001Welcome to uh Free Central Schools uh Board of Education meeting for Tuesday, October 7, 2025. Uh we begin each meeting with a pledge to the flag. So please join me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Um, so, uh, before we begin, uh, uh, uh, approve tonight's agenda, I'd ask for a moment of silence for Gene Morris, a retired teacher who recently [clears throat] passed away. So, please join me in a moment of silence. Thank you. Uh also before we approve the agenda, I'd like to uh point out that uh tonight's meeting will be paired down to the essentials as uh we have three board members uh who had
002prior obligations uh and could not attend tonight's meeting. And as noted at the last meeting, uh Miss Han here uh is now a board member of the Siaka County School Board Association. So well done, Miss Han, and congratulations. Um, but Miss Han is needed here to make a quorum tonight because we need four. But she's also needed tonight in Buffalo as a uh New York as the New York State uh commissioner of education is speaking and fielding questions and it's rare when uh the commissioners in Western New York. So, Miss Han uh is pulling double duty tonight uh by making this meeting uh but also representing Fredonia Central School and our uh county at tonight's meeting uh up in Buffalo. So, we want to get Miss Han on the road as soon as possible. Uh
003so, thank you, Miss Han. I know you have a lot of questions to ask the commissioner. Uh I hope >> you got that on the drive. >> There you go. You got it on the drive. It looks like the weather's turning a little bit better. Uh and that explanation is probably longer than tonight's meeting. So [laughter] sorry about that. Um but uh we uh need to approve an agenda for tonight. Uh fortunately tonight u uh everything is in consent uh for all of personnel and new business. Uh so could I have a motion uh to approve the meeting? >> So moved. >> Mr. Marshall. Second. Miss Han. Anything pulled from consent tonight? >> No. Okay. All in favor? opposed. Great. Okay, moving right along. Uh we move right into our uh first round of public
004uh commentary. Uh those wishing to address the border has to stand, give your name and address, and limit the comments to 5 minutes or less. I must stress though that these comments have to be directly related to the agenda tonight. So if it's on the agenda, uh you can speak now. Otherwise, uh we do have an open session at the end of the meeting uh to speak. So >> hi the agenda. Julie Mula, 131 Pilaski Street, and I am uh directly speaking of fundraising, which is on the agenda. Um, so I would like to discuss fundraising in general. And while I do that very quickly, I would like to read excerpts from an email that I recently sent to um the varsity and modified volleyball coaches, as well as Dr. Ziliocox and Nick Petrando the
005athletic director. As a parent of a modified volleyball player and also of a former JV player, we have sold beef sticks both years in annual fundraiser. You may already be aware of this fundraiser, but each bag costs $20 and the team receives a nice kickback per sale. Last year and this year, my daughters have sold a large amount of beef sticks. In fact, this year my eighth grade daughter sold 32 bags totaling $640 in sales. Uh last week I approached Amanda Koyak who is the volleyball coach um about the volleyball booster club and where the fundraising funds go to again on the agenda today. Um specifically I wanted to know where the profits were being used as benefit for the modified team. During this conversation Amanda explained that the booster club treated the profits as
006more of a whole meaning they weren't split up between the three teams. She continued to describe the things that the money went towards such as the end of year banquet apparel. She also mentioned summer camp, but went into detail about the funds being used in a long-term kind of way, that the modified kids would eventually go to JV, then eventually go to varsity and higher levels of competition have more costs. While I did agree that JV and varsity do have more costs, it doesn't make sense to me that the funds being raised by the players aren't being used on those actual players. In fact, I also had to remind her that not all players continue on from modified to JV to varsity. And I can speak to that from experience. Um that players do get
007cut. Amanda did mention that the modified team was event invited to the end of the year banquet, but they chose not to attend. Um rather there was an afterchool pizza party in the modified coaches rooms that they paid for by themselves. Um [clears throat] Amanda mentioned that they each got a t-shirt to which I was kind of taken aback. $640 worth of fundraising got my kid a t-shirt that everybody got. seems ridiculous to me. Um, from past experience last year, in addition to this year, we have basically paid for everything. We paid a $100 to send our child to a summer camp. So, it would appear fundraising cost doesn't cover that. We paid for volleyball book bags that our children bought. In the tournament that was held on Saturday, there was a shirt for sale
008for $20 that if we wanted, we had to pay for. As for the banquet, we all brought brought a dish to pass. To sum this up, I would like to know how money that is being raised directly benefits the modified team. >> Can I can I jump in? I'm sorry. I should have stated this at the beginning. I got caught off guard, but uh if you could just leave individuals out there. >> Okay. I'm sorry. Thank you. >> I'm sorry. Continue. >> Thank you. Um I would like to know um directly if a breakdown could be provided of how volleyball booster funds I guess in all fundraising are being distributed. What percentage is being distributed towards modified towards JV towards varsity? I would like a breakdown of what each particular team raises. I know from
009speaking to the modified coaches as um recent as last evening that the modified team brought in over $3,100 of sales and they have gotten nothing from those sales except for a t-shirt that all three um teams have gotten. Um again, I've reached out to Dr. Zilcs. I've reached out to Nick Petrando. I have spoken with Amanda who has said basically the same thing over and over again. And I have reached out to Mr. Forbes earlier today. Um more of questioning I guess about fundraisers in general and about booster clubs in general where there is a check and balance system. Um the modified coaches have told me that they do not even have access to the booster club. They have no idea what money is going in or out of the booster club. So, I'm wondering
010going forward, who's on accounts for these said booster clubs? Where's the check and balances for the booster clubs? Seems to me there's a lot more money going in and not much money coming out um for the expenses that were discussed. I I don't know where all the money is going. Um >> great. >> So, I guess that that would be it. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss McCulli. We appreciate your comments. Um, and uh, the board would probably like a follow up on this. Uh, >> yeah, I just wanted to share uh, Miss McCull and I had a chance to chat yesterday by phone and uh, I'm working on getting her some information that she's requested and I would expect that to be soon. Um, I would hope within the next 24 hours or so.
011>> Appreciate that. >> Um, if for some reason it'll be longer, I would definitely reach out to you and make you aware of that. That's up to you. If you could leave your comments with Miss Morrison, our district clerk, and we'd appreciate that cuz, >> you know, in conversation, I I get probably 70% of it. So, please leave your comments and um Dr. Xanax, if you could uh just follow up with the board. >> Absolutely. No problem. Very much. Thank you, Mr. Anybody else who'd like to speak tonight uh on the agenda? What's on the agenda? Okay. All right. Well, we're going to move along and um we need to approve some minutes. We need to approve the minutes from the audit meeting of September 22nd, 2025. Got a motion to bring that to the
012table. >> So moved. >> Miss second. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any questions on those uh audit minutes? >> All in favor? >> I >> opposed. Uh we also have to approve the minutes from the uh regular meeting of September 23rd, 2025. I got a motion to bring that to the Mr. Marshall. A second. >> Second, I guess. next time he's on. Any questions on that? >> All in favor? >> Opposed? >> Great. Okay, we go right into the financial treasures report. We have a budget uh investment and revenue. Really not a whole lot to talk about tonight. This was for July and I know the board in the past has wanted to have more current reports as we get into the new school year, how we close out the old school year. So, this
013is more or less just for information. I said not a whole lot of activity one way or the other and not a whole lot of comment on it. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. Any questions on that at all? >> Okay. We need to approve the treasures report. I have a motion to bring that to the table from Mr. Marshall. Second. >> Uh Mr. Forbes. Anything on the treasures report? >> Nothing on that. >> Okay. No questions. I assume so. All in favor? >> I >> opposed. And uh as stated earlier, all the personnel do businesses and consent a rare night for citizen number. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I missed. There's one more financial. Sorry, my apologies. We need to approve the application for the corrected tax roles for the 202526 school tax levy. I
014have a motion to bring that to the table. So move, >> Miss Han and Miss For and uh Mr. Forge, anything on that? Yeah, first I'd like to make one correction is for 2425 which is a little bit unusual and what happened was there was a correction processed through the county and the assessor's office last year that subsequently turned out to be incorrect. So they've had to correct that again and so that's what this one is. >> Okay. >> It was a star exemption that wasn't carried forward correctly. >> Okay. >> So it is the 2425. I'll adjust that in a minute. Thank you. >> Questions on that? All in favor? >> I >> opposed. And uh as I said, uh everything in personal new business is in consent tonight. So we're going to move
015right into our second round of uh public commentary. Is there anybody that would like to speak in the second round of public comment? Okay. So, uh right into the superintendent report. Yeah, I'm going to try to keep it rolling. Um, I did want to just take a minute to recognize some of the people under personnel. Um, we have two people who would earn permanent status. That means they worked for a year successfully done a nice job. That's J Josh Copeland is one of our cleaners and also Kathy Ships is our food service helper who spends time in high school cafeteria. Thanks to her. We also have some new teacher aids coming on board. Marissa Burr, Andrew Camp, Kirstston Brown. um look forward to them uh joining the Fedonia family and also a new appointment in
016food service uh Carmen Medina. So welcome to all of them. We appreciate um everything they have done and will do for the district. We're happy to have them on board. Also wanted to note that next meeting we will have an update on the SSSA or the support staff negotiations that have been going on. Thanks to their team as well as our team. Those conversations have been positive and productive. We're getting close to a final agreement and we'll have more information on October 21 there. Also wanted to talk a little bit about the uh more about the FTA contract that we uh approved last meeting. Um just sharing a little more details. Again, thanks to their team, thanks to our team. Again, very productive, respectful, positive conversation. Um, I think we reached an agreement that was
017fair and could be considered in our CVY language a win-win. Um, sometimes in contracts we clarify and there was some language that we clarified around the grievance process that will hopefully um avoid confusion moving forward. Um, we also defined some things within these contracts. Um, one was defining the term prolonged illness within the sick bank section. So that was nice to some come to some agreement around that. Um we also reorganize oftentimes as part of these contracts. We have some teacher leaders that we call instructional leaders that overseer see certain content areas or certain teams of teachers at certain grade levels. uh we reorganized them to align better with curriculum and New York State standards and also to equalize the stipens between those two positions, the team leaders and the instructional leaders. Oftentimes during contracts,
018we add um different components. Uh in this contract, we did add one uh teacher workday uh to the school year. So uh right now it reads 184 days. We'll go to 185 days next school year. Um at times we increased things as part of these negotiations. We did increase the health insurance contribution um of the FTA members from 16% to 70 17% over the course of the four years. Um that's a half of a percentage for the first two years and then another half in the other two years. Um we also changed some things as part of contracts. One of the things we changed is how the retirement incentive is uh set up and eventually paid out. And now it is partly based on accumulated sick days. This was not part of the um equation
019prior. So we're happy to bring that into the fold moving forward. Um again other increases um to salary of the FTA members and this is over the four years. There's really two ways you can look at salary increases. Um each year teachers move up a step on the salary schedule. So if I am a teacher with 14 years experience this year, um next year I'll move up to 15 years of experience, which brings with it a higher salary. If we factor in those increases that are already built in to the existing structure, the increase over the course of the four years would be an average of 2.57% above step or what sometimes people call as new money. Um if we look at that as a whole over the four years and and factor out um
020whether it's step or above step, the increase is uh 4.63%. 63% overall. So either way you look at it, um those are the increases that are associated with this contract. Um we also added a half day for preK and grade through grade four teachers which matches the amount of half days that grades five through eight receive. And we also added 10 paid parental leave days upon birth or adoption of a child. So, usually in a contract, salary gets the most attention. I just wanted to talk about that briefly. Um, we do think about how we compare to other districts locally and around our area. We also look at other local contract settlements both here in Chiakqua County and southern Erie County. Some of the districts more north in Erie County are much bigger, don't equate
021with us as well. Um we noticed that many of those contracts were settling in the range of five and sometimes even 6%. So we're under a lot of the districts that um have currently settled. Um we also recognize the need to be competitive in the market and we certainly want to um attract good teachers and we want to be able to stay competitive in the market. Um, back when I first started teaching many moons ago in the early 90s for a teaching job, sometimes you would get 50, 60, 70 applicants. Um, now sometimes we might get five, four, three, eight, six. Um, so the market is surely changed. We um want to be competitive now, but also over the course of this contract. We also want to show uh respect and honor to the employees
022that we currently have on board who work extremely hard, do a really nice job with our students, provide a great education here in Fred Fredonia, and we want them to feel good about um you know, their situation in terms of compensation as well. Um we want to be able to continue to offer highquality educational uh experiences and opportunities for all of our students um across the board. We also want to be able to continue to serve our community well now and moving forward. And we we believe that this contract really helps us do all of the above and puts us in a good position um to be successful in Fredonia schools now um and moving forward. Again, we want to thank everybody who is part of this process. This contract is for four years, so
023beginning in uh 2025 and will um end in uh late June of 2029. So, we're excited to have this off the table. Um anybody can feel free to reach out to me for more information at any time. I'm always available and can usually return a call or an email uh certainly within 24 hours. We've talked a couple times here at our board meetings about our operating procedures. We just wanted to make you aware that they are up and on our website um under the board of education link. Thanks to Mrs. Morrison for her help with that. Also, thanks to her for the post on social media, especially over the last couple weeks. If you haven't seen, take a look. There's a lot happening across the district and we're really trying to do um a job
024of communicating what's happening and celebrating some of our successes. Um although Miss Han is going to be on the road shortly, um I'm going to have a chance with the um Erie Bo superintendent tomorrow um at 10:00 a.m. to meet with the condition uh commissioner and have some dialogue back and forth similar to what they're doing tonight. Um but that'll just be with our superintendent group. And also, I just wanted to make people aware at our next meeting in October 21, we're going to invite our new hires um any of the new teachers um to the district um to put a name with a face and share a few thoughts uh with the group. So, we look forward to that two weeks from tonight. >> Great. Thank you, Dr. Any comments from the board before
025we administrators? No. All good. Mr. Tanelli, did you say anything? Yeah, just quick for me today just uh our first set of parent conferences is this Thursday. Um so all that information has been sent out and then on Friday during our half day we have some um presentations from the Albertie Center uh UB's Albertie Center for Bullying Prevention. So that'll take care of our tier one NTSS um for within the district. So we'll have that on Friday. >> Great. Thank you very much. Yeah, Miss Farrell. >> Um sure. Just one little piece of news. on Saturday, October 25th from 11 to 2. There is an event being held at the Wheelock building. It's an autism mom's lunchon. It's sponsored by the Autism Caring Center, which is um actually centered out of the Pittsburgh area. And
026what they're doing is they're having a lunchon for moms who are raising extraordinary children. Um they say it's more than a meal. It's a chance to connect with others who share your journey. Um there's two keynote speakers or featured speakers. There's speech pathologist Lauren Melo and also Lindsay Ericy who is going to talk about hope humor and holding it together. So a nice opportunity for parents. It is a $20 fee for the meal and the session. So I don't know if that's going on there'll be another reminder but it is >> thanks M. >> Mr. Forbes. Anything else? No. Miss Morrison. >> All good. >> Good. All right. [clears throat] Well we have no need for executive tonight. So, uh, we can, uh, end this meeting in record time and, uh, get this out on
027the road. Uh, looks like it's clearing up out there. We have a motion to >> second. Oh, >> Mr. Bar. All in favor? >> Opposed? Thank you, everybody. Drive safe and students, anybody can sign your know >> lucky meeting. really pick the right meeting