001Board of Education meeting for the Pittsburgh Central School District. If you'll all please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. We have a motion for approval of the agenda. Thank you, Robin. And Kim? Any questions or revisions? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Human Resources Report. Thank you and good evening. Uh first for your consideration, uh we have the professional staff report. We have a change in status from probationary to tenure for 38 certificated staff members. We have three certificated staff appointments, one certificated staff increase in FTE, one regular substitute to probationary appointment, two SRP appointments, one supervisory and technical appointment, five SRP resignations for retirement, one certificated staff termination, two SRP resignations. We have per diem substitute appointments and spring coaching volunteers for you. Thank you. May have a motion to approve the professional
002staff report. So moved. Thank you, Renee. Second. Sarah? Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Thank you very much. Next for your consideration is the support staff report. We have five clerical appointments, one clerical resignation, two clerical resignations for retirement, four transportation appointments, one transportation resignation, four custodial maintenance appointments, two custodial maintenance resignations, five custodial maintenance resignations for retirement, one custodial maintenance termination, five food service appointments, one food service resignation, and one food service resignation for retirement. Thank you. May have a motion to approve the support staff report. Thank you, Dave. Second. Renee? Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Thank you. >> Just like to say on behalf of the Board of Education, congratulations to all those that received tenure tonight. They um had a little
003reception before. >> [applause] >> And finally, we have one first reading for tenure for for your review. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next on the agenda is Principal's Report for Menallen Center Elementary School. team. And um Jess Levine, who I think is probably caught up with family stuff. She's our assistant principal at Menallen Center. Um she's in her second year, done a wonderful job building relationship with relationships with our families um especially our students. She has um um we're happy to announce she's reached celebrity status in the community. Now when she's out, everyone recognizes her and kids are constantly running up. So she's enjoying that. Um also, I'd like to um I'd like to um thank our dedicated staff for all their work, our families, and especially our Menallen Center students. Um you can
004see on our our first slide, we're continuing to foster a welcoming environment, academic growth in our students, and our family connections. That's a picture of our Menallen Center message from this fall. Our message was welcome, welcoming all of our students, families, and staff at Menallen Center. Um again, we did our drone photo where we have all of our grade levels represented during our welcome back to school assembly. Today, I'd like just to spend a few minutes um sharing highlights um around um some of the important work that we're doing at Menallen Center this year, including our Amplify math program, um also how that connects to our strong curriculum based in play at kindergarten, and um also a little bit more detail in math instruction, and um the important piece in the passion that we have
005for STEM at Menallen Center. So um launching our math program this year um really the first place I would start is the wonderful work that our faculty and staff have done. We kicked off this work about a year ago at our Superintendent's Conference Day, which was um which was April. Um at that time, we focused on um preparing our staff to look at math instruction a little bit differently. Um they did a wonderful job spending some time talking about productive struggle in managing change in math [clears throat] instruction. I'd also like active participants in their math work. Um you might also see classrooms where students have what we call great big whiteboards. So their whiteboards are standing up, and partnerships of students are working on multi-step math prog- prob- problems. After they're done with those
006problems, they're sharing their thinking with their partners, and also often times doing gallery walks where other partnerships are are moving around the room and talking about their math thinking. Discourse-rich instruction. So talking about math in our math program is essential for kids. Students explain their reasoning, um they critique and build on each other's ideas, and they're strengthening their communication skills. Most times, if you're in a math lesson at Menallen Center, you'll see kids spend part of their math instruction breaking into partnerships, often times with a partner they may have not met in a week or two weeks, so that they each are always taking an opportunity to do some of the math work, but also getting feedback and support from their partner. And again, most importantly is equity and access in mathematics. All students engaging
007in rigorous math, whether it's our students with um individualized education plans or our English language learners, it's important that everyone sees themselves as a mathematician. That really helps our children build positive math identities, and we see that that will lead their continued interest in STEM areas. Some of the key benefits for our MCE mathematicians are conceptual understanding of math, critical thinking, and problem-solving, engagement and curiosity, communication skills. These all align with um some of our 21st century skills that we're focusing on. And a couple of the most important are fostering a positive math identity in our students kindergarten through fifth grade and also preparing them for STEM readiness. So our focus on STEM at Men and Center is really important to us. A cornerstone project that we do at Men and Center every year is
008our MCE STEM Day, which we just had this past March. It was an awesome success. It's only successful through all the amazing work that and help we get from our PTSA. Um we can't thank them enough for all their coordination and their efforts. Um this year we had 22 interactive lessons {slash} presentations led by volunteers who are family members and parents. Um over 50 total volunteers participated this year. Um some of the example presentation titles are um construction robots was one of the one of the activities. Our blood cells, lungs and how they work, which included model making of actual working lungs. Um bug life cycles, orthodontics where kids were actually placing braces on on dental models and the clean water challenge. So kids had a awesome time with that. They also ended the part
009of the day with a creative activity where they used toothpicks to create um unique architectural designs. Um they really loved that part also. STEM Day was also an excellent opportunity for us to introduce our solar panel project at Men and Center. So we're pretty excited that we're the only school at Men and Center that um is actually going to have solar power captured at the building. So we took that opportunity to present to all of our fourth and fifth graders. We had great support from our project team at Johnson Controls to come in and join me in the presentation. Um we heard some really great facts like there'll be 1,020 solar panels on the roof at Men and Center. That project is ongoing right now. It's in process. Um we also learned that that equates
010to about 650,000 kilowatt hours of electricity saved. Um that really blew the minds of some of our students, but they really wanted some context. So we talked about that in terms of how much energy it's saving per year and they were pretty excited to hear that that's the equivalent of about what 64 homes per year would use. So that was impactful to our fourth and fifth graders. This is all part of our um our energy performance contract, which of course also includes work around LED lighting and other areas to um to increase sustainability and reduce energy usage here at um at Pittsford schools. So we were happy to participate in that. Um another big piece of science and STEM at Men and Center is our science action program. So we have an ongoing kindergarten program
011um around butterfly life cycles. Every year in May we go to one of our courtyards and all of our kindergarten classes go out with lots of PTSA parent and teacher help and they work on learning about butterflies and their life cycles. This year we're lucky again through funding and support through PTSA we're adding a second grade science action project um again connected to our New York State science curriculum around erosion and specifically um sand erosion. So kids will get to create sand castles in a way that will reduce sand erosion. So we haven't done that yet. We'll see. We might need some help sweeping up the sand when we're done, but we'll let you know. Um and one of the really fun things this year again supported by PTSA and the funding and the fundraising
012we did is a big addition to um to Men and Center is we have Pickles the Axolotl. I don't know if you guys are familiar with what an Axolotl is, but it is a endangered rare underwater salamander. So it's like a fish. It it breathes water. Um but they're really interesting and weird looking in that they're almost like translucent and they glow in the dark and I found recently that they're pretty engaging if you go and check them out like almost awkwardly staring at you. If you look, they will look back and through your soul. So you're welcome to come you're welcome to come and meet Pickles at any time. We did So so Miss Griffin, Abby Griffin our science teacher did a great job setting up um um kind of a naming exercise and
013everybody got to vote on the name. So Men and Center students chose Pickles. It was not mine or Jess's choice. Um and since fourth and fifth grade science comes to the science lab for science, we wanted to be sure we included everybody else. So she arranged a time for all of our kindergarten through third grade classes to tour through the science lab and get to meet Pickles. So everybody got to see him or her. We don't know yet. We won't know for 18 months. That's another unique fact. Um so community support, that's another big piece. All of these things I'm talking about couldn't be possible without our um family and community support. We're lucky to have them. Um they support our teacher appreciation activities, which really hit home to our faculty and staff. Um we
014kicked off our MCE Stride and Shine Fun Run last year, which earned lots of money like in our other elementary schools, but the most important part of that is how we've been using the money, I think. And they've done a nice job to really try to advertise that. Um multiple projects have been funded. Pickles was funded through this work. Significant art supply increases, books for our fifth grade end of the year Battle of the Books project, which we started last year and we're doing again this year with all new novels for fifth graders. Um we're doing um some PE upgrades by adding inflatable Gaga pits that will be available inside the gym and we're adding a permanent um playground Gaga pit outside near our playground to help increase fun at recess. So we really appreciate
015all that all that support. Finally, we're really looking forward to continuing to welcome and support our students and families at Men and Center for the rest of this year and moving forward in the future. And of course for all of your support. So thank you. Any questions? All right, thank you Rich. We all enjoyed our time at Men and Center with the staff this week. Yeah, thank you for the tour. >> That's great. Thank you and thank you for your presentation today. Yep, thanks everyone. >> [applause] >> And next on the agenda we have a presentation from Monroe One BOCES with Kathy and Kim. Thank you for having us here tonight. And seems funny to be on this side of the table, but it's great. So I just like to take a minute to introduce
016Kathy Huber, who probably doesn't really need an introduction, but she's the first woman to serve as um BOCES superintendent ever and for BOCES One. She started her new role in July 1st. And prior to this she was the assistant superintendent for instruction and served as deputy superintendent for eight years at Monroe One BOCES. Thanks, Kim. Uh so we get to follow Pickles. >> [laughter] >> We're going to go visit Um I think uh everybody in this room likely knows Kim McCloskey. Uh she really when you're standing in a room that's named after an individual next to the individual, um she likely does not need an introduction. Um but for those of you who may not know, uh Kim served on the Pittsford Board of Education for 24 years and has been on the Monroe One
017BOCES Board of Education for I believe this is your eighth year, seventh or eighth year. Yeah, and she um I know she was an outstanding board member uh when she served here at Pittsford and she's been a tremendous asset to the Monroe One BOCES Board of Education as well. We're delighted to be here tonight. Uh we'd like to start off by thanking the Board of Education for your service to the Pittsford community. We'd also uh like to thank the leadership team here uh for their continued partnership with BOCES. Uh you likely know and have witnessed as a Board of Education the strength of your leadership team um each and every day here in Pittsford. Uh what you may or may not know is regionally every one of your cabinet leaders uh are very highly respected
018uh individuals at their respective tables. So um Lindsey and Elizabeth at the PPS table, uh Heather at the ASI table, Shayna at the superintendent table and of course Mike at the business official table. They represent uh this community very well and as I said they are are very uh well respected leaders and and we appreciate their leadership at at those tables as well. It's very important. So uh one thing that we want to share with you this evening is this is a milestone year for Monroe One BOCES. Back in January Monroe One BOCES turned 70 years old. 70 years ago we uh had a staff of seven that operated from just two small rooms uh over in Fairport. Uh today we have 19 facilities across the region, 1,400 employees and we serve over 2,000 students
019through our special ed, CTE, and itinerant programs and services. So a lot has happened in the last 70 years uh and and we're proud of uh what we've been able to develop at Monroe One. You likely know there's a couple handouts uh right at your at your places. I'm going to start with the Monroe 1 at a glance handout. You likely know that Monroe 1 is one of 37 BOCES across New York State that serves 688 districts. We are a cooperative. So we work with districts and on behalf of districts to provide access to high-level programming and opportunities to share expenses. The major categories that we partner with you as a district in education is through instructional supports, so curriculum development, professional learning, digital learning initiatives, things like that. Development and access to student programs,
020so special ed, CTE, regional summer school, alternative education, and transition programs. Technology services which helps to support your IT infrastructure, cybersecurity, data management, student management, things of that nature. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, itinerant staff. We share specialists across the region and I'm going to get a little bit more into detail on that in just a minute and what specifically Pittsford And then of course business and purchasing. We support the process for cooperative bids, insurance coordination, cost sharing on products, software, hardware. The next handout you'll see is the Pittsford services summary. Some of you may have already seen this if you were part of our district service meeting. And this provides a nice high-level overview to the Board of Education on some of the services that Pittsford participates in. On the front page
021you'll see some career and technical information so you can see that about 50 students from Pittsford participate at the Eastern Monroe Career Center and you can see the breakdown of the many different career and technical programs that they participate in. Our multi-act focus program which is also a career and technical program. About 13 students participate in program or in programs at that site. And last year Pittsford students earned 70 college credits and participated in many of the 135 work internship sites that we have developed across the county. On the backside of that page you'll see an overview of special education up at the top. You'll see that about 39 students participate in our highly specialized special education programs that support students K through age 22. Pittsford participates in many itinerant services. We have providers that
022support assistive technology, behavioral health, clinical therapies which includes occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech language, and music therapy. We provide deaf education and vision services to students here in Pittsford or any private and parochial schools that are within your district boundaries and also regional programs and services which include comprehensive teaching solutions, high school equivalency, regional summer school, translation services, and tutoring services. And I do believe Pittsford is one of our hosts for regional summer school this year, correct? Awesome, which is which we really appreciate. And then last but certainly not least, technology services. Monroe 1 is home to one of 12 regional information centers across the state. Our regional information center serves 19 districts. That's 10 Monroe 1 districts and then the nine Monroe 2 districts on the other side of the county. Pittsford currently purchases
02342 of the 47 technology services that are offered by the BOCES. So again, a strong a strong partnership there for sure. That is what we prepared to share with you this evening. Just as a quick highlight of BOCES and then a quick highlight of the programs and services that you participate in. We're happy to take any questions that you might have. Questions? Thank you both for this great presentation tonight. Thank you both for everything you do at BOCES and for all of your collaboration with Pittsford and all the other districts across the county. It's really valued. Thank you. Thank you. Next on the agenda we're going to receive an update from food service on the universal free meal program. Good evening everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Elena Montgomery.
024I'm the director of food service. Um So tonight we're going to take you through a little presentation about updates on our program in general, the National School Lunch Program which we rolled out in our elementary this year. Um and some looking forward to the future as we roll out this program for our secondary schools. Applications are already in, so we are just waiting for approval. So a couple did you know facts. Right now our projected estimated revenue for our program will be $3.3 million this year. That is up over a million dollars from last year and probably will continue to grow by at least a million next year. So huge growth um in that realm. We try and use as much fresh and local fruits and vegetables and partners as we can. Um if you've
025been in our cafeterias you may have seen a huge switch to fresh fruit and vegetables which is something that we're really proud of. Um obviously we have more work to do. Um remote serving at Barker Road. So with the current construction project we are serving completely remotely in our MPR room. And let us tell you we are excited that participation is still up 6% in this school but we are very excited to have our new cafeteria next year. Um some fun facts. We have served so far as of end of March 637,277 meals which is more than we served in entirety of last year. And as far as just general purchasing we purchased over 13,000 pounds of just chicken alone. We've gone through. One of the kids' favorites as I'm sure you can imagine. Um
026obviously key biggest focus is the National School Lunch Program re-entry. That was kind of the big focus of the year. Um due to that we had to modernize some of our infrastructure, our equipment which we'll dig into a little bit later. Um as well as make some make some adjustments to our um administrative team. So if you haven't met Kristina Maldonado, she has been my lifesaver for the past year and a half year. I guess it's only been a year um getting this program up and running. We couldn't have done it without her. Um and that switch as well as being our new field supervisor has been a huge help to make sure that we can keep running these programs and feed our kids because there's a lot more of them eating as we'll talk
027about in a second. So quick snapshot as I mentioned about $3.3 million revenue we're project projecting for this year. Um expenses non-payroll which is most of our food supplies equipment. Payroll cost about $1.2 million including benefits. Um we run about a 35% labor ratio which is pretty standard for hospitality industry. Um and we're projected this year to have about a $54,000 surplus. Key revenue factors obviously participation. So we've grown year over year as a district 37%. That's grown and 58% in just the elementary year over year. One of the big key factors to this and our biggest surprise entering this was breakfast. Um so we did hire a consultant to find out what is this going to look like. We were told if you're not a breakfast district you won't be one. Surprise. >> [laughter]
028>> So um we were averaging about 20-ish breakfasts a day as a district. Some days we did zero across the district. So about one to two per school. Um we're now averaging about 1,000 breakfasts a day. In our schools just the five elementary. It's not including any secondaries. So it's about a 14,000% increase. So there were some tears um by probably not only our staff, administrators, teachers, lunch aids, but we pulled it together >> [laughter] >> and we figured it out. Um now the guess is what's going to happen next year in the secondaries. Who knows. Um we have had to expand our staff. Um obviously with breakfast becoming a thing and not before, we found that we didn't have the staffing in the morning that we had before. You know, one to two breakfasts,
029one person. 300, not so much. Um so we made some adjustments, added some assistant cook manager roles to help support our managers. Realistically we our team just jumped in and did it. I mean we had part-time people working three hours a day, working seven hours a day, eight hours a day. Whatever it took to get it done. So we wanted to make sure that these people were recognized for the role they were actually doing, um the hours they were working, getting the benefits that they deserved. Um so one of the key changes that really has affected our revenue um is the direct certification program. So if you're not familiar, um now that we're we are in the National School Lunch Program, we have access to the data for families that are receiving other government benefits.
030So SNAP or Medicaid. They automatically qualify as free or reduced. Which again it's free for elementary but it does impact where funding comes from. Now if elementary students had older siblings that also impacted their status because they're from the same household. Now we knew that our free reduced percentage would probably increase once we got this information. But just with the elementary data we've gone from 3 and 1/2% to 10%. Within our district which is a huge jump. We didn't quite plan for that but that's okay cuz everything worked out. So as our secondaries are self-funded as far as free and reduced, we're covering that cost which right now is amounting to about $129,000 a year in meals we are covering for students in our secondaries, which is awesome that we have so many kids that
031we now know needed these services and free meals that previously hadn't filled out applications. So, that's really awesome um and we're excited to see where that number is going to jump next year once we have the data for families that only have middle schoolers and high schoolers. Um in case you weren't aware, food service is kind of its own entity. We are a business kind of within the district. We cover um all our own costs. That includes all of our labor, our benefits, our equipment, the food, everything is covered uh within of the revenues that we make. So far, we've received a little over a million dollars just through the end of March in state and federal funding for our program and about 170,000 in entitlement, which is money we use for government foods, produce,
032things of that nature that we can now access as part of the program. The staffing um strategies, we mentioned some of that. One of the things we also looked at is our wages. So, we did a comparison over all of Monroe County and food service programs and we found we are in the lowest quartile of pay for some of our staff. So, we wanted to make sure looking as this program is growing and growing over the next years that we are competitive and then also our staff that was existing is able to be compensated for the ex excessive amount of work they're doing over previous years because it was a huge lift for everybody. Um so, we adjusted those. Um we are planning to hire about six to 10 more staff for next year to
033be prepared. We've already brought some of them on currently and they're in our secondaries and our elementaries learning to be ready for next year um as we found it was hard this year having a bunch of brand new staff on top of rolling out a brand new program. So, we're trying to be as prepared and thoughtful as we can about that process. Field supervisor role, Rico Griffoni has joined us um as our field supervisor. He's currently training. Um he's going to be a fabulous addition. And with the new administrative task that really come along with running this program, he's able to be the boots on the ground. He's in our kitchens every day. He's working side by side with our managers. He's training. He's making sure that everything is compliant, that we're doing what we
034need to do, and the kids are getting the best service and food possible. And um that's that in a nutshell. This is just a quick um sheet to look at. This is what we call meals per labor hour. It's just a staff efficiency tool that we use in school food service. Um just to kind of show you that we are are on track where we should be. Um obviously, we're carrying some extra people that are training for next year, so there's some um adjustments there as far as obviously the construction project. We have more staff because we're moving food back and forth all day long instead of just serving in our cafeterias. Um procurement and cost control is something Christina and I have really dug into this year. Um obviously, not knowing what the program
035was going to look like as far as the revenue side, we wanted to dig in and make sure we could control our costs. So, we brought on new vendors such as uh Sysco, which we've been working on for quite some time. They're much bigger than Palmer's, who is always wins our local BOCES bid, um and they offer a lot better pricing on some products. Um we've also switched to doing a lot on Amazon >> [laughter] >> um as well as added some other vendors that can give us better pricing. So, it's really looking at how can we get what we need for our kids, but also get the best price possible. So, some key things that have happened as part of this program, we used about $200,000 from our fund balance um to invest in
036equipment um and some of that infrastructure in our kitchen serving lines. We need a lot of new ovens all kinds of different things. Our our kitchens are old. Um a lot of our serving lines haven't been replaced in a long time. Our equipment hasn't been replaced. It's just kind of limping along. So, even before this um program became something that we were going to be doing, we had already kind of laid out a five-year plan, 10-year plan for replacing a lot of our equipment because it just it needs to happen. Another thing we ran into with the program is walk-in coolers and freezers. Um our kitchens were not most of them with the exception of probably Calkins was not built for this kind of volume. So, if you go to most of our elementary kitchens
037now, you'll see coolers and freezers wherever we can put them just to be able to store food. So, just a consideration as we look forward to capital projects, we may need to look at where we have more space to properly store food for longevity. Preventative maintenance, so as far as this equipment too, one of the things that was never in place was preventative maintenance. Um so, that's something that we instituted this year to make sure that we're taking care of our equipment that we can make sure that don't have outages that are not anticipated, that we can uh extend the life of our equipment can we get the more the most out of it as we possibly can. And as we know nowadays, appliances do not last the way they used to. Um so, we're
038continuing to work on a comprehensive replacement plan to make sure we always that's up and running um and not get to the point where everything is falling apart. Um we've also added a new temperature monitoring system that is um a lot more modernized and it is right on our cell phones. So, our managers, Christina and I, Rico, we have 24-hour access to our coolers, freezers. We know what the temperature is. We know something's going wrong. We can identify trends and issues and have service out before they there's a massive outage and we lose food, which is actually a lot of dollars sitting in our coolers and freezers. And we've added some smart technology with ovens and things like that to really um enhance what we do to help reduce repair costs where everything is now
039collected connected to the internet, so they can remotely troubleshoot things. We can save in those costs as well as um helps with consistency and recipe building that we can send out from our office to all of our ovens, which is kind of cool. New technology. [clears throat] Um as we mentioned, administrator and regulatory is a lot of work. We are actually preparing right now for our first state audit, which is on Wednesday. Um so, we hope all goes well. We think we're pretty prepared. Um And then some strategic initiatives that we're really focusing on is expanding online access. So, you may notice this year we went to online restriction forms for parents. We're putting a lot more information on our website. We already have up and running to be launched next year is an online
040free reduced application right through um Infinite Campus. So, parents don't have to worry about paper. It's really easy. Um and it can comes right to us. And it actually has an automatic approval. We can also communicate with parents for extra information we may need. So, it's a lot simpler, cleaner system. Um one of the biggest things is Meal Viewer. Um it's not 100% finished yet, but it's a work in progress that is a online um interactive menu website. So, you can pick your school. It has everything that we serve. You can click on it. It's going to give you all of the um nutritional information. It gives you allergens. You can sort by allergens. We're currently working on still uploading ingredient data and pictures to make it a lot more fun and have everything we
041want on there and that would be promoting that. But that's kind of been a a passion project over the past year, so um unfortunately, it's not the most intuitive program, so it's a lot of manual entering. Um but we will get there and I'm really excited to roll that out to all of our parents cuz it's a phenomenal tool. Um sustainability, we are [clears throat] um composting in eight of our kitchens um partly through a grant that we um are using through Monroe County. So, we're really excited about that. The staff is really excited. Um they love to see themselves making an impact um and it's something that our students care about as well. That being said, plastic reducing plastic in our kitchens is a huge initiative. Um so, you will see our secondaries will
042all be going to self-serve food and salad bars next year eliminating those um plastic cups that you see everywhere. And we've also applied for a grant um through the state to get those for all of our elementary schools. So, we'll find out in May if that's something we received. We did just um win a grant for some breakfast carts and milk coolers for three of our our elementary schools. We're really excited about that. We tried to apply for everything we could and we'll see what we get. Um for the first time and as far as I know, we'll be doing summer feeding for extended school year program this year. So, we're really excited to launch that. Um and then we're continuing to expand our menu options and really with the focus next year on dietary
043restrictions and allergies. So, you'll see a lot more menu items that are halal friendly, that are gluten-free or at least have alternative options for our students. So, that's a really huge focus for us. And you'll see that coming um through next year's menu. Um the other [clears throat] thing we're working on is student involvement. Um so, you may have seen on our Facebook page, we did Try It Thursdays. We started last month. We started with a chicken masala. We found if you give a kid a sticker, they'll eat anything, which is really exciting. We did not think it would be that successful. Um so, we've been trying that, continue that with different items and sides and veggies and all those things to encourage our kids to try new things. Um and then we just talked
044met with Melissa and Mark um this week to um utilize our business students in our high schools to help design some materials for our new cafeteria designs for the secondaries. So, they'll be designing some signs as well as we're working on a video contest um for our students to be able to do some informational videos for the new program next year to put on our website. So, lots of fun things in the works amongst everything else. Um and that's pretty much all we got. Some key takeaways, um thank you for everyone for all of your support. I know our program has been ever-changing since I started. It's more of a norm than anything else. Um but we definitely couldn't have done any of it without the support of our parents. Some of the ones that
045are here have helped us out. Um our administrative team and of course, Shayna and Mike and all of your support has been wonderful. So, thank you. Any questions? >> [clears throat] >> Yes, you two are both Yes. Absolutely amazing and um I think we're all kind of blown away by what you've been able to do this year and being able to see behind the scenes how you work together so seamlessly and you are a model for all of us of truly strategic thinking and flexible thinking and teamwork and your genuine passion for wanting to nourish our students with fresh, healthy foods that they're excited about is contagious. So, I see that through all of your staff within the buildings and the change has been drastic, I would say, and um very much appreciated. So, we're
046just we're so grateful that you're here and that our students get to benefit from your thinking and your hard work every day. So, thank you so much. Thank you. >> [applause] >> I'll just echo what Shayna said. Thank you very much for everything uh you're doing in food service. Uh it's really been amazing. All of the unknowns you've had to work through, all of the challenges you've met, um and and you know, all of the feedback has just been overwhelmingly positive. So, thank you very much for you and uh for both of you and the entire department and everything you're doing. Thank you. Next up, we have the 2026-2027 proposed budget presentation. Okay. Thank you so much and good evening again. I am proud and grateful to be able to present this evening with Mr.
047Mike Vespi, our assistant superintendent for business. Um she's been obviously a huge um thinking partner and uh a lot of the behind-the-scenes work in presenting to you the budget that we've been meeting about and talking about over the last several months. So, we are excited to um bring you this proposed budget tonight. Um so, tonight, I'll start us with um just talking through again. I know we've looked at the budget guidelines a few times. We'll review those again. These are such an important part of the foundation of the decisions that we make and um those are collaboratively created every year, as you know, at our district planning team. Um Mike's going to go through part of the New York State budget and our state aid looking at our proposed budget, our revenue sources, and then
048the propositions that we'll see um on May 19th at the vote for our community, and um any of the other legal requirements that we need to keep in mind before we answer any of your questions. So, to start with our budget guidelines, um one of the most important things for us is that our that our budget is student-based. And a lot of that happens throughout the year as we're making tough decisions, especially during years where we know um we're going to have some challenges in terms of the budget. Uh some examples would be like right now where we're having sectioning decisions um and conversations, and we really let our students, their desires, their um plan for their course work over their high school sections um or over their their high school years determine um where
049we're going to prioritize. So, um while we want to set some firm guidelines around that um and make sure that we're being thoughtful about making those decisions, we want our students' needs and desires and um those those changing factors to be able to allow us to be flexible. Um we want to have, as we've been talking about quite a bit, consistency in resources and consistency um in terms of what our teachers are using um in their instruction day-to-day and their assessments. Um and then we've heard a lot from our community um through our strategic planning process, through our surveys and our focus groups, how important those extracurricular and athletic and social-emotional opportunities are for our students. So, those um remain a highlight for us when we're considering our budget. One of the most important uh
050key factors in our budget guidelines is our professional development and making sure that's high quality. We've spoken a lot about our multi-tiered systems of support and how that means that we're going to have more consistency while allowing our teachers to also have autonomy in the classroom. But as we're using more consistent resources, as um Principal Albano was able to share today around Amplify, it's even more important that we're giving high-quality professional learning so that our teachers are able to use those resources with fidelity so that we're getting the most impact out of um those resources. And through the work of Heather Clayton and Nicole Berry, we've been looking at our induction program, looking at our newest teachers and the years they have with us in induction and making sure that we're making adjustments, putting our
051resources in places where we're going to be meeting the needs of our students where they are now, but also where our teachers are now. We want to have a balanced budget that um looks at investing in education, but also is sensitive to the fact that we have limited community resources, which we spent a lot of time talking about. Um so, we want to make sure that student needs are at the center even when we have to make challenging decisions. Um and that means that we are transparent with our community around the decisions that we're making um and that we're um advocating. So, we've done a lot of the advocacy work over the past several years, um but we want to make sure that we're continuing to work together around foundation aid funding, making sure that
052our community knows um what that means for us uh when funding is at a hold-harmless level um and what we can do to be able to apply some pressure and make sure we're continuing to advocate for our students. And of course, maintaining fiscal stability now, but also having long-range planning into the future. We've had to make some staffing adjustments. So, as you know, we've spent a lot of time in collaborative decisions. Um Mr. Vespi will share how we um kind of ended up, um but we were able to this year uh reduce around 17 positions through attrition without job loss. So, we were able to look at what are the areas where we can think differently while still being able to be innovative and flexible and bring in additional supports that may meet the current
053needs of our students better. So, those long-range planning conversations become more important and our long-range advocacy efforts become more important, too. So, we want to be really thinking ahead um over the next several years so that we don't every year feel like we're on our heels waiting for the state to give us information and then we're coming back um with the same advocacy ask. So, um that's something that we're going to want to keep an eye on. So, before I turn over to Mr. Vespi, some fast facts around our budget for this year. We are bringing to you tonight a balanced budget where we've closed about a million and a half um deficit um in a gap through, as I said, some staffing reductions that we were able to make without job loss. We have
054some added revenue um that Mr. Vespi will talk to you about through our interest earnings and some expenditure-driven aid. Um we are also recognizing that the investment we're making right now in the strategic planning process is going to help us into the future because we know that we're facing these types of years moving forward. So, the more we're clear around what our goals are and where we are right now and where we want to be, uh we can be really thoughtful and more mindful around what resources we're investing in, what goals we're trying to reach, and making sure that we're all rowing in the same direction. Um the budget that we're presenting this evening maintains all of our programs for our students. It's balanced within the tax cap at an increase of 2.69% and is
055responsible and reduces budget margins while preserving our ability to still fund um our reserve accounts and maintain our fund balance. So, with that, I'm happy to turn it over to Mr. Vespi to talk about our budget timeline, next steps, and our budget for this year. Wow, that was amazing. Um it's great to uh to have a partner in the budget process, and really I think this highlights what all of, if you take a look around the table, what we all do uh as a uh you know, really as an administrative team and a school community. Uh we've got a very collaborative process. Uh looks like we need to spend a few extra dollars on ceiling fans. >> [laughter] >> On 78° days, I think we just need to pull the chain, honestly. That's what Yeah.
056>> [laughter] >> Cuz I I did that earlier. I tried that. Yeah. But what But what's nice in terms of the process here, and and all of you know this, we start early with that forecast, right? We know what's happening. We know what the the landscape looks like. So, we're not in a situation during the budget adoption in this the superintendent's proposed budget to the Board of Education, we're not in a situation where we're panicking. And I think uh as you look around the state, I actually had a conversation uh earlier, you know, at at at a county level, and then you look at some of the other counties, post uh federal dollars to school districts, schools are going to start to struggle a little bit. The state support at a 1% uh level for
057foundation aid and possibly a 2% level is not going to be enough to keep up. So, really, you know, you're going to start to see some of these challenges um you know, roll in. We're not in that situation because if you look at our budget process and that timeline and process, it starts very early on, identifies these challenges, carries them over from year to year, and and you know, gives us the ability uh to utilize this timeline in a way where we don't create panic. You know, we talk about transparency, and we want people to be more involved in terms of the budget process, just overall from a you know, from a a thought process, right? But it's not their job. Their job is really to focus on, you know, our our our mission and
058vision. It's our job to put this budget together. Um we're almost there, right? So, tonight's the budget adoption by the Board of Education, which then triggers uh some paperwork that Terry and I have to ensure we file at the state level, which we'll cover later on in the agenda. We have the official budget hearing on the 12th, and then of course, the week after that, the budget vote. Really, the the main consideration in the development of this budget this year was when we voted uh in March of '23, we voted on the debt service for the capital project. That debt service now, 3 years later, is coming on online uh in terms of um bonding. Right? So, as I mentioned previously, you know, about $2.8 million more in debt service, but about $2.8 million more
059in state support. That state support is governed by a formula, right? That that's triggered when we set up this financing. So, it's a separate bucket of money separate from what we talk about with foundation aid. We've noticed uh a huge increase in health insurance rates, and there's a lingering challenge that we have uh with our our Medicare supplemental plan in the future. So, that's something to be mindful of. Um the BOCES presentation was outstanding. The information's there. We do a great job of utilizing BOCES services. They're facing some of the same pressures that we are in in terms of increasing costs. So, there has been an increase, and and that's a driving factor. Um Rich, you're hired from now on to do anything related to the EPC. Great job with that. But, we're we're ahead
060of the game when when the Board of Education decided to entertain the idea of doing an energy performance contract in between capital project votes. How timely. Right? So, we can count on energy savings. Uh it hits our sustainability uh committee's work. So, great timing in terms of that. So, we're going to continue to look for ways to be conservative because energy costs now are increasing as well. Um and then, of course, we'll talk about the the uh vehicle replacement plan, but I'm not going to spend the time that I did at budget workshop uh three with the EV um vehicles. Again, we did all of this collaboratively as a team, knowing that we're probably looking at uh 2% increase with foundation aid, which is the major formula-driven uh state aid that would adjust to help
061support our program. Shannon, you did a wonderful job in terms of the long-range financial plan. We got to continue that, right? We got to continue to look two or three years down the road and anticipate what those changes are. Um so, we are using more in reserve funds. Tonight, I'll highlight on the property tax report card vote those changes. We do a great job of telling everyone what our what we have in savings, and we're spending it. We're spending it as we get through these challenges. So, it's a combination of cost reductions, finding additional revenue where we can, and then using our our savings, you know, to help offset uh where we are. Cuz as we look forward, our main revenue source is going to be capped at about 2 and 1/2% you know, which
062is the tax levy. So, that's going to limit future budgets. And I think that's a message that, you know, that we really have to make sure at least everybody has an understanding that our revenue is is really only growing at about 2 and 1/2% our expenses grow at about 4%. That's where the challenge comes in. So, really no I I said to Terry, you know, about 5:30, "Is there any update?" Cuz I haven't heard anything, and you know, I'm on the Board of Directors at you know, for the state. No updates yet on in terms of the budget. Um I'm anticipating a 2% uh increase in foundation aid, some slight changes. Um the uh the Climate uh Leadership uh and Community Protection Act is a major um discussion point, as well as some insurance issues.
063So, we're waiting to see what happens, but I I don't think we're going to see more than the 2%. What have we been advocating for? A minimum of CPI or 3% on the revenue side. So, we need to continue to do our work. The foundation aid formula's stalled, right? 2007 until now, we need to continue to advocate for updates on it. These are all estimates, but by now, in terms of you know, what we've seen in the past, I think we're we're pretty close to where we are. But, again, cautionary tale, they're estimates, they could change. What typically boards of education will say, "Well, then why are we adopting a budget tonight?" Well, in the past, right? Their their mandate is April 1st. You have a a mandate uh that um you know, puts you
064in a situation where you have to adopt. And it's okay, because right now, we've taken this this budget recommendation is with the minimum amount of aid that we expect. So, we've taken a very conservative approach. If we get additional aid post your budget adoption tonight, then we'll apply it to offset uh you know, the concern that we may have with health insurance. So, you're in you're in great shape in terms of the timing. It's okay. I've gone through this revenue. You know, the biggest thing is when you look at it from a budget to budget standpoint, foundation aid is 0.42%. That's where we got to continue to lobby for more money. Um we uh anticipate more in BOCES aid, um high access costs with some additional special education students, typical increase in transportation aid, but
065the largest increase is debt service. Right? So, that building aid to offset it. We're still looking at a little uh uh you know, the industrial development agencies uh development. So, we're potentially looking at another pilot. We have one. We're potentially looking at a second one. One dropped off this year. No impact on this year's calculation whatsoever. It'll be impact probably in a in two budgets from now uh in terms of the tax cap. So, we're fine there. $600,000 in interest earnings. We've maxed that out. So, any We can't We can't add any more from here. So, from a revenue, if you think about that, from a revenue strategy, we're able to close the gap, right? Significant portion of that was the interest earnings piece. And that's This is the last year we can really, you
066know, kind of do that uh at that level. In fact, we're anticipating, depending on, you know, the uh the overall economic um outlook in the future, we were anticipating rate cuts, interest rate reductions. So, a little nervous about that number going forward, but unfortunately, a year from now, you're not going to be in a position where you can look at counting on some additional revenue in that area. And then, of course, you know, we've talked about this, using more in reserve funds. And I like the approach that we take, right? We're going to reduce. We're going to be conservative. We're going to try to maintain programs. But, we're also going to use more out of our savings account to try to balance it. The only problem with that, everyone knows that using money from reserves
067or your savings account is not a recurring revenue source. So, eventually, you hit a fiscal cliff, and you have to scale back the other way, right? And that's what you're seeing happen out there with some school district budgets. So, while I'm comfortable with this recommendation, caution uh going forward as to how much more we allocate um out of these accounts. Terry's very happy that I made that statement. So, when we put it all together, you can see it's a 4.94% revenue increase, which is what you're going to see on the appropriation side of the budget overall. So, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the on the individual school budgets. What I do want to back up a little bit, and I did this last time, but I want to talk about
068a little bit more. The information you have in front of you with the individual budget books, Terry had to make a lot of changes, because what we did is we consolidated a lot of accounting finance codes, right? Budget codes. And we did that for efficiency reasons. And when you have a lot of budget codes, it's great if you're using the data to track information and do the analysis. We're not anymore in terms of the reporting. So, we were able to consolidate and make things more efficient. So, when you see a lot of these adjustments between budgets, the significant aspects have already been outlined by our administrative team. It's really a shift through uh budget accounting codes that'll level off as you look at next year's budget. So, overall, in the elementary school, the biggest uh
069shift is in special ed uh for, you know, um from one um from one area of the budget to the next, and that happens over time, and Terry's done a great job aligning the buckets of money with the uh with the codes in each of these categories. And then, of course, you can see a shift in the middle school, but overall, a slight increase. Uh and then, there was money shifted uh away from the high school uh into the other schools. Um we've talked about uh central student services. Uh the biggest increase that we're looking at is in in BOCES costs. Um overall, instructional services uh is slightly reduced. And then, central administration, obviously, because of um salary changes and leadership changes, there was some savings there. As we look to support services, I outlined
070this. It's It's mostly uh been neutral. Um the increase that we saw in technology was offset by using more out of a savings account. Uh and then, the biggest part of the budget is in the undistributed expenses, where we look at the uh impact of insurance, right? So, we we talked a lot about that in budget workshop three, and these are the areas that we got to continue to manage and and work collaboratively with everyone going forward. The second biggest area is that debt service increase, which I've already said, that's offset by more in building aid. So, all the budgets, you know, it's it's all come together, and I think this is an easier way to look at it uh you know, from um you know, from an a big picture uh standpoint, it's uh
071you know, a 4.98 um percent increase overall and the largest categories of increases are salary and benefits typically in any budget and then a little bit extra this year in terms of BOCES. So when we look at and put it all together undistributed expenses we talked about with benefits and debt service and then schools and then each of the categories respectively are sent there. The state's proposed by object. So this is the way that we report information to the state is salaries and benefits just as I had mentioned. Equipment we're very very conservative in terms of our equipment and this size budget you know that really could be hundreds of thousands of dollars more which is food services a completely separate budget, right? But there are other areas in the district where I do look
072and say our capital project planning is really important. So the Board of Education has done an outstanding job in the last 3 years in terms of capital projects recommendation, energy performance contract and now another capital project for infrastructure. That's all supported by a separate bucket of money that comes from the state. So I think we've been very fiscally responsible and we're moving in the right direction in terms of that you know that 5-year plan to update these expenses. So the equipment budget when you put that in perspective the equipment budget is going to be okay as long as we keep up with that that continuous improvement cycle. See the reduction in utilities as a result of the EPC and then you can see the increase in BOCES services which traditionally is not that high um
073and then once again without the debt service increase we would have been at a actually we would have been really low in comparison. Usually our budget rolls over about 3.9 percent, right? Just from one year to the next. This year it would have been about 3.25 percent. Uh and again net net not an impact because we get the building aid. So while this budget looks higher at 4.94 percent knowing what I said about the revenue keep in mind it's largely in part because of that that building aid debt service offset. So just some more information for you to review in terms of the composition of the budget you know take a look at the tax levy at 69 percent of our revenue comes from the tax levy. And we're being very conservative with tax levy
074increases in the you know the 2 and 1/2 percent range. Little bit higher this year because of the factors but again very conservative. I think you're going to start to see increased pressure in school district financing the more the state doesn't support school districts then the bigger pressure there's going to be on the tax levy. The other offsetting pressure is if you look at the programs and services that we have here nobody wants to make cuts or reductions. We want to maintain those services. It can't all stay the same. So you're going to have you know that challenge going forward. But this at least lets you know that 23 percent of that revenue is coming from state aid. We've got to continue to fight for more of a fair share in terms of that support
075because after all we are following what's mandated in terms of providing the educational services for our students from the state. And if you read the state constitution the largest portion of it isn't about some of these other things that are holding up the budget. It was educating our youth. So we always have to keep when we advocate and lobby we have to keep that in mind. This is our biggest responsibility public education. So we shouldn't struggle to at least get CPI for an increase in foundation aid. Little preachy there I apologize but I also promised no doom and gloom this time so. We'll just jump right in. There's a lot going on this year with the budget, right? So the first thing I'll say is EV buses. We have an EV bus vote, right? So
076we're going to see what happens. The EV buses two buses it's separate. I outlined last time how much they cost what the impact is and and laid that out. We've got a presentation with the PTA tomorrow night. We're going to spend a little bit more time there. Nancy's done a tremendous job of of putting together additional information for our administrative team and so we're trying our best to get that information out there because there's there's a lot out there right now about EV buses. Obviously we have the budget vote which is standard and again I think is is very conservative and fiscally responsible. We've got the normal bus vote that we would see with diesel buses nine diesel buses. What's nice about whether it's diesel buses or EV buses we have about 9.2 million in
077in a savings account. There's no impact to the taxpayers for our transportation replacement plan right now. So you know all those other factors are important, right? To educate our community but the most important thing that we say is there's no tax impact meaning your taxes aren't going to go up by the propositions for the buses whether it's EV bus or diesel bus because we've done a great job at saving money and then we take the aid that we get from the state for that purchase and then we re-put it into the reserves. So it's you know it's very good. What's new and different this year is for safety purposes we want to update our signage. So we've we've already got the communities already approved 69 million dollars for capital project that we're halfway through you
078know the majority of the work here and and at Mendon. We said with some of the contingency money that we have we'd like to do this project. So we're asking the community's permission to add it to the scope of the project. There's no tax impact there's no additional money the money's already there. We get through this summer and our contingency funds in the capital projects are okay then we can give if the community approves the scope then we can move forward with this very important signage project. So that's new and different and again I think Nancy's done a great job in our newsletter to explain that and I think you know we've communicated it as well. And then of course the normal Board of Education um member vote. So we've outlined all of the information
079here. We like to do this online so that you can be educated before you go into the box you know to the little cubicle to vote now. You know so here are all the resolutions for the buses for the electric buses the spending of the money for the technology fund to offset our replacement plan for one-to-one devices and other technology equipment our wayfinding signage system. And then um and then again this year we've got built in the budget a hundred thousand dollar project to replace storefront windows and doors at Mendon Center Elementary. So again good timing. And then that's a way to maximize revenue from the state about 70,000 of that is expected in the following year. So those are uh you know that's really the update on the budget adoption and the legal requirements
080obviously the board adopts this budget recommended by the superintendent. If approved later on Terry and I will make sure that the property tax report card and the tax cap and the tax levy and the administrative salary disclosure those notices are legal documents that we have to send to the state. And then of course last year we changed the Calkins Road we'll have the vote there again as well. So that's it. We've got a public hearing that uh that Shayna and Terry will be doing very brief you know probably fraction of the time that I spend tonight and then we've got the May 19th technically annual meeting and budget vote. Um and that's it. So I'll pause there for any questions. Again I want to highlight too that budget workshop one, two, and three are online
081all of our information's online. Like we have a tremendous amount of information available that people can watch videos, look at the PowerPoint presentations and review the information. So I think all available online. So with that I'll turn it over for any questions. Any questions for Mike? I don't know. Guess not. Thank you Mike as always for the collaborative process and leadership in helping prepare this budget and working with all the groups that have been involved. Every department's been involved bargaining units that represent all of our employees all the leaders at this table. So thank you everyone. It's it's been a lot of work and I think we've put together the best budget we can. This time we'll take a motion to adopt the 2026-2027 proposed budget. I'll move. Thank you Robin. Second. Second. Emily thank
082you. Any further questions or comments? Hearing none. All in favor? Motion carries. May have a a motion for approval of the minutes from the March 10th, 2026 Board of Education meeting. So moved. Thank you Dave. Thank you Kim. Any questions or comments? Hearing none. All in favor? The motion carries. Board of Education reports. I'll open up the table if we have any board members that want to report out on any committee meetings that they have attended recently. Yep. Okay. A few dates to remember. The Executive Committee for the Monroe County School Boards Association will meet on April 22nd. The Information Exchange Committee will meet on April 15th and the District Operations Committee will meet on April 22nd. And next we will have reports from our student members. Um since AP exams are coming up, a
083lot of people are struggling with their laptops that were given, especially upperclassmen, because we have ones from 4 years ago. Um I know that the library has been calling down people in school to make sure that everyone's is updated to like the most recent Windows 11. And then um lots of teachers have also been trying to get students to use their school laptops like every day because that seems to be the only way to make them work as opposed to like charging them. Um so we're trying to use them a lot more in classes and then also with using College Board and the lockdown browsers and then also Blue Book so that AP exams should hopefully be easier when the time comes around, but I know that a lot of students are frustrated because last
084year we were able to use our personal ones and this year we have to use the school ones. But that's one thing and then also on May 28th after APs during lunch periods, we're going to have an ice cream truck for everyone who's done with APs. And then um prom tickets are on sale as well. This year Sutherland is having it at the Woodcliff Hotel. So yeah. Uh at Mendon, I want to talk a little bit about Heritage Day, which was March 28th. Uh so >> [clears throat] >> since the last meeting we've had it and Ms. Kataia was actually there. I saw saw her there and it was really really fun. We had uh two booths drop out last minute, but we still had more than 20 booths uh at Heritage Day. We had
085some booths that I want to call out uh is the Unique and United booth, which was a really cool idea and the person that kind of came up with that idea was Sarah. And uh she had the idea that you know, there's so many booths where people are representing their culture, why not have a booth where people can come up and talk about their own cultures. So uh she had a white flag and everybody who wanted to participate could write down their name and uh what culture they identified with or what ethnicity that they came from, which I thought was a really cool idea. We also had our past booths table, which is something new this year. Uh where we had past trifolds that we still have as a club. Uh but maybe people who
086aren't hosting the booths this year, so we just put those trifolds up for anybody who wanted to go over and see those. Uh we had a dance circle again, which was super fun, where we had uh some people volunteer to go up and teach a few cultural dances. And we had our central booth, where people could come down to get prizes after they uh filled out their passport, which was something that we also handed out. Uh and people got to get sticker stamps at each of the booths and after they did that, they also learned trivia from each booth. And once they came back to the central booth, uh we would ask them a trivia question and if they got it right, they got to pick out a prize that they wanted, which we also
087provided. Uh Other than Heritage Day, oh, also we had a Morning Madness segment about Heritage Day on Monday this week, so that was really fun. Hazel was the one that kind of uh took it upon herself. She volunteered uh and she was so amazing with it. She filmed with one of the school cameras on Heritage Day and she was there throughout the day uh getting a lot of perspectives from different people and a lot of footage from the day as well. And she kind of compiled that into a little report, a little day in review uh for our Morning Madness, which is our morning show for the announcements, which we have 4 days a week. And then on top of that, we have the Mendon Fine Arts Festival right now, which is super fun. I
088actually went there today. And I I know that they moved it to the auditorium because the gym's being used for the counseling office right now, but I actually really like it in the auditorium. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I think I think it looks like nicer and more like artsy versus the gym. Which I don't know. Uh I think it's a lot nicer and I think it's really impressive uh a lot of the works that I've seen from the students. I'm like, "Wow, high school students are you know, I feel like it looks very professional and they're putting so much effort into uh their passions." Uh on top of that, we had our junior senior win meeting last week, where we went over expectations for the rest of the year and programs that
089are coming up uh such as prom. And also uh AP exams are coming up, so we're having a lot of classes go from doing like LEQs or DBQs, which we used to do on paper and well, like at the beginning of the year, the teachers would still have the LEQs and DBQs on paper just to make it easier and now we're using our laptops to do those. Just kind of getting into the habit of taking out the laptops, making sure Blue Book is running really smoothly. And uh the end of third quarter is tomorrow. So the grade book like shuts off on our end, but not on the teachers' end and you know, that's as always, it's kind of what's expected. Uh but yeah, that's kind of it at Mendon. Thank you. Thank you both
090for your reports. As always, keeping us informed on Sutherland and Mendon. >> [snorts] >> Any questions or comments? Thank you. >> [snorts] >> Some additional dates to remember. April 24th, schools are closed for students for Superintendent's Conference Day. May 7th, we have a board visit in and tour >> [clears throat] >> at Allen Creek. And on May 12th is our next regularly scheduled board meeting. Now we'll turn it over to Mr. Vespi for the financial report. And I am going to try to be as brief as possible with all the information I've already updated. So acceptance, first for your consideration is the acceptance of the treasurer's report. It really is a standard report, not a lot of action. Overall, just normal. Um um the fourth quarter sales tax payment, school lunch fund, you heard a
091full update on um and then just normal action in our our debt and reserve funds. Thank you. May have a motion for approval of acceptance [clears throat] of the treasurer's report for February 28th, 2026. So moved. Thank you, Sarah. Second. Thank you, Kim. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Okay, next uh for your consideration, you've already taken care of the budget adoption resolution, so that's all set. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. So that will set forward the legal next legal steps that I mentioned in the presentation. Uh so next for your consideration is the property tax report card resolution. I always like to pause to talk about and I always I say this to Deb from the minutes standpoint to say we paused to talk about the district's reserve
092funds. What changed with the property tax report card is now we're expected to outline all of the reserve funds, the savings account that we have. And we're asked to predict what those will look like and what our spending plan is. So if you look at the document that we have to submit into the state education department, you know, and submit it to you know, for your consideration as a listing of every reserve fund that we have. And a lot of times when we have the comptroller's audit, they'll come in and say, "Has the Board of Education looked at the reserve plan?" It's right here in the property tax report card. What is the spending plan that we have? So of course, in the Audit Oversight Committee, we talk about, you know, what is the spending
093plan? We also revisit this in June and the Board of Education considers resolutions on where to place any money uh due to conservative budgeting, where that where those funds would go. So that's what you really have here. Um and a couple of things that I would highlight is um the tax certiorari reserve, um you know, and this is a good thing and and I always knock on wood after this. We're going to adjust that. We're planning on adjusting that down because the anticipated uh settlements are coming in less than expected. Um so that's good news. Now anytime I've made that statement in the past, immediately within a week or two, we'll get served with notice of a of a tax cert case. So let's hope that that doesn't happen. Um but so far so good
094in terms of that. Uh we still plan on um having funds available to fund the capital reserve. Although it looks like there's a net decrease, that is because we have to charge the money that was approved in March, we have to charge that money at the end of this year. So typically that looks like a huge reduction uh in the capital project reserve, but we are able we are anticipating to be able to offset uh you know, some of that reduction. So the rest of this really outlines our spending plan for reserves. We have a 5-year spending plan for reserves, too, right? We talked about that in particular with the instructional technology reserve. So I do like to pause, spend a little bit more time and note, you know, make sure this is noted in
095the minutes, so that way if we're audited, to say have has the Board of Education had a discussion in public about the district's reserve funds. Here they are. What is the spending plan and what are some of the significant changes we've talked about them. And then of course, you know, we're always available for discussion. But this this document is actually a good document from a transparency standpoint because then you can see where the money is and then what our spending plan is. So I'll pause there for any questions. Questions? And then if not for your consideration is the approval of the tax the property tax report card resolution. You may have a motion to approve the [clears throat] property tax report card resolution. Thank you Emily. Second. Renee? Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all
096in favor? Motion carries. Okay, very good. Thank you. Next for your consideration is the resolution for the approving an easement that's put in place There's two properties across the street, right? There's the church and the fire department. The sewer line from those two properties go through the high school property. When we went to do the existing capital project, modifications had to be made to that line. It held the project up by three to four months. Mr. Piro, Mr. Beardsley, Mr. Colville met collaboratively with the town. And they took care of that. It's a true example of how this district works collaboratively with our, you know, with our other municipality friends. And we were able to come to an agreement. It cost some extra dollars, you know, obviously in change orders to fix that issue, but
097that'll now take care of a problem that previously existed. This resolution is now asking for the change to the easement from that collaboration that took place and then this will be documented in the survey maps going forward. Thank you. May have a motion to approve >> [clears throat] >> the easement for 472 Mendon Road for the sanitary sewer. Thank you Robin. Thank you Sarah. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Okay, next for your consideration is the resolution for acceptance of the internal audit report as reviewed by the audit oversight committee last week. So first is that and then I'll talk about the corrective actions. Thank you. I was there for the audit oversight committee. You we received the auditors highest possible rating, so everything was very positive. Few of the
098items that they did point out for improvement were some of the documents that they were requesting I understand were in the process of being digitized and scanned, so they were not available immediately, but they were provided and uh I understand that um you know, the the district's on pace to have all of those documents scanned by June 30th of this year. So that will be taken care of. Um They also pointed out that we had uh many um I guess unused vendors active in our systems. You know, vendors that we're not currently doing business with and uh so we have um the district is in the process of deactivating those vendors within our systems. They're not deleting them, they're just deactivated. Uh so they can be audited in the future or you know, we can
099go back and and see what we purchased from those vendors. And the third item that was pointed out was there were some delays in remittance that occurred from the at the business office in the building level. I understand some of that was caused by our inter-building mail and kind of our systems that were paper before and we're now in the process of using DocuWare software to again digitize that process and that'll be you know, more streamlined. >> and Rachel have done a tremendous job in terms of the efficiency and automation of the business office. Um in fact first hand today, you know, I had a chance to go and visit with our business office staff and in a room that previously was just loaded with filing cabinets. You know, where the floor to the point
100where the floor had to be reinforced. All those filing cabinets are gone now. This will be a much more efficient process, so when a building receives something, they can they can sign off on and approve it, you know, through that that software now. So much more efficient. They've done a tremendous job at moving us, you know, in into the automation world for the process. Yeah, that's great. So overall very positive internal audit results especially considering the number of transactions that the district um >> [snorts] >> you know, puts through every year. It's it's really positive, so thank you. >> Super. I may have a motion to approve the acceptance of the internal audit report for purchasing and accounts payable process. So moved. Thank you Renee. Second. Thank you Dave. Any questions or comments? Hearing none,
101all in favor? Motion carries. So then I'd say you just did a great job in terms of the corrective action plan, so next for the consideration is the actual approval of that corrective action plan to fix these issues. Remember we have to be very specific on the dates and documentation or someone on the other end of the computer in Albany will reject it and make me bring it back to the Board of Education. So this should serve as notice for those corrective action the corrective action plan. So next for your consideration is the approval of that. Thank you. May have a motion to approve the 2024-2025 internal audit report corrective action plan. Thank you Renee. Second. Thank you Sarah. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Okay, next for your consideration
102is the resolution approving the capital project change orders as reviewed in our owner architect construction management meeting reviewed by both Shane and I in terms of of that process. May have a motion to approve resolution approving capital construction project change orders. Thank you Emily. Second. Thank you Robin. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Next for your consideration is the resolution for acceptance of electronic bids. I'm excited to say that now purchasing is in the process of automating the bid process. So we have software that we can load all of our bids and all of our RFPs into the software. It's through BOCES, so it's both it's eligible for BOCES aid and certainly that will be um much easier from an electronic standpoint instead of having paper copies where we mail
103things out etc. etc. So this is another step forward at the the business office is taking in terms of automation. Thank you. May have a motion to approve the resolution for acceptance of electronic bids. Thank you Kim. Second. Thank you Sarah. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Okay, next for your consideration is the resolution for purchase of a new radio repeater. The current one that we have on top of Mendon failed. Which is put our communications for transportation at risk. Um This approval will allow us also to submit for transportation aid, which is approximately 67%. Thank you. May have a motion to approve the resolution for purchase of a radio repeater. Thank you Robin. Thank you Dave. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Okay, next
104for your consideration is the declaration of surplus vehicles and operation and maintenance as part of our vehicle replacement plan. We do anticipate upon the approval of this of sending these vehicles to auction and we've been doing very well in terms of that replacement plan. May have a motion to approve the declaration of surplus vehicles, operations, maintenance and security. >> [clears throat] >> Thank you Kim. Thank you Emily. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Next for your consideration is the declaration of scrap equipment a floor buffer. May have a motion to approve the declaration of scrap scrap equipment Barker Road Mendon Middle School floor buffer. Thank you Sarah. Second. Thank you Dave. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Okay, next for your consideration on the consent
105agenda are bid awards. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next on the agenda is special education report. All items are on Brick's inside the packet. Thank you. And superintendent's report. Good evening again. Um there is a need for an executive session tonight to discuss the employment of our particular individual. May have a motion to approve uh >> [clears throat] >> the call for executive session. Thank you Robin. Thank you Emily. All in favor? Motion carries. Uh next we have a field trip approval for our combined Sutton and Mendon robotics teams to travel to Houston, Texas for your consideration. May have a motion to approve the field trip to Houston, Texas for Sutton High School and Mendon High School robotics team. Thank you Renee. Thank you Kim. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor?
106Motion carries. And our Sutton High School French class would like to take a field trip to Montreal, Canada. We have a motion to approve the field trip to Montreal, Canada for the Sutherland High School French class. So moved. Thank you, Sarah. Second. Kimberly, any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Thank you. And on the consent agenda, a couple items. First is the second reading of the flag display policy that came to you last meeting. And then a special thank you to um our PTSA at Parkwood Elementary School um for a donation of a new outdoor Gaga Pit with flooring valued at $5,500. Um that's also on the consent agenda. Uh so we had our exciting kind of beginning of the end-of-year events tonight with our um 10-year reception. So that was
107really exciting. Um next week we move right into our PTSA Honorary Life Membership Awards. And um you know, we'll be going through that into our retirement and onward. So uh all of our collaborative efforts with our PTSA and our PDTA have been great just partners in um helping to plan these end-of-year celebrations. Uh we do have this weekend um Sutherland High School has their musical Little Women. So it's really exciting Friday and Saturday. And as Masoudi mentioned, the Fine Arts Festival um the reception is tomorrow night at Menden High School, but it's open during the day. I think students are voting on favorites as well and classes were going in. So some really cool artwork there, all different mediums, all different grade levels. So I agree, it was kind of nice and moody in the
108auditorium. It was it was different than the bright lights of the gym. So you know, we're making lemonade out of lemons. I like it. Um next week is our Superintendent's Conference Day. So as the board knows, we had a retreat, I think that was just last week. Um and Heather Clayton came over and gave us a little snapshot of what the staff is going to be learning. Um so they will be really doing some foundational setting around multi-tiered systems of support. And part of that is around our social emotional learning and how we use Habits of Mind as a framework um to help our students build some of those life skill uh mindsets and habits uh that will help them be able to access um their learning in um in a better way. So we're
109really excited about that. And in an effort to help keep our community apprised and using the same common language, we have a Power Hour coming up at the end of the month um April 28th at Calkins Road and um Dr. Ali and Ms. Clayton are going to be presenting around Habits of Mind. So really this is around the habits that all of us want our students to have um we want our children to have around being able to be precise with things, being able to question things, being able to respond with wonderment and awe, being able to manage their emotions and their impulses. Um all of those different things. And um what we've really seen is our ability to use common language with our kids around those skills makes a huge difference. So they can
110do a really good job in a single classroom, but then they move to another grade level, another classroom, and different language is used. And sometimes that can um create some gaps in um our students' ability to be able to continue to succeed. So the more we can do that at home, at school, in the community, um the stronger uh we all can be and we can better help support our students to build some of those skills. So we're really excited to see that presentation coming up at the end of the month. Um I think information just came out today around that. So check your inboxes and you can RSVP um and let us know if you'll be able to attend. Um and I just want to highlight too that uh a lot of that work
111around the Habits of Mind really came from our social emotional learning district level committee. Um so Lindsay's been leading that work with Maria Hill. And um that group looked at all sorts of different programs and resources. And uh something like Habits of Mind, which is free. Um it's really just the idea of using these particular habits as a framework um and being consistent in them, again having high-level learning around that, um and having that consistency across our buildings is really um the thing that's going to help carry that forward. So with that, that concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you, Shayna. We have a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Thank you, Robin. Second. Thank you, Dave. Any questions or comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Any old business? Any new
112business? Hearing none, I'll take a motion for adjournment, please. So moved. Thank you, Sarah. Second. Thank you, Robin. All in favor? We're adjourned. Thank you, everyone.