001Stand for the pledge, please. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Sullivan Bosey's administration budget approval upon the recommendation of superintendent to approve the 20 two 2025 2026 Sullivan County Board of Cooperative Educational Services Bosey's administrative budget in the amount of 3,735 355. I need a motion. I'll make the motion. Motion by Stacy. You need a second. I'll second. Second by Amodore. All in favor? I I I have it. Bot for election to the board of cooperative educational services. Approval to cast one vote for each of the following trustee vacancies on the Sullivan County Board of Cooperative Educational Service Board. Miss Ho Aaron. There you go. Thank you. All in favor? I need
002a motion. Make the motion. Mot by Stacy. Second. Second. Kristen. All in favor? I I Miss Allison Smith. I'll make the motion. Motion by Stacy. Second. Second. Nancy. All in favor? I I Mr. Keith Striker. I'll make the motion. Motion. Stacy. I'll second. Kristen. Second. Mr. Amador Laut. We didn't vote. I'll make that motion. We didn't We didn't make key striker. Oh, I'm sorry. All in favor? I I I Mr. Amador Laut so excited. Motion by Stacy. I'll second it. I'll second it, too. All in favor? I. Perfect. One more. Yeah, I see it. Miss Jackie Rutled. Make the motion. I know her. Motion by Stacy. Second. Second by Kristen. All in favor? I I approval of the ballot authorization of budget proposition one. Approval upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the following resolution
003be placed on the May 2025 ballot that the board of education of the Elg Central School District is hereby authorized to expend for the fiscal year 2025 2026 is hereby adopted and the requested for portions thereof to be raised by taxation on the taxable property of the school district is hereby authorized 20,348487 to the levy tax thereof. I need a motion. Make the motion. Stacy motion. Second. Second. Second. Kristen. All in favor? I. I. Approval of the ballot authorization of Sunshine Hall Library Proposition Two. Approval upon the recommendation of superintendent that the following resolution be placed on the on the May 2025 ballot. that the board of education of the Elder Scent School District is hereby authorized to levy taxes annually in the amount of $49,500 and to pay over such monies to the board
004of trustees of the Sunshine Hall Free Library. Motion make the motion. Second. I'll second. Second by Omodor. Motion by Stacy. Is there discussion? You're looking at me like dear in headlight. Yeah, cuz we were looking into this, weren't we? Yeah, we did. they just had a shortfall and you know they're trying to expand their programs and do more things. That was the explanation. It doesn't affect our budget anyways. We just want everything. People vote on that different doesn't affect us item. Yeah. Things. So all in favor I approval of the property tax report card. Approval upon the recommendation of superintendent that the board of education of the Elgen Central School District approve the 2024 2025 property tax report card. Motion make the motion. Stacy second. I'll second. Nancy, all in favor? I superintendent report. All
005right. Um, superintendent report. We're in budget season, so Lisa Caleb and I are working on the budget newsletter. Um, this will be sent out to the public by April 11th. Um, May 11th, sorry, excuse me. See, May 11th, um, Caleb will have his final um, the budget presentation because we're having our budget hearing on May 8th. Now, a reminder that the vote will take place on May 20th. We've changed our hours. So, it's 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. So, polls close at 8:00 p.m. In previous years, we've done nine, but this is a change to our hours. Currently, we are there's still a standstill over in Albany with the state budget. So, the approach um Caleb and I have been taking or Caleb is that we are taking a more conservative approach. We're actually utilizing
006the executive budget proposal that came out. Um, and we're just waiting on Albany to agree and let us know. Um, they are supposed to have it April 1st. They're at a standstill. Um, which Caleb can talk more about that with his presentation. Fieldhouse and track update. So, overbreak, they did start the remediation on areas of the concrete sidewalk that because of the freeze and thaw that we've seen some areas, they've been taking care of that. Frank's been back up there working with Boy um Boyce. Um there is also the water was turned back on. The fieldhouse plumbing is also supposed to be um completed and we're waiting on the plumber to basically get that done. We did have like we did have plumbing in there and toilets for the October the football games. There was
007working bathrooms. They were the wrong toilets. So we had to switch them out, put new toilets in. This is not at a cost to us. This is at a cost to um the plumber and he has to finish that work including getting the fieldhouse basically clean up all of the mess that he's made from having to fix some of those issues. Again, this is not at a cost to us. This he has to cover and he is covering. Um maintenance staff, we did receive training including Amanda on turf cleaning and maintenance. So we have that now done and track construction will start weather pending very soon within the next couple of weeks because again once they lay that track down it has to cure for 2 weeks nobody can go on it. So again we
008are looking at that the track the fieldhouse really turning back into a live construction zone um while they lay down the track. So that will also be starting and we're hopefully we'll be done with everything so very soon. So that concludes my report. Any questions, Mr. Board? We're good. Elementary, Mr. Cockney. Little secondary. I'm sorry. Hold on. Oh, I'm sorry. Secondary. Sorry. But we know in your heart it's not. I tried. I tried. Thank you. I appreciate it. Finally. Finally. Go ahead, Michael. Go ahead. All right. That's okay. My AOK awards were not here today. I just want to let everybody know. All right. Thank you. Uh so attendance for JSHs from March 13th to April 15th, we're at 90.63. Uh not bad, not great. We're still looking to improve on that. Reaching out to
009students that you know might be uh chronic absenteeism, getting them into the building. Academic outcomes, third marking period ended on April 11th. Report cards are now published on the portal. Um New York State 7th and eighth grade testing update. So you might have heard that the everybody there was a window given for New York State testing this year. Um so everybody wanted to finish it as soon as possible. So everybody chose the first day. Well, unfortunately that first day the entire site uh and it crashed so no testing could be done. So uh with Mrs. Ferrer and Mr. Carpeteri made a decision to kind of say no to our ELA assessments before break and we reschedled them for after break. So the junior senior high school is taking theirs tomorrow and Thursday and then we
010have our eighth grade assessment on May 1st and our math assessments are May 6th and 7th. So I think all the bugs have been worked out of the system. I heard they didn't it didn't work two days in a row. So it was a good decision on on our parts to kind of to kind of postpone it for the time being. So hopefully it all goes well tomorrow. So that is starting then. Um regent exams. The regent's exams for June have been ordered this year. Um every region's teacher is coming up with review sessions. That will happen after school. Um we're trying to amp up the you know the passing rate for all the regent exams. So we're going to have um each teachers put out their dates. We're going to put out a a
011nice document to all the parents who have students taking recent exams and hopefully they take advantage of the opportunity for that. U math uh new series has been chosen for K. I don't I think I believe I thought Mr. K would be here to talk about that but I believe it's envision I want to say um and discussion has begun. Well, it's actually, you know, it's it's got a lot of traction that the eighth graders we're looking into next year. Our seventh graders coming in will take a hybrid of seventh and eighth grade math, which will prepare them prepare them to take algebra in eighth grade and allow them to take their regions in eighth grade, which will give them a leg up when they start freshman year of high school. So, that's something that
012is gaining a lot of traction in the county as well. So, uh, El Junior High School wants to jump into that, too. uh master schedule. We uh almost all students have met Miss Garren to go over course selections. We're going to again going to have a master schedule tail tailored to student interest and of course we're going to you know monitor the enrollment um of classes to make sure it's you know fiscally responsible while also providing the best instruction possible. Um leader me did a full spring sendoff before break. It seems like forever ago, but um it was an entire week of themes for the school day and finished with activities for students to take part on April 10th. Um there was arts and crafts, there was a volleyball tournament where the uh students beat
013the faculty team, you know, pretty much took them out, crushed them. I think it was best two out of three, right? Still have a Bruce. So that was fun. Um there was also like a schoolwide um rock paper scissor contest that it's a great concept. We probably have to monitor a little bit better next time. But um beads were given out to each kid when they entered the building and if you want to challenge somebody for the beads that they have, you have to do rock paper scissors. So at the end we had three students in the middle of the gym. Whole place was going crazy for the battle at the end. So it was pretty cool. Um we'll do that again. It was it was good. It was by the varsity club and uh
014Mrs. Drew took the lead on that too. So that was fun. And they did some movie viewing that day as well. Um, we had students that competed in the Bethlewood art art show. Um, we also had students attended the Warrior Teens uh, program at the Hurleyville Performing Arts Center, which is going to be every Friday. They're going this Friday to view um kind of programs that um, relate to them and kind of help them out as they, you know, go through adolescence and stuff and take some knowledge back to their classmates as well. So, it's a free lunch too when they go. So, it's great. Um, our juniors are going to Newalts on April 24th. And good news because this is two years in the making. Our 9inth graders are taking off for Washington DC
015on Thursday, April 24th till the 26th. So, very excited for that. Two years in the making. So, um, they fundraised. They're ready to rock and they're going to go in the nation's capital. So, and checks have already been sent out. Checks have been sent out. Yes, one of them. Yeah, but I hope there's a bus. I already talked to But yeah, very excited for that. So, good stuff. Thank you. That's it for me. Any questions for Mr. from the board? Okay. Big double. No student report. Oh, yeah. Mr. Copin, you have anything from the student? You pretty much covered everything. She was uh late. She lost her voice, so I pretty much covered everything. So, she couldn't speak tonight. Mr. Carpenter. Yep. Tough act to follow, but I will. Thank you. So again to to
016just talk about attendance for a little bit, we had uh a significant number of um issues with attendance over the last two months, mostly because of stomach issues, um flu, um even COVID, you know, that word that we don't really use anymore. And so our attendance has definitely dropped. However, we've made some strides in our chronically absent students. We've had our district social worker, Kylie Livich, as well as Andrew Develar, our school attendance, our district attendance officer, make some home visits. and we've seen the attendance of those um students that they visited increase pretty dramatically. Um which is great to hear. We also I discuss every uh month on my videos that I send out with the Mackenzie Buzz about our student attendance and where we're at and you know what really constitutes an absence
017and what uh when are students allowed to come to school and not come to school just to clarify for parents sometimes, right? So, you know, a 99.6 you can still send the child to school. Some choose not to, but you know, you really want them in school so they can learn. Um with that uh academic outcomes, uh target enrichment is complete. It's a program we did before school that we saw a lot of success in grades 1 through six. Um that ended right before spring break. Uh Envision is our new math program K through 8. We're excited about that. It is teacherdriven, teacher-led um committee that was able to choose a new program for our K through8 students. Um I'm happy to talk about the countywide art show that Mrs. Brown submitted a number of
018our students artwork um which was over in Bethle Woods. And then also we had a music in our schools month the week of the young child concerts. Uh Mrs. uh Will Dicker now Mrs. Alvarez had a great idea in um we used to do it by grade level like each day. We did every grade level on one day. We got a lot of parents in the building all in one day and that was really great and it was helpful for parents who had multiple children and multiple grade levels so they could all come at once and it was a little bit of a longer concert. It's a little bit more meaningful. It's really great what they did um in in during K4. That was awesome. I also, of course, we talked about the um rescheduling
019of the New York City ELA assessments. We're going to do our ELA assessments on May 1st and 2nd. Um we have our science assessment for our fifth graders on the 29th, next Tuesday, and then the 1st and 2nd for ELA. And then the following week, we have the same date for math that Mike and I had established earlier on the 6th and 7th. Um our spring clubs started today and they're off and running, which is great. Um always fun. The spring clubs bring everybody back outside. We have an outdoor club, a nature club, a playground club. There's a lot of great clubs going on. with the nice weather coming, it's really going to be awesome. And then uh the basketball league that was put together by the PTA and Todd Key um that ended just
020prior to spring break and there was a lot of great things that happened with that basketball league and seeing a lot of those kids play over a six week period and we're going to try to refine it a little bit cuz the thing that we had to struggle with is just gym space, right? We got modified boys, we have modified girls. If you want to try to run a basketball league at the PTA, we have pickle ball at night. We have the men's league at night at GRM. So just finding that that that time would would be the perfect uh spot for the basketball league only because it ran into little league a little bit and I always you know little league's pretty popular around here too. So but that concludes my report. Very good.
021Any questions for Mr. Corpier? These these uh these baskets don't go up and down do they Amanda? Yeah because I I I I actually heard nothing but good things about that basketball. It was 80ome kids I believe signed up for that. Yeah, grades two through five. Two through six, there's just over 80 kids. We had um with the older kids, we did grades five and six. There were four teams. And in grades 2, three, and four, we had six teams. Yeah. Um and so Todd and I have talked about this over the last two years. This is something that Mr. Keith really wanted to get going and moving. And it wouldn't have been done without the support of the PTA cuz you need an insurance rider, right? because it's not like AYso soccer that covers
022soccer or little league that covers the other little league. You need that parent organization that kind of helps you cover it because it can't really it can't be run through the district. Um there's too many issues that would be involved with us as a district running it and you don't want it that way. You want an outside organization doing it. So the PTA stepped up um they used their insurance rider, the go the little elder little league was able to purchase the shirts for the teams which were all turned back in. We had parent coaches. I was just looking to see if these hoops would come down because this would be the place to do it. Yeah, this would be great, too. We have special hoops, too, for a second, third, and fourth graders that
023come down even lower. We purchased those. We got those to a grant just this year. Um, our guys installed them, and that's really helpful because you can't have a you can't have a 6-year-old shooting at a 10ft. No, it's impossible. Um, I was against having the second graders participate. It's a little young for basketball, but Todd convinced me and um he won and it was great and I'm glad that they did cuz it was just wonderful seeing those little ones just running up and down the floor learning the game, you know, basketball. My grandson in kindergarten, North Carolina played basketball on a week like that. Kindergarten. Kindergarten. Yeah. Seriously, I just I mean it looks like chaos, but you know. Yeah. Yeah. Same with soccer. They'll start as early as 3 years old. It's just
024getting the ball up. Any questions, bud? Okay. Do you have anything from uh No, not not that hasn't been covered already. Short and sweet. Go for it. Okay. All right. So, um not a lot changed actually since the last time I presented, mostly because uh the state hasn't passed their budget. Uh I don't have our assessment data yet and we don't have equalization rates. So, um I don't have a lot of new information. Um I do have you guys approve this property tax cap report card that just points out what the tax cap is. This year it is high. It's 4.63%. Um our budget went up by 2.6 69%. Inflation was 2.95. So, we're increasing it by less than that. Uh, we're being extremely conservative in the sense that I'm budgeting higher than what I
025think we're actually going to spend because there's a bunch of unknowns. And we can always spend less than that, but I can't spend more than what was appropriated. So, um, when I fly blind, I usually go a little bit higher. And if it only ends up being 20 million instead of 20 million three, then great. Um, and then we can adjust next year to account for the surplus. Um, so that was that number. Uh, I have here, you guys should have the fuel bids. They came in excellent. So, we're going to be paying $250 about $2.56 for our fuel oil, which is pretty cheap next year. Um, we get, um, motor transport for most of our tanks. Uh, we only get a tank wagon for the one at the, um, bus garage. Um, basically the
026difference is, uh, they bring you a motor transport. If you have it, actually it's 7,000 gallons, but we have 10,000 gallon tanks. So, anything bigger than that, they're going to bring a motor transport. You get it cheaper, but our tank at the bus garage is only 1,000 gallons, so we pay a little bit more for that. Uh, and then diesel, I believe, was $242. That one went to Morabo. Um, kerosene, we don't really, that's part of our blend. We don't really do too much of that. an unleted fuel nobody will give you a fixed rate for because it goes up and down so much. Um, we get a preferred rate, but it's it's it's moves around with everybody else. We just basically get we don't pay the taxes on it. So, those were those small
027points. I'll go through this presentation. I'll go through it relatively quickly. Lisa, let me know. It's time to update the presentation. So, for the budget hearing, we'll we'll change the slides. But um basically where we ended up, our state aid is definitely going down. How much I don't know. I don't think it's going to go down by 2.8%. That's what was in the executive proposal. The legislative proposal the last I checked and the uh school was not a controversial topic on it right now. Right now they're arguing about um some justice reform of some sort. Um they were going to give us the 3% raise. So this number was going to go up. And then they had mentioned potentially giving some um increase to the amount of Bosey's aid. This is using the executive budget
028proposals Bosey's aid, but they had proposed and the legislature was seemed to be amendable to giving more uh increasing the cap on CTE salaries. So the salary portion of the um VOTE was capped at 30,000. You didn't get aid on the employees above 30,000. They wanted to raise that and I couldn't remember if it was 45 or 60,000 but they wanted to raise it substantially which would obviously give us more Bosey's aid. Um I am going under the assumption of the executive proposal until somebody passes something. Um the other going down is I'm expecting interest rates to go down a little bit. They've already gone down a little bit based on last year and uh I'm going to assume our Bosey's refund this year was a little bit lighter than it usually is. I'm going
029to assume that that is staying the same. We don't know the reserves. The state would like us to pay back our loan to ourselves. That is the cafeteria. So, it has some small deficits every year, but they've added up over time. Um, they were about 180 when I got here, and they're up to 300 now. It says 20 to 30,000 a year, but the years keep going. So, basically, they said they want us to give them a plan to pay it down over x amount of years. I gave them a three-year plan. the extra $150,000 is basically taking it out of the general fund and going to the cafeteria fund. Well, I but I wanted to explain that I'm not spending $150,000 more out of our reserves. I'm taking it from the general fund and
030giving it to the cafeteria fund. So, um some of that is I don't I don't want to say fake expenditure, but in a way Yeah, it's just a GL transaction. Exactly. So, um, the tax rates, this is what would happen on a $200,000 home assessment. I'm not going to focus on this too much at the moment because these numbers are based on last year's assessment. Um, so I don't have any new properties that are in there. I don't have the equalization rates. This is almost fake news, but it's an idea of where it's going to be. Um, these are the percentages. This is how we calculate the tax cap. Most of the change in the tax cap was one. We're adding that $100,000 capital project um or not capital, capital outlay that is included in
031there. And then unfortunately part of it is also how much building aid and state aid or uh transportation aid you're getting and that is going down. Uh we're also going to get a little bit less in pilots, but that is a minor portion of that. Um that will probably level out next year. I don't expect our cap to be particularly high le next year unless there's some giant property I don't know about going on the rolls. Um on the expenditure budget, general support going up, I included um enough money in our budget for a buildings and grounds supervisory position. And also I left in there um which we're not planning to fill right now, but if it turns out that we don't have enough maintenance, I put enough money in there for a part-time maintenance
032or part-time cleaner because if we end up too short staffed while our current employee takes on a supervisory role, we need to have that capacity available. may not get filled, but if it's necessary, um the instruction going down, we're not really reducing our instruction too much that we we ended up with two fewer students in out of district placements. We are spending $145,000 less on VOTE. Um because we had that one year where we had 40 students, that's cycled out. Um so over $300,000 of the the reason you know so you have your raises and then we had $300,000 less in out of district costs and Bosey's cost and then we are potentially not replacing two employees who are retiring. I have only budgeted in one for right now because just so you have that
033flexibility but um so so like I said there's some conservative numbers in there. Transportation, that's just inflationary. Employee benefits are going up a lot because ERS is going up a lot. And health insurance is going up 3%, but it's a big number. So 3% is $78,000. And then again, the transfers, that's where you budget for the transfer into the that's the other end of the cafeteria fund. So otherwise, most of that is inflationary. The big ones are employee benefits and general support. And then finally, I think I already talked about all these. The fuel bids are good. The out of district placements are big savings. The votech costs have gone down and yep. So I touched on everything and otherwise uh if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them. I have a question.
034Sure. Other student fees. I see that there is a $32,500 difference between last year and this year. What is that attributable to? Or was last year an anomaly? Last year actually did we're not going to collect that for this year either. Um that was the fees originally I in the budget that we passed that was for the students the college courses. Okay. We were paying for the whole thing and then collecting the parents portion. They're now paying directly and that's just where that gets accounted for. Got it. Um otherwise normally it's only for like uh the the concerts and stuff like that and it usually comes to 5,000 with all of the things combined. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Just real quick, it's the time of year for budget year. It's the devote
035in May, May 20th. Mhm. And uh the board and the admin people have been very conscious about trying to keep the taxes where they've been so get a little increase and uh I look forward to a positive vote to continue on what we're doing and hope for the support from the community like we always get every year. At this time, I'll take public comment on the consent agenda items only. All good at this time. I need a motion to approve consent items 701 through 1006. I will make the motion. Motion by Stacy. Second. Second by Kristen. Any discussion on any of the agenda items? All good. All in favor? I take a public comment on whatever anybody want. Oh, no. I'm sorry. Old business to come before the board. New business to come before the
036board. All good. Public comment on anything they want to talk about. Uh, we have a mic or no. Be nice. There you go. All good. Need a motion to enter an executive session. I'll make the motion. Second. And this is for personnel. Uh Jordan. Yeah. Next meeting at the junior senior high school at 6 p.m. on May 8th. Thursday May 8th. I don't have my class. I am getting bam. and meet the candidate at 5:45 on Yes. congratulations. You're the only one running. So, you will be uh running on opposed. So, I'm sure you'll be sitting up here as I'm voting for you. You only need one vote. Uh motion to adjourn the meeting and I don't participate any business after executive session.