001All right, welcome everyone to our second budget hearing. We're going to go ahead and turn it over to the superintendent and get started. >> Good evening everyone. We have our support services presentations tonight for curriculum and instruction, student services, special education and technology. So with that, I'll welcome Heather Glenn. >> Thank you. Good evening everybody. Um it's my pleasure to present the curriculum and instruction budget this evening. So as you recall um our mission in the curriculum office is to engage all learners in authentic and rigorous learning experiences so that upon graduation they'll be able to independently use their learning to achieve their goals and become contributing members of a global society. This is really important at this time as well with NICED's new portrait of graduate and the um requirements of our students upon
002graduation. It's really a K12 vision and mission. Um some of the responsibilities in our office, we lead curriculum and assessment, writing and implementation. And that's just one simple bullet, but it makes up a lot of the work that is happening right now. So, we are in full implementation of Amplify, which is our new math program at K5. And that has involved um a lot of professional development, hitting that implementation dip and coming out of it. We're coming out of it now, which is wonderful. a lot of work with the Amplify coaches, our standards leaders, and our teachers have been really um collaborating and working hard to make that an effective program for our students. Evaluating and acquiring our textbooks and supplementary resources. Textbooks aren't what they used to be. Now, they come with digital licenses
003and many other um requirements. and companies are wanting to bundle lots of different skills into one program. And it's getting harder and harder to discern if there's one specific piece you need. They want to send you the a whole um program. And that's been a challenge for us, particularly with the science of reading. For example, spelling is a gap that we want to address, but finding spelling as a standalone in a lot of our textbook companies is a rare find. So, our elementary academic council's been doing a lot of research around spelling, for instance, at 35 and what that can look like for our students as an integrated part of our um ELA program. Just continuing to use data for informed decision making, um reviewing and revising our practices to align with mandates. As you
004know, there's many of those coming from the state. This past June, we had students taking the life science biology regents exam and earth and space. And then this spring, we'll have algebra 2 and English 11 as new exams for students. Um the Earth and Space was challenging for students in ways that they didn't predict. However, they did overall perform very well when you look countywide. Facilitating and engaging in professional learning. Along with any of our new initiatives comes a lot of professional learning. So the coordination and support of that um access to our Bosei services and coordinating and overseeing our career and internship program. So just for a quick overview of our budget um we have collapsed standards which is number 511 into our 510 code. So, while it looks like an increase, it's really
005just a merging of those two codes. So, um we're more efficient and effective in how we're budgeting and managing the money. We're not doing lots of unnecessary transfers and things when we have too many codes. So, aligning in this way has been really helpful. Um just some of the things to highlight in add in addition to textbook purchases I had mentioned professional development. So um thanks to the work of Melissa Julian and human resources and many of our high school folks we have hired two new technology teachers which is a rare find in New York State. So they'll need project lead the way training. um things like our 3 through eight assessment scoring, our software applications, any of the professional learning that goes with that, salaries and stipens for our standards leaders, any of their
006membership supplies and travel conference. So the curriculum office is myself and my assistant Liz Norton who's amazing. And then there are 25 standards leaders with varying degrees of release time for their positions. So they might get 10 additional days, they might get a portion of their allocation released or they might have a full-time release for their positions. You heard about our career internship program earlier. Um this year when campus construction was here, we had 78 different placements this year for our students, which was really incredible. nine community partnerships, um a high number of mentors in the community taking our students on for their internships, and the program has really doubled in what it's been able to do for our students. And to look at their finished products and the photographs and read their reflections about
007their experiences, it has been a really impactful and important part of their high school um story. our Boseies um teaching regular school services. This includes things like our cultural arts, our distance learning, our accelerate you for example, if we have any homeschooling coordination, regent scoring. What you don't see here is any of our students in our ENL program that you'll hear about later from Lindsay Ali, if they take an exam in their home language, then Bosei scores that for us. So just an example of different ways that we're using Boseies that might not always be as um obvious. Non-public textbooks and challenger field trip is continuing for our elementary students. That is a big um part of the budget. The missions have increased in price, but it's still a very popular field trip. We have
008our Bose summer school program. That amount is staying flat. That's the same. No increase there. We did have an increase in the number of students that um took Regent as a part of the summer school program last year, but you can't always discern is it a regent retake or is it a credit by exam situation where they're like advancing. So we do have both scenarios in our summer program. Um so you may look at a number of middle school students taking regents when it's not necessarily a retake because they didn't do well. because they may be advancing their studies by taking it in the summer. Our proposed budget, you will see that there's an increase in um 510. There's a slight increase there and really the reason for that increase is our textbooks have had
009to increase about $30,000. when you look at the rate there um the cost for the professional development that accompanies the resources the digital licenses and the print materials have just doubled um so that's where you see an increase there in our textbook code um and our resources and then obviously utilizing Boseies whenever we can so we're giving that aid and that return um continuing with our salaries are 94% of our budget So that continues to be um the highest impact when you look at our overall cost. So just here's another view. Um that 4.48% change in the 510 code, remember that now includes our standards area. So that speaks to that increase and that slight increase in textbook. Um we've had a slight increase in career internship that's tied to the salary increase with the
010teacher that's the 6 release every year there's a slight increase um and Bosey's summer school and the teaching regular school has remained 0% increase so some of our celebrations um we have been getting a lot closer alignment with the science of reading at ELA and K through five so for example example, we now have phonics screeners and assessments that measure that strand. Um, we have fluency measures. Now, we're using our universal screening, but along with that, we also have some diagnostics that our teachers are giving at tier one. We want to find assessments that are efficient to give but yield the most information about our students. And we've been successfully able to do that in ELA through our grade level release times with teachers. We've trained them in how to administer the assessments, interpret the
011results, and use it for their instructional planning. The best part about the screener that we're using is it's free. And the fluency measure, um, the book was $10 per teacher. So, that's fabulous. Um continuing with our amplify implementation, we will see some return on investment with that MC class which is the diagnostic component and the personalized learning is a new um tool for them and some of the things that they had promised didn't come to fruition. So they've given us a credit if you will to compensate for that. So we've had some return on investment there. uh we won't need as much professional development with it this year as it becomes more operational. Um we are implementing I Ready in grades six through eight. That's a product we piloted last year. It's a diagnostic that
012the kids take three times a year in English language arts and then it provides them a personalized learning path. So for 30 to 45 minutes a week total they get on their personalized learning path and do skill skills-based work. Um today actually the middle school teachers met with the I Ready coach and we saw an increase in diagnostic scores in grades six, seven and eight at both middle schools. So the teachers were really proud to see the growth scores um after administering the middleofyear diagnostic. So it this is the exciting time of year when everything's coming together. All the new things we're now seeing the the benefit for our students. We've revised our elementary report card indicators to align with the science of reading and amplify. In some cases, we've had to reorder our scope
013and sequence or make adjustments so it was in alignment with how teachers were measuring student learning. And we have our guidance that we published around the use of AI that we're continuing to apply and um enhance as new challenges come across. So looking ahead, we're continuing our work on our multi-tered system of support. Um particularly looking at the academic and social emotional learning needs of our students and thinking about what are our guarantees in our tier one curriculum that every student receives. And along with that, we are going to be moving our curriculum out of New York Learns for the same amount of money into a product called Powers School. And power school gives us the ability to see gaps in our standards. Look vertically. You can have 10 people building curriculum at the same
014time. You don't need special rights. You don't need to download documents into a briefcase and then move into it's just much more efficient, intuitive, and gives us far greater capability to use our curriculum. And importantly, our building administrators will be able to more easily access curriculum. Currently, we have some in New York Learn, some on Teams. Um, it'll bring everything together in in one place and we'll really be able to hone in and see what are the guarantees we have for our kids. Continuing our PD around ELA and as I mentioned before, spelling, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, particularly in grades three through five. We're continuing our grading work in grades 6 through 12. um aligning with the portrait of a graduate and trying to position ourselves so that when those changes come and the new
015credit requirements come, we're in a good position. We're also working at secondary academic council to develop a consistent academic integrity agreement across all four secondary schools that really integrates AI into the document and having it be an assetbased positive um representation of what academic integrity looks like versus what you shouldn't be doing. And then continuing our support for the onetoone device initiative. We have our survey wrapping up at the end of this week. We surveyed all 3 through 12 students and faculty. Um we're going to get those survey results, see where we are. Um potentially do additional surveying of our families, but our kids have some great feedback for us about what's going well and what needs to improve around the initiative. So, we're really excited to dig into those results and bring them back
016to you. Any questions? >> Yeah, >> I was just curious. You said under the amplify that um there was an issue with they didn't weren't able to to deliver on something. Can you give any more color on that? >> So, we were supposed to have access to specific reporting around the kids diagnostics and we aren't able to access those reports at this time. So we can the kids are able to use the assessments interact with the product but we can't get the reports the way that they had promised us we would be able to. So our representative has been awesome about giving us credit and support back. Um they are you know rebuilding and correcting that. But they've been really responsive to the fact that that was something we had predicted we would have that
017our teachers haven't had in their hands yet and they were very eager for it. So yeah. Does that help? >> Um, can you talk about the increased price in textbooks? Is this kind of like a one-off or does this happen regularly? >> This thing. It's um, so for example, we have foundations is our K2 phonics program. We've added workbooks to that because when we initially purchased the program, there were no workbooks. So that's about $30 a child with the printing costs. FundHub, which is the digital resource that the teachers use, has doubled in price going into next year. So, printing costs and digital costs have just continued to rise. We've seen um increases in everything across the board, but particularly printing costs and the digital platforms along with the professional development that comes with these
018programs has just spiked. It's no longer you just order the resource, you get it, and you use it. It's a whole package of things that have to happen so it can be effectively implemented. I think that's honestly where we fell flat maybe 15 years ago when we adopted two different math programs at elementary. They didn't have the robust robust professional development to come with it. And when you don't have that and you're not in an ongoing way collaborating and learning then you don't have the um success of the implementation. So it's worth it but it's >> Yes. Yep. So for example, Amplify Coaches have come in. They've done walkthroughs in every one of our elementary buildings. So they visit classrooms at each grade level. They do some demo lessons. Um they observe our teachers doing
019lessons and kids working and every grade level team has then been able to meet with the amplify coach and talk about what's going well, what's challenging. And the coach is able to pull up the resource and say, "Okay, if you're having trouble with this, try this. If you need this, try this." So that's been really powerful. We're repeating that again in March. I mean, that's that job embedded professional development that you can't replicate in a in a classroom. So, it's been really great. Our teachers have been vulnerable and opened up their classrooms and been honest about their feedback and it's just made it a better and better implementation for us. >> Thank you. Good evening. I'm going to present the special education portion of the central services budget this evening. Just for a little bit
020of background, um our special education department, we support diverse learners and foster an inclusive culture. Um, and we do that by arranging for any services that preschool age students need and recommending and providing all programs and services for school age students which goes now until age 22. Um, we also support and provide um extracurricular and inclusive opportunities for our students. So um just a little bit of information about budgeting for special education programs. Um, just so you're aware, the salaries for the majority of our special education providers are incorporated into the individual building budgets. So that includes special education teachers, um, paraprofessionals, um, as well as the professional development supplies and materials that support programming in the buildings. So those will each be incorporated into the building budgets. What you'll see in my budget here
021this evening are the costs um, that are centralized at the district office, and I'll go through that in a moment. Um I know that you're aware we continue to see increases in the number of students who receive special education programs and services. Um these increases have been um trending upwards for at least 10 years, more like 12 or 13 years. Um this year we have 859 students in the district receiving um special education programs and services. That represents about 15% of our population. And just for a comparison point, um, New York State, there are 20% of students across the state of New York who receive special education programs and services. Just so that you have kind of that, um, piece of information. Um, we also continue to monitor where our students are receiving their special
022education programs and services. Um, this is the update for the current school year. Um and you'll so you'll see between full day and partial day general education that the vast majority of our students are receiving their special education services within general education classrooms in our buildings. Um and a smaller percentage are receiving them outside of the general education setting either in our buildings or in specific outside programs. So for the central services special education budget um similar to Heather's um presentation we've also consolidated budget codes for our area as well. So we have now um consolidated consolidated everything into two general categories instead of three. So the first area is just called special education. Um and that includes our office, our special education office expenses as well as our related services expenses which are speech
023language providers, adapted physical education teachers and now occupational therapists and physical therapists. So this code um the prior years to show the trend I collapsed the two codes into one so that you were comparing the same amount the same codes over time. Um you'll see what's proposed for next year and again it's a total of those two previous areas and again this reflects our plan of bringing occupational therapists and physical therapists from Boseis to Pittsver. So our plan for this year it's a multi-year plan. We were intending to start with one OT and one PT and we were actually able to hire three occupational therapists and two physical therapists. Um so we're moving a little bit quickly, more quickly than we had anticipated. Um and that's what represents our what you'll see for the proposed
024increase for next year. The second general category um are the outside placements and services and this is where the bulk of our budget comes from or is allocated to um at the special education level. This includes all of the um special education programs and services that Boseies provides. So those can be specialized um special education programs. It also includes the remaining occupational therapy and physical therapy services that we are accessing from Boseies as well as other specific Boseies services such as teacher of the deaf for example um and more specialized services that we contract with Boseies for. This also includes um any of our private special education schools that the committee on special education recommends our students to attend. Those tuitions are in this code and all of the Boseie services that are provided to
025students who attend the private schools in our district. So that would be Allenale, Columbia, St. Louis, Trinity, Monasuri. So all of those are included in this area. You will see a relatively significant increase being proposed for next year in the um outside placements and services category. The there are several factors that are included in that but the primary one is our Bosey's tuition costs for Bosey's programs are increasing quite a bit next year. Um primarily because of the health insurance costs. Boseies is delayed a year behind us in feeling you know having to adjust their budget accordingly based on the health insurance costs that went up last year. Um so we're now seeing that in tuition expenses next year. We are not anticipating more students to require Boseis programs. We've been fairly flat in that
026area for a while. Um but again those programs are increasing in cost. So we had to account for that in the budget. Um special education um also has a couple of additional revenue sources that are specific to special education. So I just wanted to you know share those with you and give you the trends in those areas as well. We um first we have our federal grants. Um you will see that these grant totals are flat and in in specifically went down a little bit for us this year. So um it's difficult for us to include these in the in the budget at this point um for planning purposes. We don't know what next year's allocation is until late in the spring. Um but again, you'll see that those numbers are fairly consistent year-over-year. And
027what that grant allows us to do is support any additional committee on special education functions um as well as specialized services and supplies that students need that go beyond what would be typical for a building budget. So those additional costs are absorbed through the federal grant. We also receive Medicaid reimbursement for certain medically necessary services. Um, last year we received just over $69,000 in Medicaid reimbursement. That was a decrease from the previous year. That number goes up and down every year because it really depends on the specific how many students are eligible for us to claim Medicaid reimbursement and um who's receiving the services that would qualify. So that es and flows a little bit, but that certainly helps us to support those areas. There are also a couple categories of New York State aid
028that are specific to special education programs and this does represent a significant um support for us on the revenue side. We have public high-cost aid and private excess cost aid. So you'll see what we received in the 2425 school year just as a gauge for the type of revenue support that we receive to help us with some of our um really specialized programs that are much higher cost than typical. the state reimbures us at a higher level for those. So, as a special education department, we do continue to support most of our students in general education, which um is consistent with our um purpose of supporting an inclusive um culture and supporting our students with their general education peers. Um we also continue to have a very strong partnership with our special education PTA with
029our SEPTA um as well as a subset of the parent advisory group that advises us specifically around special education. And again um we have been we found some real success in our first year with hiring our own occupational therapists and physical therapists. Um we've we have some phenomenal people both working for us and working for Boseies and they've come together to form a really nice um department structure across those two agencies internally. So we're pretty excited about how that's turned out and how well they're working collaboratively and look forward to continuing with that plan moving forward. Some of our obstacles I've already shared the significant increase in Bosey's tuition costs um is certainly a factor that is affecting um our budget projections at this point. We also do continue to have some weight lists for
030some of our more specialized programs which um requires us to continue to just support students within the district as best we can and continue to build capacity and supports internally for our students. Um, and we're facing um, staffing challenges that you're probably aware of and that are not unique to special education, but some specific areas that just continue to be very challenging for us to maintain um, our staffing, especially when people are out temporarily on leave. Bringing in short-term substitutes can be real challenging. Um, and sometimes we need to provide services later or over the summer to make up for anything that was missed during the year as a result of those challenges. But that is again all factored into um these budget projections. So this is the summary of again what is now um
031the two primary budget codes rather than three. Um comparing last year to and I apologize it says 2526 two times. I will correct that. The first column is actually 2526. The second column should read 2627. So I'll correct that for each of you. Um but 26 27 the second category is what we are recommending or proposing for next year. Are there any questions about the special education central services budget or update? >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, Elizabeth. Hi everybody. I'm excited to be here presenting the budget for student services. I'll ask for forgiveness in advance. I'm going to have to refer to my notes three months in and I'm learning a lot, but I I need some some of my guidance, so just forgive me for that. Um so [clears throat] it is
032a big department and one that I've been really working hard to get to know um well and as you're aware it oversees a lot of different um facets of what students may need. Um in this new position a lot of people ask what is student services anyways or what do you do? Um and it's been really fun figuring all of that out. But really the way that I summarize it is just um help working really closely with schools to remove unique barriers for student learning. Um, and really it could incorporate any support a student may need that isn't special education or that may be um really even individualized. So, anything from um nursing supports, mental health supports, um working with homeschool or students who need support through homelessness and foster care, um working with our
033English language learner population and driver's education. So it really is quite a range of support services that um we are really lucky to be able to work with and offer our students. Um so you will see within that department we also did the same kind of um restructuring of some of our budget codes. And so you're used to seeing two slides for the student services budget. Um one was specifically for the student services office and then one was for pupil services with all of those other departments. We just merged those two together. So that's what you'll be seeing what these numbers reflect here. Um some of those first ones. So the district office team, myself, Marie Cutney is um the the clerical support and then um Maria Hill, we're all in the office, the assistant
034director and oversee all those programs and processes. Um and then just some of the supplies and materials and interpreter services. Those are specific to this the office. And then um everything else falls under the pupil services, our district physician, Pittsver youth services, um mental health staffing, all of the mental health staffing. So you'll um you'll see that that's condensed and that we have just slight increases this year. Uh trying to remain fairly consistent as I continue to learn and grow what the uh learn and see what the department really needs. Um but just some minor adjustments due to salaries and then costs for some slight increases in some staffing. Um the next slide that you'll see in regards to budget is non-public support. So this represents um our responsibility to private schools in our catchment
035area and in our boundaries um and specifically the nursing services that we provide for them. And then along with um some some funding that we provide them for our residents that attend private schooling. So things like textbooks and technology that's allocated for those private schools because some of our residents attend those schools. Those budget increase just slightly as well. Um we then look at title allocations and unfortunately this is not the way we want to see that port that those um graphs go down slightly. Allocations uh similar to special education allocations all title grants um are posted late spring. So, we're not really sure what that will look like for next school year, but we did see a a slight decrease for this this current school year. It's difficult to predict those allocations. Um, and
036there are very specific ways in which we can spend those that funding and those allocations. Um, and each there's four titles and each of them represents different areas that we have to prioritize. Um we think that some of this decrease uh really has to do with some of our wealth ratio and some of the per pupil allocations that they assign to the districts. Um and that can also be because of some decreased enrollment or even a small drop in um eligible students related specifically like to poverty measures. Even a a small drop in that student number can really impact the allocation that we receive. So, um that is a a different a difference that we're seeing for title grant allocations. So, for um successes and accomplishments so far, it has been a very smooth transition.
037I was really grateful to have time with Shaina to go to meetings and to meet departments um which was great. And then I put out a survey to try and gather information from all of the stakeholders in the department and saw some really common trends about what people felt were hurdles that they're dealing with or things that they want to address in this school year. Um so then I was able to meet with each department as a whole department. And so we took some time um to really dig into what are what do they love about their jobs, what's going well in their departments, and then what areas do we really need to focus on ways to further support. Um, so that's been really helpful in these first three months just getting to really meet
038with um the departments and the the staffing in those departments to identify needs. It's been quite a privilege and and a pleasure to get into all nine buildings that um and really be partnering and collaborating with the principles and the mental health staff in those buildings, getting to know the teachers in all the buildings and each unique building's needs um and then some of the students that we support. So that has been a a really fun part to the transition is just now being um really across the whole district and and working closely and collaborating closely with those buildings. Um we are throughout this school year and anticipating next school year really seeing an increase in ENL needs. Um but it's really been quite an accomplishment and um and a and a a great success
039of really just working getting to know the students and then and working to meet their needs. So, we currently have over 90 students receiving English as a new language support. Um, and they represent 22 different languages, which is just a really neat statistic. So, we have been working hard as an ENL department to really be sure um the the amount of service that each student qualifies for is all dependent on assessments that they're given and then mandated by the state. And so, that can be very drastically different per student. and we've worked really hard as a department to make sure that we have all their needs met that we're um you know our our staffing has been really flexible but has had to increase to uh to meet some of these needs that change pretty
040quickly. So I feel as though that's been a really great success just even from um from November till now of having new students move in and being really quick to adjust and meet their needs. Um along with that, just mental health needs. A consistent um thing that came up with the departments was just feeling like we are really working hard to support students with um mental health needs and and sometimes some different behaviors and some unique learning needs. And so we've been working closely as a counseling department, a psych department, behavior specialists. Um and and it's just been nice to join each building's mental health team to see how much we're talking about students and how we're being creative in supporting some of their needs. Um along with that, we are continuing to pro uh
041program for some alternative programming and what that can look like for a start next September um for some students that just have some really unique learning needs and that we haven't been able to find the the right perfect fit for in um in their traditional classrooms. So, continuing to program and and be creative with what that programming can look like with uh hoping to be able to start some of that that programming in action in September. And then the health and safety council have been has been working really hard on an electronic reporting form um for students in or for staff and faculty members in the buildings to be able to electronically report if they ever see a health or safety concern within the building. So, we worked on taking the forms we've had in
042the past and looking at what we needed to tweak with those forms and then putting them electronic and then they report uh those those electronic forms are now on the website so staff can have access to them and it goes straight to Jeff Beardsley and myself and the principal so we can be really timely and aware of what are some of our staff concerns for health and safety. Um, sorry I missed the work which I do want to get to. So Heather's been working really really hard on the MTSS work um and just really having those common consistent um practices for tier one support. And so that goes not just along with academics but also for that social emotional piece and really just those learning habits and learning skills. Um we do have two elementary
043schools incorporating the habits of mind. Now we've been doing a lot of work as a district committee on really seeing how we can um have that spread districtwide. Um but just looking at universal screeners and universal consistent language for um what we're expecting our students to be able to do uh as lifelong learners and just as not just on the academic piece but really on those soft skills. So, we've been able to take the habits of mind, we've looked at it at ILC and at the committee and align it with the portrait of a graduate and align it with some of our um existing structures that are already in place and really feel like those 16 habits while while we'll narrow it down specifically by building with what the building feels they need um that
044we'll be able to use that as our common and consistent tier one um language across all buildings. So, some of our department challenges just continue to be that mental health needs and some of the those um some behavioral pieces are an area of concern and the best way to address those and to make sure that schools are supported working through some of those needs. We have continued staffing challenges with um ENL and the behavior support, social work pieces. Um and then just some roadblocks and with outside programming which which leads us to just a continued need for some more flexible um alternative programming for our students right here in district. So when you look overall um there is some the the budget really reflects mostly just contractual salary increases. Uh but we are looking at
045ways budget neutral ways to also increase some mental health supports and really look at what is that right position and right fit to meet the building's needs um when it in regards to mental health. So, we'll continue to be looking at that um and and ways to utilize the staff we have and then identify what we really need um in addition to that. Okay, questions. Thank you very much, Lindsay. Okay, thank you. Thanks. appreciate you. Uh good evening. Tonight I'll be giving the presentation on the technology instruction instructional services and BoseI support services. Um just some background information on what is technology services. So we are responsible for the support and the maintenance of both the technical and the instructional systems that we use throughout the district. Um we support and maintain the computers, phones,
046the tablets, peripherals, interactive boards, printers, copers, servers, Wi-Fi. My joke is anything that plugs into a wall probably support it. So um we also work directly with the teachers, the staff, the administration, students, families and people throughout the community. Um we provide high professional uh high quality professional development on both new and emerging technology. We support teachers in the integration within the classroom of the technology. Um and we support and maintain our overall infrastructure throughout our our Pittsford schools. Um and we do this with uh 20 full-time staff members which is myself, one administrative assistant, 10 technicians, uh four instructional technologist, two audiovisisual assistants, one of them right behind me. Um one performing arts coordinator, one uh per print shop instructional materials operator. Uh and they're just a phenomenal team that is more than willing
047to help and and do whatever they need to to to kind of pitch in and get the job done. uh Bosei support services. This is much further reaching than just technology services. This goes beyond um my department. It goes into finance, human resources, uh the professional development center. Um it talks about the student data systems uh such as infinite campus, IP direct and special education. Uh Lindsay Ali, she talked about this family ID, medical, sports clearance, summer enrichment enrollments. um we get into athletics, office 365, communication alert system. So BOSI support services, as we talked a little bit earlier, it does uh encompass quite a bit more than just the stuff that we're using here in technology. Um and we talked also about some of those support services increased as Boseis has been going through
048what they call a right side um right pricing over the last couple years. They're looking at their services and really trying to figure out what is the right price that should they should be uh offering and charging the school districts as they that's where they get their budget from. Um [sighs] I'm extremely proud of the the folks that um that work for us and you know some of the accomplishments that we've had is we've closed over the last year almost 10,000 help desk tickets. Um we've support on average around 4,200 uh daily guest connections. Um there's 450 million events that go on our network monthly. Um and we we have a company that that looks through every one of those and we maintain a network uh stability of around 97 to 98% uh for uptime.
049[snorts] Um moving over to the more of the instructional side, um we've continued to uh change how we're setting up our laptops. Um we're automating our workflows. We're going over to more of a digital environment. uh we installed the new PA and an alert system here in at Barker Road. Um and we've like I mentioned earlier we we provided a number of uh professional developments on Microsoft Teams, uh Clear Touch, Adobe, computer science, digital fluency, and various other programs. Um you know, we've worked very collaboratively with our students, uh and our teachers, uh to explore what it means to be part of a a digital community. Um, we've used technology to help create digital tools and to think critically and create digital artifacts and we've worked with our students to develop computational thinking skills through
050algorithms and programs. So, um, technology isn't just about, you know, the screen. It's a more about the hands-on learning and and getting in and that constructivist style of approach to to understanding the world around you. Um this does come with its obstacles and challenges as many of you are probably impacted by this. Um you know the various uh supply chain issues and rising cost of technology. Uh with with AI being such a a big booming industry right now a lot of AI companies are buying up a lot of the the the processors and and RAM and things like that. So um tech the technology uses all of that stuff these devices and as a result uh costs now start to increase as a result of uh supply chain issues. uh the reliance on cloud-based systems
051as you see here on some of these slides you know we've all been prey to oh Microsoft's down Verizon was down a few a few months ago um Amazon Cloudflare different things that it it's just we move over to the cloud and uh you're at their mercy when they're down there's nothing we can do to to to mitigate those um but trying to figure out ways around those and workflows thinking about disaster recovery thinking about instant response uh and and business continuity I think are important things that we we have conversations about and we talk with the various departments about how do you plan when those things are down and what do you do to to continue the operations within the districts to make sure that we're able to to continue business as usual. Um
052we're implementing new systems and developing a shared understanding that's always very tough as uh Heather talked about earlier you know amplify you you you have the implementation dip where people expected to do one thing and over time you get there but it does take time right so it's understanding how it's worked and and and actually using it right and then there's balancing that innovation so we talked about AI we talked about a lot of these things is how do you balance that innovation but also keep in mind the cyber security and the safety uh and and data protection of it all. Uh and then just long-term hardware costs, right? Every every year we're replacing hardware at a at you know at a different cost and uh all this stuff is is just continues to change
053and continues to go up. Uh as I mentioned earlier, the budget um our budget is supported in partially by the the categorical state aid. That's the per pupil allocation that we get for each one of the students in our school. That's good for both hardware and software purchases. Uh we also purchased a lot of our equipment uh through Boseies and that helps us generate state aid for the following fiscal year. Um as many of uh my colleagues here also did we looked at our budget and we tried to consolidate and really try to maximize that state aid for um the purchases that we're making to make sure we're we're maximizing that Bose side of it. Uh and then we also use the technology reserve which is a savings account um that's used to uh purchase
054various uh equipment um a lot of it's one the onetoone stuff and then finally there's also the federal rate that we can that's an additional funding source that provides uh for a funding source for el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el el eligible purchases there. [snorts] Then just looking to the the future, some of the anticipated uh technology replacements. Um at the top of the list is always going to be the the one to one laptops uh for grade six, grade nine, and the elementary students. Um it's looking at teacher and shared devices as we move away from Windows 10 over to Windows 11 because Windows 10 is no longer supported. Having to replace those devices
055now to make sure that the technology and the software supports is uh works together with the technology presentation spaces. So looking at rooms like this and trying to enhance and do this at other schools and other areas within the district and then our firewall and our VPN to make sure that all of the the infrastructure is supported and uh we're keeping that security and and keeping those firewalls up and and active and keeping the the bad actors out. And as we sat down um I worked uh quite collaboratively with Terry at in a lot of this and um we started off this process and we started to analyze the purchases that we've made over the last year and several years looking at you know how can we increase our efficiencies within technology and how do
056we look at those shared services that we buy through Boseies and how do we maximize that aid which has really kind of helped lead us to let's consolidate some of these budgets. Um, we also wanted to simplify the process as we talked about earlier. There's a lot of places that we we just seem like we were just doing a lot of different budget codes. So, how do we consolidate those to simplify it for all of us? Uh, and then finally, it's that BOSI support budget and that's increasing due to the rightsiz uh budget pricing from Boseies. Uh, as their prices are going up, they're charging districts more and more. So, we're having to account for all of those as well. Now, when we get into the actual budget history, you'll see starting in 2425, that
057increase, if you recall, um, and I didn't include it on this year's slide deck, but that increase, and we'll talk about it in the next slide, was partly due to, um, or partly funded through the technology reserve. $500,000 was from that. And that'll I'll show you on that next slide. Um, but as we get into the 26 27 school year, you'll see that there's actually a slight dip, right? um that we'll we'll talk a little bit at the later slide. Um as we've moved money around, some of that dip goes into more of the uh Bosei support side. You'll see an increase on the Bosei support. Uh as we talked about wanting to uh really maintain and and consolidate those budget codes, it really did help us maximize uh what we were doing, what we
058were buying in in our uh in our technology services budget. uh and as you can see salaries uh and equipment make up the majority of our overall budget. >> [clears throat] >> So looking at our technology onetoone uh initiative the reserve multi-year outlook um as I mentioned 500,000 really comes from the reserve each year and then our budget we take in an additional 400,000 out of that um these are rounded off numbers each year the hard part of this is you know as technology continues to increase as as costs continue to decrease somewhat static right so looking at um the technology reserve year over year, we're going to be pulling money out. So, the current technology reserve for 2014 that was created several years ago, that's we're going to continue to draw that down. Then
059the instructional technology reserve will continue to then jump into that side of it. Um, you know, the the important thing here is that we either need to continue to replenish the technology reserve or move that money out of the reserve and move it into the general budget for us to support the the onetoone initiative. So that's one to to keep in mind. Um and then as I mentioned earlier, the BoseI support side. This is where you're going to see the majority of the increase because this is where Boseies does more of their rightsiz pricing. And as they've rightsiz their pricing, you'll see that increase that's that shows here. And taking a much uh further step back, uh you'll see that as I mentioned, and I forgive me that for this is being a little small.
060Um you guys do have the the packet there. Um you're going to see various code lines move being moved all over the place because we are trying to maximize that aid contractual cost moving over into uh some of the equip equipment costs because we can get aid on some of this stuff. Um so you'll see just a slight in decrease in overall budget for uh technology services but you will see that increase over on the Boseis techn Bose support services side. Thank you. Any questions? >> Um [clears throat] I guess quick on the aid. What is our aid on equipment? Roughly speaking, >> it's I want to say it's around 60 62%. >> Okay. And then um in terms of you mentioned processing costs like that's just going to get more and more and more,
061right? So the equipment costs are going to go up year-over-year. Do we have projections on that? How do you think about that? >> So um that's one of the things that we always we've been traditionally a Lenovo shop with a lot of our computers. We've we've expanded that over to HP. We look at Dell. Um and a lot of the big three vendors it kind of will compete for some of this. So um that's one of the things that we kind of we'll work through is what's the pricing for this look like for this year? what's the pricing look like this for this this following year? And then we try to get ahead of that, too. So, they they try to get us um pricing well in advance of when they're going to see typical
062increases, which are usually in that March, April time frame. So, we're trying to make those purchases January, February, so we can kind of beat some of those increases, increase costs. >> So, have you already noticed the prices go up like significantly? >> Yeah, I imagine this year they, from what I've been told, they will. Um we we just got our first uh purchase out for our devices. Um but in the in the coming weeks they said all of the quotes that they're providing us are only good for a couple of weeks where before it was oh yeah this is good for the next two three months and we can just refresh it. Now it's yep this is good for two weeks. After two weeks we're going to have to give you a new uh a
063new quote to to figure out what pricing is going to look like. So it is a it's a changing environment. It's one that's constantly evolving too. Thanks. >> Thanks, Matt. >> Thank you, everyone. I can't say enough about this team that presented tonight and how they've been just supporting each other, supporting me. Um, it's been really great to have some thoughtful conversations around the budget. Um, and along with that, um, we'll we'll take a a break between this and the the regular meeting so we don't have to, um, I thought we might show the the video that we created, but I know you all received it, but just a huge thanks to Nancy and her team and Mike Vesby and his team um, in being able to put out that video so that we can
064share really accurately with our community around the deficit that we're facing and how we're planning to look at that and most importantly the importance of having predictable foundation aid funding into the future so that we can be thoughtful with um long range planning. So um I'll share a little bit more in my report in our regular meeting as well just how those conversations are continuing to go around reductions that are coming up and how we're going to be closing that approximately $1.5 million gap that we're facing. So just thanks to everyone who's been involved in that process.