001How you doing? My name is Dr. Pat Sweeney. I'm the interim superintendent of schools. I was dropped out of the sky in no in uh February and I'll be disappearing on June 30th. I kind of liken it to being a grandparent. I get to get the child back and you get to take care of everything afterward. Anyway, um couple of things I'll give you some updates on. Our high school principal is out on a medical leave for a couple of weeks. Um and continuing with what I call the zombie squad. I was able to get another retiree, an old friend of mine. He's superintendent. Retired out of Roxberry, New York. For those of you who know Delaware County, uh Tom O'Brien will be with us in the next few weeks for that. As you know,
002Janate Sha is now the superintendent of Catskill. So, I had to move Josh Prey from his position to take over the tech position. Terry Nash, who many of you know very well, I'm sure, is coming as Regrady's been in working with Tom O'Brien as the principal of student support. So, if we have a round of applause to welcome them, that would be great. So again, and I've said this at other meetings, but since we have a few people here more than we normally do, um I want to thank everybody for the tremendous warm greeting I've gotten throughout my time so far here. Um in fact, I even said to somebody, if I knew how great this place was 15 years ago, maybe I would have applied. But uh so be it. I'm here now, so
003this is the second best time. But thank you for everything. What I'm going to be doing now for the next few minutes is really a teaching to basically um delve onto what my professor taught me at Sedan Hall. You don't know what you don't know. And when you know I was 18 years a classroom teacher before I got my professional lobotomy and became an administrator. And during that time you know honestly I didn't understand budgets really or anything. I just knew what I wanted to know and that was about it. Um, budgets can be kind of a complicated thing in school districts and it varies. I'm sure many of you here have read uh local districts, whether it's Hudson, Soures, or whatever, and the struggles that they're having with it. There's some common threads between
004those districts, our district, and many others who are struggling right now. Later, and after I'm done, Kim Nin, our business official, will be giving you what the really what the numbers are, where we are with the budget. that is up for the board's consideration. The board next week in April 21st will be voting on the budget that'll be presented to the public for vote. Okay? Along with the open seats for boards and everything else, that'll be May 19th. Uh 3rd Tuesday is the common uniform time throughout New York State where school budgets and board of education voting goes on uh throughout the state. Anyway, so my presentation tonight is particularly uh important in understanding what we're all about. It's a strategic ledger from 26 to 27 budget realities, synthesizing staff feedback, navigating constraints, and charting
005the pathway forward. In essence, what I'm going to be doing is show you where you're at right now, give you an insight of how you got here and some of the things that are up for discussion and things that we basically have to do. The advantage of having someone like me here is I've worked in many districts previous to coming to Kusaki Athens. Um, I retired at Hunter Tannersville. I've intermedes, New York State Education Department. I worked there for three years. um with building leadership programs. So, I've been around the state. I've been around many places. So, you can benefit from some of the observations I had. You have many difficult choices in front of you right now. um in terms of dwindling funds, dwindling student population, trying to finance what those things look like,
006uh rehashing old ideas and ideologies that you guys have about your community and school that are honestly very real. The budget problem basically what we have the stress points if you will is that we're stuck with so many fixed fixed costs to the school and we have a shrinking enrollment and we have static cost and very good news coming in meaning over the last three years you know basically there are two major funding sources for schools state aid and property tax. The reality is in the last two to three years state aid has been basically level. The reason is that years ago they used to have save harmless. What that meant was a school district could not get less than what it got the year before. The govern the governor and some of the legislators
007have said we got to change that. We got to have the formula um go along with the population schools. In theory, that sounds great. But the problem is, if you're in a school district that's losing students, that means you're getting less and less money yeartoear toear. They compromised two years ago with 2% of safe harmless increase. This year it's one that for us is equal to about $80,000 that we got as far as a bump. Everything else has to be raised by property tax. as you're all aware of because I'm sure you all play pay property tax they're cap they're basically around two to 3%. If you try to go any further above that many districts vote no on that and it's a struggle. So it means that the revenues that the school are getting
008is basically not moving for the last few years. That becomes a cliff for us because our contracts, our leases, our obligations, you might have noticed gas is kind of expensive. That's all going up and it's going up at a rate much higher than you know basically the 2 to 4% that we get that we realize each year an increase in revenues. When you look at the last few years, the blue are our expenditures and the red are our revenues. And as you can see, we've had some years where our expenditures were lower than our revenues, and that's great. That means we can add to our reserve fund for it. In the years where the blue is exceeding the red, you know, what you're seeing is essentially taking out of the reserves that we have. Okay?
009And the important thing to remember about fund balance and reserves are that they are a onetrick pony. Once they're spent, they can't be used again. What do we have as of late January this year? We have $88,548 in dedicated reserve amounts. What that means is that those monies are set aside for specific uses only and cannot be used willy-nilly by the school district for any operation costs that they have. We do have $3.54 million in unassigned balance. That's the amount amount of money that we use often times when building budgets to make it balanced. Okay. How does fund balance get generated? It's pretty simple. If the monies that we put aside in a budget aren't spent, they become part of our reserve. Our fund balance grows. If they are spent, they're gone. Okay? And that
010is a big thing that, you know, people really need to understand. Once the um fund balance is spent, it doesn't come back. It can't regenerate itself. It is truly what they say is a rainy day fund. Okay? And the problem is that if you use fund balance to balance your budget and you spend that money, you have to at a you know mathematicians say it's about 1.4 to 1.6. You have to find in revenue for the next year. Follow what I'm saying everybody? Everybody good with that? All right. Okay. Root causes. We have dem demographic realities, historic norms. We've benefited from uh pretty small class sizes, especially in the elementary. Our present, you know, we've also had a decline in population. I said, we have a present indicator right now. Our prek right now has
01134 children signed up for it. Why is that important? This time last year you had 54 and 54 usually translated to somewhere about 70 to 75 kids coming into kindergarten. The question we have now that we have to figure out and we really won't know the answer for another few years is what does this prek mean? Is it the canary in the coal mine? Is it does does this indicate that something's different? What we do know is that there were 15 less students. >> Thank you. We had about 15 less students as far as uh born uh that this year for the prek pass than we had the year before. So that seems to make sense if you think about it. So you'd say that having 54 55 we have about 34. That makes sense.
012The real question is how big is that kindergarten class going to be? My guess is with a small pool like that, we're likely to get a bump of instead of the usual 15 to 20, probably 10 12. What that means is that that kindergarten class in all likelihood will have 50 or less students in it. Why is that significant? Because the senior class coming in next year has 98 students presently. So what it means is once they graduate they'll only be replaced by half that amount. And what you'll see when we look at this is that in dealing with going back to the money 1% of a tax levy is $215,000. Right now we would have to raise the tax levy 12% right to cover that two that $2 million shortfall we have right now.
013And that $2 million shortfall is inclusive of the proposed 11 positions to reduce in force. Okay? So meaning if we got a 12% tax levy, we still wouldn't be able to keep the 11 people that were proposing to cut because we wouldn't have enough money. If we were to try to raise enough taxes to save those 11 positions, you're looking at a 15.5% tax levy increase. Nobody's going for that. Okay, that's just not real. All right, but that's the math of it. When we look at the this is, if you're wondering where I get my numbers from, these numbers are from March of this year. Okay, they're about as recent as I could get and they represent the class sizes. And what you'll see here is that next year based on the numbers we have,
014we'll have about 97 kids as a seniors, 90 as juniors, 96 as 10th grade. I'm a trivia buff. Your normal class size for years and years and years at Kaki was 95 to 115 in each grade. And I see many people nodding their heads. Yep. Okay. This is your bubble that you have right now in student population. What you'll notice is that beyond those three, okay, you do have a class of 81, but that's the biggest one until you get down here and they have 81. Everybody else is in the 60s and 70s and who knows what the 34 is going to be. So in over three years, three years hence, by the way, I won't be here in three years hence, you're going to lose about 75 kids in your high school. you're going
015to have 75 less souls in the hallways and all these numbers obviously will shift over. I did an analysis for the meeting before this about demographics and while I didn't know the prek that we have right now, I predicted the class after that to have the kindergarten classes somewhere between 60 and 62. Okay? But that follows if you look at it the trend line that we're talking about. Here's a reality that most people do know, some people don't. 90% of a school budget is fixed. Meaning it's contracts, its leases, its obligations that the school has to operate. And schools are human-driven mostly, right? So that is 90% of our cost. That's the biggest part. So when we have to make a lot of cuts, cutting staples and pencils doesn't add up to sometimes what we
016need. When you look at an employment budgeting formula, I'll translate that. I know it looks like hieroglyphics. Basically, you take the salary of a person, you take the payroll tax, which is about 40% of whatever the salary is. You you put in the idea of u health insurance, dental insurance, the retirement costs that are associated with everybody, and you put in the substitute cost. Generally speaking, most people take somewhere around 10 7 to 10 days off a year. We have to pay a substitute. That doesn't come out of the teacher salary. Comes out of another substitute line. But when we're looking at cost of employees, you factor that in because that's what you're going to pay. The budget dilemma, of course, is what are we doing with our resources that we do have and how
017can we best serve what we're supposed to do, which are the students. Okay, we're an educational institution. We we are charged with giving them the education that they not only deserve but they expect. Okay. So when we have to make these choices, we know it impacts their future. We have to sift through what we have and what was nice to have and really have honest discussions about whether or not we can afford it. There are three major areas that control our decision-making process. They are New York State Education Department mandates and what could be and you'll find that if those of you who have insomnia, please go to New York State Education Department website and read part 100 and part 200 for special ed. Those are the rules of what we have to do. Title
018N compliance and we'll be talking about that in a few minutes. um which was passed in the early 1970s and in part, not in whole, talks about the opportunities of sports for both females and being on par with males. It also talks about sexual harassment and other things, but for tonight's conversation, that's the one we're going to be on. And we have special education law. If a child's identified as a special education student, they meet with the committee of special ed and they produce what we call an IEP. The IEP is a legal document. We don't have a choice. If it says you do X, you've got to do X. You got to do Y, you do Y. Simple as that. In order to get through this process, um, I was a bit shocked when
019I got here. I won't lie to you. And in trying to learn as much as I could about the school, I went to faculty meetings, went to a links meeting, talked about talked about things with a few people, but I also took the other step of putting out a survey to teachers and and non-instructional uh employees about their ideas of what we could do. I could get my wife to certify that I spent eight hours on a Sunday reading each one and I got a answer for everything. And she saved my life. She saved my life because I said, "You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna give these answers, you know, these reactions back." She goes, "Do you want to die?" She I go, "What do you mean?" She goes, "This reads like the
020idea of Hunger Games." And I said, "Well, maybe not." So, I I will react to a lot of what you have there. I want to assure you, I read all 156 responses from people. They weren't 156 responses. There was 156 people who wrote responses. I've read each and every one of them and I actually have answers for all of them but not for public consumption. >> Okay. One of the things that we did early on is that we took talked to your ad. We said we need we're in a big hole here. We're looking at $2.6 million originally. What do you think we can do? and he suggested that perhaps we could look at field hockey because that you know the lack of local competition we could you know look at transportation costs and everything
021else. When you start looking at sports the problem the challenge you have is title n. So then it said okay you know can we survey all the people we have blah blah blah but the easiest thing is to say well find a sport where you have a similar makeup and a similar sort of issue and that is football in terms of price per athlete and everything else. Let me make it clear to you so none of you have a there is no cutting of these two sports in the budget right now. But this was part of the discussion that we had and I would be lying to you if I didn't share that with you. Okay? We looked at that. We looked at our demographics. We look at what we could. These discussions have to
022be had. Okay. There was also a discussion about we have a one administrator that is called the uh director of innovation. One of the things I noticed immediately when we got here is that when I asked to see what sort of curriculum we have and how it's sewn together and everything, there's no such thing. And I believe we can do a lot better by our students and by our teachers. Our teachers are geniuses at curriculum, but they can't do curriculum and teach at the same time without the resources and the support in order to do it. My suggestion is to do something very different. And the mistake I made was that I use the same title as somebody they had before. And unfortunately, that brings up that idea of that's what it'll be like. And
023that is no way in in in the world the intention that I have of what I think that position should be. This kind of explains it as best I can. The older model we had was an old model where it's outwardlooking. It's looking for things. It's throwing things at you, saying that you're going to do X, Y, and Z. And I heard it loud and clear from many instructors that that was a very confusing and daunting task to be given all of these programs and really not have a structure or a way to get them done. So what I need to do, what I think the district needs to do is get what I call a new model which focuses it on inward out. Meaning that we need to coordinate what we're doing right now.
024Find out from the teachers what's working great, what seems to make sense. But at the same time, we have three overt taxing things that SED is saying we have to do. Number one, we have to quantify and refine our K3 reading literacy program, which the school had to put in initially. That has to be done. This year is the K12 mathematics reform that's supposed to happen. K12 that has to be organized, quantified, and put together. Third thing, you may have heard the thing about the portrait of a graduate. That is coming. We have to coordinate what we're doing so that we give our students all the options in the world to get that portrait of a graduate the way it's intended. It gives them offramps, on-ramps to different experiences. We have to make sure that's
025there. absent somebody in charge of running that that whole thing, it won't happen. The idea of the curriculum director is also to talk be with the teachers, find out what supports they need and give them the supports that they need. Not the one that the director thinks they need, the ones that the teachers say they need in order to accomplish X, Y, and Z. So that's the model we're going after. We did hear loud and clear. By the way, that's a picture of me when I was 20. They And we did hear loud and clear on a couple of things that you guys said. Okay. So, the idea of stop funding Quest R3 a program. We have to do it in house. It was already done for us. Quest 3 is ending their program as
026far as June 30th is concerned. So, we won't be paying for Quest R3's egg program. Save the cartwheel therapy. We heard that loud and clear. We are working in ways that we can make sure that keeps going. Pause. PreK came up. We're not going to do that. PreK is fully federally funded. It doesn't come out of our school taxes. Okay? So, we're not touching that. And plus, we would be kind of foolish if we did that. The reason why we would be foolish, every bit of research you can find will tell you earliest interventions that you can do with children sets them on a path of much greater success later on. I don't see any reason why we want to touch that. We do have to deal with the numbers we have right now and
027that may affect things, but we've got it's we're going to keep it under the federal umbrella so it's not hard. Okay. Uh cut high school electives. We have been doing that. That's why part of the our the riffing that we're doing is we have a down number in across the board. Even with 712, we're eliminating some electives that only garner two or three students. We're streamlining it, trying to get it to be a more reasonable thing. College courses will be offered, but not as a smattering of the same thing all the time. They'll be in a two-year cycle so that it makes some sense that everybody can get a hold of it. Okay. Elimmit the OAO badging. That's gone. That's done June 30th. Is that where is that where I say no stinking budgies? No.
028Anyway, so uh a lot of people talked about the 101 Apple iPads for K1. We're going to eliminate that. Um, the K1 classrooms will still have access to some iPads for things they need, but I really don't think it's really that important that we get every single kindergarter through first. Oh, is my warranty up? Oh, okay. So, we're going to get rid of the whole idea of K1 onetoone iPads. They will have some available to them in the classroom in a car if they need to do things, but we're not going to be we're going to be down that l downgrading that list. And also next year we're going to be monitoring second grade to see the efficacy of having it in second grade too. So we are physically looking at that. Um cancelling redundant
029software like spring math lighthouse at Vistas. Um, for the most part we're looking at all those. We'll get we're getting rid of Ed Vistas. We're getting rid of Spring Math. Lighthouse is out. Um, Ed Vistas was kind of interesting because it was a redundancy. So, we'll be saving about $9,000 a year with that using Front Line instead of Ed Vistas. And actually, in the second year, we actually realized the savings of about $12,000 on that. Um, Infinity Campus. Some people said they didn't like it and everything. We're not doing anything with that primarily because my understanding and the understanding that a lot of people have is that they tested it with teachers and that's the one you chose. It's a incredible cost to change it at this time. So, we'll ride that one out for
030a little bit longer. But, it's one that I will tell uh Dr. K, your next superintendent. Maybe you want to look at that moving forward. Okay, out the door. I already said I like blah blah blah blah blah blah operations facilities June box. We may already made severe cuts in June box. One of the things that came up a lot was 1199 shipping costs. Exorbent. Um, also what we did this year was we put an April 1 deadline for POS. And the reason why we did that is because in every district I've ever been in, I've never seen where you're allowed to spend money later than that. Because the reality is here's part of the education law that we have to follow. You need 6 to 8 weeks for bills to be paid, right? You
031buy something, 6 to 8 weeks, you get you have to pay it. If you keep buying things and the bills come after June 30th, you're not spending this year's budget. you're spending the new budget that you already had. So, you're already putting yourself in a hole. It also makes it very difficult for us to figure out where we're going to land at the end of the year. And that's not fair to teachers, you know, or anybody else in the building in terms of trying to figure out what we need. So um June box out basically um outside consultants and PD travel done out anything that isn't Boseies that we have Adidable that we have we're not going to do that so there won't be any trips to other states or anything like that. Uh supplying
032equipment lines across everything have been cut back. Um, you know, obviously with facilities and management, we have to be careful with fuel oil and stuff for obvious reasons, but other stuff that we cut back, we we're going to cut back. Um, one person, I think, at least one person also put in the idea of volunteer for shaft burning and stuff. It's a nice idea, but I don't see it being viable at all, be honest with you. But if you want to volunteer, we'll be happy to take your time and service if you want to give it to us. Um, what else? Okay, the strategic enrollment analysis. The pipeline for the district is shrinking fast and it's forcing a lot of difficult decisions that we have to make. There's just no two ways about it. The
033district that you knew 5 years ago isn't isn't existing much anymore. It's a lot smaller and it's getting smaller. Okay, those are not fake numbers I shared with you before. They are real numbers. Okay. So, focus. Let's talk about EGA. All right. I can talk about it because I'm not from here and you know, you won't kill me, I hope. All right. But a lot of people have talked about, you know, well, we should do something about that, whatever. And I know that the board and everybody tried to do something last year and took a lot of backlash about it. So, the appetite for just running into that wall again is not that high. But we do recognize, I mean, I can tell you right now, you know, four or five years from now, you're
034going to really have to decide, does it make sense to even have people there? Because you'll have room enough here to have people. Okay? Something to consider. The other thing is we will be working on costing out what it costs to keep that building open. I don't have figures for you right now, but generally this is what happens from experiences of other school districts. there is a savings, which is great, but if you don't have a plan for the building, you're losing a lot of the savings because you have to maintain it, right? You have to make sure there's no mold in the building. You have to make sure it's it's heated. You have to make sure that it's clean. All of you own homes or apartments and stuff and you know darn well if
035there's no one living there, it's sort of like it's like its own human thing and it it goes to heck in a in in a in a minute. People have got to cut the grass. There's nothing more depressing than driving around anywhere in New York and seeing old buildings that were obviously schools that no longer are having schools. They just look sad. And being 65, it scares me when I see the cornerstone of the 1960s. I'm like, wait a minute, that's still a new school. How can that be done? So what I am suggesting that the school district does, okay, call it my legacy gift to you, is to start looking at what we can do to get the most educational benefit out of EGA right now. And what I'm what I'm saying right now
036is I want the kindergarten all to be over there with them. You may say why? because we can keep the kindergarten and prek together and concentrate our early early elementary resources together. Plus, it prevents those pe a lot of those prek kids having to transition again after just one short year back here. So, we eliminate that piece of it. At the same time, we have to engage the people in the village in the town of Athens to start looking at the building and seeing what possibilities it could hold for them other than just an elementary school. There's nothing that says we can't share the building. There's nothing that says we can't, you know, perhaps rent it out. I mean, I think it would be great if the town or village needed a place and say,
037"Hey, they're in you're there in your old Athens elementary school now." And a trivia thing I found out, thank you, Bart, was that that building was the original co green building when that was first done. I didn't know that. That that's pretty amazing. How cool would it be to go to say, "Hey, have I got a building for you that's updated and you can use it?" Um, I mean, I look at I mean, for me, the visioning of something like that is like whether you keep it as part school and part whatever, you give the people of Athens an opportunity to do some really cool things. You know, they could use it as a junior YMCA. It's got all the facilities that Y does. It's got a gym. It's got a cafeteria area. Got a
038lot of place. You could do adult education there. You have your older age home. It's I mean group home down the hill. You could work out with combinations with them. I talked to Jim. I said, you know, if we don't do it already, of course he does it. The Donna of Athens does it all. um you know having the grandparents come up and and read with the younger kids and things like that. It means a lot to them and it means a lot to the kids. There are a lot of things you can do, but you got to start doing that at the same time. You can't it's you're not going to be successful banging your head against the wall, okay? Saying this is what we have to do no matter what. We're not going
039to listen to you and you think you're going to get somewhere. That's not going to happen. All right? You got to engage in them to do these things. You got to start a strategic plan of the next 3 to 5 years of what's going on. We're not done yet right now. And the thing that I want you to understand is even with the 11 horrible cuts that we have to make, that still doesn't get us to zero. And that's important to understand. I would love to horse trade and have great discussions intellectually about if I don't do this, we could do that. But we're not in a position to do that right now. Not until you get to zero. and you're not there yet. With the budget that Kim is going to be presenting to
040you, it still has a $2 million gap in it. Okay. We need to strategically plan and set the foundation. We need to look at resizing the district to what our realities are now and what we can do. We need to look at the proper student population alignment. What should it be? Are we going to continue with a five, six hybrid thing that we have? Do we bring them back to elementary? Do we, you know, whatever you want to do, but you have to be brave enough to look at it and you have to be brave enough to break down everything you're doing to make sure that you can go ahead with it, okay? And what's best for you. Financial sustainability. I believe we need to get somebody in here who can look at and assess
041what our back numbers are. Okay, those would be the e, you know, the EVA stuff, the the, you know, the investments that the school has that we can't use, but we right away, but it can give us some financial solidarity. Moving on, things like that. We need to optimize the facility usage. We've already talked about that. We got to get the community and fiscal strategy to melt together so it makes sense. Um, we got to get an educational environment we could do things. But one of the things people put out is that question three wants to rent our billing. No, they don't. I already asked. I wish they did. I'd be on it. Um, academic program optimization. We're going to have to seriously look at everything we're doing teaching wise. And yes, the innovation person
042is going to have to do this. We're going to have to analyze the programs that we have right now. We're going to have to look at their performance value or how they're doing and how our kids are doing given the realities we have right now. And we're going to have to look at what are the best ways to deliver options. Do we continue using some distance learning or not? Do we do we look to do more group programs with other schools or not? But these are questions and decisions that the school district has to excuse me has to do. This process needs to start May 20th, the day after the budget's passed. Okay? And it's something that we can't just say, "Oh, the budget's done. We made it for another year." Because you're going to
043be back in the same place if you're not working on it. You got to start doing it the next day. I can't be more adamant about that. And I'll help you as long as I'm here. Okay? I don't mind that. That's what I do. Choosing the path forward, navigating the buzz saw changes. It's going to take a lot. I'm not going to lie to you. But it's a process that can also open a lot of different opportunities that we have to be aware of. One of the things, and I'll leave you with this, most of the school district I've worked with in the past are true K12 school district. meaning, yeah, they're smaller, but everything that they do is that it's one resource that they use for their kids. You follow what I'm saying? They
044don't look at it that, oh, well, we have an elementary building here, we have an elementary building there. No, every one of our elementary teachers is a resource for our elementary students. Every one of our secondary teachers is a resource for our secondary students. We should no longer be thinking of these madeup divisions between school settings. All right? Teachers are incredibly important. They're incredibly valuable. They're the second most important individuals in communities next to parents and they have to be valued and they have to be treated as such. But we have to also have the right attitude in why we're deploy deploying those important resources. Okay. I thank you for your time. All right. Thank you, Dr. Sweeney. That was a lot of information for us to absorb. I just want to put it in
045context for myself as one person forms and pass it up here. What's that? >> I'm going try to face you guys. >> Okay, I know. >> Hey, good evening everybody. Thanks for coming out. I think it's really important to see the engagement, you know, from the community, you know, as we navigate this difficult as we navigate this difficult time. Is that better? >> Oh, it's not on. >> Oh, now. Hello. Oh, there we go. >> Okay. So, anyway, what I was saying is thank >> Does it stay on? >> I know. Seriously. >> Off. >> Yeah. Way to go, Pat. >> Oh, there you go. Okay, now. >> Okay, try this again. So, um, you know, thank you to everyone for coming out tonight. It's really important to see the engagement from the community, you
046know, as we do navigate a very difficult situation. Um, so my I guess goal here is to give you the numbers to kind of show you what happened and how and why we're in this situation. Um so and I can't figure out where to look. Um so I'll talk to you about budget pressures, some expenditure shifts, revenue, how we can close the gap. Um I'll mention the idea of a capital outlay project and what that is and if it's something you guys are interested in doing this year. Um and then you know how do we balance the budget? So budget pressures, few things have happened. Um this year there were a number of unbudgeted expenses that ended up you know for different reasons. We ended up spending money that was not in the 2526 budget.
047Because of that gets rolled into the new budget. Um we're seeing an increase in special education costs. um increased transportation costs and then you know the perpetual increase in health and dental costs. Believe it or not, we got lucky this year, but relative to other districts as far as an increase, but that even being lucky, we're still looking at a, you know, six figure increase in health insurance. Um so on budgeted expenses three categories of expenses we had we have had to add additional transportation runs to meet the special education needs. We um had eliminated one bus but then we added a a detention bus. So that's a cost. And then also uh there was a thought that we could eliminate the Tech Valley bus and realized that wasn't possible. So that's another expense that
048came back in the budget. So those items were $324,000 of unbudgeted expenses. Staffing. Last year there were um pair of professionals that were eliminated from the budget and in a you know cost reduction plan and eight full-time aids and four part-time aids came back. Additionally, there was a full-time teacher added in first grade to reduce class size. So again, these were not in the budget. So, this is an additional $336,000 of spending. Finally, um you know, as Pat said, we have an obligation to educate special education students. We can't always meet their needs here. So, because of that, we have to find outside placements for these students. In this case, we had students place again, they were not in the budget, and that's costing us $185,000. So there's $846,000 of expense that was not budgeted
049that now has to be carried over. So just to show you special education, you can see if if you can see and this is on the uh board docs as well, but last so in 2425 there was an increase of $444,000. Last year the increase was 28.54. So that is is reflective of the reductions that were made in the staffing. Um but as you can see for this year, I'm looking at a $738,000 increase in special education. Um that is re um bringing all that staff back in. It's also making sure we're we have money for high need students. Um, and we currently have two students that have gotten a placement, you know, expensive placement, but it's what they need. And we have three students who still don't have a placement. So there's money built
050in so that I don't we don't run into that situation again where now a student gets placed and we don't have money budgeted for it. So I intentionally have budgeted money to for that situation. Um but you can see this represents you know 14% increase special education transportation. Um again we had those unbudgeted expenses. So you can see last year there was a very large increase, 30% increase because there was an RFP and new contracts were signed. So um so the district had to absorb that increase but you can see that um again this year we're looking at another $400,000 increase. And this is inclusive of our regular school transportation, our athletics transportation, field trips, you know, all the trans. This is inclusive of all our transportation. So between the unbudgeted expenses and just general
051contractual increases in the rates, we're faced with a $400,000 increase or a 10, you know, almost 11% increase in that particular category. Finally, um, like I said, we got lucky. And I guess if you look here, you can kind of see it. We increased $274,000 in 2425. We increased $700,000 last year. This year it's better, but it's still not great. So now we've got another $360,000 in cost for health and dental insurance. Um and you can see high mark 7% care mark that's our RX 5% and then CDPHP is 5.1%. Now relative to my colleagues around Questar these are great. These are absolutely we did get lucky. It doesn't feel like that but but we did. Um so I tried to lay out here what I tried to do um for to try to I
052don't know mitigate this. So you can see the salary line and salaries and you can see in the pigraph you know salary and benefits are you know 70% of the budget salaries are down and unfortunately it's because we had to make reductions in salaries but you can see 25 26 26 27 basically flat with salaries. Um you can see the fringe benefits is you know your dental. So fringe benefits is your health and dental vision also your retirement plans and your FICA and Medicare. So that increases total 464,000 about 5% increase. So that's why it's yellow. Our debt is down slightly. That'll increase next year when we start to have more debt. But right now we had some debt drop off. So that category is down. Boseies is down you know roughly 2%. We have
053worked really hard and I commend you know my administrative team. Alli Leonardo has been really instrumental. We have gone through every single Boseis thing that we're purchasing and we have you know you can see it's it's down. Um so you know um and then again transportation other so other what other is is that's your supplies your travel and conference your um nonBOSI special education and um you know instructional materials textbooks things like that uh you know uh technology. So the other category is up and about 280,000 of that is related to special education. So those placements I was telling you about. Also another about 92,000 of that is related to facilities. So maintenance, you know, things break. So you got service contracts. Our utility bills are through the roof. I sweat every month when I
054have to look at the gas and electric bill. And I know you're doing that at your houses, too. So, you know, except our bill is $30,000 a month. You know, my home bill might be 300 a month. So, you know, obviously a much different scale. So you know um we have to unfortunately be prepared that that is going to continue to increase you know and our facilities team does a great job in keeping this place you know maintained but you know things break so we have service providers you know we have so all of those expenses are increasing and you know um what's not increasing is state aid. You know, you can see here, you know, 2.28% increase from last year. Uh we are holdless and then if you if I don't know if you
055know if I'll tell you what that is. So, historically, hold harmless districts got a 3% increase of foundation aid. Then the governor said, "No, we're not going to do that anymore." So then last year, hold harmless districts got a 2% increase in in foundation aid. They decided to change that. So this year, hold harmless districts are getting a 1% increase in foundation aid. For us, that's $80,000. And um so we're at the mercy of the state and the legislature. They don't have a budget. So we have no idea what our aid is going to be yet. I mean, we kind of do, but who knows? You know, we have to wait for them to pass a budget. Um, the goal, I think, is to they wanted to not give anybody hold harmless anymore. So, if
056a district's not on the formula, they don't get any increase in foundation aid. Thankfully, we got something. Um, so our we have other revenues. So, we, you know, you can see tuition. We um Emily works with a few districts. We have students from other districts that come here because we have programs that they might need. So just like where we have to send a student out, Catskill, for example, sends a student out and they come here. So we get tuition for that, which is great. Um but you know, and and interest rates are pretty good right now. So um we're making a decent amount of interest. That could change. So, you know, if if the Fed changes interest rates, that can that can impact our revenue. Um, and then you've got, you know, pilots, which
057um that's actually gone down a little bit. We had a SERTA has come off, so they'll be back in the tax role. So, that's why that's a little bit lower. But you can see, so again, our actual other revenues are down. We're anticipating down slightly um you know, next year. Tax levy. We've talked about this. Um, if we go to the maximum levy, it's a 2.8% increase, which um is $586,000 in revenue. So, I'm kind of trying to set the stage of, you know, our our situation. So, what do we do? So, and closing the gap requires difficult decisions across K through 12. and you know how do we rightsize the district to meet the enrollment you know and resources so we are effectively using our resources so this is what we're proposing um we
058looked at pretty much all secondary or primary sorry elementary and secondary we have two retirements in elementary that we're not looking to fill and then we're looking to reduce grades 1 2 3 four and six. We haven't proposed five because we're already at three sections in five. So, um we don't need a reduction there. And then in the secondary, we have an English and a math retirement. So, we're looking to also reduce in social studies and science. These reductions are about $1.2 million. There's one other, I guess, reduction that Pat alluded to with preK. We have five employees that are in the federal grant. We don't have enough students to run the sections of preK. So, we're suggesting we have to move a teacher and an aid from the federal fund over to the general
059fund. So that's what this bottom one is. So there would be someone coming over which would then bump another staff member out. Um so I just wanted to show though what happens and I I know we have two buildings and I know that this has to be figured out but if these sections are reduced here is what you're looking at for average class sizes. So um you know K would be 17 1/2 18 1/2 in and first etc. You know they get a little bit larger in the middle school. So 23 is in the middle school you know versus what I think it's I think it's under 20 now. um other reductions and again these are these are proposals you know these nothing has been ultimately decided yet that will be on Tuesday when the
060board adopts a budget but um I have gone through every single supply line in this district and I have pretty much slashed all of them um that gets us and also travel which we talked about you know there's not going to really be a lot of conferences next year So that gets us about 357. We had talked about reducing Green County mental health. We're proposing rather than cutting the whole program, we at least reduce it back to 3 days a week instead of four. So 25% reduction. Um in athletics, the non two, we propose reducing two non-lean games for JV and modified programs gets about $10,000 in savings. And then I know this is why a lot of you are here. We talked Dr. Pat mentioned field hockey and football. We had talked about field
061hockey, but like like he said with a title n consideration, if we were to eliminate field hockey, we do need to consider a boy sport. So these are not yet set in stone. So, um, but that is another potentially 113,000 in reductions. And finally, um, I do have a capital outlay. I have money in for a capital outlay project. Um I know we had talked about potentially um kind of combining it with the cops grant because we've had some turnover right now with you know Janate and then our treasur is going to be leaving. I think that has to go on the back burner for now. We have three years to do that. So we don't have I'm working with Scott Wolf and actually Scott Bennett to see what we could do. So, it is
062built in, but it ultimately be up to you all as if you want to keep it in. The nice thing with the capital outlay is we do get the 71% aid on the project. So, if we do a project, we're really only paying like 29,000 for it once we get our aid back. So, just something to consider. Um, but this is currently in the the fun. >> We have to put it out now and get the money, >> right? Yes, we'd have to do the project. We would do the project next year. We we have discovered we have some roof issues that we need to look into. Kind of discovered by accident. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Jeez. >> Um we discovered we have some roof issues that may have to be addressed. So, we are
063looking at that. Um but again, uh so yeah, we would have to plan it. It would be the project would be done next year and then we would get the aid in. So, it's in the budget now. >> the 100,000 >> the >> 100,000's in the budget. >> In the budget now and it's designated already or you don't >> It's not I mean that this is going to be a decision that you all can make if you want to keep it in or if you don't >> So, we don't get the aid until the following year. >> Yes, you get the aid the following year. >> Right. >> Okay. So, >> and did we get our last >> I submitted the paperwork for it. So, we didn't spend the full hundred. So, we'll get back,
064you know, whatever on what we spent. >> Um, >> that's the cops grant. That's different. Yeah. Um, okay. So, here's the bottom line. the budget number. So this year's budget was 377. Next year's budget right now is 387. Um again the revenues you can see. So to get to our revenues only equal 36655. In order to get to the 387, we would have to take we'd have to allocate a little over 2 million of our fund balance to close that gap. So, um, and again, that's just to close the gap. This is the 387 is after all the cuts. So, um, that's kind of the overall picture, but that's how we got that's how I got to the number. I wanted to give you all kind of the road map of what what happened to
065that gets us there. Um, all right. Do you guys have any questions? >> So, there's flexibility with this outlay program. What? Okay. Is there other areas that you saw some >> I mean I I tried to trim >> you saw from I tried to trim back everything that I could. >> Kim, I know uh our athletic director Kirk had mentioned cutting out nine league games >> for the JB squads. Uh what would that look like? My question is, what would that look like for our varsity squads by cutting out non-league games to assist us in keeping hockey and football? >> Yeah. Is Kurt here? >> Cutting all non league games, right? >> We're only cutting two modified level right now. We're only cutting all non. Hi. >> What was your question? >> Question is you
066had proposed the board cutting non-league games >> two for JV teams >> JV and modified >> right. So if we expand that to the varsity level and that would assist us in some capacity I'm thinking in maintaining field hockey and football. So the situation that I told I talked to you about in the fitness or in the finance committee was that we don't want to eliminate non-league games from varsity schedules because they have implications on sectionals and strength of schedule. So that dictates and I used the girls basketball as an example in that meeting that they got to play the non-league games against Gilderland Kabad Crane Warriorsville because that gave them the competition to prepare for the run that they were at. So, and the situation is that we want to use a utilize those
067non-league games to give us a an advantage to prepare our kids to prepare our teams to be successful in the season. >> Yeah, I understand it makes us stronger >> y >> competition wise, but I think it's an area that has to be looked at if we if we if we want to keep the other programs intact. >> Well, quite frankly, I I have talked about this and before, but you're saving peanuts over two programs when you're talking about $35,000 and we have some additional money that we could probably use out of the revenue to save those two programs. Plus, you're talking about the second largest program here that you're trying to cut. Doesn't make a ton of sense either. >> And what I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to cut those
068programs. I'm trying to look outside the box to see where we can find the monies to support those programs to keep them. >> Yeah. I I think the question has been asked multiple times is what is that dollar figure if we cut all non-league games? We don't want to cut anything. I I can't speak for everybody. I shouldn't say we don't want to cut anything, but what is that dollar figure on cutting all non-league games? >> I can't give you that that total. I mean, >> every every you could probably break it down, but I mean, every every team is different. There there will be for girls and boys basketball, there are two non-league games. For baseball this year, I have six non-league games >> because of the way that this conference is broken down.
069So, you're only allowed a certain amount of league games, but you're still allowed to play 20 games. So, I mean, you're talking about it's different for each and every team, >> but I I think what we're >> So, where would the equity be in that? >> We're hoping for We know that there's a certain number of games that we only get and we can play 20, but if we only play 16, is that still something that gets us enough funding to keep more of our other things >> as a whole? Can all of our sports teams play 16 games instead of 20 and make it so that we don't have to cut an entire sports program as a whole. >> I think I understand what Kurt's saying is that that money isn't the same. >>
070Well, that's why we've asked for how much that money is so we can we can see those numbers actually and not just say they they aren't >> each schedule is also different. So when you play girls varsity or boys varsity soccer, that's 16 games. When you play varsity football, it's 10 games. So where where what are we going to where where are we cutting? >> So then every >> So are we going by percentage or are we going by games? Because it doesn't I mean it doesn't equate >> the I guess the question was is what are we what would we save if we cut all non-league games? That's the question. >> And I can't tell you that answer because it's you can't just say you're going to cut all non-league games. It's not equitable
071with all the programility. I asked about what the dollar value is. That's what was asked. >> Okay. Well, I don't have the answer to that anymore. But if we cut all non games, then maybe field hockey wouldn't have as many games because there's many. >> Actually, that's a great point that I didn't even think about. >> So, I'm trying to say field hockey, by the way. But but if you I'm just trying to go to like at S not um >> like that score it's dwindling but we I think we have a strong program still I could be wrong but I think we do >> if we cut all non-league games across the board they might have one game so why have a team which is what not my intention at all but and that's
072I think Kurt's point of being equitable Well, maybe it could be percentage instead of a number. >> There has to be some way to figure out some sort of >> numbering. And I know we've got >> right. Exactly. A fundraiser. >> But and I know other sports do the fundraising and and what how much are we say 40,000? >> So can we start looking at other cuts? I mean I know two years ago we cut 10% of our admin. 10% of 10 is a month. So, can we start looking at that and looking at the district office? We need to save our kids sports. Some of these students PROBABLY SO, I can also speak just about numbers and percentages. I mean, you talk about when I broke this down, we have 45% of our student
073potty from 7th to 12th grade participate in a fall sport. And you're talking about two of the four sports here. >> And how much how many of these students would not be participating if they did not have these two sports? Like would they go >> I can't speak for them. But I'm what I'm saying is we have almost half the amount of the student body is participating in these sports. >> So you're taking something away that >> we don't want. Okay. >> How do we save? >> That's why we're asking if we can do cuts across everything. >> Yeah. percentage of >> Well, I wasn't really 100% prepared to come up here and talk to you. I wouldn't answer these questions. So, I'm just giving you pre answers here. >> This is this isn't fair
074to put you on this. >> But maybe we can come back. >> We need to come back by Tuesday. We need to vote on Tuesday. But I also think it's fair to point out that the finance committee or the the committee that we have put in a lot of time on this was a a quick discussion and it was completely not considered >> and it's a little bit of a blind side in a way because it's not something that anyone especially on that committee was even remotely prepared to consider. for her to consider what >> eliminating sports that ultimately are the best thing for kids to >> Oh yeah, 100%. And I think that's where it goes back to what other >> ways is there to make it so that we don't cut the two
075teams, but we maybe make it so everyone plays a little bit less outside of, you know, traveling really far, keeping them so that they can make up that money to allow the people. >> Just a reminder, these are not these have not been reduced out of that 38. >> No, but if we don't do something, then we're going to be really in trouble with our budget. >> Wait, wait, wait, wait a second. It's not part of your not has not been taken out. This is if you guys say we >> Well, it's 113,000. >> It's >> this is not in the budget, right? >> Not yet. >> Yeah. So, this isn't even in it. >> So, this is uh you know, these are all and you know the number is the number but you know
076if you guys say you want to keep it, it stays in you know so and if you guys make that decision. So in other words, to make it really simple for all of you, >> the only decision say we're simple. >> What's that? >> Did you just say we're simple? >> No, I said make to make it simple. >> If you take no action on it, they're not cut. It's not in the budget. If you take an action, it would be whatever you ultimately decide to put in there. But right now, they're in there. They're not cut. So, what Kim was showing you are just other options for you to look at because we were tasked with Kirk to come up with ideas that we possibly could do. So, that's where you're at right now.
077>> So, can we go back to slide um 17? That's our That's our line our end line there. >> Mhm. >> Right. Yeah, I guess I'm confused on what is actually included in this. >> What's included in the 387? Really, the only thing that's not included in this is the two sports, but the staffing reductions are included and Green County mental health is included and the um >> I thought that was proposed with the sports. Why is that on the sports? Those those would be additional savings if we opted. >> If we wanted to save another what was it? 113,000. If you want to save another >> 38,000 40,000ish. >> So all of that >> all that other stuff's already removed from the budget. >> Those top three items are >> but bottom two have
078not been removed. >> That's what confused me. It's on the same chart. >> Yeah. It all comes down to what is the comfort level of the board of education on how much how many funds we take out of our unappropriated reserves and what do we want to be left with at the end of the day in case something major happens roofs whatever that we have to fix. What what number are you comfortable with moving forward in our reserves? >> That's that's what I think it comes down to. And anything that we take out right now, if we take $2 million out next year, according to what Pat just got done saying, it looks between 1.4 to 1.6 times that. So we're looking at a $3 million budget deficit going into the 27 28 year. >>
079Am I saying if nothing >> if everything stays equal, that's what we're looking at. Is that correct? So that right now with 3.5 million in the bank, Bark taking 2 million of that, that means that it's gone, right? It just disapp replenished. That would leave 1.5 knowing that we're looking at $3 million. >> Explanation then when we >> regularly took out 1.775 million. >> How did that get replenished? >> It it wasn't always used. >> If we never be gone. >> It wasn't always used. Last year it was used. Or I should say this last year it was used about one and a half million and then this year >> it was used because we had >> we had things coming at us that special and it was about $500 to $1,000. >> If I
080may say some of those cuts were things that we we couldn't see. We cut a lot of aids and and people that we desperately need and we were forced to hire them back through special ed regulations. So, you know, if we keep doing this, we're kicking another can down the road to have the same debate next year, losing more and more things. So, >> and I keep going back to we're constantly being told that our enrollment is declining, yet two or three years ago, we hired another full-time admin. Why? Um this we were told because we needed more people to have their their hands on the money. Why can't we please go look at that? Because maybe that could be a $100,000 savings or probably more between those two positions. >> I know you guys
081did a great job. I'm not >> Well, that that topic was brought up in the finance committee and I don't know if you want to elaborate on it. >> Yeah. And I'm not saying this because I'm an administrator, but this district has fewer administrators than any other district I've been at. You are very, very white. You really are operating on the least amount that you possibly can. A school of this size with essentially no assistant principal is really mind-blowing. The first question for years about >> well I'm just you're asking me about my experience what I've seen >> and the bottom line is you you don't have like when we look at how many kids you have and how many sections you need as far as administrators go you are where you're at and if
082you go any further you're going to be reshuffling positions and things that have to be done that can't be done with the left staff that you have. >> I mean, the only thing I heard when Janate left was, "Oh my god, Josh Prey is the best thing since sliced white bread. He's super at the job he does and everything else." So, I had to get somebody else in there. Okay. The other positions, you need the curriculum person there. You need the director of technology to help assemble those things. By law, you have to have a principal in every every designated school. And right now, you have three designated schools on this campus and another designated school out. But by law, you have to have it for individual. >> So, you know, when when you say
083look at administration or whatever, you know, that's fine. It's your prerogative. But if you want to hear from me and my experience, I don't think you have a place to cut there. You have to get APR done. That's a law. You have to have qualified people to do it. You can't take any Tom, Dick, and Harry off the street to go and evaluate people. And that's shared by every single one of the administrators we have here because these people here can't do their particular areas by themselves. So, they have to share vote on doing something like that. >> So, is that assistant principal shared through the four schools? No, that that principle of student support is shared between the middle school and the high school. >> That's my thought. >> They do most of their
084work with the high school, but they are technically shared with both. >> Then again, back to the district office like we hired like when people retired, we'd hired like two people to replace one like a two years ago. >> So yeah, >> I mean I don't I mean >> we're we're the district office. I mean, first of all, we have to have internal controls. So we have to have you know one person can't do all the things you know because of auditing requirements and laws. So like I can't I shouldn't be doing payroll >> or I shouldn't be doing you know journal entries and things the treasurer does um because I have to sign off on those things. Um but you know we have our district office staff. They're doing multiple things. You know Julie
085does HR and she's the district clerk. You know, Skyler does a few different Skyler's running payroll and doing, you know, other tasks. You know, we have Crystal that pays the bills, you know, and andrea does the registar and and CIO task. So, I I I don't know. >> No, we were just told something different when that new person was hired. >> Oh, well, I'm >> Well, then we're at a disadvantage because we weren't here. >> Yeah. I mean, I wasn't here, but >> this whole board was an Okay. >> Well, we could also sit here and talk and part of your thing earlier was about the district and and reshuffleling and and we we were given numbers that said this was coming eventually and we buried ourselves a little bit by not pursuing it further
086then. In my opinion and mine only, it's not out of the board, but you know, we can sit here and say how could we see this coming? But, you know, this is a trend that this community is facing and these are cuts that this community is going to have to face and everyone's going to feel it and they have. We we've sat in these meetings and and other programs have come in and fought and we love to see the heart and the people and and protecting what you want and and hold dear. Um, that's great. We love to see this. But we're also our middle school is a school of needs still. I mean there's there are academic needs. There's which listen the the the I love sports. I went to I went to college
087for sports education. I I participated in every one I could here. So I'm not saying I want to cut any of these or that we are. Let that be known. But you know the school district itself is is a is a multiaceted organism and we can't just keep cutting this program that. Everyone's going to have to feel something when we're $2 million short in the budget and we can't fill it unless you want to pay the 15% more in your property taxes. So, you know, we're in tough times with cuts and and we can sit here and bicker about whose position is is right or wrong, but we've had these conversations. We've done the work on these and I and I feel like some of our stuff now is is uh it's grandstanding things. We
088we have stuff that that we are figuring out. We're trying to get and we we everyone's going to feel something again. We say this every every April, every May. >> I have I have a question. So, in our fund balance right now, we have a little over $3 million. >> Yeah. three round 3.5s. >> You're saying that we're going going to take over $2 million out of that and we'll have a little over 1 million laps for next year when this happens again. >> Then what do we do? >> That that is what Sam is saying. We are going to be in bigger trouble next year >> at this time. >> Yes. >> But but we didn't spend the 1.775 million the other year. But we only have 3.5. >> I know, but why wouldn't
089>> we're going to be in a bigger hole next year. >> Why wouldn't we just replicate what we did in other >> because we don't have it in the funds. >> It's gone. >> No, where did that 1.775? >> We didn't spend all that money, >> right? >> This year we're going to spend I'm going to work really hard not to spend it all, >> but we're going to spend >> most of it. So in the completion of this >> in the completion of the 2526 school year, >> but there's there's always special ed people moving into the district and that's thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Transportation, >> um other programs, people move into your district that are already placed out into other programs that cost >> 80,000 100,000. And and the challenge
090is if I don't build this in and we do have these students now we're in the same boat where we're now scrambling to to spend unbudgeted, you know, or to add unbudgeted expenses. Now, I can assure you I'm going to work like heck next year to keep costs under control the best I can. So, I go through every purchase order in the district and I have no problem denying a purchase order if it if it doesn't make sense. a little. >> No, no, I I understand that, but >> everything everything adds up. >> Everything adds up. So, you know, I want to work really hard to, you know, keep our cost down. Um, >> so maybe I know so maybe we won't spend the full 2 million, but we have to be prepared for the
091things that, >> you know, could go wrong, I guess. >> So, the big difference, as we've talked about before, And you're absolutely right. If you don't do anything and show up here again in April, you're going to be in the same hole. >> So the wakeup call for everybody is on May 20th, you start looking at what has to be done next and move in that direction. get somebody in here to look at your back your back numbers like I suggested and develop a plan with Dan and go through it so that you're not scrambling in April trying to close a gap and wondering whether or not you have enough reserves >> because you're right if you do nothing you're going to be in a bigger hole >> and everybody has to just accept it
092that this is a year-long you know this is a three year long process you're going to have to go through to constant constantly check and and do the evaluations. And I agree if we're going to be cutting things in terms of our most important resource and teachers, you know, that pain has to be felt across the board. You know, it's not something I like to say, but it's that's truly what equity is. That word has been misused. Okay? And when you work on a plan like that and you you're trying to offset the very pitfall that you're talking about but absent doing that you are going to end up in the same place but you have to commit that it's going to be a constant process you have to work out. You have to evaluate
093your academic system a to zed you have to be able to see what you're doing if the delivery of what you're doing is the right thing and move ahead with it. I've already had plary conversations with some people in the district about what are the next things we have to look at and I'll I'll hope you set that out before I leave. But, you know, mark my words. I appreciate everything everybody's saying, but you're not victims here. Okay? You just have to commit to understand that it's a 12-month process, not a three-month process. >> Yeah, that's >> And I'm sorry if I sound like I'm lecturing. me. Um, it's the old teacher voice. >> Yeah. >> So, so Pat, in your experience, going down to to spending the two the the 2 million at unappropriated
094reserves and going down to 1.5. >> Yeah. >> Where does that place us based on your experience? >> Well, it keeps you within the 4% which is actually the law. >> That is our 4%. >> I mean, as odd as that may seem, that actually gets you where where you know you've been illegally above it. I think it's still over. >> We get a flag in our >> but aside from that, where does it leave you? It basically you're at the end in terms of of what you have to do, but you have to understand they're going to be more cuts along the way. The question is don't do it like a hacksaw. You're going to have to do it more like a surgeon at this point. And Kim is going to get you the
095numbers for what it costs for programming and stuff. and we're going to lay it out for you, but you have to be willing to look at it, analyze it, and move forward on. Okay? And you need a third set of eyes. That's what I was talking about. Getting somebody in here, look at your back numbers that you that our staff can't do to get a fresh set of eyes. That's on your investments, your financial decisions that you're making with stuff, not depending on construction people telling you what to do with the money and everything else. Get somebody who understands that completely to show you how you work those funding funding streams out. And then along with your new superintendent, he's going to come in here with an entry plan. All new superintendents do. And part
096of that entry plan is to reassess your programming that you have here and being committed to it and not being afraid of it. All right? I know there's a lot of fear whether people say it or not, but that's my experience. That's what it tells you. The 2 million right now, sure it's going to hurt and yes, it's a challenge if you do nothing. But if you're committed to working this through, you'll be okay. It's not going to be pretty, but you'll be okay. the kids will be all right. I love that. Good to hear. >> And I think we have to >> move on and you know strategic. So when we look at these things, what's what what's the bang for the buck kind of thing, right? >> You know what what we get
097and so what is really something put a value on things and some things are maybe more valuable. I don't know. That's hard to do especially if it's people. But if I look at these two sports programs that now I understand are not a part of this and so they're separate and what that's what they mean for the kids that play them and how we've heard that percentages of kids academically even do better the more they're involved in sports behaviorally socially. Then unless there's some disagreement, I would not want us to cut these. I would look elsewhere. >> Supplies and travel with whatever that looks like. >> Well, I think we that goes back to how do we and I know where you come from. How do we save this? >> And that that I think
098we could still look at. Well, I think you can you can >> save it. >> You can save it. But here's what I need from you all. >> I have to present a budget to you all to adopt on Tuesday. It's now Thursday. So, I need to know what you all want to do. >> Can I ask what we just said is that we do not want to cut then we'll keep IT IN. THAT'S YOU KNOW WHAT THE MAJORITY of us want? >> Should we vote? >> I think we should vote. >> I still have some more questions. >> Okay. >> I want I want to go back to the uh capital >> capital outlay. >> you said we could save 100,000 by not by postponing that. >> Yeah. I mean it just >> What
099does that look like >> a year, two years, three years down the line? We let them come back to bite us >> significantly >> with the increase in in material cost and yeah very likely. >> So that's what I need to hear from Kim. >> So I have I have a a follow-up question on that before you answer it. Right now in your budget, do you have the revenue that were supposed to be coming in from the aid from the last outlay project figured in as revenue? >> Yeah, it figures in with the tax cap. So >> well 70,000 >> in the ballpark at 70. So you have really you have 70 coming in which would be put in in essence would be put toward that 100,000 and if we don't if we don't maintain
100the building if we don't maintain the building and get aided 71% I believe we're setting ourselves up for failure. >> And how much of the cops grant can we use for 100,000? >> Well the cops grant we have to spend money And then >> she's asking the amount. >> Well, we have to spend 72,000 and then we get, you know, the federal government is going to pick up all the rest of the cost. So, you know that >> what what is the rest of the cost? >> The total grant's like $289,000. >> So, we got to spend 70 grand to get $210,000. But we have to our obligation is of that $289,000 grant we are obligated to spend the 25%. >> Okay. >> And then the federal but but we don't have to spend it.
101I could if we start doing stuff we can put in for reimbursement. The the agreement is before the three-year period's up we're spending 75 or our portion of that. So >> um so it's not like it's not even that we have to do it all in one shot. you know, we could then buy things here and there if we had the money, but >> but that's a 75% return on our money. So that I mean, right, that seems silly to walk away from that also. >> So the other question I have is by keeping uh football and field hockey in our budget. Um, keeping those the numbers to fully fund those two programs in the budget and the budget gets passed. if we need to massage that going into the school year and and someone
102decides that maybe we we we adjust certain mechanisms of that, we can still do that. >> I mean, we're not obligated to spend all that money. >> no, no. So if maybe there's some non-league games, you know, my advice is keep those two programs in the budget and we'll just look to see within the programs if we can make any massage them a little bit to save us some money moving forward, >> right? And save on the the appropriate fundology, >> right? It sounds like that's what you're saying. It's 12 months, >> right? >> So we would keep we have to keep doing that >> all year, right? to keep looking at those talking about doing that. >> Yeah. I mean, >> you know, I'm looking, >> you know, I think we've talked about like
103our sub expenses are are, you know, six figures, you know, can we, you know, there ways to, you know, >> you know, cut that stuff down. So I think we have opportunities but I just think we have to be you know we have to say no >> you know and that's >> Can I ask a question? >> Sorry. >> Um the capital project there are roof repairs in there. Is this an addition? >> These would be addition. Yeah. >> Yeah. These were things that they they came to us and they just found so >> Yeah. I mean we had shingles got blown off the high school roof and and there's some soft spots up there. So, we wanted to investigate that. Um, so I like I said, I'm communicating with Scott Wolf and Scott Bennett
104who was here. He's still here. But, um, so we, you know, we've been having that conversation to kind of see what what we're looking at, you know, as far as addressing that before it gets worse kind of. So, >> can I ask a non-sports question at the moment? Sure. It's >> probably not popular to switch topics, but um >> I am very confused as to how we with our current structure and current um placement of students, how we would be able to cut that many K6 teachers. >> We have to figure it out. >> And but and again, maybe not popular opinion, but having we have a lot of fluff in certain places. Um, and I know I've brought it up many of times in meetings, um, that we need to look at those things.
105Our kids can't take classes if they cannot read and do basic math in the elementary building, >> cutting, I want it, seven teachers from our elementary building, but leaving where would those teachers come from? Are we having trying to do two sections at each building? That's not feasible at all. Our class makeups are completely different in each of the buildings. I know we have a lot of high school kids here, so this is not at any of you guys, but it is great to have an entire business pathway, but is it necessary? It's been really nice to have it, but is cutting that making it so we have an availability to not strip everything from our elementary buildings. I know it's been really nice to have someone that means our our fitness center, but is
106it a necessity? I those are that's where my brain goes. And I know again there's a lot of sports kids here, so I'm not trying to say that I don't want you guys to work out or have that space. Um, but it is a lot of money that why are we not looking at some of those avenues? I know we've talked about not offering as many college level classes that our teachers here are teaching. Like >> we talked about that stuff. >> The finance committee has addressed >> I haven't heard anything. So this >> the finance committee has addressed the personnel that you just mentioned. >> Okay. And what what we were told is that that position fills in in other areas besides just the that portion of the the gym. She in other periods
107she fills in in other capacities. >> But is that again is that more important than >> if there's a need I haven't heard >> if there's a need in those other capacities then we >> but is take that person we take that person out of there. We still got to put some money in there. >> Yeah. >> From what I'm told. So >> teachers can't take the kids to this. >> That's I believe teachers take this. >> I just I'm worried about >> if you look though at that slide with the amount of kids like I mean >> yeah they're they're spread out between both buildings. you're not all like in the putting all of the kindergarten kids down at EJ makes it so that that number is feasible, right? That number that they shared
108and broke the kids down into the four sections is feasible. But if you're looking at the third grade class, whatever their number is, they're at completely different buildings. So if they're all have the same, there's no way to have the same number of kids. CE has way more third graders than Athens does. So would CE be the one to now have 20ome kids in the class and they have all this fed and they have all like that's where my as said she's under the gun because we needed by two steps. >> So some of the >> Wow. All right. Uh, exciting things happening at EJA. You already heard I'm going to point out Miss Lefay uh was recognized uh for her application to the uh New York State um excellence in visual arts um which
109is a really amazing honor for any elementary school to receive. It's a very rigorous uh application uh and it just highlights the amazing stuff that she's doing in our elementary schools. Uh it truly is a vibrant uh place when you come into our hallways, you go into the classrooms, you go into the art room. Um so congratulations. Well, welld deserved and uh we thank her for everything that she does. >> Hi. So, a couple of pieces uh from CE that are pretty incredible. Um I know that I talked about our readathon last month, but when we finished it, big news is that uh CE students earned uh almost $7,000 um from the readathon um through their hard work, which is really amazing. Um in addition to that, we had one of the things that was
110um a goal for kids that was a prize was to win lunch with the principal. And I'm still shocked that there were so many kids who worked so hard to watch me drink Diet Coke and play Uno. Um, but we had over um over half, it was closer to twothirds of our students who earned that. So, I'm still working through all of our kids a month later to make sure that I am um with all of them. Um, but it's also been a really incredible experience. It's been really fun to um get to know kids in a little bit different of a way and hear different things from them than I usually do. And then the final thing of that is that our PTO really generously um because kids worked so hard allowed them to
111pick their own assembly. Um and so this week we had Zuzu Acrobats come which I mean wait for the newsletter this week because the pictures are incredible. Um it ended with lots of kids on stage doing really incredible things. Um there was so much energy in the room. Big thanks to our high school staff who had to listen to us cheer for the whole last period because it certainly could be heard um throughout the building. But just a big thanks to the PTO. A big thanks to all of our families who participated, who pushed that, and especially our kids who worked so hard to you season and it's always a great time to come together with teachers, staff, students, and families and really see the progress that we've made for students and to see the
112support um and hear from students about things that they're enjoying in their classes and what they're working towards and their goals. So, that's been really great. And we're also getting ready to start planning. We're in the kind of beginning stages of planning for ESY. So, we've had postings put out. We've had a lot of people interested in applying, which is great. Um, so we're planning on that starting right after the 4th of July. So, good evening everyone. How are you? Um, before I go too far with the tech team good news, um, I just want to give a quick shout out and, uh, thank you to Mr. Mr. Espazito for setting up all of our technology today, all of our uh cameras and everything and our microphone. So, uh thank you, Mr. Espazito, part of
113our tech team. And he's also our birthday boy today. So, I don't know if we all want to sing happy birthday to you. No. All right. All right. All right. But, uh but thank you. Thank you again for that. Um so u as I am has moved into the um director of technology. First thing I do want to say for our good news um is we've transitioned again once again with a with some new administrators. Um tech team is doing great running smoothly as usual. So it's been a nice smooth transition for me. It's been a very easy transition for me because they are so adept at their job. So um I just want to personally give a shout out and a thanks to the tech department um not only as the administrator but now
114um looking back as a teacher how much they have saved me throughout the years. So it is nice to now um work directly with the tech team. Um speaking of which the uh one of the tech team updates that we are having is we will be replacing light speed with go guardian. Um I won't bore you with the details with that right now as we do have a very long night. Uh but basically this is going to give teachers more tools and control over the classroom environment which will be great. We've been talking about the learning environment as well. Uh teachers will be able to upload their Google classrooms to GoG Guardian teacher. Um and that will allow them to send invitations to students. Um have full visibility of student devices and iPads during the
115class time which will be great. Um as well as um making sure that teachers can also send notes to students. So if uh a reminder or something like that just gives teachers a little bit more uh control over the electronic devices that are in the classroom as you're probably aware and you might have seen 20 to 25 students in the classroom is not only a lot to manage but a lot to uh keep on track. So um I do want to make sure that I thank Mr. Bugross for sort of spearheading that as a part of the tech team and that will be rolling out more um in the coming weeks and months especially as we get into 2627. Um, speaking of iPads and electronics, we are prepared fully for state testing. The tech team
116will have our uh final meeting before state testing on Monday. Uh, we were even um just working on getting uh iPad charging carts ready for the state test uh which required removing and adding in some wires and everything. So, we had a lot of great work right here in the cash department um with the students working alongside with the teachers. Um, not techreated, but I do want to give a quick shout out since um, since uh, Mr. Elliot is not here. I do want to give a quick shout out to Mrs. McNeel who was awarded by I think it was the Green County Outstanding Educator Award, and I think this is what it is is, uh, called So, um, again, as you're all probably aware, these are the last couple of weeks and months with
117Miss McNeel, and I can't think of a teacher more deserving of such an award. Um, and my last piece here, we have been uh working on the Apple Distinguished School videos, uh, which we are using to send to Apple, which will then eventually end up on their website, um, as a way to sort of show off and showcase how students and teachers are using iPads to support the education process. Uh, I'm pretty sure we have EJA done and um, we're working on EJA, we have C's video done, and we're currently working on the middle school and high school video as well. um for the I came in sort of the middle of this process. Um and again, Mr. Espazito has been spearheading this and he's we've heard only great things from the Apple rep. Uh
118so we're already on a great start. Uh we are a little bit ahead of schedule even. Um so once again, I just like to thank Mr. Espazito for his great work and for the tech department as well for all that they do for us. So thank you very much.