001Good evening everyone. Welcome to Lancaster Central School District's annual budget hearing. As the school year winds down, we take time to reflect on all that we've accomplished together. It's a special time of year as we continue to celebrate the hard work, dedication, and achievements of our students over the next few months and the many people who support them. our teachers, staff, administrators, board of education, and of course, parents. I'm incredibly proud to be part of this amazing district, and I want to sincerely thank everyone who contributes to our students success, as well as the entire district and community for their continued support. In a moment, Mr. Randy Crazyman, assistant superintendent will highlight the outstanding opportunities, programs, and achievements made possible for our K12 students, faculty, and staff for the support of the Lancaster community's budget
002over the years. But first, I'd like to share a few key highlights from a broader district-wide perspective. We use a variety of measures to assess student success at all levels. Our commencement level metrics reflect the collaborative efforts of the entire district from kindergarten through graduation. So last June or June 24 uh statistics around commencement, our students at Lancaster High School earned a 99% graduation rate, one of the highest in both Western New York and New York State. At the same time, our students earned a 64% uh of our student graduates earned a region's diploma with advanced designation, marking one of the highest rates in district history. But our mission goes beyond graduation. And Mr. Vandor touched on this if he's still here. There he is. We aim to ensure that every student is prepared for
003life after Lancaster, no matter their chosen path. Each year appro approximately 80 to 85% of our graduates go on to attend two and four-year institutions of higher learning. Last year seniors were not only prepared academically, but they also earned $9.4 million in scholarships and therefore had the ability to support their continued education. This budget, carefully developed by our business office in collaboration with many others and supported by the board of education, maintains all current instructional programs, student opportunities, services, class sizes, and everything else the Lancaster community has come to expect and value from the Lancaster Central School District. Miss Phillips and Mr. Crazman will highlight the details of the various components of the budget. And in a moment, I'll turn it over to them. As you can see behind me right now, the budget vote
004and board of education election will take place here at Lancaster High School in the Java Gym on Tuesday, May 20th from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. The proposed 2025 2026 budget totals 141.2 million reflecting 4.9% increase percentage increase. It maintains all current instructional programs as I mentioned student opportunity staffing levels and class sizes. In addition, it includes the um in addition includes a speech therapist position, special education teacher, music teacher while addressing the rising operational costs and the enrollment increases that we've experienced the student special education population. Importantly, all this is accomplished while remaining below the New York State property tax levy cap. As outlined in our newsletters, which is on the website, social media, and should be coming to households very soon, uh in our public meetings, the proposed tax levy increase is 1.85%,
005one of the lowest in the past decade. At this time, I'll turn it over to Miss Jamie Phillips, who does a fantastic job leading the budget development process. and shall walk us through the mandated budget information and provide a detailed breakdown of next year's budget. Phyllis, thank you Dr. Full and thank you for accounting for height difference. Um, so tonight I will obviously be talking about the numbers. Um, our budget is required to be presented in a three-part budget format. Those three parts being the administrative, instructional and capital components. This meth method of showing the budget um shows how our expenses are grouped by main area within the district and these are uniform across the state. The grouping, sorry. The administrative component provides for the overall general support and management activities for the district as
006a whole, including the district office functions, district-wide expenditures, business functions, and building administration. It is the smallest portion of the budget overall at 9%. The cost increases in this area are generally related to our contractual salary and benefit increases. This portion includes salaries and benefits for 36 out of our 912 staff members, which is about 4% of our staffing. Increases this year in the section of the budget are offset partially by some cost reductions uh that we had in some of the various OC services that we participate in. This portion overall is increasing by $141,000, which is 1.13%. The second component which is by far the largest uh component is the program portion. It is 75% of our overall budget. This portion contains all of the expenditures direct directly related to the instruction of our
007students including classroom instruction, special education, technology, transportation, extracurricular activities and student support services. So, guidance, social workers, library, and the health office to name a few. This part of the budget maintains all of our current instructional programs. I'm sorry, we've already said that three times, so I'll skip that. Um, it includes the addition of 1.2 speech FTEES and a special education uh teacher position to meet service and placement needs within the district. It also includes an additional music uh teacher position to meet new current interest levels at William Street School in the music program. It also includes new instructional support segments for our seals of biiteracy and civic readiness. It includes additions of some extracurricular positions and athletic positions including modified flag football and modified boys basketball and also some club advisor and coach siphon
008adjustments. The annual major cost driver in this section of the budget are contractual salaries and benefits for instructional faculty and staff. This portion includes salary and benefits for 782 out of 912 staff members. So 86% of our staffing along with hundreds of substitute teachers and substitute instructional support staff. The salary and benefits cost account for 53% of the budget but to budget increase in this section. Other major increases besides salary and benefits is the special education component of our budget. We've been talking about this for a couple of years and the phenomenon continues to increase. We're seeing increases in student enrollment and student needs um including tuitions for outside placements and Bosey's programs, staffing for our special education programs and related services and our Bose services. Uh this also includes transportation to out of uh
009out of district placements as a contributing factor. Our special education increases this year in quote um account for $2 million of our budget to budget increase which is about 30% of that the overall budget increase. There are several areas in this section of the budget um that are offset on the revenue side in part or in full based on different ratios that New York State has set up. Uh we received some revenue for our textbook purchases, hard uh computer hardware, computer software, some of our library materials, some of the special education expenses that we incur, our Boseies expenditures, and also our transportation expenditures. That aid on the revenue side is based on what we actually spend in a given year, and it's paid on a one-year lack. So overall, this portion of the budget is
010increasing by 5.17%. Um, this component's increase is actually 78% of the total proposed budgettobudget increase with $2 million of that being related to special education. So, I will now turn it over to Mr. Crazy who is going to highlight some of our programs and achievements with you. Thank you, Miss Phillips. Um, good evening, members of the board of education, colleagues, and community members. For the first time, I have the opportunity to celebrate and highlight the many amazing experiences, opportunities, and education our students have here in Lancaster. The instructional side of the budget, as stated earlier, makes up roughly 3/4 of the overall district budget. Most of that is our people. The teachers, the administrators, the staff, all do an absolutely incredible job and make Lancaster truly the special place that it is. Please know that
011on the papers in front of me, each highlight that I will briefly speak about is represented by a bullet on this piece of paper, and they're no more than one or two sentences in length. Some of these could have been their own 20-minute presentations. But that being said, I do hope to capture the essence of why Lancaster is and continues to be a destination school district that is second to none. I'll start tonight with some of the district highlights that are a result of the culmination of the hard work and the dedication from our teachers and administrators from kindergarten all the way through commencement. Last year, our seniors earned 9.4 4 million in scholarship money pursuing higher education. Last year, we closely had a we had a 99% graduation rate, almost hitting 100, which consistently
012ranks near the top of Western New York. 64% of those students who graduated graduated regions diploma with advanced designation. From grades kindergarten through 12, we are preparing students with the skill sets to use both electronic and traditional tools to meet their educational needs. With ongoing support from our community, we will continue to provide multiple methods of instruction for our students to move forward. We continue to focus on instructional professional development around supporting our long-term initiative of student engagement through Kaden cooperative learning. Additionally, this past year, we placed emphasis on trauma informed practice, the science of reading, and multi-tered systems of support to foster academic prowess and social skill development of our students. These programs allow all students to have an opportunity to learn in an academically rich, inviting, and safe environment. Our culture, climate, and
013inclusivity. Our CCI mission is to continue to cultivate a school community where everyone feels safe, valued, and connected. Our students, faculty, staff, and CCI coordinator have led the initiative, and each year the initiative continues to grow. We also have a long-standing commitment to service and a deep sense of community here in Lancaster. Each year, our students and parents, faculty, and staff work together to raise tens of thousands of dollars for those who are in need. Some of those examples include all for bucks, Western New York walked in Alzheimer's, Sleeping Heavenly Peace, the Punt Foundation, along with many other various projects to support the community along with Lancaster Youth Bureau, including our annual day of giving. I'm going to take a moment and highlight the music department here in the district. The Lancaster Music Department was
014recently named one of the 2025 best communities for music education for the ninth consecutive year and the 11th overall. This comes as no surprise on the passion and enthusiasm our music teachers, students, and families possess. The program offers countless opportunities for students to participate in ensembles, bands, orchestras, choirs, all different levels, and their performances occur year round and are absolutely fantastic. Even though I did say countless opportunities, during this school year alone, when all is said and done, there will be over 200 concerts, performances, assemblies, and events held in under 180 days of school. A few other special things to highlight. The Lancaster High School marching legends were selected to participate in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia. Our drama programs out outdid themselves once again as they performed Once Upon a Mattress at
015Lancaster High School in Disney's Little Mermaid at Lancaster Middle School. In closing, our dedicated professionals who share their passion and love for music with our students have also received recognition and accolades for their work, not only as teachers, but also as musicians. Some of those highlights include Buffalo Jazz Magazine's best in Western New York, Erie County Distinguished Player and Educator from the Buffalo Philarmonic, Erie County New York State Music Educators Association outstanding outstanding educator awards. This year we also had several teachers who served as directors of area all county and area all state ensembles. This group continues to achieve incredible accomplishments with our students on an annual basis. In the realm of athletics, Lancaster Athletics is consistently at the top of Western New York as one of the best all-around programs in the state of
016New York. We offer 79 different athletic teams, grades seven through varsity in 37 different sports for students to compete and grow from. Lancaster High School was designated as a New York State school of distinction for the second consecutive year, meaning that every varsity team had a cumulative average of at least 90%, giving the definition of true student athletes. We earned the National Federation of State High School Associations award for excellence for exemplary display of sportsmanship, ethics, and integrity. Today during the 24-25 school year, varsity teams have won sectional championships in boys soccer, girls soccer, girls volleyball, football, unified bowling, girls basketball, boys indoor track, and in addition, our girls basketball team competed and won the Far West regional championship. Throughout the year, we've had 14 student athletes who have been named to all Western New
017York athletic teams and 58 honorable mentions. On an individual level, we have many students who qualify for ECIC, sectionals, and state competitions in all three sports seasons. One final stat, currently we have 25 student athletes that have committed to continue their athletic careers at the collegiate level after graduation from Lancaster. So, as you can see, through athletics, we're preparing and shaping our young people for success in the field of play, but more importantly, the game of life. to highlight our K3 schools, Court Street, Komo Park, Hillview, and John A. Sholey. One of the strengths of our district is our size. Our teachers at the K3 level across buildings work together and collaborate on committees to align curriculum and instruction and set a solid foundation for years of academic success to follow. A major highlight of
018the progress has been made around the science of reading. Our administrators, building principles, classroom teachers, reading specialists, special education teachers continue to work tirelessly. This year, we did a fullscale implementation of UFly, which is a systematic and targeted approach to teaching phonics for students in grades K through two. Additionally, all of our teachers have been part of professional development regarding the high impact practices within the science of reading. We completed a pilot program where 35 teachers in grades K through three ultimately selected a vocabulary and knowledge building program which rounds out all aspects of a science of reading aligned curriculum. In the past few weeks alone and of course throughout the year there have been spirit days, talent shows, fun runs, incredible art festivals, cultural nights, and some amazing coral concerts. Our English language learning
019families have been supported in our K3 schools with several family orientation meetings and social events to help them feel more welcomed into our schools. Students have additional opportunities to participate in various field trips and extracurricular activities such as good citizens club, the coffee shop, character group, peace bus, garden club, and Spanish club just to name a few. Our K3 students have opportunities for service and have collectively raised thousands of dollars to support various nonprofits and charities throughout the region. William Street School is one of the largest elementary schools in New York State with over 1300 students. This affords our students a variety of exceptional education opportunities that are truly second to none. Williams Street School offers extensive math program from additional support through acceleration to help all of our students succeed. Our students have access
020to extensive STEM programming. Project Lead the Way, which starts in fourth grade with PLTW launch, continues through Lancaster Middle School with Gateway, and then culminates with an academy experience at Lancaster High School. Students in grades five and six can participate in the William Street Art Academy to showcase their exceptional talent in the visual arts. Additional opportunities that make Blame Street unique to other elementary schools include opportunities to take classes in health, foundations for leadership and success, argumentative writing and debate, creative writing, receiving swimming instruction and physical education along with access to v various music groups such as jazz band, select chorus, and one of my favorites, the ukulele club. Students have access to various intramural programs. Basketball, volleyball, art, swimming, comic book club, board club, rocket club, PTO club. It's incredible. There is a growing
021number of service projects in which our William Street students give back to the community, which is mostly organized by our students from our foundations class in collaboration with the student council. Our William Street coffee shop gives our students with special needs the chance to gain real world, real life skills. And finally, William Street continues their tradition of legends of the roundt discussions. These conversations provide students a forum to provide a voice about the culture and climate of the building by providing feedback and suggestions to make the building the absolute best that it can be. Moving on to Lancaster Middle School, students in LMS are challenged to best prepare them for high school. This year we had 160 students enroll in pre-AP English to get them ready for our AP courses at the high school. Next
022year we are projecting even more students to participate in the program. Lancaster Middle School is one of the few middle schools in New York State to have a preap program uh for students while they are in middle school. More students have been accelerated, meaning taking high school classes for credit in middle school than ever before. Just under 70% of our students take living environment and 40% take regions algebra 1 and 8th grade. These numbers continue to grow as our faculty and staff support our students. Lancaster Middle School offers a menu of 10e courses that help introduce the career themedmies at Lancaster High School. Students have access to 20 different athletic teams, four different choirs, and six different music ensembles. Middle school offers 30 different clubs. I won't list them all but yearbook club, technology and
023engineering ski club, STEM club, drama club, design club, Minecraft club, junior sad, and so many, many more. Lancaster Middle School Swiss. These are students working to improve the school setting. Our student leaders who are empowered to work to improve the student life at LMS along with key faculty and staff members. Finally, Lancaster High School Academy of Finance students visit our eighth grade math classes from Mad City Money, which is a fun and interactive way to learn about real life real life finances and sometimes consequences and bad decision making. Finally, Lancaster High School continues a tradition of excellence. The bar is set high for our students and they truly deliver. Our students do not just graduate, but through the hard work of our teachers and administrators, our students are prepared for life after Lancaster. We provide
024many opportunities for students to obtain college credit while simultaneously earning high school credit through the offering of next year 21 advanced placement courses and 32 different dual enrollment courses. Our seven career themedmies, hospitality and tourism, project lead the way, academy of finance, leadership, building trades, visual and performing arts and healthcare provide our students with real life experiences prior to graduation through partnerships with local businesses and industries. About 70% of the freshman cohort applied for an academy for next year and we've seen this number progressive progressively increase since coming back from the co pandemic. In addition, many of our students participate in career and technical education through the harpness harpness and powder road programs through Gary Wosis. In fact, this year 18 high school students were inducted into the national technical honor society for their pursuit
025of career and technical education programs. The Lancaster High School student union was once again uh given the gold medal of excellence award from the National Association of Student Council. This marks the 20th consecutive year of earning that distinction. Our Academy of Finance has completed 14 consecutive years of earning the National Academy Foundation's Katherine Bless Distinguished Level of Recognition. That's NAS highest honor. We were one of the first in New York State to offer the New York State Seal of Biteracy Program. In 2025, 27 students will earn the seal and they are in the following language languages: Polish, Spanish, German, French, and Bulgarian. Since its inception, 150 students have received this honor. And this year, three students are earning two different language seals. Absolutely incredible. Last year, 25 of our students graduated the New York State
026Seal of Readiness, which promotes active citizenship. This year, 28 students are on track to earn that seal. This year we anticipate 169 students will graduate this year with a diploma and a career development and occupational studies or we call a CDOS credential. Finally, we provide alternative programs for our atrisisk students who have had challenges in a traditional school setting. The goal is to support these students through graduation and help them set on a path for life after Lancaster. This year we are working with 57 students on their journey to help them graduate from LHS, including what we project 24 students will successfully complete the program at the end of the year. As I said and as you can see, our teachers, administrators are truly second to none. I didn't even include all of the different
027field trips, speakers, assemblies, collaborations, book reading between secondary and elementary students, all of which were organized by our administrators, faculty, and staff. I've provided just a small sample of the multitude of opportunities and experience our students in Lancaster have as a direct result of the hard work, dedication, and love for our students and this community. Lancaster truly is a destination district. Thank you so very much. I'm going to turn it back over to Miss Phelps. It's certainly going to make everything I have to say pretty even more boring, I guess, and probably. Uh, thank you, Mr. Gravesman. great job for your first time. And I think I know we know about a lot of those things in isolation, but rarely do we actually just get to hear the full list all at one time. And
028I'm aruck. Um, so the third component that we talked about 20 minutes ago, um, the capital component provides for the operating and ma maintaining of the district's facilities. So, the debt service payments for our capital improvements, um, our buildings and grounds department and also transfers to other funds, which includes a $100,000 capital outlay project that we do every year. Um, it represents 16% of the overall budget. The portion includes salary and benefits for 94 out of 900 our 912 staff members. So, about 10% of our staffing. This portion is increasing by six uh.15%. The components increase is 20% of the proposed budget's overall increase. The cost increases are related to contractually contractual salary and benefit increases similar to the other uh components but also the rising cost of utilities and um increases in our debt
029service that we have related to our construction projects. The debt service however is offset on the revenue side in full um with increases in our state aid for building aid and then also our use of our debt service reserve. So overall compared to last year our three components um are down slight or the administrative component is down slightly. Um it is coming in at 9.36% of our overall budget. The instructional portion is 74.74 and the capital component is 15.9%. So in general um those are all the most those have fluctuated is about 1% on the instructional side. So the budget kind of overall pieces of the pie are remaining the same. So while you the vote on Tuesday is on the overall expenditure budget, uh we are required to pro present a budget that is
030balanced on the revenue side to meet what we're proposing for the expenditure budget. So our est our revenues are estimated and the um our district has really two main revenue sources and that is New York state aid to education and our local local property tax levy. I'll address the levy last. Um so first a little bit about state aid and some of our other smaller revenue streams. With respect to state aid, the state budget uh was just finalized actually last week uh very late compared to their April 1st deadline. Um but our budget had to be approved in April. So we truly were making estimates for state aid. Um we budgeted we budgeted state aid figures based on our on the executive budget from the governor that was released at the beginning or the end
031of January and then also some other reliable figures and calculations. Our budget includes a $1.3 million increase in foundation aid, a $450,000 increase in building aid related to our capital project expenditures, and a $1.2 million increase between excess cost aid in Bosey's aid. Um, and that's really related to those special education cost increases that we've been talking about on the um expenditure side. So overall, our 202526 estimate for state aid to education is a $2.9 million increase. A couple of the other smaller revenue increases that we've estimated includes increases in a $350,000 increase in sales tax revenue from Erie County and also a $1 million increase in our interest earnings which are both indicative of the current receipts that we're receiving in sales tax and interest earnings from our investing. We're also using our reserve
032and appropriated fund balance use to their maximum levels. Um that is increasing $1.4 million from this year's budget to next. The um the reserve contributions are up to their legal uses and the appropriated fund balance is just a a few hundred thou or not less than $100,000 more than it was last year. The same thing we talked about the piece of the pie for the expenditure side. Um for 25 26 estimated revenues our major pieces of the pie is local property tax items which is 45% of the estimated revenues and state aid is 39%. Sales tax from Erie County is 6%. Use of reserve funds is 7 and miscellaneous kind of small revenue streams is 3%. our property tax, our reliance on property tax on the revenue side is down an entire 1% and I
033would say over the last 10 years that has gone from about 49% to 45%. So the district's reliance on local property tax revenue has decreased overall as an overall piece of the pie. um that is in part in part attributed to um increases in state aid uh but also our use of our reserves and our fund balance and then um we've really been earning well um just with investing our cash um and really that interest allocation has gone from about $80,000 when I started working here in 2010. Mind you, the economy wasn't great at that point. Um but we're now at at over uh almost $3 million. um for earnings just from having our money in the bank. So that's great. Um for the tax levy, our estimated tax levy for 2526 is $1.1 million,
034which is a 1.85% levy to levy increase. If you recall last year, uh we did not increase the levy at all, so that was flat. Um this is the 14th year of the tax cap legislation in New York State. Um which is affectionately known as the 2% cap even though we know it's never 2%. Um this year our cap calculation was a total of $63.1 million. So that would have been a $1.8 million increase or uh just under 3%. the proposed levy uh 42526 is $62.3 million. So that is about $700,000 below uh what our tax cap calculation was. So with us being in the tax cap uh within the tax gap, the budget vote requires just a 50 uh simple 50% plus one majority to pass. Uh I will turn it over to Dr.
035to discuss our tax rate and a few other things. Thank you, Miss Phillips and Mr. Graman. Um, so what does that translate for the community uh members in your household? The estimated tax rates uh are on the slide above here, but from last year's actual rate to this year's estimated rate per 100 per $1,000 of assessed value, you'll see the increases here in Lancaster's a 27 increase. Therefore, a $100,000 assessed value uh would equal $27 increase. $200,000 assessed value for $54. $400,18 so on so forth. The Chief Dewaga increase is 24 cents per thousand and Elma is $722 per per thousand. Discrepancies are due to equalization rates which we won't get into here. Uh remember though these are estimates um that we will that will be set in the summer. Um we make these estimates
036conservatively based on the information we have available at this time. Contingency budget. What you see above is the contingency contingency budget. By law we are required to present a contingency budget um for the upcoming school year in the event that the budget is not approved by voters. If the districts were required to operate under a contingent budget next year, uh not only would non-contingent items be uh cut, um but under the property tax cap legislation, we couldn't go above the number that Miss Phillips just gave, uh $61 million, 61,232,869, which was the levy for last year. That translates to cutting $1,134,978 uh from the levy, which would ultimately mean and result in reductions to program, student opportunities, and staffings. Some non-contingent items include equipment uh not related to health and safety, equipment not reimburseable under
037state aid, certain contractual and supply expenses, certain BOSI services, capital outlay outlay, project transfer, uh programs and staffing including instructional hardware, software, textbook purchases beyond the state aid amounts, the additional uh proposed or the budgeted music position 1.2 to FT is speech therapy um and then the additional special education teacher proposed changes to extracurricular position stipens and new clubs and sports would be removed and then reductions in instructional athletic music department equipment supply and contractual funds if operating under that contingency budget. This one should be familiar to our regular vote voters. Proposition two. We've been doing this for uh years. The replacement cycle of our uh buses. You're looking at five replacement school buses. Four 28 passenger school buses and 165 passenger bus with the the cost up there of $999,484 or not to exceed
038that cost. Um, important to note here, there is no tax impact on Proposition 2. As a reminder, voters reestablished our school bus reserve a few years back, 2022, and the purchase will be paid in full from that reserve. Miss Phillips touched just a little bit. Uh it is possible that this purchase is the last of the fuelpowered buses that we currently have in our fleet based on the New York State mandate to purchase electric vehicles beginning in 2027. The mandate requires districts to begin the conversion to electric buses beginning in 2027 and we fully transition with no fuel power vehicles remaining in the year 2035. Now, as M. Pharaoh said, um, up until about 5 days ago, this mandate still exist existed as it was initially signed in 2022. Once the state budget was passed
039last week, it did include an amendment that allows for up to two two-year waiverss to delay the start of implementation, but the requirement to transition still exists. Important to note and and this is talked about before through a NAERTA grant the district uh has worked with a consultant this year to do a full and comprehensive study on our transition to electric vehicles uh electric buses. The study is complete and the report is still in draft form awaiting approval from NAERTA. We anticipate the the final report in the next few months and that will be presented to the board and the community in the summertime at some point or early fall at the latest. The report's still on draft. Uh but certainly the estimates on the cost to make the bus garage site compatible with electric
040vehicles and to transition our entire fleet of buses to electric vehicles is real. Um which is the perfect segue back to Miss Phillips. So we have two additional propositions this year on the ballot. Proposition number three and Proposition number four. I'm going to kind of talk to talk about them as one because they're very similar and the purpose is very similar. Proposition number three is for voters to authorize the creation of a $10 million capital reserve. Um, and that would be allowed to exist over the period over a period of 10 years and allow us at the most to contribute up to $10 million to it. Uh the proposition is not about funding the reserve is about it is about creating a reserve um and us being able to fund it as funds available avail
041themselves over the next 10 years. Proposition number four is for the same thing but for a bus purchase reserve and that is for $10 million for the course of 10 years. Again same um details. Uh it's voters are approving the creation of the reserve but not the funding of the reserve. It's not going to be funded the day after the budget vote. Uh both of these we have placed on the ballot with the electric vehicle mandate in mind. So while the reserves are worded generally um so if the electric something happens with the electric vehicle mandate um and we do not need funds for that mandate we'll be able to use them for other types of voter approved capital improvement projects and voter approved bus purchases. But what this what these two do allow us
042to do is start to save up for the astronomical cost um of the electric vehicle mandate and try to do our best to cover as much of the local share that we can. both on the construction side um of converting our site to be electric vehicle compatible and then also on the vehicle side where we're replacing 80 to 85 of our fleet um with electric vehicles over the next 10 years. So, um that need to say more about So, as a reminder to vote, please vote on May 20th. on the budget, the buzz and reserve authorization propositions along with the vote for three candidates, three running, John Tel Rico, Melissa Payne Smith, and Jonathan Van Norwick. Um, let me go off script just a little bit and and say that in my new vantage point,
043I've given Mr. Crazeman's some version of that had the pictures in the background, right? And I I really enjoyed it and appreciated it from this vantage point and seeing the picture cycle through a couple times, right? Um I I the second time I looked for the things that I didn't see the first time and and what I didn't see the first time that I know are there are the people who are making it happen, right? Our administrative team, okay? Our building principles, our district office administrators, our fantastic teachers, okay? Our faculty, our staff, our community. behind each one of those pictures creating those experiences for those kids. And uh uh I have on my paper there is no doubt that Lancaster is a destination district. You've heard that. Um but I'm also very proud to
044serve as superintendent of schools for this fantastic community and and that really brought it home for me even though I've done it and given it and it's the words on the paper but it really jumped out when I saw the pictures. Um there's been a tremendous amount of support um amount of progress from an academic and operational standpoint over the last couple of decades in Lancaster. Um that support from the community is humbling and on full display if you walk around any of our campuses as they're all work in progress and the beautifification process uh is in full display. But I can tell you what happens in our schools and our classrooms is even more impressive than what's happening to our campuses. We appreciate all the support the community has given us over the the
045last several years. I'm hopeful we have community support on May 21st. And at this time, we'll conclude and open up for questions and comments. If you have any questions or comments, please come to the mic, state your name and address. Otherwise, thank you very much. Thank you for coming.