001Rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and have a moment of silence for anyone that's in your thoughts and prayers currently and we'll get started and Mr. McCabe, could you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? I certainly will. 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, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Can I get someone to bring approval of the agenda to the table, please? First by Miss Felzerano, second by Mr. Butler. I first like to I'd like to pull under a personnel action 2.03 Gus MOA new title for our next meeting. Any questions, comments, concerns on that? No? All right. Can I get a vote on the agenda as amended? All right, that passes 9
002to 0. Thank you. All right, moving on to 1.05 BOCES 2 Superintendent. Mr. Putnam or Dr. Putnam, I should say, and Board Vice President Chuck Phillips. No Chuck. No Chuck, all right. No, and and Tom works just fine, so no worry about that. >> I I appreciate being here this evening and thank you to the Greece Central School District. I always do like to share I I I worked here, so I was at Odyssey on when it was on Hoover Drive as a teacher and then an assistant principal at Greece Olympia and I still think the world of Greece. My line in the other districts I've been in is that if you took teachers from Greece and put them in just about any other suburban district, they'd blow the roof off the place in a
003good way. Your your focus on professional development and supporting staff is is really incredible. So, thanks for all that you do. As the District Superintendent for Monroe 2-Orleans BOCES, we've prepared a new this year. I believe everybody has one of the seat. It's just a data sheet. I won't read through it, but sort of pinpoints all of the different programs that Greece uses and not just that, but I always like to remind folks that Monroe 2-Orleans BOCES, just like every other BOCES in New York State, does offer programs for students with disabilities and CTE options, career technical education. We also do a whole lot more in terms of competitive bidding and professional development and long-term suspension hearings and all the fun stuff. So, thank you for your partnership. I'd also like to acknowledge that you
004have a great superintendent with Jeremy. A lot of conversations. We know at BOCES we have been looking for space and so that's one of our big issues is knowing that we need to expand to support the needs of our students with disabilities as well as our CTE students. I hope many of you will attend the annual meeting, which is Wednesday, week from today. Nope, today's Tuesday. Next Wednesday is our annual meeting over at our main campus on Big Ridge Road. Really excited our culinary baking students will be there serving food they've prepared. I've only been to one. It was last year's and it was absolutely incredible. So, I really appreciate that and and and hope that everybody can be there. I just wanted to reference and acknowledge the space. We are looking at a larger
005center-based program. We have a number of possibilities we've been digging into, really trying to make sure that we have the best cost and the best locations and what we can do for that. And then you'll hear, I'll give you a preview, but we are getting ready for construction at for a new CTE building right next to our campus and we are hopeful that that'll be a September 2027 opening and that it will pull two full programs out of our current building, which will allow us to then either expand or create new programs at CTE, although that's a small step in the space that BOCES needs to make sure that we can offer CTE and special ed to as many students in the county as we can. Are there any questions? Guys make my life easy.
006I appreciate it. If you ever need anything, please don't hesitate to reach out. Um Jeremy knows my cell phone number and I I always try to pick up. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Putnam. All right, moving on to 1.06, although it says something different here, but GTA comments, Gina McCormick. Please come on down. Hi. Hello. >> going to ask if there's any questions. >> [laughter] >> Good evening. My name is Gina McCormick and I'm one of the elementary advisors on the executive council for the Greece Teachers Association. Tonight I will be speaking to you about two very important initiatives that our union supports passionately. First, as you may know, the Greece Teachers Association proudly supports a 501's >> [clears throat] >> a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, Greece Teachers Community Programs, GTCP, dedicated to
007enriching educational experiences for both students and educators across our district. Through generous community donations, GTCP provides grants that bring engaging speakers, innovative programs, and meaningful school events directly into our classrooms while also offering targeted grants to support early career educators with 1 to 5 years of experience. As a second grade teacher at Paddy Hill, I can speak firsthand to the benefits of these grants >> [snorts] >> and what they can provide for our entire school community. We applied for a grant this past fall and it was awarded to us. As a result, we were able to transform our gym into a real-life pumpkin patch to support our annual Paddy Hill Pumpkin Day. Each child visited the patch and picked their very own pumpkin to keep and take home. Many students expressed they had never had
008this experience before and the smiles were priceless. The ability [snorts] to offer these types of opportunities reflect GTA's commitment to promoting student learning, equity, and community engagement. Every contribution, no matter its size, directly invests in our schools, empowers educators, and expands the opportunities for students. We encourage you to please visit our Greece Teachers website to learn more about this important foundation. Second, I want to talk a little bit more about an issue you've heard my fellow colleagues speak about at previous board meetings, Tier 6. Tier 6 is often viewed as a retirement matter, but in reality is a workforce and student stability issue. Created in 2012, Tier 6 raised retirement ages, increased employee contributions, and requires newer educators to work longer for less. >> [snorts] >> Over time, this has begun to impact recruitment and
009retention across education, contributing to staffing challenges and reduced continuity for our students. These concerns are not theoretical. They are quite literally being felt in classrooms across New York State. As you previously heard, on March 8th in Albany, more than 15,000 individuals, including not just educators, but firefighters, police officers, and other public employees, came together for the Fix Tier 6 Rally. This was a powerful and unified demonstration showing that this issue extends well beyond any single profession. Led in part by New York State United Teachers, the rally helped generate legislative momentum, increase awareness, and shift the conversation from a cost issue to one of workforce sustainability and student impact. While change will take time, efforts like this matter. They elevate the conversation and reinforce the connection between policy decisions and what we experience locally in our
010schools. As a Board of Education, your awareness and continued advocacy are important because attracting and retaining high-quality educators and ensuring consistency for our students depends on addressing issues like Tier 6. Thank you for listening, taking time to understand the importance of this movement, and as always for your continued commitment to our schools. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, next up is GASAA. It's Audra and Jamie. Hello. Thank you for having us here. I am Audra All, Director of Math and Science. Jamie Yauch, Director of Humanities. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, I'll I'll just talk really loudly. So, Jamie and I teamed up together, which we so very often do, to bring to you how our directors have been working together to help support the DCIP goal. No, do I not do that? It's
011okay. There we go. All right, so we teamed up together to talk through how the directors have been working together to help support the DCIP goals, specifically around literacy. So, right now we're going to actually spotlight some teachers and some work that's been happening across our content areas. So, in this example, you'll see this is a social studies teacher in seventh grade and what he and another teacher did is they surveyed teachers across their content areas to look for common Tier 2 words that they all felt like a pertained to their content area and then they keep a log of like how often they are dressing those words so that kids are getting multiple exposures. And then you'll see the tier two word of the week, it's in a student-friendly format with a visual to
012accompany it. So what's kind of unique about this is a lot of times content area teachers might focus more on like tier three words which are words like geology, pyramid, so forth. But in this case, focusing on tier two is helping kids get um repeated exposure to words they would see more often, more high-frequency words. This is from math six. Uh actually uh ingrained in the i-Ready curriculum is utilizing these Frayer models. So after very like explicit instruction around the term of scaling in this case, um students are then asked to come up with their own examples for what does it mean for scaling? So whether they're using pictures or numbers or graphs or drawings or what have you, they fill in that Frayer model model with their version of scaling. Um and then after
013that they're actually asked to describe like what is shrinking versus stretching and then in their own words describing specific types of scaling models. So in this example shared um with us by the annual department on superintendent's conference day, the newcomer program worked on uh two specific strategies to build language structures and supports for students in the um newcomer program. So this is a see, think, wonder and then the who do more is a writing language structure protocol. During our superintendent's conference day with our elementary school teachers, we offered lots of choice sessions, a lot of them around math. Um one of those sessions was led by our district-wide math TOSA, Louisa, and it was all around the power of math stories which is really taking math and making it and humanizing it and making it
014a story. Um and then she uh brought in various like literacy strategies, in particular the multi-read strategy uh for helping students be able to grasp the math that is in this math story. And shared um from Mario, our director of arts and music, um in K-12 visual arts students are working on creating artistic goals in writing, reflecting on those goals in writing, and creating art artist statements. In addition, in music, through text chunking strategies, students are learning to read music and they are also in writing creating reflection statements. For example, how a conductor's feedback might improve their um musicianship. Uh also on the superintendent's conference day, um the secondary humanities department and uh secondary math department teamed up together at the beginning of the day um to do some collaborative learning. We actually had an
015entire theme around the 250th anniversary of our country and if you see the background image, that actually is like an image of all our decorations that we had that were at Athena. Um so in the afternoon, sorry, my uh the secondary math teachers uh engaged in some learning around a specific vocab strategy which Lisa and Erica, who are two of our math TOSAs, um collaborated with the ELA TOSAs to uh design this PD around this vocab strategy that we are utilizing in secondary math classrooms. So from a district-wide lens, some of the professional learning offerings and support provided by the literacy TOSAs, um they provided professional learning opportunities about vocabulary instruction, writing strategies based on the writing revolution and the IES guide, um engaging with complex texts, and then they've also been providing ongoing support
016through attending PLCs in various buildings, elementary and secondary alike. And our last example is with elementary school science. So for the past few years, we've had our whole curriculum review cycle process taking place which included creating a vertical team and a large uh task for that team was uh finding um a science program for elementary school that really is nicely ingrained with the art curriculum um because the art curriculum actually has a lot of units that are science in topic. Um and so it it has led us to actually have a um two different pilots that we are going to have going on next year that we have found are um really really nicely work well together with our art curriculum. That's it. And that's it. There you go. Do we have questions? Do we
017take questions or not? Thank you. All right, we have no one from Ax up, GAS, or Teamsters, so we're going to move on to 1.07, residents forum. We have one signed up tonight, um Mr. Ennis. Come on up. Thank you. My name's Charlie Ennis. I'm a resident of Greece. I live at 1022 Romsey Road. And my lifetime goes back to the 1940s. Been around a little while. I'm also a veteran of the United States Army. I ended up retiring from the federal government, actually. And uh I'm here today uh this evening, I should say to um talk about diversity in leadership and how that relates to our culture educationally going forward. Whether it's a form of a school board meeting or the county legislature meeting or American Legion meeting or whatever. Uh diversity is an
018important part of our culture and all elements of our society should be listened to and heard as they speak their opinions. Whether it's my opinion or any member of the audience's opinion, their opinion is of value and it should be listened to, I feel. And um that is one of the criteria of leadership, I think. And when somebody in a leadership position fails to do that uh who fails to listen doesn't want to listen or whatever, avoids listening that kind of situation uh is not a positive one. It's a kind of a negative one, actually. And I think that going forward we might even the school board here might want to consider that in making a decision on their leadership of the school board, even, if it goes to that level. But uh and by
019the way, thanks very much for giving me a tax discount a while back, a year or two ago. I appreciate it very much and I'm sure my fellow veterans do, also. And it is much appreciated. I look forward to the upcoming election this next month in May, May 19th, I believe it is. Uh I'm a big believer in public education. I'm a product of New York State public education from the 1950s and '60s. And I'm a big believer in it. And I would like to see it continued at one of the highest levels in our nation, which it is so far, in spite of our federal current federal government's efforts to dissolve or abolish the Department of Education, which I think is is not a positive step. And I think that uh we could actually
020use more funding in a responsible way uh for an increase in our educational levels here in New York State. I was fortunate enough to have a a Regents scholarship and a Regents diploma back in the 1960s when I left high school over in Wayne County. Which was a good thing for me. I think it stood me well in my uh my lifetime. I made it to retirement. I'm still around. I'm still able to speak and I'm still able to vote, which is good. And uh I hope you all uh continue your good work, basically. And perhaps you've listened a little bit to some of the words that I've said to you this evening and take them to heart. And uh I wish you all well in the future. Thank you very much. Thank you. All
021right. Bailey. You're up for our joke. All righty. I got a little spring joke. How excited was the gardener about spring? So excited he wet his plants. >> [laughter] >> Where do you find these things? My dad. All right. >> [laughter] >> I get it. Play corn, you get corn. >> [laughter] >> Awesome. All right, moving on to personnel action. Um 2.01, staffing. Can I have someone bring staffing to the table, please? Moved by Mr. Maloney, seconded by Mr. Bonfiglio. Any comments, questions, concerns on staffing? Seeing none, all those in favor. That passes 9 to 0. Moving on to tenure. Can I have someone bring tenure to the table, please? Moved by Ms. Seaman, seconded by Mr. Butler. Any comments, questions, concerns on tenure? No? All those in favor? That passes 9 to 0. And
022with that, I want to congratulate Mario and Brandon on their tenure. >> [applause] >> Most deserving. You want them to uh stand Yeah, stand up so everybody knows who they are. >> stand up. Whoever you are. Okay, cool. We don't want you to come up drunk, but I said that [applause] was a little too much, so No picture? Well, congratulations. Well deserved. All right, 2.03 is off the agenda. All right, moving on to 4.01, special presentations, 2026-2027 superintendent's proposed budget recommendation. Superintendent Smalley. Great. >> [clears throat] >> Well, good evening. Can't believe it's been a year. Time's gone by very fast. Um So, again, good evening. Um I'm very very proud to um with all of you our proposed 2026-27 budget. Um This plan, um I believe, truly reflects our commitment to invest in our
023students, while also strengthening um our entire community. I do believe that every decision in this budget is grounded in what students need to succeed not only today, um but also in the future. So, our budget is not built in isolation. It's driven by our strategic plan and our improvement plans both at the district and school levels. These plans identify needs, set priorities, and guide our actions. Simply put, every dollar we invest is aligned to our goals. This ensures coherence, accountability, and impact across the district. This budget also reflects the voices of more than 3,000 stakeholders. We gathered input through surveys, um forums, open forums, um ongoing conversations. So, students, families, staff, and community members all played a role in this budget. This is not just a district budget, it's a community-informed plan. So, what did
024we hear from those 3,000 voices? So, we heard clearly that student needs are growing and becoming more complex. There is a need for more specialized program programming, especially in special education. We heard that our youngest learners need stronger academic and behavioral supports, and communication and real-world opportunities are also priorities. This feedback directly shaped our proposal. >> [clears throat] >> So, this budget was built um at the intersection of two realities. Uh increasing financial pressures and growing student and family needs. So, costs continue to rise. For the first time ever, our district was what's called held harmless. Romeo's going to talk more about that, but really what that means is that we saw 1% increase in foundation aid from this year compared to previous years where we saw close to 5%. That impacts our budget, especially
025with the increasing costs that you see on this slide. At the same time, we are aware of the increasing demands of specialized programs in our schools, mental health supports, and career readiness programs for our students. Our responsibility for this budget was to balance both without compromising opportunities for our students. So, this budget delivers on six key commitments. Strong classroom experiences, safe and well-supported schools, engaging extra extracurricular opportunities, targeted academic and behavioral supports, college, career, and real-world readiness, and expanded and strengthened early learning. At its At its core, this is a student-centered investment plan. So, this budget, we remain focused on a strong strong instruction in every classroom. We are investing in our educators through professional learning and collaboration. We remain committed to strengthening tier one instruction to ensure all students receive high-quality core teaching consistent
026at each of our schools. And we are expanding the community school strategy to better support our students and families. Early learning is one of our most important investments. We are expanding pre-K access to reduce wait list and maintaining small kindergar- kindergarten class sizes for more individualized attention. This budget proposes additional staff at the kindergarten level and refining our kindergarten curriculum to strengthen early foundations. The goal is simple. Set every child up for long-term success. Students' needs are more complex and our supports must reflect that. We are increasing special education programming, particularly for students with autism. We are adding behavioral supports, intervention staff, and related services. These investments allow us to better serve students in our district and meet their needs early and more effectively. As we prepare for early learning, we are preparing students for
027life beyond graduation. This includes expanded access to college credit courses and career pathways. Programs like AVID, early college, and WeMoCo provide real-world opportunities for our students. We are also investing in digital innovation to enhance teaching and our learning. Our graduates will leave ready for college, careers, and for life. We believe engagement matters. Athletics, arts, after-school clubs help students feel connected and motivated. These experiences build teamwork, confidence, and belonging. This budget maintains these opportunities across all grade levels. And finally, safe, well-functioning schools are foundational. We are investing in technology, facilities, and essential operations. This includes transportation, food service, health services, and security. These are the systems that allow learning to happen every day in our district. And while we do that, we're navigating the road ahead. So, we need to continue the use of contracted services
028to address our ongoing driver shortages. That is a problem throughout New York State and with within our own district. We're We're going through an optimi- optimization assessment looking for ways to solve our transportation challenges. We will continue to advocate for common sense sense adjustments to the zero emissions trans- emissions mandate. This budget, as Romeo will go through, does not propose any electric purchases for this year. We look to bolster our fleet of gas and diesel buses, which will help the transition to electric buses if the mandate remains unchanged. So, I'll now step aside for Romeo for our financial review. Thank you, Jeremy. Good evening, everyone. Um so, as of this today, uh most of you may have heard, uh we have not received and the state has not approved a budget for next year. It
029was due April 1st. Uh my understanding is that both houses last week had passed a budget extender until today. Um that expired today. My understanding is they're passing another extender through Tuesday of next week when they get back in session. And those extenders will cover cover payroll and other costs at the state level for an additional week. Um My understanding, just for for for everyone else's just knowledge of the uh items holding up the budget, are New York State car insurance laws, climate control laws, raising taxes on the wealthy, school aid, and as our GTA uh I think she left. Our GTA uh representative mentioned uh tier six pension reform. So, those are the items that are still holding up the budget for us. The item in the budget that we're waiting on, and I'll
030speak to uh in a couple seconds, is foundation aid. Uh we're still waiting to see how that pans out. Uh but with that, I want to go back to uh the slide we shared a few budget meetings ago. Um since we do not have a legislative budget, we are going to use our modified governor's state aid report, which is what you have here. So, the first two columns uh represent last year's adopted and then the legislative budget. There are two because, again, they were late with the budget last year, so we adopted and utilized the board's versus the legislature. The green column, the first dark green column, is what the um Sorry, the the middle column is what the governor uh proposed for us. Comes to a total of $170.1 million in state aid. Um
031With foundation aid, again, as Jerry uh Jeremy had mentioned, at 1% increase versus our normal increase that we have seen in prior years. This was the first year, as Jeremy mentioned, that we went to a hold harmless status, which meant we would by formula get zero increase for the upcoming school year. But the governor then added a do minimum 1%, which is reflected in the 101 $120.3 million uh in uh in foundation aid. Our hope and our anticipation is that the legislative budget will provide 2% do minimum an increase uh that foundation aid by about another million point uh 1 million 200,000 dollars. Uh so we're until we kind of see that, we really can't uh do anything with it. The other two adjustments that we made just as a reminder is we we increased
032the uh building aid from the state governor or the governor's uh state budget from 10.6 million, I'm sorry, 10.1 million to 10.6 million because we knew we sent in final cost reports that would increase that. And we also increased down the bottom the BOCES aid uh by 750,000 because that is going to be based on money know we know we're spending this year that we'll get back next year in aid. So rather than utilizing the governor's 170.1 million dollars in the budget at this time, we are going to use 171 million 406,000 dollars instead. So looking at um our revenues in a more traditional way in the past we had been uh providing sort of a tracking sheet to the board. This is summarizing everything into more traditional format. Um our aids our state aid,
033the 171.4 million dollars is from the previous slide. Our tax levy is proposed at one I'm just under 131 million dollars. That is a 2.2 7% increase in the levy and it's the maximum levy as well, so we need a simple majority vote and for the budget in order for the budget to pass. We are not exceeding the tax cap. Other local sources are up uh 2.1 million or about 10.7% um those are variety of revenues that we uh did some screening on and reviewing and we've increased items such as interest earn interest earnings, sales tax on equip our sales uh of transportation equipment, insurance recoveries, health and welfare services and some other budgeted revenues we increased uh within that number uh that we believe we will see in revenues and therefore we're reflecting them
034more accurately uh in the revenue section at this time. Transfers and internals up about 700 and $83,000. It's primarily primarily related to our debt service, which we confirmed uh with our uh financial partners. And then appropriated reserves uh what you see is in 25 26 we appropriated uh million dollars out reserve primarily from workers comp and unemployment. This year that's going up by 8 million 75,000. That is the use of our retirement reserves in order to balance the budget. Should the legislative budget come in before the board adopts in 2 weeks we will make a an adjustment here assuming we get the additional 1%. We will increase our state aid by an additional 1% or about 1.2 million dollars and we will decrease our appropriated reserves by the same amount leaving the budget at the
035same total but less um less uh reliance on the reserves at this time. If we do not get the legislative budget before the board adopts, we will need to go with this budget and when the legislative branch approves their budget and we do get state aid, that will just come in as an excess revenue. So if we if we get it, we'll adjust it and present it for adoption. If we don't uh it'll just come in and fall to the bottom line for fund balance for next year. Overall uh revenues are up and the budget is up 5.31%. Looking on the expenditure side, um looking by object broken down on the left-hand side our salaries are up just under 5% about 4.9%. Uh that includes all our current staff moved forward for the current year
036or for the next year under any tentative or um proposed, I'm sorry, uh current contracts. Uh and it also reflects um some new staffing that came out of the staffing to actual process conducted by human resources that are now reflected in that number as well. Equipment is down 788,000 dollars. We had cut equipment by about a million dollars, but then we had to add back some funding uh for some specific items, so the the deduction the uh the decrease of a million turned into 788,000. Our contract services and supplies um those are typically B&G utilities, contract services, transportation contractors in there uh up about 9.2% again everything is up um in terms of contracts, utilities a variety of other items. There's really nothing that isn't costing us uh significantly more next year uh than it
037did over this year. BOCES is up additionally about 9% uh and again that is really not an add to the budget. We are just moving more supplies and contracted items through BOCES and receiving aid on it the following year versus the prior year. So yes, it is an increase, but it's not a total 2.6 increase to the budget. It's a lot of that is shifting funds from one line to the other in order to take advantage of the aid for the following year. Our benefits um are up about 4.6%. um that's primarily social security and health care uh for all the staff on the first line. And then interest and other expense is basically our transfer to debt service and interest on borrowings that we're going to have uh for the level up project that
038will begin uh shortly. Again, the budget goes from 318.5 to 335.4 up just under 17 uh million or 17 million dollars or about 5.31%. This is a different look uh of the same uh budget just split out by functions, general support, instruction, transportation. Gen- general support includes the superintendent's office, finance, B&G, human resources, other general supporting operations out there um that is up 3.8% primarily con- um uh wages, uh union contracts and contracted services for the services that we do uh currently have. Instruction is our largest increase at 9.4 million dollars. That's up about 5.7%. um Instruction includes curriculum development, supervision, evaluation, regular teaching uh special education teaching, uh OTPT, athletics, anything having to do with the instruction is included in that line. Our pupil transportation is up about 7.2%. um Again, that is for
039our contracted services with Ontario bus. As Jeremy mentioned, we're still seeing a bus driver shortage, therefore uh we need to contract those routes out with Ontario and those costs tend to increase each year. Community services really not a big increase in undistributed are a variety of items including a retirement, social ser- social security, health and dental, workers comp, unemployment, debt service are all wrapped in that undistributed category. Those are up about 4.7%. The one other item to note is which was uh pleasing to see obviously is that instruction of that 16. uh 9 million dollar increase instruction represents about 55 to 60% of that increase, which it should be. Uh followed by uh undistributed or or the benefits related to all the salaries and the other items that we need to provide uh to our
040employees. On a summary basis, you can see the budget the budget increase is 16.9 million dollars, 5.31%. The levy is estimated to increase 2.9 million dollars or 2.27%. percent. The one thing I'll mention here um is the 5.31% just to just to um make a clarification. Um again, CPI was probably around 3% for this year, so we are above CPI. But when you really look at CPI and I've made this point um in previous budgets that index includes things like food and apparel and gas and groceries with our which are not a typical basket of goods for a school district when we have to look at uh unionized contracts, retiree uh retirement uh rates, health care increases for everybody. So, I know we're a little bit above that, but I still think the 5.1 uh
0413% is uh pretty reflective of what it really costs uh to kind of manage a district year to year. And I will say in looking at uh not that it's any great benchmark, but looking at other districts in the county, this is probably on the little bit on the probably the middle lower end um at this point in time. And then in addition to the budget, there'll be one proposition for our annual bus replacement purchase. We're looking to buy 35 replacement buses as we as we have for the last several years. We typically buy 25, but we're again we're looking to over purchase um in anticipation and kind of waiting on changes that might come through for the electric bus mandate. You can see the breakdown of the buses there. Aggregate cost is just under
042$6 million, $5.9 million. We will utilize 2.7 million from our bus reserve and we will pay that off over five year five years um starting in 26-27. And between what we get back in state aid and what we pull out of the reserve, there is no additional cost to residents in the uh proposed levy. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, so um similar to previous years, we're to vote uh right here um in this building. Um polls will be open from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. And just a reminder to that to be eligible um voters must be registered with Monroe County Board of Elections. Early voting by mail, all registered voters are eligible to vote by mail. Uh those who wish to vote by mail must complete an application. Appli- Applications will be available on
043the district website beginning April 23rd. Once the application is verified, the voter will be mailed an official ballot or they can pick one up in person at district office. So, what's next? So, April 21st, our next board meeting, the board will vote uh on this proposed budget. On the 24th, a budget book is uh available to the public. On May 5th uh we'll have uh an official budget public hearing. And on the 19th we hope to see a large crowd come here to vote uh vote for the budget and for board election. What still needs to be determined is a board candidates night. Um and so more information will come out on the date, time, and location um once we have um all of those um vote uh What is it? Petitions. Mine went blank
044right there at the end. Mhm. Perfect. Okay. Questions? Thanks, Jim. Mr. Butler. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. Um I've two uh questions. Uh the first is how are we preparing for potential sustained high fuel prices? It I'm sure it's a pretty big cost for the district, and we've seen the prices go up dramatically uh since the war was started. So, I wonder if if we're able to do anything to prepare for those costs, if we factored those higher costs into the into the budget projections. Yes, the higher costs are factored into for 27 or 26-27. Um we buy gas uh fuel for our buses from a state contract. So, it's also been a bid price, so they're not as drastic as they are uh for us at the fuel pump, but it has been
045factored in um and we've left a little bit of room in there uh for contingency should they escalate temporarily for longer period of time than anticipated. Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Bonfiglio. They were what? Correct. Yes, correct. >> put your mic on. Correct. Forgot about the mic. Sorry about that. Okay. So, I think there are protections built into this like the the state insurance fund, but I just want to make sure these are these are excess retirement funds, I assume. They're not they're not um they're they're overfundings. I assume or >> They're rainy day reserves. >> Okay. Okay. >> for Go ahead. I'm sorry. >> We're not drawing anything from the retirement system. Certainly not drawing anything down below um current level needed fundings. We're not putting anything at risk in that regard. >>
046No. Um No, we are not. More specifically um there is an uh ERS cost and then there's a TSR T TRS cost that we have to contribute to the retirement system. Just for round numbers we'll say it's uh $5 million for one and $8 million for the other. Um What we will do is instead of budgeting an increase in those costs, I should say, we will take reserve funds out of those two um categories bring them over as revenues in order to pay our our um contributions to the retirement system. So, nothing will give at the state level. Our reserves will go down there, but then it'll also give us some room in TRS should we have surplus at the end of a year going forward, we can put those money back in there and
047then reuse them again should we need it down the road. And should there be a let's say significant pullback in the market and we end up in a situation where we have underfunded uh retirement obligations does do we have time Yeah, we would never underfund. Yeah, we would not underfund the retirement. Those would be that would be a priority expense uh if things really kind of pulled back, something else would be cut in order to pay the retirement contributions that we have to make cuz that's that's required. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Bailey. First of all, I just wanted to thank you both for a great presentation and for always prioritizing us students in the budget, so I appreciate that. A couple questions. Um just with the whole um slide 12, the safety and
048support, I was wondering by investing more security technology, um how will that affect the scanning screening system that we have in the mornings? Could you clarify that for me? Your question again? Yeah, so I think on slide 12, it said that one of the initiatives was to invest more in like security technology. Um would that affect the morning process of coming in? Like would students see any differences in >> no. No, okay. >> No, good question. No, that Typically, we're looking at uh additional cameras. We're looking at cameras around our doors um and our exits so that those are some of the areas, but it wouldn't impact uh morning routine. Okay, perfect. And then uh my last question was what do you think are the and if there are any changes that you can think
049of right now that students would notice with this new budget um this year and beyond? I love that question. Um Well, I think in the elementary level, if you look at that, I think um teachers or students will see increased support. Um especially at the kindergarten level, they'll have additional support, probably smaller groups, smaller class sizes, you'll see that. I think students are going to have uh more access to interventions and specialists if they're struggling in the areas of math or um ELA. Um we also uh continue to support mental health support, so you'll see uh access to either social workers or counselors um throughout the district. Um continue to have opportunities for clubs after school um musicals, um athletics are still funded there. Um so, I don't think they're going to they're going to
050see any um negative difference. I think that for students looking for additional support, it's going to be there um to support them as needed. I think families are also going to see um we're increasing our community school strategy, so you'll see um more um access um or opportunities for parents and community members to partner with our district as well. Good question. Any other questions? Mr. Butler. Uh one uh point of curiosity, uh you mentioned uh Romeo, the uh um situation where we the state budget might result in a larger amount of foundation aid than we've got built into the budget right now. Correct. And if that happens after the budget is approved, it would come in in as excess revenues. That is correct. >> what I I first of all, I think we're very fortunate
051to have the team that we have on uh in our finance department that's helped us be prepared for a rainy day such as we're experiencing now. And so those reserve funds that are being appropriated kind of reduce the bank that we've got to rely on in the future. And so I wonder if we have that excess revenue that comes in, would you expect that that would be used to replenish some of the reserves or would you simply not draw as much of the reserves as you have been the plan right now? It would probably go back into the reserves. There would be two options. One would be to put it back into the reserves and then re-appropriate more reserve or we could appropriate fund balance which would mean which we used to do maybe five
052or six years ago where we would take any surplus in the current year and earmark it to go towards the budget for next year. I think our team's preference has been to stay away from appropriating fund balance as much as we can and utilize the reserves and then put money back into those reserves in order to use them again when they're needed. Thank you. That would probably be our preference. But again, those will those the recommendations will come to the board at the end of the school year via a resolution as to where we wish to deposit or we recommend where we want to deposit any surplus for 25-26. Thanks. Any other questions? Mr. Bonfiglio. Thank you. Romeo, the numbers on page 18 regarding just the variances and you called out the the large share
053for instruction at about 55-56% of the increase. Um can you give me a sense of how that breaks out like maybe on a FTE per FTE basis? I I don't know what the the best measure would be but total staffing. Does do we does that does that reflect an increase of staffing? I mean is that contributing to it or is it primarily just salary increase? I'm just wondering. >> in there so when you break it out by function, it's all costs for that function including salary and non-salary benefits, any contracts that are in there, any supplies and materials are all wrapped up in that function. So that $9.4 million increase is increases in salaries, benefit costs for instruction folks, supplies and materials, contract services, anything that has a dollar amount attached to it is included
054in the 9.3. I would say most of that is is probably salary and benefit increases because those are the two biggest categories for our budget are roughly 75-76%. So most of that 9.3 is probably salary adjustments for current staff and any new staff that was added due to need plus the benefits and the district costs related to that. Can you have a a number that you could use for like where we are staffing at staffing levels? No, not at this point. Other than no, I don't have that offhand. Okay. Sorry. No, that's fine. Thank you. Any other questions? President McKay. Yep. In your slide, Romeo, you talked about bus purchases. Just to be clear, you how many electric buses are we buying? Zero. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Bonfiglio. I don't know
055if this is a point of order kind of thing not a point of order point of inquiry a procedural kind of thing but I'm wondering if the board has an opportunity or if we can create an opportunity to we've talked about this in the past a letter to Albany regarding advocacy for removing that burden of electric vehicles but also as we've heard from some of our staff um also advocating for the foundation aid needs that we could speak I would hope with a common voice and maybe with a little more impact. Alex. Um What what exactly was the question, board member? Like [laughter] Like if you would like you could have Yeah. Yes. I'm I'm just wondering if if we have an opportunity as a board there are if there is an action that we
056can take perhaps to propose a joint letter or resolution Yes, that yeah, you you could put together a resolution and then vote on that to send to the state or you could write a letter yourself from you personally. Okay. Thank you. I I guess procedurally is is the question how how something like that might get done. I It would just be proposing a resolution like anything else in the agenda. Get put that on the agenda. Okay. Um I guess the other part of the procedural aspect of it is is how we make it happen. I guess I can propose doing that I would do that and I would I guess I would ask if there's maybe someone else who wants to assist with something like that that we might want to do that and then
057put it on the agenda for a later proposal a later resolution. So I guess I'll take that offline for the moment but I think it would be probably worth pursuing. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you. All right, moving on to 5.01 audit committee report. I don't see Mrs. Flores here. Mr. Butler. All right, I'm up. So um the the audit committee met on March 23rd and the primary agenda item was receiving the report from our auditors at the Bonadio Group on our independent internal control or the independent internal control risk assessment report. So we had extended conversation with the representative from Bonadio who talked about the report that looked at 13 different areas of risk. We had a robust discussion of the audit process as well as the findings from the audit. The good
058news to report is that there were no the audit findings didn't require any corrective action plans to be developed. And and the group agreed to have further engagement with district staff to better understand our risks as well as the risk mitigation strategies that are being used. And the group recommended approval of the of the report that that we received. We also had discussion of the current corrective action plans from past audits and um and our next meeting will be May 4th. Thank you. All right, can we get someone to bring the acceptance of the 2025-26 independent internal control risk assessment report to the table? First by Mr. Maloney. We're we're going to do questions in one sec. I just got to We got to get it on the on the floor first. Yep. So first
059by Mr. Maloney, second by Ms. Felzerano. Questions, concerns, comments? Ms. Like. Um the title looks like there's there's a discrepancy page three um on page three it says it's high and then on page 10 and then on page 10 it says it's moderate. Mary, you've got to put on your mic. So that that moderate is prior year and the current year is what's high. So we're looking at the prior year report. >> Nope. We're the the report shows both the current year and the prior year. So if on page 10 it says CY overall, that's current year. No problem. Yep. Any other questions, comments? All those in favor? That passes 9-0. Thank you. All right, moving on to 6.01 anticipated bids is written information only. 6.02 budget and revenue status report is written information only.
060And 6.03 summary of property tax refunds 25 and 26 written information only. All right, moving on to the consent agenda. Can I have someone bring the consent agenda to the table, please? Moved by Ms. Farmer, second by Ms. Like. Any comments, questions, concerns on the consent agenda? No. I'd like to acknowledge we received over $7,378 worth of donations um for Athena High for the extra classroom, Odyssey Academy for extra classroom and Pine Brook uh, from the Tops or Box Tops for education. So, thank you for those donations. All those in favor? That passes 9-0. All right. Moving on to program action 8.01, the 2026-2027 school calendar. Can I have someone bring that to the table, please? Moved by Mr. Butler, seconded by Ms. Farmer. Um, any comments, questions, concerns on that? I'm going to Yep.
061Yep. Gina, if you'd like to talk about the changes you made. Yes. So, um, between the time that the calendar went to the board last week and today, um, you have a new calendar in front of you. The only change is a swap out, um, of January 22nd for January 29th. So, you'll see that January 29th is that lovely rose color now. Um, that is the attend by exam only for grades 9 through 12. So, the original Regents exam schedule was Tuesday the 19th through the 22nd. It changed and, um, I did not catch it. So, it is now Tuesday the 26th through the 29th. So, that's just a shift in one day, um, but just to follow the Regents schedule. Thank you. Any questions, comments, concerns? All those in favor? That passes 9-0. All
062right. Moving on to Board of Education information, Board Committee reports. District Improvement Team report, Ms. Like. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, Tracy. Your microphone. >> [laughter] >> Okay, anyway. Sorry. We met March 26th and, um, we looked at the instructional practices around literacy. Um, evidence-based vocabulary instruction, academic discourse among students, complex text across content areas, writing, word study, and multimodal practices for phonemic awareness. Um, we looked at the current instructional practices, talked about our reactions to them, how successful they've been. Um, we worked in groups, and then that information was taken back to then inform our work from here on out. Thank you. >> meeting is April 23rd. Perfect, thank you. All right. Graduation Measures Committee report, Ms. Falzarano. >> [clears throat] >> Uh, the Graduation Measures, uh, portrait of a graduate committee led
063by Dr. Zevis was, uh, met virtually on March 25th. For me, the key takeaway that day was coherence. Um, each subgroup leader reported on how they're working to identify where and how our current practices and courses align with the expected student attributes for, um, New York Inspires. As a reminder that as a district in New York State, we will be required to declare where the, um, stated attributes will be taught. And so, committee district leaders are conducting crosswalks across all the curricular disciplines to determine what we currently have in place and what we will need to have to add or shift in order to meet those expectations for instruction. Um, a little bit more specifically, additionally, the committee work is now focused on the integration of New York Inspires into the student course catalog, how
064to track student progress in meeting the expectations through Infinite Campus, as well as how it also might be reflected in the district code of conduct related to student behavior. So, there's that that thought of coherence. So, what we're experiencing is a requirement from New York State is going to be reflected in all of the ways we function, you know, as a district. Um, there are also ongoing efforts to create an AI companion to the course catalog, but not probably till 2027-2028 school year. Furthermore, the intention is that when our new district strategic plan is completed, the elements of the New York Inspires will be reflected in that document as well. And to help inform and raise awareness throughout the district about this, um, statewide New York Inspires portrait of a graduate initiative, Dr. Zevis has
065proposed that we will be producing a video to be launched this summer with assistance from the, um, Arcadia High School morning show students. So, again, this is a heavy lift. There's a lot, um, involved, a lot of moving parts, but the committee is well on its way to help to making sure that we are going to meet those requirements. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next up is the Parent Advisory Leadership Council report, Ms. Like. We had a Zoom meeting March 25th, and it was a focus on family engagement, the current state, and opportunities, um, moving forward. Um, they talked about the struggle with, um, PTA participation when families had the two feeder schools in the elementary and how they were losing people, and then, you know, the same people were called on to do
066things in both. Um, Autumn Lane and Craig Hill actually combined theirs to one, and and that sounds like it's been very successful. Sometimes things are appropriate for one level and not the other, but they've been working that out. Um, then they talked about developing trust, and one of the things that was pointed out was that with the new safety precautions where parents, um, had to stay in certain areas when they came in, um, it made them feel a little strange, and they talked about how, um, certain security personnel and administrators went out of their way to make them feel welcome and what a difference that made in schools. Um, and something else, teachers showing up at extracurricular events, and they made note of the fact that teachers are overworked, security people have so much on
067their mind, people in the, uh, front office of schools have so much going on, and they realize those things. Um, but again, those places where people make, you know, make a difference, um, really was impressive. They, um, talked about surveys that the district sends that often are very specific for information the district would like, but there isn't much opportunity for the parents to to share other things that they would like to have noticed. Um, opportunities that they would like to see is more events linked to learning, which they find very, um, helpful. And that, um, a lot of parents were having more difficulty understanding, I think the s- the standards-based grading, is that's what's happening at the elementary level that they were talking about, Kelly? And they weren't sure where to go with that. Um,
068>> [snorts] >> and and there are cases where teachers would write in a comment, and that was so valuable as far as what they could what their student what their child needed and how they could help. So, there are a lot of parents out there that that want to do that. Um, so, those teacher comments are greatly appreciated. And, um, I believe that's it. Thank you, Ms. Like. Mhm. All right. Moving on to comments, Superintendent comments. Superintendent Ms. Maureen, you're up. All right. Um, >> [clears throat] >> so, I wanted to start, um, by thanking the Board of Education, um, for your leadership and thoughtful discussion, um, this evening regarding the budget. Um, and I also want to say, um, for your support, um, throughout this entire process, not just tonight. Um, it's been over
069a little over a year, my first full budget, uh, with a new cabinet. Um, and as we shared today, um, very unique, something that I don't think, um, district has faced in a very long time, if ever, um, with the Foundation Aid. You've been, um, your patience, your guidance, and support, um, made a difficult process a little bit more doable this year, to have faith that I that we could, uh, present a budget, um, and that you'd listen and understand, and I appreciate that. So, that goes a long way, and it's hard to put into words, but I'm grateful for that. Um, and for the public, as we shared tonight, you know, our proposed budget, our 2026-2027 budget reflects both the priorities of our community, um, and the realities we are navigating as a district.
070And I just want to thank the the students, the staff, the families, and community members who contributed their voices throughout this entire process started a year ago. Uh this proposal is stronger because of your input. And we remain committed to listening as as we move forward. Uh I also want to I I need to acknowledge the support of cabinet, um human resources, the work that you put in through that entire staffing process um in dealing with me changing my mind back and forth several times and being patient with me. Um we're dealing with students' lives and people's livelihood and it could keep you up at night. And I appreciate your patience and your guidance and your support with that all of you. Um I also it's important to recognize the work that our building leaders
071have done. Um when we start looking at a budget deficit and start thinking about um how we could do things differently, it's uncomfortable. Um and it's difficult to do that because at the end of the day we're here because of students. We really are here for our kids. And when you start talking about changes um you're worried about the impact that it's going to have, especially when you're going into an unknown place that we haven't experienced before. Um and I know that was difficult for our buildings, our department leaders, um and everybody and I appreciate that. Um Romeo's Romeo and his team, Janine, Megan, uh I appreciate your partnership. Um I I see us working together a lot more. Um our budget process is going to pick right back up in June um as we
072start looking at the year ahead. Um and I appreciate your support with that. So, uh I'm proud of the direction of this budget and the work that is happening across our school district. And I look forward to continuing this conversation in the weeks ahead. So, Thank you, Superintendent Smalline. All right, student board member comments. Bailey, you're up. All right, first I just want to highlight um the student AI forum that I went to at the end of March. Um it was an inspiring event that connected students and adults and had a conversation about AI, which hadn't really been brought up in our district yet with including students. So, it was awesome to be working collaboratively with adults um talking about AI. We did a lot of problem-solving of where we thought the level of cheating
073was using AI, which I thought was very interesting to hear how adults felt about that and how my fellow students felt with that also. We um got to hear from an amazing panel of professionals and how they use AI in their daily work life. Um and it was just an amazing event, so I just want to thank um Mrs. Gerla- Mrs. Gerolamo, Mrs. Gidley, and the rest of the team um just for their work with this event. It was so inspiring and I couldn't be more proud to be in a district that prioritizes student voice and is taking the initiative to talk about AI with students and adults. Um next, the third quarter ends on Friday, so we have a lot of things coming up this week and throughout this month. So, at Athena, A
074Greater Purpose Rochester is running a fundraiser with the goal of improving learning and educational opportunities for Rochester City Schools. This is a club at Athena run by students and it aims to assist community the community of Rochester. You can help support their cause by purchasing merch. The link can be found on their Instagram at A Greater Purpose Rock or by donating lightly used books to the Athena main office throughout April. This Thursday, April 9th, the Odyssey seniors are holding a karaoke and paint night fundraiser. That is from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the Odyssey cafeteria and it's open to all families in the community, so come support our Odyssey seniors. Um there is also two new clubs coming to Olympia. Um launched last month was the Health Career Exploration Club um to help students get
075information on careers and work opportunities in the health industry. And starting soon at the end of April is a GSA club um welcome which will be a welcoming space for LGBTQI+ community and allies, so that's very exciting. Ar- at Arcadia, the high school student government is holding a Chipotle fundraiser tomorrow night from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Ridge Road location. And finally, you know, I always got to shout out the musicals. So, Arcadia Middle School is putting on their production of Shrek this weekend. That'll be Friday and Saturday at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Tickets can be found on the Arcadia homepage or at the door of their auditorium. And the Athena Middle School is putting on their production of Wizard of Oz. That'll be April 17th, 18th, 24th, and 25th at
0767:00 p.m. and April 18th and 25th at 1:00 p.m. So, tickets can be bought at cure8.com, that's c u r the number eight.com or at the auditorium door. Thank you, Bailey. All right, moving on to the board member comments. Mr. Butler. Thank you. Uh I want to add my thanks to the budget and finance team for all of the work that's gone into uh putting together this budget, but also to Jeremy and the entire cabinet. It's uh been I know really challenging process this year and uh the care with which you have done this work is not gotten been lost on on me or any of my fellow board members, I think it's safe to say. And the way that you have ensured that any changes uh that need to be made are kept uh
077in the negative direction uh as far away from students as possible is something that shows your value. So, um thank you uh for that. Um uh I will add my uh encouragement to let your freak flag fly at the at the Shrek musical. Uh that's a song from the from the from the show. >> [laughter] >> Um but you can do that if you want to also. Uh but uh um and uh and remember that there's no place like home when you go to see uh Wizard of Oz at uh Athena Middle School. Um it is April and uh it means we're actually starting to turn the final corner and so as hard as that is to believe, uh I think one of the things that can happen is we can sometimes get a little
078bit of spring fever, especially uh seniors in in high school and that can uh compromise our attendance behavior and so I just uh want to encourage uh students and families to prioritize being in school every day. Uh it's one of the greatest predictors of of academic success is actually being in the building. So, uh please uh um um stick to it. Um I want to uh let folks know if you don't already that the summer program portal is open. We once again have a great slate of summer offerings available and I would encourage families to uh to get your spot reserved for your student uh to have some great experiences this summer. We we do I think uh it's uh fair to say the best job of any district in the uh in the region
079uh with our summer programming and so I'm I'm really proud of that and hope families take advantage of that. Um April 18th at Arcadia there is going to be the Community Schools Spring Family Fest. So, if you haven't uh reserved your spot for that yet, please make plans to to be there. And uh I would ask that we all keep in our hearts and minds our armed forces who are in harm's way. Do you have anything? No. Ms. Farmer. No. Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> Thank you. So, um spring, we had a a whole week off for spring break and today we had winter again, but that's Rochester for us. Uh but the sun came out, so that was wonderful. I want to follow up a little bit on um what Bailey was talking
080about with the AI meeting that I also attended. And what I was most encouraged about was the um student depth and understanding that um when using AI, it is most important that we remember our humanity and how we bridge the two together to uh get our best effort when we're in school. Um I'd also like to say that during spring break on uh this past Saturday, it was the 58th anniversary of Dr. King being assassinated. And um he was in uh Memphis, Tennessee organizing and marching for safe working conditions for sanitation workers. Um it's important to remember that if we talk, discuss, and communicate, we can come to know one another at a deeper level and see a better world for us all. I'd like to say peace to all of you. And I'd also
081like to uh say uh not only our armed servicemen, but also the people in the world who are being affected by what is happening today. So, we can um give us this uh need for us to come together. Again, peace with peace to all of you. Thank you. Anyone? Ms. Falzarano. Um to echo what um has been shared, I am very proud of our our musicals. Um I did have opportunity to attend Mean Girls, Arcadia High School did an amazing job. I was particularly um intrigued by their set changes right on stage and the fact that this is a topic that is relevant to our to our kids in schools and I just thought they did a great job with with that production. Um I also participated in the AI student forum and again to
082re- repeat, I think the piece that was most impactful for me was just giving our students that voice that we we listen to our students. Um this is their future. The AI will be a part of their world. What that will look like, none of us knows. That's the challenge. Uh the humanity of it, as we've mentioned also. I thought the panelists were outstanding. This helped paint a picture for what our students will be required to think about relative to AI as they go forth. Um it was just an amazing event with over 150 people in the space. It was incredible. Very very well done and kudos to all who who planned that. Um finally, um March 26th was a festival of bands event at um Olympia High School where we were treated to um
083Longridge students and Buckman Heights students. And then they uh later on joined the Odyssey middle and high school performers for one really um great song that they performed together. And to see the little ones, the younger students sitting alongside the older students, is really what we're about, right? When you talk about um modeling for our students, but that music is such a part of their lives. And what a gift we've given our students, no matter where they go in their lives, no one will ever be able to take that away from them. They will always have that ability um to understand and and appreciate music. And so we appreciated their performance. And again, echoing what has been shared to just keeping um our armed forces in in mind tonight and today as we move forward
084um for our world. I I appreciate um our speaker earlier tonight. Um we all are one. The Artemis crew up in space, when they looked back on Earth and said, "You didn't see any dividing lines for any of the countries, that we're all one one human race." And that's how I felt um moved to say that this evening. Thank you. Ms. Like? Okay. Um a couple of things. I guess the first thing is feeling like we're caught between a rock and a hard place. And that our state leaders have kind of um blindsided us um with their change in foundation aid and um what's gone on to lead to this difficulty with coming up with a budget. Um but the thoughtful way that the administration has approached this budget. We were really excited about some
085things that were responding to a need at the with our youngest kids. And those have not been abandoned. Um we're carrying through with those things. And I really appreciate that. And it's because of the um the way the financial department has been so wise with our money. Um I remember a couple years ago when we had that presentation and it was just astounding to me the thoughtful processes that went through. And then the reserve funds and how they're being used so that we can continue on. And anyone who has the ability, I hope that they will call their legislators and tell them that this is not fair what is happening with this um drastic cut in our budget. Um and the other thing I is wonderful as AI is, um there are some real dangers
086that I don't I don't think it's wise to ignore. And um when we're going full throttle, um we need to be sure that there are guardrails. Because it's already been very hazardous to some kids. And I I don't think that can be understated. Um on a cheerier note, congratulations to Mario Bellcafini. Um again, I I enjoy these tenure letters. And what you've done, Mario, it's really congratulating us for having you. Um I should have said this before you left, but >> [laughter] >> expanding Maybe you'll hear about it. People do that, you know. Yes. >> [snorts] >> Expanding the Arts Partners program has been amazing to use the rich resources that we have in Rochester. And um with the Philharmonics, Memorial Art Gallery, and expanding the RBTL from 70 students who participated to 1,100 is
087is quite amazing. So, thank you, Mario, and don't go anywhere. Um and the other congratulations to Brandon um for his tenure. Um Brandon, I think that your commitment and enthusiasm are only dwarfed by your attendance. Your his absences for 4 years would be good for somebody for 1 year. So, how he does it, I don't know, but he shows up. Thanks, Brandon. Um that's it. Thank you, Ms. Like. Mr. Maloney. I would like to thank Mr. Vice President for running a great meeting tonight. And that's all I really have to say. Ditto's to everything else that everybody said. Thank you. Mr. Monogoria. Um I want to make a quick reference to an article I recently read where the author was calling for a lofty vision of education. And we hear an awful lot about the
088um the portrait of a graduate and the need to have uh links to career opportunities. And that's all really true and important. But there's also something much more fundamental to an education in in that is the the value of education itself and in how it leads to the creation of of a a better people. Um the the article writer uh referenced to an exchange between a reporter and a government education official. And and the reporter asked, "Arguably, schools have broader purposes than just um losing it like civic, moral, and social rather than just preparation for employment." And and the official responded, "I couldn't agree with you more. Education really is about forming human souls and preparing individuals to inherit the blessings and liberties of a free society." The writer goes on to talk about her
089experience as an English teacher. I know one of them. Um and how passionate she is uh about conveying that that you know, the experience from reading good books, the great books. And uh I have a a friend who is one of our English teachers in the district, who has loved that opportunity to share that kind of experience. Unfortunately, in the I don't know if it's current, but in the mix of it probably is still is the the mix of driving towards the knowledge base that we're also trying to build up, which is also critical. Some of that gets lost, but it's so important. And I and I what brought it to mind was in in the budget proposal uh presentation, the need and again, it's so important, the importance of performances as as Bailey shares
090with us of athletic teams, etc., to keep students engaged, but there's something much more fundamental. And it's learning for its own sake and growing from that. So, I I just want to encourage us to to keep that focus. And we're doing you guys and our teachers are doing such great work. So, really ultimately to the important point, I want to emphasize the study sessions that we've been having for over a year now have been really helpful to see the the work that you all are doing, the investments that are being made. Uh and you know, what we're driving for to make sure that those experiences we're not just we're just not just trying to help kids get a job down the road. We're trying to build better people. So, thank you for all of that
091work. Keep doing it. It helps us. It helps us to be a part of the process so we're not just coming in at the last minute. So, thank you uh for all of that. And one last thing, uh it has been really difficult um for us, I think. We've struggled a lot in adjourning meetings in recent months. So, I want to welcome Mr. Maloney >> [laughter] >> Thank you. All right, just a few things. I want to say what Mr. Maloney said. Jordan, you did a great job. The last few meetings you've run, you've doing a fabulous job. Um Mr. Butler, Ms. Farmer, and Ms. Felzerano, I think you guys need to have more good thoughts for other people because as you guys finish your comments, they just announced a ceasefire in the Middle East.
092So, that's a good thing. So, I think we all need you guys to think good thoughts about all of us. So, that's much appreciated. Um it's hard to believe we're in the last 11 weeks of the school year. I mean, before we know it, it'll be end of year celebrations, graduations, Bailey moving on to bigger and better things, um changes to board, a budget that will pass hopefully next month. A lot of good things happening. It's going to be a busy end of year. Um Two other things, I want to thank Mr. Annis for coming. He made some comments tonight that were directed towards me from in a position that I wear another hat in, and it was clearly directed at me, and I wouldn't change a thing. I want him to know that. It
093I made my decision, and I stand by my decision 100%. So, but I appreciate him coming and sharing his thoughts, but it fell on deaf ears on this case. >> [snorts] >> And in Naples Central School District, if you haven't had the opportunity, I encourage all my colleagues to read their electric school bus analysis that they did. It was totally non-political. It was the Naples School District experience with electric buses. The good, the bad, the ugly, and how it doesn't work for them. And I would encourage every board member, I would encourage every politician, I would encourage every citizen to read the impact. They had two I believe it was two electric buses, if I'm remembering the article correct, but I think every board member should take the time to read it to have a
094better understanding of the limitations and some of the struggles with electric buses as the state seems to not be listening to school districts and communities in regards to the electric bus mandate. And finally, I want to finish up. And everybody's pretty much mentioned this. Superintendent Smalley, it's his first full budget. Yes, he came in in January last year, but that budget was already well in process. This is his first budget, and he kind of got blindsided in January with a significant, you know, cut in foundation aid, you know, a pretty significant deficit in the rollover budget. And having done this, this is my 18th budget being part of the Board of Education in Greece, and this was the most transparent, the most, I think, heartfelt and energy went into this budget and thought went into
095this budget and any budget that has been presented to this Board of Education over the last 18 years. And there were some hard years, and there were some other things, but to be in your first year as a superintendent and be getting hit with a $13 million budget deficit is pretty significant. So, to him and his team, I want to give him kudos. The transparency is unbelievable. Mr. Bonfiglio kind of hit on it with some of his, you know, like our study session work, etc. I would highly recommend that the board continues to do that. Develop [snorts] the transparency, develop the feedback. I think it's really done a lot in his first year as superintendent that we've seen, and it was especially evident in the budget. So, I just want to thank him and his
096team for the great work work with the budget. Back to you, Mr. Stenzel. Thank you, President McCabe. All right. Mr. Maloney, you're up. Uh by the way, uh oil's dropped $18 a barrel as of now. And I know that already. After you're going to do my stocks. >> [laughter] >> It says I would like to propose a uh to adjourn this meeting. Thank you. Second. All those in favor? That passes 9-0. Good night, everybody.