcome to stay. You're welcome to stay, but be sure to sign up before you leave so that you get credit. Taking that pause for our students. I think where we ended off, John was asking us to reconsider the instructional coach based on the tremendous value that I think nobody is denying. So I

112don't know if anyone else has any thoughts about that. I'm persuaded. If the board's going to go and pay from the restricted fund, undesignated funds, fine, let's not harm the instructional. All right. I'll go with it. I mean, my only concern is with the instructional coach that this is a position that's not just this year that we're talking about. We're talking about every year this position is going to grow with our organization being paid every year. It's just going to accumulate. So in thinking of future years, we're talking about they may be difficult years. That is a concern of mine. And also just the concern in the larger budget that John was talking about, we do have that one line in which we are including an increase in aid. Is that correct from the legislature?

113Yes. Yep. But that is not guaranteed. And that's also just a concern that we do have to keep that number. in mind whether or not it's truly going to happen. I don't know if anyone has any other thoughts. Did Holly give you any? No. This didn't come up, obviously. This particular position didn't come up. Yes. This might be not a possibility at all, I don't know, but what would it look like to add a part-time instructional coach? Would that save the budget a little bit and then make it so it's more doable for several years? Is that something that would be, is that job able to be split into that? So, I mean, the challenge there is you want somebody in that position that's been a long-time classroom teacher that has credibility with our staff.

114So absent finding a retired person that would want to come back to do .5, say, I just, and then, I don't know, at that point. I don't know how effective it could actually be. But it would be a challenge. We did have a few years, actually a number of years ago now, we had a teacher that was doing instructional coaching on a part-time assignment. And I'm trying to think, I think she did it through a job share, if I remember correctly. Today's point that it was problematic because it was really difficult to get around and have the time to really do instructional coaching at the middle or high school level You could do that because teachers are assigned more on a period basis and then they have other periods that are free But the elementary

115level the structure of the day, you know, it's a classroom team It would have to be someone who's not a classroom teacher and then I'm not sure how they would really be able to work with classroom teachers. That is kind of the purpose of it. So I think that would be a challenge. It's a creative idea, though. I appreciate that. That makes sense. Any other thoughts? I continue to be supportive of this, of including it this year. And that's what I've got to say. Well, that breaks the... You and Brooke are tied the other way, so... Okay. So we will include the instructional coach, so all the additions that were recommended, all the reductions recommended, and the use of the fund balance. Okay. So what I'll do between now and April 1st, we'll work with

116bond counsel to get the wording of the authorizations for the April 1st meeting for both the operating budget and the bus proposition. We've already started that process, so we'll button that up. I will also, there will be some updates to those forecast slides based on the information today. The deficit will change a little bit. It doesn't get necessarily. in the black, but it'll change and we'll reflect that at the next meeting. In terms of potential ballot propositions that will be presented to the public this upcoming May, you have the district's operating budget, the bus proposition, the Bethlehem Public Library operating budget, which the Library Board of Trustees recently passed, three District Board of Education seats, and one Library Board of Trustees seat. So for our Bethlehem, Bethlehem, for the Bethlehem Board of Education, there are

117three seats open for a three-year term expiring June 30th, 2029. Petitions were first made available February 20th and are due to the District Clerk, Brittany Barrett, by 5 o'clock p.m. on April 20th. Our calendar is getting shorter as our days are getting longer. April 1st is the next scheduled meeting for if there's any additional discussion or feedback. I think I got pretty much all I needed today. So the adoption and appropriate authorization of all. Mechanics of the budget process. May 6th is the public hearing on the proposed budget. In earlier conversations, we were going to parallel both the public hearing on the budget along with the smart bond initiative because that does require a public hearing. May 13th is meet the Board of Education candidates night. And May 19th is the budget vote, 7 a.m.

118to 9 p.m. at the high school gym A. Do you have to know offhand the library budget? Was it roughly in line with past years? They went to the tax cap, which was just over 3% based on its calculations, similar but slightly different. There were some changes in revenue streams, particularly pilot revenue, that from one year to the next changed it, but they're right at the tax cap. And then, sorry, just a quick question. Can you remind us what the, I know that the public hearing on the... Sorry. Smart bond. Smart bond. Thank you. Is a requirement of receiving those dollars. And can you just remind us what the question is we would be asking the public to comment on as part of that hearing? It's more comments on the proposed use of the smart

119bond dollars, which Aaron had highlighted are associated with video boards, associated ancillary equipment, whether or not it's the computer component that operates a smart board. the elevators which are the lift, you know, the ascending, descending devices for the smart boards. Anything I'm missing on that? The computer devices as well. And there's an allocation for the district and the private institute, the private parochial schools within the confines of the Bethlehem Central School District as well because that's a requirement. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, John. Next on our agenda is item five, recognition of public comment on an agenda item. If anyone here would like to comment on an agenda item, you can please come forward. When you come forward, please state your name. Hi, I'm Emily. I'm a high school senior. I'd like

120to thank you all for, in terms of the EV buses, prioritizing both sustainability and efficiency and costs. I had a few questions. I know you mentioned that there are a lot of operational problems with them. I was wondering what those operational problems are and what the main causes of those are. Normally during public comment, we can't do question and answer. Oh, okay. But I will say that we have discussed this in previous board meetings. If you want to look in our YouTube channel. And I think there was a previous presentation that also spoke to that. There's a presentation on that. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next item, six action items. First, we have 6A, finance action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following finance

121action items one and two. Can we split these, please? Yes, we'd like to separate items one and two. So first, it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following finance action item one. Well, I think we have the motion to split. Sorry, yes. I'll make a motion to separate items one and two. Second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? No. Okay. It is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following finance action. Item one. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That passes. Point of order. So I'm going to move to table item two. John's going to answer one question for us about some of the math in there, and we'll come back to it next time. You are moving

122for that? Absolutely. Can I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That passes. Thanks. Item 6B, professional personnel action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following professional personnel action items 1 through 15. So moved. Second. Any discussion? You're doing great. I appreciate it. Thanks. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That passes. Item C, support personnel action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following support staff action items, one through six. So moved. Second. All in favor? I don't. You've got discussion. Oh, discussion. Sorry. Just recognizing, again, one of these is someone with 22 years of service. Thank you for your long-term service to the district. It's really cool. I'll second that sentiment. Absolutely.

123All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That carries. Item D, other action items. It's recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following action items one through two. So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That carries. Item seven, recognition of public comment on a non-agenda item. If any members of the public would like to comment on a non-agenda item, now is the time. We do have a sign-out sheet. Samuel? He left. He left. Okay. Just checking. Item 8, future meetings and events. We have on Wednesday, April 1st, we have a Board of Ed meeting at Glenmont. Everyone put that on your calendars. Please text us. It's at Glenmont. Anticipated exec session at 6 o'clock, at 7 o'clock, regular board meeting. And on Wednesday, April 15th,

124we have a meeting at Hamagrail Elementary School with anticipated executive session at 6 o'clock and a regular board meeting at 7 o'clock. Seeing no need to go back into executive session, can I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Thanks, Mary.