001One. All right. Be like to call the meeting to order. Please rise for the pledge. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank you everyone for attending tonight. We're going to get right into the agenda and our first item is a budget presentation. I'll turn it over to Kathy Mayor. Okay. and I'll move out of the way. Good evening everyone. Tonight I will present the 202526 proposed Gloversville School District budget. I'm not going to read every single number. I'm just going to kind of give an overview and you know I hate it when people read every single word on a slide. It's so annoying. So the total budget of 78,06376 is an increase
002from last year of 2,937,54 or 3.92%. I will provide more detailed information on those increases in a moment. So as you can see, I I broke down the account codes, what we had last year, what we have this year proposed, and the change. So the general support codes are those that provide administrative services such as B&G, legal, property and student accident insurance, the board of education codes, etc. The increase represents additional fees for maintenance contracts, the salary for the central copy room attendant, legal fees, and property insurance costs. Property insurance increased significantly this year due to natural disasters throughout the nation, which resulted in major claims that affect all aspects of the insurance industry. General teaching codes are those that directly affect the scholars, teaching, special education, library media, athletics, etc. These increases are due
003to salary increases amongst the various bargaining units, the obligation of 50% of the crossing guards, 11 additional career tech students, cost to upgrade to the new addition of the CKLA reading program, increased PETA tuition costs, and additional Bose service costs for the distance learning program. Transportation costs are up slightly due to salary increases and we did budget a little bit more for uh contract transportation as we have a lot of Mckin Vento students that are uh we just don't have this the drivers in attendance to do that. So we have to contract that out. Uh we are still analyzing the total cost of transportation as this is the first year transporting our scholars in over 10 years. Fringe benefits are down because negotiations money was included in the 2425 budget that is not needed in
0042526. Also, the Fulmont Health Trust PL premium increases to 6% which is significant with the number of health plans the district has. Debt service figures are provided by our fiscal adviserss and have decreased slightly. Here's the proposed revenue. Again, I broke it down by category. last year proposed in the change. The tax cap is 1.77% which represents $284,300 increase to the tax levy. The state budget still has not been passed but Governor Hokll's proposed figures have been used for state aid. Transfer from debt service is also provided by our fiscal adviserss and represents the local share of debt service that is transferred from a reserve that is specifically for this purpose. Other revenue represents interest income, property rental, utility taxes, Medicaid reimbursement to name a few. Interest income was projected at approximately $100,000 increase over
005last year due to the amazing interest rates that we have been experience over experiencing over the past two years. This is still a conservative number as anything can happen. Fund balance is projected to be an increase of just over $980,000, but based on state aid and conservative spending over the 2526 school year, this entire amount may not be needed. The board of education reviews fund balance use to help alleviate the burden to taxpayers. If there were no fund balance to use, the tax levy would need to be raised to cover the difference between revenue and expenditures. This I will kind of read. We have election of board members. There are three board of education vacancies for terms of three years each commencing July 1st, 2025 through June 30, 2028. The Gloversville Public Library has four
006trustee vacancies for terms of 5 years each commencing July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2030. Petitions are available in the business office or the Gloversville Public Library weekdays between 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. and require signatures of 100 qualified voters within the district. Petitions are due to the election clerk no later than April 30th at that should say 5:00 PM located at 234 Lincoln Street in Gloversville, which is the business office. So if anyone's interested in running for the board, um please pick up a petition. I'll also put them on the website so they're available there as well. Propositions. Uh we will also be casting ballots for the following propositions. the 2025 Gloverville School District budget. The purchase of two wheelchair buses, one suburban and one dump truck from the school bus and vehicle capital
007reserve fund. The purchase of computer monitors, charging stations, and upgrades to the infrastructure from the technology capital reserve fund. the purchase of musical instruments and classroom furniture from the furniture fixtures and equipment capital reserve fund and approval of the 2526 Gloversville Public Library budget. Um this is just a reminder that um the budget vote propositions and election of board of education members and the Gloversville library trustees will be held on Tuesday, May 20th between the hours of 11 and 8 at the Gloversville High School gym in the Bleecker Town Hall. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. And there's my number and my contact information. This is the first year that the Gloversville Public Libraryies information will be on our ballot. They will have their budget and their trustees on there
008as well as all of the other information that I talked about tonight. Um, if you have questions about the library budget or their trustees, you can contact the public library. Um, I don't have their number right now, but um, also going to put that on the website. We're going to have a separate budget um tab that Osama is going to put up. So, we'll have a lot of that information on there for you. All right. Does anyone have any questions? I know that was a lot of stuff. Uh, next item on the agenda is public comment. Anyone here for public comment this evening? All right, we'll move on to board discussion. Uh, we have the minutes from the March 3 meeting. Anyone have any questions or comments on those? Motion to approve those minutes by
009John, seconded by Sharon. All in [Music] favor? Yeah, Heath had his hand up. Anybody have anything else for board discussion tonight? All right, move on to the next item, which is the superintendent's report. Great. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, good evening, everybody. Nice job, Mrs. Mayor. Thank you. We just know the budget's in good hands. Um, I think everybody can understand why you see the cost going up related to um staffing or the teaching or what you have under teaching. I think um to be competitive we we're obviously uh there's a contract on on the agenda tonight and the district's obviously uh doing all we can to be competitive regionally across all bargaining units. It's important we do it otherwise uh there seems to be less and less people going into the profession regardless of
010the positions. So it's important that uh we have an attractive package for potential employees. So, um, a couple things I want to talk about before I get into the agenda. Obviously, I always like recognizing, uh, those who donate and those who are retiring. Uh, tonight we have a donation of $2,000 from Derek and Margaret Brown to be used for our backpack program. A very generous donation. We also have $1,000 from the William uh Gun Gundry Brotten Charitable Private Foundation to be used for the backpack pro uh program. So again, $3,000 for a program that helps our scholars uh in the elementary level really start off the school year with the supplies they need to be successful. So once again, thank you to uh very generous community that uh never ceases to impress. Um very happy
011to mention that we have a lot of great teachers receiving tenure tonight that I would like to read their names, congratulate them. Uh I don't think most of them are here. When I meet met with all of them, I told them you don't need to be here. You're welcome to come if you want, but you don't have to. But I really would like to mention it because uh really impressive group of people and all positive and and promise to be a great assets continue to be great assets to the district. So congratulations to the following people. Uh Danielle Bombard, TA April Jazzabowski, TA. Bertie Bergraph, high school counselor. Melanie Weaver, special ed. Haley Etheertton, elementary teacher. Olivia Roberts, elementary teacher. Greg Holleshower, elementary teacher. Danielle Zublki, elementary teacher. Kristen Cumins, um, elementary teacher. Lori, Lori
012Venolstein, middle school special education. Christine Striek, uh, elementary teacher. Carol Healey, uh, teaching assistant, and Allison Dra, special education teacher. So, congratulations to all those individuals who receive tenure tonight. I also want to point out we have a lot of great new hires on tonight's agenda and one of them is here with us tonight. Shannon Argusinger has joined us. She's going to be a speech teacher for Gloversville. Welcome aboard Shannon. Um we've also had success. Uh we have two music teachers, both coral and instrumental on the agenda tonight. a physical education teacher, a secondary math teacher, and an assistant director of student support services joining us uh as a result of tonight's agenda. So, we look forward to contributions of all those folks. Um couple retirements of some long-erving individuals. John Savage, music teacher, Glovers
013of High School, uh effective 7125 after 30 years of service. Todd Staler, elementary teacher, Glovers of Middle School after 32 years of service. And Mr. Robert Williams, head custodian Glovers of Middle School after 38 years of service. So tip our hats to those gentlemen, wish him a long, healthy, happy retirement. And I would be remiss to not point out that Mr. Cody Hedwell is receiving 10 years of principal tonight, too. And uh one last piece also is Mrs. Christine Elias is on the agenda as a resignation and an appointment. We're glad that second piece is in there. Uh she'll be leaving her role as high school principal and accepting a role as a secondary curriculum director. Uh I think in her career it's a good time to make that move. She has a lot to
014offer in the realm of curriculum leadership and to free her up to pursue that the secondary level. Uh we expect great things out of her. She's already been doing a lot of it already with Mr. Chachio in the district. So we look forward to Mrs. Lias in her new role and she has done an outstanding job in her role as high school principal. Few other things just want to point out grant opport we have a grant opportunity. Chris and I will be meeting with uh Catholic Charities later this month and Diane Mott from the loft to discuss a new grant that's put out there called the uh youth safe spaces grant. Um it's for $500,000 annual for f 3 to five years for uh communities to serve targeting 12 to 24 year olds uh in
015need of seal mental health services and obviously safe spaces for young people. So uh we think the loft is a good partner for that. They're already doing great work in that regard, but we think we can expand upon what we're offering and hopefully reach far more people. Pretty exciting. Uh you never know. Nothing venture, nothing gained. Let's hope that uh we can put together a good proposal that makes it hard for the decision makers to deny us. Any questions on that? I want to give a shout out to the uh Gloversville Education Foundation staff appreciation gala which is scheduled for April 26 at the uh club centric club. Thank you. Um staff appreciation. The foundation wants to put this on a a ball to recognize the employees of the district. Um, I encourage people to
016to uh come on out and uh have a a night. Uh, it's obviously in a not on school property, so they can dance the night away and have fun. The adults like to have fun, too. So, encourage everybody to come. Uh, the deadline for tickets is April 21st. Hopefully, we get enough people to make uh it a endeavor worth pursuing. Certainly encourage staff to sign up and come on out and have fun together. How formal is the event? I just said formal on the uh I think the I can't wear like jean shorts and tank tops. Yeah, I think kind of I think somewhere along the way the word prom was used. Uh but I think more it's cocktail attire. Yeah. I don't think you need to get a prom dress or cumber bun. Please
017do dress somewhat n uh just wanted to let you know that there was a computer testing glitch today across New York State. Not every school was impacted, but many schools were impacted. Um there's there's an organization called NWA that handles the computer-based testing for New York State Education Department. The issue was on their end. Um and they are promising us tomorrow uh all systems are returned to normal and operating at full capacity. So take that to the bank, I guess. Uh let's hope that our we did have a number of impacted scholars across our district, especially at Boulevard, I believe. Um I know Mr. Faggo's class wasn't so impacted, but I was told that was one of the few that it worked for. Um, but I think Cody's building uh they're able to for the
018most part finish the test. Okay, good. So, I think our our Boulevard scholars will jump on tomorrow and hopefully put this behind us. Um, so I guess when you you beauty of computer-based testing is that there's things out of your control. You know, you're filling out a bubble sheet for the most part. If it doesn't work, it's on us. This one, we can blame some acronym for messing it up. I don't know what happened. So, a lot of emails today talking about it, quarantining computers and things that we're like, wait, what? We'll see what happens. Hopefully, hopefully we're good to go tomorrow. And last but not least, in your packet, you have a nicit regionalization initiative. Tomorrow night, we have the uh regional meeting for the HFMOSE and some of the stuff Dr. was just
019going to be talking about. But prior to that meeting, all the superintendents of our region will be talking about the uh regionalization initiative that New York State Education Department rolled out last summer. This has kind of faded from the headlines in recent months because um some states in Long Island pushed back and the state blinked frank frankly and and became optional. But you know, we work well as a region in this part of the state. Uh our Boseies I would say works well together. And if you look at this document, you can see the areas that we're focusing on. Academic domain, social, cultural, and capacity. Um, some of the on page two, you'll see some of the instructional priorities, science of learning, um, multi-tered systems of support, the MTSS, which Glover receives a grant, and
020we've done a lot of great work over the last few years with that, and also the work towards, uh, implementing what a portrait of a graduate is going to be with the changing graduation requirements for students. um regional operational priorities, community schools resources, regional transportation study and cooperation obviously with the initiative on electrification that has not gone away yet. I we assume it's going to. We think it will, but we've been moving along those lines trying to study uh our ability to meet the the demands of frankly what's current law um come 2027. Uh but we do expect there's going to be a change at the state level and we will not be required to buy all electric buses come 2027. But as of right now, come 2027, we are required to purchase electric buses.
021And frankly, the grid is not there to support it. So it's got to change. Not to mention the cost to taxpayers is three times the current cost of a bus. And if they're expecting to put that on local taxpayers to vote on, uh, I don't think Glover is going to be the only district that they're going to have a hard time stoming that. Any questions on the regionalization initiatives? I know Sharon and Rob, you guys both come tomorrow. Yes. Okay. Promise is always to be a good evening. Look forward to seeing you. And that concludes my report. Any questions? All right. More questions? We'll move on to the next item, which is the student board member report. All right. Well, overall the school is everything's going pretty good. Um, we're the fourth quarter now. We're
022in the long l um I like to call it the death valley of the year. The five weeks from regents week to spring break. It feels like an eternity. But we're almost done. We got a week left. Um, spring sports has started, which is always a great thing to hear. And we're in our swim unit in gym. So, take that as you will. Um, some things that I do want to highlight at GHS on Friday, April 11th, we are having our carnival, which is a great positive reinforcement thing that we do every year. Um, we've got bounce houses, we've got food vendors, there's tons of different activities. There's arcade games, prizes, everything like that that we have there. And that's a great way to keep kids coming to school. I think it's what? It's two,
023you can miss two days, right? Yes, that's correct. Two days for the last five weeks. There we go. Two days for the last five weeks. And um otherwise, you know, then you wouldn't be invited to the carnival, but it is it's a great event and it definitely keeps kids in school and I'm very happy that our school has that. Um a few weeks ago, our U Albany courses 20201 went to U Albany for our for the Spanish day. It was a great day. We were invited. The kids had the opportunity to speak to native speakers. Um I went on that day. It was a great day. Um everything went smoothly. We learned a lot, spoke a lot of Spanish, and uh had a pretty good time. So I also do have a little presentation repaired
024about um about the student parking lot. Is that a private device? It is. Access the better uh photos and that is true. That is true. I needed an I needed an SD card reader. So, I don't see any stickers on that. There there are Here we go. Oh. Oh, I've got to extend. Oh, hold up. Hold up. This wouldn't happen on a Chromebooker. Yeah, right. This has got to work. No. All right. Let me just end this. I'm sorry, guys. Full screen. Full screen. It's one of the two. Well guys, the economy is doing pretty good. Maybe I don't know. Weather's nice. Where? Not right. Uh [Laughter] duplicate the displays. We are in good. There we go. Okay. We're here to talk about the student parking lot. There we go. Finally. Okay. Um, this is
025our student parking lot. It looks like a parking lot. However, there is an intersection. This intersection is T. Please don't. It's a great It's a great intersection. But I will agree that intersection is terrible that was coming out of your mouth. Well, I'm not actually sure what to do now. Do you want me do you want my computer? I don't know why this is actually being so weird. I think it's because it thinks I'm like duplicate. There you go. This intersection is is actually really terrible. In all seriousness though, um so I'm just going to go over here. Sorry. Uh so over here, right, we have we've got oncoming traffic leaving the parking lot. Oh, please. Oh, this is just so bad. I know this will be social media tomorrow. This is everybody. This is
026like all day I'm going to hear about this tomorrow. And I'm sure my mom is watching right now at home banging her head against her phone. Extendencies, please. There wouldn't be a presentation if it didn't. There we go. Oh, you guys can see my screen. We're going to keep these changes. All right, this should be fine. All right, Miss Liz is on there now, it looks like. Yeah, I do know if you wanted my computer. I might have to borrow in 10 seconds. Okay, so this is terrible. So, this is a line of students um leaving the student parking lot, right? And then over here, we've got people who are making a right-hand turn, no, left-hand turn out of here. Had to visualize it, right? Left hand turn out of here, right hand turn out
027of here, and here's the traffic coming down the hill. In the morning, it's perfectly fine, right? We've got a stop sign here. There's a stop sign here. But at the end of the day, with kids crossing the street, it is stop start traffic non-stop, right? We've got kids coming. There's a car coming here, a car coming here. So, the traffic becomes backed up. Now, it took me a minute to get the drone up because I had to get the clearance and everything that I needed before I could take off. But, um, normally there's a third line that comes in right here, which causes another stop, start, go type situation where another lane has to merge in here, which takes even more time. So, as you're waiting here, we've got students that are crossing the crosswalk,
028cars coming through, cars coming down this way, and it takes roughly like, I'd say probably 10 to 15 minutes on a Friday to get out of this parking lot, which is insane. Leave five minutes early. Why does Why does everybody want to leave school in the first place? That's what I'm saying. Overnight, get sleeping, man. We're fine. Um, if you're just going back tomorrow, right? So, um, what I would propose is speaking to a civil engineer, getting a traffic light that we could keep on a flashing red coming, um, a flashing red coming down the hill and a flash flashing red leaving the parking lot, but at 2:30, at 2:35, we could switch it to a red and green situation where we could empty out the student parking lot and then empty out this line
029here, right here. So, it wouldn't be as much stop start, stop start traffic because that's what's taking the most time. And the other problem that we're experiencing with the student parking lot is over the summer with the capital project, they shifted it with a new drop off loop and we got new parking spots, but the old parking spots are still there. So we essentially have an old parking lot on top of a new parking lot. So whoever decides where to park, they kind of determine where everybody else is going to park for the rest of the day. Is it a white day or a yellow day? So whoever parks first determines what kind of day we're having. And uh that's got to get there early. That's about it. Yeah, I mean this is just a
030few cars lined up. I think you're doing a good job, bro. I think Yeah, you can see me right there in my trunk right there flying the drone checking the shots, but yeah, this is just another view of the parking lot. Um once again, right here, this line usually is backed up all the way to about here, but by the time I was taking this, it was like 250. So, and a lot of those cars are also parents picking children up. It's not just the 25 cars of students that are parked. It's people who are picking their children up, which people know it's not just the kids, it's also people picking their children up. Yes. And I would I would feel pretty confident making the statement that if we had that traffic light, this line
031right here wouldn't be as long. So that would eliminate the line of traffic here because people try to get into this line as a shortcut to avoid doing the long thing. But if anything, that makes everybody longer because it has to do the stop start. So if this line was fixed and we could get everybody off faster, this line would be eliminated as well. I was just saying what if you guys get rid of the sidewalk on the right curb stopwalk going down entirely left the left kept the sidewalk on the left maybe walk around there around the loop then go down and get rid of that right parking lot completely curb stop it so they're not crossing in front of traffic no more crossing no more kids no more traffic no more foot traffic
032get rid of it then you have all the middle schoolers have to walk all the way around that Right. I think even without the sidewalk, he would still take the shortest distance. President CSR, I'm going to make sure they see this presentation and uh we haven't lost but our engineers long before I got here. So I think Yeah, of course. Yeah, this is a diff this is an issue that I don't think even we can solve. There are access roads in the back parking lot just Yeah, there's like a lot of like even just like just bumper bumper stuff. I wonder if right I mean we don't want to encourage that right now Rob but if we ever paved that and made that an egress out of that back lot that may be an option
033right now there's no there was a huge hill there B&G uh access road it's not paved I don't want to encourage kids to be using that I mean right now it's maybe if we would guard rails civil engineering her thoughts we could we can do something better overall I'm happy with the the design that we from the high school. But I don't disagree with you. I come in and out of every day picking up Rowan and begin school year it's a nightmare. Yeah. But even in the afternoon, uh I don't I'm not there for the most part. So I don't see talking about but that's not the only bottleneck we have on this property in the afternoon. Of course still is. So after school are people trying to make the left to go towards the
034high school or is everybody down there? So yes. So right now at the end of the day everybody's trying to make this turn and nobody's going the other way though. There are a few not. Yeah, there's a few there's a few kids the lap turns during that time. I mean what's the biggest issue? Is it kids crossing so that when the car going straight the people who want to who then it would be normally be their turn they're blocked by kids crossing. So I just wonder if you put a crossing guard there and help kids up walking. Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. So I think it's a combination of both. You have the Certainly the crossing guard would support student walking safety, but the biggest issue is they'll get a final get an opportunity to pull
035out and then you have kids in the crosswalk. So yes, if we had the stopping guard there, the crosswalk guard there, that would stop that. But what he's mentioning, I think would kind of like traffic there, but I'm saying that there's something that he's suggesting would you could also put it on there so the kids could get a flasher. You you're walking now. You're walking now. And then they would get trained Not saying we walk, we wait so that they can get out. Uh we have had kids almost hit by cars on foot and a few vendors um this year alone pulling out. So that is the it's a twopronged problem. The walkers and the kids trying to get out. Obviously they get impatient. They're teenage drivers, right? So they're like now is my chance
036and it's really not their chance. I'm just saying the cafeteria is just as dangerous. No, I don't disagree honestly. looked at it for seven years and it's like I'm not a civil engineer. You see, and then right here, this car, normally there's a longer line, but now this car is going to try to shove himself in right here and that car is not going to let him go. This car might feel nice today. I think they're going to let him in, but they don't want to let him in. And then down here, we've got that stop start. That car is going. This car is probably going to hold off. That car doesn't want to go because there's somebody waiting there. And now those kids in the waiting and now those kids are there. You got
037somebody waiting to turn into the party. And it's tough. Yeah, they're trying to get in because they want to pick up their kid and they don't have a stop sign coming up. No, coming up does not have one. No, but obviously the pedestrian always has rightway. But yeah, you can see just get a bridge. How about a roundabout? Oh my gosh. Put those teenage walkway probably be the fastest way because the crosswalk build a tunnel underneath it for tunnel really. Um, but yeah, I think those are just really the main problems with the student parking lot. And it's the other thing is kids really like to see their window, and I see this all the time. They see the smallest window and they'll go from like 0 to 20 and just blast through and it's
038bad. It gets real dangerous. I mean, this video is a pretty calm time. By the time I filmed this, I don't know if there's a time stamp on it, but it was it was pretty late. You're 100% right. I go down the hill every day after school, my son, and it's just everybody's trying to find their edge to get out and get in. I think the short in the short term for pedestrian safety if we assigned person give a best stop sign stop and slow sign we could certainly at least in short term cut down on the possibility of of pedestrians being hit and also hopefully have kids maybe gather where those three are now for a minute and then stop traffic coming and going let the kids cross and go back to traffic moving
039I think for the most part you said 10 could probably be uh shaved in half with a little bit of cooperation and patience and somebody in a staff member overseeing that piece. I mean because my initial thought was we just the track uh the traffic light and then just like a walk wait thing but kids wouldn't listen to that. Yeah. I think I think right now without having a bridge or a tunnel to get the pedestrians across, you're going to need a staff member or directing traffic and the traffic light would also obviously stop to stop and start at the intersection as well. And that's about it. And then the only other thing traffic-wise, as we were just talking about that is um the signage at Gloversville, a lot of my friends that come from
040other schools or people that come from other schools for sporting events, whether it's a play or something like that, it's hard to know where you're going without the layout. there's not many signs like middle school this way, high school this way, and things like that because we have such a large campus. So, even if we're already speaking to a civil engineer, we're getting signs and everything like that. If we could add in external signs that say, "Okay, well, this is the high school. This is where our gym is." And we I know we do have some of that stuff outside, but even just larger parking signs coming up the hill that the middle schools continue that way or the high school, even aerial map of of the of the campus with clear labels of what
041is what exactly. Yeah, a good point. But that's about it for the parking lot. I appreciate it. Thank you guys. I think I see a future civil engineer. [Applause] You know that was me following you in school yesterday. What' you say? I was I was behind you coming to Oh, you were following me up? Yeah. I was complaining cuz you let that car on on East State Street. Uh you were taking a left on on Bleecker. I was behind you and I was like, "Oh, he's going to let that he's going to wait for that car." Was like, "Dad, that's pressed." Then I felt bad. No, I wasn't on a horn. I was still throwing my arms in the air. He was being a good driver. Thanks, Preston. Anyone has any other questions for Preston?
042Oh, by the way, if at lunch, I was a little upset we were going to make it a meeting without hearing about lunch. All right, next item. We have recommended items. We have items 7.01 through 1822. Anybody have any questions or comments on any of those? All right. Motion to approve those items, seconded by Heath. All in favor on those. All right. And then motion to adjourn the meeting in record 36 minute time tonight. John seconded by Heath. We'll load you up with that. All in favor? All right. Thank you everyone for coming. Thanks folks. your