001the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty for all. >> Good evening everybody. I'd like to ask for consent motion for ite.03 03 approval of the regular board meeting agenda. Upon the recommendation of your superintendent to approve the February 9th, 2026 regular board meeting agenda. There any questions on the on tonight's agenda? All set. All in favor? >> I like to ask for consent motion for item 1.04, 04 approval of the regular board meeting minutes on the recommendation of the superintendent to approve the January 20th, 2026 regular board meeting minutes. Second, >> are there any questions on the January 20th minutes? All in favor? [clears throat] Any >> oppos? Anybody signed in order? >> No. We move on
002to middle school. Yeah. >> Yep. Middle school high school. >> Yeah. We have the go boot trait for February for middle school, high school, and bravery, which will be the main focus for students and teachers this month. Recent recently students completed their midterm assignments and are now moving past the 25 week mark. This mid this midpoint of the school year is important time to reflect and prepare for the remainder of the school year. Extracurricular activities continue to thrive. Big blue little blue meets regularly. The juke graders are actively fundraising. NHS is working to improve our school and community and bridge builders met with their cohorts to discuss some nth grade concerns, questions, and give advice before midterms. Additionally, students recently formed the high school outdoors club, creating new opportunities for outdoors activities and student involvement.
003Recently, the Odyssey of the Mind competed in the regional competition with four teams advancing to the state level. In addition, the division 3 vehicle team of Jonah, Alex, Noah, and Abigail received the Renoska Fusa Creativity Award for exceptional engineering and design. The Lakers indoor track team won their league championship on Saturday and will be competing in sectionals soon. The snow team also played second at sectionals, which is a huge accomplishment and something to be very proud of. Looking ahead, the middle school and high school will take part in a career day to explore different career paths. Additionally, some high school students will attend a field trip to the health academy to learn more about the programs and career paths there. The high school and middle school look forward to continue learning and growth as the
004school year progresses further. >> That's all. >> Thank you very much for that. Any questions? Any comments, thoughts? >> Yeah. Can you explain fusa is and why you got it? So the renatant fusa um is one of the most highly coveted and most difficult we get awards in Odyssey of the mind. Um if the judges feel that a team exhibited exceptional you know creativity and fine um engineering in something that they made um in the solution of their problem then they will receive that award for those reasons. >> Can you tell us about the the engineering and the problem solving that you went through? Um yeah. Um so this was something that I headed up for the team. Um with help from everyone else of course. Um but we decided that we wanted to make
005a music box this year. Um it plays California if you were wondering. >> Um but every year there's a team that has to use baking soda in their solution to the problem. That was us this year. So, we powered the music box with um pressure from baking soda and vinegar. So, that releases CO2 and then we use that pressure from gas to actuate um the plunger and a syringe which then pushes a rack and pinion gear which then turns the music box. So, that's why we run. >> Nice job. If the power goes out, we're calling in. >> How long is the music box playing? Like what's >> um It's the full chorus. So, >> that's impressive. >> All right. Well done. >> Thank you both. >> All right. So, Mike to you, I guess.
006Revenue presentation. We like that. >> Yeah, this is the fun part of the budget cycle when they tell us how much money we're going to get. There's no problem solving or anything yet. >> Income. >> Yeah, we're going to we're going to talk income. It's going to be straightforward. Feel free to ask any questions that you do have though. Um so this is a >> it's not advancing >> is the Sorry. >> I had an onoff button. >> Um, so you can see our our revenue sources are broken up into three main categories. We have state aid, tax levy, and then other. The other is the local sources. So you can see our tax levy makes up about 48% of our revenue source, our state aid comes in at 49%. You know, there are some
007districts across the state where their the local between the local sources and the tax levy funds such a huge amount of their budget. And in our district, we rely heavily on state aid and we'll be talking a little bit more about that. What is not in here is the fund balance and the appropriated reserve. So that we're not having a discussion about that quite yet. Um, so tax levy. So let's talk about the tax levy. That's really uh basically what that is is the amount of money uh that you're going to make up from your tax base. So partially determined by the tax cap. You know that many many years ago the governor put in the 2% tax cap which is really not a 2% cap. It's based on each individual. It's a complicated formula.
008complicated to me, maybe not so much to Steph or some other business officials out there. Um, but there are a lot of things that go into the uniqueness of your own tax cap calculation. Um, and you could see some of the impacts are your individual district's growth factor, the inflation rate, uh, pilots which are payment in lie of taxes, uh, ERS and TRS exclusions and capital exclusions. And so those are some of the things that that do have an impact on um on the tax levy. And so that is why every year there's a discussion based on the tax cap. What is the tax levy we're going to go out at? So tax levy limit calculation due to the New York State controllers's office on March 1st, which is why we ended up putting that
009second meeting in February on so that we can make a decision on what that's going to be going forward. We did discuss that in finance committee tonight and Matt will be talking a little bit more about that later on. So if you're interest or if you're wondering about how does a district come up with uh a growth factor, the growth factor is determined by your prior year's taxable assessed value throughout the entire district plus any actual growth. That could be new construction. It could be um someone that was exempt before on a pilot come into now a tax base. It could be a variety of different things. Could be a business that was a vacant building that was sitting there and then the business was revived. So, there's lots of opportunities for physical growth. So,
010again, prior taxable assessed value plus any growth you've had in your district divided by the prior year's taxable assessed value. So, you can see one kind of being an average. So, you know, many districts come in around one or slightly over if you're going to be seeing a little bit of growth there. Our tax factor or growth factor is 1.0048. Okay. Talking about the tax levy, here's the history of it. This goes back uh six years back to 2020, 2021, back when it was 1.68. You can see all the values from there as they go up. Um and we really wanted to highlight the fact that each year Gio is notorious. We are well known for staying under the tax cap. So we only went out at the maximum tax cap over the last six
011years once at that 3.80% in 2024 2025. And you can see our 5-year average is 2.27. Okay, very respectable amount. Uh another conversation that we had in uh in finance committee again that uh Matt will be talking a little bit about uh but that 2.27 27 and how it relates to all those years that we stayed within the ones. Um that is, you know, keeping in mind that how much how important it is to our tax base to to be staying aware of what's going on in the town, staying aware of what's going on in the village and the surrounding areas, and just knowing how much inflation hits individual households. So, um again, very respectful to be going out at a 2.27 27 over the course of a 5-year average. Okay. The governor's budget 2026
0122027, Governor Hokll put out her executive budget and here are just some of the highlights that are related to education. Specifically, the executive budget proposes $39.3 billion. That is the um you know, each year obviously it continues to go up, but it's the largest increase. um in in a very long time. $1.6 billion, 4.3% increase over the previous year. So, uh that's a decent amount of money and you could see where she's allocating that into some of these other initiatives I'll be talking about. But the budget ensures every district receives an increase in foundation aid while beginning reforms to the formula. Now, not all of our counterparts around the region are seeing the that increase the way that they want to see it. So, before the the uh governor put her hands on those state
013aid runs, I think it was 11 or 12 out of our 22 districts across the region, we're seeing 0% increases. So, what she did was guaranteed an increase. So, anyone across the state that was at a 0% increase is now at a 1%. Okay. Uh there's a major push for universal uh full day prek. So by 2029, Governor Hokll's goal is to allow any prek student, four-year-old prek student who would like to attend prek in the district is given a slot. So what she's done is allocated a lot of money to gear up for this. So she has increased the amount of aid she's giving per student. So, for instance, last year we received about six, well, this year, uh, we received about $6,200 per student and the aid is increasing to $10,000 per student,
014uh, getting ready for this. Um, but we'll talk more about that when we get to that that part, you know, when we're bringing our prek back on. Um, you know, it's it's not necessarily a full funding aspect of that program, too. So funding continues for the universal free school meals program. 395 million set aside for that and of course building on uh previous instructional or uh learning initiatives regarding as you know you've heard a lot about the science of reading and now expanding that into math with uh funding professional development, professional learning for teachers um and high impact tutoring in high districts. Money will be allocated for it. So those are some of the highlights from the governor's budget. So looking at our foundation aid, that's the formula that New York State education department uses
015to distribute uh the money across the districts. This is a set amount each year and uh typically increases based on several different things. enrollment. The combined wealth ratio for a district which is another comp complicated formula uh that is used in each individual district that that determines the amount of money not just aid but other things like our aid rates from Boseies you know transportation aid all those expense aids that we'll be talking about. So that has an impact on that and then of course the the district's property taxes. So those are some of the things that can affect the foundation aid. Um, again, runs right now aren't set. Uh, here's a perfect example. If you could see, take a look at 2025. Um, about 8 million89,000. We are looking at a 6.41% increase in
016foundation aid. Uh, and that's solely, well, I shouldn't say solely, but heavily because of our enrollment increases. But again, that fluctuates. Now, we could say 6.41 41 next year if we lose some students which students come in and out then you know that's not a consistent number that's going to be there. It's really dependent upon those three factors. But I did want to point out to you if anyone has uh a memory where you memorize the exact dollar amount that was in the proposed budget, it actually changed. So this is another thing. These aid runs do change from month to month to month. We got the first one in December. We got an updated one in January. We're going to see what happens as we go along. So, 6.41% could change, right? It is subject
017to change right now. Um, but if you could see in the proposed budget and that bottom line right there, we at about 8,31,884 that was in the proposed budget. But even after the adopted budget went through for Jio this last year in 2025, VA changed slightly and went up to 8,89,858. That's the 6.41% increase to this year being 8.6 million. Okay. Um, I'm not going to run through this entire chart, but feel free to take a look at it. I do want to point out a couple of different areas. Expense aids number one are those that's not fixed like a foundation aid. I don't mean foundation aid is fixed because it does go up every year but it's based on um the aid formula. This is based on usage. So transportation aid comes back to
018us building aid bose aid textbook aid um based on the the numbers that fluctuate. So for instance our usage of transportation um building aid the amount of services that we purchase in Tabosi. So you can see that aid comes back based on usage. It's based on expenses. So the percent changes you can see on the right hand column um you can see some of the areas that have gone up slightly are our building boseies hardware aid uh computer software aid textbook aid that's typically based on enrollment of students um and li library learn uh loan program aid same so you can see the overall increase in our expense aid is uh due to us it's about 1.66% 66%. All sources of income are made up by again pilots, payments in l of taxes uh where
019some companies as they come in they're as you know they uh make deals with the local governments to in lie of taxes. They have to pay a certain amount of money. So you can see that percent change their interest and penalties on real property taxes. uh other student fees and charges, so on and so forth. As you go down through there, those are just some of our local sources in expected revenues for this current year. Going into next year, you could see a decrease at 1.37. We're uh 951 951,000 last year, going down to about 938,000 expected local revenues. So if you bring it all together, this is what we're looking at. This does not include a tax levy. So you can see it's 0%. It's flat right now. That's for us as a district
020for you as the board to make the decision on what tax levy we go out at. But you can see the foundation aid, the expense aid, and the local source. Remember those three forms of income there. And you can see the percent change. the tax levy um at 0% is there's no calculation of any number in there right now. So we're looking at with just those three sources of revenue 2.42% right of an increase in revenue going from 26.3 million to 27 million is our income. So, as we know, the tax levy will be a portion of that going into whatever our final expenditure amount will be to help close the deficit between our operational expenditures and our revenues. Okay, we're still early on in the process to trying to determine what our operating budget
021will be. Okay, we'll have more conversations around that. So, next presentations coming up will be March 2nd. Um, it'll be we'll bring be bringing to you a draft of the non-instructional budget. March 16th, the instructional budget and then April 6 will be the final budget, the first B or the, you know, the the full budget I should say, and then the final budget coming to board approval on April 20th. And you can see some key dates there as well. But at this time, I'd like to open it up to the board for questions or comments. >> Any questions? You want to reamp your >> Sure. >> Audit report a little maybe. >> Just give me the report now or >> Okay, sure. >> Okay. >> Uh so >> definitely the parts that are related to
022>> Yeah. I mean we had we had preliminary discussion about about the tax cap u various scenarios u and so we'll make the final decision as a board at the next uh meeting that we've scheduled. That's the only thing that's going to be discussed to my knowledge at that meeting. Uh we talked about um different uh the potential for propositions coming as part of the budget. Um so it looks like at this point we're we're leaning towards one proposition. Uh we talked about kind of where we are currently in in the pledge process. um you know what the initial gap is and uh some potential ways to possibly close that and um it would just have a really good discussion. Okay. Well, we still have some time before the state closes their budget. So, we'll
023see what what one closes in this year at least. That'll certainly have some impact potential impacts. It's I guess reasonably good news if early albeit that there's a potential increase of aid albeit if they'd like a better formula. Anything else? Anything? All right. Thank you. Much appreciated. It's early, but we're getting started. Thank you for everybody's work on this so far. >> I like to give credit to Stephanie, of course. Uh, put all that together for me. >> Okay, you ready? >> Now, we're going to talk a little bit about school improvement plan, which kind of ties into what you just heard, right? and uh all the money and the expenses and how obviously how we can use that uh the revenue and things like that to really support our students um here in our
024school and help support them and improve them. So um we're going to talk a little bit today, give you an update of kind of where we're at uh dig in a little bit to what we're doing at each building um to support students and things like that. Just a quick reminder, um, in 2324, um, we kind of had to develop a district comprehensive improvement plan, uh, based on some subgroups. And then in 2425, uh, we were a targeted school of improvement and we kind of decided to focus on three through eight, um, in that area. And then for this school year, we had to create a school comprehensive educational plan um, which is our our SIP plan there. and you shared that back I think maybe August or so we kind of went through a
025lot of that with you. Um so we're just kind of giving a little update today where we're at. Um obviously we have some subgroups um with uh groups that kind of made us that target and but overall I would say that really think about all students um when we're developing these plans and how we can support all students and not just those subgroups of students that we looked at. So, as we go through this, just what we kind of looked at for this school year is just kind of some things that we already have in place um and how we can make them better um and do a better job of redefining them and then also trying to enhance some things or expand some programs that we have. So, a lot of things we'll talk
026about today you probably have heard about um as we've gone throughout this school year. So, we really tried to to tweak them and change them. Um, and that's some of our goal even moving forward into next year is even to make those those better and do a better job in those areas. >> So, this is just a the most updated um information that's on our New York State report card. Um, our first subgroup that we were targeted a district for was Hispanic or Latino subgroup. Um we have now moved beyond that and we're just in the local support and improvement um which is great that we have shown progress there. Students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged subgroups are where we were targeted um and we received that designation. So that is really where um across
027the board all again as Craig said all students were supporting uh but specifically those three subgroups because we're hoping not to fall back into the targeted um support and improvement. Um so as we look at the growth of in comparison between 2324 and 2425 you can see uh just an overall this breaks down summary of ELA scores. And if you look at overall grades 3 through 8 we increase by 14% overall for all students. Um and and this is due, you know, in our our beliefs due to again the commitment that the student the teachers have done to supporting curriculum work uh implementing u and learning about programs, being a reader, being a writer, having more depth to the conversations uh with at the student level. um having conversations around what students need in order
028to um fill in those gaps in targeted services. So overall 14% and then in math um we in 22 23 23 24 they were working on a local curriculum but did not have a common curricular resource that they were using uh grades K five. And um now yet last year we spent time as you know exploring different resources and we fully implemented a curricular resource pilated classroom map um from I Ready. So although there was limited change here, we still went up 44% overall and we're hoping that this will be a direct um reflection on the designation that comes out should be very soon from New York State um with updated reports for the specific subgroups. So we're moving in the right direction. Um we're trending in the right direction. We still have a lot
029of work to go. So that data is is collected for all three subgroups. >> Uh that's actually just for all students. >> All students. Yep. And that's right on the New York State website, >> the New York State report card. >> I made Christie do those sides because I I can't see. So I told her to do if you can see. Uh so when we were looking at creating the district district comprehensive improvement plan, uh really we concentrate on three areas. Um and so we're going to go in and kind of touch on each area a little bit and and what we're currently doing in each building and obviously also what we're doing um districtwide to support those three priorities. But obviously social emotional and uh is one main area. We've done a lot of
030work in that areas. We also looked at instruction interventions um and the support to meet students needs. Um, and then just really working on creating a positive, welcome, student centered environment, uh, when our students come here to school. Um, and really working on making sure that we're we're supporting staff, we're supporting students, we're supporting families, um, and really trying to get everyone in our community involved um, in our school as a whole. We'll talk a little bit about action steps, uh, some things we've been doing for the 2526 school year, um, just in those areas holistically and we'll go from there. >> Yeah. So each of our priority is broken down in a slide and you'll see there's a lot going on there. It takes a lot of what we've already been working on and
031already doing and we're enhancing and expanding in a lot of those areas and then it adds in what we're what's new to supporting those priorities. So for example, TCIS is not new to us but the depth and the number of faculty members and staff who are trained is growing and that's a new component. So we had a full cohort do a three-day training in the fall. We are lucky enough to have Bri and Melissa as in-house trainers. So they're going to do another round in the spring. Um and that's growing K12. So that was one of our goals too to expand that up to the middle school high school. We're also providing a 100 level for all support staff. So we're hoping eventually it's something that everyone in the building has had some experience with.
032We're also expanding different ways we're supporting these social social emotional components. So, our K through five zones of regulation curriculum is new this year. You know, you'll see common um terms like bridgeuers and big blue little blue and go blue. All of those things we just continue to work on enhancing and and being a little bit stronger and more consistent. We had a first semester student of the month breakfast um in the middle school high school that was pretty well attended and nothing crazy um nothing super fancy but just uh 30 minutes where we're getting more families and community and connections in the building. So another way we're just trying to grow those um in and outside of school connections. The second one deals with instruction intervention and support. So, as Christie mentioned, we are
033fully implemented with our being a reader, being a writer, which is a lot because in addition to that, we're doing our I Ready math. And so, teachers have gone above and beyond to try and navigate the challenges of new curriculum and they're doing it um with such grit and I have full admiration because it is a lot to handle, but it is what we've needed and they're doing a good job implementing it, which is going to be continually reflected in our scores. We have our guiding coalition that we'll speak to in a couple slides. Um, we sent another 10 staff members to the RTI at work conference in the fall. So now that guiding coalition is full of 20 people who have now attended that 3-day training. We continue to embed different curriculum work and
034collaboration working on vertical alignment and cross-curricular supports. I'll speak to the writing revolution in a few slides and the datadriven problem solving. We had awesome days where each elementary grade level got to work with Christy Hag and us and um really spend a half a day just diving into what is the data showing us and not just exploring what it's showing us but action steps of where to move from from there and what's most essential in moving forward and so it was a really great experience to be a part of and then the last I would like to highlight our community liaison So Liz White being um our Spanish speaking parent coordinator, the work that and the connection that she's able to make with that subgroup in particular um I I it's just invaluable. It's
035it's been tremendous and it's given us such u incredible insight into how we can better support and connect with those families and students. So we're working on a lot of different things as we move forward through the year. one being when we have our read across America celebration week. We have taken what the elementary has established in a K5 and we're expanding it K12 and the Monday night event. We're kind of merging all of these different groups and we're taking our reading team, our elementary team with our multicultural collective group in the middle school high school. And one component of this event, the theme of read uh across fairy tale land is that we'll have about five different classrooms that cultural have cultural exploration into a different fairy tale. So if there's a Hispanic Latino
036room, what does Cinderella look like in that um culture? And so we'll mix in some language, some arts and crafts, some readalouds. And so again, just a lot of these um initiatives that we're trying to work collaboratively with. And so hopefully this will be the biggest turnout yet. You two better be there. Um and and again vertically aligning K12. So we're really excited about that. >> All right. And and as we go talk a lot about this, um one area that we're really focusing on is our our multi-ter systems of support or MTSS, which you'll hear talked about a lot. Um and really about supporting students academically and behaviorally. Um so a lot of things we talk about we talk about go blue traits and all those kinds of things. Um we look at that
037and this obviously pyramid that you'll see a lot um we look at tier one tier two and tier three um students. So tier tier one really should be we really should be impacting about 80% of our students 80 to 90% and really should be getting uh that core instruction that those those core go blue traits different things like that in the classroom. Um and then we're really working on that tier 2 um which is five to 10% of our student population and really doing some targeted interventions there. Um and then we want to try to work on our our 1.5. Um, we're working on kind of flipping this triangle a little bit and that's really what the the MTSS RTI at works uh program kind of talks about doing is really that tier one instruction
038should be at the top. Um, and all students really should be getting that and then as we work through the process um really kind of targeting certain areas whether it's academic or behaviorally with our with our subgroups and and different students at that area. So, um, we're going to talk a little bit about that. And that's really what a lot of our guiding coalition work is about, um, that the 20 of us have now attended and things like that. Really looking at, um, how we can do a better job of supporting students, um, and really narrowing down and focusing on those areas to improve our data as we do that. So, we use a lot of the the data that you showed earlier, some of the data that we collect here internally just to kind
039of make sure that we're reaching students there. All right. So, add the elements here. Oops. Um yeah, I guess I got just some things to tie in. So you'll see um really working this year on just K12 having a good understanding of what the MTSS process is. So uh we've been really trying to promote it uh discuss it um and do some different things there. Um obviously the RTI work conference adds up the guiding coalition team. Um and then at each building, um we're kind of looking at master scheduling, doing different things, um to try to make it better, um at the elementary or the middle school high school. Um and then really trying to work on our our student support teams. Um we kind of started implementing a a student support team in the
040high school last year. the elementaryaries had a little bit of an IST and instructional support team in the past and we're trying to make it better uh throughout the school year and how we can really help support students and to have those good conversations um with our staff as we work through that. So, some things that are happening at the elementary level right now for MTSS, I think Chris is just going to highlight a couple areas there. >> Yeah. So, school as a whole is a multi-tered system of supports. That's what MTLS is. Um, and any student at any given time may need an intervention. An intervention can be provided at the tier one level, the classroom level. Um so something that we work very closely with our teachers um our Christy Hag our mentors
041they're doing a phenomenal job at working with the new teachers and the as they learn and grow their craft on how to explore different types of interventions before kind of hitting that panic button of oh my gosh the student isn't making the progress that we thought that they were going to make. So our we call it an instructional support team. We meet um twice a month and our team of teachers and uh service providers. We have been working on toolbox of interventions to help provide to all staff. And again, with having an MTSS coach, we're able to help support um and offer that toolbox of interventions to teachers in order to help problem solve within the classroom. If that doesn't work, they can submit a student consultation form where they're looking at more specific support
042for speech and language, occupational therapy, physical therapy, um counseling, reading, math, and they have exactly what it says, a consult. So, they have a provider will come in, they'll give some interventions, share some things they've done, have a great conversation, try some here's some new ideas, give it a try, maybe here's a screener, and then they walk away for a couple weeks, come back, consult again, and they decide, hm, we're making progress, we're not. Let's take that third step and explore um how else we can approach the problem. um the problem solving situation. So that's our instructional support team. They'll put a referral in and that will get scheduled with the instructional support team. Um we come to the table. It's generally about 10 people. We have some standing members. We have invited members as
043well. And it's all about focusing on the child and what's working, what's not, what their strengths, um their interests, what their challenges are. And we then select um we list several different new possible interventions. We choose one, set a goal, and then we come back six to 8 weeks later and monitor their progress. And that's that's the goal is that we just keep coming back as needed as much as often as uh the student requires and parents are involved. Um it really becomes a collaborative effort. That's an overview of our student support process in the elementary level. Um the MTSS coach position with with Christy Hag um with her decades of experience uh A5. She is just uh a pillar of strength to support schoolwide behavior. Um new teacher coaching again those classroom interventions having
044data days and working with the teachers as Megan had mentioned. Um and then supporting with instructional resources. So uh from there uh again she is a resource for everyone. Um, and we also continue to look at our master schedules because that was one of the initiatives as a district was looking at our student support but also our master schedule. So we have very focused essential learning blocks that are untouchable. So any services that are provided are not during essential learning so that all students receive tier one instruction and they're all receiving the same thing. Then the interventions come in at the what we call is I and E block. um it's intervention and extension. So kind of reaches again all needs of learners but it's differentiated for ELA for math. So that's a continued work
045in progress where again new people who have gone to the RTI at work conference are already saying I think we can tweak our schedule a little bit more which is great because it's a continuous growth cycle. Then a little bit at the the middle school, high school, just the student success team. Um she kind of kind of the same process a little bit. Um but obviously when a student is struggling or there's some things going on um teacher can submit a referral and then we'll get that information. Megan does a great job. She'll send an email out to the rest of the uh students teachers, get some feedback on how the students doing across all subject areas. Um and then we'll pull our intervention team together. uh meets, we'll discuss the student, discuss interventions, um
046try to come up with some strategies and different things that can help uh support that students. Um and then we'll send that out and then obviously we'll do follow-ups. Uh could be in two weeks, could be three weeks, could be five weeks after some of those interventions have been put in place. Um and just see where that student is and if they we need to tweak them, change them, adjust whatever those interventions that we put into place um are. So um kind of go through that process. Uh obviously it's it's a team collaboration. Um we just started it. Um we are starting now to invite more people to that uh those student success team meetings. Um originally it was just kind of the mental health staff and us um trying to sit around the table
047and brainstorm. So now we're trying to include uh the teachers as well to come to those meetings and things like that to have to have a better understanding and obviously have more ideas and strategies and things like that that we're having. Um we're starting a it's an invisible mentor kind of program, but obviously we did the panorama survey back in the fall with all students. Um and some some of that information we got from that. Um one area is like um connection to staff. Do you have a an adult in the building that you are connected to? Um so one thing that come back come back came back from that is that there are some students that didn't feel like they were connected to an adult in our building. Um so we're kind of we
048use that data. We're using our go blue committee um to kind of work on building that invisible mentor so that student doesn't really know that um that person is doing but they're trying to build a relationship um so that when we do the survey again here in a month or so hopefully that data changes a little bit and we can see that we we made a difference in in those connection pieces. So those are a couple areas that we're working on there. Um and then Megan was going to talk about the other two. >> Yeah, the last two focus more instructionally. So the instructional discussion, you know, obviously you're always having discussions centered around the best kind of instruction. You're looking at your um assessment results. And so this was a reflection after our post
049uh 20week grades were released and our midterms were taken. And so with team leaders, we started to just almost brain dump and just have this open and honest and vulnerable and tough um conversation about what reflective practices we can have as instructors. What do these assessments mean to us moving forward? um looking at when we have changing demographics and we have changing student needs, the idea that I want to maintain accountability in my classroom, but that accountability or that essential learning model might look a little different. It's not releasing the accountability, right, or responsibility of a student, but it's reshaping it to ensure that we're really providing a well array of differentiation for all students to have that opportunity. So, it's it's a it's going to be a never- ending continuous discussion, but it was
050a great first step in that the focus on literacy really getting back to the foundation of morphology. And so, we're working with our reading team on having a root of the week in 612. So, universal tier one for everybody. It's a root of the week. and building that and revisiting work that's done in ELA classes and and examining the best way to teach vocabulary and embed that practice. We continue to use our I Ready Diagnostics to drive literacy intervention. We now have all ELA, social studies and science department members along with the fifth grade and our 6 through 12 L teacher um all trained on the writing revolution which is really support and strategizing the best way to teach writing crosscurricular. So that was a huge accomplishment. Um and then we're working as we think
051about the master schedule next year and the best use of resources how we can better leverage our reading teachers. So looking at in middle school for example, if third period remains a period where most middle school students either have a study skill, so they're in a group of 22 students, they have support services, that is a great period to then make our reading teacher schedule a little bit more fluid. So it models more of a true intervention. So there's pulling based on skill deficits in groups, small groups, and that intervention works done for 6 to 8 weeks and then they're returned and then the next group is pulled. So reaching more students within a block instead of just the one or two that are typically assigned. So hopefully this is familiar to you. This was
052something that was shared with you over the summer. Again, we have our district comprehensive plan that has three main priorities that we reviewed our um action steps within those priorities. This was our school comprehensive um plan. Again, the green fancy check marks are just saying, "Yeah, we're on the right track. We have done these taken these steps." Um, I have copies if you'd like another copy, but just wanted to remind you again, we have the big umbrella of the DIP. We have the school comprehensive education plan. Um, and it all right. So, next steps, uh, just kind of follow up on that. Uh, next steps are really to do the panorama survey again, um, here this spring, uh, to compare those results. Um, we really need to do an audit of our 2526, uh, DIP
053and SEP plan, um, and make sure we what we've done and haven't done and how we can tweak and make it better. Um, and then we have to formalize and get ready to submit our 26 27 plans. So, those are really the next three steps. And when we are doing that um obviously we're use we're working with our community groups so our parents our staff um and really obviously it's all for our students as that. So those are really our next three steps throughout the next 15 or so weeks here as we we finish out this school year um to have it ready to go for next school year. And then just a a last statement there obviously that you probably seen this before but you know obviously uh we were put on this list
054for certain subgroups but really overall this is really hopefully uh success for all students and how we can do that to support them. So that was probably a lot of information uh there for you. We tried to include some some data so you saw some numbers um and then also some just things um that you might you might not have a lot of data for but we feel like are making a difference. and our school culture. >> Is there anything you don't have to? >> Yeah. What do you need? I feel like I mean I I think that we are I think the connectedness between K12 is huge and I think that we are you know we had a um our building planning team which is combined with our community connections group. So it has
055community members, has staff members, has parents um and we we said the same thing. What do you need? what's missing? And like we we feel really good about it. Communication is great. We're moving in the right direction. We're making connections. There's little gaps we can fill in, but um they're feeling a lot more experiences both in the building, but also outside the building. Um and we're trying to reach as many different families, as many different subgroups as we can and be inclusive of everybody. So, um I think >> I think time is I think time is a time is something we all need uh because I think we have great conversations and and then we get caught up in the day-to-day things. Um so it's nice to have that time to really have conversation with
056staff. I think the staff is really uh is working on changing in how we can address our our student and our population. We just need we need that that time to have those conversations and to make the these things that these action steps and these interventions and these strategies and and things that we really want to do. uh we just need that time to really make sure that we're all on the same page and going forward because I think everyone is here for students and and you know staff has been very very helpful, very supportive uh with everything that we've been trying to do and on board and and really putting forth 100% effort to make some of these things um happen because we couldn't do it without them. Um if it was just the
057three of us trying to do that obviously it wouldn't these things wouldn't happen. Uh so really get that time to work with our staff and our very Thank you. Any other questions? >> Great job everyone. Thank you. >> Well done. Very well done. I just want to say one thing about that is I came into the district I you know there's a lot to learn right like you're coming in it's just from facilities to uh operations to safety to you know staff history instruction instruction is the biggest component here right like this is what we're all here to do is to focus on teaching and learning. And I just want to say um this you guys all know this. I'm just I'm preaching to the choir here, but the staff is is amazing here. They
058really are. Like they're willing to take on any challenges, give kids the best experiences they could possibly have. Always looking to do better and greater things for kids. Going the extra mile. I see it day in and day out. And this administrative team is phenomenal as well. Um to do what they do. I mean I ran a building for 13 years. It's a hard job. Arguably I'll say this. Somebody told me this once and I'm like didn't believe him but they said we have a principal. It's harder than being a superintendent. And I I will agree with that. Well I feel the pressures of the district and the long-term planning and all the things I have to do. It's hard to be in that day-to-day grind. But my point is they do it and lead
059all the instruction on top of it, right? Like they're the instructional leaders within the district. It's phenomenal. Um so kudos to you guys. And it's it's a really great team. Um you know, not not just the three of them, but you know, with uh Stephanie, John, and Sarah as well. Like everyone just kind of steps up and does whatever uh that's necessary and needed to be done to get through the day. Sometimes it's just to get through the day. And so I just want to say how impressed I am with this entire GCS. And I know you guys see pockets and hear pockets, but to live it on a daily basis, it's pretty special. >> You uh can go right into your report. Like a couple more positives to share. >> Um all right. So
060Ally shared all the great things without the minds. you know, a lot of the teams that did really well. It's really impressive that out of our five teams, four of them are qualifying and going on to the state tournament. So, pretty impressive. I won't go into too much more detail on that. Uh, we had our jazz band and show choir concert last week. Phenomenal. Again, another new experience for me, one a new first, but I'm blown away. Like you to see just to see the high schoolers or it's like, wow, how do they get to that? But then what's really cool about I like about the concerts here is you get to see every single level that build up to it. And the amount of middle school did great, too. don't get me wrong, but
061to see how they progress, the amount of potential our students have and our educators, like kudos to all the music teacher to get them to that level, it's just it's it's amazing. So, I enjoyed every moment of that concert. Um, dogooders club got a recognition not too long ago at the annual regional legislators breakfast. Uh, each school district has the opportunity to nominate a program. Uh so we nominated the dogooders club and uh they were uh recognized for their amazing work that they did uh or have been doing and something that was mentioned just a little bit earlier too. So congratulations to all those students and teachers involved in that. We had some great performances in alpine skiing. Uh hopefully Lincoln Donigan, am I saying that correctly? And Andreas Laughlin, am I saying that correctly?
062All right. on the Alpine skiing team. Their races uh were cancelled just recently. So, it kind of wrapped up the season where Lincoln finished fourth in the league and Andreas finished ninth, which is a huge accomplishment. They're about 30 boys varsity skiers in total, so not too shabby. Uh they're going on to sectional, so good luck to them. Um last week was school counselors appreciation week. Just want to say thank you to our school counselors, Teresa Hol, Suzanne Scholman, and Becky K. Three amazing people that we have great assets to the district. Um, this week we have bus driver appreciation week. So, you happen to be out there and see a bus driver, thank them for what they do because you couldn't pay me enough money to do what they do and they do it
063so well, right? Like to drive a bus is hard enough. You're just having a conversation with a couple of them. Don and I were last week and they, you know, to have 50 kids on a bus where you're supervising them through a mirror and to get them all to and from safely every day, pretty phenomenal. So, we have a lot of appreciation for them. Um, let's see. February breaks coming up, week of the 16th. I'm sure the students excited, have a little bit of time off, and so are the teachers and staff, too, right? So, uh, it's a nice winter break to recharge and come back for that long haul of the spring. Um, last but not least, uh, many of you know, but I want to say it in open session here. Um, our
064capital improvement project, uh, bidding date got moved. Um, as you know, it moved from January 20th to February 3rd. And the reason behind that was the amount of interest and inquiries we had in the project. um there wasn't enough time. There was a lot of questions that came in right before January 20th. And in order to give a fair amount of time for the questions to be answered by SCI and campus to get the information back to the biders to make an accurate bid. They decided, the companies decided that it would be best to just postpone that. So, it got postponed to February 3rd. Um they were doing kind of like a a regional um canvas of some projects that have been going on across the region and updating some estimates based on some new
065information that came in regarding labor rates and material rates. And so from that, um, the new estimates came in and they weren't as good as they were 6 months ago. As you can imagine, everything's going up and it's happening so quickly. So they came to us and said, "Hey, we have some talking to do. Um, a buffer amount of money within the project is built into protect just in case the bids do come in a little bit high. That's not counting all the contingency money that's set aside for as you, you know, rip up a floor, you're like, "Oh, I didn't expect that to happen." That contingency budget of just in case we need to add or work in or do whatever. You know, there's a pretty healthy budget of that in a capital project
066set aside. But then there's this little buffer, bid buffer they call it, uh, that's set aside as well, just in case the bids come in a little higher than expected. Well, with the labor rate increase and material increase, that buffer was eaten up. So, Mike, Kevin, and our team here, John, Stephanie, and Campus and SDI sat down to say, "Hey, what is it that we could really look at um in terms of possibly needing to pull back a little bit of work, a little bit of scope on the project because of these labor rates and material increases? And we won't really know exactly, but we kind of looked at preliminarily some things that if the bids come back in a little higher because of these labor rates and material increases, then what areas do we
067want to start looking at? So, we started the conversations around that. We don't want to go into anything um say anything right now because we don't know. Everything's kind of up in here. Really depends on the bids. That new date was moved to February 19th. So on February 19th, we're going to have a much better idea of where we stand. We will descope the project, meaning once the bid come the bids come in and we know the amount of money that we have to work with, we'll be able to have some decisions and then we'll go public with exactly what's going to happen at that point. But for right now, we're just, you know, we just had to put a slight pause on it. Now the most important part of all this is that the
068timeline for breaking ground and get shovels in the ground is still remaining the same. Okay. And one thing that SEI and campus did which was good foresight is they build in some buffer time between bids and start of the project knowing that things could pop up. So Horn any questions from the board on that? >> Not a question but if I can add one. So when you just mentioned descope, we're not descoping the auditorium. We're not descoping the gymnasium. We're not descoping the front entryway. The areas that are potentially in consideration are not do not impact that. Okay. So let's just want to keep that out there. Right. >> If I could just one thing I meant to follow up with what descope means, not hold back on the scope. That's good. Thank you for
069that point. descoping in the past. Okay. And I'm not we're not descoping no >> project. >> Meaning we're going to pick apart what is able to go into the project. Sorry, I didn't know the history of that. Uh what's going to be able to go into the project based on what the bid looks like. So breaking down the scope and where we're at for each one of them, not pulling scope out. Thank you. >> And we have gone through the areas that are being looked at and prioritize those. There's priorities in terms of what is first and second and third. Correct. Anything else? Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you all. Good information. Matt, anything you want to add? >> Yeah. So, uh, in addition to things that I mentioned earlier, uh, you
070know, the we didn't have any further questions about the revenue report or the appropriations report that we received as part of our packet. Uh, That was uh you know that was the other things. There was some as part of the meeting uh we you know we had some discussions about you know the the the tax cap from last year and where uh you know the decision the decision was made uh to not go out at the full cap. So we wanted to deconstruct that and look at had we gone out at the full cap. How much of an impact is there? You know, if we had gone out full cap last year, what would we be looking at this year? And it's very minimal impact u on the revenue side for this year. um you
071know it would have a a further compounding effect as the years go along um but given our decision-m process um we made the right decision next year. >> Great. Thank you. >> Uh we also talked about um our ban is set to expire. >> Yeah. So that's so we're going to go out for bond in June, right? >> So switching from ban to bond. >> Yeah. >> Right now rates are favorable. >> I was going to say I just going to ask where where are the rates now is >> well tomorrow. >> Okay. with >> our advisors >> and we're we're hoping that time's on our side that that that you know between now and then status. >> Thank you. Good. anything on policy or >> uh tonight we uh we put in motion for
072the first read of 1,600 policies. There's six of them up for the first read tonight. Um just for an information for everybody, the policy committee usually at this point in time takes leave absence from meeting. uh budget goes into double sessions occupying time on the first and third board meetings prior. Uh we're going to continue on with our meetings on the uh at the second board meeting. We're just going to start earlier at 5:00 and and meet until 6 and then allow time for the the budget um to continue on from 6:00 to 7. there's uh she wants to do with policy at this point in time and this is the best plan moving forward so we accomplish all the objections needed by July. Thank you to all committees much appreciated. All right with that
073personnel section 8 like to ask the consent motion for items 8.02 02 through 8.12. Any questions on any of the personnel items? Members hearing none. All in favor? >> Any opposed? >> Like congratulate under section 9 new business. I'm sorry. I'd like to congratulate the person for 8.12. >> Are we gonna have >> Yes. >> Are we going to have like a little ceremony for him at some point or >> Yeah, we're going to lump everyone together. Okay. Get to that. >> So, we're approving it tonight, but we're going to have >> a normal recognition later. >> Perfect. >> Thank you. Good question. Okay. Uh section 9 under new business. I'd like to ask for consent motion for 9.02 and 9.03. Questions on the CPSC or other policies? All in favor? >> Any opposed? Section
07410. Business office like to ask for consent motion for 10.02 and 10.03. All right. Any questions on the the audit report? Anybody? >> No questions. That was another thing that we discussed at audit finance. There's some corrective actions internally that are that are incurring various processes. Yeah, I >> read the read the report actions and very proactive. Thank you all. All in favor any like to move to section 11 business if any not aware of any old business we've got it all we haven't kicked any cans down the road section 12 board president's report board committee just one thing I'll talk about tonight is Wednesday this Wednesday we have uh our round two of the of the board district retreat. So there'll be pretty much a full day for those who can make the morning
075who visiting classrooms and just to kind of restate something I know superintendent Book has already stated just normal day no special anything uh we'll be touring the school kind of seeing every a day in the light and um then we'll have a lunch and kind of an open forum for any questions comments that board members and district can have and from there we'll go into an afternoon of the retreat later on in the retreat where we'll talk through a number of topics related to dis what we didn't cover in in round one and picking up on the district vision goals as we we talked through the district goals and board goals uh the planning process and um communication I think communication internal communication external communication those are the the general topics As always, it's an
076aggressive agenda. We'll see how much of it we can get through. We don't get through it all. We may have board retreat two 2.1 or three. We'll see how that goes. But any questions on on Wednesday, I got your messages. >> I'm going to try to >> Yes, sir. Thank you. And all right, questions, comments, thoughts. With that, I think we have an executive session. We're going to enter item 13, executive session. Uh motion to enter the exec. >> All right. >> Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you for all you do.