001Everybody welcome. Call the meeting to order. Pledge of Allegiance. 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, justice, all after a couple of preliminary approvals here. We're going to modify the agenda briefly and then you'll understand why in a second. So all right. So like to ask for consent motion for modified agenda personnel section the agenda I'd like to move 8.13. It's the appointment. This is the appointment of our district clerk. I'd like to ask that to be moved forward to section 1.03 and we can point and conduct with the office for a district clerk. So motion for consent we approve the amended agenda. Approve the amended agenda if we have just so everybody knows on the agenda
002here it says March 10th but it is March 24th. Second. All right. Motion made and second. All in favor? Any opposed? So move. Yes. All right. So we're going to read the uh you would if you would make a motion to make a motion to approve 8.13 or Yep. It's a motion to approve 8 8.13 the appointment of our district clerk. Second. So just as a for everybody's here on the recommendation of the interim superintendent Dr. Hunter to approve Morgan Carson to the position of superintendent secretary district clerk has a start date of March 31st 2025. Motion made and second. All in favor? Anybody opposed? All right, good. Um Morgan, if you would like to step forward, Dr. Hunter Sal, if you'd like to make So, I'd like to make a couple quick comments and
003then um we're going to do an oath of office to follow up so that um the appointment is uh consistent with uh New York State policy and New York State regulations. It's a real advantage to have someone with the knowledge, background, and commitment um that Morgan will bring to this office. There's lots of knowledgeable people out there. She's got knowledge in areas that exceed the typical type of clerk. Her political background, her organizational skills, her ability to work with a variety of members in the community. make her uh a person who will bring to us someone who will add to the quality of what Jennio is all about. I'm excited for the short time that I'm going to have the opportunity to work with Morgan, but I'm more excited for Jennio and the opportunity they're
004going to have to work with her over the next few years. I would echo everything Dr. Hunter said. I've known Moren as a student and as an adult and uh I think she brings a wealth of talent, passion, and commitment to the district. She's always displayed that and and I know that she will do a remarkable job in every aspect of her position. So, we'll just add that along with Dr. Hunter and Mr. style. I'm honored to recommend that the BOE has approved, board of education has approved Morgan Carson as executive secretary to the superintendent and district clerk. Um, this district role really requires some extensive leadership and organizational skills uh that Morgan clearly has as well as a lot of expertise in law, the legal environment, confidentiality because of this role, community relations, technology.
005I can go on and on, but I won't embarrass you too much. Morgan brings these and other and many other qualities to this role as our key district uh point of contact. So with that, Morgan, if you would step forward. So if you would repeat after me, please. I Morgan Carson. I Morgan Carson do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America. Do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America. and the Constitution of the State of New York. and and the Constitution of the State of New York. And that I will faithfully discharge according to the best of my ability. And that I will faithfully discharge to the best of my ability the duties of the office of district clerk to the
006board of education of the Genio Central School District. Now it's But you do need to sign. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Yes. I wasn't planning on repeating that part. One more. Well signed and John and then John, you're going to have to sign. Thank you. And I just want to thank um everyone here today that came to support me and especially um Dr. Mr. Hunter, Mr. Dalio, Mr. Salotale, and the rest of the GCS hiring committee that took their time to speak with me, interview me a couple times, and entrusted me in this entire process. I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity and can't wait to see what the future holds. Go Dallas. Welcome, Morgan. You want to take a few seconds? Let's adjourn and that way Morgan can say hi to each of the board members. Okay.
007Yeah. Teresa, good. You can introduce your husband to sleep if he doesn't need that's not good with myself. Okay. Is it open tonight? Dr. Hunter, this is Dana. Sorry. I remember you. My brother's nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you. This is my husband. Nice to meet you. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. All right. Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. [Music] Yeah. So, we're actually still in session. Okay. So, now we just All right. So I'd like to ask for a consent motion on 1.04 upon the recommendation to superintendent to approve the minutes of the regular March 10, 2025 board of education meeting. Second motion made and second. Any questions on the minutes from March 10th? All in favor? Any oppos? So move. Do we have no student body?
008All right, with that we are going to go to capital improvement project presentation. So, I'd like to thank um our capital improvement team uh from campus, Gary Huffman and um Mike Ferrari and our capital improvement team architects uh Ted Mountain uh who is here today to give us an update on where we are with schematic designs. This is something that's absolutely critical, important for the board and any community members at home to be tuned into. We have made a commitment and an investment to continuing to grow our facilities and our designs are developing and we want to make sure our board understands the uh extent of the development of these designs and we want to make sure the board understands the costs associated with it and that's where campus and SEI uh can show us
009their their insights into the ongoing work. Hi, I'm just going to introduce Mike Ferrari. Mike is a senior project manager with campus. He works with me um on the Genio project. You're familiar with me. Um Mike is a new face to the team. For everybody else, you are Gary Huff. Yes, it's still there. And so Mike is going to present. We put together a package this evening. So it's going to reflect and this goes back to a conversation we had a long time ago is that when we're developing the documents and Ted Mountain is here from SEI as well. uh we really identified the development of the project documents as a schematic design that's an initial highlevel development of the project which with time gets refined to a design development level which is picture as
010an airplane flying in the sky at 50,000 foot. um your schematic design, you're looking down at the ground, you see things. It's it's it's you can conceptually see what's happening, but there's not a lot of detail. You bring it down to the DD level, design development. Airplanes now about 20,000 foot. You really can start to see definition. And then we get to the final stage at the construction documents which go to SED for their approval. They'll issue the building permit once they approve the documents and that's when the airplane's hitting the ground and you can really see everything in fine detail. where we are this evening is we're at the schematic design level. So we're up here still um conceptual to to some degree but also some definition as well. Right? So we in order
011to monitor the budget do estimates at each of those levels. So, right now this evening, Mike's going to talk about the schematic design estimate and it's going to and we're going to show you where we are in that and then um in time as SEI develops their DD documents, there'll be another estimate. We'll come back to the board and report on that and then then when the documents go to SED in June, then we will come back again with a more refined and that'll be the construction documents. As I say, that's eventually what will go to the contractors for bid, but we have to go through the SED process though they're taking six to eight months right now for review. So, we are planning on a on it to come out of the state around
012February next year, which then it goes right into bid and award phase and construction next year. I will step away a minute. I'll let Mike take it from here and you're in good hands as he reports on where we are on schematic design. Thanks Gary. Thanks. Hi everybody. Um so a lot of what Gary was just referring to I have illustrated on our on the first slide on the screen here. Uh what our pre pre-onstruction process is. Um I want to start here because it'll give us some context on the next couple of slides. Uh you can see like he Gary said we are we are at the end of schematic design. We're talking about our schematic design report and estimate. In reality, the architects our are into design development phase already. You know, in
013the essence of time is a very short schedule. We've got to keep moving. So, the comments and feedback that we've received so far and that we continue to receive back is constantly flowing back through the architects into the design documents from this point forward. Um, at the end of every phase, we we follow back up with the user group. So during schematic design we had a series of meetings with stakeholders in all the uh areas of the building that are going to be touched in this project. We it's a information collecting phase. Um so our our task for them was to tell us give us all of your wish list items. Tell us how does how can your space work better for you? Basically um at this phase we and this will become more apparent
014on the next slide. At this phase, we're just collecting tons of information and we expect that everything that we are hearing is not going to be able to make it into the project. We do have to honor the budget. We can't go over what really spent. Um so what we do is we try to incorporate what we can into the documents and where we are right now. Thank you. Um is trying is wrapping our heads around that with the dollars associated to it and starting to identify where can we start value engineering this thing. How do we start refining this down to get more closer to our budget? So, some of the reasons in schematic design that you see larger budgets um is that the conceptual ideas sometimes are and a lot of times are
015are based on a square footage. There's no details at the concept level. Um we use historical data to apply uh square footage costs to to some areas. If there's if there's prices we can hard prices I should say we can get, we try to get those as soon as possible as well. Um but at this point we are taking the concepts and putting them onto paper. The architects are doing that. Um and uh those tend to the ideas tend to grow and the idea is it grows so we can see the bigger picture so we know where we how we can refine it down to get to our end goal. Um we're also incorporating as I just said the user feedback. So this is still we're still pumping more information into the project. Um existing
016condition surveys. We're doing deeper dives into areas that are going to be affected in the building. uh the architects are doing their building code analysis uh and we are at this phase um incorporating this because we want to overd design for reason for for later on in the project. So as we get down into design development phase which will be our next report uh we're going to include all of the feedback we get from this one um refine the design even more and we're going to start to um uh include or identify alternates to the scope. This where we start to identify protection for big day. Um we will we will identify portions of the work assign priorities to them and those become our ad alternates. This will the idea behind this is to get
017us actually below budget heading down into SED and towards bidding. Uh the idea is if numbers come in on bid day higher than expected, we're protected. Uh we at least we're at budget. Um if they come in at our estimate or lower, great. we can we can turn to our list of alternates and start pulling things back into the project. But including them this early which in which leads to higher costs is is done for one very important reason and that's so sed has the information to review. We want them to review this now or when we submit it to SED. If we have to go back to them later to add something they have not seen before, we could be entering this same 6 to 8month queue. may be different but it's it's another
018review process that would kill our schedule. So so we try to identify as much as possible. Um can go to the next one. Okay. So we are currently reporting that the project is a little more than $1.2 million over the conceptual budget. Um on the screen here you're looking at our conceptual estimate. what our current schematic estimate is and the variance between the two. An orange number means we're over, a white number means we're under or at budget. So if we if we go down these and the next couple of slides are going to add some explanations to these. Uh we're seeing overages right now in the gym but some savings in the locker rooms that are across the hallway from the gym. Um between those two, we're looking at a smaller variance of just
019under $50,000. Um the corridor improvements, we're we're including the tunnel um moisture mitigation that's happening down there. That came in a little bit under budget because the scope of work was a little less intensive than we were originally thinking. But the access hallways around the um the back of the auditorium that go by the fitness center, those had some more finishes in them and had some more upgrades to them than originally thought they were going to be in concept. Um the existing locker rooms, these are the ones over closer to the fitness center. Uh I believe it's where they're located at, right? Uh this grew significantly and I'll explain in a minute. Um we had estimated this is one of those square foot costs where the locker rooms are going to be renovated. We applied
020some historical numbers to a locker room renovation which would have included, you know, new lockers, new finishes, maybe new fixtures, new lights, things like that. Kind of a refresh of the space. Um the the schematic drawings are showing a full gut renovation with a complete new layout in those docks. Um we and and I'll get back to that on the next slide. Uh the auditorium renovations, those actually we saw some savings from concept. We're about $175,000 under budget. That would be in the um in the auditorium proper. So we're doing ADA improvements essentially in and some work on the stage. Um the work on the stage is on the last line. Um and that has to do with an acoustic shell. Right now you do have um a structure behind the the stage that is
021built to kind of help reflect sound and and to the back of the room. This would be this acoustic shell is a a portable, foldable, storeable solution for that that um would help enhance that. Uh the reason why this number creeped up a little bit is um we there's different tiers. There's different prices for everything. And I think we priced one of the more expensive um options to be on the conservative side at this point. Next one. Um the entry lobby and secure entrance. We had some scope uh creep in there as well. The vest fuel got a little bit bigger for security purposes. I'll get into that on the next slides. and um uh just a more added scope of of finishes and um a little bit extra area. The the one thing that's
022that is adding a lot of value to that overage is replacement of all the exterior storefront windows and doors. Um the ones that are existing there are I was looking at them on here. They look like they're in decent shape, but that's one thing we're going to look at trying to salvage to bring that number way down. The art music UPK area, we did see some increases there. Um, a lot of this $54,000 you're seeing in the variance is tied to um a replacement again of exterior doors and windows. Now the um there there is some opportunity for us to take another look at that and scale that back as well and be a little less invasive and just target specific windows that we might need to to touch or egress purposes. And then BCS
023items um we this is on here kind of for conversation purposes. the the value that we're dealing with. Um we have an allowance for $536,000 uh and change to address items that have been noted on your BCS report. It's been recently discussed to um to pause and revisit that list because priorities might have shifted uh recently. So we're going to sit down with the OIC team and Mr. Hunter and the district and uh capture anything that we don't know about or that priority might have changed and then we're going to re revisit this number and and see what we can fit into it. Um depending on what happens with some of these other numbers as we go through the next couple of phases. We might be able to have more room in that number as
024well, but we'll see. Okay. So, we did meet um this morning uh with our design team and the districts and uh Mr. Tanellio, thank you for joining us. And he shared with us some of his um immediate concerns after uh looking at the report. Uh so, we'll just go on through some of his questions and after we go through these, I'll open up to you guys if you have any further questions. So, you've studied this gym for a while now. Uh the question is, why are we so uh far over budget? Our explanation in the report was there was additional steel structure that needed to be added to the building. Um, and while you guys have studied the the block walls and the steel frame structure and we know what why we're doing this project
025to address that, what was not included at concept level was removable removing of the mezzanine level that's in the gym. This was was this um user input to remove or from the beginning? No, I think we had the idea of removing the mezzanine from the beginning to provide more gym space for you guys, but it was not understood at the concept level that the mezzanine is actually providing lateral structural support for the walls next to it. So, we can't just go in there and cut it out. So, what Mike's talking about is we we cut that mezzanine out. we provide the additional gym station, but at the same time, we have to provide some additional steel reinforcing to the sidewalls um in order to make that work. And so that's part of, you know, the
026the overage on the on the um large gym. Yep. Um there was also some additional uh structural uh details that we didn't take into account at concept level. The new walls where they are going back on the interior of the building require some modifications to existing structural footers that are under the concrete slab that we've got to actually go down, find them, enlarge them so we have the bearing capacity for the new walls that we need to put up. Um touched on the additional steel and the footers. So the those were the big picture items. I believe there was also a third um divider screen added during the schematic design process where we I think we captured two of them at consec. So that all together has kind of and made that number go up.
027Um how how can this be addressed? We're going to SCI is going to start exploring alternative structural details to to address this. We do need to brace the building from racking back and forth. Um, so we're going to go back to the table and and see what we can do to make that less impactful with the existing or added structure we need to to put in there. Um, and then equipment and finishes, those could become expensive really quickly. So, we're going to be vigilant on what we're selecting. Um, you know, anything needs everything needs to be durable. It needs to look good. You know, needs to look like we did this right. But uh we're going to be uh very smart about it and balance that with the budget um as well going forward. Music
028art um what the the increase in footprint this the the price went up because u during design we had some requests from the end users that the spaces were tight and we started looking at the area of that building. There was a conference room next nearby. So the the discussion quickly went to well can we take that space and we started to explore that. Um so the the footprint that we're talking about grew in size. So immediately that's bumping the price up from our concept. Um we added a relocation of the kins to the art room from its existing spot. And the big driver of the increase there was um the windows and door replacement um shown on the schematic designs for the exterior of the building. There were for some reasons for that. Um,
029rooms of a certain size do have different requirements for exiting. Uh, when you get to certain thresholds, you're required to have two exits, a door and a rescue window. When you reach another threshold, you know, a rescue window no longer becomes viable and needed a door. Um, that was one of the driving factors for adding some doors into those classrooms. Also, the age of the existing windows was taken into consideration. They're existing. uh they're original to the building and if we need to bring this space up to the current code it would not meet they would not meet the current energy code. Can we go back to the increase on that that section? Yes. And go back. Thank you. So, how how are we going to adjust this? We're we're we're going to shrink this
030footprint back down to what we're originally um looking at a concept and start thinking outside the box a little bit to see how we can make this work within that footprint. Um, second, we're going to the uh, SEI is going to take a look at the exterior wall again and see where we absolutely need to replace a window or add a door if necessary. Otherwise, we're going to try and keep that the same. Um, a full replacement as shown in the schematic drawings, required structural steel to shore up the masonry openings, putting new open, you know, glass and doors in there. So, we can avoid that. That'll bring cost way down. So Mike, I want to I want to be clear so that anybody in the audience and or anybody listening um in the community,
031we had discussed in regards to this music, art and UBK area a plan A and a plan B so that we can continue to value engineer some of the recommendations made by that art and music committee and see if in fact we can get um square footage to the point where windows and doors are um appropriate, but also so they can get some of the size increases and and and see how far that goes. Uh so that that can be a plan A in evolution. Plan B is if when we get to the bitter end and it just doesn't go, we'll need to make sure everybody's aware that um we gave it our best shot but the dollars don't align with the structures and we want to keep driving that A and B concept. Correct.
032Yes. So we did discuss that um earlier today and we are going to come up with a with two different options. One this way one scale back. So we do have that fallback. Okay. Thank you. I mean he the what drove this whole section was the intent to incorporate UPK into the district and it makes good conceptual sense but now that we begin to see some of the the ramifications from a construction standpoint the cost is getting pretty significant. Well, so so I have I guess I I have other questions to go back while we're on this particular are is the size increased to the UPK rooms or the the art and music groups? Yes, we distributed it. Uh so the the space that we took over um picture those three other spaces kind of
033shifting over and absorbing that space. But so like during the initial design like we went over the the required square footage to code what code did those require do do those meet the square footage requirement to include another exit door? If I'm hearing you correctly, you're asking are we at that threshold to require that? No, I was saying from the like you were talking about the addition of needing like rescue windows or if the space is too big that it it can't have a rescue window. It has to have a door. The required space for a UPK classroom is like we had already gone over this like the required square footage. Yes. Does that square footage automatically require an exit door? We That's a good question. Can I answer? He might know. So, if you
034remember, Matt, the um the block I don't have it up here, but we had four rooms in a row. Yep. And it was down in the hallway um uh down from the district office. So, that if you remember that block of space, um it has four rooms now and then there's a conference room at the end. So what we did is when we explored the option of taking that conference area office area um we grew the prek rooms which were at the other end minimally and most of the space went into the music and art rooms because that was the discussion of what space needed the most square footage because of the number of kids in there. Um, and so what happened is the two preK rooms did not grow to require a door. It
035still needed a rescue window. Any size classroom over 500 needs a rescue window. Um, so the music and art needed a door out of it when we absorb that other space and part of the cost is in that door, but we've already started to look at ways to bring that back down. Um, so that's what we're doing right now. We're trying to bring that area back down. I personally think it t makes a lot of sense to take that space because of the number of students in the art and the music rooms, but if we can't get it back down, we're going to have to make a decision about whether that cost is worth it or not in the end. That answers your question. Yes. Yeah, that that answered my specific question. Thank you. That
036it was not related to the UPK room, right? I think the prek rooms were originally sized around nine and we're trying to keep them under a th00and because that's the tipping point is 1,000 square feet is going to require the door. So we're trying to massage it right now between 9 and 1,000 but if it grew it grew minimally. Um it was mostly the art and music that grew and they they gained some space by grabbing that end which that end was really if you remember the original existing plan it's it's about half a classroom. So essentially we took half a classroom and we distributed among amongst art and music to give them a little more space. Programmatically it makes a lot of sense. It's part of the I think advantage of doing all these
037phases of design because you get these ideas that come in and it's just a matter of now can we afford it. I think it's the best design but it wasn't originally conceived that way. All right. Um the locker room renovations. So, those were originally, like I touched on a little earlier, estimated as a renovation of your existing room, um, updating finishes and lockers and such. Uh, for for privacy reasons, uh, I think mostly there's there was a request to move those offices and storage that are inboard inside that locker room out so they have access up the hallway. The reason being if there's if there's a male coach that has to get into an office that happens to be in the girls team room, he can't access his office. So, um, SEI did a a
038study on what that would look like and in the schematic design documents um, and that's what we had priced up. That's why we're seeing a a blow up of that number. So, this is another space where we talked about doing a plan B, our second option, where those offices stay where they are. the space generally stays like it is and we do like we had estimated at conceptual level a refresh of that space with I think minimally like new lockers, new team style lockers. Uh and I just described how we can address that. Uh so we're we're going to look at a plan B to keep the plan similar to what it did. And the auditorium overall decreased, but um the acoustic shell increased a lot. And I touched on that before. we we priced
039conservatively a more expensive model of this. Um there's definitely room to pull that back and I think the latest pricing is more in the $50 to $60,000 range, not the $125,000 range. Um so we're we are identifying those products now to try and rein that price back in. Again, I I just want to again make clear for those that are here and those that may be listening, um, this is not going to just be a dollars and cents and or architectural decision. We're going to get back to our user groups and we're going to share with them some of the other schools in the region that are using different models of this shell so that our music and theater group and look at some existing um, facilities and what those alternative shelves look like. uh
040versus what maybe the school of the arts might have in the Cadillac version so that they're getting a look see and making sure that we're moving in the right direction. I I I guess I just I have a problem with the when you're developing a concept and applying dollars and cents when we have to make a decision and go to the public and ask money for him. Why wouldn't you have used the Cadillac numbers first? H well that's a that is a good question. Um I I don't have a indepth answer other than we have a little bit more information now as to what was being looked for looked at which is what we had priced and at this is the point at which we then take a look at a number and say whoa
041hang on this that can't fly let's find something cheaper and now we're working our way back into that number that fits. So, we want to we we're always trying to push the envelope to see what we can do. And from there, we we see where we're at and we got to then scale it back. And that's part of the process from getting the from the schematic down to the construction document up level. And I believe that happened during the planning phases when the conceptual budgets were being built up. If you recall, we were significantly higher than where we landed with this project. there was misogyny being done to bring the number down to something that could be um promoted to the public in a reasonable amount, but we were we were I think we're several
042million over at some point and it's like well let's get the number down. So there's it's like pushing on a balloon. You're trying to make it work within what you have to work with, right? So we could have but it then referendum would have been significantly higher too. So it just it just it's just all it kind of just bakes into it all in a way. But that's the point, Gary. Yeah, that's the point is is we have to go to the public to ask for what we need. And if we didn't have the correct information, then we didn't ask the public for what we needed. I don't think you did. I think you had the correct information. Clearly, we don't. Clearly, we don't. So Matt, I think at this stage we have as early
043in the design still room to make some adjustments within the design itself and stay within the within the financial level. The discussion we had earlier today was there are different levels of this acoustic unit and I think we're at the good to better category as opposed to Broadway level category. So that is the distinction. So earlier today it was about 158,000. Today it's tonight it's 50,000ish. But okay, we're getting down but still still meeting the functional requirements of this. But back to the the gym. Okay, which was the main driver of this whole project. We had ad nauseium meetings with your group. We specifically talked about structural steel. I'm confused as to why it wasn't known before now that we needed additional structural steel and that you were going to need additional footing like how
044did you not know that then? I'm going to defer to because ultimately what we do is we work with the information we're given and if you roll with it well I guess for the answer on structural steel I would say that we did a lot of investigation into the gym but did we did we do you know adnauseium field investigation in the locker room area and understand all the calculations required to pull that mezzanine out. Probably partially, but um it does take the design process to go through and have a structural engineer an analyze everything to understand the final um design. And they're looking right now at how we can pull that structural number back if there's other ways to brace that gym that'll be less expensive. So that's what we're going to do. We're
045going to try to get it back in the right budget number, but we can't we're not we're never going to know everything at at the concept phase. We'll know as much as we can, but there but without going through the design process, you're always going to discover things. I I understand that, right? And and and there's built-in variances. What was the percentage 25% that you built in as a as a variance? Um, but you knew what you encountered with the small chimneys and so you had to add additional footing for that. Yes. And you saw that the building moved when we moved part of building. So I I just um I feel like you guys missed the boat a little bit. So, our task at hand here is reigning these numbers back in and where
046we can find flexibility. It'll help us in other areas like this. Go back to the locker rooms again. Um, the staff is requesting their offices to be outside of the locker rooms on the outside corridor wall. Right now, you have to walk through the lock and that looks like that can't happen. uh just from the price alone that's a big driver of the increase. So our our idea was let's create another uh path forward that keeps these in place so we can compare the two the two numbers. Yeah. Is there any way you people can look at moving those offices so that the staff and the students are more comfortable with the setup than having them inside the locker room moving them somewhere other than they are right now. That's what the plan was showing.
047So they moved from one side of the locker rooms to the other so that we could put a door from the hallway directly into those offices and that requires a pul of the holy space which was above and beyond the concept level. So these are alternative. We're we're we're exploring every idea right now. The the plan is to look at what it looks like and what it looks like costwise to leave the rooms where they are. Um if we can access them where they are from a different room. I think the fitness center is on the other side. I don't even know if that's doable. We're going to consider everything. This is the next one. Sorry. Okay. So, the secure entrance uh this this has grown in in cost a little bit. Um, schematic design
048like I I mentioned earlier reflects replacement of the storefront up front. That's that's I think one of the biggest drivers of the cost increase. Those are achieve. So, we are exploring an option to leave those in place while also adding the um force entry protection that we're looking for for security. Um we did through the schematic design process widen the vestibule a bit uh from the from the concept level and increased this and that also increased the size of the reception SRO office as well. Uh there were addition there were some finishes that we didn't have at concept level for the rest of the lobby um which which adds to the increase. So, what we're going to do, like I said, is is come up with a plan B. Uh, leave as much of the
049existing building intact, like the windows and doors as we can reuse, and see where we land there. That'll chop that number down significantly. One of the biggest drivers in that vestibial decision was the fact that um the double door security area wasn't deep enough and that in fact uh typical teenage individual could hold one door and hold another door um and thus break the security concept that it was initially designed for. So changing that vestibule was absolutely critical from that one piece. The size of the offices and the locations of the offices are things that we do need to re-engineer, but we're going to have to look at the vestibial size and then where do we put those offices? Um, and how much change in the offices are really needed or not needed. Right. Exactly.
050Is it possible to to change the size of the vested Google without changing like without increasing the square footage of the offices? Um it is. Uh we were also being sensitive to that group's input as well and there's the spaces are small um even on the increased size. So they're they're big enough for their function. I'm just afraid if they got smaller they'd be on the small too small side. But it's definitely something that's on the table to be looked at because I I know that one of the one of the areas that we discussed in the initial part was the fact that the current vest that we have now was not wide enough. So again, I'm I'm just confused as to why that cost factor wasn't factored in um where we ended up placing
051the interior vestibial doors is is even wider. I I believe um I I I don't have an answer for that right now. I I I apologize. But um the we did do you know you you have any idea what that dimension increased to? No. It probably doubled from 6 or 7 ft to 14 ft. Okay. Um so the the conceptual estimate would have not have included the windows and doors like ID said uh focusing mainly on the existing area where the doors are. Um, did the did the best wheel getting that much wider drive the price up as much as it did? No, not on its own. That like honestly a lot of that expenses between windows and bars. You can go on to the next one. Yeah. So, to to address that, we're going
052to come up with a second plan here to reuse some of the buildings, existing building Um, and the dust collection system, what's contributing to the the higher cost of that? Uh, this is something that's also been talked about before. So, the system we're looking at, the duct work requires fire protection inside the duct to protect from a spark igniting a blowback into the building or explosion. Our closest connection point to a code approved water source. It can't be behind any sort of shut off valves. It has to work when it needs to work. Um is over by the main entrance. I believe it's across the building. It's very it's significant. We have to go through the through the building um to run new sprinkler pipe out to there. Uh that length of pipe was not
053accounted for at the schematic level. Um there's a lot of ancillary construction along with that as well. You can imagine we're taking ceilings down. We're punching through walls. We're we're cutting our way through the building to get a pipe above the ceiling over there. Um and then the the screen is current was designed as a a nice looking masonry wall which can easily be scaled back is how we're going to address it to a a decorative chain a decorative fence or a chain link fence is Is that is the dust collector going to be enclosed in the building? It is outside the building. You you don't think that there's going to be a a a freezing issue with an unheated area with a water source that has to be a continual water source. That would
054be a problem if it goes outside. Um we are looking into that. That question did come up. um where the sprinkler head needs to be located exactly in that I I don't know right now. Um but yes, that would not be a good idea to run a sprinkler pipe full of water outside into an unconditioned space. That wouldn't happen. We are looking at other options uh like a dry systems that would put a dry agent on there to douse that down. It could be locally stored and help cut cost down as well. Would it be it? Um, are there any other questions? I'll open it up to the rest of the board. Can we just review? Okay. So, in the gym, you're going to evaluate the bracing due to the removal of the mezzanine and
055and look for cost savings there. in the UPK music art area. They're revisiting the square footage of the floors to keep it under a thousand square feet per which would get us what the users need but keep the cost down from all the additional items required when we exceed 1,000 ft square feet. the secure the secure entryway. We're going to revisit and come back to the original plan, but at least have a secondary plan with some layout adjustments and widening the area in the doorway so that nobody can hold it open and keeping it secure. The auditorium, I think, for the most part, is is in good shape, although you're still looking at the acoustic shell and some variations there. Is that correct? That's correct. Y and just for and and the and the dust
056collection since Matt also brought that up. It's there are different options that you're looking at for um fire code as well as the outside not necessarily using CMU wall but potentially screening or some other material some other type of fencing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And and for the board also, we spent a fair amount of time on a variety of other what I'll call other items in this list in the and there's a whole series of other items. There's furniture, there's there's printing costs, there's a whole bunch of other things that I think they're taking a close look at um because there's potential to remove some or all of those. Um, what I would say and I want to re reiterate a couple of things I think you said we might I'm okay with submitting two
057plans to SED because giving one plan to SED that they can review that that is over over budget as long and they they can review it at this time and then later on when we get to the point where we may have some contingency funds as long as it's been reviewed we can add something in that may be needed at that time. Is that right? That's correct. Okay. And some of those items may be part of the BCS or building condition survey. That's correct. Yeah. Is there an additional cost to submitting two plans to SCV? No, there's not. No. And um we've tled one of the one of the costs that we talked about earlier today that is included in here that we can remove is the roughly $35,000 for third party review. Ed, I
058think you said earlier today that everybody's doing a third party review. So it's actually maybe quicker to go through the normal review and not spend the money. The regular queue has got So that's, you know, something we're going to take that out. That's 35. So I know it's small, but that's an example. That's the example of the kind of things we discussed earlier today. Yeah. Uh we'll we'll continue on with the the standard SED review. Is it scheduled for 6 to 8 months or No, I just have a question. If we submit a plan A and a plan B to SED, how does that work for our time frame? Then again, is it still the six to eight months or is now is it you get one, do you have to get both at the
059same time? It didn't affect the time. Okay. Yeah, good question. Yeah, we would always recommend submitting if you if you think you might be able to get a better plan, we would recommend submitting it with the scaled back plan because that gives you more options. you simply have the option when we get further down the road, we're going to have better and better estimates and when we get to close to the bidding um if it looks like we might be able to get something that's a better value would already be approved at SED. So, I would definitely do that. It's just we have to make sure that people understand that that we may not be able to afford the Cadillac in the end, but we'll design it so you have the option. Based on the
060meeting we had today, I I I walked away with enough confidence that we can get this back within the budget amount and not compromise the requirements that we've committed to. I'd like to add one other comment to Mike's point and that is um we're going to be engaged in this process and the user groups are going to have to re-engage and we're going to want to re-engage the user groups because if in fact we're thinking about um taking this initial plan A and resizing it and rescoping it, their input is going to be critical so that they understand um how we're reshaping things and the potentiality of that if it doesn't work, we have to necessarily make some difficult decisions. So, um it's about that focus and again re-engaging our individuals so that everybody's involved
061in the in the work moving forward. But yes, our our goal is we get to the end of this project, there are no surprises. Everybody knew how we got to the end and hopefully we're all happy with how it came out. And you said you were going to look at um other schools for how they problem solved different things for the band. for the I would implore you to do that with a variety of issues with our small rural schools who do not have massive budgets, who are pretty accustomed to not having Cadillacs, but we still have brilliant students who do creative, wonderful things and phenomenal educators. So, we still have great spaces. see what they do and bring those ideas to us because that's what we know we're not going to have state-of-the-art everything,
062right? But what we do want to know is how we can deliver the best thing for the greatest value to our kids. Yes, totally. Great. Absolutely good point. That is what we're going to do going through our as we develop the design in the next two phases. Y thank you. Yeah. Any other thoughts or any can you fill in some details on the scope of the boiler work? Is that one or two? We did one project or one second one under the project the regular project. So how's it cost multiple times but the last one? My memory is correct. We were like a half a million last 400,000 boilers did go down. We actually 15,000 to the positive on that number from the original budget. So that was a single six million boiler. We just
063replaced one, but we're nowhere near that emergency. So one one thing we do have baked into some of the into these numbers at this point in design are design contingencies. It's a percentage that we add because there's still the great unknown in front of us. We're still refining things. We're still selecting materials and equipment. We're boilers, for example. Um although that we might already know what we're going to be using. Um um yeah, we're we're going to be taking a look at all this and and and trying to get back into this number. I think that number well that number. Yeah, sorry about that. That number that number is not correct. I think that's not the number we saw earlier today. Okay. Yeah, that number is not correct. I apologize for that. It should be
06415,125. Yeah. Thank you. I think there were a couple of others in there that we can talk about later. Yeah. As well. Um any other comments from board? I'm actually going to ask everybody good. I do want to turn it to just because of where we are in this project. I'd like to see if there's anybody here who has any questions. Anybody in the audience just Yeah. So, I mean, I've got a few comments and I'm sorry I didn't I wasn't thinking I was going to speak at this, but um so I'm not be super articulate, but a couple of things. Um I want to mirror what Matt said. It's really disappointing having been through this time and time again to think about things like what the mezzanine was going to do to our gym.
065Um what the dust collector situation was going to be like the vestibule not understanding how wide it would need to be to be appropriate ahead of time. That's really disappointing. Um because to me these are things that could have been headed off in the past. But the other thing, and again you're seeing this for the first time, I just want to say when you add up the issues that happen between the arts, music, and and UPK, they are minuscule compared to the others. So, while I'm not saying we need that big huge shell in the auditorium, we do not. We were perfectly happy with a $33,000, you know, shell. So, we don't need that. We're not saying we need that. What I don't want to do is start picking apart a couple thousand here and
066there and getting rid of them in those spaces for the 1 whatever million that is happening other places. So I feel like and I'm not saying that the gym is not important. It is super important. The locker rooms are super important as well. But I don't want to hear from now on those spaces being talked about in the same level as the 1 whatever million spaces. it's not going to it's not going to have that same kind of an impact. And the last thing I want to say is that I'm not sure the UPK art and music room space is really being thoughtful if we are going to um not increase music and art for those spaces. Those are ex critically important. And so to me, whatever can be done to expand those really needs
067to be done and be thoughtful. And um and so I I feel like I need to speak for the teachers on that, seeing what those spaces are like right now. Okay. Thank you, Alison. Thanks, Alex. Anybody Anybody else before we close off this conversation? Okay. All right, Mike. Thanks, everybody. Gary, thank you. Thank you. We'll be talking a lot more. Thank you. And you can feel comfortable to leave. We we won't stay the same. It's up to you, but you can feel comfortable. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, Dr. Mike, Steph, John Boltz, floor is warm for you in the budget discussion. Terrific. This is Thank you. Thanks everybody. Thanks. Thank you. This is the something you said to me about it too much longer. If we can keep you awake through this one,
068it's going to it's going to go much quicker after this. No, all kidding aside, we will keep you awake for this one. um in that this uh budget for instructional and personal expenditures is exceptionally well done. Uh so I want to start by giving kudos to Mike Salau, Stephanie Hilt, John Holt, and our principles. This is about thorough planning for where we are and where we want to go. It's going to give you a picture of who's driving our programs and what are the essential programs for this year building on into the future. That's what good budgeting is about. Uh and we're pleased that this budget presentation is going to show you a picture of that quality work. So you have seen our budget goals before. So there's nothing new here, but they do uh
069focus our work and we start with those budget goals because they are what this budget plan is all about. I'm going to do the first summary. So I'm going to do the first summary and I'm going to let Stephanie do the followup and she'll give you more depth into the numbers. And the reason I want to do the first summary is that you're going to see over on the plus minus delta column some pretty big numbers in professional salaries, support salaries, and out of district placements. And then at the very bottom, our budgetto budget growth of $1.8 million. This is about good budgeting at this point in time. in the past budgets uh made the decision in the past to not budget for positions both in salaries and in federal grants. That is not how
070most budgets are produced and we decided we were going to leave that pass behind and we were going to budget for both grants as well as uh professional and support salaries. So those two big numbers reflect that double budgeting which is part of a strong budget plan that backs up these positions should there be changes in any type of grant money. The third intercreist placements um there's a history in our district and in other districts we're not unlike any other districts other than we're trying to do it better now. There's a history of special ed programs expenses being greater than budgeted. It happens everywhere. Our focus this time through hard work is to try to budget and or project budget uh categories for individuals who have not necessarily been placed until maybe even after the
071budget is uh uh passed and adopted into the middle of May. This gives us again best budget planning at the outset. So uh when you're looking at a 1.8 million budget to budget there are reasons for it. you'll understand what these uh budgeting decisions are, but more importantly as we go through the rest of the budget, you're going to understand what the instructional and staffing decisions are to drive instructional programs. Mr. Holt, you're going to pick up uh our next piece, please. So, the next slide goes through the projected staffing numbers in these areas. And like Dr. Hunter said, um, we really are are trying to be as, uh, clear and as specific and as transparent as possible in in in what our budget staffing numbers were this current year, um, and and then again
072next year. So, you see in maintenance, it went from 15 to 14. That was actually um correcting something that we had um, in this current year budget. Um, someone in the maintenance department was actually a substitute cleaner. They were included in that budget. They shouldn't have been. So that minus 1.0 is is not reflective of a cut. It's just reorganizing where they should be in in our budget. Transportation stays the same at 16.0. Um superintendent um 2.0. You do see the increase in technology. Um that's on the agenda for tonight. Hiring a a CSA, a computer services assistant to help uh in the technology office. Um and and that was uh created this year to help offset um as my role changed um I'm not in the technology office nearly as as much and um
073last year we also had a a6 individual in that department from from Boseis who's no longer there. So um that's that's in in theory um helping support that technology office back to where we were before. Um district operations you see a 1.0 reduction there. That's the position that Mr. Carol um left. Uh um and and we didn't fill it in the same way. We've restructured what uh Stephanie Hilt's doing, what I'm doing, and others in the district office. But you see that reduction for a total from 39.0 in those uh uh five areas down to 38 um for 1.0. Um the key additions I talked about was the computer services assistant, which is on the agenda for tonight's meeting. um other notes in non-instructional um we while we've talked about it and we're planning for
074EV um vehicles in our in our transportation that is not part of this budget. You know, it's not inclusive of this budget at all. Um Mr. Salel talked um about uh the cell phone policy in New York State. Um that is we're talking about it, we're planning for it, but that is not budgetarily included in this budget. So, we wanted to to make sure that was clear moving forward. Another big component of the budget is your employee benefits. So, this is your health and dental insurance, um, any of your secondary FICA expenses related to personnel, your retirements, and the other category, which is going to be your workers comp insurance, your um, insurance for the building, things like that. Um, a couple key things to point out is the anticipated health care increase for next
075year is 12.4%. That is pretty substantial. Um, another one is the TRS um rate for next year is going down from 10.11 to 9.58. Um, and then the ERS percentage is is actually going up from 14.9 to 16.4. 4%. So, all of those pretty big increases are going to drive a lot of the increase in your employee benefits. Now, we're going to get into the instructional piece of the budget. And, uh, as you can see for the elementary enrollment projections, I'll scroll that down a little. Yeah. Thank you, John. Um we're actually going down 15 students projected. That can change. We certainly know this year we've added um more than we lost students. So that that's always a good thing. Uh really everything is going to be pretty consistent with the exception of two areas.
076One being the additional special education teacher. Um Mrs. knew and and the staff felt that that's a very important piece to support our students to the best of our ability and uh as we increase the needs of students we certainly have to look at increasing the staff's needs as well. So the other big piece is the MTSS. We we want to really be a able to support students academically, but as well as behaviorally. And having a tiered intervention model in place led by an NTSS provider will really support staff in the classroom from both an instructional standpoint as well as a planning standpoint and a behavior standpoint. So, we're excited about that opportunity. Next are just a list of the resources that are are currently part of the budget as well. If you notice, a
077lot of those items are in year two, maybe three, some are in year one. Um, but we want to continue to budget for those areas, whether it's go blue, character strong, really great rating, uh, to to make sure they're in the budget so we can support those programs. and and best support staff as well in enhancing the level of performance from our students. I ready. We're going to do a trial year with that and uh very very important in math for us to continuously assess our students, monitor their growth. Then uh we'll do it that comes with resources, we have subscriptions, and then the benchmarking piece as well. Next year, we already did the assessment piece. Um we're going to plan on doing the assessment piece and continue that again. uh local math curriculum. We're
078looking at full implementation of that and our local reading. We're going to be working on that as we enter into next year. That work will be ongoing and of course the special areas will continue as is supporting those programs as well. middle school, high school. Uh we after many conversations with staff, one of the areas we noticed this year is we do have to increase our level of support at the middle school, high school. Uh we did lose um a portion of a teacher last year at that level and that certainly with our numbers going up, we want to be able to support those students as well at a much higher level. Uh we also last year lost a teaching assistant. So we're looking to add that back into budget too and everything else is
079going to remain pretty consistent through the year four. Much like the elementary I presented, you know, we're in year three of Character Strong. Mrs. Curley, Mr. have done a wonderful job of implementing go blue K12 especially to middle school high school and we're going to have to gear some of our resources towards that next year because it's really taken off this year. They're doing an incredible job of that writing revolution. We'll do some summer trainings, train our uh ELA staff as well and we'll also do some in-house professional development. NTSS, we talked about that a little bit before. Uh we're looking to enhance our academic intervention services. Just an area we really want to focus on. How do we get these students to advance in their performance level as well? College and career readiness. Uh
080I think this is an area that JIO has does a remarkable job at. We're going to continue to focus on career development. We really partner well with um the Chamber of Commerce. You'll see a lot of those lunch and learns. It's taken off this year. Mrs. doing a great job with that. And you have the path for the program and then your your field trips to go out into the business world and see different places. Just a tremendously valuable learning experience for our students and bridge builders. We have talked about transitions in Jio for many years and now we really have to start to put resources to that. So, how do we transition students from fifth to sixth, 8th to 9th, and to some extent even graduates, how do we transition them up? So, I'm
081really excited about the future for that and the good work that's going to be done uh to to promote that because it it transitions for students can be very challenging. So, the more we can support them and provide resources for them, I think it'll pay big dividends at TU. All right. uh advanced placement. We certainly are going to plan on continue to offer our 12 courses, which is just remarkable for a school our size. What's really nice about this data is we're going to grow by seven students next year, not just in exams. Those are seven additional students are going to be enrolled in an AP. Of course, these are anticipated right now based on course signups for next year. Altogether 147 exams up from 133. Again a great showing there. Number of GCC courses
082available. We are going to drop one there. Not to our liking, not to our desire, but they due to accreditation at GCC, they make it very challenging at times. And I know they're constrained as well what they can do for a teacher to get approved to be able to teach a GCC course. the superintendent. We have met with GCC to see if there's any wiggle room. Right now, we don't have the ELA teacher that'll be approved for GCC. So, therefore, we can't offer that as credit right now. We're hoping, I know a lot of uh superintendents are are really struggling with this as well because there is a big push for college readiness in high school to get students on that ped track much earlier than just their freshman year of college. So, we're hoping
083to make some movement there, but right now we have to plan accordingly and plan on only 12 GC courses. Career and tech, we're going to be going up a little bit there. uh 20 students at 29, 27 to 31. And again, this is just remarkable and I applaud Boseis for the great work. We have students coming out that are wellprepared to join a workforce or whatever uh college they want to go to, whether it's two-year route, four-year route. Our students really find their learning experiences at Boseies to be very beneficial, meaningful, productive. So, that's a good balance right there. CTE and AP. Yep. Great picture. Yep. And Bose, like you said, Boseies is just doing phenomenal phenomenal great work. And again, this is that college and career readiness. It's what you hear about a lot.
084And that's exactly what that demonstrates there. All right. Uh in special education, there's three different components or phases or stages uh of special education budget. First, there is the out of district stage that we look at. Um and we are looking at the potential of out of district placements growing uh for students. Uh and we have tentatively put in numbers to hold once those students gets placed in order to provide the resources necessary for the instructional support those young people will need outside the district. Our Bosey's numbers will remain consistent and that number rolls over in our budget. The second tier of special education services deal with um what we might call as inschool supplemental support IEP driven services. We will be uh looking at a speech program that this year services 57 students and
085we're projecting uh an increase of about three more students to be served uh anywhere from 60 to 63. And you will see right through pretty consistent services uh in OT, occupational therapy, physical therapy, pretty consistent, maybe a a change of one or two students. Music therapy, pretty consistent. We will continue our contract to provide this necessary IEP program and support. We have two students on visual therapy. they will be retained uh in our programs and we will uh continue with a contract as well as mobility and CPSSE services uh CPSC services. We're looking at a potential of 31 students and their service through our connections with Livingston County. And then our final component of special ed uh budgeting and planning for instruction is within our own programs here on the Jio campus. And when we
086take a look at elementary special classes, we have about 14 students uh this year and we're projecting an increase uh anywhere of about uh three to to uh seven students. Um, elementary consultant teacher services, we're at 30. Again, we're looking at a potential increase in the need to service those students right here on campus. Our middle school special class, it's pretty consistent uh as we're taking a look at um uh those individual students and the way they're being serviced. Um, and finally, our middle school consultant teacher program is serviced by 3.0 0 teachers and our high school special class high school consultant teachers are serviced by a group of 4.0 services. So we have uh a total of 3.0 elementary special class teachers a total of 5.0 know elementary consultant teachers, middle school special class
087about a half an FTE, middle school consultant teachers, three individuals and high school special class in consultant teachers at 4.0 in order to provide services this year. um we are using 6 or three dually certifi dual certified individuals to support uh part of their instructional load with special education case learning. And that's why um as Mike pointed out, we're looking at key additions of a 1.0 special ed teacher and a 1.0 special ed teaching assistant. This is just another summary of all of the things we talked about. Um again pointing out professional salaries increased um 560,000 support salaries the 327,000 and then your employee benefits the 686,000. Those are the three key areas um that are increasing to get to that $1.8 million increase. just some key dates on the next presentations. Um, April 7th
088will be the first draft budget. April 21st will be the final budget. Um, and then we also have petitions and budget candidates that are due on April 21st. On April 22nd, we'll approve the Bosey's budget. May 13th is the public budget hearing. And then May 20th is the budget vote. Any questions? Questions at this point? I just I just want to thank you guys for the work in doing that. Uh that is the most important part of the budget because it's what we do. So thank you. Well said. Thank you all very much. You want to have a conversation on tax? Yes. Um, so instead of a superintendent report, I want to just briefly um uh set this uh the stage for um the board to ask questions um and drill down into driving us
089a direction on where we want to go with the tax cap and tax. Um it's an important reminder for board and for community that the levy is about 48% of our total funding uh pool. Um we are are dependent on our levy. Uh our New York state aid is impacted uh by some of the high wealth areas. So, uh, we know we need to use our levy and, uh, use our levy wisely in order to provide close to 50% of the resources that, um, that we are using to build our instructional plan. Last year, our maximum tax cap was at 3.8%. And over the last five years, um, if we were due to do an average increase, we had an average increase around 2.1% of our tax cy. So those are the starting points. I
090also want to mention that um when you talk about the max tax cap, you're talking about um a formula developed by New York State that requires a variety of different measures and takes into a variety of considerations. When um we looked at the max tax cap, um the audit committee shared with Stephanie Hilt some ideas about how to bond or ban some existing short-term debt. And by her putting together a plan to better manage short-term debt, she was able to provide us with a starting point of moving our tax cap max cap from about 4.8% down to 3.2%. So with good planning, we've already reduced what the uh potential expenditure on the community um might might consider to be. But that's the max cap. That's not where a board needs to land. It's the starting
091point for the work. Any other pieces that I should be adding to that? Okay. So you have the chart in front of you. You see the max cap um listed at 3.2% 2% um that would be uh a levy that would bring in about $12.9 million. Last year we brought in about 12.5 million. And then you see the gradations moving down from 3.2 to uh a 0% increase. The key for us is for you to find a position that is fiscally, politically, and educationally responsible. And as you have this conversation and you ask us about moving those numbers, we want to make sure that we answer those three components, educational, fiscal, and political responsibility. as we make this uh determination. We won't vote on this tax cap until sometime in midappril. But that being said,
092this is an absolutely critical decision for us at this point in time for us to move forward and present you with a first draft first draft budget in April 7. That's our overview. Thoughts are questions about where 3.2 two is and where you're thinking our district needs to to consider. Well, I mean, if you just take the two numbers that you mentioned, um, the top max 3.2% 2% and the average which has been I think you said 2.1. Yeah, it's about 45,000 difference in terms of levy. Yeah. So I mean the question then becomes depending on where you are in that scale if you just use 2.1 as the average what what do we lose? What do we give up? What does what's the impact in forget about political education or fiscal? I don't we
093can't I don't know whether an answer. Yeah. So, educationally rhetorical question right now. It's a rhetorical question, but but educationally um we know that there's going to be some difficult decisions that need to be made. We know that this budget the way it's planned um is need is going to need to be analyzed and that the revenue sources need to be at a point that is um maximum from your understanding in order to minimize any of the difficult decisions that we need to make. That being said, regardless of where you land or we land, there's going to be some difficult decisions. Have you started those within finance? Okay. I suspect you're getting close to Yeah, we we I think we landed. You want on that pick up on that or Matt? No. Do you want
094to do you want to say now or you want to? Well, I think I think I mean we don't have to decide now. I think we we I guess I'd say we are leaning towards just under 30%. [Music] That's looking at all programmatic and other related challenges. So, um, for planning purposes, um, the, uh, administrative team and myself, uh, we're we're going to be focusing on, uh, around the 2.9 two point 2 point around a 2.9% levy. Um, and then you obviously as a board you're going to give us a a final determination, but for our planning purposes, that's what we're going to use moving forward. Good. Great. Thank you. Any other sign? No. No. Anybody want to sign in? Want to sign in? Um, all right. I guess we're at reccommittee reports in finance.
095Yes, we we met just prior to this meeting. Um we've obviously already hit on some of the materials we covered. We did spend a fair bit of time talking about the tax cap numbers. Um Stephanie also presented us with a collateral report which just basically summarizes where our money is parked and how it's collateralized. That was that was very handy to look at. Um, we looked at a revenue report through February for January, February and also appropriations reports or report. Um, I think we could say we're we're in an okay spot now, but maybe too soon to tell, you know, another month or two will get us a better idea where we're going to end up the year as far as appropriations, revenues are all on track. Um, and that that really was most of
096what we covered. Okay, great. Thank you. I know it's a busy time for finance and audit committee. So, thank you and welcome. Thank you. Have anything on policy? Yeah, we're going to get geared back up again here shortly. Uh we have several policies that we need to address. Um pardon the new superintendent as well policy that's going to be need to be in place before we start school next fall. So, we've got some work ahead of us. Okay. All right. Looking forward to that. Mike, anything on GCEF? Yes. Uh, once again, greatly appreciate us having that avenue to go to. We have a number of teachers that apply for some grants to give our students a variety of uh very valuable learning experiences coming up in the near future. Also equally important, this is a
097time of year we have to get in all of our payments to our travel agencies and that economic hardship fund has been a savior this year. So once again, GCEF, we can't thank them enough for all that they do to support our teachers, but most importantly, our students as well. Okay. Thank you. All right. Uh with that we're going to turn to personnel with the exception of 8.13 personnel I'd like to ask for motion of consent 8.02 to 8.12 and then from 8.14 to 8.16 second. So, in this list, um I guess I uh my wife's here, so she'll probably yell at me for saying this. We went on vacation. Maybe I shouldn't go on vacation anymore because I come back and I see six retirements. um all bittersweet in so many regards and it's
098hard to hard to say that but retirement from Amy Perez Allison Chandler John Bear Renee D Young Karen Robinson M just u I don't know if I could I don't know if my math is good enough to add up the years of service that that list includes and the the amount of oh gosh the the I could go on all night and say all the good things that that group have done and Allison you're here and I'll speak to you on behalf I did send you a note but um it's it's bittersweet I I respect everybody who wants to retire I I you know in this in this context it's it's a year ahead of time I know but from that standpoint point. We certainly will and we'll miss you all. It's hard to replace
099um the the expertise, the service, the quality that you bring. So, I'm going to echo that uh for each of these individuals. Uh Amy Perez, Allison Chandler, John Bear, Renee Dion, uh Karen Robinson. um the expertise and the commitment to children is exceptional and we can enjoy that for one more year but we're going to miss it after that. So thank you for your work and I would echo that as well. The learning that takes place in their classrooms is certainly highly commendable, but all these individuals also do so much more for our school and students outside the classroom community. So that what they bring and have brought to the table for many and many years will be sorely missed. Just congratulations. Welld deserved and uh GCS will have to pick up from where a
100lot of you have done so much and I'm sure that'll happen but done a remarkable job all of them. I would just like to just thank thank them all for their their level of service and dedication to a truly noble profession. um one can't quantify the the value of a teacher and the number of lives touched. So appreciate everybody's service and uh like like I said, it is bittersweet but welld deserved. Well said. Thank you so much for all you've done for us and hopefully you'll come back and sub. Taylor looking for a teaching job. Spoken by All right, with that I have to ask for the vote. So comments made all in favor? I. Any opposed? As much as we would like to reject some, we can. Right. All right. Hearing none. So moved.
101Thank you. Under new business, I ask for a motion of consent for item is 9.02 through 9.05. Second. All right. Any questions on any of these? So any business hearing? None. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Sold under the business office. Like to ask for a motion of consent for 10.02 through 10.0. Second. Any questions from anybody on these items? Um, so when I was looking at the documents of 10.02, I didn't have an attachment. Um, when I looked at it, if I could just get that at some point. Um, and then it was really nice to see a picture of the obsolene item. That was really helpful. But it was nice. All right. All in favor? Any oppos? So moved. Under section 11, at this point in time, I ask for a motion with
102consent to enter into executive session upon the recommendation of the interim superintendent to enter into executive session to discuss the personal matter and contract discussion. First enter second. All right. All in favor to enter executive session. Any opposed? Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you online. Anybody online?