February 12th, 2026 - Board of Education Meeting

001Good evening everyone and welcome to the February 12th meeting of the Ontario Board of Education. We have a tobacco policy in place. There's no smoking within 100 ft of any school building. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. Will our acting board clerk please call roll? Sure. Trusty Smith >> here. >> Trusty Jared >> here. >> Trusty Mitchell Morurell >> here. >> Trusty Jerome here. Trusty Goodrich >> here. >> Trustee Nutson >> here. >> And Trusty Bishop >> here. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we will start right off with item 2.01. Our high school principal, Mr. Lance Adelman, will welcome the board. Great. Well, welcome to Antiora High School. Um, you have to bear with me a little bit because I'm really altering my presentation quite a bit for a good reason because we

002have some students here tonight who are going to present. weren't sure how this was going to roll out. So, since they're more important than me, I'm going to really fly through my slides. But I do think they're they're some very important slides uh because a lot of what I want to present are really aligned to the board goals that you're going to affirm tonight or possibly affirm tonight. So, um I'm just going to take you through this relatively quickly. We are not starting off on a good note. Okay, here we go. Yeah. All right. So, I thought I would I would I would give you a midyear a midyear update. Um, you know, we're now entering the third week of the third quarter, which is really unbelievable when you think about it. Uh, at this

003point of the year, uh, we've conducted, and when I say we, the high school administration has conducted, um, the majority of our classroom observations, our teacher observations, and we're noticing some real amazing things coming from our classrooms. We're seeing a huge shift from traditional instruction uh to seeing a lot more group work, a lot more projects, a lot more studentled presentations. And this is going to be these are going to be key components with New York inspires and our portrait of graduate work. So, we're really glad to see that. In terms of assessments, we just got done with midterm week three weeks ago, but we got done with our midterm weeks. We administered over 1,300 midterms for our students and we had a uh a success rate a passing rate of about 86% which is

004really nice. It shows that our students are really taking advantage of a lot of the opportunities that we have in terms of afterchool help and also help that that our teachers are providing during the course of the school day. I always like to remind parents and it's been on our parents square communications uh that we do offer afterchool help in our core areas. So math, English, science, social studies and world languages. Uh if you go to the website and I kind of put it up there under student resources, our entire academic help schedule is online. Some of the other things that we're working on, we're continuing to work on. Uh, one is we're exploring our grading practices. And again, this is going to be another key component of of our portrait of graduate work. So,

005we're going to have to really take a look at what is what assessment really means and how it's going to align with all of the new requirements. So you know Stephanie Laughen has done an amazing job bringing our team together and bringing in presenters and giving us all the resources that we need. In addition to that we are continuing to explore the whole area of artificial intelligence. It's a very very complicated um process and topic and I truly appreciate the board's patience because I know I know a lot of people are anxious to try to you know get policy procedure and see what's going you know see how this could be used but this has to be done the right way and uh our teachers are really doing a good job exploring trying to figure

006out where AI actually fits into the high school for students as well as for teachers and we're still exploring a lot of the tools that have been given to us through you know different platforms mainly through school AI. Um so you know we're continuing to bring our feedback back to committee and again it's another it's another uh committee that that Miss Laughen has really uh been instrumental in in forming. So I thank you for that. I also wanted to let you know at this point of the year, even the winter se sports season is kind of wrapping up. You know, it's it's awesome that our students have the opportunity to participate in approximately 27 different clubs. Uh and obviously the eight winter sports and they keep bringing more and more ideas to the table. So,

007you know, I I appreciate the students advocacy for and and the staff for their willingness to help pursue all these things that students are interested in. One of the goals that I spoke about early in the year um is we continue to monitor our student attendance and chronic absenteeism. I just wanted to give you a little bit of I wanted to give you some data and a chart to show you what our daily attendance rates look like. And this this includes from the beginning of the year through the end of January. And if you remember, our goal at the high school was really to try to bring our attendance rates back up to where they were precoid. And you can see we're making really good strides. Uh we're very impressed with with the data. Uh

008last year we did an exceptional job. I didn't think we were going to reach that same number and we're right we're right where we wanted to be. And this is a testament to the hard work by a lot of our social workers, psychologists, and school counselors. Uh, everyone's really pitching in to to make this work. The next question I'm always asked about is is how are you doing with uh New York State's new law in terms of um new electronic devices, bell-to-bell, and I figured I would just give you all the data. So, To date, or I shouldn't say to date, from the beginning of the year through the end of January, my office has processed 59 referrals for students who have, you know, violated that policy. You could see you could see it month

009by month and the data is pretty much mimicking what student behavior would would do when you chart it. Uh, so, you know, we're happy to see that there's a decline. Obviously, you know, January was a shorter month, so there would be, you know, fewer incidents, but you know, we're really curious to see how February and March will turn out and that we can make some u you know, some additional suggestions, but there's not a teacher who will tell you that this is not this is just this is just absolutely great to get rid of this distraction. The other question I'm always asked when it comes to the electronic devices is, you know, what grade levels are you struggling with? And to no surprise, the majority of these referrals are coming from our upper classmen. Our

01011th and 12th graders make up most of those referrals. And of course, they've had the most changes in these policies since entering high school. And then of and the final question I'm usually asked is you know how does this compare to referrals in prior years because we're getting a little bit more you know stricter but really the number of referrals has really decreased. So you see same point of time from three school years you know 77 to 113 and you know this year down to 59. So, we're happy to see a decline in the number of referrals that are coming down to us. And I apologize for going so quickly, but I really want to give give the students some time here. The the last thing I want to talk about is master schedule because

011we're in master scheduling season. Our counselors have already visited the majority of high school classes. However, when I talk about master schedule, I can't do it without speaking about our student enrollment. And you've and people who have been on the board or have seen my presentations, you know, I talk about this all the time. Currently, this school year, as of uh February 6th, our enrollment was 319 students in the high school. Next year, it will drop. Projected enrollment is 310 students. We're looking at, you know, mid70s, high 70s per per grade level. And you could see the the prior year's enrollment on the slide. It's important to note this because we have a very rich course offering. So we are very strategic in the way in which we're running classes each year, alternating them to

012make sure that students have an opportunity to take some of the electives throughout their high school career. Um our counselors are very good at communicating with us in terms of what a student's plans if we have seniors for for example if we have seniors who we know are going we say um you know biomed or you know we may say okay we have to run that AP bio we're very strategic in the way we're offering courses everything is student centered um and we have reached out to student government they've kind of a little bit a little bit of feedback, but um we're going to try to run some classes that we haven't run, you know, in a while on the website. And I think Amanda said she was going to uh print this out. I

013don't know if she did. U you do see our course selection form, and you also should have a copy of the descriptions of all of our electives. Uh we're being very transparent with the course selection form. And by the way, this was also put out by PA through Parent Square and is also on our website with all the links so that all parents are aware that this stuff is happening. We're, as I started to say, we're very transparent about what courses we anticipate running and which ones we've we've decided we can't run this uh next year. So, you'll see that we left those courses on the selection form and we grade them out. A couple of quick notes about the courses that we're looking to offer. We are required uh there's a new requirement that

014all students who are in high school receive a course in personal finance by the time they graduate high school. So what we're implementing for next year is we will be offering a halfyear course that all 11th graders are going to be taking in personal finance. Now, let me back up a second. In order to meet this requirement, these students could either take the per the half credit halfyear personal finance course or if they want they could take a new course, brand new course that we're offering that's being offered by college board, which is AP business and finance. So, th those are two options. A third component of this is any student who is going to the Bosey's career in tech. The personal finance will be embedded in their Boseis program through the tech through tech

015math and through the trade. So they will not have to take the personal finance. For most students, we see the personal finance being offered opposite of health. Health being a halfyear personal finance. So, it kind of closes that gap and has very minimal impact on student schedules so that they're not going to be missing out on an elective, a fullear elective or an AP course that they really would like. Um, so again, I I encourage you to look through those course offerings. The next step, the counselors are in the process right now of entering in all of the student requests. We'll take a look at those requests. We'll take we'll start meeting with the department, show them the numbers, see what's viable to run um and then try to make accommodations for students, especially upper

016classmen who might not get into a course that they really wanted to take. I would like you to keep in mind that because our numbers are shrinking, our enrollment is shrinking, and because we're still offering pretty much the same number of courses that we have been over the last few years, there are going to be students who do not get into courses that interest them, electives mainly. So, you will hear complaints. Keep in mind, we do the best that we can. We have a very sophisticated scheduling program. We try to do the right thing for students and we always will. So before I move on, I know I just hit you with like a ton of stuff that I had more to say about, but are there are there any questions or any comments that

017you'd like me to address? >> Thank you so much as always for everything you do. It's always makes me feel very excited. Um I just had a thought when you mentioned that this information went out to the high school parents on Parent Square. I happen to have an eighth grader who just kind of signed up for these things and I didn't get any of this. So, I'm just wondering if maybe there's a way we can bridge that second half of 8th grade with parents with what you're accustomed to sharing with the high school parents. That's all. >> Very fair comment. Yeah, I can appreciate your problem here. I mean, you're looking at the numbers in just a couple years, you the enrollment for 9 through 12 has gone down 25%. And uh if you can

018still maintain, you know, the course offerings without cutting them by 25%. It's hard. It's really hard. So, I can appreciate it. Well, thank you very much. >> Okay. >> I I'm just going to say one thing. Um just uh in response to your uh data about the um cell phone situation in our in our high school. Um, Trusty Jared and Trusty Kenson and I spent yesterday in Albany uh at uh New York State School Board Association lobby day and we took uh advantage of meeting with our assembly persons and our senators and bragging about how great the uh you know they're calling it the cell cell phone ban uh because it's mandated, but how great the process has been here in our middle school and our high school. It's great to be able to brag.

019Thank you for that. >> Sorry, this is just out of curiosity, but uh when you the personal finance course, the halfear course, I'm just looking at the overall offerings here and there, I count 12 other business electives and that seems like it must be a very popular area in the district. And I some of them seem like they overlap a lot. Like there's a money management class. Um there's a um uh business. I'm sorry. But anyway, it seems like personal finance would overlap with are are these all classes that actually end up running or do you just see who signs up or >> We pretty much see who signs up and then make decisions off of that. So, you know, if we don't have enough students who are interested in in uh money management, for

020example, you know, we'll offer them. So let's say it's an underassman and they want to they're interested in that. We will make the exception and allow them to go into the personal finance kind of customize it a little bit. Um we also may take those numbers and see you know students are putting in um you know their first choice their alternates. So we'll also take a look at the alternates and see what makes sense to kind of run. Um it's it's very strate it's very strategic >> and then an AP business is a fullear class. Yes. So those kids have to find another way to do health in their schedule or >> No, we'll work we'll work it out. >> Okay. Okay. >> Especially when you're an upper that's why we're doing this at the

021at the 11th and 12th grade level because what'll happen is students will sacrifice a study hall or late arrival. So these will be student especially 12th grades it'll be a studentm made decision you know do you want to have an early release do you want to have a light schedule or do you want to have a heavy schedule do you want a study hall or do you want to take a class and our counselors will help guide them to make that decision >> trusty Mitchell Morell and then trusty Jerome do the students pick these classes with the help of a college counselor in some ways >> so the process is first the the counselors are going into each student's social studies class and doing an overall overview of you know what are the requirements for

022the grade level uh try to get get the interest after the students submit their requests based on what they believe that they would like to take this c each counselor will meet with with each high school student prior to finalizing their requests so that's really where all of that >> that guidance Right. It's kind of like the initial step. >> I was just wondering out of curiosity which are the most popular or just if you could name a few. >> Wow. It's really that's that's really hard to say. Um I mean because it's all it's all it's all it's all across the board and it and it changes you know. You know, so like when you take a look at electives, you could say like in one year, you know, I could tell you philosophy,

023for example, was a was a huge hit. But so many kids have taken that that, you know, now it's kind of like we need to take a break so we could recycle it because you can't run a philos you know, when you when you have classes at 24 in philosophy, that's great. But now you've kind of tapped out. you've kind of like, you know, you've given it to all those students and now you have a request for six kids and you really can't have a philosophy class with six students. So, we kind of recycle it. So, it's it's hard to say like every year it'll it will change. Um I guess but so my question is related. Do you ever have so many you have to run multiple sections because you have such popular signups

024and I would say that year to year it changes but since I know that you're hopefully looking at that you are looking at these offerings every year are you thinking about like okay for the past five years we just continue to see these programs really um having a robust response um you know for me with the declining enrollment and understanding that I know we can't do everything. I want to do some things really, really well and I want those things to be the things that resonate with the student body. So, do you do any like year-over-year kind of comparisons and things like that? And the other more easy to answer question is will you run multiple sections if you get enough for two to fill two classrooms of a of a certain elective? >> Yeah,

025absolutely. Absolutely. I mean a lot a lot depends on you know teacher availability as well. You know um this district has been fortunate in the or at the high schools been fortunate in the past that if we have if we have a need for additional sections the board of ed has been generous and allowed us to have six teaching assignments teachers. Uh we also for students who haven't been able to get into some of the electives that they want. our teachers have been very um very willing to do independent studies. Um you know go in in terms of like popular electives like um like uh film history you know we've been able to expand that course because it's it has been very very popular. So those kids want to go further. So we alternate cinema

026studies with the film history. So it's kind of like an extension of that. U but again you know it's it's always it's always student driven and the councils just continuously provide us with you know what's what's happening in these meetings that you're having with students and will those students have the opportunity to take that course before they graduate. Okay. Okay, I went a little over my time, but that's not really my I'm kidding. So, one of the things I'm really proud of of all the extracurricular activities that we offer and one of our highly successful clubs is our science team. So, I've asked the advisor, Mr. Brian Keenan, to kind of talk a little bit and he even got some students to show off some of the project that they've that they've done. Where's Mr.

027Keenan? Did he leave? Hi everyone. Um before I get started, I'd just like to thank all the members of the board uh for your you know hours and hours and hours of work uh to for the uh students in this community uh being a member of the community. I really appreciate that. Um, and also I'd like to thank um, Lance Edelman and Victoria for all of their generous support throughout let's see uh, perhaps the last 14 years of running this program. But just a little bit about the program, our gentlemen over here are setting up a helicopter which wins the longer it's in the air. Um and I did put there u Monica just started to pass around some of the rules we have. So we compete in 23 events. Um build events uh this

028year were uh boom lever. Uh we had to build a hovercraft. We have the helicopter over there, a bungee drop, an electric vehicle. These are all forums where we can do science, you know, just build something, alter one variable at a time and see what happens, right? The the you know, the crown jewel of science, excuse me, the what we call the controlled experiment. Um and um then there's so these are the build events and I'm going to have uh Connor Gearoff talk about that in a moment. Then we have uh uh dual events where kids will um take a test in chemistry but also complete a chemistry lab. Uh we had material science this year where there's a test on um well the science of materials. Okay. And um there's a lab with that

029as well. There was a circuit lab with the test uh machine exam uh with a machine build um and then just water quality where kids had to build hydrometers and so on. And then a forensics event um and then there were straight study events uh which u Jenny our board representative did very well in. And um after uh these gentlemen who were all medalists this past Saturday at John J and we are going up against some behemoths. I mean they have I think 480 kids in their graduating class. Okay. And for these kids to come close and actually beat them in the events is quite an accomplishment. Uh so it but we're not here to globe. I will though if if you if you want. Uh so um are are we ready to release that

030gentlemen? >> You know we should go further away maybe just a little further away from people and Connor I'll have you come up well it it it'll probably hit the ceiling and stay. It's supposed to uh Oh. Oh, no. >> Nice catch, Jay. Okay. And um Yeah, if I could interject, they have to build a scaffold for the wings. get it at a certain pitch, certain angle. Um, and there's again there's lots of variables the the uh, you know, the uh, length of the rubber band, the weight of the rubber band, how many wines and so on. But, uh, thank you guys. Thank you so much. I'd like to introduce Connor Gearoff who, um, is one of our main builders and has been for four years. He's going to be missed. check. Oh. Um, so

031I built this is similar to um, so this is the boom lever. It's similar to what we were making. And our goal, we have a we put this against a hook and the bottom of this against the wall. And our goal is to hold a weight from here and hold the most weight possible while making it as light as possible. Um, we made two earlier this year. They both broke in the competition, but your goal is to make it hold as much as possible and generally they break because you're holding like up to 33 pounds. Um, so yeah. Um, we went we're pretty close to meddling in our practice competition and yeah. >> Yeah. >> But that's okay. And then so this is the hovercraft as you can see. You guys, I imagine know what

032a hovercraft is, but um we this was a ma one that was made la earlier, but we've made some modifications. So, we can change the speed of this back fan. And we want it to go, I think, 0.85 m in a specified time somewhere between six and 26 seconds. Um, and the closer you are to that, you get a higher score. Um, and I can actually show you guys it working as long as it works on the rug. It's we we're usually on a different material. >> That is a new variable. So, Jake, will you go over and catch this if it goes? Hey, Connor, put it on the concrete. There we go. Thank you very much, Connor. And then, um, we have all these study events and, you know, they're all, uh, college level

033goes above and beyond the high school curriculum. Um, and uh, Jenny, I was wondering if you would like to talk about uh, a few of your events and say um, anything you'd like to about it. >> You mean to gloat? >> Well, my job aren't nearly as shallow, but I did four study events, which is dynamic planet, which was oceanography this year. designer genes which is like genetic modification, mandelian genetics, um disease detectives which which is epidemiology and anatomy and physiology which you usually have to study three body systems and this year it was the nervous system, the nervous system, the hormone system and the sensory system. So, it was a really difficult year. And so, I competed um in all four events, all four study events. And in the most recent competition, I took

034home ninth in dynamic planet, which is one away from getting a medal, which isn't bad considering I was alone. Um, Foster Kenokei and I took home sixth in anatomy and physiology. Ruby Gahagen and I took home fourth in Dynamic Planet. And then somehow, Foster Kenokei and I took home first in disease detectives. And so study events, even though they're not as flashy, they do still show a lot of like intellect and um just like a lot of perseverance and dedication on the science of members part because it when I say it's a lot of work, it is a lot of work to know everything. And at most like for den for dynamic planet, you're allowed to have an entire binder. At minimum, you're allowed to have a cheat sheet. So like for example disease detectives

035you're given a scenario and you have to figure out certain variables certain mathematics and then like why this disease spread why it could have been prevented what sort of vector it was etc and you're only allowed to have one cheat sheet back to form that's it and you just have to know everything else same thing for anatomy and fits you just have to know everything else and so like there are many study events there's entomology there's astronomy but I specifically chose I did because I plan on going to med school and I did find the information to be like extremely critical and fascinating even outside of just the event purely like right now in AP biology everything is lining up perfectly with what we did for design designer jeans. So it's like it's not just

036studying for no rhyme or reason it's fun it's dedication it's also just interesting but it also can line up to future college plans and stuff like that. Thank you very much, Jenny. And when she said designer jeans, we weren't talking about Calvin Klein or anything like that. Uh um so um hey, before we move on, I just want to one final thank you uh to the members of the board, Lance and Victoria, for all your uh hard work and dedication to our community. Okay, >> thank you so much. Thank you all so much. Very, very impressive. We want to see kids at every board meeting from now on. That's it. You just raised the bar. All right, we're moving on to item 3.01. And uh with this um uh presentation from our technology director, John

037Rhymer, uh we will be opening the public hearing on the smart bond investment plan. Thank you. And uh we're we're going to start off our smart bond investment plan. This is phase two. So we we had a phase one that was in 2019. And I'm going to just let everybody on the board know that there's one page missing out of your packet and it's just what we did in 2019 for phase one. So just so everybody knows what smart bond was to in 2014 the New York uh state voters approved bonds for school districts to enhance highspeed tech inter uh high speeded connectivity security classroom technology and uh infrastructure that process was at that time was a bear. You had to submit some uh information to New York State. they would come back and they

038would tell you, okay, this is approved, this is not approved. And that whole process took us pretty much five years to actually get approved from when it started to when we actually did something. So, our current allocate or our original allocation was $870,000. In phase one, you'll see that we actually spent $428,000 on enhancing the security of all the buildings. So again, we have $441,000 which we are looking to use for phase two. What we did in phase one was security. So we replaced all the camera systems in every building. Originally in this building, we only this was the only building that actually physically had cameras, but we enhanced that and we made it so that every building had some and we could see all the blind spots. We also enhanced our door security, so

039there was no locks or electronic locks or swipes at all the doors, so you would physically have to actually key in to get into the building. When we did our project, we enhanced that that we took every key, we made it to the doors and we allowed access based off of what credentials you had. We also did uh so we added 100 cameras in that in that part. We increased the consistency across the building. So now every principal was able to see all the camera systems in their building and they could see what was going on. We also enhance that to the SRO's when they need act when they need connectivity they can look in and see what's going on through all the buildings. That also increased our network infrastructure at that time. So we

040had to when we we did the cameras we they were all IP cameras. So we had to make sure that all of our cameras had the power over Ethernet on the switch side. So we enhanced that stuff. So phase two, what we're looking to do now, and this is because a lot of our devices that are in the classrooms right now are actually physically going their end of life. So we're looking to enhance our displays that are in the in the uh classroom. Right now they're all smartboards and the sensitivity that was on it 5 years ago or 10 years ago is not as good as it is now. So, we're looking to enhance those with bigger screens and make it a consistent classroom across the district. So, every classroom will have a display, a

041teacher device. If there's a co-teer in that uh room, the co- teacher will have a device, too. We're also looking to increase Chromebooks, Chromebook chargers, and the last part of that is going to be electronic locks for some of the classrooms. So, we're trying to phase in where we can use our door access system to control who gets into what classroom and how that is going to be used. So, again, phase two, all the equipment is going to be interactive displays, the educators laptops, the Chromebooks, the charging stations, classroom locks. In this budget, we're looking to spend about $439,000 of our $441,000 that were allocated. You will see that the Chromebooks I put in there, that's to be determined because I may be able to get that out of my annual budget instead of having

042to use our smart bonds money for that. What will increase is there's going to be consistency across any classroom. So if a teacher actually physically moves from classroom to classroom, they can't say that they don't have the same equipment. They'll have the same technology that one classroom has as the other one. And that goes for high school in uh middle school and the or the elementarymentaries. They'll all be the same. Uh Chromebooks are will be one to one. Teachers and staff will now physically not have a Chromebook. There'll be an actual laptop that they can use and that'll provide them more efficiencies of using uh things that are Windowsbased. So, they'll be able to use those too. Classroom locks just in increases our way of getting in and out of the classrooms and not having

043a physical key because if I ask Kyle what what's the worst thing? He's physical keys. We don't get them back. Physical keys we never get back. So, if it's easy for us to just turn off a key fob, it's so much easier. In conclusion, we're going to just align our educational mission, which is for everything to be the same consistency across the board. And it enhances our instructional technology plan that is all about using our technology to further enhance what how kids are learning, how they're seeing things, how they're doing things, making them move around the classroom. and they come up to the display board, they can move move things around. They can write on the on the whiteboard. They can use there could be multiple people at the whiteboard doing it. So, the boards

044we're looking at do have the functionality having two people, four people or using a Chromebook to actually write on the board as it is. Um, so if there's any questions or we can still email the smart schools at antior.k12.ny us or if you guys have any questions feel free to send them out. >> Will you take questions now as well? Sure. Okay, great. Okay, any questions for Mr. Rhyr? First Trusty Jared, then Trusty Kudson. >> Thank you so much. I understand it even more clearly now. It was great. No, that was really, really great. Um, my only question is, can you talk a little bit more about what the teachers have now and what it is that they you mentioned they have Chromebooks, but then they'll get laptops. Just a little more about that. >>

045Sure. So, right now it's a little hodgepodge. So, some of the rooms have smart boards which actually need a projection system to project on the screen. Some have the digital display boards. Most of the high school rooms have digital display boards. The classrooms that are in the elementary are more projection style. So, the you have two devices. So, with the with us doing uh the interactive displays, we're taking out the projector and we're taking out a board that actually is doing the same thing with the laptops. So, the the Chromebooks are getting older and most of the Chromebooks are pretty they're pretty uh not going to say that they're the worst, but they're not as great and beefy as a PC would be. So, some of the things that they're trying to do are very

046sluggish on them. So they they see that and they they say, "Oh, well, I need something different. I need this. I need that." So we're trying to provide that and giving them a better device so that they can do whatever they need to do. Um, yeah, I just wanted to clarify for anybody who's watching at home, um, that, um, the phase one priorities of security cameras and and whatnot, those priorities were sort of determined through public hearings and, in other words, that was a community priority at that time. Is that correct? >> Correct. So, back in 200, I think it was 2019, we actually created a survey that we sent out to every parent and we asked them, "What are your priorities for the school district to use the money for?" And the biggest one

047was security at that time because that was the biggest topic. So, we invested a lot into security and say, "Okay, well, this is our biggest thing. Everybody's looking for it. Why don't we start here and then we'll work our way through the other stuff because we already had some stuff that was working to do do most of that. >> And this is phase two and it seems like the budget is spending just about all the money that's left. So I assume there's no phase three coming. This is the second and final phase of two phases. >> We are trying to get the money out before they say no. >> Okay. And so if anybody is watching tonight and they have comments or you know if they want to engage in this process it's that smart

048schools at ontior.k12.ny us where they should opine. >> You're right. >> Okay. Thank you. So, my understanding is with the um the the new hardware in the classrooms, I'm assuming there's going to be a lot more efficiency, right? Like because I'm remembering being in class and like they got to get the projector here. There's where's the monitor? And then you wait like half an hour and then the monitor comes and somebody else is using it. This is so every classroom is actually equipped with a um a powerful computer that's attached to presentation module that's and and teachers can like I suppose pull from the cloud or wherever you keep your stuff and they don't have to depend on a little laptop to take around all of their work. I I think that I imagine that

049the efficiency and the use of the students time and the teachers time is going to be greatly improved by that priority. I understand why you made it. I think it's a great choice. >> Correct. So, every classroom will have an interactive display board with it actually has a computer in the back of it, but there'll also be a teacher laptop that they could use or the co- teacher laptop. they have a document camera and they usually have a printer or something else in their room. So standardizing everything across the board makes it so that nobody has to say, "Okay, well I need a document camera. Where do I get that from?" It it's already there. It's sitting there waiting for them to use. And the life expectancy on a interactive display board is a lot

050better than what the smartboards were. So you can get 10 to 15 years on a on an interactive display board where a smartboard is usually about five. >> John, could you uh talk a little bit? I'm I've I think we've seen uh those board members who were on the school tour at Woodstock uh may have seen a teacher um showing us a little bit of work, a little bit of student work and teacher work on one of the display boards. And it seemed like um she was able to project um you know something right out of a a workbook or or a textbook and then um then show student work and and students were able to go up and just work on it right there in in the moment. Can you talk to us a

051little bit about how how something like this could work in an elementary classroom? >> Sure. That that's an easy one. So with everything being in the cloud now, anything that they can they have access to. So if it's Google, Microsoft, they can bring on the boards itself, there's apps that automatically launch those and they can go into their drives and figure out what they need, bring it up on a screen and then show it and present it and then write on it physically write on the actual board and say, "Okay, well I want you to look at this." And the pen when they move it, it writes in and it's ink. So it inks it across. And if you have a student that is not understanding that, you can actually send it to them. So

052if that is a document that you want someone else to have, you can just click on a send button and it'll send right to them. So if the teacher is physically in Google Classroom, you can send it to the whole classroom at once and they get the notes for the day. So I'll take a scenario like we have in the high school here. We have math teachers. They're they're writing on their documents all day long. They're physically showing them their students are doing the work. At the end of the day, they go through and they send it out to all the students. So, the students actually have what they did in in class. Even if you have a kid that's not there, they physically can get it because they're they have the actual uh document

053that the teacher was writing on and explaining everything. So even with these uh interactive screens, you could you could also record what you're doing and how you're doing it. So there is functionality. We probably will not turn it on, but you can record someone giving a presentation right on the board, what they're writing and how they're doing it and explaining the whole scenario just like we're doing live streaming. You can do the whole thing. Once that's done again, you can send it out to them. That's fabulous. Thanks. Thanks for that great explanation. Trusty Jared, did you have another question? First you and then Trusty Goodrich. >> I just wanted to commend you on a really good use of, you know, funding from New York State. Like now that I hear you explain, I think it's

054going to allow our tech to like be really solid for the next 10 to 15 years all at once instead of in different spots. I think it's such a great choice. So, thank you for that. >> No, thank you. >> I just want to say I appreciate all your work. I see you're you're very busy. Um, looking forward, I know you don't have a crystal ball here, but you know, we got this thing called artificial intelligence. It's a moving target and there's applications that are going to be specific for schools that are approved for for school use and have you looked at any of those and what kind of hardware requirements they have? >> So, yes, I I've looked at a bunch of different softwares. We've actually started piloting, as we've mentioned a couple times

055during board meetings, school AI. That's our big pilot right now to see exactly if it's going to how it's going to work with students and the teachers and how the teachers are expanding on that. So, we're starting there and then we'll work our way back as we go through and figure out what we need to do, how we can enhance the instruction because that's the bigger piece. >> Any other questions or comments for John? Okay, >> I'm gonna fulfill my usual role of old school kermagin. But um so I just um so a friend of mine um was in a graduate program I think at Princeton and did a fairly a study that was fairly well covered in the media and uh she stud her she and her colleagues studied students who took notes by

056hand and then those who took notes on a keyboard typed into it and they found that the retention level for students was much higher if they actually are doing handwritten notes And the story you told me about the teachers writing all day on the thing and then sending the documents to the students gave me pause because uh I just hope that this I'm just putting this out there that I hope this technology doesn't kill notetaking in our students because I think there's literally the physical there's there's a there's a handbrain connection that if you're actually physically doing these things yourself and taking notes yourself um it's it's been demonstrated that that um increases es your retention. Um uh and I'm not saying that's what's happening in the classrooms, but that's just, you know, when these

057alarm bells go off in my head, I um I'm always worried that um that tech is going to detach us from our physical bodies eventually and and the learning process from the physical process of learning and and it's it does seem also like the the um you know, the portrait of a graduate and the pathways to graduation are much more emphasizing hands-on. So I hope I just hope our um our faculty uh lets these students be running on these boards as well. I'm just put putting that out there. >> Correct. So I just want to clarify it's a reinforcement. So it's not like they're giving they're taking the notes for them and then sending it out to them. They're showing them the instruction and working through it and it just reinforces how they're learning. So

058I didn't get that. I didn't figure out how to do it. So I'll use my son. He he go he's in walk and he doesn't understand all how to do math very well. So he looks at it and then he'll go back through his notes and the reinforcement is when he's looking through it and he he looks at it and he's like, "Okay, well now I understand how this goes with what I'm doing." And just having someone else to reinforce it with him helps him. So I I think they're using so the faculty is actually physically using it as a reinforcement, not as a notetaker for everybody else. Um, I've also seen a bunch of those studies and it made me think of our academic committee and our kind of bullet point about like staying

059a breast of best practices because I think I mean it's my understanding from my two kids that even in elementary almost all their note-taking is on their Chromebook typing which is not necessarily a a bad thing but I think it you know it's interesting when we see some new things coming out about different ways you know so that just made me I think maybe that's something we could explore as a district. I mean, I'll say from a student perspective that especially in math class, but in almost every class by the time you get to high school, you're doing paper notes. Like that's a much more common thing than taking notes on a Chromebook. So, yeah. Um, how did like this come about? Wait, maybe I just missed something. Did you um talk to teachers about

060what they want? Like I just need a little more background, I guess, has happened. So this was the >> so originally so when we did the surveys the first part of it was the biggest push was security but the second biggest driver of that survey was classroom technology and it it was based off of that that we went back and said okay well we'll do it in phases we'll do the first phase for security second phase is classroom uh technology and that's why we we lean back on classroom technology now >> when you say we it's like a committee or like who is doing this besides you. >> It was all the administrative staff and all the parents, teachers who participated in the actual survey. >> Does anybody in the audience have a question? >>

061All right. So, um, how long is this, uh, hearing open or it's is it closing tonight? Okay. All right. But in the meantime, people do have an opportunity to comment. Okay. So if you have um questions or comments about the smart smart bond investment plan phase 2 presentation or anything in it, please do comment on smart schools at antiora.k12.ny us. Thank you so much John. Our next presentation is called what's on the menu and uh it's about the New York State uh food service initiatives and Antior's participation in it and our presenter is our director of food service Christine DS. >> Hi, thank you for letting me take the time to just kind of let you all in on what we've got going on in the kitchen and the district. Um, so like title says,

062we're it's uh focusing on New York local foods. So what's on the menu from New York? If you see the items up there, milk, grains, fruits and juices, vegetables, meat, meal alternatives, those five categories are actually the components that make up a complete meal, which is a reimburseable meal by the government. The kids have to take three of those components to be a complete meal. So, I just wanted to show that in all the five components, we've got local items. So, we're starting with our milk with the Hudson Valley Fresh. Um, it used to be Boyce's Dairy. Uh, they were the only ones that would deliver to us being that we're out here in the woods, which was wonderful. Um, I was very happy about that because it's good, wholesome milk. um no additives or

063um growth hormones or any of that stuff. And they've been doing that for a long time. So now um Hudson Valley Fresh has taken them over. So that's a plus and that's been going on for a while. Um grains and I want to tout mill. When I first started, which is actually 20 years ago this month, um, as director, I had approached Bread Alone asking about trying to get local breads or organic breads into our district and it just wasn't there. So, Milestone Mill has kind of made it happen. They grow the grains here in the Hudson Valley. Um they mill them, they take it to bread alone, they bake them, and we have sliced bread that we're using for the kids. They are also making the corn tortillas, which is um the picture off

064to the left, which is our um nacho boat. The sandwich is in the middle. And then off to the right, you'll see a French toast bake, which is made with kind of like the ends of the bread, so we're not wasting anything. on the nacho boat. I want to show the cowboy caviar, which is with the corn and the beans. That is also local um corn, black beans, um the onions in there. We're trying to get as much local items as possible. And we'll go back over to the right with the French toast bake, apple cider, local potatoes, which were lovingly cut by the food service staff and roasted off. That meal is a labor of love. The kids will only see it twice a year because it is very very very labor intensive. But

065again, labor of love and we do it for our kids. More grains. Again, the tortillas is pita chips. That's a new local item. And to the right is um wheat berries. I had gone to a farmtoschool summit last year, tried the wheat berries. I'm like, how can we get these in here? They are local. We get them through Hudson Harvest in Kingston. And that was one of the um items we made. It was a It had um sundried um not sundried, sorry, dried fruits and stuff in it. It was very good. Fruits and vegetables. Um you can see what's there. Applesauce, apple juice, grape juice, all New York, the apples, the pears. Anything that we can get local, we bring it in when we can. And that's a picture of our veggie bar at the

066middle school high school. I would love to have it at the elementary level. There's really no room for it, but that's what the kids get an opportunity to eat here or take advantage of every day at the high school. And again, when we can, the items on there are local New York State I um produce. and the cheese sticks on there. That's actually local. Also, New York State meat meat alternatives, the hamburger, the yogurt, um the ground beef that was in the nacho boat, that's local. Again, trying as best as we can to get as many local items and trying to spread the wealth to who we can get it from. Um the New York chips, we can't sell those, but we can give them away. New York. There's a really good chip if you

067like chips, by the way. So, what's to come? I went on a field trip with some other directors up to Hudson to Steel Head Hudson Valley Fisheries. This is an amazing amazing place. It's 98% self sustain like sustainability, very little waste. They are wanting to get their item into the dish into schools. They're willing to give us a deal on it. I wanted to wait until I knew we weren't going to have hopefully no snow days. I'm looking at April. So, uh, fishing season that we're going to have fresh steel head trout on the menu. And before then, I am going to try to feel it out with the kids to see how they would like it prepared. got a couple of ideas and we're going to see what they say because I want to

068I want it to succeed. So the etc is um at the end of the month there's an the second farm-to-school summit. This time it's up in Saratoga. I'm on one of the panels discussion about bringing New York items into districts and how to make it happen and the steps. There's a few other directors that are on this panel. I'm so excited about it. It was an amazing event last year. So, I'm excited about being a part of um presenting at this one. And I went through that fast. But we feed our other schools feed. We fuel our students. I want to give them the best healthiest less processed foods that we can when we can. So, any questions? Thank you. >> Any questions or comments? Trusty Jared, >> you are just a crown in you

069are just like the queen and food all the people in food services and the more I think we come to understand that it totally impacts children's ability to learn the difference between having real whole food and ultrarocessed food. I knew it was amazing, but I'm it's even more amazing than I ever dreamed. And if there's any support you ever need, please don't hesitate to let us know cuz I know I mean this is foundational to our kids success and we're so lucky to have you. >> Thank you. Thank you. And you guys do support me greatly, so I appreciate it. >> Any anybody else? >> Yes. >> Yeah. I just wanted to say I appreciate it when you're saying you use the heels of the bread to make French toast to avoid waste because actually

070food waste is actually kind of a serious topic in in society as a whole. It's a it's a huge driver of climate change of of carbon footprint >> and I'm wondering are you measuring how we're doing with um waste? I'm wondering and also like if you have excess at the end of the day is that the end of the line for that food does it just get thrown away or is there is there any path? I know some some there are programs where food can have a further destination but are we doing anything like that? >> I haven't done any measurement for waste. I know it's there especially one because the kids have to take the items to make a complete meal and the one item that they need to take is either a fruit

071or a vegetable. A lot of times kids just want pizza. So they take the juice, they take the fruit. But what we recently did after I was talking to the sixth graders moved the um a table so it's right outside the registers. It's in a clean spot. They can put it down and a lot of times the kids will come along and grab the items. So at least it's not going directly into the garbage. As far as what's in the kitchen, if the item doesn't leave, like the ends of the bread, we can repurpose it. Um, the soup on the menu today, which was made inhouse, was actually franks and beans. It was leftovers from the other day made into a soup, which was actually quite popular. Another one is um Italian wedding soup. So,

072after we have meatballs, we So, we're repurposing items that haven't gone out. My staff is amazing about not overproducing because if one of the things about sending food from here to somewhere else is the worry that we're overproducing because we want it to go there. So, we're trying to keep it as little as possible. Yes. And if we can repurpose it, we do. >> Great answer. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I can't help it. I always have to compliment um Miss DS because our school lunch is really incredible. It is every bit as good as whatever I make at home. And I think much like Trusty Jared said, you know, giving our children whole foods to eat helps them learn better. But I think it also helps to reinforce in their pallet. It is

073a lifelong pallet builder because if they get whole food at home and whole food here, you will eat what you're used to eating and what you're accustomed to eating. And the things that she puts out, I mean, the wheat berry salad with butternut squash was incredible. These are things that um kids typically don't get at school. So I think for our students who eat great at home that continues here at school. It's not it's not a shift. So it is a reinforcement of them learning and loving good whole food. >> Thank you so much, Chrissy. I just want to say that it it it just always warms my heart when I'm at in central for a meeting and it ends around lunchtime and everybody's like, "All right, who's going upstairs to get lunch? They're having,

074you know, XYZ today and it's so delicious." So, >> thank you. >> People really are excited. >> Thank you. And I'll try to bring samples next time. I just Sorry. Didn't happen this time. But anyway, thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you so much. And onto item 5.01, our student representative, uh, Jenny Albbright, will give her report to the board. And Jenny, please feel free to chime in about any of these amazing, uh, presentations we've heard about tonight. I mean, the food here is pretty good. I'll say that. Um, so pretty much what's going in the board um within the school. We did have science olympiad last weekend, but that was already very highly touched upon. Um, this next coming week, I'm pretty sure, is community night because boys uh boys basketball

075has been doing absolutely amazing. They're killing it. Recently, they beat Mount Academy, which is like students, whether they be sports kids, science olympiad kids, when you hear the mount like it's like you know you're going up against tough competition. So, beating them out by four points is a lot. Um, additionally, winter track is having a great season and office skiing is also having a great season. Um, Spanish club recently just went on a trip to the city. I'm pretty sure they went to MoMA or the Met, one of the two. And then also Art Club soon has their trip to MoMA coming up. Um uh it's the beginning of the winter can drive put on by NHS which is just we take in a bunch of um and again this is co-chared by different people

076in NHS uh different high schoolers and um pretty much NHS takes in um a bunch of canned food that like preserved stuff and then donates it to food banks in such a harsh season, you know. And additionally, sixth grade has been having club sports after school. That's pretty much it. Thank you, Jenny. All right. On to item 6.01. Uh, may I have a motion to enter into executive session to consult with our legal counsel? Trusty Smith. Second, Trusty Jared. Any questions or comments? All right. Um, if passed, we will uh be back in about 45 minutes. So, all in favor? That's unanimous. Thank you. All right. May I have a motion to exit exe executive session and return to public session? Trusty Jared second. Trusty Smith. Any questions or comment? All in favor? That's unanimous.

077Thank you. Uh on to item 7.01. Our assistant superintendent for business, Monica, will present the rollover budget. Good evening. That's loud. Um so here we are, February 12th. Um as you know, the last uh board meeting I kind of did a little presentation on the process of the budget. So tonight I will show you what we have got so far for a rollover budget. So I wanted to start with the single polling location. I know it's been a discussion as to um how we should do our our voting. Uh we we realized thank you superintendent McLaren that um we should have actually been a single polling location for a few years now. Back in 2019, we eliminated uh election districts when we stopped using West Hurley Firehouse and we allowed anybody to vote anywhere. But

078by doing that, the attorneys said at that point we should have had a single polling location because there was no we did not have um election districts. So that really kind of um kind of sealed the deal for us. But we also found when we had the voting in December that that the centralized voting with the extended hours really did provide very efficient, accessible and a well-managed voting experience for for everyone in the district and complied obviously with our legal obligations. Um early voting would will obviously continue, but it'll also allow us to to keep the elementary students in the buildings instead of releasing them half day. so that we we'd have no need for an early dismissal moving forward. So, as far as what we need to do, we'll have to update the budget

079calendar and the district calendar um and then obviously communicate this change with the public um putting it all in the presentations, putting it in our notices and our newsletters. We will also need to amend board policy 1611, which I believe the policy committee is already doing. And then um the board of ed would also need to um pass a uh resolution. So that is what we're looking at moving forward for the polling location. Uh is yes clerk. >> So does the board want to have a discussion on this on which way we want to go? >> So our lawyers basically said there is no discussion. We should have been a single polling location in May of 2019. So what if the board has a discussion and they want to keep multiple voting locations? >> Then

080we need to talk to the attorneys because according to the attorneys we can't. >> Okay. So we we would have to put that on the agenda for for discussion. You mean um I I don't know what that discussion would lead us to if our attorneys are telling us that we've been doing it wrong for the past several years and that we should have had a single voting location. Um it I guess it would be something that we would discuss with the attorneys in executive session. Okay. So, I mean, little history. I mean, West when West Hurley got closed, we still voted there for a number of years. >> We voted at the firehouse. >> No, no, in >> Oh, at the school and then the firehouse. >> Yeah. And in the school. And for me

081personally, because my kids went there, I liked going in into the building and seeing >> But that was when you had voting when you had a voting district. So, like when you vote in the in your November election, >> you're told where your voting where your voting district is. >> With the school, you're not getting that. With the school, you can vote. We have it. So, you can vote anywhere, >> which unfortunately that's what leads to fraud. And that's why the attorney said you're supposed to have a single polling location. >> So, I'm just saying I I really did like going in into the old building, you know, and you know, our number one priority here as a school board. our most important task is to um pass the budget. That's it's critical and I

082don't know if it would be easier to pass a budget with uh multiple voting locations or a single. I don't know. But it's you know I I could go either way on that. But I think maybe the board wants to consider discussing that. I will say we had a lot of people thanking us for the extended hours and that was huge and we had a lot of people that came in like we it was spread out very evenly and if you look at the age of our voters a majority of our voters were over the age of 60. >> Yeah. I I mean, we could discuss this. I mean, I I could see where um if we had to close the elementary schools early to to have voting at both Woodstock and Bennett, um that

083maybe more more parents would be voting, you know, and parents usually do pass the budget. So that's one of my thoughts there. Um, you know, I I don't know if we want to have this discussion or not. So that's um I guess my question first question would be who was on the conversation with the attorney? >> Victoria and I. >> Yeah. Do you think the attorney um I mean like how do you feel how strongly do you feel that the attorney was very clear that this isn't really an option or is it something that there's value in the board having an executive session with the attorney to discuss it? >> Um in the the way that we are now it's not an option. I don't know if it's possible to go back to having electric

084election districts. Um, that's something that we can certainly ask the attorney. I don't know if that's our attorney or if it's the board of elections. >> Yeah, I'm not sure either. >> We'd have to ask that. So, I think those are the two paths. Either stay the way we are now or see about going back. I don't know if we have enough time before this vote to shift um to going back to having election districts. We can certainly ask the question But in the way that we are structured now, we should have been a single location. Okay. Um why don't we bring this back up again um near the end of the meeting under re request for information and we can request that information from the attorneys and from the board of elections if need

085be. And then uh if it feels like something that we can have a discussion about, if there's any, you know, any any reason for us to discuss it or if it's just an absolute no. Okay. All right. Okay. So I have done the initial tax levy limit calculation and as you can see our tax levy uh allowable tax levy would be at approximately 50,626,535 or a 2.48% increase over the current year. Um some some things to note if you look at the taxbased growth factor that has actually declined for our district. So um if you remember last year we had a tax levy limit of almost three over 3% because of that high taxbased growth factor. Um what that means is the actual brickandmortar growth in our district while is still increasing is not increasing

086as much as it had in prior years. Um other than that we're still at a 2% um we have the small pilots. Our exemptions are roughly the same. So that's really the biggest change is that tax paxbased growth factor. Um initial projected revenues. So that tax levy um is in there at the uh tax levy limit um of that 50 million626. State aid is we've projected based on the executive budget going up approximately 1.4%. Um miscellaneous a little bit. So, our estimated revenues at this point are about um 62,444 um or about 2.2% increase. So, as far as the state aid, just as a reminder um because it's not always an easy thing to um explain, when we get our our executive budget for 2627, it is based on 2526 budgeted expenses. So we're still

087in the middle of 2526. So when we get to actual 2627 state aid, it's based on the actual 2526 expenses. So that's why generally we don't find out what we're actually getting in state aid until about December. Um generally our actual expenses are less than our budgeted expenses. So in a lot of the um expense driven aids, it's not as high as what the state says it's going to be. Um for foundation aid we are receiving the minimum 1%. Last year it was 2% was a minimum. This year it's 1%. There's hope that um the the um go no the legislative budget thank you will give us more. So um they have in the past. We have um our foundation aid is still calculated as actually being $669,500 which means we are overfunded and in

088a home hold harmless position of 7.38 million. And now for the first time um I put a link on there. I know I had to. So if you want to see that link and it tells you you have I don't know why it wouldn't let you on. So but I can just let you in. It's um it links you to the budget. And what I wanted to note was it actually has a box in there that says this is how much you're overfunded. They've never done that before. So that's got me a little worried. Um and for our expense driven aids, these don't generally change. Building aid 31%. Transportation aid we get the minimum at 6.5%. Bosey's aid, we get the minimum of 36%. The nice thing about Boseies though, they are raising the uh

089amount of aid you get on salaries. It's going from 30,000 to 60,000 over three years. So, I'm guessing it's going up 10,000 a year. Um, and then for our excess cost aid, uh, public, we're getting the minimum of 25% and private is actually going down from 65% to 50%. And what what is hard for people to understand is that we're not getting 25% of everything we spend. we're getting 25% of those dollars that we spend over our basic contribution of 49,000. So if we spend 50,000, we're only getting aid on 700 and some odd dollars. Um so we do not get a lot of that. >> And just to clarify for the public that that's for students who need to go out of district special programs, >> correct? The public are our Bose students or

090we have a couple maybe in Red Hook or Rondout and then private would be our private schools. So our initial projected expenses we're looking at an increase in general support of uh almost 20 almost 29% operation and maintenance 13% instruction is the highest dollar amount of 1.3 million which um equates to about 2%. transportation, we're able to keep relatively steady. Um, and employee benefits, um, over a million, 5%. Um, debt service will be going down because we no longer will have debt on the, uh, the weightlifting room equipment. And then inner fund transfers, we're looking to keep the same. So, all told, um, initial projected expenses are $67,119,800, which is a $3.5 million increase and a 5.5% increase. So, kind of as a summary, where do the majority of the expenses fall? As I've always

091said, salary and benefits make up the largest piece of our budget. Um, and it's kind of scary that benefits is almost becoming as high of a percentage as salaries. Um but uh the salary does not even include 688,000 that we pay out of grants. So that's not even in the general fund budget. We keep those separate in the federal budget. So if we lose that money, we got to put that back. Um it is obviously salaries are based on our contracts. We have instructional administrative staff of about 170, non-instructional staff of about 114, and then of course we have additional salaries for substitutes, coaches, and club adviserss. Benefits are also based on our contracts. We currently have 239 active employees on health insurance, but we have 347 retirees on health insurance. And every time somebody

092retires, we're adding to the retiree. If we're lucky, we're not adding to the activives, but we're We're adding a lot to the retirees and then we also reimburse our retirees for their Medicare Part B costs. The other obviously is everything else. So what the budget drivers are um so our payroll increases are about $750,000. Um our Bosey's budget is a million dollars. So, the largest piece is that $574,000 capital payment. It is the final payment. Um, but their increases across the board for all their services average is 6.8%. So, while you might say, okay, our budget, you know, oh my gosh, it's our budget's going up 5%. Boseies has it easy. All they have to do is say, this is what you're paying. We don't have a choice. Um, so listen, it's it's it's definitely

093an interesting year. um because they they're in the same uh health insurance consortium that we're in. So when I say that health insurance is going up 16%. Boseies has to build all of those health insurance costs in their coasters. So that's why their services are going up by that much too. So we're looking at about 1.2 million increase in health insurance. We got a little reprieve with the teacher retirement system going from 9.5 to 8.4. That is obviously our largest retirement expense um because our teachers salaries are so much higher than our our um non-teer salaries. So I I was able to take a little bit of reduction to help offset the health insurance increase. The ERS is going increasing a little from 15.2 to 17.6, six, but their the way they do their their

094calculations is a little different because it's phased in based on salaries. So, every year I budget and every year somehow I budget more than we need because I think we have so many tier so we have so many more tier six employees and they're giving you an average. So, you know, I think I think we're okay. Um, I've been doing the the numbers and I feel like we're okay, but I'm going to keep a closer eye on that. Um, buildings and grounds has seen an increase as you noticed from that chart. Uh, safety and security is one of the larger increases because of staffing now for that middle school high school security vestibule. And then utilities, mostly electric. Electric. And believe it or not, our refuge removal went up by like 40%. Don't know why

095garbage all of a sudden got so expensive. And that gets bid out by Boseies. So, um, we're also still looking at some, uh, special ed placements as we're going through cse. And just as a reminder, um, those projected savings that we said we were going to see, um, we are not going to see until on consolidates, and that's still a couple years off. So, so we're looking at an initial projected difference between our revenues are, and expenditures of $4.675 million. So this year we've used $2.5 million of appropriate fund balance. Obviously my goal is going to be to get that that difference as small as a number as I can. Um you can see historically we've used as much as 3.27 million of appropriate fund balance. Um, you know, it's it's it's tough because if

096you start using a if you start using your fund balance, then you're then the following year you're really looking at making some drastic adjustments. So, we we don't want to get there. Um, again, we're still waiting for some numbers. The hope is is that um insurance will come down a little bit. They might use fund balance. The DHICK um consortium has money as well, so that they can use to offset some of the increases. Um, I'm looking to see if maybe we can pay our debt early for Boseies and that would help us. Um, the other big driver I forgot to mention was um, uh, Ry wants to buy a bus. A regular bus is now a $189,000 for a regular large bus. Just be grateful we're not buying electric ones because the ones in

097Maine aren't working right now. I've got a I got a notice about that. But um, so there any questions? I know we talked about the retirement. Oh, sorry. >> Okay. Sorry. Uh, I know we talked about the retirement and how expensive their insurance is. Is it kind of at a peak because we're paying for the retirement of when Antiora had the most teachers? >> Yes. Absolutely. That could go down time. So what's going to happen is as yeah as retirees pass away but as we start looking to not replace teachers because we don't need to for because we're consolidating we're going to end up having larger retiree costs and less active employee costs. So it will eventually but remember some of these teachers stay on retirey health insurance for well over 30 years. Eventually. Eventually.

098No, you're absolutely right. Eventually. Yeah. >> So, just to summarize here, so I was looking at the initial projected revenues, the tax levy increase is projected 2.48. >> Yes. >> All right. So, that's what the taxpayers are probably more concerned with. >> But remember, that's the tax levy, >> right? The tax rate depends on what happens with equalizations and if a town does a reassessment. >> I I I understand. >> Yeah. >> But the um but your expenses are going up >> by a lot more. >> 5.5. >> Well, again, this is the initial. You know, it's usually we usually kind of we're able to tweak the numbers as we go farther. Like I said, right now we have all retirees being replaced. We haven't looked at whether or not we need to replace them

099all yet. You know, the hope is there might be one or two that we don't and that'll save money. Um, and again, they're still looking at they haven't released the the actual health insurance rates. They they told us to budget 16%. Um, but again, you know, we're one of the few districts that could actually absorb that. There are a lot of school districts that can't even remotely absorb that kind of increase. So, they have to do something. Thank you. >> Yeah, I was just curious. Um, and I don't know if you know the answer to this, but you know, most people when they think about what they expect their expenses to go up year-toear, they think just about inflation, the published inflation rate, CPI. Um, and it seems like some of our categories are going

100up way faster than CPI. Um, does our does our overall expense picture tend to track with CPI or we do we have categories that aren't included in CPI that do you understand what I'm asking? Yes, I do say so really health insurance is a big health insurance never tracks CPI. Well, I can't say never rarely tracks CPI. Um and the other one is obviously our contracts. So we may give like we have actually had um salary increases in the past that were 1.3%. And then but then we've had years that CPI was zero. I mean CPI the other hard part is if you look at the um tax levy you know it says allow a growth factor CPI 2%. CPI is not 2%. But we are only allowed the lesser of CPI or 2%. Yeah.

101So because CPI is higher than 2% we're allowed 2%. But there have been years we've actually had a CPI of zero. >> Okay. But but it it is important for people to understand that if you're struggling with your electric bill, >> yeah, >> is struggling with its electric bill as well. It's all all those regular category things, you know, um if that go up, expense categories that go up for regular people, they go up for us too. >> Correct. And that's really the biggest increase for operation and maintenance is obviously the like I mentioned the safety and security for the new vestibule and the utilities. electric electric has gone up and that's that's really hurt us. Um the general support that is the Bosey's debt is in that one. Um and then you know uh

102employee benefits the health insurance other questions. >> Thank you Monica. >> Okay I will continue to fine-tune and be back in a couple weeks. Okay. >> Great. Thank you. On to item 8.01, acceptance of minutes. The board of education hereby accepts the minutes of the January 13, 2026 and January 23, 2026 meetings. May I have a first? Trusty Goodrich. Second. Trusty Jared. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Oh, I'm sorry. Trusty Goodrich has a question. >> So, I just want to say the special meeting that was on January 23rd, we did approve the agenda items. I just want to let everybody know that. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? All in favor? That's unanimous. Thank you. All right. on to our superintendent, District News. >> Good evening. Um I was uh

103just speaking with um Trusty Kitson before the meeting and realizing that I'm in the habit of looking back in my calendar for about two weeks. So I'm afraid that there are going to be things that I have forgotten to mention, but I trust that others may fill in the gaps during board news. Um just a quick recap, snow days, we have used four days. Uh we have two remaining. So parents, please review the back of the one-page calendar that's on our website just to familiar refamiliarize yourself with the process that we have if we need more emergency closing days than we have built in in the calendar. Um just quickly, we will be minimizing our spring break if we get to that place. We hope not to. Uh speaking of the school calendar, we are

104working on our draft for next year. Currently in the draft calendar, we have students returning on September 8th, which is the day following Labor Day. We plan to hold two superintendent conference days um potentially the Thursday and Friday prior to Labor Day. The calendar for next year currently also has six snow days in uh built in, but that could potentially increase by one day. Uh we're still looking at that, but if not, we will follow the same process as we have uh this year related to emergency weather days. Um, so if we have to utilize more days than are in the calendar, we will again reduce spring break to make up for that lost instructional time. Uh, we hope to bring the calendar to the board in March for review and then approval. Um, assistant

105superintendent Laughen and I were fortunate to join the board on the annual board tour of all of our Boseies programs that are available to our students, including the new facility at I Park. The day was very full as we visited five separate locations. This is a really important opportunity for our board members to see the programs and speak with the administrators and most importantly the students in each program in order to really gain an understanding of what is available to our students in the county. We don't always have onor students in every program but it's really valuable to become familiar with um all the offerings that we have. Our middle school has partnered with the Booster Club and the Golden Notebook and they are in the middle of a book fair. Uh book fairs are

106traditionally an elementary thing in Antou, but uh Dr. Salamini brought that to the middle school. So the book fair was set up for much of today right outside the cafeteria and will be available again tomorrow. And in addition, the sixth grade was treated to a book reading by uh a voice actor, Mr. Ali Wyman. Uh we were lucky enough to be able to watch part of the reading and it was really great. The kids were really engaged. Um and he was having a great time because as he said as a voice actor he doesn't often get a live audience. It's usually just himself in his booth. So it was really really fun. um during the Olter County School Board's meeting with legislators that um Trusty Goodrich and I attended a couple weeks ago. Couple weeks

107ago or last week? Couple weeks ago. Um Michelle Hinchi spoke uh about her efforts to uh change the EV bus mandate. She noted that she's really pushing to ensure that all the challenges of the program are recognized and that additional waiverss may be put in place. And just on a related topic, uh during a meeting of the legislative committee of my professional organization, a colleague whose district has three EV buses noted that all three were completely unusable during the cold days last week. Um they just sat in the parking lot. Um during that same Olter County School Boards meeting, um Michelle Henchi noted that although the governor has put forth a an executive budget with a 1% increase in foundation aid, um the senators will be uh fighting to increase that number, they are advocating

108for 3%. I think probably if they do that, we may end up at two. Uh a 1% increase for us in foundation aid is only a $79,000 increase. So even if that were to be tripled, it would not be a significant aid increase for Antiora. But I think for some of our neighboring districts, that could be very significant. Um, and just lastly, I am pleased to report, as um, people may have noted, the West Hurley property sale has been closed. As of Friday last week, the district is no longer the owner of this property, and I look forward to seeing it transformed into housing hopefully for our district. Thank you. Any questions for superintendent? >> All right. Thank you. On to board district news item 10.01. Any trustees have news to report? Um, we had

109bingo night. It was so fun. I remember last year coincided with like a flu and it wasn't that well attended, but this year everyone was there. Every table was full. It was really fun. And now everyone's getting ready for the talent show in March and tomorrow they're having a Valentine's Day party which usually it's a breakfast but because we have so many people um they're splitting it up and I'm excited. Excellent. Thank you. Any other board district news? It was so wonderful to attend the middle school community day. I got to go share yoga and meditation which is like my other thing and I what I really wanted to say was I've taught a lot of kids in a lot of places and these kids were really truly the most polite, engaged. They they were

110so lovely and a lot of them didn't pick it as their first choice and I've been in that situation and you wouldn't have known it walking into the room. I'm so impressed with all of our kids and our teachers that create that kind of environment. It really is exceptional. They are. >> And just to to make clear, this was a this was an afternoon where many community members came in. Not I also my wife and I did a little uh improv workshop for some kids. They had a lot of fun with that. And the kids, I think, got to choose an area of interest and or apply for an area of interest and they were distributed as equitably as they could be, but um it was really um many people from the community um turned

111out for for our middle schoolers to give them a a little bit of a different Friday afternoon, which is always great, especially in this winter we've been having. >> And I can only report from the student side. Um, and my daughter was so happy to have her crepe making and I forget the other one she did, but she gave it rave reviews. And I think um, yeah, in the winter doldrums, it was a really fun day. And from yeah, what I hear, the student body really enjoyed it. So, thank you, uh, Rick and Jenny and everybody else who gave their time. >> Yeah, I'll just jump in on that. My granddaughter was so excited about it. She actually called me that night to say, "Your it was so great. It was so wonderful." You know,

112she's just super impressed with the booster club and obviously loves to see board members, you know, showing up for things like that. So, yeah, really great. Do we want to talk about uh legislative action day? Yeah. So, uh, yesterday, um, Trusty Jared and Trusty Kudson and I went to Albany and we were able to meet, um, we didn't actually meet with any of our, um, senators or assembly persons. We did meet with their representatives. Um uh it it was I think it was a really interesting uh day and and you know just to just to be clear when we're meeting with their representatives uh we we really I think had the pleasure to meet with four very engaged representatives who were um if not knowledgeable um that were taking copious notes Um sometimes we were

113paired with other um uh neighboring districts. Uh for one of our representatives um Senator Oberacer um he he um his um legislative district it contains a very small portion of Antiora. And so the the other board members that we were paired with in that meeting were from Sullivan County. But for the most part, uh, the issues that we raised or that we were going to raise were raised by all of our co our board trustee colleagues from around the region. Um, I'll let if if you guys want to chime in with some some more specifics. >> Sure. Well, h as has already come up in the discussion, um every school district in the state is very worried about the um the EV bus mandate, but you know, for us, um it's particularly of concern. Be

114it's not because people around here don't support decarbonization. And I think it is a, you know, it is something that a lot of people around here are concerned with, but it's just not physically possible for us at this moment to implement the requirements of that mandate because we do not have the electrical grid to power a fleet. Uh we have to run these buses up and down mountains. So there's range problems. Um anyway, there's a whole host of practical concerns. So um unfortunately at the governmental at the state governmental level this has been allowed to just sort of stay on the books and drift toward its deadlines which are one and seven years away at this point. So, at some point, um, just speaking to any public that's watching that this this may need to,

115um, get on the radar of people beyond just school board trustees and it may require some advocacy to the governor, um, to provide some clarity to boards such as ours who are trying to plan for the future. um because um the in order to do it as it's written now, it would be just incredibly cost prohibitive and probably not um implementable from a practical point of view. So we and we communicated that voseiferously and clearly that we are begging Albany for some clarity on what the next version of this is going to look like because it's pretty widely agreed that this current version cannot last the way it is. Uh it doesn't align with reality. Um and uh other than that um we talked obviously about uh you know foundation aid um is a big

116one for us and um and we also were bringing up artificial intelligence um uh just because it's it is um such a big um transformation that's going on in society uh all of society but will will affect education and Um, you know, we've been, you know, Principal Edelman was talking about how well how great the steps we've taken to address um, cell phones and electronic devices during school. Um, uh, and that's great, but you know, uh, what we what we were saying to the representatives, we sort of are now where we were with electronic devices like eight or 10 years ago. like you know it's sort of at its its its incipience and we're not really sure how it's gonna and it took us eight years to to address that situation and uh what I

117said from my personal point of view to a lot of the representatives but I don't feel like we can wait eight years for to to get our arms around uh AI and education. So we just wanted that to be on their radar as well. Um, but I I will second that the that that uh these they were tended to be chief of staff or legislative aid type people were very interested in what we had to say and were writing everything down. And we did have a passing conversation with Senator Hinchi in the elevator. So, uh, we said hello and uh, but she was between two places rushing off somewhere else. But it was a good day. It was a good day and I felt like our concerns were heard and Sogerties was with us much

118of the day and they had many of the same concerns and we had great uh conversations with them as well um and and camaraderie with them. So um hopefully we can figure out because a lot of in our region a lot of the districts have the same issues um with these mandates and um and and the changes in education. So, uh, but I felt it was a very positive day. I don't know if Trusty Jared wants to add anything, but >> I echo what both of you said and just because I think it's important to note it, the highlight for me was all of the school boards and trustees, regardless of what region they would came from and all of the representatives, staff, regardless of which side of the aisle they sat on, we were

119all totally unified. completely in agreement and focused on what's best for our schools and our kids. And I think that's a amazing thing and I was grateful to get to have that experience. Trusty Goodrich. So, I just want to add um when um we were at the I park uh for the Olster County School Board Association uh after the meeting um I ended up talking with our senator Hinchin and uh had a good fivem minute conversation about EV buses. probably repeated 99% about what Trusty Kitson was just saying here, but I think she's on board that she knows there's an issue there. I said, you know, whatever plan we really come up with, it has to be affordable. I mean, I think our budget is 11% for transportation. And I said, you know, we can't

120double that, right? These buses are coming in, they're very expensive, and we, you know, we can't afford uh to go from 11% of our budget to 22%. I mean just as an example. So you know as she know she knows there's a there's an issue there. I said you know maybe you think about hybrid which we had submitted I think the previous year uh to the legislative process there. See the other thing I want to report on is um number of us went to uh Boseies classes and u for me uh it was great to go to I park and get the tour for the Boseies there because you know I used to work for IBM so it was kind of like going back in time because I hadn't been there since uh it closed

121in 1996 but they did a great job with that facility for for Boseies and it was great to hear the kids. The kids the students there did most of the talking. Um the teachers pretty much turned it over to the students and uh they talked and uh what what they were doing and it was great uh to see that. U that that was awesome. So thank you. >> Any other board district news? Our music department ever making us proud had an outstanding showing at the All County Jazz Festival two weekends ago. I'd say almost half of the All County Middle School Jazz Band was from Antiora. It's a by audition situation and almost every soloist in the middle school jazz band was from Antiora. We had less students in the high school jazz band, but

122they were extraordinary. And it's just it is something to attend these musical performances that feature our district and to just see how strong that band and jazz band program is. It's really something special. I forgot to mention that I attended the um all county coral event which was the week before the jazz band event and it's just to me remarkable that um students from all over Olster County receive music and uh rehearse with their uh music teach with their chorus teachers here in in Antiora and in all the districts and then they meet for the first time as a giant group on the Friday night before the concert and then they meet for several hours uh the day Saturday the day of the concert and and uh and then they perform together and it's spectacular.

123It's really really great and I just you know um our uh the chorus teacher Britney Carol was there. And uh you know that the the actual conductors of these um choruses and also the jazz bands and things like that are invited by uh the the people who make up the association. And yeah, the kids were thrilled with their conductors and you know, it was it was it's really such a great event for the students and really really nice for the families. All right, we'll move on. Um, acknowledging public be heard. We did not have any public be heard uh comments at our last meeting. Do we have any would anyone in the audience like to speak? All right. Do we need to take a break? Okay. So, on to item Item 14, which is discussion

124and possible action. Item 14.01 is the district goals. Um, do we require any further discussion of the district goals or do we approve them in their current state? All right, we don't have to vote on this. This is just consensus. Yes, everybody's nodding. Okay. I think they're amazing. I love them. Um, item 14.02 is discussion of a a potential parent workshop in the near future. And we called it a parent workshop because it could be um another book study or it could be um like article studies or you know or really whatever. that kind of came up uh in our last meeting and I just wondered if anybody has any thoughts about that. Any ideas? >> So this would be in theory in person over a several weeks. Is that the format or not even

125necessarily? >> I think whatever the community can do and would get people there would be the best approach. Like I think um we had a very small but committed nice group at the at the book club, but we also got feedback that it was hard for people to commit to multiple sessions and particular if they had their kid had some regular thing on Monday nights or something, you know. Um so you know what we had talked about was just sort of um creating awareness. This originally came up in the in the um in the context of our of our uh AI goal or our AI um discussion like just creating awareness um that that we thought that our role as a board as with the book club that we did in the fall is just

126sort of um making parents aware of of um issues that are coming up um with things like tech and but it it doesn't necessarily have to be tech but that that was the context in which this originally came up and there's you know a book if you take taking on a Jonathan Heights book was like I don't know 250 pages something like that 300 pages so we broke it up into three sessions but you know it this could be more of a discussion group that it you know it doesn't have to be a whole book it could be if there's a particularly interesting we could find a particularly interesting magazine or newspaper article to discuss um or just really, you know, what came out of the book club for me that was interesting was hearing

127the parents, especially of young children, talking about where they were in in in dealing with these issues um you know, not both at school and and with negotiating with their kids at home. And it was just sort of a nice space to open up about that those topics for those parents um with their fellow parents and with some of the administrators. And so, um, I just think there's a lot going on. Um, and if the board could create some sort of space for the community to sort of try to digest and discuss what's going on, that would be really a service for our community. This is just a thought that I'm having. I'm not, you know. Yes, this is a yes. And um I'm remembering um when I came to the presentation on the technology

128um that was offered to the parents after the children received it and um somebody just asked me in the hallway, did anything ever happen with the anxious generation discussion? I was like, whoa. I wasn't sure what they meant. and they meant like at the board level like did anything happen and that's just been something I know I mentioned it last time but I just want to bring it up again that um when before I was on the board you know the board read the governance code core governance core um and took some time to discuss it and um I just feel like what we keep coming up with is we're in like a whole new territory as a board now I feel Like we've kind of opened a walked through a portal into another place

129where now we have a little more space to think about things like mission and vision and how things are going to change over the next couple years. What is the future? And I think it could be really great to maybe think about merging those two things. You know, like a book that maybe the board could read in installments. It doesn't have to be weekly. That is to do with one of our goals or digging deeper into something that we're working towards. And maybe we could include the community in that, you know, in some way. Maybe we discussed in the board meetings, but then we have a, you know, like a roundt before or after at another time. I'm just wondering how maybe what we're doing can stay can keep moving us forward all together as

130a group, too. I think that's an excellent idea. When we talk about these events, I wonder how we can get, you know, people in the room given that um there is so much going on. But if it starts to be we're however many we are um you know, if it starts to be something that we're in the room and that people are open to join, it's also a good for us to have um a back and forth with the public that we don't normally get to have. I think that uh Trusty Jared, you're on to something. Actually, when you were talking, I was just thinking, you know, I mean, I I found the our book study of the governance core 2.0 to be really valuable. And um you know sometimes uh we would just we

131were really just sharing the part of the chapter that was most meaningful or this quote really resonated with me or whatever. Um, and I'm wondering I I don't know if this is a possibility, but I if we were to uh, you know, read a book as a board and have that discussion in the board meeting um, possibly earlier in the night than, you know, uh, at at the end of the night that maybe uh, people who are reading the book with us could join us in the meeting and share sure what resonated with them, you know, for them. Um, I don't know if we could do it at every board meeting, but um I mean, and you know, like this winter, we've only had one meeting a month, but I don't know. I mean, it's

132to me it it um as soon as you started talking, Trusty Jared, I was like, you know, could could we make that happen? because I feel like, you know, if we choose the right topic, we could really generate conversation. And I don't I know that's probably a really unconventional way to run a board meeting, but hey, it's on here. They are like maybe a a logical next step would be to kind of just all keep our ear to the ground or research even what books are popular in parenting and technology and whatever. Maybe like look at the top 50 non-fiction books and if any of them would work and maybe um propose a few. Could we do that over email? >> Yeah. and just see >> what interests people and what you think would uh

133resonate with the community. >> Sure. I mean, does that I'm like I'm just basing this on my own experience on the board which is only this is my fifth year so we've never done anything like that. Is that something that you've ever heard of a board doing or I don't know like >> I'm kind of imagining that it would be like the hour before the traditional board meeting you could have a workshop. We could we did talk about when the meetings were spaced out a little bit farther that time of year having a work workshop meetings as a board which aren't so hefty in their agenda. And I do think just as a parent with kids with a lot going on like spreading them out actually makes it a little easier you know because one

134can imagine like once a month for sometime it just gives like it's more realistic. So maybe we could look at a time of year when we would maybe want to add a workshop meeting and then we could a discussion meeting and then we could do like the first half could be like our discussion of the book with community and if the community if there's like two people here we all discuss it. If there's nobody here we discuss it. If there's 30 people here we discuss it and then we continue on the topics that we wanted to discuss in our discussion meeting. Doesn't have to be big night. Okay. So, is everybody okay with at least the concept of this and kind of trying to figure it out and how it would work? Um, and taking

135a look at some titles and Yeah. Okay. >> Sounds like a great idea. Um, we have librarians here in the school and we could have them research um what books they can come with with some suggestions. >> We also have the our public librarians who I'm sure have some great ideas. We could tap into that as a resource as well. Okay. Shall we move on? Okay. On to the consent agenda. Um, the board of ed hereby approves items number 15.02 through 15.13. Um, may I have a first? Trusty Jerome second. Trusty Smith. Any questions or comments? Trusty Jared. Thank you, Dr. Salamini, for the bench soccer table, which I hear has transformed middle school lunchtime recess in these freezing temperatures when only some kids can go get their yayas out in the gym. Dr. Salini,

136I have to say, what an outstanding middle school principal. I really feel like he understands this age group and they need to play and he is like about making sure they can play and this this was such a cool move. So yay and thank you to our u mentors all of our community members who are agreeing to be mentors. It's wonderful and I've re reviewed the schedule U and it looks good. >> Any other questions or comments? All right. All in favor? That's unanimous. Thank you. Item 16.01, all uh we will uh the board of education approves all independent contracts and in independent contract retainers which includes items number 16.02 through 16.07. May I'm sorry may have a first trusty Jared second. Trusty Jerome any questions or comments? All in favor? That's unanimous. Thank you.

137Okay. On to item 17.01. Our policies. First reading of policy 3435, culture, climate, and belonging. Item 17.02, first reading of policy 5659, free meal services. 17.03, first reading of policy 5660, charging meals and other food items. Uh 17.04, 4 first reading of policy 5681 school safety plans and teams 17.05 first reading of policy 5720 scheduling and routing 17.06 first reading of policy 5730 transportation of students. So all of these policies are available for uh for us to read and also for our community members to read and um we will have the second reading and voting on those policies at our next board meeting. All right, any questions about that? Trusty Goodrich. So, the meals u policies that are here, I I'm just they're they're very long and uh confusing to me. Um, do we have

138free meals or not? >> Okay. Because it it seems like there's a lot of different categories there. We absolutely have free meals for all, but additional food is charged. So, if you want to buy a cookie or ice cream or something like that or a sec a second lunch, that that's what additional food is. All right, on to committee reports. Any committee reports? >> Jesse Smith. >> Uh, yes. On January 15th, we had a facilities meeting at the Bennett Elementary School. Um, and really was we just kind of went over the uh optimizing Alora. There was the talk of the building condition survey. I think they were going to start on the 19th of January. Um they talked about the elevator ceiling abatement and the middle school uh gym flooring project. Uh the bids are

139out and everything should be on schedule. And they also brought up the um they were drilling for the well back behind the Bennett uh garden and they broke uh one of the the pipes in the process. Um so they're going to resume uh resume that around the spring break time um at no cost or extra cost to the district. So yeah, that was kind of a a big deal, I guess. Um and that was it. We'll have another meeting on March 19th at the middle school high school. >> Thank you. >> Any other committee reports? >> Um I'll do committee uh communications which we we did our usual with the board briefs and just um made sure that that was ready to go. was ready to go. Um I can't think of things in addition

140to that that we we but we basically knocked it out for um both the uh print version and the digital version. >> Right. And then um I'm not sure if everybody saw it, but I'm just going to make a a plug for a quick turnaround on the board corner, which Holly forgot to include in the uh in the communications committee meeting. And so she did send us a draft um which I I sent to the full board today and asking for a quick turnaround on that um because we we just received it a day or two ago. Uh the communications committee received it a day or two ago. Um any other committee reports? Um I just wanted to give a brief update on health and wellness. Uh so we met last week. Um we have

141confirmed that obviously the date for um the meet, greet, and eat. We have uh booster club on board. We have uh Bair Bash on board. Um we're we're moving ahead. So, um yeah, we're very excited. We're going to meet next week again um to kind of go around the cafeteria and the halls to kind of see how we can maybe better place um things and people um for a better flow. So, if anyone's interested, next Wednesday at 2:45. Great. Exciting. All right. Uh any unfinished business? Any new business? Any requests for information? I did write down uh for my for my in my own notes um that we would like to um get more information on the uh decision to go to a single voting location and uh that um we'd like information from the

142attorneys and also if needed from uh the board of elections. Okay. Any other requests for information? All right. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Trusty Goodrich. >> So, um, any updates on the sale of Westerly? >> It was at the end of my superintendent's news. Yes. As of Friday of last week, the sale for West Hurley has closed and we are looking forward to seeing it um hopefully become housing for our district. >> So I'm just curious about um so we have entered sort of the design phase of the capital project with the architects. I'm just wondering um and and they are they are in cons consultation with the faculty and >> so we um we got a schedule from them um yesterday or the day before principles are going to be reaching out to faculty. So

143in this round uh we're going to have representatives from general classroom faculty, library, art. Is that it? I'm missing something. And then there's also going to be um office staff providing input on the new office spaces and the security vestibule. Um they're going to be invited in to meet with um the design team and the architects uh to give input and then there's going to be a second um meeting with them to kind of show them what the architects and the design team have done with their input. Uh that's all going to be happening in the next month. >> Okay. And then it seems like the first phase is almost entirely the the elementary school. >> Yes. Um, uh, is there any piece of that first phase that student input would be appropriate for? Because

144elementary school students obviously going to be limited in what they can contribute, but I'm wondering if there's any pieces of that that creep into the middle high school that we could that was something that we discussed back, you know, that that it would be great to have student input at some point during this before the design is is finalized. I think for the elementary um we can certainly share the designs with them and see how they feel about it. I think they're going to want to have lots of input on the playground. I think that's where they're going to be really um engaged and that was our experience the first time we built playgrounds. They very much enjoyed being part of that process. Can we request that um at the next board meeting um you

145could go into you know what whatever detail you have in terms of the you know first stages of the design in your um update at the board at the board like so people that are not staying up until the end of the meeting can hear what you just said. >> Sure. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Great. Super. I did think of one thing that touches the high school which is we were hoping to have the track happen sooner. Right. Okay. So, yeah, any any progress on that I think would also uh the community would love to hear about. All right. Our next meeting is March 3rd. Uh and it is at Woodstock and those meetings almost always start at 6 PM and we'll see the everyone there hopefully. Uh, may I have a motion

146to adjurnn? Trusty Jerome, second Trustee Mitchell Morell. Any questions or comments? All in favor? That's unanimous. Thanks everybody.