Board of Education Meeting March 18, 2026

001uh continue negoti discussed discuss continuing negotiations with the EAFA and EACPA matters relating to the possible promotion or discipline of three certified personnel and matters relating to two particular corporations moved by Mr. Brunson second >> second by Miss Mrs. Whitel discussion all in favor. >> Opposed abstensions that's passed 6 and we are in executive session. Thank you. All right. Uh thank you everyone from for uh joining us this evening. Uh we are returning from executive session where we discussed uh continuing negotiations with the EAFA and EACPA, matters relating to the possible promotion or discipline of three certified personnel and matters relating to two particular corporations. Um we are back in open session now. Do we have any agenda changes? All right, great. Um, we are moving on to item five, reports and discussion items part

002one. Uh, and we have uh Dr. David Or here to present to us from >> Thank you so much, Joe. Appreciate it. Thank Thank you all of you. Is there a clicker for the the technology? I can use that if you like or Thank you. Um, it's a pleasure to be here with the East Aurora board. you are our inaugural presentation on our capital project. We had a meeting this morning with all of our business administrators and superintendent. Uh it was very well attended and um it was an opportunity I think to really kind of present months and months and really multiple years of planning and that has led to this moment where we have a chance to speak with our component districts about capital facilities needs. Um, as just as with any house when

003you have to keep it up or just and you know you're in the middle of some capital work yourselves on your on your facilities, we we also have four campuses. Uh, one of them is a neighbor of yours at the Ormsby Center and it's it's come time for us to turn back to our component districts to look at a sizable project. Um, so I wanted to make a couple introductions uh about Here we go. My aim isn't great. >> Down arrow. Okay. Thank you. So, um, first of all, this is our our cabinet team, the people the most are most responsible in our own organization. Uh, besides myself, we have Bina Morates, our deputy. Um, Michael Carter, who's our new business administrator. He's taken over for Karen Drummond and also Ron Wasik who is, uh,

004brings an awful lot of great experience in facilities management uh, to our team as well. But most important, um, is our partners. I mean, all of our component districts, the bo the board of cooperative educational services is a cooperative and our kids are your kids. Our buildings ultimately are your buildings. And so our our component districts and and we represent them here with your logos and mascots um are are the most important um folks that we're really trying to serve with this work. Um you'll also know that that the work in planning included the perspectives of superintendents and business administrators throughout as we came up with this this plan. So I have a number of materials for you there um in front of you. There is a um a skinny packet that is only two

005two front and back pages. Um that packet contains kind of highlights of information and it and it's very succinct but the key thing about it is it's specific to East Aurora. So the numbers there are what East Aurora would entertain as the decision before you. Um, you'll also see a much more detailed financial document and we'll have some more information about the finances of the project as we go forward tonight. Um, I wanted to before I get too much further also acknowledge and and recognize some other key um, folks who are part of our team. We have Steve who you're familiar with are from Young and Wright. He's your architect as well as is a representative of the architectural firm that we work with on our project. We also have David from campus. Um, David

006is is a Easter resident and 26 years >> and has children in the district as and he's he's also a key part of the construction management uh work that we're doing. And finally, Melissa from from uh office um which who's our financial planner and and they helped kind of figure out all the complicated work. You know how complicated capital projects are for schools. Imagine that times 27, right? and how does this all get put together to put together one partnership and and that's the very extraordinary work that we'll hear hear more about later on today. So we have two key um priorities here. Um one is to maintain safe, secure and reliable facilities and the second is to enhance functionality. That's not a lot of fancy things. Um I'll give you an example. We have

007a swimming pool in the south that needs to be infilled to create therapy pools for ease or special education programs. That's the kind of of of enhancement of functionality we're talking about. There aren't extraordinary expansions of of program that are retained in the scope of this project. Um but there are some things at the Ormsby Center I'll get into in a moment as well that are that are small. Um overall um when we did our building condition survey, as you know, your facilities improvements are driven by a building condition survey, our own building condition survey. Um the total scope for that that when it was initially done and and don't react to this number because it's not the number but but it was where we started was $142 million for four campuses. Um and in

008time we narrowed that down to 90 and then we narrowed it down again to the core priorities which is $49.5 million of of total work across our four campuses um in two inch county two in Erie County. Um, we did a number of sessions to help prioritize this scope. That included perspectives of our principles and Bosei staff as well as perspectives of component superintendents and business administrators as we tried to figure out the pacing of the project and how it could be done. Um, and we also have a capital project committee that helped steer that work. And we have a long-term facilities plan. So, what's included? um you'll see all all buildings across our entire organization that that we have outdated alarm systems and phone systems. They're really nearing end of life, the phone systems

009that we have right now. Um so there are some um IT improvements for all of our campuses, but um I'm going to I'm going to really focus on ORMS because that's the one that's in the neighborhood. Um we have uh needs for pavement, sidewalks, um mechanical equipment. Um there's there's some windows and doors that need to be rep and some repointing of brick. um as well as a need for some modifications to the welding shop so that it can accommodate additional students. We have weight lists in welding every single year. Um we have some toilet rooms that need to be altered so that they they um exit to the hallway as I understand this this this this work. There are some um rooms that had been developed for the internal toilets that need to be

010external to really serve the students more more appropriately for where we are right now. And finally, there's there are some um floor there's some flooring in our cosmetology shop that has it was kind of done with um inexpensively. This is inside the the cosmetology shop. And as time went by, the chemicals of of hair treatment and cosmetology have affected that flooring. We need to get it up and there's some asbestous underneath it that we need to um remedy as well. But you'll see some similar um building envelope um not fancy things across all of the campuses that are listed here. Um I have some photographs to kind of help us um see some of that. So this is our Lua Center in Fredonia. It's our Hughes Center. There's the pool infill that that I spoke

011about earlier and the creation of some therapy pools for for students that need that in our intensive special education programs. here at the Ormsby Center. These are the pictures right just down the street. Um we have some ventilation needs in the welding shop as well that this will this will address. And at our carrier center in Angola, our other Erie County site, um you'll see HVAC um as well as sidewalk and and some program space for renovation internally. So what's the budget? That's what that's what our component districts absolutely are right to wonder about. And and I wanted to to bring us into this by saying that of the utmost importance to us. I mean, I came from a component super component superintendent role at Silver Creek. Um, we want to make sure that the

012what we're trying to put forward is reasonable and can can be accommodated by our schools. We've tried to work with our superintendents and our business administrators to to figure out the timing of the project, how those payments would hit. Um, and we also recognize that this is this is a little bit of an uncertain fiscal time for all of our school systems. I mean, um, we've got a 1% minimum due right now that's affecting the state aid growth for our school systems. We know that. Um, and and we also know that the tax cap presents what we can raise locally. Um, that said, the facility needs that we've had and we've already pushed it back a year, we have to get to these things. I mean, these are roofs and things like that that if

013you don't do them, we end up ends up being more expensive down the road. So, what what's before our boards is um is a unanimous consent um proposal. Every single board would need to vote for the this approach, an intermunicipal agreement or an IMA. Um here we are in education with MCAs and IMAS and that um IMA in education we use lots of acronyms, right? IMA is an intermunicipal agreement and by passing this intermunicipal agreement it would enable your board and all the boards of the Boseies to finance this or paid with cash or some mix thereof according to your best advantage locally. So that's that's really the decision that's before you this spring. Um every single aspect of this project falls under the maximum cost allowance. That's the MCA acronym. Okay. Maximum cost allowance

014is what would be aidable. So we've designed this project to make sure that it returns the Bosey's aid flow for every element that gets done which also advantages your financing and the cash flow of this project. So we set this whole whole schedule up with the input of superintendents and business administrators throughout our our planning. And right now I'm going to turn over to Melissa who is going to talk a little bit more about some of the the specific numbers for the for the project. >> All right. So before we get into the actual specifics for your particular district, we'll talk continue to talk overall. So um you'll see here on this page that there's the breakdown for each of the components um of the $49.5 million, right? And the determination of that breakdown is

015based on the latest actual Arwatada rate or percentage. So the that's the Arwatada the resident weighted average daily attendance rate. Um so this is based on the 2526 actual rate and then this would be locked in pending that approval by all of the component boards. So this would be your respective and all of the components respective shares of that $49.5 million project. Um so we'll look at this page again in a couple of minutes. you know, we'll kind of focus in on your share in in that time frame, but going along with the full authorization. Um, and then the the process, >> oh my goodness, um, the process from there, um, really for Bosey's projects, there's two different types of authorizations. um the way that the project's going to be authorized kind of how David

016had mentioned with the IMA or that intermunicipal agreement the details there on the left hand side of this page and the next but then there's also um an option for DASNY financing through the dormatory author authority of the state of New York um so similar to the pool financings I'm sure you could be familiar with that type of program um but really focusing in on the IMA approach there um would really need all of the components to approve that agreement um in order to kind of move forward with that type of financing and allowing for um your own individual options as it as it relates to how you pay for the project itself. If we had to go the DASNY route, that would require, you can see there, uh, Bosey's wide vote. Um, and then

017the Boseis board would adopt resolutions related to that project and the legal publications and so forth there. And it's really more focused on um, Boseies doing the actual structuring versus everyone on their own um, individual basis. >> Add two more points here. One is the IMA borrowing is a lower cost of borrowing. It does have an advantage um, doing the individual components. the you typically the rates of interest are lower for that and secondly um the vote that that Melissa is describing that Bosey's wide vote would be a public vote so that isn't a vote by the individual boards it would be the members of the total Boseies all the component districts the residents of those of those districts would have an opportunity to vote and that's the other way that a Boseies can finance

018a project is is not going through the unanimous consent method but the Dazzy method but it is more restrictive method >> it is and um we kind of touch on those points here on the next page which really focuses in in on you know the flexibility of the IMA on the left and then um more stricter um setup there of the dazznney option for you. Um so you can see on the lefth hand side the financing flexibility you are able to determine you know the way you want to finance um you can choose you know cash or you know the short-term bond anticipation note financings or uh serial bonds or a combination thereof as you kind of go through the different payments and cycles there. Um both would impact and have an effect there on

019your annual tax cap calculation. Um and then like David had mentioned there with the DSNY side there with the higher interest cost there's higher cost of issuance to do that type of financing and then the it takes longer to kind of get through that type of financing and then to do the actual project itself and then you're locked in to whatever payment cycle the Boseies chooses then um from there on out and whatever interest rate that was received on that financing. Um, so still kind of focusing in on the overall $49.5 million project. So the the project itself was structured in a way and phased in a way um in order to make each of the five um proposed payments as level as possible. So you'll see the red outline box there at the bottom

020there. Um starting with July of 2027 and going through and including there July of 2031 for each of those five years. Um roughly um pretty level there starting off with total of $9 million and kind of increasing to 10 million and then kind of ramping up just slightly from there. purposefully. Um, you know, a lot of work went into, you know, making that as level as possible so that there wouldn't be, you know, any spikes or dips um in in any of the payments there to to more smoothly bring on and um have those local shares for each district be as smooth as possible. Um and then there's a lot of boxes on this page here, but this is just really related to um how the payments start to flow for Bosey's project and then

021the aid receipt. Um so it's different from your own capital projects. The way that the Boseies projects get aided um is based on the payment or either a cash payment that you make in any particular fiscal year or your debt service principal and interest that you have related to the financing for your payment. So you get aided that same fiscal year based on you know whatever the payment is that you make. So if you're making you know a cash payment you get your aid reimbursement at the end of that fiscal year based on that full cash payment. If you're making a smaller debt service payment, similarly there, you just get aided based on that payment over the longer term there. But um so next we'll switch to your own specific details. Um so we'll just

022need to switch the presentation to the other report. >> The these these slides, by the way, you should have them in your packet in front of you as well. Some of the fonts are small on the screen, but we do have more easily read uh >> documents in front of you. >> It won't use the words. >> Okay. So for your specific district, now focusing on that report, so your share of the $49.5 million total there is red um roughly $2.6 million. Um and then the the breakdown of that per payment of those five years. Um if you can go to the next slide, please. um you'll be able to see in a little bit more detail there um the proposal of your breakdown then for each of those five payments um starting with July

02315th of 2027 for that first payment um in that greenish color shading $478,000 would be the payment that would be due to BOSIES um and then about 532,000 you know kind of reading across that row there you can kind of see what those payments would be um per year, right? So, those are just the actual payments to Boseies. Um, doesn't reflect any aid reimbursement at this point. We'll look at that next. Um, so we're just going to touch on a couple highlevel options for the financing of your share. Um, certainly, you know, working with your own financial advisor and your own local shares and your capital project planning for your own district related pro projects there. Um, and the tax gap calculation that you do have. So, you know, these are just sample schedules. Certainly

024fine-tuning that with your own advisor. Um, but you can see here, so we're going to start off by looking at, you know, what if you paid cash for each of those five payments. So, column A shows you those five payments each fiscal year and the relative payments adding up to that $2.6 million at the bottom of that column A. um the related um aid reimbursement. If you were to make those payments as shown there um based on your current arada ratio and your reimbursement um you know we have the aid calculating there in column B and then the resulting local share uh in column C that you can go to the next page. So, a visual of how that really would work and what you would actually do with those payments there. So, starting from

025the left hand side, kind of going to the to the right there, you see that first green flag. You make your payment July 15th of 2027. Then there's a purple flag there. You're going to receive your aid back based on that payment um by the end of that fiscal year, so June of 2028. Um and then you kind of move forward from there, same cycle as you go through those five payments. Um, so that's cash. Another option that you could do um are issuing shortterm one-year or less bond anticipation notes or BAS. So this schedule um shows you a sample of if you were to do that, you know, what that could look like for, you know, annually on that local share, the aid reimbursement and so forth. So you start with the same kind

026of uh plan there. So column A would be you'd be borrowing each year's share of that and then you would be paying that off. So the principal payments in column A, you know, match exactly to your actual um payment dupe. And then you have interest expense, your estimated interest expense there in column B. Um based on that assumption of a borrowing um column D then shows the resulting um aid Bosey's aid reimbursement. So when you do financings, your aid increases and you get paid aid based on interest expense also. So that's one difference from your regular capital projects. And then you get column E there at the end for local share, you know, based on that option page. And then the the following page after this is just a visual of, you know, how something

027like that could work. um you know subject you know to your own um you know planning there but for example purposes here you have the payment due that starting on the lefth hand side there with that green flag so first payment due to the boseies in July of 2027 you know maybe you're doing the financing around that time frame you're having that you know issuing it having it come due in that same fiscal year paying that off interest expense everything all in the one year you're getting the aid back based on that borrowing similar to the cash schedule um but you just have in a little bit of interest expense now per year instead. Um, and then at the end of the five years, you're done paying that off and then you're done receiving the

028aid at that time. Next page. Um, the last option, um, just to review, you know, what if you were to issue a longer multi-year financing schedule? This one looks at, um, if you were to issue a 15-year financing, you know, what could that look like for your local share there? you could issue a financing up to 30 years. The period of probable usefulness um that would be in your bond resolution um since a reconstruction project for the school buildings would be 30 years. So you do have an option to finance up to that time period. Um but we do have this a sample here kind of show you what it could look like over the years. So similarly, so column A, the principal payments total your $2.6 million share. So you'd be repaying that over

02915 years now versus the five years. Uh same related interest expense for the borrowing over that time frame, the aid then um then the uh local share. So the one benefit of stretching out the payments is that you're able to reduce your annual local share but it is you know stretched out for a longer period of time. So just weighing the pros and cons of that. Any questions about any of that? >> Sure. >> Um, thank you for your presentation. I appreciate it. I'm Dan Brunson. Uh, the, um, aid for building projects comes a year after the payment is made, as I understand. So, as I look at this, it looks as though it would affect our 2728 budget by about half a million dollars, but we could not expect reimbursement for the aid till

030the 2829 uh fiscal year. Am I correct? >> Actually, it would be all in the same year. So, you'd have the expense. So the the five roughly $500,000 of the expense, you know, if you're looking at the cash option and then you can recognize the aid back that same year in 2017. >> Oh, that's great. So you don't have to wait a year for the >> not for both these projects because it's just based on that particular fiscal year. So your regular capital projects you have there's a delay. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. So it's a little different. >> Just related to that. Uh a few years ago you redo you did the uh Terzo floors at the RV center. We redid the exterior of the building. It looks beautiful up there. Uh the they have

031we paid that off yet? I mean that's that's done. >> Yeah, that's done. Um and and I would just say about the the floors. I had a little conversation with Brian about this too. Um when a normal project like it's great news when you run a school component project and the bids come under, right? In a Boseis project, we have to hit those aid targets for our school district. So we have to reach that that expenditure. So we will build alternates to protect the full expenditure um that allow us to make sure that the districts receive the aid flow in that same year. Does that make sense? So so in the in the case of the of the Ormsby component of the project when it went out to bid, we had alternates that allowed us

032to get to some things like the major corridors have have some trazo in them. Not our cause room which needs more flooring stuff not right now but but some of the other places. So those things are a function of those alternates. >> Great. Yeah. And just to finish my train of thought, I want to congratulate you on the welding program at the Orsby Center. A few years ago, I was on a committee with the Chamber of Commerce and we were working with some of the local businesses and they were lamenting the fact that they could not hire welders and you it was before you had a welding program and I remember we contacted you folks. >> That's right. >> And and you jumped right on it and created this this wonderful welding program. the welding

033teacher at the Armsby Center is a graduate of East Aurora High School. >> That's wonderful. >> And and and does a terrific job. So, so I I appreciate the fact that this project uh includes creating a proper welding uh shop. Uh the room that you're using up there was not built to be a welding area. It was it was converted from machine shop or something. >> Thank you for taking care of that. And I think it's important for the people in our chamber of commerce to understand that the Ormsby Center helps to address uh the the needs for the for the the the kind of uh uh uh employees that they need to keep their businesses viable and to keep local graduates employed locally. >> Yeah. >> So, and you've been a great help to

034do that. So, >> thank you, Dan. Thank you. That's how BOSI should work. and thank you for the partnership. >> Any other questions on the financing right now? >> Um, just jumping back to the the authorization of the reconstruction project. I'm just trying to get a little clarification. Is that an either or? So, if it if you did not have a unanimous um decision by all the component districts, does it then jump to the is it ask me? Is that is it either or or how does that work? >> Yeah. Yeah. So um it doesn't mean that Easter has to vote unanimously. It means that the component every single 27 one of our component districts needs to vote for the project for unanimous consent to function. If one district votes against it um we still

035are settled with the responsibility of making sure that our our the the um you'll see this in some of the publications that our facilities are safe, warm, and dry for our kids, you know. So we're going to have to figure out how to do that. That probably means we're going to need to go to the Dazzy method, go to a public vote and re and we're probably going to lose some time on that. So that means again probably reconfigure the project a third time now that that to to make that happen. So um we're very hopeful that our school districts will see also their own self-interest in pursuing it this way because it's the least expensive and most flexible option for schools to finance facility. When was the last time you had um a major

036Bose seas capital project? It's been a long >> 2017 I think I yeah 2017 18 I think was the year that 2018 was the year construction might have began. Okay. >> Um yeah and um I think we did a lot of the work to get get these votes happening in 2017 when we last came out. So it has been some time. We do have a um I say small but it's small considering the scope of 27 component districts and the geography that we serve in four campuses. We have a capital charge annually of about $2 million which allows us to do small things within our own capacity with small projects. Um the the plan to try to get down to $49.5 million includes allowing the aid for school systems to drop down to a $5

037million charge that would be sustained after that to to allow us to defer a large project as long as possible. Does that make sense? So, we're trying to kind of smooth that with the aid so that the districts see a a step down in costs that's offset by this aid revenue and we land at 5 million as a sustained same year aid model to continue with facilities. >> Go ahead. >> Oh, sorry. >> Oh, no. I I just was going to say if you could just clarify what our WA is and how that is determined in terms of our our amount. Um just yeah go ahead. So ARATA is your resident weight weighted average daily attendance. Um so that is the numbers of resident students that you have as a school system. That number is

038locked in with the intermunicipal agreement. Okay. So when it's passed that number moves all the time right like some districts get a little bit bigger some districts might get a little smaller. In general in Western New York we see declining enrollment but East Aurora has has held pretty steady. I mean you you more than many districts. That means that the share for East Aurora um increases as other districts get smaller. Does that make sense? >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Um just a clarification cuz if so in our capital funds projects, if I'm correct, if we go under a little bit on say the floor, um then that can go towards what we're spending on something else as long as it's the same building, same project, right? >> We would we would build alternates in

039for every bid. Okay. would allow us to to um fully expend on the things that we need. You know, um we have a more detailed slide that we had with our our superintendents and business administrators um this morning which showed these were the kinds of things that were the absolute mustd do. >> Here are the kinds of here here's the categories of things that were good to do that we probably need to get to soon at some point but might not be included in the current project. And then there's nice things. You know, we're probably not going to get down to nice things. We have about I mean we have more than I think 30 million of of need to do but need to do in the next few years and those will be the

040things that end up in alternates for us. >> So that's that was my clarification is um cuz I misunderstood that that it's that you still will like the what you're saying is we're still like whatever we ask the money for like we're still going to spend that amount and we need to spend that amount in order to make it aidable. >> That's right. In order to make sure that full aid gets back to >> full aid gets back to Okay. No, but you still have that flexibility is because it flexibility to do those. I hope we get to >> as long as you spend the >> That's right. I I'd be surprised if we get to I hope we get to. I think we're going to get to need to do. Probably not in this

041scope. That's probably where we're going to be chipping away at alternates for this. >> Thank you. Mo most important. Um I think we're going to switch back to the other slide, deck, just real quick. Um I only have a couple other things to just kind of highlight here. Um this is probably the most important. um for superintendents and board members time chart. Okay. And it shows kind of how this all fits together. Um we are um we're right here on on item five, which is a presentation um between March and June of this year of the inter municipal agreement to the Conan districts and hopefully the unanimous consent of our districts to move forward with this option. Um if that if that is to occur and we have all those those adopted by July 1st

042that will allow us during the 26 27 year to get our project which is already ready to go to the department of education and facilities planning. So we have a full year for the department you know how those delays can happen. You you've experienced some of that yourselves and in fact Brian and I have had some conversations about that discussion about SED. Um, so that will happen in 26 and 27. And then our first project, the actual kickoff to the project will happen in July of 2027. That's when construction is beginning. And also that's when the first payment would be due. And um, David, you want to talk a little bit about about the construction schedule. Finally get to talk. I only have one slide though, so it'll reach you, I promise. Okay. So as

043far as construction, we're looking at four phases. What the goal of each phase was to try and have two summers to do work because that minimizes the amount of work that's going to happen during the school year. The first thing we're going to do is work on districtwide technology. So the first summer we're going to be in two buildings. Example would be say Ormsby and the Carrier Center one summer uh with a little bit of second shift I might add. And then the other would be Luis and Hughes the other summer. So that's how we're going to break up that and that's also to make it more attractive for contractors so we have more competitive bids so we can do more. Then we get to phase two for Hughes. You can see how that's in

04429 and 30 two summers. Ormsby unfortunately we have to wait until 30 and 31 to do that. And then Carrier and Luitus that is actually out in 31 and 32 because of the MCA resets. If we had that earlier, we were going to go over the maximum cost allowance. So that was locked in right away at the beginning so we could maximize aid. So that's it. I mean it's it's a 5 years worth of work, four phases. Um any questions on the schedule? >> Um I think I I highlighted this when I was talking about the timeline. One thing that's happening for the um Erie 2 Boseis board is in April we'll be adopting the SQA and the intermunicipal agreement as at Boseies um and then we're asking for the during this window for the

045districts to adopt adopt the um I made the the unanimous consent and then those payments would begin in July of 2027. Any other questions for us? You've been very generous with your time. We're grateful. We know we've given you an awful lot of information tonight, but thank you uh to the members of the board and superintendent for giving us this time to talk to you about this project. >> Thanks, Dr. So and his team have done an excellent job. All the superintendent all the details. um talk to our financial advisor, you know, about the project and we will be prepared at the next meeting to bring you some um ideas of how we can finance it. Uh and then we can have further discussions at that time. Uh so again, thank you uh for this

046work at this project which is very complicated uh but it'll be really great for our kids when it's all said and done. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Uh we're going to move on to uh item six. Uh uh a superintendent recommends uh that the board accept the reg resignations resation for the purpose of retirement of Carrie Allen Carrie Allen school nurse effective June 30th. May I have a motion? >> Moved by Mr. Blau. Second >> second. Any discussion? All in favor? >> I abstensions MP >> recommends the board uh accept the resignation for purpose of retirement. Walter McLaclin uh physical education teacher to coach effective June 30th 2026. Motion moved by Miss Daniel. Second. >> Second by Mrs. Whitel. Any discussion? All

047in favor? >> I opposed abstensions. >> On to item C. The superintendent recommends uh resignation for purpose of retirement of Sharon Zagrazenski of fifth grade teacher effective June 30th 2026. May I have a motion? So moved by Miss second by Mr. Bowers discussion. >> Uh yeah, I'd just like to thank uh take a moment to uh congratulate our three retirees and thank them for the amazing careers that they've had. uh I think Mr. Cassidy said it's a combined um years of 74 years of service to the district and each and every one of them in their own way as a nurse as teacher and a fifth grade teacher have really made a huge difference for our our students have been great teammates for their colleagues um and this is what makes Easter great is people

048like this and we're just so thankful for their work and we wish them the very best and we will be celebrating with them in June uh at our board meeting. So again congratulations Thank you. Uh all in favor? I >> opposed abstensions. That two is passed second. Uh we're moving on to item seven, committee member comments. Uh before we get to any u submitted a card, uh I just want to review with the board uh emails that we've received since our last meeting ago. uh we received uh on the 6th of March from Roxan Perry uh with regards to uh the podcast episode with uh Mrs. Misano. Uh we received a uh an email on the 9th uh from Just Alliance which was an invitation to the wellness day and another one from uh uh

049Roxanne Perry on the 9th uh for another podcast episode. this one featuring our student board members. Just want to confirm that everyone received those and had a chance to review them. Thank you all. Do we have any cards that were submitted for discussion tonight? Excellent. So, with that, we will move on to item eight, superintendent comments. >> Uh, yeah, just a couple of comments. Um, first, um, I'd like to thank the crew that put on our wellness day. Um, Miss Lions, Mrs. Swinich, um, and Mr. Brown, uh, did a fantastic job of having how many beds? >> 75 sessions for our our staff to choose from. Uh, they had massage therapy, they had people stretching, people, yoga, pilates, and they even had a mobile, a sauna, and cold plunge that was extremely popular with our

050staff. And so the gentleman that that runs it tells all the health benefits um from from using a sauna in cold plunge. It's a a Finnish uh sauna and people in Finland there's 7 million people and half million sauna. So there's uh and their health benefits are are noted. Yes. I honestly it's >> so they're continuously in the sauna. >> They're continuously in the sauna. Yeah. So and they are very healthy. They're like the healthiest uh nation in the in the world I guess. So, um, so we've really enjoyed it. It's just a great way to celebrate and, uh, tons of positive feedback about taking the time to do that for the staff, especially at this time of the year. You know, we've been through a lot kind of a crazy winter and, you know,

051to decompress a little bit together was was very, very successful. We had a great keynote speaker that talked about functional longevity. A lot of positive feedbacks around that as well. So, it was just a really great day. And then on Friday night, um it was the my talent show and I have to say that was my one of the best evenings of the year. Uh the talent was amazing. Uh the students who were there are just celebrating each other, families, great turnout. It was just a super wonder. So I really loved it. Great. Thank you very much. Uh we will move on to uh item 9A. Uh, are there any administrators who have anything to share tonight? Mr. Rob, happy belated birthday. >> What was that? >> Happy belated birthday. It was it was our

052last meeting kept scrolling. I couldn't miss it. So, tomorrow is the day uh that Brian Balmages, who is a worldrenowned um conductor and composer of music, and he has written pieces specifically for our five and six band, our seventh and eighth grade band. and he was here all day today working with our seventh and eighth graders for a few hours. Uh and then tomorrow he'll be working with our fifth and sixth graders and then at the concert tomorrow night he will be a guest conductor and will come on this stage and work with the students. Uh Mr. Wilmore explains him to me I'm more of a sports guy that he is like the Michael Jordan of um you know composing music for bands. He is literally um you know known by by all the music

053gurus. And the feedback today I did not stop in. I tried to and I didn't make it. Was incredible. The buzz in the building was huge. The students are so excited. So I can't wait to go to the rehearsals tomorrow to see with my own eyes. Um but tomorrow night is the concert at the high school at 7:00 and we're hoping to pack the house. So I would encourage you if you're able to come out, we would love to have you there. Would these be available to school districts across the country? Right. >> Yeah. So after the world premiere of this music, by the way, he came and visited and did research on East Aurora. So the music is actually about East Aurora. Um there's going to be like parts of the Royoft that that

054are, you know, symbolized in certain piece or certain music um or components of the song. So it is about East Aurora. And then after the world premiere tomorrow night, other schools can uh select this piece of music to play for years to come. >> Any royalties from that? >> I don't know. >> Probably the foundation does because they made the grant. They're paying for >> just a plug to the foundation as well. Mr. Wilbour did write a grant to the foundation. So they made it possible to to bring it in and just this experience that our our students can have. Great. Thanks. >> Any other administrators? >> Um I'd just like to um acknowledge our literacy committee did did a fantastic job at last week's literacy event. Um a ton of positive feedback. Our kids

055were happy. Um we had a Highland cow in the front of our building. uh kids free to the Highland Cow and it was just an amazing night. So, I want to acknowledge our teachers who worked truly um a lot of hours to to make that happen. And I I just want to also um share that next Friday, this upcoming Friday, we have Michael Patrick uh O'Neal, who is a an author of children's books. He's also a photographer. He'll be coming on over to um Parkdale to share his story. um he does a lot of work with environmental issues as well as um children's books in the area of um uh animals and uh conservationist. So he uh will be coming to see us on Friday and the kids are excited um and we're looking forward

056to his visit. >> And the cow was really cool. So I hope you have a picture of that in your next newsletter because big great cow. I'll have little >> I've never seen anyone like >> all over the place. You're adorable. >> Thank you. >> Others, Mr. Lombardo, I'll kind of set up the winter season. We've got obviously a lot going on and I'll stand kind of behind everybody. Um back on really the day of the last board meeting, we had 10 seniors um signed. We have a senior signing ceremony and class of our size and our senior. just really speaks to the level of work that they put in, the coaches put in, the support of the board. 10 seniors signed, we already know we're going to do another one in May and have

057four more. So that's at least and I think a few more 14 of our seniors going on to compete collegially after they graduate Easter. Um so those are always kind of great days and having the families there, it's just always good moments for those kids to see their hard work and and the reward they get. Um we did have two division winners in the in the winter. Um boys basketball, boys swimming. Um and then into playoffs for and why I was on at the last board meeting is we had our girls playing at Bus State. Um for those who don't know, they had two games at Bus State this year and you can thank the graduates from a few years ago who started petition for the reason why we had multiple games at Bus State

058which kind of matched the boy schedule as well. Um they played the Saturday before and then um unfortunately through a great experience but lost on the fourth um in the section final against Dew. Um we had two section champions individually on the track as both the boys and girls nights won um the small school section six title. Um they went on the boys were sixth at states and the girls were eighth in the small school category of the state meet. Um and then going through our teams and I never want to miss anybody. our teams that earn scholar athletes, boys basketball, girls basketball, unified bowling, boys swimming, boys indoor track, girls indoor track, and wrestling. Um, kind of talk about the the athletics and the academics together at one. So, and we're we're up and

059going. We got spoiled a little bit as our spring sport started with a 60° day one. Reality set in yesterday is we had to move everybody inside. So, manage on schedule. >> Thank you, Mr. Lombardo. Any other administrators? I'll just share um depending on how long the meeting goes tonight, our Deca Club is sponsor is working with McDonald's um and 15% of the sales tonight go to our Deca Club. So, I'm just saying that if we out at a reasonable time, we can all go to McDonald's. >> No pressure. Um I did look They close at 11:30. Um, we can do this. I don't know. Shamrock shakes on Mr. Brown. Not. >> All right. Thank you, uh, Mr. Roberts. Uh, last call for administrators. All right. Thank you all for being here. Uh, we're going

060to move on to item 10. And I'm going to throw a curveball and go completely backwards. And I'm going to start uh with Mr. Fry. >> Yeah. Um so >> he's um uh I Charlie and I both want to thank Miss Perry for having me on the podcast and talk about our ex official role here on the board of education. Um you mentioned about the Vital Talent show. um I was able to attend that myself and it was phenomenal just to see everyone time and uh really feel obviously a part of our school and that also tied into inclusion week which is going on right now at all three buildings and I've seen great participation um from all the grade levels so that's been absolutely phenomenal. Um today a number of high school students were

061at UB at a leadership conference. Um they brought back a bunch of ideas for future years and events and campaigns that they can bring to our school here. And lastly, I want to talk about um a fundraiser we're doing for St. Jude Children's Hospital. Um I passed out a sheet to all you guys here. Um so last year uh I sort of started this event um with our student government and we're doing it again this year. Um, last year was just really for high school students. Um, but this year it's throughout all three buildings. The high school will have a walk on the 31st of March at 2:00 and the middle school will also be having a walk that same day. Um, and then all three buildings will be participating in spirit days here, which

062are labeled at the bottom of the poster. Um, so on Friday the 27th, there will be a sports day. Monday the 30th, a hat day. And Tuesday the 31st will be red and white for St. Jude which will be the day of the walk. Um so students need to raise $50 whether that's texting family members, grandparents, parents um to get that $50 to participate in the walk and that'll be during the school day like I said the high school 2:00 and the middle of school. We're still deciding. Um is there any questions about that? >> Okay, >> that's awesome. Thank you very much, Mr. Bruns. I have nothing this even else. >> I have nothing but I just think that's awesome that you organized that. Good job. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Blowers. >> Nothing.

063>> Um, two things. Last Monday, I think it was, we had the community engagement meeting which you attended. I'll let you talk about that. Um, but I think it's it's positive and I think that getting the community together or conversations is everybody starting to talk more and wanting ways to interact more and I thought that was positive. So, I'll let you discuss that. But on the 20th, I attended the um with Miss George the regional grid capacity seminar that was originally scheduled and then there was a snowstorm. Um I will share with everyone when I get the slides from that and they're worth looking over because it definitely it was mainly centering around the electric buses the mandate um mainly centering around that that any new buses purchased from 2027 on have to be zero

064emissions. But there are waivers so you can get a 2-year waiver for that. But then by 2030, is it 2030? By 2030 is any new buses purchased. Obviously, we're in a slightly different situation because we don't own our own fleet, but it was it was very um there's so much information, you know, little things like just in Western New York there's 1,720 buses. And the question that people had was can the electrical grid report that they were able to. they because there are districts that have started doing it and because they have a lot of pilot programs going out. There's many many kinks that they have to work out and 2030 may be a little soon to work out all those kinks cuz they're working them out now but there's lots of little things like

065universal chargers and um all of that. So there are there are kings to work out but there are schools that are already purchasing um obviously because of the mandate coming up and uh the interesting thing they said is basically every school district can handle probably three to four buses on their current grid. Well, what happens is as soon as you add, you know, 120 buses or whatever to your school district, how do you increase the power there? And what they did say is it's not just the the electric buses that'll increase the power. It's other things coming into your community. So maybe there's an Amazon warehouse being built, maybe there's new apartments being built, whatever it is. So, it's that's not the only thing that's adding to the grid, but it's the school districts that

066would pay for it. So, they're trying to find ways around that and how to make that aidable. Um, and it's between 50 and 90% and our percentage would probably be 50%. So, um, so it is a cost that we need to keep in the back of our minds because there's there's not going to be an escape from it. But what they did say is right now there is a lot of money out there and we should be thinking about starting the process of applying for that money cuz the getting it will take a while. So there is money to fund some of this but we won't as a district we're we're not going to get all of it's not going to be completely reimburseable for us but there will be some offsets. Um they also

067talked about that it's not just the buses that are that will be electric is the one reason why the grids will need to improve why we'll need more power is because of all of the other things. So, not just new buildings or whatever, but it's as new um all of the other upgrades, for example, air conditioning units and electrical stoves and all of the other upgrades that will start to happen and be mandates, those will also um add on to the grid for school districts. So, I encourage the board to um like I said, I'll send out what they gave us on their slideshows. some really excellent graphs that go through just different scenarios, different busing systems, and just something I think and I think this is not I think it is going to be

068a little slower walk than what they want it to be because they're working out um they're working out kinks like making sure you have maximized roots roots that you're doing. Um, and then there the as the pilot programs are going out, they're discovering things like, oh, right, there's this is in the aderondex and this is a mountainous area and we can't get this bus this level of bus up the mountains. So, we'd have to use something else. So, they're working out those kind of kinks. Um, so it'll it's going to be a process, but it will happen. Like there's no way it's not going to happen. So, we just have to be prepared. So, check out the slides. Yeah, that was it. >> The only thing Mr. Bowers, Mr. Brunson, and I attended the budget

069and finance uh committee meeting and that is on for later discussion with the budget presentation. So, I'll just wait, but we did go to that last week, I think it was. So, >> thank you very much. And uh I will just add that um the uh I just want to echo superintendent's comments about the specifically the wellness day and the unified talent show. Uh both uh great events and uh I can't wait for next year's talent show. Um the uh community engagement uh committee met uh a week ago and it was last week, right? Last Monday. Um it's all it's all blur. Um uh and we we that's where we meet with uh uh Mr. Russ and uh some of the uh administrators as well as uh people from around uh the community. Uh and

070so we heard uh update from Mr. Russ on the the uh the budget process and the uh the work that's being done to uh improve our our grading system. Um, we heard updates from all of the building uh principles and uh some of our other administrators as well. And then uh three of the uh community members were there uh talking to us about the SPSA uh Parkdale PTO and the parks and wreck uh for the town of Aurora. Um all very very good updates and I agree with uh Mrs. or Dr. sentiments that that it's it's it's a great conversation and the more we have those conversations with the members of the community, the more we get our message out there and the more we learn and it seems like there's opportunities for collaboration that

071come up in those meetings. So, uh really really good meeting. Um the uh other things that I want to touch on are uh so uh my my uh at every meeting if you aren't subscribed to BDTV please subscribe to BDTV on YouTube it's where we post these meetings uh some of our sporting events and the uh affirm mentioned uh podcast videos uh which I had the uh opportunity to record one um maybe yesterday. >> Uh so look forward to that. Um and uh the last thing I just I just want to personally um uh think and recognize what Mr. Lombardo brought up uh which was the girls basketball getting a chance to play at the uh play their semifinals for sectionals uh at the uh at the uh gym at Buff State. Um it's been

072a two-year uh process and I want to thank Mr. Lombardo and uh and Mr. Roberts and uh Mr. for uh Russ as well as uh the coaching staff for the girls basketball for their support of the uh the girls who started that petition uh and the team in general. Um the the two co- captains who started it got to be at that game. Um and uh I appreciate uh Mr. Oler from the advertiser doing a follow-up sort of closing the loop uh on that because he he had interviewed them two years ago. So, it's really nice to see um that sort of progress made and uh I know that it's something that uh uh will make a difference. Uh that is what I have. So, we are going to move on. Uh actually, before we

073move on, um we're a minute early. If you guys go quickly, I don't think Mr. Roberts and Mr. Most people notice seniors have met your requirements. You can do All right, great. Uh, thank you to everyone. >> Uh, we're going to make one. Uh no, we're going to move on to item 11, uh legislation updates. Um um yeah, sure. So we, um you have included the uh the new mandatory disabled veterans tax exemption was included in your So we'll be uh happy to address that uh in a coming meeting. Thank you, Mr. Russ. Uh, moving on to item 12. We are going to move the uh uh capital facilities project. >> Good evening everyone. Um, tonight is all about money. Apparently, there's a lot of budget talk and a lot of budget numbers to present.

074Um, I know I was here just last month, um, but there have been a couple updates in the construction project that, uh, Mr. Russ felt it was a good idea for me to come out and give another update, just a much more brief one this time. Uh kind of where we stand financially with the capital project. Um so construction is still going well. Uh there haven't really been any hiccups aside from the expected pieces, pipes behind walls, things that we weren't expecting to find in floors. When you rip out things that are 100 years old, you're going to find some things that were not ideal. Um, as a matter of fact, last month, I think I was here on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, and I said we hadn't hit anything big and unexpected. And

075the next morning, I got a call from Zach that all the walls up in the upper portion of the library were really crooked and needed to be addressed. Um, so we actually had to rip out a lot of old plaster and reframe a bunch of the walls up there, and that was sort of an unexpected change that had to happen. Um, but the good news is that the contingency on the capital project is covering that. Uh, we still have about $225,000 in actual contingency money. That's money that Buffalo Construction set aside after bid day. I think we started with around $400,000, maybe a little bit less than that, 350 to handle things like this that come up, things that have to be cut and capped or fixed that we would not have accounted for. Um

076unlike Boseies however where they need to hit a dollar amount we cannot exceed a dollar amount. So if we all remember when we opened bids um we had a larger project submitted to state education and put a series of alternates in the project. Alternates for various areas of this building, the first floor by the district office, renovations to the front conference room, renovations to the superintendent's office, some other work in other areas of the building. those items were not accepted, so to speak. They were they were cut from the project on bidday to get where we are now. Um, at that time, we said we were going to hold off until we were done with major demolition to figure out what we could do with the remaining money cuz we had a little bit of

077a slush fund left. Right now, we have a slush fund, $281,000. This is independent of that $225,000 in contingency. So, all in all, it's close to 500,000. Buffalo Construction and Young and Wright both collectively feel that now is the time to spend some of that money, to allocate some of that money. Um, so over the last month, our team put together uh a list of items to consider. And before I get to that, actually, I want to hit on this. What is already accounted for uh to make sure that everyone's on the same page. Um, we've already created an office space on the second floor for Mr. Meddy. Um that way he has a place to actually go cuz his office was originally cut from the job and he was going to move into our

078office up in Buffalo. Um right next to the barber shop in the pizzeria. Um the upper walls in the library have been accounted for and are being repaired. Um and there are new roller shades already being procured for the entire district office area on the front. Those are in really rough shape. So this is already done. there's still $281,000 left. So, considering that, uh, we put together new designs or revised designs to break up the remaining portion of work that was already approved by the state and got pricing for it. Uh, the numbers that you see on the screen are numbers that came back from the contractor. In total, about $420,000 in work. Obviously, not all of that is capable of being done. So to break this out and explain some of these in detail,

079uh the first floor corridor, the most expensive additional item on that list are the hallways outside of the middle school office down the hallway past the district office uh and by the superintendence area. All new floors, lights, ceilings, paint. This would finish the entirety of the first floor. The rest of the first floor of this building is getting renovated in the project. this area as it was not a studentf facing area was put on that alternate list. This would be uh an amount of money to finish the first floor of the building in the hallways. Um a an additional separation and door, a much smaller cost item, but providing a little bit more privacy to the conference room area as well as uh Mr. Russ's office in the front. renovations, a facelift to that first

080floor conference room, demolition of the little closet room that's in the corner there, flooring, ceilings, lights, uh minimal mechanical upgrades, all kinds of finish improvements, renovations to the superintendent suite on the other side, flooring, ceilings, lights, some electrical outlets as well. Um our recommendation from all of that is to proceed with a handful of those items, not all of them. Um, we believe it makes the most sense to proceed with the corridor renovations. It is a big ticket item, but it finishes something that has been a goal of the project from the beginning to take care of the hallways in the building. Um, the also think if the two other recommendations are at the bottom. Um, and then the glass door was just kind of trying to fill in the last bit of money that

081was left there. Um, in that 281,000. Um, the additional window shades. Uh, this would be buying window shades for the district to install for the rest of the front of the building. I guess a couple window shades actually fell down in the last few weeks from screws pulling out of the walls and the age of them right now. Um, and then camera system upgrades. This has been a discussion at numerous owners meetings and and construction meetings over the last year to make improvements to the security systems in the district. Christiey's around here somewhere. There she is. Um, so this would be an investment in the camera system to make those improvements. That got us to around $260,000. And then, like I said, the additional door to sort of get closer to that 281. Um, any

082remaining balance of that 281 would just bump into the contingency. And an important thing to remember on that, if this is indeed the direction that we proceed, is that if the contingency money isn't used, I would expect some of it to be used. If it isn't used, we could continue to proceed to add more to the project as we go through the summer months and into the fall. We don't want to let the job linger for too long. We have to hit a financial closeout date. Um, but it would be uh too early in our opinion to spend the entire contingency down until we actually have drywall up in all the spaces and the contractors are really putting things back in place just in case something comes up uh that we don't want to account

083for. That is our recommendation for how to proceed with this. Um, obviously open for discussion and question, but we think this is the best plan of attack that stays consistent with the original intent of the capital project. >> Thank you. Any questions on this side? >> What did you say? >> Any questions? >> Decision or is that the decision? >> Yeah, I guess it's up for discussion. Paul, you know, that's kind of uh Steve and I sat down and went through it all together and and again looking at the numbers, what makes the most sense. We really want to finish the hallways off so that everything's connected and looks good. it's been years in the making and so we thought that was the first priority and then we kind of fit the other pieces in

084with as Steve said there's you know still there not a contingency we could take a few more things off the list but if something blows up and we spend another 50,000 we don't want to do that now until we know we're we're in a good place >> we're also going forward >> yeah makes how you feel about all that >> I around view of it. >> It seemed like he was close to anything else. >> Oh, I just The glass door is that just straight down there. It's going to be a door >> all the way at the end. Yeah, just in front of the conference room and uh Brian's office. >> Does it lock? Will it lock? >> That one doesn't lock. There is another door here past the middle school office that does

085lock. That's in the $200,000 number that was in there to separate the district office for security and separation completely. So, right where the tile ends right now, there'd be a door that goes in there that has a card key fob card on it to separate the students from the the district office wing. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I like the idea of finishing that home. >> Thank you. Ju just to be clear, the what you're recommending does not include the work that you detailed in the superintendent's office or the conference room across the hall. >> No. So, so those those are the two things that you detailed that are not included correct >> in the recommendation but could possibly be done with contingency uh once we see whether we need it or not for the

086summer work that >> Yep. Absolutely. And then in from a logistical standpoint, those are both isolated spaces. Sorry, it might disrupt you and Sue, but like those rooms could be closed and work could extend past the summer months if necessary. work in the hallways would be significantly harder to accomplish in September or October. >> I appreciate the fact that the superintendent has postponed the work in his primary areas until the work that affects uh the rest of the building is completed. So you need we should work do the best we can to do the needed updates in his office and the room across the hall because uh you know for instance that little bathroom was built in 1916 and it looks so >> I'll donate a can of painted on a weekend. He's not paying

087attention. May I ask if just for clarification for in case somebody happens to watch the meeting um just for clarification when it comes to c capital funds projects can you just reexlain to us when there is some sort of leftover money >> um that where where that money can go like it can go here but can it go to the high school can it go to the elementary school like can you >> depending on the wording in the project referendum so you're only allowed to a spend up to what the community was was told would be expended. So $22 million in the project. 223 I think was the number. Not a penny more than 223 can be expended. Additionally, the work that can be done is only allowed to be done that was written in

088the referendum. So, if the referendum wording to the community said ceiling replacements, we could do ceiling replacements anywhere in the district or at whatever building it was mentioned at, but you couldn't do floors. So, the wording, you have to be honest with the community and you can't change that scope without going back and communicating that to the community again in another vote and referendum. Um, and the third part is you can only do work at a building that has an active construction number with the state education department. So, right now we have one number left open for this project. All the work at the high school is done. The work uh at Parkdale is done. The middle school is the only building that has an active construction project number. All of the work we're doing,

089including the hallways, the offices, all of that was submitted to the state education department, approved, and is under a certain building permit. Um, that is all we're able to do within those guidelines. >> Thank you so much. But that's a question that comes up in those. >> Thank you. >> If I can just add on to that, dollars that are allocated for the facilities cannot be used in our general fund. So when the boat boat happens, it has to be just done. Uh the work that has to be done in the facilities is all that it can pay for. So we can't move it over and pay for a program or a position. That's not allowed. >> Doesn't go back in a pot. I just well so seeing that we're going into the contingency uh

090a considerable amount we don't foresee any uh uncovering any crooked walls in the work work that has yet to be done. >> No, the majority of everything has been demoed now. Things are being put back together. I actually believe Mr. Brunson, you may have taken a small tour last week with >> Yes. with uh Mr. Deckard and uh one of your um construction managers, >> Zach. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I couldn't remember his name, but yeah, we had a nice tour of uh of the library and and an explanation of how it how it's going >> from from what we're expecting, new drywall should be going up in the coming weeks. Um so, we're past heavy demolition. Uh there will be some unforeseen that we don't know in the hallways. That's the only risk here

091when we get to taking the floors out in the hallways. But those spaces are different in terms like we're not removing walls in the hallways. We're just taking up floors. So there's a chance we'll find some areas that need to get patched, but not to the level of what we're what we experienced upstairs. >> All right. So that that's what I assume. Uh any other questions? You good? >> Thank you for being here. >> Thank you for moving me up in the agenda. >> You're welcome. Uh we are moving on to back up to item A, the uh instructional calendar alliance. >> I'm going to stand up. >> Okay. Okay. You all have a copy of it, right? Okay. So, just for some a little background knowledge for any of our new members. Oh, sorry.

092Um, for any of our new members, what happens with the um when we develop the um calendar for the following school year is we take into account the um number of days that students have to be in attendance which is at least 180 and we add in some for snow days. Um we take into consideration the teachers uh contractual days they have to work which is 188 and then um of course the Bosey's calendar that they share with us once they approve it. So after we um look at all of those things, uh Mr. Manrey and I make a draft to bring to the calendar committee. If we didn't start with a draft, we'd be there forever. Um and the calendar committee um consists of a teacher from each of the three buildings, including Mrs.

093Converse. And so we met, I don't even know, a couple weeks ago, and we go back and forth a little bit. So this is the final calendar that we came up with. And I'll just briefly go through it month by month. Um and I'll address Kim your question in your email about the spring break. So on September, we'll have staff development days on September 1st and 2nd. Students will have to start on the 3rd uh and the 4th. Uh Labor Day is really late this year. That's why it's kind of wonky in the beginning um of the year. Um October 9th, uh the day before the long weekend will be a superintendent conference day. Indigenous people's day is the 12th. November brings us Veterans Day and the Thanksgiving holiday. And we schedule the staff development

094day the Wednesday before the Thanksgiving holiday. We found that there's been really low student attendance on that day when we do have student attendance. Uh uh December 4th is another staff development day for UPK through 8th grade. They'll have parent teacher conferences on that day and the high school will have staff development. Um for the uh December holiday, we have um a week and a half off, not two weeks like we had this year unfortunately. Uh we'll resume on January 4th. Uh January 18th is Martin Luther King Day. Um and then we have the midterm uh and regions week at the end of January there. Uh moving up to February, we'll start our second semester on February 1st. Uh we've been able to keep in that February break uh as have most schools in Erie

095County, I believe. Um March, uh Easter is really early this year. So um the March 26th through April 2nd will actually be spring recess. So we'll edit that in the middle column here where it says March 2027. We'll edit it to say the 26th through the 31st will be spring recess. Uh we won't um refer to the 26th as Good Friday, but it is officially a holiday. We'll resume on April 5th. April 30th will be our staff development day. We usually have it like in the middle of March like we did last week, but because of how um short of a time span there is between the February and um spring recess and there's a really long span of time between the April and Memorial Day, we added in at the end of April. Then

096we have Memorial Day and then we end with uh regions week and Junth is June 18th. Uh the last day for students will be June 25th and then we'll have another teacher uh staff development day on June 28th. So all of the numbers add up there are added up for you there at the bottom. Um and again we'll make that change in the middle column there for spring recess. Are there any questions? >> We're voting on that tonight. >> What's this? We're voting on that tonight. >> If it's approved tonight, I will send it out. Uh I had quite a few parent call parents call me um asking because they're trying to plan with the wonky Labor Day. They don't want know whether to plan a vacation that first week of September or not. So,

097>> an unusual start of the school year with students coming before Labor Day. Yeah, other schools there some are coming before, some are starting after, but again they're working with different um parameters than we are, such as teachers coming in in August or teachers having less contractual days too. So that's why we do have to start before Labor Day. >> How was the student enrollment before? Because that happened a few years ago and I remember something about the student not enrollment, sorry, the student attendance. Yeah. coming. I I'm not sure >> it happens the sooner we can communicate it out. It it does happen every once in a while. This is the latest Labor Day. Happens every five, six years. Um we just communicate it frequently and early and make the best of it. Some

098families will still go, you know, yeah, a lot of them don't want to miss the first couple days of school, especially if they they have little ones. They want to be there for all the supply drop off and the meet and greets and stuff. So, you know, the sooner we get it out, the hopefully hopefully the better. >> You're welcome. >> Good. >> So, the one that we approved tonight, we'll have that one change. We don't We're not going to be >> Yeah. By the time that the email today, she didn't have time to change it for me to give it to you, but but everyone when we approve it, that will be your Yes. Yeah. Yes. >> All right. Uh, thank you very much. Moving on to B, uh, the, uh, high school curriculum

099catalog. Here's the first song on back there. So, Bill is passing out the full curriculum guide, but we want to start with some of our updates from the courses that I shared with you last year. Um, the first one was book society. That was a half-year course for one credit. 23 students were enrolled, so that was a pretty healthy elective attendance. Um, and then our other two kind of supplemented each other, but we did basic woodworking and home improvement. So, they were each a half-year course, one credit each, 28 students in basic woodworking and 18 in home improvement. So, those are both really good enrollment numbers. We're only proposing new um one new course for this coming year, and you'll find that in the handbook on page 32. But there's a new New York State

100mandate for financial literacy, and we would like to pilot a course before we mandate it for all students. So, that course is going to be money matters. We're hoping it will be for 10th graders um complimentary of health. So, they would take health one semester and then money matters that second semester. And it's going to be a half-year course for all students to graduate with those financial literacy skills. Um they'll work on topics like managing income, spending and basic banking, understanding their taxes, credit, insurance, and debt, and just how to make informed financial decisions as they leave high school and become adults. Um the culminating project at the end of this course is going to be a guide to adulting project. So students will get to apply all of the learning in a practical hands-on

101way. Um, and this would cover that New York State requirement for financial literacy. Any questions on that? Since that's norm. >> What do they currently do for the other semester of opposite health? >> Um, normally it's an elective. Sometimes it's a study hall. It's kind of different for every student, but we figure that's a natural place and a good grade level to start it at. And then if there's interest, they can continue on in business. >> What's a grade level? I didn't hear you. >> 10th grade. 10th grade. Okay. Um since health um other grades as well take that um is money matters just for sophomores or will that also be sort of health where some juniors take it if they didn't take it? >> Some people depending on schedules might have to move. Yeah,

102that happens with health sometimes where they started in 10th grade. We would never have a freshman in health. But if a schedule doesn't allow, we always move it. >> But the goal would be 10th grade. >> Was that >> it is? Yeah. And we do we infuse a lot of this in economics and um career and finance but to have a defined course to make sure it's covered will be really helpful. >> My question is just how does this um complement or different than if >> so right now we have those under our business electives. So some students take career and finance, some students take accounting, all of them take economics, but really it's not mandated for every single student. So with this New York state mandate, they're actually going to eventually go to middle

103school and elementary school, too. So students will get some sort of financial literacy K to 12. So we're just >> Yeah, those would all be business electives. Yeah. And the hope would be again if the kids take it in 10th grade and it's something that's interesting, they might feed more into those business courses. >> Um I don't know. probably not too much, but more of um so future financial planning is more focused on their future where in 10th grade it's more of just that basic money skills and how to get a job, how to apply for a job, how to start a bank account where I think future financial would be a little more. They'd probably need more math skills and, you know, a little more paired with accounting. And we do cover a lot

104in economics now, but even economics being a half-year class, that's a lot to by senior year, they have jobs, they have cars, they have loans, they have things. So moving that younger is not a bad idea. Um but we like to try a class first before we mandate it for all students. So we're hoping next year's that pilot year then we can move forward. >> And also say uh the uh the culminating guide is in line with credit. >> Oh yeah. And we've I don't want to say joked but we have there's this like comment about adulting. We wanted to have like a life adult class for health. We had health and society that Mr. Lombardo taught. So their kids need these life skills and the joke about like adultting is really practical. I would

105say when they leave sometimes I'm like what you did how you did what with your money and so it'll be it's interesting. >> So that's our new proposed actual course for next year. >> I was going to ask with the guide to adultting if we could add that to our adult education offerings. >> I was going to say >> some of the adults. Um, and then the other one mentioned here, I don't know if you remember from last year, but we spent a lot of time talking about the Aurora Production Academy. We were trying to take our film academy and kind of cater it to what the kids wanted and what they needed and where the jobs were going. Um, so we did that, but the next year we're going to offer it more as

106standalone classes. So now you have to package each of those classes together, and that's tough to have all those courses in a kid's schedule. So, we're still going to offer every single class individually, but the students don't need them all together to be part of the academy, if that makes sense, just based on interest and kind of changing ideas. And then in our to be considered for the future list, we always kind of have this running and when the teachers meet with us during master scheduling, they give us ideas or, you know, they're always brainstorming of what would be an awesome class. So, we keep this list running. But just to share a few, um, English lab, this would be an intensive lab focusing on the science of reading. That's an evidence-based approach to reading

107and writing. And this would really zero in on decoding skills, vocabulary acquisition, complex sentence structure, almost similar to what you would see in a college comp class. Um, so breaking down words and letters and syllables and improve their reading and writing skills to match all grade level courses. Another idea was AIS Spanish. Um, this would just be like our academic intervention services we use for math. Um, right now we have math, English, we don't have science yet, and we have social studies. So, this would help kids who are struggling in Spanish courses to be able to have additional help. Um, another idea that we don't have a ton of detail on yet was just some sort of inclusive Spanish language culture and unified Spanish. Um, we have a few special education students who push into

108our Spanish classes and that's been really meaningful like all of our unified, but just some way to kind of add in culture and unified program and add that into the world language classes. And then lastly, restorative practice freshman seminar. Um, this isn't necessarily new. We have right now Kim Riser and Lindsay McAnnanders are kind of piloting it. So, all of our freshmen have a random sixth day in their cycle against their science labs and their PE classes. Usually, it's a study hall. So, they might have a study hall on only E days or only A days. Um, right now they're pulling groups of freshmen to do freshman seminars and they're handling topics like study skills, um, how to succeed in high school, how to get included and, you know, join clubs and activities. and it's

109been really meaningful. It's just another chance to do circles, not just in our 15-minute freshman advisory, but in a whole 40-minute period. Um, so they're always kind of brainstorming and trying to find ways where we can define that restorative practices into our schedule. And our high school schedules are pretty packed. So, anytime we try to add something and it's tough, but we're just looking at having it set in their schedules on that sixth day. So, it' be in power school, they would have an assigned teacher, the students would have it in their schedule, they could take attendance. Um, so doing what we're doing this year, but just signing it to a class period. Any other questions? >> Do any of your recommendations require additional staffing? >> Um, no, not necessarily. It would just be depending

110if they could fit it in with what they're teaching already. So, for example, for the English lab to work, we would have to hope that an English teacher has a section in their schedule where they can fit it. But for instance, the for the Aurora Production Academy, you said it was not offered this year um in U 26 27 it's not offered. >> Yeah. So it was offered this year but the students have to take all of the courses together next year. >> Yeah. So next year we're not running it as a production academy. We're just offering the courses individually. I see. >> So they can still take broadcasting, they can still take film. It just doesn't have to be all put together to be in the program. And the money matters is covered by

111the business department with the current staff staff. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you. >> I didn't see uh the community. >> My watch just told me it was almost time to go to bed, but I do my best. I'm not joking. It's set for 8:45. Um, I'm just going to give you an update on some of the work our grading committee has been doing. And when Brian and I went through this presentation, we realized it started in 2022. So, it's been um almost four years. Um, so how this all started, like I said, we formed a grading committee in 2022. We had representation from each grade level and uh department from grades 5 through uh through 12. Um, and our goal at the time wasn't to jump into any changes, but we just wanted

112to begin asking ourselves some questions about the purpose of giving students grades. Uh, what uh grade should communicate about what students have learned and how consistent our practices were um, across grade levels, departments um, and various um, electives and special area teachers. So, our early work focused primarily on a lot of professional learning, a lot of reading, a lot of discussing. We have lots of uh great uh conversations in our meetings um and then reflecting on our own experiences just as committee members. It's a very sensitive topic so we wanted to make sure to do our due diligence before we brought it out to the um larger faculty. Um we attended a uh grading and assessment some of us did um conference in Atlanta in um April of 2023 and then from there we met

113and heard Dr. Tom Gusky speak. He's one of the leading researchers on grading assessment. We were able to bring him in to talk to our faculty in October 2023 as a keynote speaker and he that keynote helped frame some of the core questions that we continue to talk about and still wrestle about to this with to this day. Um after his keynote that day um all of the staff K through 12 broke off into small groups and our grading committee members led small group discussions just getting people to start thinking about yeah you're right. Why do I grade this way? who taught me or told me why I should weight these grades these certain ways? Why do I include participation? Why do do I include homework? Like just got people really thinking about um why

114they do what they do. Um our committee continued learning. We had a lot of professional learning, ongoing readings, discussions of research out there looking at practices from other districts. There's a couple um within New York State um who grade uh differently than the um traditional grading way. So, we met with them virtually. We got some insight into the process that they have uh taken over their several years um like we have. Um and we also reflected on how grading impacts uh student motivation. We talked a lot about how um students are very um motivated by looking in power school constantly and what grades they got and just being concerned about the number and not intrinsically motivated necessarily. Um we continued to have uh department conversations. We thought it was good rather than Bill, Matt, Brian,

115and I going to talk to the faculty as a whole, we really use our grading committee to bring the message out to their own teams. We get more um more honest feedback from them and hearing the faculty hearing it from their own colleagues. Uh it's more impactful. We can get further um and they deliver it just in a way that we can't. It's like when you tell your kid to do something, they don't do it. But if somebody else told your kid to do something, they'll do it. So that's why they they've been a really great group bringing it out to the masses and bringing their feedback back to our um grading. So last year departments uh engaged in a grading inventory. Uh this work asked teachers to specifically look at and write down. We

116collected uh what factors go into your grades. Uh how different assignments are weighted um or or do you use um uh total points and categories. Uh what counts towards a student's final grade and how consistent practices are within departments. Um we found a lot of discrepancies with homework. Some just check off they did it or they didn't do it. Some collect it for a grade. um and how that affects a student's overall grade, including those habits of work we've we've um come to um call them by, you know, such as participation, um if they're they're absent or not, their behavior in class, stuff like that. So, this work helped us understand that our current reality before we started talking about any potential changes. Then last spring in April of 2025, we brought in a woman

117named Courtney. She's from Joel Feldman's team. He's another guru out there on grading for equity, equable equitable grading practices. Uh she did another keynote um on grading reform and her keynote focused on grading for accuracy. It really got into the equity piece of um when students leave our four walls, what do they have uh what what do they have the ability to do or not do um when they do leave here? And then she did talk about separating academic achievement from um behaviors or habits of work. So that session helped continue the conversation uh and pushed the committee to keep thinking critically about our own practices. And then from there, this brings us to this school current school year. We were lucky enough to get a grant from the foundation to work with a company

118uh called Grading RX. Um and it's a woman, Dr. Laura Link from University of North Dakota. And uh she works with one district at a time. She just finished up work with a district in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. um kind of around what I'm going to talk about where we're hopefully headed in the future. Um and she's really been a lot of behind the-scenes stuff which I'll talk about actually I'm not going to get ahead of myself. I'll talk about the work that she's done with us. So first she um and her colleague developed a survey that we did send out to um member of students, parents, teachers and administrators. Um and the purpose of the survey was uh to help us understand what people believe grades should communicate. Right now, we'd only had the conversations um

119amongst faculty, but we really were curious um for students and teachers, what they think uh grades should communicate, how people interpret grades, and where there's inconsistencies. And so those survey results helped us reveal some important themes, um including different stakeholders, have very different ideas about what grades mean and should communicate. There's variation in what teachers, including grades, and in many places, achievement and behavior are blended together in ways that make a grade harder to interpret. it doesn't give you a clear picture of the strengths of the child. From there, our grading committee has uh this is still in draft form. Right now, we're getting feedback from um the other stakeholders, but our draft grading philosophy from the grading committee uh is the we think the primary purpose of grading and this is after three years

120of lots of talking and lots of research. Uh the primary purpose of grading is to effectively communicate student achievement towards mastery of specific learning standards. Academic achievement grades reflect what a student knows and is able to do at a certain point in time. Students will receive separate feedback on their learning and work habits which will not be included in the academic grade achievement grades. So, the big takeaway from here in all of our research was when you just give a student one grade and you lump all these things together, it doesn't give a clear picture of what the student, like I said, their um strengths and maybe um opportunities for growth. But when you separate those two, you only include academic achievement in one grade and their habits and work in another. We definitely thought

121the habits of work are important. They're they're soft skills that they need to survive in the world. So, we definitely didn't want to get rid of those. We think they're very important, but we think they should be um reported separately on a report card. Kind of like Parkdale Parkdale current report cards. There's there's our separate. So um this these next two slides are just what we've been doing from January through today. Um in our five uh 12 grading committee, we soon came to realize that fifth and sixth grade were a little treated a little differently. They already grade a little differently um than 7 through 12. So, we split off the committee um because Matt and I want to be on two different committees. Um so, we've uh Matt and I are running a fifth

122and sixth grade committee. Um and we've been doing a lot since January. So, we've been working with Dr. Link in grading RX behind the scenes. She kind of uh we meet with her a couple times a month and she tells us what the research says. She tells us what she did with her district when that she worked with in Pennsylvania, what works, what doesn't work, the best way to approach change, how to collect feedback from teachers, and she helps um guide us in our meetings that we have with the fifth and sixth grade teachers. So, when we broke off um we expanded it a little bit to include um some more fifth and sixth grade teachers. So on this committee we have two fifth grade teachers, two sixth grade teachers, two special area teachers because

123they grade totally different than a classroom teacher and we have a special ed teacher and uh Mr. Brown and I. So we expanded the committee. Uh we did a deeper analysis of the district grading survey. And what happens in our meetings is we basically do activities with them and then they turn key them to their larger groups. So, we do a whole three-hour activities and um come up with habits of work template and get feedback and then they take it back to the whole fifth grade team, the whole sixth grade team and all the special area teachers for grades five and six. They turn key what we did with them. They get feedback and bring it back to us. So, that's kind of how the cycle has been working with fifth and sixth grade. Um

124so, we did a deeper analysis of the survey results. We hadn't done that. We hadn't given it out yet, but we um we did a deeper dive with the committee and they took it back to their teams. The discussions around the survey centered on the purpose of grades, what factors are currently included, the distinction between academic achievement and learning behaviors and um the equity implication of of various grading practices out there. Um they also engage their grade level teams in uh some reflection activities. uh teachers analyzed their current grading practices identifying what factors currently contribute um and the approximate percentage of that grade and they brought that all back to us too. We found they weren't they're not as different in fifth and sixth grade as they are at the upper grade levels. They're pretty

125they work pretty much like similar to Parkdale. We have similar practices. Um but we did get a lot of good feedback around the special areas. um you know, family consumer science was saying, well, safety is part of my curriculum. Like teaching to safely cook on is it's part of it. It's not like a habit of work if they're not safe. So, we're we're working through those types of things. Um and so at our last meeting, we came up with these three habits of work that we thought were important. So, we spent a lot of time uh we looked at Parkdale with work hard. We looked at the uh school in Bethlehem or in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania that Dr. Link had worked with. And we categorized uh three main habits of work which are preparation for learning,

126engagement in learning and interactions with peers and staff. And these are actually the exact same ones that are on the park yoga report card. And underneath each of these are different criteria for indicators of success. So at our last meeting, we came up with all of that and we um had the committee go back and during the month of March, they have to meet with their respective teams and we're meeting again on March 30th. And at that meeting, they're going to bring back the feedback on um what we think of these three categories, the criteria under each, and um if there are any thoughts around a 1:3 scale or a 1 to4 scale on grading those. So, Parkdale currently is a 1 to4. Um the school in Pennsylvania that actually work with is a 1

127to three. There's pros and cons to both. So, we're going to be discussing that at our next um meeting. From here, we don't know exactly what's going to happen. We would love to pilot a multi-grade report card for fifth and sixth grade starting in September. Um again, it's a lot of work between now and then. Um we're on the we're on the right track, but if we do decide to do that, there'll be lots of communication with uh families, uh faculty, obviously, lots of trainings because when you do summarize these out and you have certain criteria, you have to create rubrics. So, every teacher is grading with on a similar rubric for every child in that grade level. So, that's where we are in seventh and sixth grade. Before I go on to 7 through

12812, are there any questions on fifth and sixth? >> Is there an imple implementation date that the state is demanding? >> No, there's nothing. This is >> No, there's a couple schools in the state who have switched to something like this. Um, this is just this is just me guessing, but with the portraiture for graduate changes, I think transcripts and report cards are going to naturally change over the years. But this is not a state-driven thing. This is just a Brian Russ idea. That's a good one. It's innovative. It makes sense. Um, it's like cutting edge stuff. Yeah. >> No, I get that. >> Are you using some teachers as change agents, so to speak, that are going to be implementing this? >> Yeah. So, I say pilot, but if we did pilot, I think

129it would be all of the fifth and sixth grade teachers and special area teachers and classroom teachers. And earlier on the smells um they actually ran a dual grade grade grade books. So the people that were in in the in our pilot group they were running a traditional grade book and then they ran a second grade book. They did all this extra work to see if grades were still really um impacted by removing those things because they what they found is there was considerable inconsistency between even people that were teaching the same English class. Few people were teaching English class and they had different components to their grading system. So if you had this teacher experience was a little bit different than that teacher and even like uh the common assessments and things like we

130did some in common but then they're also like hey I really love this project. I don't do that. I do this instead. So we talked about being consistent and and the idea from like the students perspective that experience should be really similar based on the standards and then there's agreement on what the projects and and assessments and look like and how we're going to evaluate that. And so that's where all this started quite honestly probably 10 years ago. um started looking at grading just the equity in grading and how it played out. Yeah. In equity equity, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. So, if we did move forward with a pilot, we'd love to, but we also don't want to for this is a big change. So, we want them we really are looking for feedback from

131them and want to hear their voice and what they're they they like this idea. There's so many questions that surround it though. I mean, it's like what or Mr. Russ was saying, it's if a homework completion, where does that go? Does it go in academic achievement? Does it go in preparation for learning? Uh grading homework. Uh giving students a chance to redo assessments if they hadn't learned the material. The the research shows you should retach them and give it to them again. Retach them. Not just okay, sorry, here's your grade and move on to the next. So there's all those little things that it's easier to talk about and work with in in fifth and sixth grade than it is in 7th through 12. >> I know. I was thinking about students. I had that

132>> really tested in so many different ways in order to be successful. they could be successful >> on the same material, but they had to be assessed in so many different ways and so >> bought so many people to get there. Um the other thought I had, maybe you address this and I just didn't hear you. I have old ears. >> Yeah. >> Um was to think about how you're going to educate the parents. >> Yep. >> Yeah. On um at our next meeting um Dr. link sent us like a facilitator guide and I just went through it yesterday and so on our next meeting there's a whole timeline of when you're going to do certain things and that's all that's on I mean doing this presentation um parent meetings and Dr. link will join

133us in those parent meetings because she can speak to the research. >> Sure. >> Behind it and then we'll be on there to talk about Easter specifics. Um >> more individual. >> I think it makes it more individual. >> Yes. That you can talk to a child about how they're doing or where they can improve better if they know that okay my academic grade is a 95 but I have a two and being ready to for class. And so we're just going to talk about how you can be more prepared for class not about your academics necessarily whatever it might be. exciting. It's exciting. >> They would have a report card with their same academic grade that they've always had and then there would be three other grades. Preparation for learning, engagement, and interactions, which

134would be a 1:3 or a 1 to four. >> Yeah. >> Um, so I know one of the the goals is equity and grading. >> So, and then I saw inclusiveness in there somewhere as well. So, as far as different types of learners go, >> um, has the that been built into the because I'm assuming it's part of equity, but at the same time, I'm not really seeing like where would that come in the how how are how is it inclusive of different types of learners? Whereas some types of grading because horrible, but you do this well, you know, like >> where where's that? >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> So, go ahead. Well, that's that's the idea is is even with like portrait or graduate is like the course that MK also is talking about

135is providing different assessments and having consistency throughout like either maybe the grade level or in the department that we believe that here are the important factors like English they they do a lot of writing so they're the writing papers projects those types of things are the key pieces of their grades and there might be also some assessments And the one thing that I was really pleasantly surprised by is that because a part of this is the idea the kind of the concept around mastery learning. What we want is we want you to learn it, right? We want you to learn the material. So we give you multiple opportunities to do so. And so feedback on one part of the survey is that vast majority of our teachers said I do provide multiple opportunities to learn

136the material. I retest. Right. And then now part of it is is more like not just retesting, >> right? So that and and fitting that in. How does that work? And so the fifth and sixth grade teams are just >> once they you our teachers are really bright and they're they always want to do the right thing when they have this much on their once they decide and realize which they have, they're ready to go. And so they're really making excellent progress. But we thought again fifth and sixth grade is much much more similar to fourth grade than 7 through 12. Break it off and and get this piece started and and the people that are in the in the committee are are really ready to go and just why do we want to move

137here and why it's different than a lot of other what other places are doing. But we know based on the research, this is a much more equitable and effective way to evaluate children. >> And that's what what you said is what it seems what I was trying to get out of it is that it it is it is seems in line with the whole idea of where where the district has been going through 12th grade to make sure that every child's um things that every child's has the possibility to succeed. And succeeding isn't just one one thing. >> The modalities so different modalities should be reflected in the instruction and in the assessment. >> Yeah, that's thank you. >> And our power school, our student platform is coming to our next I met with them

138and it is possible. Before we did any of this, we said is this we don't know exactly what we want, but we think it looked like this and so it is possible. And then um also with fourth grade coming up to fifth grade next year, yes, we'll have parent meetings, but we thought it'd be an easier transition or communication of course. >> And then lastly, uh grades 7 through 12 when we broke off as two separate committees. Um we're basically doing the same thing with grade uh teachers in grade 7 through 12, but at a much slower pace. Um it's just more difficult, especially at the high school. They have mixed grade levels, uh transcripts when they go to colleges. That's been a big conversation, and we don't know what that would look like or

139what colleges would accept. So, we're still working through that. Um so, like I said, they're going at a slower pace. Um um in the March um high school faculty meeting uh we had them read an article just to again get them thinking about um traditional grading systems versus giving a better picture of a student and then we broke out into small group um discussions and each grading committee member collected all the feedback from their um departments. I'm sorry department seventh and eighth grade met as a grade level departments met at the high school. Bill and I and Chelsea met with all the special area teachers at the high school. So again, they read an article, we gathered feedback, and then at their department meetings next week, we're doing the survey result analysis with the high

140of the 7th through 12th grade teachers and again just collecting feedback from them because we really do want them involved in the process and we really want their feedback um whether they think that or not, but we really do and we take that seriously and we use that feedback to shape our next meeting which isn't until April. Um, I really have to give a shout out to the grading committee members in fifth and sixth and 7th through 12. They've been turnkeying this work and it's not easy sometimes when you, you know, the administrators aren't there and they're getting bombarded by their um, colleagues whether they like it the ideas or not. So, they've been really really um, not only in that sense, but also just their conversations and where their thought process goes. They've been

141really interested to shout out to them, too. Yeah, that's I just said that real quick, but that's basically what we're doing. Slower pace. We'll continue um next school year with 7 through 12, just doing more research, getting them thinking, talking, giving feedback, um and kind of keeping an eye on portion over graduate at the same time. >> I'm going to say this, the 7th through 12 group, again, it's more complicated. That's why we needed pumps a little bit. But in general, um, when they the committee members go out, they say, "My my colleagues are really interested, but we're just not sure how to get there." >> They see the value of it. It makes sense. >> Yeah. It's a big leap and it's a big adjustment and how we record transcripts and those types of

142things. So they just want to go through it in a way that they feel comfortable then bringing it forward to parents and and sharing with them and and having time to have those discussions. I think working with Dr. Link has really honestly um Mr. Brunson changer. That's the only reason >> is that her research and her background and her experiences coming to talk to the committee gave them also the the courage to say okay now I know what to say right cuz we were at kind of a we we made some really good progress but then we were stuck because then we had to really operationalize we had passes and and there were all of us were like okay let's try this let's try that and people were coming on board but there wasn't like

143a framework have really helped carry the class. >> Yeah, we need like a road map or a pathway to follow to to get to where we wanted >> really made all the difference. >> That Pennsylvania school in Pennsylvania that she worked with, I actually did like an two-hour Zoom with them last year just to just the the the me person there and somebody they're much bigger than us. They like two or three times bigger than us, but I did a really long phone cover um virtual meeting with them just to get their feedback on how um how they approached this and their and just the work with Dr. and how it went and they um they moved forward in two years and the woman had said I would have paid double what what they charge

144cuz it was just she just gives you the background and the confidence and the the framework and the pathway to get you to where you want to go. But it's us delivering the PD so it's it's perfect for students. I remember a seventh grade student I had to refuse to do homework got 100 on almost every single test. PhD research. >> There you go. >> Mr. Russ, the foundation is really happy to be part of this initiative. Uh the the uh over the years we we've spent many years uh purchasing equipment, you know, and it was delighted to do that. We helped get things rolling in areas of technology that were emerging. uh but we've always felt that uh that we could have uh a broader impact and when you came to us with your

145uh with your plan I think it allowed us to expand our thinking with regard how to how the foundation interacts with the school district. We also know that this kind of work can be expensive and that the school district budget may not be able to support it uh to the extent that's required to for quality work. So uh uh so you know thank you for uh for involving the foundation and for uh uh and and for presenting it in a way that enabled us to show that this uh relates to our mission as a foundation policy and say of of all the innovative communities we've done this is probably near the top but the people that are taking this on and leading it it's they're really taking um some risk, you know, it it's not

146easy and we're learning along the way as well and communicating a message. Um but this will be a fundamental change for us and it's even changed what we do at Parkdale. So it's really a K to2 and it is um most schools don't do it because quite honestly they're just afraid to take it on because it's a ton of and a lot of push back. It's the same thing that we did with um with ranking. You know, the research showed that ranking is flawed in many ways, but people are used to judicial ranking. But taking that on, Mr. Roberts did a brilliant job uh taking the research and presenting it and moving it into a way that is well the recognitions are far broader, much more equitable and and it's just a much more effective

147way uh to to recognize students and what they're doing their work and also I see those students who are typically recognized under a ranking system for doing all kinds of other very >> interesting projects and having certain talents and like our senior award say amongst the best out there right now because it it it is um based in equity and and respect for all learners and that is a really great night because of of the broad scope that it has. So again those are those are really important things that we've done. question. Go ahead. >> You said you're talking about this. So maybe this answer is to come, but what would this be for a GPA? Like does this happen learning? We don't know. That's why we're taking a really slow approach at the secondary

148level. Uh we reached out to it was probably many years ago to the top five colleges that our students apply to and they had made it seem like it's not a big deal. They get transcripts from all over the place. But I don't know. We're in Western New York, it it is a big deal. So, we're we're just trying to see what that would look like exactly. And I'm thinking if we did make any changes at the high school, it would coincide with the portraiture of a graduate being implemented. And I'm also kind of waiting to see cuz the state, we don't really know much about the portrait of a graduate right now. They're slowly coming out with more things. So, I'm kind of wondering if they're going to the changes that Porsche graduate are

149going to kind of go along with these changes that we're talking about in fifth and sixth grade. It's going to go along really nicely in 2029. But I don't know. So, um, colleges didn't seem to be worried, but I think it's more like a local internal, uh, worry cuz we want the transcript, the report card and the transcript, we want them to flow nicely into each other. And if we changed it, like we we're talking about changing fifth and sixth grade. I don't know if it'd flow nicely into the normal transcript that colleges get from seniors. So, we honestly colleges don't think it's a big deal, but I think it's more an internal local individual that we want to kind of work out and wait and go slow and see how things play out. >>

150Yes. >> And I was wondering how that school in Bethlehem is, you said they transitioned in two years. I was wondering how that high school did that and whether or not they had because there are you know even though we have some colleges that you spoke to that are the ones our students our students apply to college >> that you know >> yeah that that could have an impact so that >> I don't know if I ever asked Bethlehem about the transcript I have to go back and look at my notes but um >> they also were doing a very slow roll they changed their uh they're on either A to F not not not zero to 100 it's A to F or 1 to 4 or something smaller also just the ambigu or the

151the range of numbers that a student can get 0 to 100 and they're constantly like I just want those couple extra points or it's it it just causes a lot of stress and anxiety and competition. So that's why a lot of schools outside of Western York are A to F or uh 1 to four to take that out of it and have them less focused on that one number and more focused on the overall version of a graduate. >> That would be probably the ultimate place we would like to get is on a 1 to four scale something like that that is is kind of reflecting a little collegiate model >> just like we've done with with the commodity. Um we wanted that that kind of collegiate recognition for our students. Um so you know

152and then how does that conversion work? >> We'll probably spend a lot of time next year on that too. Maybe some sometimes Dr. Guski has a really interesting presentation on the um a 0 to 100 scale like why it's why it's so inequitable because well the failure ranges from 0 to 65 right so it's 2/3 of it is failure and oneird of it is fast right and so he knows all the research on it and and it's it's a very interesting presentation maybe someday I'll we'll see if we can get him to come on behind >> he's not busy >> he's not >> I'm just joking I would love for the board to hear it because it's even as like a presentation for a an evening for parents or something cuz it's it's a research

153on it is which is it's just very interesting >> a big shift >> questions we'll keep updating you as things progress and thank you very much >> we'll see you again in 5 minutes for another >> No I know I'm done go home and go to Mr. Cassidy, any objection to a five minute take five. Thank you all. >> Thank you very much. >> We are back. We need one more and then I'm done. >> Uh thanks for entertaining the break. Uh we are on item E, the business office operations and financial reports. Ms. Joe. >> Hi, good evening. Um, tonight's financials are through the end of January. In our general fund, we had approximately $18.4 million in the bank. We had expended almost 50% of our appropriations and received approximately 77% of our revenues.

154in the cafeteria fund revenues and expenditures have finally caught up and we're showing um revenues exceeding expenditures by $85,000 which is a very good thing um which we'll see in our budget presentation. We're hoping to shift some costs out of the general fund to be covered in the cafeteria fund um to help us manage the budget. So, if this keeps trending the way I think it's going to, we should be able to do that. Uh, in the federal fund, revenues about $400,000, expenditures a little over $800,000, which is very typical of how the federal fund runs. It's right on track. uh in our cafeteria or capital project fund, the big capital project that we're working on. So far this year, we've expended $3.5 million and only about $8,000 on the capital outlay, which I think

155we just got an update on the weather breaking. >> I think April, yeah, we just received an email. So that's when we'll start seeing expenditures out of the capital outlay. Um the only other thing is that um the cash in the bank tied to the cash flow and for this year making it through the summer with our cash flow should be okay. Oh the grid. Yeah. Yep. Heat. Okay. And the grid is up to date um as of today. Um so under the salary category, you can see that we're going to be under budget by a little less than a million dollars. Um and that's due to a lot of things that happened after the budget was adopted last year. We had, I believe, six additional um faculty retirements um that were budgeted at a

156higher rate than what they were filled at. Um there was a clerical position that was in the budget. Person resigned and we decided not to fill it. Um there were there are four currently unfilled buildings and grounds positions. There were a couple teacher aid positions that retired at a higher rate than we refilled it with after the budget was adopted. Uh benefits I'm projecting to be a little bit over budget. I'm still following that. I'm really waiting for some bills to come in in March. I'll be able to um adjust that next month. Um we're projecting to spend all of our equipment budget um on the capital project furniture and fixtures. Supplies are coming in a little under budget about 50 50,000 contractual about 20,000 under budget. textbooks, um, textbook, software, library, hardware, and tuition

157is coming in a little bit under budget, about $30,000. Whoops, I'm on the wrong line. $20,000. Ambos is about $30,000 under budget. And then transportation, this is up to date as of today when I did the analysis, which is good news. I really thought this number was going to be higher over budget than it what it's coming in at. And that's because of a couple things. I worked with First Student on um partnered with some of our surrounding um school districts to help us out. So, that number is still significantly over budget at 280,000, but at first I thought that was going to be much higher. Um our debt service, we talked about that last time. That's about we bounded to cover a um uh I'm sorry I lost my train of thought. >> A

158settlement. Yes. And then each of the revenue categories down below that are coming in over budget. So, under budget by about $600,000 on the appropriation side, over budget by about $400,000 on the revenue side, making us to the good about a million dollars. So, it's important information for our next discussion. Okay. Questions? >> M. Oh, I'm sorry. I just with respect to the transportation is there anything in terms of would the increase in fuel costs right now? >> It's not the fuel costs. It has to do routes. >> But but what I'm saying is these these increases in fuel costs are not going to have anything to do with our our prices going up. >> No, because we have contracted prices with the >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? Yeah, the um I haven't brought

159this up in a while. I've talked to the board about it before and certainly the business this administrator. The um receivables, do we have any update on the receivables in the special aid fund for the >> uh yes that um I passed out a sheet that's accounted for on the sheet with the excess cost aid for the federal summer school receivables. Yeah, there's a carryover receivables that we have that are still on. >> Yep. I added those up today. So 207,000. And then if you go to I have to find my sheet. It had purple writing on it. >> So that's happened since January 31st then. >> No, but that's what's expected to come in is what's on that purple sheet. >> Not yet. >> Correct. But that's what MAG has projected to come in

160for those programs. >> Moving back to 2021. >> Yes. >> Okay. Then the um universal prek and when there was a receivable there for 55,000 is that from expenses last year or is it this year? >> I've got to try to find it. If you could tell me >> uh 410 24410. >> Yes, we did not re Yes, that's still from the correct. That's from the end of last year when we did our draw down. We still haven't received it. >> Still >> haven't received it yet. >> Okay. I would assume that's going to be paid. >> Correct. >> Yes. So, um >> Mr. blowers. Um, the sheet I was talking about, it's this sheet and it's this whole top section that we're expecting. >> No, I'll watch for that then. >> And then the

161bottom percentage. Did you get that information? >> I'm sorry. I forgot to ask. >> I'll write it down this time. >> Anyone else at this down here? Uh, Miss George. My only question was also on the transportation. So it's gone up uh you know in in February and then again in March. Do we think it will continue to go up or is that leveling? >> Um this is my projection to the end of the year. Um based on the conversations I had with her student on so there was a route last year that was covered by a surrounding district. that district said they couldn't do that route for us anymore. That was a $100,000 route. So, I've been working with the other districts and Jamie Swinich has been we've got that reinstated. So, up until

162March, that was still a first student route. Now, it's going to be another district route. Um, I got information this week from First Student that they were able to a route that was costing us about $33,000 a year. Um, they were able to combine it with another route. So, that's another So, those are the things that I'm watching and I do that on a monthly basis. Anyone who wants to see my spreadsheets, come look. I I like to project. They're very big. >> A good spreadsheet. So that's my best estimate right now. Now we could get another a student move in who needs a route. Then it's going to change. >> Yep. Yep. Thank you very much and thanks for your work on that. Um unless we have any other questions before. >> Great. Thank

163you, Miss George. Moving on to uh item F. Uh it's a uh on the internal audit uh risk assessment for the year ending June 30th. >> Um did you want me to present on that? >> I don't know if the audit committee was presenting on that. They asked >> what's it talked about last year? Well, yeah, we met with Lumson and McCormack uh last month sometime uh and um we were happy with the work they're doing. Uh their recommendations for the coming year seem to make sense. Uh so I don't see any problem with uh uh with um moving forward. We have to take action on this. >> Not until the testing is done. I thought the audit committee asked us to put this on. So I I didn't know. >> Now I uh I

164don't see anything that we have to do tonight relating to this. >> Right. Not until the testing is completed. >> Any uh other board members have any questions on the uh the attachment? My only question was I mean looking at the uh items that are uh recommended that the ability the district has the ability to change with uh benefits greater than the costs. Only one that doesn't seem to be addressed is the uh claims auditor. Uh the other ones have uh responses from the district down there on on on the work we're doing. As far as the claims auditor uh uh presenting a written monthly report to the board, has there been discussion around that and in implementing that? >> Yes, Mr. >> Yes, we've had discussion the last couple of meetings of the of

165the uh audit committee relating to it and uh I think Mr. Blowers has plans for inviting the claims auditor to come to a subsequent meeting uh to share with us uh the process that uh that she uses and to uh uh and to provide a report and then uh we would uh in turn uh report to the board uh relating to that. Uh it's uh it's something where in the past uh the when there was a problem when the claims auditor found a problem the the the claims auditor would communicate directly with the uh audit committee through the through the chair of the audit committee who currently is Mr. Blowers. uh the the uh but but that uh having a regular report uh makes a whole lot of sense and so we saw that as

166a recommendation and and uh plan on implementing. So, so then we'll get the the rest of the board will get that information >> through through the audience >> through your reports to us and if there's anything Okay, great. >> We have a high priority for the committee. This report here we had the uh was handed out last last meeting to review the proposed one. So, this just finalizes this one, but this report here tonight it's a high priority to bring in the clerk. >> Okay. Awesome. Great. Thank you very much. Uh unless anybody has anything else, we'll move on item G or uh budget workshop. Okay. Um so uh yeah, so we we've been doing a lot of planning, a lot of meeting uh with the administrative team to uh to kind of pull pull

167our budget together. We all know that we're facing some significant significant deficits and so I'll be sharing that with you. the agenda looks like. So there's there's a lot to cover, but some of these things we just want the public to be able to see different things. So I'll get through it as quickly as I can. Again, you know, we use the the values and vision to kind of guide us, especially now uh as we're moving through certain deficits, making sure that we're staying focused on our values, what's most important to us as we're making these decisions. So here's the tax cap. We talked about this for the last several meetings and you can see really similar to the last year is about 3.36. That's a calculation that Miss George says through the business office,

168but that's been finalized. So we 3.36 is our is our maximum tax loving increase. Uh school aid runs again. Um we got an update uh in February which helped um but unfortunately still we're thinking that budget will not be uh done on time cuz it's an April 1 deadline. Uh the governor said Jade so uh doesn't seem to be a priority at this time. So we're going to have to make some assumptions and continue to move forward. Um so here it is again based on the governor's post and I'm meeting with um Senator Gallivan on Friday. Uh, Senator Galvin will talk to all of the superintendents in his region. He'll explain to us what the Senate is thinking. It's typically more. I heard they're thinking at least 2% on foundation a$5,000 for us. Um, and

169then he'll also talk to us about what the assembly is, but many times most proposals are really close, but they both have their particular ideas or thoughts that are a little different from each other. usually that helps us in terms of um finances um as we tie this up. Uh so the foundation aid so we have 673 school districts in the state right now and 400 92 of them are in hold harmless. Uh and so that means 73% of the uh New York state districts are getting 1% and only 23 to 27% excuse me are on formula. And that just talks about how broken this is. We've been talking about this gosh for years, decades. Um they made some adjustments a few years ago, but it's still far off from where it needs to be.

170Um funding us at this level in regard to just inflation and all the other issues that we're dealing with is just uh really it's not sustainable. So here's our aid ratio over the years. You can see um my health ratio is kind of an important indicator and you can see how that has consistently risen um over the last six years. that is shown on this chart. And why that's important is that it's in direct it's disproportionate to our aid structure. So the higher up wealth ratio goes, the lower our aid ratios are. So you can see that too um 21 to26 27 all those aid ratios have declined except for building a building a consistent for us and that's why when we save in the capital reserve uh that's really kind of a wise way.

171We know we talked about facilities um today for ourselves. We talked about facilities today for Boseies. So that building aid ratio being consistent is really important in terms of our aid factor on our large projects. >> Mr. Russ, the only thing I wanted to um clarify is that when Mr. Oor was presenting, I think there was confusion. I thought I heard someone say we get our building aid ratio on the Boseis project. We don't. We get our Bosey's aid ratio. And if you look at those two numbers, that's an important piece to be aware of. >> Closer to 049, I believe. >> Correct. >> Instead of 661, we get 49. >> Yeah, 49 was in the presentation, but I think I think you might be correct. Yeah. >> Right. I thought I didn't know if

172I misheard or it's different from this. >> Um, and again, here it is in just u graph form. You can see uh the combined weight wealth ratio is going up and our our our state aid ratios are coming down except for of course building a gain. So the revenues we were able to fill in some more of the charts uh as we were working through this. Uh you can see that um between 2526 and 2627 we're expecting about $1.2 million in additional revenues. Um which sounds great. Uh and some of that is is really good around you can see foundation transportation and building aids going up nicely. Same thing with Bosey's aid that's directly related to the services that we're using from Boseies. Uh you can see some reductions in taxport from state aid but

173overall we're looking at a one 1.2 um increase. Um but then when we look at the appropriations you can see here they're going up by about 2.9 million. Uh so that the difference between those I'll show you in a second is is the um is the gap. Uh one thing you can see here year-toear pretty much um increases across the board in benefits and salaries that those are pretty a lot of that is related to health insurance and those types of things. uh we have some uh some significant increases in bosses as you can see is one of the response that has changed and that's really related to primarily uh for students who need additional assistance. Uh so that is a really considerable increase as well. >> So you want questions on each slide or

174do you go back to >> No, it's okay. >> All right. Thank you. Uh on the projected appropriations uh uh under um transportation, the the current budget is 2,630 uh and uh there you're projecting here $150,000 increase uh for the coming year. But in the in the sheet we received with regard to current expenditures, uh we're already spending apparently $280,000 more than the original budgeted amount. Uh and so there is there a reason why we're budgeting so much less than what we're spending this year? >> Yes. As Mr. Cassidy brought up when we were going through the grid, um I have adjusted for that $100,000 run. that is no longer going to be a first student charge and the $33 $30,000 run that is being um absorbed into another. >> So I took all of

175those things into consideration when I was building these. >> Got it. Thank you. >> At what point we thought it was going to be closer to 400. >> Correct. >> Well, that's why it it stuck out like a sort of fun. >> Yeah. So that that's some really good news because um just additional runs and it's not just additional runs for special education. It's all the additional runs we do for private schools and those types of things. >> So here appropriation. So we were we're putting things in that we know so we know there's going to be an increase in our electric cost and those are going to be pretty significant. Uh we also we already know that we have three retirees. So those have been uh rebudgeted at step five. Uh so there's a

176breakage there that we use the EVR for 403P and uh contributions. We have to do a building condition survey and that's quite expensive but that's required by the state. Uh we have some uh for special educations industry. um increases in uh proceeds projections in general are going up because the the the fees associated with the um programs and services that we use are going up. Um we really try to pair that back as much as we can. We spent a lot of time looking through um what do we absolutely need and what can we kind of get away without. Um and then so our general liability insurance is uh we've been notified it's going to be increasing but we're going to see an increase in compensation premiums which is nice. Uh we included the librarian.

177It's been rebudgeted at master step five in this particular presentation. Uh we're trying to decrease our legal services by a bit. Um, also we're going to be decreasing uh equipment because we're able to purchase all of the uh capital project furniture out of this year's budget, which is also helpful. Uh, and then our adjustments in uh transportation cost and so that's gone up. Now it's going to be picked out a little bit. So, uh, we're still working on that over the next several weeks. So, here it is. Uh, this is what shows the gap. Uh, you know, currently our budget is $46,881,816. Um, there's a proposed increase of of 2,98,215. Um, which is a grand total of $49,790,75 or a 6.2% increase over our current budget. And that leaves us with a gap of 1,654,842.

178Um, and if I could just interject your paper copies, I am so sorry. On the bottom, March 18th, I forgot to change the date to 2026, but we fixed it on this PowerPoint. It'll be fixed. There's a typo. >> So, so, okay, that's a really big gap. And so, it so closing the gap, we're going to be looking at reduction of teaching positions at grades preK through 12. that will be in the core areas and also in the elective areas. Uh we'll be reducing um support services and staff. Uh we'll be adjusting programs because of those um reductions in staff. Um we'll be reducing and realigning the central office staff. Um, we had a a a secretarial position that we did not fill. And so that is when I talked to the board about possibly

179re um reestablishing our clerk typus, a senior clerk typus to take over for some of those duties. And so we'll be presenting that to the board at a future meeting. Um, we're going to be reducing buildings and ground services. I've worked with Mr. Birds Loft to see what we can do a little differently to save some money. Uh, we're going to reducing our CTE offerings. We have mature at this time for induction but and in general athletics and extracurricular activities. We'll also be we've also looked at our software and our devices there. uh we'll be reducing materials and supplies pretty much across um buildings and also um there'll be reductions in so what we try to do when we face these types of of budget gaps we try to spread it out so the impact

180isn't in one specific area or in one specific grade levels and our core values uh to keep us focused in regard to these these pullbacks. So, here we are. The appropriate fund balance uh in this I don't know if we saw it yet, but we we actually pull back on the appropriate fund balance to 664 364 just to kind of we were talking about that earlier like how do we pull back on the fund balance? But maybe we go we go back to 707. Maybe we go to 750 or 807 depending on how all this falls out. Um but that's what the what's included in the budget gap is actually reducing the appropriated fund balance by about $40,000. >> 664. >> Yeah, the 664, right? Yeah. Um the capital outlay project which um uh will

181hopefully be moving forward for next year again is around camera system that this capital project because the camera system agreements across the district are are in need of of of repair and stored and so that's licensing and devices and kind of a combination of the technology reserve. This is one area where we're thinking of actually expending more dollars. So, we were we've been talking about 75,000, but we're thinking maybe 100 or 50,000 using other reserves to help us balance the budget. So, that's that we have to make, but this would be one area where we think we're going to actually increase um reserve. That's it. So, next one is is April 1st and then we're going to talk a little bit about possibly having just a a budget meeting discussion on April 16th. Then we

182come back on the 21st to adopt the budget. So, that's um just about 4 weeks away. >> Y So, >> so, so with So, I guess before we get into questions and comments, can we start with that meeting uh to see uh if we can get it on the schedule? Do we do uh either of you have or any of you have issues with a April 16th meeting? 7 p.m. >> Is there a reason why we're not doing the 15th? 15th is a Wednesday. That's our normal meeting day. >> Yeah. >> I can't be here on the 15th. >> Well, there that's the reason. >> There you go. >> All over the place. And currently I can't make it, but I'll try to rearrange my scheduling so I can >> Would it be better if

183we did it uh as a morning meeting? >> No. No. It's better for the community to do it in the evening and uh uh you know, certainly I don't want to tail wagging the dog here. You know, I I'll make it if I can. >> How about this? Any concerns with April 6th meeting? >> I wouldn't be able to be there till probably 7:30, 8:00. Oh. April 15th 16. >> I cancelled my trip to Maine. So all year round >> he wants to be for here for more budget. >> Yeah. Oh yeah. No, this stuff I I >> What day? >> 16. There's so so many dates. >> Okay. conservative topic on the agenda. This is all this week at 7:30. I took I'll be able to be here. >> So, so April here at

1847:30 >> at 7:30. >> One one agenda item and that is budget. And it it may turn out that we possibly don't need it, right? But we want to get it on the uh calendar >> 7:30. >> Yeah. And then our we were going to vote on Bose as well or not but we were going to discuss um the Boseies um thing as well. We had talked about that on that day in the morning. That was supposed to be a briefing meeting >> on the 16th. >> Yeah. Following our planning meeting that that is that is that's >> it's April 28th. >> April 28th. >> Okay. We need to do the post vote, >> not the capital we because of the meeting and requirements for our a 10 minute meeting in the morning. purposes of

185>> Okay. So, that's no longer on the 16th. So, now it's the 20th. >> What's on the 20th? >> Bosy's the Bosey's budget. >> That's the one that I asked if people could do a 7:30 >> On the 28th. On the 28th. Yeah. So, the Boseies budget vote and elections will be on the April 28th at 7:30 a.m. >> Yeah. It's like a 20 minute meeting. >> Yeah, that's that's a fast one. >> Okay, so we've got the 16th 7:30. Uh thank you all. Uh I apologize for derailing us, but I wanted to make sure we didn't uh didn't lose sight of of getting that on. Um and we'll start uh on this end uh for any uh questions for uh uh with regards to the budget presentation. Probably more more comments. Um, >> I

186do have one question. Now, we talked about building aid at the last meeting and we weren't sure that our numbers were correct at that point. Do we still have more building aid coming in or is this the number we have? >> This is the number with the building aid added in. >> There's no building aid added in from the February database. >> That's Yeah. Okay. And just taking a look at pris benefits just comparing this chart here from from uh 2425 until looking at 2627 2ear period it's going up about a million dollars and that's just a I mean that you start getting less than 100,000 state aid you got benefits alone in a 2-year period that's um closing the gap under the reductions in building and ground services. I know that's been a concern

187for a while. Not not having enough staff getting by doing well. So that's going to be a consideration over the next meeting though or how's it going? >> What we're going to do is we're going to fill in positions. Uh but we're going to be looking at some of the um like so for And sometimes not necessarily Mr. Ed, but Mr. Urslo kind of went through all of those things that he felt they could kind of stretch so that we didn't have to do those things every single year. And through that process, he's saving money. Terms of the positions, we're hoping to restore them and that's part of this. Yeah. So we because we didn't fill them this year, we've been struggling to to to get the work done. So we're we're planning >> which

188is kind of hard. Very hard. >> It's not sustainable. >> Services as opposed to >> services right for this. Yeah. Right now we'll be getting out additional information. >> Yeah. So for the for the next presentation it will be um much more detailed in terms of reduction. So we'll talk about specific positions and specific programs and each building specific that's very >> well that was going to be my question too. you know, the uh it's hard to vote for a budget unless we know the effect on students and the teachers and buildings. So, you know, we'll be patiently waiting for 1,664,000. That's $842 to materialize. Uh the uh uh my one comment relating to the appropriated fund balance though is you're projecting a reduction in the appropriated fund balance but but the our bridge shows

189that uh if it if it comes to pass that there'll be a million dollars in uh excess uh uh funds at the end of the fiscal year. So we could certainly appropriate more than the reduced amount that you've got. So, if you get if you're getting to to close this uh gap and uh and you come up 40 some odd thousand dollars short, you might consider not reducing the appropriate fund balance because it's it's there to appropriate the the I remember when I first joined the board, I went to Albany to take a course at this kind of stuff, you know, cuz I wasn't really up on it. And the first thing they said was, "Well, the money that's left over at the end of the year should go back to the taxpayers." You do

190that by appropriating it. You know, now we that's a simplified uh statement, but but and of course we've used those funds to to improve our uh our uh uh reserves, which is important. You know, you have to have reserves for a variety of things. But in a year when you have a million uh a million um $654,842 gap maybe we this is not a year to put money in reserves. >> Yes. >> So that's my >> I'll say this. We'll probably be pulling more money out of reserves than we have in the past. >> Well, there you go. And the uh Yeah. and and so I wouldn't worry too much about increasing the appropriated fund balance if it helps to uh balance the budget. >> Mr. N >> just and just I guess a couple

191of of quick things for me. So this the closing the gap that is a list uh I mean and you tal you talked about the idea that you're going to come in with more uh details on that and uh and I know that you and your your team have been working on this for for quite some time and that this is uh a list of uh areas of opportunity to find that and that uh presumably there are um different things that are are you you may have identified that you want to keep uh that uh that you'll be sorting through to figure out how to use this uh to complete the puzzle, right? Yeah. I mean, I think a good example is the transportation piece. Today, we found out that that wasn't 350 or 400,

192it's 100, but we were able to negotiate things like $150,000, right? And so that that's still going to happen over the next couple of weeks. So that will then definitely impact. It's not going to be all of that. It's going to be pieces from those different areas, but those are the things that we've identified that we can continue to that we can reduce that would have what we would like to consider the least impact. And and then that's where the reserves or the appropriated fund balance comes in is, you know, I may come back and say we're going to go back up to 707 and I'm also going to pull an extra $100,000 out of the ERS reserve or the TRS reserve or one of the other reserves to make all of this left over

193because again like your savings accounts at home there's only so much money, right? So you have to be interested in how we pull from that because again next year I don't >> think we're going to get a windfall of money, right? It's it's next year we're not going to get a windfall of money, right? You know, so it's it's going to be some struggles next year as well. So we have to kind of again play the long game and how do we kind of systematically make the adjustments that are as has the least impact um but also prepares us for a year next year that might not >> Yeah. So, and in and I guess also looking at the uh uh slide 12, the what's included in the uh projected uh uh appropriations. Um there's

194clearly things on there that we have no control over, right? Uh increase in electrical costs. Um we have to do the uh the uh building condition survey uh and that and that sort of thing. Are there things on there that you think that there might be um that might change? >> Um so um yeah, like the increases in post these projections, we've been working on that all week to try to reduce those. We've done some of that. So not all of that I don't think, but we're getting kind of close. We're getting kind of close to the end like the increase in general liability insurance that's coming. There's really not much we can do and that's based on our utilization of our insurance. you know those rates going up and down. um like decreasing services

195is not a lot but we hope to pull back on services and then that so these things I mean we don't have a choice right the the programming and contractual things those are required for students so we again we don't really have a lot I mean we are looking at at at just program delivery and seeing if we can do things differently. So that may just remove the expense. Um but again those are very complicated. Uh making sure that we're meeting our responsibilities and special education. So >> um one further question do you have any plans for adding staff anywhere? Um well, you know, um I I I don't think so. >> I could probably help clarify like um it's a very fluid process once once we identify how many retirees we have. I know

196we have three. Are we going to get more? We have until Friday to find out. Are we going to replace those positions or are those going to be some of the things that were on the reductions that we don't replace? That's going to impact benefits. Not only salaries, but benefits it's going to impact. So those types of things are always going to be fluid. And when I say benefits, it's health insurance, it's TRS, it's ERS, it's social security, it's uh the 105H. There's a lot to figure out within that and that fluidity of it. So once we know what the plan is, those things start falling into place. >> So the first two lines on this, the reduction in teaching and support services and staff. Um I'm I'm hopeful that we may be able to

197do that through attrition. So as people retire, Miss George just said, we won't replace them, but then that doesn't impact the rest of the staff that's still here. to rejust fill positions and that may change class sizes or how programs are offered, but it necessarily won't necessarily affect um our our newer staff members. So, that's that's what we're focused on. So, we're hoping that over the next two days we get some additional red. >> Any other uh questions? Yeah, I just had this comment too. Just I talked about it last time too long and we talk about we set the tax usually lower advertisement to to vote. But where it gets taken back is the fact that the combined wealth ratio was going up. State aid comes down. So even breaking one end away, right?

198>> Yes. >> I said last time too make a mistake. It's got to be right up there. >> I bring it up again because it's amazing and it hurts. It seems positive but it's a painful number. >> Yeah. I think it's important that the that taxpayers are aware of that as well, but that's we don't the property value 256 and 26 27 that >> Yeah, that that slide in particular is something I've just so impactful to to see those numbers and understand the impact on our district just >> so >> but thank you >> and with the only aid that's remaining constant sort of the building aid and everything else >> you know uh more to come in two weeks thank you for uh thank you for your workout Um, move on to item 13,

199the consensus items. Uh, are there any board members who wish to withdraw anything from the consensus agenda? Hearing none, are there any board members who wish to add anything to the consensus agenda? Hearing none, may I have a motion to approve the consensus agenda? So moved. >> Moved by Miss Daniel. Second. >> Second by Dr. Discussion. >> All in favor? I >> opposed. That's pass 70. Thank you very much. Item 19. Uh, superintendent recommends the board of education perform a second reading uh to read the policies uh listed in the agenda section EA3000. May I have a motion? >> Moved by Mrs. Daniels, second by Mrs. Malice. Discussion. All in favor? opposed abstensions. That's pass 70. Uh item B. Uh the superintendent recommends the board of education perform a second reading to read the policies

200as detailed in the agenda section EA for approval. May I have a motion? >> Moved by uh Mrs. Whitel. Second, second by Mrs. Danu. Uh discussion. All in favor? >> Opposed? Extensions. That's pass. 7. So, the superintendent uh item uh 28, the superintendent recommends the board of education approve the attached resolution uh regarding the um capital outlay project uh in the uh second to action under C. Uh I have a motion moved by Mr. Blower. Second >> Second by Dr. Proa. Discussion. >> All in favor? >> I >> opposed abstensions. And that's pass 70. Item 21A. The superintendent recommends the board of education. The attached resolution uh authorizes notice of May 19th annual school district meeting budget vote and election as detailed in the agenda. May I have a motion? Moved by Mrs. Whites and

201second by Mr. Daniel. Discussion all in favor. opposed extensions. 70. That's a long one. We uh we are on to item uh 22. Do any board members have anything new to bring to the board? Hearing none, we'll move on to 23. Uh, our next regular scheduled um board meeting is um >> Oh, there it is. On uh April 1st, uh we've uh added to this list tonight a uh uh April 14th meeting uh April 16th at 7:30 p.m. Uh and we are moving on to item B. um meetings workshops listed in here. I want to point out the prospective board member workshop March 28th uh for a man moved by Mrs. Daniel second by Dr. Mroa. uh discussion. I just want to thank everyone for being here uh and the work that was done tonight

202and all in favor that has passed 70. >> Thank you all. I will admission >> on any results.