001Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic from which it stands one nation under God indivisible with Li and justice for all thank you Can I some move the agenda table please move by Mr stencil second up by miss m any corrections additions to the agenda sing none all those in favor the agenda that passes 7 to zero and before we go any further um I'd like to take a moment to apologize um earlier this month in our public comment session at the meeting um during public comments uh at least one or two different speakers made mention of employees or past employees of the district Dr Kathy Kio and an assistant principal Noel Breedlove I'd like to apologize to both those individuals they shouldn't have been named I should
002have cut the speaker off and for that it was my fault and I apologize to both of them with that we'll move on to the student leader comments from Arcadia welcome this evening thank you for having us tonight we brought quite a poy of arus fin with you tonight so we're going to give you an overview of all the great things that are going on and at the end we have a little surprise for you and they've justed from down I'm over good evening everyone I am FAO Ros on site at the gree Central School District boardroom to talk about some excellent things happening at high school I'm here with my good friend Seth mattick well fbby there is a lot going on over at Arcadia at the moment a lot of students and staff
003have been working hard all year to build a culture of Excellence over in our building every day the whole building starts our day with home base during home base we have a crew where we produce essentially a live Morning Show we live stream every morning and it's it's like our version of The Today Show where we fill our students in rather than morning announcements every morning we get our students to collaborate and give a live stream every morning to each other for each other we have a crew of about 30 students who participate in a variet iy of ways to make sure the school Community knows what's going on around the Titan territory thank you Seth let's go to Molly for a little more info on Titan TV also this will thank you Molly I'm
004dearis and I am a regular host on Titan TV as well as I just played the role of Jack's mom in our recent production of into the woods um one of the things we do on a regular basis is help Mrs binc recognize some terrific Titans during her what's up with reniac segment on Titan TV every week she surprises one staff member and one student with a terrific Titan award we filmed this for her and create a segment that is then aired on our show for the whole building to see we've included links to a few of these in the presentation that you can view at your leisure next up I'm going to bring Seth and Fabby back up with me so we can talk a little bit about our kadia music and theater and
005our recent production of into the woods sorry thank you demarez I played the role of the wolf and the prince in our recent production of into the wolf woods and our crew over at Arcadia our theater department has actually won two backtack awards for best production from the annual stars of Tomorrow competition it's been an amazing experience for me over the last two years and Fabby for the last three yes being a part of that family over at Arcadia and I guess can you just tell me a little bit more about the stars of Tomorrow program yeah of course so for those who don't know stars of Tomorrow is a program that that is hosted by the Rochester Broadway Theater League which celebrates teamwork and talent and growth and discipline in the the theater communities
006here in Monroe County and the other counties too the ones that surround the schools that participate in stars of tomorrow um they are evaluated by people called adjudicators who then write feedback towards the cast and the direct ctors about the performance and um excuse me they they write their feedback based on how the cast treats acting and vocal work and safety and other categories and the schools with the highest scores in each category are given something called recognition by the rbtl and it's just a very very wonderful thing to experience and also um each school is given a chance to um send students out to something called stars of Tomorrow NYC bound which is a chance for those students to represent Rochester at the Jimmy Awards can you tell me a little bit more about
007the Jimmy Awards yeah of course they're like the Tony Awards for musical theater except for high schoolers and um I'd like to um use an example of our friend Ian Rey who isn't here with us tonight but he um not not only with his help did we win two best production of the years but he also did win the Jimmy Awards and went to New York City and Shake Josh grin's hand and he did not win the Jimmy Awards but he did win NC bound I'm sorry I'd like to correct myself he did not win the Jimmy Awards but he did win NYC bound so very thank you fobby not only over at Arcadia do we have a Morning News show but we also have a student run newspaper here is JY who has a
008little bit more about the Titan times l of each other and other schools in the same division and score in two rounds first we start off with a team round and then individual rounds there are wide variety of topics each month such as quadratics complex numbers and creative problem solving then the scor is decided by adding the team points and the four top individual scores during our February meet we won division 2 with a score of 36 points this Thursday we will be heading out to Nazareth University to compete in the county meet to wrap things up I am going to send you back to Fabby for another excellent addition to T territory that is just getting started thank you Nikki and JY not only does Arcadia have a Morning Show and a newspaper they're
009about to have a new student ran restaurant and I'm here with everyone's favorite Titan our culinary teacher Mr Carlson now Mr Carlson can you share a bit about what's on the horizon for our culinary students sure so we actually uh great news we were just certified as a uh as a business over in the Arcadia culinary room so we are open for business um and uh we actually had our first event tonight we did a uh we catered the basketball program's end of year banquet we actually took a break just to come over and see you guys for that um and we have a lot of great stuff going on uh there'll be events there'll be popup restaurants held at the in The Culinary room and we even have a great uh internship program that
010we partnered with Wagman's that just jumped off this is our first uh member of that club Jonathan that from the from the okay good good evening everyone so as Mr Carlson said I am the first student to be doing the thegman intership the Wegman's internship program and it's a um Pro it's a program where they hire students from schools and then they like put try to put the student into the work work base the work area I want to say and like they train the student like make sure like the students like very comfortable with the job and they would like to get it to where where the students able to like be in like the food area of like working with food but they bounced from like different sections but they're they're still know
011still working towards that so as of now I work in the sub shop with the Wagman's on ladder Road and I have I just started there a couple weeks ago I would say it's a really good program the people wman are really really all sorry extremely nice they're very friendly it's it's um a great atmosphere and a good good environment I want to say sorry thank you yeah thank you guys um recently you had an event to celebrate Black History Month uh Taste of Soul what was that all about um we partnered with Community Schools and we put on a Black History Month um celebration did some food in The Culinary room um we're lucky enough that um multp times a year we can pair up with different groups and celebrate through food students make
012it and then uh students get to enjoy it that's just awesome now um we have some breaking news and I'm wondering if you can confirm do you have something to share with the board maybe a little treat yep so uh the students this week have been working hard one of the dishes we made was uh we made some fresh pasta and made a lasagna uh bolog bashal and um we also made some Rosemary sea salt fasha and they are going to be coming around if anybody has a gluten or a dairy allergy I apologize um it might not be for you but uh hopefully uh you can enjoy a little snack uh courtesy of the kids yeah please enjoy the food uh now back to Christian and Molly to wrap things up thank you uh
013we hope you enjoyed your little peek at all the excellent things happening at Arcadia there are more but I'm sure I have already gone over a lot of time thank you for taking the time to listen with us we know you want to you want more so embedded in this slides show our video links to many things we' have highlighted or there are video links to many of the things that we've highlighted here today so we hope you take some time to review them and discover what it means to be a tight in that's all we have for you tonight we hope you enjoy the food provided by our culinary students and have an amazing evening go tit thank you guys if you could come up and we'll do a picture with the board um
014that'd be great it's really good all right everybody ready [Applause] thank you all very much for coming it's much appreciated and thank you for the wonderful food I got to keep superintendent Smalling away from my lasagna hello Mr Butler welcome this evening all right um just an old as you can see board member Butler is joining remotely um maybe not you don't see that and Mr Maloney is excused this evening moving on to Staffing can I son you move the Staffing to the table please move by Mr stel seconded by Mr Borio any comments questions concerns on Staffing seeing none all those in favor Mr Butler can you hear me all right that's going to pass 7 to zero assistant superintendent Larson thank you so much um I'm pleased this evening to welcome our new
015assistant principal for Odyssey Academy Kenisha Campbell Kenisha Campbell is an experienced educator with over 16 years of dedication to Student Success and academic Excellence she holds a bachelor's degree in elementary education a master's degree in literacy and a master's degree in integrating technology in the classroom Kenisha also completed advanced studies in educational Administration and is currently pursuing coursework in curriculum instruction and assessment before joining Greece Central School District Kenisha served as an educator in the Rochester city school district for 16 years teaching grades 3 through six and spent an additional one and a half years teaching fifth grade in EAS aronda School District kisha's favorite part of as an educator is building meaningful relationships with students and help helping them grow both academically and socially she is passionate about creating safe spaces where students feel
016valued and supported Kenisha is excited to collaborate with teachers staff families and students in Greece to promote a strong inclusive and collaborative School culture she values teamwork and is dedicated to working collectively to meet the diverse needs of all Learners outside of her work Kenisha finds joy in working out reading and singing she is a proud member of the national s sorority of fi Delta Kappa Zeta Zeta chapter and serves on her Church's praise and worship team sharing her love of music and Faith most importantly she Treasures spending time quality time with her family including her two teenagers chette and Christopher Campbell who are her greatest inspiration and motivation they remind her daily of the importance of showing up wholeheartedly for the students in community she serves welcome to [Applause] Greece and now it's picture
017time we'll have you do a pict you're were trying to get away there I saw you trying to escape that doesn't work uh we'll have uh Dr zaitz uh superintendent small and Deputy superintendent Fleming all right moving on to 2.02 GTA MOA student teacher stipend can I somebody move that to the table please move by Mr stel seconded by miss mour any comments questions concerns on that sing that in favor Mr Butler can you hear us yet or no swinging a mess that passes seven to zero our volume NOP you you're good you U moving on to 2.03 nunit rate sheet updates can I saw you move that to the table please move by Miss like second by Mr stencil any comments questions concerns on that seeing none all those in favor Mr Butler nope
018seven to zero all right moving on 4.01 recruitment hiring and retention superintendent sming all right good evening I would like to ask uh Miss Gina Larson and her team to come forward for a presentation good evening everyone um I don't know I should wait for it to pop pop up are we I've got a great presentation in front of me secrets though there we go perfect so thank you for having us tonight I'm very pleased to be sharing the podium this evening with two of my teammates uh Jennifer Hendrickson our executive director and Julie Riley our assistant director over in Human Resources so we're excited to share some of the things going on in the department of human resources in the area of recruitment hiring and retention so as you know this is one of
019the Strategic plan key Focus areas and really the center of our work in Human Resources um tonight I want to share a little bit more about what the Department of Human Resource resources does and give you some um very specific examples of how this plays out um throughout the district uh throughout the year so to start off this is a very very brief overview of uh what our department does so as you can see we're a fairly small Department as compared to um the size of the district so we're 16 people within the department and um we manage uh recruitment hiring onboarding and benefits for 3200 employees and an additional 600 retirees uh we have eight bargaining units uh plus we have non-unit employees we work on hiring terminations leaves of absence uh certification management
020tenure and lots of celebrations um Labor Management and negotiations is um a a big uh portion of time that we spent not spend not only in Labor Management meetings but between Labor Management meetings and while um contracts are being negotiated uh we manage the benefits for all of our employees and retirees um including health insurance um their entitlements life insurance Etc uh we do uh your lovely board staff board Staffing reporting as well as tenure reporting and other information that the board requests and then we work a lot in documentation so we work with our leaders to make sure that any incidents are documented and that feedback and coaching is an ongoing part of their work I'm going to turn it over to Julie to take us through a couple things sure as Gina mentioned
021um we're giving a brief portion of our department today so this is a little bit of our stabbing and hiring timeline but our full timeline actually includes over 150 items so we're very busy throughout the whole year um but this snapshot really just is to show you that we are continually working on our staffing process throughout the whole year um our two biggest drivers for our staffing timeline you'll see in red um in January the course selection by the students in the high schools drives are Staffing um because we do staff to actuals to be um fiscally responsible for the district and then in March the final numbers due to finance is our ending point um because that's the information that Romeo needs for his budget purposes one of the things that I do want
022to outline on here on our timeline is if you go through the items you'll see that we work collaboratively with a lot of different departments so we meet with each building principal for secondary principles we meet with them three times um that's really to ensure that we are hearing student voice and as well as the leadership voice of what um they're really advocating to run um we look at Staffing numbers to make sure that we aren't running classes with six kids in it but we really want to make sure that we can run the classes that the students want um so we work through those three rounds to make sure that we're moving kids within courses co- seating where possible um traveling where possible to make sure that our students are getting um the classes
023that they want so I know we've shared some daunting statistics in the past about the teacher hiring shortage that the whole country is really a midst right now but part of our daily work is really working on recruiting hiring and retention um we we've kind of coined the phrase um early intervention recruitment all of these images that you see on the screen up here are efforts that we're putting towards student teachers that are currently in our district um we've been really trying to amp that up because we want them in in our district to fall in love with Greece um we do a welcome reception when they first come their GTA counterpart most of the time when they're available they come with them um it's a great introduction to what the district has to offer
024and then at the end of the semester we do an exit celebration again GTA partners with us on that we provide exit um screening interviews we provide opportunities to give them feedback on resumés and cover letters walk them through the different benefits that our contract has has to offer um and really try to sell Greece as a place for them to come these images on this slide are from that exit celebration again those are GTA members working side by side with different student teachers and we we want to say a quick thank you to the board for approving the mo MOA um I have some very exciting data to share with you um that has really helped amp up and and beef up our process so Greece teachers ended up hosting 195 student teachers this
025school year that is up from only 59 in the pre school year so a 229 increase just in the student teachers that we hosted since the Moa went into effect so thank you for supporting that effort um another piece of really noteworthy data especially because it speaks volumes about our GTA members is in addition to the 194 student teachers they also hosted 165 field placements there is no compensation for them for that they're doing that out of the goodness of their own heart because they care about the profession and want to help it grow um so so kudos to GTA for really coming and stepping up we had overall over 359 placements that's 359 potential candidates walking in and working in our buildings that that was up from 106 last year so what 2 139%
026increase in the number of of college students that are really close to being employable um walking through our doors and again all of these um events that we do are all in an effort to get them to come come to Greece experience the amazingness that happens and stay in Greece and apply here all right so um along with um our postings that are going up throughout the week most of the time daily we are posting some kind of position um we post we send emails out to all of our supervisors with those postings each day um and those are posted and communicated with staff we also put all of our postings on our Human Resources Twitter page um so that we are reaching out to people in as many ways as possible um one of
027the things we've had a lot of luck with is our recruitment events um so these are some flyers that we've used on the support or non-instructional side of the house um for events we've done um we do a every year we do a support event in October um for mostly for special ed support positions is the focus and then in April we work on our teachers um but we've also had other events focusing solely on School nurses we had a bus driver one we've had food service um so we're just working continually to have those opportunities to have face-to-face interactions um with the community another event that we um tied into was the December um level up vote um we actually put a table up and we talked to people as they were coming through
028to vote so just any chance that we have to talk to people about positions we we try to Gras that on the instructional side um these two Flyers the one on the left um was one that we used for the April event um so we do have this event that we're going to be doing again this April um so we will be doing that um and starting to advertise for that that's going to be April 9th um we work with our um staff so the um gasa staff really help us to put on that we also work with um parent volunteers to come in and help us with the interviews um and get their voice on applicants as well on the right hand side there is a postcard that was printed out this year we
029sent that um to our staff and this was put in all of the GTA members um mail boxes to give to either student teachers community members anything anybody that they thought might be a good fit um for substitute teaching which is obviously a high need for us um you'll see it has a barcode on there so we have tried to put it um put these little QR codes on all of our Flyers just to make it more accessible and easy for people to get to our postings all right in the area of Staff retention uh we want to make sure that we're keeping the valuable employees that we have so we continue to work uh or excuse me continue to focus on Choice voice and growth um We are continuing to improve our labor management
030practices to ensure that we have positive relationships which allow for better negotiations and stronger contracts we offer mentoring opportunities as well as clear career ladder opportunities to our employees who are interested in growing either within their role or within the district we currently have 38 instructional administrators who opted for mentoring or leadership coaching which was obviously optional for them um additionally we have another 35 leaders on the non-instructional side who are participating in leadership development so we're really excited about that um and as we've mentioned a couple of times we believe in celebrating our Milestones like tenure years of service and retirement and making sure that our employees really feel honored and appreciated um another big part of retention is keeping good Labor Management relationships and offering great contracts Labor Management meetings are monthly as
031I mentioned at the beginning uh with the goal being to solve problems clarify contract language and when necessary um bring forward moas for approval um however most of the work of Labor Management happens between meetings so it's a lot of phone calls a lot of emails a lot of check-ins um one of the three of us checks in with every union leader at some point every single week um and it's not always to solve a problem sometimes it's really just to check in and you know check up on things that are going on uh in addition to Labor Management we have active negotiations um right now we well for the next few years we'll have at least three contracts that need to be negotiated every single year um this year we have Gus Food Service
032um and the facilities central office secretaries and LPN contracts those are the ones that are highlighted with stars on this um slide and next year we'll have GTA gasa and transportation and those ones are noted with an arrow each contract takes between um 3 to six months to negotiate with a collective team of 10 to 15 people and with the goal of having board approval prior to the end of that contract so it's a lot of work that happens sometimes we're overlapping with different groups and we've got a lot of negotiations going on at at a time so it's it is a lot of work but again very meaningful work for our employees um we also work very hard to create a team atmosphere um and we truly believe that working with the Union rather
033than in opposition to them is the best way um to keep our employees interests and the district's interests um at heart so we work really hard on doing that one of the benefits that is not talked about enough is our employee assistance program our carrier just changed names it is now Bri Health um and it offers a variety of free supports to our employees and their family last year we had 146 employees use the services available and they used those Services over 1,800 times so um although it's a small portion um of employees that are accessing it we would love for that number to go up um their use is um is is quite a bit so we're pleased with that information regarding these Services is shared with employees when they come in for impr
034processing it's also periodically shared through the instructional newsletter our principal newsletters and sometimes with just direct emails from Human Resources um EAP is also a tool that's used when handling Personnel issues um as as you know um sometimes things happen at work because of something that's going on outside of work so we want to make sure that we are supporting our employees that need support so that we can uh retain them and you know if there is a behavior problem we look to correct that and move forward in a supportive way before I talk about this slide one thing I wanted to mention and forgot about the GTA um student teaching stien that um we are going to be tracking who we hire um who was placed in Greece so be on the lookout this
035fall we'll definitely have some data for you after we go through this hiring season to be able to keep you up to date as to whether or not the mo MOA is really effective it it's effective in getting people here but are are they staying so we more to come on that um this slide makes me very proud so we have over 35 operational or non-instructional leaders that have been choosing to participate in professional growth for themselves so so often on the operational side of the house leaders are promoted into those leadership positions because they are great at their job not necessarily because they went to school to become a leader or exhibited leadership characteristics and we've been finding that they they have been really hungry for professional development so we have had this program
036has allowed us to have many different opportunities to engage together as an operational leadership group um we've done the seven habits of highly effective people together so almost all of them have gone through that training so the same training that their instructional counterparts have gone through we've engaged in foundational leadership development aligned with all of the different words that are listed on this screen and we were able to take a group of leaders to the Global Leadership Summit which will'll also go to again this summer these leaders are setting wigs and tracking goals and it is amazing to watch them do the exact same things that their instructional counterparts are doing um earlier in this month the oper operational leaders were together for a full day of professional development and we kicked off with a
037team building activity that was actually planned by three of the operational leaders and it was called TW Lane leadership challenge the focus was all about building trust having effective communication um doing the activity with integrity and and they had to show some courage to get up and do it so there was video footage that we just couldn't keep to ourselves so we're going to share a tiny little compilation of the two-lane leadership challenge Maybe try one more time if it doesn't work we'll send it to you all right well that was kind of anticlimactic but we we will send you we will send you the um the the presentation so that you can access the link they worked so hard and they had so much fun and it was really amazing to see these leaders
038come together and and really team build with each other so we have gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback from not only the leaders themselves but from others who are their subordinates their employees that are working with them every day that have noticed the strengthening of their own leadership and and that just goes to that that huge retention piece that when people are here we want to keep them here and we need to keep them happy and and and invest in their development so it we have a lot planned are already planning for next year um and it's really just been a great group of people to work with all right we also like to party in our department um so the next couple slides we'll talk about the celebrations that we um put on so on this
039slide right here um on the left side you'll see the information about our tenure um celebration so we do this every year at the end of the year um last spring we celebrated 59 people who um received tenure over the course of the school year and this year we are and anticipating right now that there will be 68 people um that we celebrate on May um 21st so that's a really exciting time for people um they come they bring their families and it's just really nice to celebrate and and it's also nice to see the amount of staff that come out to support them as well on the right hand side is the information about years of service recognition so we do this each school year um at the end of this school year we
040send out to um certificates to all of the um supervisors for their staff we celebrate um years of service in five-year increment starting with 10 years um so you'll see last year we celebrated 319 employees and right now we're on track to celebrate 330 um so that's a really exciting thing for people they're able to put their certificates up in their office um they celebrate with their departments um and it's just an exciting time and and something fun to do with staff it's also really interesting to see how long people have been here like you'll see this year we're celebrating two people with over 50 years of service in our district which is really awesome and then our one of our favorite events is our celebration and recognition of our retirees so it's obviously a
041sad time to be losing employees um but it's a very exciting time in their life and we love to celebrate um so this is something that we put on with collaboration of District employees and also the students who come in and help provide music um we do um snacks and or derves and celebrate our retirees they bring their families with them um last year we celebrated 56 employees who retired um and their years of service totaled over 1,257 years which is really cool um so right now we're on track for 40 GTA retirees um and a total of 69 total employees so we we have even more this year um that we'll be looking to celebrate that is it so we are ready for your questions Mr berler go ahead can you hear me okay
042y yeah great great so uh um thank you very much for the for the presentation um and uh uh assistant superintendent Larsson thank you for your thoughtful replies to M the questions that I sent before uh before the meeting was very helpful I want to say uh um I think the focus on retaining student teachers is a is a great idea very uh uh effective I think um and uh and I think we're going to see great results from that so I was very happy to hear those promising uh those promising statistics that you shared I've got two ideas and then two questions and just given the awkwardness of a virtual attendee I'll I'll throw them all out at once and uh um the we've got a great Communications uh team at the district and
043so um I I'm guessing you work with them closely on the on the communications and things so um uh forgive me for sticking my nose in with suggestions in that area but my two suggestions are this um all those great flyers and everything that you that you shared I think are are really eye-catching one thing I think that might make them more eye-catching is if we put actual photos of our people in them people are attract there's a lot of research in the advertising world that people's eyes are attracted to the human face more than anything else so if we put the faces uh of our people uh in those uh I I think there's a good chance that they'll help people picture themselves uh um in our district um I another suggestion is around
044highlighting our staff and teacher accomplishments in our social media we have great following on social media and I think regularly uh you know whether it's one post a month or or something like that some regular posting highlighting staff and teachers tells people in other districts that uh um that we value our people and they're doing great things it also says uh that if we're featuring staff not just teachers it'll also help people realize that there's other jobs than teaching in school districts so then my lastly I have two questions one thing uh we there was a lot of discussion at the last meeting about uh surveys and I just wondered if we're thinking about including staff in our uh survey I think you know you gave a lot of uh information about what motivates retention
045and um and I think we could test some of those things in a survey uh not just with teachers but also with staff because I know staff retention is a is a big issue as well and lastly I wonder if we've thought about the idea of developing a wildly important goal for the HR department nice great question so as far as the staff surveys go um we have been working since I would say the beginning of last year um to teach leaders the process of stay interviews so it feels really weird to talk to somebody who's not here um so um with the stay interviews that is current employees it's a one-on one a check-in what brings you to work every day what excites you about the work you know what keeps you here so
046that we can keep um some of those great things going um and it allows us to gather themes of what things aren't so great versus you know what are the things that are really keeping people here um but I would say that's not every single employee so I I I love like the idea of looking for something more that's um specific to retention for our staff it's um we'll need to think a little bit more about the timing of that so that we're not surveying people to death but um I I do like the idea of asking those really specific direct questions so I I think that's a good um that's a good plan and for the wildly important goals that's something that my team will be working on um over the summer and into
047next year um not only just for um our leadership group um there's five of us but for the entire department and um taking what our regular goals are and turning them into into wigs so we are we are um looking at that thank you thanks other questions thank you moving on a 2526 budget update superintendent Smalling good evening and I'd like Mr Romeo K to come up thank you good evening everyone uh just one shout out uh to HR um the um non-instructional Department's professional development that's been arranged um by the hdar department organized by uh Jen uh has been fantastic it's been so well received by our folks uh as she mentioned they're eager for it um they're looking for more of it and we've seen a difference just in kind of the stand
048upness I guess you would call it uh within the Departments a lot more confidence a lot more um um uh confidence in what they're doing how they're doing it and and how to lead uh those initiatives so again thank you for doing that tonight uh we're going to spend a couple minutes just talking about the uh budget update last time we did this was back in February 4th we wanted to bring you up to date as to uh where we currently stand and how we've gotten there so uh before we uh move on from the agenda we're going to talk a little bit about what the state aid adjustment was uh at this current time budget adjustments since our last meeting uh when we updated the board and then share a draft budget summary of
049where we sit as it sits this evening and before we move on I do want to uh also do a shout out and a thank you and a kudos to our budget team uh led by Janine kushman uh they they're working on this every single day since February 4th trying to get things in place making sure they're right having conversations it's a lot of work um and this is a summary of where we are as of right now so on February 4th uh we shared with the board an initial budget uh initial rollover and a budget uh we showed Revenue increases uh of about 3% uh we had expenditures at the time at a roughly about a 5% increase and a result of that showed a gap at about 5.8 5.9 million dollar where our
050revenues to meet all those expenditures um were short about 5.8 million in that expenditure number just this kind of a refresher we put all Staffing all contracts negotiations and and contract commitments were included all extra work time was estimated overtime substitute teacher and staff cost student needs um increases in student needs other supports for students equipment supply budgets Bose increase benefit everything was in that number and what we said at the time is that we would go back and review our Bose contracts in details review our our staffing in detail review vacancies and other areas and other contingent areas in the budget to see where we could either gather more revenues or shrink down some of the expenditure sites and that's what we've done first item to note uh we met on Tuesday February 4th
051we had our meeting with our financial partners on that Thursday uh February 6 so we didn't know what the update would be but we're sharing it here this evening previously we showed you the first two the first three columns on February 4th where we were with the executive budget and what our state aid would be uh the governor's budget was somewhere around $67.20 of about uh uh 5.4% or about $8.5 million we met with our um our financial partners and one thing that they're really good at is reconciling and kind of taking a better look at each state aid item to see um where adjustments could be made in the one highlighted item is on building Aid the governor's budget is based on a November database run they pull information as of November she prepares
052her budget based on those numbers in Fe in December by the end of December of last year we submitted a bunch of final cost reports which will generate building Aid those were not taken in consideration in the governor's budget but our financial partners have um taken those into consideration and reconciled them so the only adjustment we're making at this time is we're going to increase the building Aid adjustment from the governor's budget of just over $10 million to a new number of 11.2 million which would increase our revenues about $1.2 million so our new number at this point in time is the circle number at the bottom of $1 168.5 million that we will use for state aid that number could change again because we're anticipating that the legislative budget will be out hopefully in
053the next week but it could be closer to the end of the month we'll see where that goes but right now we're using 168.5 as our state aid number uh for this budget just kind of walking us through briefly as to where we were um revenues on the leftand side expenses on the right February 4th you can see we had the gap of about $5.9 million you can see those items those from last year's budget for 2425 revenues that we added at the time and expenditures that we added and other adjustments that we made that brought us to million picking it up from February 4th to where we are today on the revenue side um again we just reviewed we added 1 million $191,000 to building Aid we firmed up our tax levy um tax
054cap calculation submitted thatb that generated roughly $30,000 more so we're close and our debt service Reserve amount we in coming over from The Debt Service fund uh went up $237,000 so that took us from revenues of $317 million on February 4th the $38.5 million as of this evening on the expenditure side uh we made several adjustments we were at uh 320 almost 323,000 um we had some additional Staffing adjustments to make uh most of those uh were in support of student needs and uh those will be discussed and and kind of shared and uh finalized uh when we do the next presentation um Staffing adjustments were about 1.3 million healthc care we reduced about 1.2 million we were able to do that because in our Healthcare number uh we build in some contingency when open
055enrollment comes around from November December into January the rates change people could be switching from single coverage to two person coverage to family coverage we build in a little bit of contingency to cover that risk we've reduced that contingency a little bit so there's a little more risk to us but we don't think it's uh going to cause us any issues but we reduced Healthcare a million2 you see a number here for a million6 reduction retire re breakage as uh Gina had mentioned we have right now 40 GTA retirees um we take breakage on those 40 so those folks uh those 40 people have been here a long time they're going out at a higher salary we'll be replacing them with somebody with a lower salary that difference in salaries is what weer we refer
056to as breakage uh in the replacement of the position and we're estimating that there' be a savings of about $1.6 million our debt service adjustment again was a number a reduction by uh $1.1 million that was confirmed with um our financial partners so that's a solid number bosies was reduced a little bit by 33,000 after further review and then in the benefit side we also made some adjustments to about $2 million for uh TRS teacher retirement system Employee Retirement System and FICA and Social Security again we build in cushion there a little bit um and we've reduced that down and that cushions there because if a grant were to be decreased those positions need to be picked up and those costs need to be picked up in the general fund or if we add new
057positions we've got to pick that up in the general fund so we build a little contingency in these items we re reduced those contingencies but again we don't believe it'll be uh problematic for us when we sum all those up you can see our revenues uh go up about 10 million uh 10.7 million it's a uh almost a three and a half% increase which I don't think is unreasonable here budget to budget increase CPI was somewhere around 3 to 3.1 32% um our salaries number which is our biggest increase here is dict salaries and benefits are dictated excuse me by contracts um most of our contracts have salary increases of roughly three to three and a half% those are all factored in here so 3 and a half% budget to budget increase uh is very
058similar to what CPI uh has been for this past year on the expense side uh you can just see we've talked to most of these items um again 3 and a half% uh increase budget to budget as of this evening we are balanced and we're comfortable uh with that again these numbers could change pending um a receipt of the state aid numbers and whatever else the governor or the legislative budget May dictate to us whatever those changes are we will bring them back next board meeting and do a separate maybe many presentation before the superintendent does a final presentation on the recommended budget for next year kind of looking at this a little bit uh differently we've included this Slide the last couple times uh just to kind of show where the changes are um
059your packet might updated this a little bit so there's a couple different uh formatting items on here but we start to the far left um with the 2425 budget of about $ 37.8 million the items cascading up and coming down are the items that have changed in the budget to land at our new budget of $38.5 million at this point um the categories where the increases are are along the bottom and one point that made on the note if you look at the first two G categories salaries and wages and health dental premiums and other benefits it's about 8.5 of that $10.7 million increase is related to staff cost and benefits which is roughly almost 80% of the increase is is reduced down to Staffing and benefits again somewhat dictated by contracts um and in
060health care you know our increase for Health Care uh out of the r is like 14 and a half 15% that's built in here um we anticipate that that's probably going to be close to true for next year as well so the point here is most of our increases are really restricted down to Staffing and benefit costs which uh were either uh restricted by contracts or restricted by some uh factors outside our control the rash the environment other things that are are dictated to us overall our draft summary budget $38.5 million up 10.7 million or just under 35% our estimate ated tax levy is $128 million that's up almost 2.6 million or just over 2% increase in the tax levy for our residents next steps we're hoping to get um our legislative budget uh before
061April 1st that's when it's due um fingers crossed our Revenue budget is likely to change um as a result same thing with maybe our our expenditure budget and whatever those changes are again we'll bring them back here on April 1st um prior to the superintendent's recommended budget uh to the board I'll start with you Mr Butler thank you and thanks for the presentation Romeo and to Jean and everybody uh on the team I know how much work this is um so uh I I have uh two questions I'll give you both of them um the first very small on page five I noticed a a decrease in the uh state aid for the charter transition and I wondered if that's sort of an expected transition over time or if that is a Formula change from
062the state or uh you know the number of students we've got going to Charters is smaller so I know it's small but I if this if it is a Formula change it may be an advocacy opportunity for us with with New York State um and then my second is uh around uh um the potential risk of uh things we things we're hearing about regularly in the news about uh cuts to things like uh school lunches school lunch aid from the federal government and so on and I saw that we've only got a line item of about $450,000 in Revenue so it's not a huge amount uh as compared to our overall budget but I know also some State dollars originate with the federal government so I just wondered if maybe there's greater risk uh uh
063around some of those things that have been talked about lately that's my questions okay thank you um first let's do the uh Charter School on page five Mr Butler you're referring to the um the $700,000 increase you referred to the page I'm just trying to note where well the under other Charter School transition is down like 15% uh it's only $50,000 uh but that that has been um generally kind of formula driven and and passed on to us either based on enrollment number of FTE and the dollar cost that we spend for the year you have to be over a certain threshold I believe to get the transition the charter school transition funding and again it's it's it's dollars in volume that generate it we don't do a lot with it but it is just
064dictated to us okay I was just wondering if the state had if the state was cutting back if we've got costs associated with having students go out to charters in our in our district and the state is cutting back the amount that they're reimbursing us for those for those cost I'm not aware of that it has not come up in any of the literature um that we've talked about in terms or that we've read in terms of changes being made or proposed in the house or the Senate Charter School transition or or Charter School um en rment or Charter School transition has not been discussed or proposed at all so I think it's the same formula running that has been running in past years it just changes for us by between probably 50 and $150,000
065depending on the year thank you um in terms of potential Cuts in the risk uh we've talked up a lot about that in in our discussions um the couple areas big areas would be the categorical grants um that that could be impacted title one uh Ida the titles in general idea uh Food Service would be another one um from everything that I've read if there were cuts the categoricals seem to be something that is less likely to be cut it may me more along the competitive and the those type of block grants that are out there if there were some uh changes to uh the title Grant some reductions in there um we would have to make some decisions because most of those grants have positions in them uh we would have to make decisions
066on whether we bring those back and increase the budget through an amendment or can we bring positions back into the general fund um we do um have a little bit of a hedge uh within the budget because there's always going to be vacancies that we could bring from uh tital and idea I don't see that as a huge risk excuse me but it's there in terms of the other one that could impact us would be Child Nutrition so Universal uh School meals if the if there were Cuts there um we could see an impact I've looked into this a little bit if we wished to continue if there were cuts that impacted our free meals for everyone in our building our schools um we could come back to the board and ask for a resolution
067whatever that difference is ask for a resolution to be passed by the board to move general fund dollars to the Food Service program to cover that Gap and still provide free meals to our kids um when we wish so that risk is probably a little bit greater than say the title um and the Ida had uh risk that we have but not that much more but either way we're prepared to handle uh any of those thanks Romeo you're welcome any other questions vice president farmer thank you thank you Romeo um question I know you've covered this before um are we paying the charter schools quarterly yearly then the money comes back how does all the at work and do we have data in terms of how many kids end up coming back from the charter
068school what that does in terms of Staffing uh room in the classrooms those kinds of things that could affect you know the whole configuration of a grade level or several grade levels depending on how many people go back and forth so I'm not expecting to see the data from you or tonight but I'm just do we have it and C does it cause you know an unevenness sometimes um I'll start from the from the first question um Charter Schools can bill us monthly quarterly periodically throughout the year we spend three and a half four million maybe more five close to five that number 10 years ago was probably a few hundred, um we track each individual because they have to bill us they have to provide us the names of the kids that are Greece
069residents uh that are going to a charter school elsewhere um so we have all that information we know exactly year to year how many students and FTE we have we have that data um in terms of which kids are come are leaving us and coming back we don't see that side of it we know that at the beginning of the year we may have had uh a hundred kids go to a charter school and at the end of the year there were only 89 at that school that we paid for Charter but we just don't know who those 11 were without really digging in and finding out did they come back to us did they go to another Charter did they move out of the state so we have some of that data um in
070terms of impacting us um that number has just been going up each year and pretty significantly uh to the tune of a few hundred thousand to half a million to 1.5 million 2.5 million three point every year um so it is an impact um when they come back maybe Janine can help me out I don't see that they're coming back in droves where it's causing a huge problem at least from our end of it within the classroom where all of a sudden you've got 15 new kids coming into a specific grade they're spread throughout 17 buildings and classrooms throughout the district so I think they get accommodated and absorbed uh pretty quickly um but as far as the needs for those kids when they come back and what impact that might have that may cause
071other dominoes and other things to have to go in place that weren't there at the beginning of the year I'm not certain what those are anybody else first before all right go ahead um so thank you for adding that last sentence so we typically understand that if kids are leaving Charter Schools it's it's for reasons that could be lack of academic success the idea that Charters want to keep their test scores up high so they're going to Usher Out kids who are not um making the grade if you will um I'm not sure and you said you know where do we see that data but it's it it would typically seem that kids may come back because they are not receiving the services uh afforded to them by the idea act because of whatever multitude
072of reasons it is so when they come back kids who are IEPs or needing extra help we then need to increase the number of staff that are working with these kids whether it means a teacher ends up with a another kid in their classroom or we have uh larger groups for uh Speech Therapy PT physical therapy occupational therapy autism so that is uh something that I guess I'd like to see in terms of data if I don't know if I don't think it would be you guys but who would where would we get that data regarding the transiency between Charters and public schools and and the going back and forth you don't need to you know and finally um well this is another question I got another question is anybody else all right go ahead
073okay last question okay um back in the day before everybody was getting free food kids had to fill out the income based form is that something and I know we try to encourage people to do that now but because everyone's getting food it's kind of redundant seems like it could be possible that if we did take a step back I'm not sure whether all that much would be caught but it would we then maybe look at that and going back to doing these forms if people have to use their card or number whatever the kids used to have to give a number to the cashier um we've we've never stopped trying to collect those forms that's always been an annual process um but the number of them has decreased as we became C eligible in
074in a a building yeah and then we've made extraordinary efforts to try to get those forms even though you are eating you're getting breakfast and lunch for free we'd like you to fill out this form it's been a hit and miss on whether they return them or not um but it doesn't matter right because they're getting food regardless now for food but it does for other portions because um one kind of just sideline piece is you know our our free and reduced lunch real number may be 65 or 70 or just over 70% but when you look at the number of applications that get filled out and then they compare that it shows us at like 50% or 48% which is a far understatement when then you go to try apply for a grant that
075has a requirement that you need to be 65% or more free or reduced to be able to participate in this grant award we get knocked out of the box because the only number we can really show is that application number so we've tried to make efforts um to get those completed um one other piece I just thought of that I I've just recently became aware of is currently with our C schools um up until last year this current year or last year you had to have a free and reduced lunch population of at least 40% with than a building for that building to be considered a c eligible our buildings we made all our buildings were fine in order to have um more districts participate in CPE they lowered that amount from 40% last I
076think it was this school year to 25% so more districts became eligible for c as of this year my understanding and what I've read a couple different pieces on is if there is a cut a chain in that um they may change the C requirement from 25% back up to 60% in order for that building to be eligible fre free and re uh free meals in our case there could be a couple buildings in there that have been totally free and reduced or totally free that now may not be if it's 60% some of that would be a result of the paperwor that we don't have but that goes to what I was saying earlier there might be an impact but it's not a huge risk because it's only a couple building it's not like
077the whole District would go from C eligible to non C might be a building or two even with the change that could impact us but we can handle that so kids who were at that income level even in a building less than 60% they would still continue to receive the free and redu it's the whole building oh the whole building it's the building average not the individual within the building that building would have to be over 60% so if that building uh Dem demographic fell to 59% yeah then that building would not qualify for C and we' go back to free and reduced and kids would have to pay some kids would have to pay unless unless they qualified under the paperwork correct thank you Mr Mario thank you Romeo on page8 this there might
078be a little bit of overlap with with um um Tracy's second question uh but you you pointed out that basically our salaries and benefits are really right in line with inflation so that's understandable um is there anything notable going on in the contract Services the tuitions or the Bose services that because as I calculate those changes they're 6% to 10% the uh the Bose services in particular up up about 10% anything notable in there and I don't youou comments we could make there yeah so Bose services are up because we're taking more expenditures that had not gone through bosis we're we're running more through them so it's not necessarily an increase um there is an increase in cost for bosies but again those are aable back to us it's the volume of expenses we're putting
079through them so things that weren't weren't bosies aable in 2425 are now Bose's aable in 2526 um so that's the bulk of those Contract Services um supplies materials it's just inflation um little bit of a hedge in there for additional costs that are there everything has gone up dramatically and that's what's reflected in this number also in their contracts includes utilities Gas and Electric um transportation is a contract that's in there all those things are up four five 7% That's what's built into that number um tuition's Public Charter School there's more kids just there's more kids going to private parochial and there's more kids going to charter schools that we anticipate we're going to have to pay those bills and those per pupil costs tend to go up each year along with the volume gone
080up going up gives us that increase thank you you're welcome M farmer voice pres farmer thank you so to follow up um as these costs continue to go up and the needs in our Public Schools continue to go up and that which then in turn the cost per pupil increases yes yes so as we continue to pay and and have to fund these Charter Schools who don't have to provide those more expensive services to the students there they actually benefit from extra money based on our kids okay talk to me not not entirely so two things um charter schools get a per pupil amount which may go up 12 13 for whatever that dollars they can um spend they're they're Bound by the same purchasing rules and all the same things that we all the
081call it the red tape that we have to go through right so they may be able to buy this item for a little bit less than we could okay in certain circumstances on the other side there are when you're talking about um like students with disabilities some of the other anciliary Serv we provide those services to them because their school is housed some of the schools are in the gree Central District we are responsible for providing a lot of those services so when they get the payment from us they're not necessarily using it to pay for all the same things that we would have to pay for so so we pay for that those Services correct that's part of our cost correct thank you thank you thank you moving on to 5.01 annual legal notes
082can I move that to the table please by Mr stencel so I going to buy vice president farmer any comments questions concerns on that sing that all is in favor that passes 8 to zero moving on to tax Cy settlement refund can I have some move that to the table please move by Miss mure second by Mr bagorio any comments questions concerns on that sing then alls in favor that passes 8 to zero moving on to the Seeker approval for the playgrounds at Patty Hill Buckman homes Road Pinebrook and English Village can I move that to the table please move by Mr stencil second by Mrs L any comments questions concerns on on this seeing none all those in favor that passes 8 to zero 5.04 the capital reserve resolution can I move that to
083the table please move by Miss L second by vice president farmer any comments questions concerns on this Mr barago um do this comes to you Romeo okay um ju just curious so we've got various sources for funding um The Reserve um the new Reserve fund um transfers from other funds General funds state aid uh Appropriations uh do you have an anticipation so it's it's ultimately a $50 million goal but do you have an expectations of what funding amount will be going in annually not going to start out there I'm assuming um not at this point no okay uh but it would be any potential Surplus that we have we could move some excess funds into reserves from one Reserve to this Reserve as well which would need board approval that might be an option for
084us to kind of say we're going to deposit uh you know $5 million a year in there consistently it could be 3 million one year zero the next seven one year but I think a lot of it my intention was to start to utilize some of the monies that we have in the reserve funds especially the work I've been updating the board we have purposely put those funds in workers comp and unemployment because they are the most flexible for us to utilize in a different way and at some point whether it be next year year after that we would come back to the bo and ask for a a a transfer from one of those or both of those reserves into this Reserve to give us enough to at least start a future project uh
085in the next three or four years but it come from a variety of sources it will be primarily reserves and then year end fund balance and the whole point of that is and I know you have gone through the exercise before but so that we can take on these these bigger projects down the road and not be strapped in any way um and and for Just note purposes we are having you know and all those walkthroughs took place uh with the different teams through the buildings and we came up with the level one level up project there were other requested changes in the buildings that we couldn't fit into level up we are still having those uh conceptually designed and conceptually cost estimated to give us a number of like what would it take to
086do all all that other work over a five or seven or eight year period we'll then give that to our financial advisors and then they'll come back and give us a you're going to need 25 thou 25 million 30 million in the capital reserve to make it a zero cost to Residents to do$ 130 or $140 million project so the goal would be to get to whatever that number is to make sure that when we get ready to put that project up it's to zero additional cost for our residents just as all our projects have been um the other clarification I wanted to make in case it needed the 15-year term is to deposit funds into the fund it's not to expend it we can expend that within 15 prior to 15 years we can
087spend it after 15 years that restriction is only deposits can only go in for 15 years or up to $50 million whichever comes first good so we can use that money again for project 20 years from now which we wish but it will set us up to be able to do the work that needs to be done given all the changes in the environment and student needs that needs to be done in the next five years or 10 years or 15 years thank you you're welcome anything else M slake I was fortunate to take Romeo's class in um budget and I'll tell you it was great to be able to understand this stuff and I think I could have even answered your question mark with that all those in favor that passes 8 to zero
088moving on to a budget stat report it's written information only is any have any questions 6.02 anticipated bids again written information anybody have any questions all right moving on to the consent agenda can I saw move the consent agenda to table please move by Mr stenzil seconded by vice president farmer any comments questions or concerns on the consent agenda I would just like to thank the Greece Education Foundation they made donations in the amount of $1 13,152 to various programs across the district for supplies for language development program equipment for PE um scooters parachutes Etc uh portable PA system field a bubble machines percussion equipment tumbling mats microphones and sounds equipment books for the school vending machine we're very thankful for our relationship with Greece Education Foundation what they do I'd also like to thank
089the extra classroom funds at Arcadia middle for their donations Athena High for their donations The Odyssey Academy for Their donation and Olympia for Their donation with that all those in favor of the consent agenda that passes 8 to0 moving on to 8.01 the elementary and secondary grade reporting timet can I you move that to the table please move by Miss second by Mr bagorio any comments questions concerns on this sing in favor that passes 8 to zero and moving on miss m you're up yeah service on the board yeah okay service on the board like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting seconded by Mr stel all those in favor good evening everyone thank you that passes 8 to zer e e e