001hearing of the board of education of the city school district. We all stand and say the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all the clerk call. >> Mr. Joseph Oa Jr. >> here. >> Mrs. Danielle Padula is excused absence. Mr. Donald >> here. >> Mrs. Tal New >> here. Mr. Mr. James Paul is excused absence. Mr. Jason Cooper is excused absence. Mr. Braden. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um I'm going to take the uh agenda a little bit out of order. Um >> sorry. >> I'm going to take the agenda a little bit out of order. The uh first um we have a some resolutions that are up for adoption. The first
002one is where is an appeal of the decision of the superintendent of schools regarding student discipline was made to the board of education in accordance with section 3214 of the New York Education Law dated April 15, 2026. And whereas the board of education duly considered the arguments made in support of the appeal and fully reviewed the record of the matter in light of said arguments. Now therefore, it is hereby resolved that the disciplinary action imposed by the superintendent is overturned. The board finds there was insufficient evidence in the record to establish that the student engaged in the charged misconduct. The board directs the superintendent to expune the suspension from the student disciplinary record. All uh all those in favor I opposed. Motion carries 40. Whereas an appeal of decision of the superintendent of school regarding
003student discipline was made to the board of education in accordance with section 3214 of the New York education law dated April 15, 2026. And whereas the board of education duly considered the arguments made in support of the appeal and fully reviewed the record of the matter in light of set arguments. Now therefore, it is hereby resolved that the disciplinary action imposed by the superintendent of schools is upheld. The board finds competent substantial evidence the student engaged in the charge misconduct and deems the penalty imposed appropriate given the nature of the misconduct and the anecdotal evidence in the record. All those in favor? >> Opposed? Motion carries. >> There's a resolution whereas an appeal of decision of the superintendent of schools regarding student discipline was made to the board of education in accordance with section 3214
004of the New York education law dated March 17, 2026. And whereas the board of education duly considered the arguments made in support of the appeal and fully reviewed the record of the matter in light of set arguments. Now therefore, it is hereby resolved that the disciplinary action imposed by the superintendent of schools is upheld. The board finds competent and substantial evidence the student engaged in the charge misconduct and deems the penalty imposed appropriate given the nature of the misconduct and the anecdotal evidence in the record. All in favor? >> Opposed? Motion carries. Resolution. Whereas an appeal of decision of the superintendent of schools regarding student discipline was made to the board of education in accordance with section 3214 of the New York education law dated March 30, 2026. And whereas the board of education duly
005considered the arguments made in support of the appeal and fully reviewed the record of the matter in light of set arguments. Now therefore, it is hereby resolved that the disciplinary action imposed by the superintendent of schools is upheld. The board finds competent and substantial evidence that the student engaged in the charge misconduct and deems the penalty imposed appropriate given the nature of the misconduct and the anecdotal evidence in the record. All in favor? I opposed? None. Mo all four resolutions have been adopted with regard to student discipline. Up next, the Udica City School District 2026 27 budget hearing. And I believe if you do have any questions, you are welcome to ask them in an orderly manner. All right. Good evening to the board and the viewing audience at home. Um, today we're here to
006discuss the budget hearing um and really talk about, you know, any particulars that uh relate to this budget. So, we'll get straight into it. So again, you'll notice a con a consistent theme that all of the work that we do is rooted in our mission and vision and so too is the budget that we've constructed um in this process. It's really uh based on our ability to foster an organization that's rooted in continuous improvement and incremental and sustainable growth over time. So again, we're talking about a very large, complex organization that has so many different moving parts and we are working to develop a budget that's going to allow us to develop sustained and incremental growth over time and you'll see that aligned with our priorities that we have proposed and initiatives that we propose
007to fund for the uh uh 2627 year. So again, Rome wasn't built in a day. Our mission is always to be better next year than we were the preceding year. And so we look at this work as a larger transformative process that will take uh the shape over time as we are molding the organization into a a model district urban transformation. So again I always point to continuous improvement because it's something that we are engaged in. Again this is our our our vision. Everything is aligned to our mission and vision. And then also our instructional and priorities working in collaboration with the and broader instructional council we developed instructional goals for the year that would guide system performance as well guide the benchmarks that we are looking at to determine whether the system has been
008effective this year. We will build upon those goals working with our broader administrative council to revisit the areas in which we were successful and also set new benchmarks for the 26 and 27 year. But the reason why I highlight this is to show that mission, vision, district goals, there's a coherence that shapes our budget priorities. And this is all aligned. And it's a very important distinction to note. And so one of the things that we have worked to to do is we've of course developed our award-winning Raiders extended day program and we want to continue that. So we are looking to continue that program because we believe that that invest investment in our students academic and social emotional skills will pay dividends not only now but later on. Again if we are prioritizing extended day
009learning opportunities for students now. We would imagine any science would tell you that those students should be better or uh differentially academically positioned than students who did not engage in that program. So it's an investment and as those students leave the elementary and traverse through the system, we're going to track how did their their how was the experience shaped by their attendance in this program. It's one of the things we're looking at. Again, we um our new career and technical education program. We are um introducing 310th grade students to over 12 career pathways. Again, that helps us with educational attainment, giving students a variety of ways to access the education and credentials as well as improving their uh postsecondary outcomes. Meaning, we want students not only to leave here with the content, knowledge, and skills
010to be successful, but also um to be immediately employable in our im uh local community here. Um we're going to again continue a continuation of our summer enrichment programming. Uh we're working to strengthen school leadership. So one of the things that we um noticed just in the feedback that we've gotten from our administrators, even our teachers is really, you know, strengthening the building level supports. So we are offering um or or prioritizing an investment in um uh additional administrators to help really support the uh the instructional capacity of our buildings. We want all of our building principles not only to be operational leaders but to also have the capacity to be instructional leaders in their work because they have that support. And another function of this is not only to only fun focus on just
011our uh um our school leadership from the instructional side, but it's also capacity building for our organization. We want to make sure that we are creating advancement opportunities and really creating a pipeline as we're looking to grow leaders and further succession planning throughout the organization. professional development. Again, we're prioritizing this in a globally interconnected world. Isolationism doesn't work from a country standpoint, nor does it work for a school district. The schools and our leaders and our teachers and our faculty and staff at varying levels of the organization must have the ability to meet with others in the field that are on the uh the edge of cutting new practices to stay a breast of best practices in this in the field. and they need to be able to speak and to really communicate within a
012broader field so that they can bring that knowledge back to Udica in the local context and help inform the things that we're doing. And so that work doesn't happen in silos. It happens by really connecting with professionals in our industry so that we can get better and that we can learn and grow and to some extent so that we can teach and offer the things that are working well in Udica to the field as well and position ourselves in as leaders in the things that we do well. So this is very important. Um we want to focus on leadership development, capacity building across the organization to make sure that not only do we have a strong succession pipeline, but we also have people that are developing the habits and minds, content, knowledge and skill set
013to be effective in their work because the organization and the industry is ever evolving. as to are the challenges associated with urban education and and transformation. So, that's a very um a big initiative that we're proud to invest in and we appreciate the support. And then again, we have the ongoing technology upgrades to make sure that our students have the most um uh ready tools to uh support student learning. And so today we're we're joined today for the budget hearing and and our purpose really is to educate voters, you know, really justify our fiscal decisions, clarify our tax impact, which is easy because we're going zero on the levy and then help to prepare the community for the upcoming vote. And so that's really what the purposes of today is. We've had a um a
014a good strong collaborative process in building this budget and we we'll talk about that. So again, we're planning out months in advance. We are making projections based on what we think future organizational needs will be based on the information we have our dis at our disposal at any given time. And we really worked this year collaboratively as an organization um as a central office administration um to really gain feedback and insight from different vantage points within the system to help inform this budget process. And we've done this uh done this work uh together collaboratively with board input and the board has directed some changes in the budget and we appreciate that input working with the board and working with the administrators and this is the final project and and we're we're proud for that and
015I'm proud to have been a part of this process. It's been a very good process this year and so we will discuss the three-part budget. Again, we are proposing a budget that consists of $310,427,947 with a 0% tax increase on the levy, which will remain at the $30 million mark. Again, when you look at the proportion of the way the budget is proportioned in regards to how much of the budget is programming, you'll see that that's consistent from where we were in the 2526 to the proposed 26 27 year. Um, contrary to popular belief, not much changes. We are not cutting programs. We are not laying off people. So, there's not much that changes with the budget over year over year. their contractual obligations, health care costs, and the amount of the budget that we
016actually have at our disposal to move around is not as much as people would like to think. I just have to clarify that. And so for you'll see our our administrative budget here. This has been again presented before. This really just uh uh articulates our thinking in regards to this function of the budget. You'll see an increase of about roughly around $2.5 million. If there's anything else we want to say about this, >> Dr. Spence requested that we take a look at the administrative percentage and and what part of the budget and right now of the next year's budget, it's about 7.78%. He wanted to know is that more or less than what other school districts similar in size either around in our community or around the state. Are are we having more administrative costs,
017less admin administrative costs, are about the same? And what we found was we were far below >> far below. terribly far behind. >> Um we knew that last year starting last year when we got the annual state what they call ESSA report a transparency report and we actually were flagged and the flag was why are your administrative costs so much less lesser than other school districts around the state. So when we did this research project and took taking a look at other school districts similar to our size, we found that we indeed were so far below up to about two and a half million dollars. When we looked at another district that was comparable in several districts comparable in size, the lowest amount that we were below was two and a half is almost some
018are up to five million. So we're pretty proud of where we are administratively wise. Um Dr. Spence, you know, has always been promoting trying to make sure that we have enough staff to get the work done. Um, but I just want to also mention something is that this is budget over budget. So when you look at these numbers, sometimes it gets a little confusing because you're going to say, well, we spent in 2526. That isn't accurate. >> Very important important distinction. >> Okay. And again, you look at the bulk of the budget, it's programming, you know, it's it's it's the people that are really driving the work that help support our students. And you'll see that there is a $17 million increase. and have the view again in a similar fashion when we speak to
019program aspect of the budget >> there. Again, when we took a look at programmatic, we found that we were we were pretty far high up in the amount of dollars that we spend percentage-wise. We weren't the top, but we were right up there with with the majority of of other districts. So, we're very proud of that. What's the flip side? You'll see that in capital. I think that's because we've invested so much in our buildings in efficiencies, whether it be lighting, uh, air, all kinds of those things, and those things are paying off as it relates to cost associated to electric and gas. Um, I just want to point out a couple of other things real quickly here. Um, let's see. Some time ago, the press reported that we we were cutting jobs, a a
020particular press service. We're not cutting any jobs. there there was some extra contingency in different places and Dr. Spence really wanted to see that money being worked on our behalf of our students. Um and so there are no positions being cut, but if there were a little bit of extra money in there that could be used somewhere else um for the betterment of our students, that's that's what he asked us to do. >> Call that the strategic uh reallocation of resources. But I think just for wait before you go on just for the for their thinking you were very diligent in really looking at what was actually expensed and making those projections. Could you just talk a little bit about that because to a degree you've right sized this to make sure that you know
021it it fits based on our assumptions today knowing that these things can change. >> So as I've provided the board on several occasions over the past couple of months we took a look at every line over a three-year history. We took a look what was expensed there. Was it supposed to be expensed there? Did it did it make sense? Um and where could it be placed? If so, that would be more transparent because that was our goal. Making sure things were in the correct lines and transparent. Didn't have to do too much. But what we did what we did was we learned uh more about the process where things should be. So it is transparent. Um and we did this over a period of three or four months. This budget process doesn't start two months
022ago. It started in the fall when schools started to make sure that that we had enough uh allocation and resources to implement where Dr. Spence was leading the district. Um and so we're we're very excited by this budget. One other thing I do want to just point you see down to transfer to other funds. Um the the majority of that money is for our school lunch program because we do subsidize it because we provide free lunches to our students. Um and so uh the past couple of years you've done a big transfer for that and Dr. Spence wanted to make sure that that was properly funded this year. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> As we're in in involved in ongoing negotiations regarding particular MOA that's contributed to that. And so just so I'm going to
023say it here should we have to revisit this next year. He have right is that there may be transfers. We have predict we're doing this based on assumption today. So as any good business model we will make adjustments within a year depending on what occurs. But this is based on our assumption as we know it today how we uh uh plan to expense the money. Now you know depending on what happens we may say we need to transfer funds here allocate resources there to make sure that we are um fulfilling our mission and vision but I just want to say that here and we've done our best to project those things. >> Could I just ask a question about that? >> Yep. >> So it's not against the law to transfer money that's in the
024budget right in one mind to another? No, not at all. >> Can you, Heather, can would you mind if Heather just got Can you just explain what that's about so that the people listening at home understand what it is that you guys are doing and what we're overseeing. >> So, a budget is a footprint of where you want to be. Sometimes that footprint doesn't materialize because of a number of factors. So, you have to be able to pivot. You have to be able to move on behalf of your students. If you have a new program in the middle of the year, um you look to find those account lines that might have contingency built in or certain things that may not come to fruition and you move that money. Um you know, the the goal
025is to be as accurate as we can be. They're all estimates and and that's really the important thing to remember. They're estimates. So does it happen in governmental, you know, the operation of government or school districts where money may be placed in the budget and then you find that you have to transfer it somewhere else in order because something changed that required you to do that. >> So >> how does that work? >> So in a lot of local governments like the city of Udica, they do it weekly. They have a board of estimate aortionment and and they approve budget transfers weekly and at their common council meetings. School districts, one of two ways. Either they do it the way that we are now doing it and up till three years ago, you weren't approving
026budget transfers. They were just happening, right? And that was one of the first things that we did. You as a board decided that you wanted to do budget transfers as soon as we knew them. Um, and that's something that we've been coming to with the other way, which is what a lot of school districts do. they wait until the end of June into July, right? They're getting ready for their audit and that's when they come through and do huge transfers. You know, we've done a little bit of both, but we've really been very active and and progressive in trying to get those budget transfers to you when we know they're going to take place. >> Thank you. >> Again, we call that strategic resource allocation. And I just want to talk about this point. In
027any other sector, you would expect a CEO to do that. In any other sector, you would respond to the market immediately based on market factors, market conditions. So, as an organization, we want to get better at doing that because if we understand that there's a problem that we can maybe develop programs or things that we could fund and we can do it in real time, we want to do it in real time rather than wait till the next year. So that is actually a um a strong financial management if you can do that and again the things that you can predict that you know ahead of time you'd like to plan for but again I I couldn't said it any better. Thank you very much. So just a question because I know I've asked about
028it before >> and I [clears throat] think it's worth clarifying again in terms of the decrease the the large decreases that we we see in three of the areas of the budget and I know I've asked about two of these in the past to clarify for everyone. >> We're not cutting services is my understanding of this. >> It's that there's two correct me if I'm wrong. I think that there's two things going on is one there was order budgeting in the past in a couple of those areas and more largely I believe the guidance and psychological services those some of those are being recoded to Bosey's account items right which is why we see the decrease there but not actually a decrease in services >> yes and and then just for for the viewing public
029when they when they vote all of this is just accounting this is just cost accounting practices is the the board and the public will approve a pot of money and within the money this is how we intend to to spend that money. So to your point you're right on no we're not reducing staff we're not reducing services but we're really just um providing greater tight management in regards to where things should be placed within these codes and within these lines and we're right sizing it. there was some contingency in somebody's lines and we worked to rightsize that to ensure greater fiscal management and if I did I take one down well >> thank you see my >> specifically with guidance and psychological services those were being recoded to to coers under right >> two different
030situations under psychological services um there was more money budgeted when you looked at a three-year history it wasn't being utilized um there's still a little bit of contingency in there if we need to pivot at any Right. Um but we we wanted to reduce it and not keep having the over budgeting in that particular line item. When it comes to guidance services, that was a reallocation um of a Boseies coser uh between several other lines. So we're not reducing guidance services and and presently there is no guidance services um that Boseies is providing us. >> Thank you. >> And then I just I guess I got to say this again because you know sometimes you hear in the rumor mill that we're cutting the attendance teachers. Uh, no, we're not cutting the attendance teachers just
031for the public that might believe that, you know. So, we just got to make just be strong in our position. We're not cutting people. We're not cutting positions. We are also working to expand u services in some areas. And so, we'll move to to capital and how you want to come back up just to talk about capital. So you you see a little bit of a decrease uh as it relates to um the operation of plant there. Again, um work really closely with our director, our chief of of our facilities and plan operation, Mike Ferraro, who really watches these numbers pretty closely. Um and just reduce some of the contingency there. Um, as it relates to maintenance of plant, the extra $231,000 is repairs for air circulation and our parking lot sidewalk improvements. It took
032a real beating uh this year. Um, as it relates to judgment claims, there's not much there. And and employee benefits, um, you know, we've seen an increase there. And and employee benefits is across in each of the the sections. It's under um programmatic and administrative. Um and but overall there's about a 7% in total increase to employee benefits most of which is health insurance. >> Okay. And again we just showed just utilize this pie chart to sort of show the proportion of particular objects within the budget and you know they're really proportionate. Again, most of the budget is fixed through contractual obligations because most of our budget is people and you know contracts. So you won't see much fluctuation here. And now we'll turn to talk about the revenues. So on the revenue side of
033the budget, much like the expenditure side, we continually work together to project revenues throughout the year. Uh it should be noted that this year that's of course as important as ever. We don't have a state budget yet uh for state aid, but we're very confident in the work we've done to project and prepare the revenue side of the budget. Uh you see the revenues laid out there. As you know, we're a highly state aid dependent district of our approximately $20.3 million increase in total revenue that's driven by approximately $19 million of state aid. Uh you can see the other smaller differences and one one reason you see almost a difference in every line is similar to expenditures. We did quite a review of the revenue lines to really project out what we were anticipating and
034what makes sense uh for each of the individual lines. On the appropriated fund balance side, uh the net of our appropriated equity accounts, we have a slight reduction. Uh that's important as we look to rely more on reoccurring revenue and slightly less on state on fund balance and reserves. And again, we just show you the proportion of revenues being highly um uh the state aid dependent district. And so [clears throat] again, we try to make sure that we are, you know, our expenses and revenues balance out so that we're not creating any structural deficits within the budget. And then these are propositions that will be on the ballot and then want to take Uh May 19th is our annual voting day, our public vote. We're pretty excited by that. We have one opening on our
035on our board. Um these are all the different polling locations. We'll be there from 12:00 to 9:00. Immediately after we'll be reconvening here in the boardroom uh where we'll be canvasing the vote uh as a group and then I believe the next day, May 20th, there is a board meeting that will be approving those results. Thank you. Thank you very much. Again, this is the total budget amount and we are zero on the levy. We are not cutting any positions. We are not cutting programs and we are looking to build upon the work that we have done. Again, this work is um this budget provides us with the resources and tools to continue the momentum that we have um established and gained together. Um would like to again thank the board for providing us with
036the tools and the resources. The board and and and the administration together we have collaboratively been able to accomplished a lot most notably the market increases in student achievement most notably the awardwinning RED program as well as the close and completion of our CTE project. So through this collaboration and strong partnership we're able to continue to lead this district and and advance upon this momentum. So again this is the budget. It's been a great process and thank you all for your partnership. [applause] >> Anybody else have any questions? >> No. Okay. I need a motion to adjurnn. >> All in favor? We're adjourned.