ICSD Board of Education Voting Meeting - Tuesday, January 13, 2026

001and uh our attempt to try to be uh time efficient and thorough. We will call the meeting to order. Uh the first thing we will do is ask if there are any modifications or uh to the agenda. Hearing none, uh may I propose one to my board colleagues? Uh agenda item 9.3 says uh policy 5605 stutter student voter registration and pre-registration. It's listed here as a first reading. If I am not mistaken it's a second reading and adoption this evening and if there are no objections we'll make that change the agenda. >> Yeah that goodbye everybody. Any discussion needed? >> No passes. You got that >> second reading and adoption for this evening. Um and if that's it, then we will continue on. Uh a note about our agenda this evening. Um we've been trying

002this a little bit. Uh the board will be um anticipating entering into executive session near the end of the meeting, but we wanted to begin today's meeting uh at 6 p.m. given the presentations that we have. Uh so we'll continue on with the agenda. That brings us to agenda item 3.1, public comment period. And we do have someone signed on. Right. >> Hi there. Good to see everyone. Can you guys see and hear me? Okay. >> Or you think it might be us >> because it says join audio. >> Hello. My audio looks like it's working. >> I think if you go to the left hand corner, the bottom >> where it says join audio. Usually that fixes >> that maybe the microphone speaker. >> I thought it was >> Give us a second here,

003Brit as we work out our technology. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Is that working? Test. Test. >> Yay. So, you can all hear me? >> Oh, good. Hello. Good to see everyone. I'm uh I'm calling from the hallway of BJM as my son finishes basketball practice. So, cross your fingers that um he will let me speak for three minutes without being interrupted. Um but um I'm happy to come and chat with you all today. I've met and spoken with a handful of you in person and um have been really grateful for the relationship between um PTA Council where I currently serve um as secretary and um Dr. Brown and the the board. Um I'm coming with two hats on. So the first hat is sort of me as a a parent, a small business owner who

004works um in consulting and fundraising. Um I've also been uh contracted through Cornell Cooperative Extension to do some support for um fundraising among farm farms and food access sites. Um, and I've spoken to Mary Grover and several board members about this, but um, as you're all preparing the budget, I would really love to re recommend support the concept that we include compensation for a grant writer or development person, a staff or consultant. And no, I I don't want this position. This is not this is not something that I want personally. Um uh but I do recommend that it be included in budget. Um as we think about additional revenue streams being one of the most important things um around budgeting. Uh I think these positions typically pay for themselves multiple times over. Um and we

005shouldn't be relying on the very few administrative staff at the district level to be doing this alongside their current job. So, I know that, you know, all all of the district administrators work really hard. Um, and, you know, for Mary to be also writing numerous uh government grants alongside her work just feels like um we're taking away from what she needs to be spending her time doing where there's lots of great professionals that could be hired um to do this work. Uh so, I would encourage that. And then I'm going to put my PTA council hat on. Um, PTA council is hoping to maybe have a consistent position reporting back um or a consistent slot in the agenda reporting back on what we've been talking about because um we're getting a lot of traction. PTA

006Council is meeting monthly. We've seen excellent attendance and engagement. Today we had nine units represented um and we spoke for the full two hours about a lot of great topics. Um our executive team has been meeting monthly with Dr. Brown and we're really finding that information is flowing really well between um Dr. Brown, the executive team, PTA council, PTAs and individual families and then back the other way alongside um teachers and uh district principles. So we we've really come into this sort of groove and would love to be um in deeper relationship with the board of ed individual representatives. Um we had a lot of conversation today and agreed that we will be hosting um a candidates forum in May. So mark your calendars. Uh we we will be doing that. Um we are also

007preparing units to directly engage the school district budgeting and voting processes per our conversations with Dr. Brown. Um those will start to happen in March and we've said hey units be ready. Um the we're really aiming to get district representatives at each meeting um to share information about the budget so that we're not scrambling last minute with questions so that we know what's coming up. Um we also spoke about collective fundraising, enrichment, school lunches, PTA equity, school and classroom supply purchasing, teacher contracts, school pantries, among other things. Um, and lastly, I just want to encourage board members to attend PTA meetings across the district. Yeah, if you want any of the contact info for PTAs, um, a lot of you have, actually, all of you should have my email. Um, so feel free to let

008me know which PTA you're interested in talking to and I can connect you uh with their representatives. And you're also invited to our PTA council meetings. Um, and if you want to specifically be put on the agenda, just let me know in advance and we can create time for that. Otherwise, you're just welcome to come and listen to um what's happening across the district. I think we have a really good sense of, you know, what is a school specific issue and what are district-wide issues and we're really becoming a lot more involved in those things. Um, so I'm happy to share the PTA council meeting schedule. I don't know how I can do that, but um yeah, just wanted to to show up and give those two things and maybe make a plug for PTA

009council to be put on um agendas in the future like the student representatives are. >> Thank you. >> Uh any information you want to send, please send to Trisha Barisford who will get it to all board members from there. So brilliant. >> I believe that's all the folks we have signed up to speak. So uh board responses. >> Is that something that's happened before like a BTA council or a similar organization seeking a board meeting? >> Uh no that is not uh let me rephrase that in my time is not something that's regularly happened or been part of a regular agenda. Uh but we also know times have changed. We also in years prior would have um uh be e either community organizations or not for-profit um schoolboard leaison. So beyond uh individual building leaison

010folks have been a part of PTA council been a part of SEPTA the special education PTA have been a part of IPDI have been a part of the village identica um and additional roles as well. So, and if we do not go the route of an agenda, a regular agenda item, another thing would be to revisit whether or not the board wants to have community lison on roles uh that we've had again in the past as well. >> She's still on. >> Um well, I'll say thank you to Brit. I I think that she uh wildly undersold herself um and the work that she has done in this district and she alone has um helped to raise an enormous amount of money um in the district and has helped uh facilitate uh lots of new

011programs especially at BJM but in collaboration with other schools as well. Um, this is not the first time that I've heard her talk about the grant writing role and I um would be very curious to um engage in a dialogue more more about um the history of a potential role like that and any interest or feasibility in that from from the district at some point. Um I do also know that Mary spends a lot of time um seeking funding as well. So having some some support with that I'm sure would be really great. Um, as usual, I can speak really highly of the PTA council and uh, while I would love to engage with the board in a conversation about having regular report outs, um, how regular that may be is is one conversation, but

012I do think that it's really important to recognize that this is a group that um, is really focused, as Brett said, on districtwide issues and not just focused on important single school. And I think that their ability to build such a strong and mutually respectable relationship with Dr. Brown and the leadership team here speaks volumes to the kind of work that they are trying to do and they're already getting done. So we'd love to create more opportunities from them. >> Any other board responses? When is the when when would there be a venue to discuss the idea of shareh >> uh seeing as I'm just hearing about it. I don't know what that would look like. Uh I do know it brings up issues and questions of equity about which groups get invited and be

013on agenda and which groups don't. How does that get decided? So um again something that we need to think about. uh our January 27th meeting is already fairly packed and so I would dare say the first time that we can as an agenda item for the whole board public discussion will be sometime in February. That may not be what folks want but that's just the logistics of where we find ourselves. Um and then briefly I my experience is we have entertained a grant writing position uh at a number of times in the district's history in my 17 years in the board and probably before then and most recently um that that was something that the community in various ways told us that that was not what we should be focused on. Uh doesn't mean that

014times haven't changed or we should consider it. We are also making the argument about the economic return for investing in a position at that level. what we get back in terms of the millions of dollars of grants that we had total at various times or um so something again to revisit but um it has been something that has been a topic of conversation for multiple years uh in the budget process you could probably speak to it more during your superintendent >> fantastic thank you all uh that will bring Sean quick absolutely are there like third party companies like organizations you can outsource it to that just make a percentage so it's not actually doesn't cl the budget they only get paid if they the grants are approved is that is that a thing for districts

015but um in the past it was a bose position you would uh contract with both seats that had a grant writer and then that position was eliminated you talked about bringing it in house and then it was seen as an additional administrative role so no matter how you look at it if we bring it in house it will be a position with benefits and all that and that was something our community didn't have an appetite for and there are uh consultants you just saw one of the best I've and agencies we can consult with. I think that will be a part of our budget deliberations this year um because as we know it can bring in millions. Every district I've been in before this had a department just for grant writing right and we have

016someone who does it um when she finds time and it does not take from her other job. She does that job great and she brings in millions but that is not always given. Thank you, Mary. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean because that position essentially pays for itself many times over. So it's not even technically coming up. It's in the budget, but they're paying for themselves because they're bringing in all this extra revenue. So, I mean, I I definitely be in support of it, but >> let's make that argument come budget time. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> I never seen Dr. Brown take handwritten notes in a meeting. So, there you go. >> Trying to get it. >> I'm going to remind you all about your thumbs. Yeah. >> That brings us to our next agenda

017item 3.3, which is our student reps. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. Uh, and I never like to choose who goes first, so I'll let you all work it out. >> Oh, awesome. >> Uh, hi everyone. I hope you all are doing well. Um, I just wanted to discuss a little bit about the old school assembly we've had this past Friday. Um, it was the second one of this year. We held it in Bliss Gym. Um, yeah, it was a nice event. I um the student ambassadors and student activities and communications club helped set it up along and then the winter sports teams all like entered the building just helped with school spirit and I think everyone was pretty enthusiastic about it. It received a lot better feedback from the previous films um and we're

018excited to do again for the other two ones that we have. Um and then this past weekend the I just one acts happened which I was involved in. It's student directed and student written and it's just scripted readings but those went well and this isn't um school sanctioned but a lot of people from Ithaca High School are in the art show. Um and that's happening this past weekend and this next weekend there's also shows going on. So that's fun. And then uh of course regions midterms week is happening next week and student council is providing tutoring um help during regions week which is in collaboration with the peer tutoring and key club which is just students helping prepare other students for their midterms or regions. Yeah. >> Um so for me first off Jing is

019at a uh code red build season meeting tonight. So, Code Red is our robotics club and they're in build season preparing for their competitions where they're in there every night, sometimes until 900 PM working on robots. So, that's where she is tonight. Um, I wanted to update everyone, the rest of the board, if you guys haven't been updated, uh, and the public and the other board reps on the student exopicio policy meeting that I went to last week. Um, so we had a lot of really good discussion. I think sort of the conclusion that um us board reps at IHS at least came to was that we would have the same amount of reps and the representatives would go to committee meetings and then um each week or each each voting meeting uh one exopicio

020from each school would come and represent at the meeting and speak in discussions uh and they would bring concerns from the reps who went to policy comm meetings and that would be a rotating position the exopicisio um or it would be decided amongst ourselves each And students also agreed, the board reps also agreed that um a board of ed mentor could be useful um in the sense that we could ask them questions not as much as an adviser that would be coming to all of our meetings, but a mentor that we would have um more direct access to to talk with. Um, another thing that we've been working on, um, in our, uh, inside meetings with, um, Miss Arnold at IHS and, um, the board refs, uh, one of the things we worked on was

021the clocks now show the A and B day um, every after every period for every period um, when the bell rings. So before a lot of students were confused about what was an A day, what was a B day. You would have to go on your computer and then go to school tool and then go click a few tabs to find out which day it was and that really sucked because I had different classes on a bday. So we got that fixed really quickly and we're really thankful for that. And then last weekend our model team went to Syracuse University for cinnamon uh and we came back with two outstanding delegate awards and two other awards. So not a bad performance. And then um last thing I wanted to say was that we are working

022on getting the cell phone ban survey back out um for uh a second review of all that and seeing how opinions have changed. But um that's mostly gone pretty well and we'll have that back in the next month I I think but that's all I have. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Oh, I see you guys. >> Go ahead. >> Yeah, no worries. Emily has very diligent to the meetings. Um, hi. Been a bit. Uh, hope hope everybody's well, so I'm just going to run through a couple things quickly. Um, I know this is later up on the agenda, but I want to get ahead of it. Uh, we have implemented we voted and implemented on our LACs phone policy. Um, it is all in your emails. The printer was feeling disagreeable, so it's not in

023front of you, but if it's it's there. Um, we were we revised we voted on it and we've implemented a compliant phone policy that recognizes the individual individistic nature of the school but also sets a clear path for how we plan to tackle phones in the classroom and generally in the building. Um yeah, a brief just I guess a brief summary of what we try to plan on we plan on doing is you'll get you'll get your first reminder put it away bag phone pouch locker bar second reminder that that okay that that goes to your teacher for the period as a student you agree that you obviously you had the first reminder that you know at this point and it's that's an okay thing to do is pass that over if it becomes more

024than that then we have The process is outlined in that documents being that make up maybe a meeting with your family group leader similar to home home room teacher or Keith our principal Matt Allen our guidance counselors maybe that's in order to figure out a plan to better suit this and see what's up. So we're we're pretty proud of it and we're hopefully we might see some amendments but that's how LCS rolls. So I just wanted to update you guys on that. Um, another update, busing. I know lots lots of last year, you heard about this kind of on end, and I don't want to dig into nitty-gritty details of this right now, but we are still seeing students getting to school late. Emily can personally attest to that. I I can attest to that.

025We would love to have a conversation more with the board on how we can tackle that, how we can what what's going on where students are still are getting late to school. We've seen the year started out maybe kids missed the entire first period. 9:45 school starts at 9. It's gotten far better, but that's still 15 minutes late. A lot of that can be it means you can't have student can't have school lunch. Get to school 15 minutes late and school breakfast. Sorry, not school lunch. But it just since it just sets you up for the the day in a not great way. So we'd love to have a conversation with the board may and but just have some points on that. Um Oh yeah, you have the in front of you. up instead. I'm

026going to get you guys that. Uh, this is our latest edition. I hope you guys enjoy it. Put a lot of love, put a lot of art in there. Uh, it's middle school and high school written, so there's a variance in articles, but hope you guys like it. >> I'm going to highlight, look out for Jav Campbell's articles. I'm really impressed. He's in seventh grade this year, right? >> Seventh. >> Yeah, that keeps going places. No, >> I've never seen a 12-year-old that can has a full citation seat in the same >> Do you want >> I can I can take it from there. >> Um, all right. So, I'm jealous of the sixth graders this year because apparently they've started doing really really cool things during regent week. Um, they are doing because they

027are technically still elementary schoolers. So, they still have to go to school during that time even though we don't do the regents at our school. what they're doing. >> Um, yeah, 11th graders have to do the English regents, but otherwise we have a waiver from the state. Um, so anyway, they are going for like fun half days and on Tuesday they're going to visit circus culture. On Wednesday, they'll spend the day ice skating at Cass Park. Um, they'll be doing like swimming and other activities at the Y on Thursday. Uh, they'll visit the library on Friday. >> Yeah. And the maker space. Yeah. So, uh, sounds like a pretty awesome week. And why didn't they do that for us? We just had to go to like weird like 30 minute classes or something. Um, and

028then during Regent's week for the rest of us, we've got conferences planned. So, that's when we do our conferences instead of doing them like you guys did them in like December or something, right? >> Okay. Um, so yeah, those conferences are studentled. They're pretty fun. you meet with your um family group leader and your parents and um it's just sort of like we usually build it around like some big project that you did that semester that you want to show off and just talking about like where you're at. You read eval and everything uh evaluations together. Um and then you guys got the chest set. Um uh on the horizon coming up pretty quickly is infusion week. So, I maybe talked a little bit about this last time, but uh that's coming quicker and quicker.

029It's going to be on March, the week of March 2nd to March 6th. That's when we take a week to focus on a social justice issue. And we have workshops during when we usually have projects. So on Tuesday afternoons and Thursday morning and on the Wednesday when we usually have ASM we bring together the whole school and we also bring in other like outside people to do a panel. Um and then all of the classes during that week are going to be infused with that infusion week topic. Um which is proving to be a bit of a challenge. Like we've been trying in our little Yeah. gym class is actually kind of easy. But in our little groups, we're like, how the heck are we going to infuse like I don't know like Asia studies

030with the topic of this year's infusion week, which is roots and wings of Latinx culture. Um, and pre-calc. Any suggestions? Um anyway, so that's um been on my mind a lot and on my friends of mine who is leading the whole uh uh effort and we would really love to work with you guys a little bit more on like bringing you guys in for that week at some point because it's really really awesome to see all of that going on. Um yeah, that's it. Thank you. >> All right, so I I just want to start out by shouting out also Matilda. Uh I we have quite a few students that are also in were were and are in that production. Uh they're honestly having a great time and of course go see the production next

031weekend. Um >> uh also we just began rehearsals for our new musical. We are putting on a performance of The Lightning Thief. I personally am participating uh rehearsals. We literally just began like this week maybe. Oh, no last week. There was last week rehearsals. Um okay. So la a few board meetings ago I brought the ISS is I mentioned that we had struggled a little bit with evaluations in the end of the first cycle we had we had a little bit we our our system was a little bit messy where we were we were getting a new system we had like 20 emails from like and for every evaluation for each class there was an email with a Google doc not good now we've transitioned into a Google form so essentially the teacher for the

032class will uh give you the link either through Canvas or sometimes an email but mostly not. Um then you click on the link, you fill out your name, confirm that it is your class, and then you write your self-evaluation and that's gone really seamlessly for me. Uh I know some students have uh had some issues. I mean some teachers are still struggling with communicating that thing the link and we are trying to continue to improve that. However, we have well, we are leagues better than where we were at the end of last cycle and yeah, no, it's going well. >> All from us. >> Fantastic. Thank you, student reps. Uh, board responses. >> I I got to say, I looked at Jav's article. I know him from Northeast and um, someone needs to tell him

033to contact the Chinese journal. Seriously, this excellent. Yeah. >> And so, yeah, there wasn't much else to comment on. So, thank you. >> Very excited to see this on Saturday. Great musical and so excited to see it. >> Julian, I really appreciate you laying out the um cell phone policy work you all did. And I don't know where I already read it from. like a the principal communication something. >> Keith probably sent it out. We we've been we've been marinating on this pretty much in the time since the last board meeting to right now. It's kind of all been coming together. So >> yeah. Well, I think that's really exciting and I really appreciated being able to look at um a list of kind of very clear actionable increasing consequences for every um additional um

034while also making it really thoughtful and student centered uh and supportive in recognizing that both of those things may be true. So really appreciated that and look forward to hearing how uh what the response is for students and um see the outcome from that. Um, and Judah, I just want to, you know, reiterate from the last conversation how grateful we are to to you all and you and I know Julian, you were at the last policy meeting about um engaging and and helping us really think thoughtfully about the exeicio um policy and look forward to continuing to do that. I think that the next policy meeting we're going to be talking more and hopefully have something even more concrete for you all to respond to. I do want to offer one piece of clarification which

035is that we want to get as much input as possible. Um and in the end the policy is going to be reflective of what the nine board members who are responsible for adopting it have kind of agreed on. Um and so we I I'm hoping that that's going to be a very or I know that it will be very very informed by all of your input. But just so that you know that until a policy is is drafted and finalized and truly adopted, there's no way to know or say like what the final kind of components and pieces are going to be. Um so just want to give you a heads up that when we have those conversations, it's not okay now we know exactly what you want and we'll bring it in. Um but

036that it continues to be a process, but we really we appreciate you all um engaging in it. And I'll just continue about the policy um about the student rep. Now, is it the students rep's desire to attend every committee meeting and the two board meetings per month? Because if you're putting something like that in the policy, you have to think about the future student reps who will um have to commit to this. and and realistically um we want to make sure that your responsibility as student first that you don't forgo your workload that you currently have. Um I know that um with the government classes that IHS has that students come to different meetings and can you connect with students who do who attend these meetings to get more information instead of putting it the

037ownership on the student reps. So that's something to consider. And with regard to the buses at CSI they hear there's still delays. Um, please do make sure that a ticket has been put in or whatever means to make sure communication between the principal and our transportation department and our administrator who's in charge of that because it's not the board that be responsible for that dialogue. Thank you for updating us on it, but do make sure there are different channels. >> Yeah. We know Lisa Jer when like they they she every every day someone's late writes down all the names that gets submitted straight to transportation daily. Keith is aware. So this point we're just >> I was 15 minutes late this morning. Missed a good chunk of eval time in J class. >> And um

038one more question maybe question comment. The infusion we was the um theme based on the upcoming international trip. Uh, no actually it is my friend Victor's senior project. Um, yeah, he was trying to get uh just for a little bit of background, he was trying to get some more uh conversation about um Latinx issues and immigration into especially the American studies class last year. Um, and then he was talking with the teacher of of that class and then the Spanish teachers and they decided to take it into push it into like a bigger project. this year. So, >> yeah. >> Um, yeah. >> Yeah, we really might want to come to I've heard some amazing speakers there. It's really wonderful. >> Yeah, we're hoping to make it like a big experience. So, like bringing in

039like um we're going to be talking about serious stuff and also like celebration. Uh we're hoping to get some like really good like food into the building that that week. So, um we've got a lot of hopes and dreams that hopefully you guys can see how they come to fruition. other board responses. >> Maybe for I'll be there. >> Let's just I'll update you. >> It's well documented. >> Yeah. >> I'll just say I know you said um RTP not everyone in the community may know the acronym of running to places. Um a phenomenal organization and while it's not affiliated with ICSD, it does receive ICSD support by using facilities and the like including ICSD students. Want to make sure that they get a shout out. Code Red as a supporter of Code Red uh

040for a long time. Wishing them good luck on this season. Uh Judah, you and I had a brief conversation. Um I loved the way that you say it. Um and the role of the student reps, how we frame this about bringing concerns. You know, I said it last time, I'm also hoping students bring to us congratulations and commendations. Uh one thing I know about an academic talent is we're really good at booking polls and things. We know how to tell people what's wrong. Um and I'm hoping we also do the opposite as well of what's really working well. So we can try to highlight and amplify those things too. So congratulations to our model UN infusion week. I'm looking forward to it. Um Emily, I hope you had a chance to connect with my colleague.

041Um and if not, I'm looking forward to see what that week looks like. Uh I probably will join the sixth graders, not ice skating, but maybe something else. We'll figure that part out. And as my colleague Karen said, uh we'll have um some central administrators connect. We'll keep I'm sure they're already in conversation. I will say, as I'm sure you all know as long-term LACs folks, um this is a an ongoing issue that has been around for at least 20 years. It's been difficult to solve. Uh and I'm not saying that it can't be solved, but I just want to give context to it as well, right? And actually, it's been more than 20 years. When I talked there in the late 1990s, uh the same thing was taking place that there was difficulty in

042logistics of making these buses working. So hopefully we'll be able to solve it at some point in time. And I will say it was really great like last sort of second half of last year everything was running really smoothly that there's like a hiccup this year but it can happen and I'm really impressed by the busing people. >> Indeed. It's a busing as we know is a struggle all across the state. >> Um so thank you as well and looking forward to talking more about our policies and we'll proceed from there. Uh that brings us to the next agenda item 4.1 which is approval of the consent agenda and we will entertain motions. >> Just a question about that because we have a personnel report included in that statement but we're going to bump that

043later tonight. So should I leave that out? >> The personnel report should not be included in the consent agenda. >> Not okay. >> Uh the consent the personal report has been moved to the end of tonight's meeting. So it's currently not in the consent agenda. >> Okay. So that in my language I will move to approve all consent agenda items listed in consent agenda consideration of accounts and minutes of previous meetings as >> moved by Adam seconded by Jacob. Yes, I see the language the recommended action. Uh but if you actually look inside the consent agenda the personal report has been moved but thank you for that Adam. Uh discussion debate dialogue conversation. Okay. So, the consent agenda on print out has been but on board docs still it's number seven. So, but we're going

044into print. >> Um on my board docs the personal report is not included in the consent agenda. >> Number seven is right. >> Yes. >> You're looking at the wrong agenda. I just apologize. >> Yeah. And this is a little different norm than we normally do. So um >> stand for work at >> uh I just want to highlight then that we are talking about a seeker for some work at Cuga Heights uh and a capital project. Some much needed work as folks may know. Um and there also is a resolution to certify uh the return of the tax warrant for folks who may or may not pay attention to it. I know folks in our business office do. Um, it's a pretty impressive change from the 1980s of a 90% or 91% return on

045our uh taxes to close to a 96.3% which is a fairly impressive change uh to the tune of significant amounts of money over that time as well. So, thank you. Um, I know Emily a lot of that work falls upon you. So, thank you for that work as well. If there are no other questions or conversation, we'll call the question. All in favor? The vote is unanimous. Right. Did I miss that? Fantastic. Thank you all very much. We'll continue on with our agenda, which brings us to the superintendent report. Uh Dr. Brown, >> thank you for the opportunity and and thank you for your comments a minute ago to remind us me what it's like to live in an academic community. Um this morning I had the opportunity to be on the radio with Joe

046Salazone and I shared the same similar sentiment. So not you but another community treasure my first day in Ithaca in 2010 walked up and said uh we're a great town uh that expects excellence and but we rarely recognize when we get it. So at this point in I wish to just maybe say thank you and recognize some excellence. Um and our communication team have done some of this already. some uh again a shout out to Katie and Hershey for putting out some of this um information, but I want to highlight some things and a new item that will be new to folks. Uh the first one is uh we were we've been recently recognized with the 2025 cash vest 90 plus award. That's a very prestigious award and it's given by the National Association of

047Counties and 3 plus one and it recognizes uh four consecutive quarters or more of excellence when it comes to managing uh district funds uh public funds. It looks at a lot and you can read the press release. I won't go too far into detail, but it really looks at everything from how we manage our fund balances to our governance structure. Shout out to all of you to the ways in which we are transparent with the ways we put the information out there and talk about it. Um, I wanted this one for 16 years and uh we have it now. And that's a shout out to the two people at the table um who have come on and transition um into their new roles and now have put us in you just mentioned another one, the

048the ability to collect taxes. So, um, that is an opportunity for us to say thank you to some folks who are doing some great work. And we're going to talk more about our financial help in a little bit. Um, thank you. And that's a big one. That information should be on our website about that particular award. The other one, uh, the College Board AP Honor Ro, um, is one we try to get often when I was in Virginia and here. This is, I believe it's the 12th consecutive year we've been recognized to be on the AP honor role. And for the folks who don't know about that particular award, um it recognizes Itha High School particularly for increasing the number of young people taking an AP or honors course and at the same time the

049achievement in set courses and it goes even further to recognize the diversity of young people taking those courses. So the things that we speak to when you look at our goals um around equity and a culture of excellence having access to the best high school in the country from my perspective and increasing the diversity of those in of the young people in those courses and at the same time increasing achievement for I believe it's and our communication team is trying to get it I think for 12 consecutive years that is academic excellence and that's a shout out to the educators the administrators and our families who expect that and I'm here to recognize and then this last one um as the southern gentleman I am I always say thank you when someone does something they

050don't have to do for them and if Christian can help me put up the other the table um as the board asked me and the board office to do I think I believe it was last spring we did have a conversation and a meeting with our friends at Cornell University and so much of what we do here is connected to Cornell University and we asked them to think about their voluntary contribution and I'll say the time we went up um and even now it wasn't the best time to go up on to Cornell university's campus and asked the president for an increase in a voluntary contribution because of the pressures they're facing both externally and internally. But we did anyway and they took the meeting and they had great conversations with us and they have

051recently informed us that they are going to increase the voluntary contribution. Now, it's nowhere near what we were asking for initially. Um, and I'm hoping and it will be an ongoing conversation, but they are committing an additional $50,000 in this current school year, an additional 50 more the next year and in year three, and I believe if I'm if the short Yes, thank you, Trisha. All right. In years four, five, and six, uh, 3% increase. So, if my math is correct, it's a $200 plus thousand increase to where we are currently um over the next six years. And as their letter stated that with the external and internal pressures they're facing right now, that's the best they can do at this time. And they're open to ongoing conversations. I just got an email today where

052we're attempting to schedule our collaborative meetings that we've been talking about having with their teams of educators and our teams of educators as well. So again, um I know our friends at Cornell don't hear often. I'm going to say thank you and I'm looking forward to the ongoing conversations because a voluntary contribution is a voluntary contribution and I'm coming from a town that has a nice universities next door and we didn't get those voluntary contributions. Thank you for this opportunity and I'll take some questions and there are some at this point. >> Let me add before you um from that Dr. Brown in our conversations uh talking about an increase in the voluntary contribution um there was a recognition of one there's a financial contribution uh that from many people's perspectives mine included that needed

053to necessitate an increase in the voluntary contribution for the services rendered for students uh that attend the ethnic city school district. In addition to that, there was um ongoing conversations about, for lack of a better word, inind contributions that include programming, uh access to labs, uh various ways in which Cornell University faculty will run programs, uh an increase, uh or an expectation to be involved with uh PTA or the ITA teachers with the new STEM wing that the school district is building. So, the conversation included more than just a financial check. It included other ways in which Cornell and ICSD could partner and the contributions that this institution provides up on the hill as well. I wanted to acknowledge um the many ways in which Cornell uh helps to support the education that happens in

054our community. Um and I know that this will be a topic of conversation rightfully so, but I also want to acknowledge this other component that is programmatic uh and helps our educated helps education in our uh district as well. So I hope that might not be adding adding that great meeting. >> Thanks to you and Dr. BL for >> shall we continue? >> Yes. We'll bring us to our next agenda item which is uh district business uh agenda item 9.1 which is a budget preview for 2026 2027 and I believe we have some folks here with us. >> Yes. uh dare I say nationally recognized business officials are at the table now. Um thank you all for joining them. Yeah. >> And when you maybe make say your name but uh invited some members of

055our team >> and this section on the agenda from our perspective was intended to be just a quick um overview of our fiscal help. >> There's a ton of information that we now have shared with you in board docs. We created a web instance. We have PDF documents and I have some fancy slides I put together last night when I couldn't sleep. But we have some things uh to share with you to give a sense of where we are fiscally as an organization and where we plan to go as we go into the budget development process this year and in future years. So I don't know people may be looking at different things. I hope you're multitasking. Again there's a web instance. We'll probably put that up in a second. Um and there's a PDF

056document. But right now I just want to sort of talk through and we'll just talk through some highlights and then we'll take some questions about some things. So what we hoping to do is highlight talk about general fund and reserves capital project capital cost where we are with our capital program and then forecasting what is on as we go into the budget development process. Um and I'll you want to put it back there and if you're following along in the document online we sort of break it down into revenue. So we'll start with just talking about our revenues revenues and what's happening and again we're trying to synthesize an audit report and as Rob Angel used to say the audit report is probably the most important report or document we look at as a governance

057team each year and that document is probably three 400 pages and we're not using artificial intelligence or chat this summer rather this is just some smart people trying to make it make sense for other smart people um who are not accountants. So in looking at it um there hundreds of pages just uh dedicated to revenue and our organization 100 we're at $174 million $174.5 million in revenue and as you see the highlight here for someone looking at this for the first time most of that's coming from our local tax base and we'll get into that later. um unlike some surrounding districts who get most of their revenue from the state or state aid or federal grants, most of our comes from taxpayers and when we have the significant shift of assessments a few years ago

058as we look at our tax levy that hits us differently than it does other people. So we'll come back, but just people have seen this a lot. You see it in our budget mailer, you see it in here, but just give you a sense of where our revenue is coming from in the different pots and you see uh federal fund, you see grant funds, etc. there. Move to that next uh that next slide there. Here we're talking about expenditures. All right. It correct me if I'm wrong, Don. It is illegal to overspend your budget in New York State. >> That's correct. >> So, you want to have your expenditures be less than your revenue. All right. I've been asked about that a lot. And some folks like, "Oh, you're saving money. You shouldn't." No, we

059should have a a a cushion there and not overspend. overspending that would be illegal and you'd be looking for a new superintendent. And this is how those expenditures are broken out. And you want to see here a significant portion of that dedicated towards instruction. And for us, that is we have $121 million that's dedicated to instruction. And if we were to break down what is instruction, that's classroom teachers impacting young people each and every day in our building. Other areas that, you know, some people have been shocked by that 11.5 million transportation um budget item. Yeah, we run a pretty major transportation 88 plus routes. When I'm sitting in our regional superintendent meeting, you know, and they're talking about snow days, they're talking about picking up the phone and calling four or five bus drivers.

060For us, it's a pretty different approach when snow and ice falling in one. We have an operation there. That's 11.5 million operation. You see debt service there. We'll talk more about capital projects and how we are funding our debts and general support. that general support line that is our Bosey's budget and it's our administrative cost. It's our facility cost, maintenance costs and everything else operations is in that general support. Those are our expenditures. And now we get into all right what one would consider the things we need to look at when we're thinking about general funds. When we're thinking about our fiscal health, our bond ratings, um how we can long range plan for long range fiscal decisions. Our general fund is that and I've been here with this number in the teens or less.

061Um we're at $ 39.3 million right now in our overall fund balance and 21 of million of those 39 million is restricted. It it's going into Dominic help me with some of the different fund balances that are restricted uh in how how they're titled. >> Sure. The largest Dominic is the assistant superintendent for business and finance. Our largest restricted reserve is our healthcare. That's that has our largest fund in it. They're our capital reserve party >> and uh state law asks us to restrict those funds. We can't touch those for general purposes and for expenditures in classrooms and to have no more than 4% in your unassign unassigned fund balances. If having more than four and a half% you will be cited. It will show up in your audit report and it'll be headlines. We've

062tried our best to not have more than 4% and we've been here when that's been around one or two. You want to have in that sweet spot. You want to get right up to 4% of and underlying fund balances and that's where we are. So there's a lot in that number. Our fund balances are healthy, very healthy right now. And they allow for us to plan for contract negotiations. They allow for us to plan for capital projects. They allow for us to weather the storm. When last spring when we were facing the cut in federal funds, which would have been millions had that happened, we were thinking about using our unassigned fund balances to fund that gap and not have a significant spike in class sizes or to have to go to their taxpayers and

063go over the tax gap. We use their fund balances very strategically and it also informs our bond ratings. Um, I'm sitting on a couple of other boards whose bond ratings are not very good because of the lack of funds in their balances and fund balances. right now. Ours is healthy and our bomb rating is what down >> uh triple >> a a minus. We'll we'll get it for you. I don't want >> I promise we plan and practice all these presentations. That was a question I didn't crack it. So my bad. >> Cool. It's good. All right. For the folks who were looking at it. So if you move to the next one then this is our capital pro uh program and we're going to talk more about capital projects as we get into budget

064development and the upcoming uh board meetings. Uh that that 2011 it's a little higher, right? It shouldn't be like 282. >> It's it's considerably higher. Yeah, it's actually 297 292. >> Trying to get a real assessment of all the property in the city school district is just under $300 million. and the work that we're doing to renovate, to add, to maintain has been a part that's been a part of our capital projects over the years. Um, we're right now at outstanding of around 113 million. And that other number there, yeah, it's there too. In New York State for small city school districts, there's uh if one had a credit card and one have a credit card limit, you wouldn't want to be at your credit card limit or nowhere near 50% if you want your

065credit rating to be good. We're at 14% of our credit limit or statutory limit. that makes some sense. So, we haven't maxed out our credit card. Um, we're very good with how we're using our debt and well within the statuto limits and in a place where we're not on any lift at the state. Again, when I took over this job, we were on the fiscally fiscal stress list because that number was high, our fund balances were low, and we were using fund balances to fund the budget year to year. And that put us on the fiscal stress list. We were in the bottom 20% of districts in the state. And I would say now we're in the top tier. That's an indication about district health. And this next one here, again, this is me trying

066to summarize a 400page document. Um, the key part that jumps out to me as a superintendent, probably to y'all as a um business as a business team and for the board, we had no um negative uh statements in that audit. All right? It was a clean audit. Um, and that is rare um for public school districts and public organizations right now to have an external auditor to come in and not have some opinion that speaks to something that you're not doing well or some egregious issue or you missed something. Our audit was clean and that's something we should be celebrating or at least saying thank you to the folks who are responsible um including y'all for managing our finances including the chair of our finance committee and uh no compliance issues. A clean audit is

067pretty powerful and we can talk more about audit if you wish a little bit later. The next slide is one we'll be talking about tonight and going forward. So what do we do next? Um we're going to be planning we we are while we're in a strong fiscal position right now, our jobs is to make sure that's sustainable and we're planning out for multiple years. We've moved from talking about the the budgeting process being a year-long process to now saying it's a multi-year process because we are looking at multiple years of managing our budget in this organization. And when doing that, we need to consider state aid. So you're here tonight from Dom and others. We've been monitoring state aid. We have some trend data now. We can pretty much unless something happens with our

068governor, unless something happens or happens in Albony that we're not anticipating, we have a good sense of where the state is going to come in. Uh enrollment needs, you're going to hear uh from folks tonight. We're going to be talking about the uh projections on enrollment um which do have impacts on staffing. Um will have impacts on what we how we plan going forward. uh we are thinking about the collective bargaining process. We're thinking about the contracts we have and not just about uh staff but other contracts we have to do other things like uh technology usage etc. So there's a lot that we think about um I want folks to know that we think about it not just uh during the budget process but we think about this in an ongoing way. We planned

069for multiple years. Um, and as Don would say, he's a very conservative uh, planner and business official. And we've been, our estimates, you'll see are very conservative. Um, which allow for us to be able to adjust on occasion as well. That's a lot. We try to make it as simple as we can, but also provide enough details. Again, a lot of information is out there. We'll take any questions, uh, any suggestions, but this is the first of what we see as multiple conversations in the coming months that we put together this next budget book. >> So, at this point in time, Dr. Brown, are you looking to engage in the conversation, answer more questions? >> Well, Dan, uh, yeah, I guess if there are questions about what we've shared, I know you're getting a lot

070of information right now. If there's if they're ask about additional information to share in upcoming meetings um we've heard some things already uh grant writing can we look go deeper into what grant writing look like for us and so we include some of that in our budget deliberation. So if there are things you want us to include going forward we have a presentation to talk about some trend data with regards to our enrollment and some potential options down the line. So anything you wish to see from us we're here to hear. I have a question. Um, with the link that's also on our website with the financial state of the district, should we include um, capital assets like some of the information from that that slide with the capital assets outstanding debt isn't on here.

071>> Uh, the the overall it should be sorry in the overall financial position section the total assets should be noted as 292.2 million. >> That should be And just for clarification that they're building, it's all of our hard assets. >> And then we have eight reserve funds. >> Correct. >> Right. And at one point in the finance committee last year, last academic calendar, we've stated that there's a possibility that we should have another one. >> We did investigate that. That is not something that we can do uh as a New York State school district. Other New York State entities can enter into that. We cannot. So, it's not something we'll investigate further. And just I wanted to go back real quickly to our bond rating. Uh I can fix this to some extent. The nomenclature

072I'm not sure, but we're one step below the highest grade that you can you can earn. So, and we're probably relatively close to the highest grade at this point. >> And this financial state of the district um link here is very helpful. It was extremely helpful to go through the FAQs too. is broken down well that um I know I always direct our community to our website and we always want there's been discussion at different committee meetings over the time of like um can our communication team provide any information they are it's on the website >> and we can't to have this wealth of information there's no we would print it and a hard copy form that will be multiple pages but it's still printed so it is accessible for everyone and I know that

073it is periodically updated to it. >> Thank you. So, thank you very much. I >> agree with Thank you. I also reviewed it. Sean sent the along with a lot of other resources. It's my first budget season. I know that with Bridget talking about the grant writer. I guess I'm, you know, stop me if this is the wrong venue to ask about it. I'm just curious more about like our role as a board when it comes to different levels of detail within the budgets, right? Grant writer, we're talking about one specific personnel. What to what degree are there processes, systems for us? What is our level of involvement with decisions at that scope? Maybe this question for Sean. >> No, I think it's probably a question for all of us. There's a number of folks

074in the room that participated in budget processes before. Uh there is sort of the you know 30,000 foot we're governance body response which means that in some regards there's a budget that's built in collaboration primarily through our administration using finance and facilities committee to have a conversation and the board's official capacity is to um either adopt that budget or not adopt that budget or adopt a budget that they believe uh is in the best interest of the district and the community and of our students and move that forward. for a vote. Uh with that being said, there's always these a number of conversations. I as one board member try to warn us about getting too much into the specific details, but saying more generally as we heard uh a couple years ago that uh the

075district was administration heavy. Now whether folks believe that to be accurate or not doesn't matter. The conversation with Dr. Brown was we need to do something about administration. And so then Dr. Brown then came back to us. But it wasn't like this building, this person, this position. It was more we need to find ways in which to be much more efficient in this area. Uh the grant writer, I think that's something now that I'm certain that Dr. Brown heard it. I would imagine it would be included in a next round that we'd be able to point to, but it'd be a part of a larger thing. And I would dare say um humbly, respectfully, uh and I will say lovingly to my colleagues, the one thing that I find that boards, the one mistake that

076boards tend to get into is again too much into the weeds and then tend to pit programs against each other. Well, if we fund this, then we can't fund that. Or if we don't fund that, then why are we funding this? and that becomes um a very problematic game to get into around notions of equity, around ethos, around our own experiences. So, I realize that I'm not directly answering your question, Jacob. Um the idea is that we are the people responsible for adopting the budget and hopefully it's a budget that folks get into. But I would always ask questions about particular line items when we when we feel it's appropriate not to have heavy influence but more to get clarification about if this is a budget that we could support or not. >> That provide

077any information >> it did. Yeah. Here's there's other you referenced other people as well. Are there other perspectives that anyone would share that would be helpful for me or others to know? I I don't necessarily have a perspective, but perhaps the question I have might because as I'm looking at this and I'm thinking about the years past and what we've been through, especially in more recent years and what, two years ago, the budget not passing and just kind of a the realization of how deeply flawed the funding of public schools are, right? And I I'm not sure why I as a board member didn't see that sooner, but I mean just absolutely broken. And so when I look at these projections and I look at three years from now and I know our tax bills

078in this town are just absolutely unsustainable and ridiculous, but I also know that it's not like we're we truly are not spending in an inappropriate manner here in our district. trying to figure out how to like word the question. I'm trying that that is the background to the question. The question being I mean do we ever see a scenario and this is outside of recognizing that there needs to be movement and advocacy to change state and federal policy. And that is that is years of work that maybe I'll get to someday on another level. I got to get through the now. But anyway, um, so in this capacity, currently going without changes in state and federal functioning, do we ever see a time where, and I know we have another presentation coming up where this

079might touch on it, where we'll ever see our taxes stop increasing in this town or or perhaps even like decreasing. And I know you're laughing, right? We know that if you live here, it's unsustainable, right? And so I I just I wonder as a board what we can do and and looking at this and and Dr. Brown mentioning that we have some idea of what the state might do this year. Dom, I know there's no crystal ball, but tell me. >> Um I would love to turn this over to Dr. Brown, but I'll just say to you that >> desperately. Um I I wish I had the answer to that. I think it, you know, it's I think you framed it well. We have to look towards both federal and state funding for those changes

080to actually take place and it so many other things play into that. The size of the district and and what are our goals and our mission in the future. What will it look like beyond you know the three years we projected I think and I'm not trying to obiscate your question but that really is what it comes down to. Um I wish I had an answer and there's no way I will say yes. So >> well let me add because I'm surprised Dr. didn't cosign because that was the first question you asked me when I got here. Um, can we have a budget that never goes up again or a tax levy at zero? >> Um, and my answer then was it was a rookie answer at the time that I be the same answer

081now. There is inflation and we do wish to compensate folks um in a way where there we give them additional compensation each year and into the future. And just that alone would require us to raise tax. Now, from my perspective to keep that because I just got my recent county tax bill, too, and I looked at all those numbers. I wish those numbers were 3% or less. So, as an organization, we have said for the next couple of years, we're trying to keep that number at 3% and we're using fund balance. We're using the investment strategy. We're using the great board work. We're we're working hard to keep that number at a place that's predictable and a number that's below 3%. And when we had to go above 3% a few years ago, that had

082other issues that was impacting that number. And we've done a significant amount of work since then to I I hate to use the word rightsize but to create efficiencies. Our administrative team is down significantly 20 some%. We don't have as many educators in classrooms. Our class size is raised growth. So we did some things. I still think we're doing great work here but we are a different organization today with less people and that was because our community said we need to make some adjustments. So we made that adjustment. We're winning awards for managing it and our academic improvement programs are still being invested in. So that's a longwinded way of saying I would be cautious if we didn't do at least 3% because you then could anticipate a big spike at some point or another

083that may exceed the tax cap or you may have buildings leaking roofs and other. So I just would keep us moving forward in a steady face. And Sean, that's going back to you 16 years ago saying can we ever get to a zero? Well, I'd also add, and I'm going to look to Garrick because this is Garrick's area of expertise and not mine, but some of the conversations we've had over the years, that in fact, and this gets into the nuance and to the the details, but the details are important. For a number of years, the tax rate has actually decreased in the district. Now, with that being said, for a number of people still their taxes went up with that. So, one of the things that we constantly have conversation about is the district

084is not responsible for assessments. We don't control assessments. We don't control the housing market in this community, which I would think is near whatever spike that we've witnessed over the past couple of years, but there's been a number of years where we had the lowest tax rate of any school district in the TST Boseies area. I think there may have been one that was a little bit lower than us. So, it's a hard thing to mitigate when you have a very low tax rate, but you have homes that are assessed at a very high rate as well. And so, that still means the budget increased. It still means that additional money was spent. Um, and as we know, we're unique in some regards uh not just as a small city school district, but the uh

085amount of responsibility that's placed on um individual tax homeowners, right? that that tax is vastly different than what we may see in some other locations. And so Erin, I think your question is phenomenal and I think at some point in time we know it's not sustainable. So it's something we have to consider and continue to to look for including efficiencies, including for lack of a better word, possibly right sizing. Uh but yes, my first question to Dr. Brown when he came here is um as a new homeowner at that point in time, I didn't want to pay more taxes. What can you do to stop this? And so it's been an ongoing debate. It's been an ongoing struggle and the more I've gotten into school finance, I completely agree. Our funding pyramid and Ithaca is

086upside down. Um, any one of our neighbors, right, 75 or 70% 68% of our, you know, money comes from local taxpayers. You go a mile down the road and that's completely inverted. That 68% of their budget comes from state funding. Now, it's all tax dollars, so we're all paying in some regards. But I think those are um great questions. Garrett, you say this obviously much more eloquently than I did. >> No, I I think you covered the the things. I mean, I would just point out that, you know, modest inflation is normal and desirable in an economy. Uh so, a lot of the ongoing expenses like wages, you know, will and should go up. That's that's sort of normal economic conditions. But what we can do particularly with efficiencies uh is look for ways to

087while perhaps not reducing the nominal cost to lower the the cost as a share of our economy and you know our local economy fortunately doing very well. the economy is growing. And to your point about tax rates, what we can do is is is ask taxpayers to say that educational expenses will represent a hopefully smaller and smaller share of the overall, you know, economy. And that we could do again through efficiencies and by growing the economy on both sides. Efficiencies, you know, reduce cost and growing the economy and reduces the share of education expenses that we spend on things as community. Um, but I think the the, you know, the bigger question maybe you're asking, and I think Jacob, you were asking a little bit the same thing about, you know, what it should be

088looking at as a board. To me, the single best snapshot is the 11.3 million number. And Dr. Lucy, I'm sure you can explain it better than me, but when I look at that, I kind of ask myself the question, are we going in the right direction? Are we going in the wrong direction? you know, my interpretation of the 11.3 million is is a right direction interpretation, but I, you know, invite you if you want to kind of add add to that. >> So, by really that's just indicative of the fact that our assets are growing faster than our liabilities. So, by 11.3 million year, that's actually that's a very positive uh number for us. And I just want to add one more thing and it's a reminder. I know we're going to talk about this

089more as budget season progresses and it it really does speak to what you're what you mentioned your question is that and I think we'll be reminding our assessor of this is that last year we were told that assessments would not go up for a number of years but that's a key factor in what you're all talking about certainly in the overall cost and taxes. So we'll be discussing that more as time came. Although the one exception today, correct me if I'm misundersting and you know cranes are still flying around in the air and that's a good thing, >> right? >> Yeah. I I think with inflation um you know you have healthcare which is way more than 80%. >> You have utility bills which are now owned by a private company. Those are going up

090>> 40%. I don't know what the percentage you have here but it's it's astronomical. So it's like how do we how do we maintain that? So I think it's way higher than 3%. I don't know. >> Um yeah, I mean if we had universal healthcare that that be a huge chunk of our budget, right? But we don't. Um but yeah, I I don't think 3% is even realistic just based on the way costs are rising. So >> thank you John. We sat here and that healthc care cost line was skyrocketing. >> Yeah. >> And this board for a lack of better term said Dr. Brown team bend the curve and that required us to bring our healthc care inside internal. So we're self-insured now. We're one of the few small city school districts that's self-insured

091which increased that liability line but it's something we're managing. So when we have those hard conversations here about health care we didn't want to get into the healthcare business but we needed to bend that line. And that $1.3 million variance is from my perspective, having been here this long, is large in part by a hard decision we made that we need to bring healthcare in. And we bent that line some quite significant now internally, you can get people to get even even healthier every day. We can bend it even more, get a order, but >> but yeah, we're talking about ways to incentivize great health and reaging it in house. I I do have a question about the budget um because we're looking to do you know um a capital improvement uh you know is

092that factored into that because I think you have like a current uh okay >> it is look at capital project is almost a separate budget that's handled differently except that's a debt that we incur that 7% limit but that we set that is part of our budget that's the limit that we set >> so the current one was like around 6 million give or take that was on the sheet right >> 5.3 5.3 and that that's already forecasting if we do a 30 million or $40 million that's we stay within that 7% limit that the board said decades ago I'm assuming I show you history there but u that we stay within that limit regardless of what we approved for capital profits understood >> and let's put a pin because that's going to come up

093later um one of the reasons why we run that fancy award is because we're able we've been using our borrowing to generate revenue so we have to spend money to get money from our state and we do that a through this program. We'll talk much more about that, but we needed to go out for a capital project and take increase revenue. >> And that is also going to come up as well. So, I want to make sure we do it. And I know Todd knows this, but if the district decides to go out for a capital project that is not saying we're going to spend $40 million, that is a pre-authorization to spend up to that amount of money should we need. The goal would be to not spend that much money, right? Right. And

094the goal would be to be in in a financial position and then to use our fiscal advisors particular as we all know the complicated formula about which buildings can have how much capital you know projects at this point in time. What is the time frame that we can do that? So part of the goal is to move all these pieces around to maximize both the return on investment for those capital projects that the money that we get back from the state the following year as well as make sure that we are doing some preventative maintenance so we're not looking at a complete roof repair right versus some smaller repairs that may make a roof last another 10 years or so. Um, so those are some of the conversations we've been having over the years about

095capital projects. And so it is slightly different from the budget. Uh, but it's it also that 7% of the budget line that we don't want to exceed and still make sure that we're making improvements to our bathrooms as our students ask on a regular basis, right? Or any number of things that are taking place are sometimes unexpected. A car may drive through something, right? And we need to replace that. we have to be in a position to make sure that we can fund those kinds of repairs as well. >> So now I'm actually unclear. So is that number just a set is that 7% or is that like we're we're anticipating a $30 million uh capital improvement budget. Is that a $40 million $50 million? I know we talked about different numbers. So I'm just

096wondering what is reflected on that line. >> So the best way to explain that 7% is almost like a mortgage payment that we pay on bonds for long-term debt. >> Yeah. I I got that. I'm just wondering is like what are you carrying in that? Like what is that reflecting? Is that reflecting just a 7% number? >> Yes. >> Okay. Correct. >> I wasn't sure if there was a there's a dollar amount or if it was the 7%. >> I think it's our expenditures not state reimbursement. Correct. >> That's correct. >> Okay, that makes sense. >> Additional questions board members may have. Yeah, >> that's so I I read through all the information on the website. Um, which I thought was really great by the way and very uh I mean detailed enough to get

097people into the conversation. Um, and it looked like I don't know. I guess like the theme seemed to be that as we're go through the next couple of years, we're going to have um you know more increased deficits with more increased spending. And on the on the website it said deficits are growing mostly due to increases in salary and benefits. And it says deficits become a problem when they're recurring, which signals the need for long-term strategic decisions. Those are just some things we were talking about. Um so you know with that in mind and and our desire you know to have salaries being you know increased across groups in the district um and knowing that we're going to have increased financial strain as the years are coming on. Um I'm curious to hear a little

098more about what some examples of those types of strategic decisions might be because it seems like we're going to be having to generate several millions of dollars. Also, as the fund balance goes down and we can only spend a certain amount of that fund balance and I see that over the next few years we're gonna be sure >> dipping into that. So, so curious about those types of projects and the scope of that. >> Sure. So, probably a combined discussion between myself and Dr. Brown and the other leadership team because we're looking at a strategic plan for the next three years. And so the way that we've looked at this budget, the way that we've planned it conservatively is that over the next three years, it gives us three years to to do that to

099actually plan for for that that dental outcome. Again, we're looking at, you know, a fund balance right now that is exceptionally healthy at $39 million and a very conservative aggressive draw down to I think I had about 28 >> somewhere in that area. So that is still a healthy fund balance at that point, but it does give us the three years to plan ahead for that. So the reason why we chose the three-year uh term was because that's the length of the contract that we just negotiated that really impacts that directly. So uh in terms of the strategic plan itself and where we go, I think I ask Dr. Brown to speak to that, but I think we're going to hear from, for example, uh, the group from Cornell this evening about, you know, what

100is what does it look like in terms of population, enrollment, so on and so forth, and how does that play into what the district will look like, uh, in year four to year 10, and how do we plan financially from that perspective? >> I would add, and thank you for asking that question. If I were a board member reading the website, I would have asked the exact same question. And I will say that uh, that statement that's in the answer to that question online. And what I'll say now has always been the case. We've always had we've always our compensation packages have always outpaced our revenue. Remember the days we said we were living in a 2% world, we were giving four and 5% increases to salary. So that's always the case. And when that's

101the case, you have to pull different levers and we have become pretty skilled at pulling different levels whether it's an investment strategy um staffing shifts um vacancy control or using fund balance. And sometimes we get lucky. we get more state aid than we anticipated. I'm hoping that we get more than a 3% state aid increase or the feds come back with. So again, that's long range fiscal planning. If staying if saying if that statement was the exact opposite, we were saying we're not um anticipating outspending our budget, then we're probably not doing right by our employees and other folks by taking account into all the different ways that we can increase revenue and shift some funds around. But thank you for asking. >> These are all such helpful responses. Um >> I'm just trying to

102maybe I might just not uh Sean you have referenced you sort of said this idea around like >> not pitting programs against each other >> which I understand the sentiment but I understand the words I'm trying to understand inevitably in the absence of a money tree I always wanted as a principle of a money tree like isn't any budget sort of like making decisions about like what we pay for like for everything we pay for there's something we're not paying for our >> It's possible. >> Yeah. Just help me understand what >> Absolutely. It's possible. Uh I can recall it may have been my very my first year on the board uh being at a budget meeting till 11:30 11:45 at night and we were having a debate about whether or not we were going

103to offer an additional AP course or whether we are going to have an afterchool program at an elementary school. That conversation to me and a hund00 million budget seems widely and just a misuse of time, right? If we're talking about $30,000 at that point in time that the board is trying to make that decision. For me, that's not a board decision to make. The decision to make is that are we going to approve the $30,000? Then we look to the superintendent say make this work that >> but it does happen just doesn't happen at our level. >> It hasn't happened in about 10 years because we've been relatively thoughtful in projecting out to ensure that those conversations happen well before we get to a week before we have to give a budget to the voters.

104And so at that point in time that seemed like an unfair conversation for us to have about what program is going to receive this financial support and what program is not. Now we can talk about part of the idea about doing a strategic planning I would imagine is what are the goals? What are the values that are driving the budget and then saying these are the values? This is the amount of money that you have available to the superintendent and central administration team. we expect you to make this district work. I don't know how much the board should be in the actual detail of saying, "No, we want to make sure this specific program is funded at $15,000 out of $180 million." >> That's right. That's right. >> And thankfully, we have not done that

105for quite some time. We've been again much more proactive both in the finance committee and trying to get ahead of some of these conversations as well, which is part of the reason why we're putting this out there now. So folks, I mean, I also want to remind our community that the finance and facilities committee has been meeting since the beginning of the year and if I'm not mistaken began this budget process in the summer, right? So the summer time we started thinking about budget projections, how to make sure that we're proactive in our approach to both fund balance as well as via compensation packages, our healthcare plan. You you name it. So I'm trying uh I wanna I would love to understand a little bit about uh either what changed in uh financially um and

106I know that there's a couple of things that have come up in previous conversations and maybe that's that's everything and I just need to understand a little bit more about the significance of those um andor in any just strategy or or approach um Looking back last year, um looking at like our April 8th um voting meeting, um there's a note that says assuming a 3% annual increase in state aid, a 5% annual compensation increases and a 3% annual tax cap, both assigned and unassigned fund balances would be depleted by 2028 29 um if they're used to balance balance the budget and the district would likely need to dip into reserves. reserves. Um once you spend these funds, they're gone and the district cannot uh fund recurring operational costs with these onetime funds. Shipping away at

107funds um fund balances and reserves also has a direct impact on the credit rating that we were just saying. Um, it also says if the district is providing four to 5% compensation increases when revenue is only increasing 2 to 3%, which is what it looked like in the documentation that we were looking at, um, it will have to go over the tax cap or find significant cost savings such as staff reductions. So, that was conversation on on the April 8th, right? >> Um, I understand that things have changed since then. Um but I would love to understand a little bit more about that given our circumstances are different and um we're looking at and increasing compensate compensation packages significantly more than that. >> Sure. >> From a real pragmatic standpoint, every projection that we provide

108that anyone provides in the seat is a snapshot and it's based on the information that we have at that moment. Right. So the VA the real value in our audit is giving us real numbers at the end of that fiscal year so that we can actually look and see where are where do we stand and that that really is the benefit of it. Also quite frankly coming new in January middle of the year last year the conservative approach was the only approach I could take at that point. Um the audit gave us a great deal more information about where we stood, what does our spending look like. Um practically speaking, uh since we had a budget that failed the year before, positions weren't filled. So looking at those and and taking the time to understand

109whether or not those positions would be refilled and yeah, every 10 positions is about a million dollars. And again, rough number. So, um, I look to that audit to really give us a clear perspective on what it would look like in the future and then readjusting those numbers accordingly. And we're not talking about several hundred,000 difference. We're talking about millions of dollars in difference in terms of what we spent and what we didn't spend. Um, so without getting into, you know, every dime here, that's really the practical answer where the changes are through that. And that's common for the audit to like ship the it situation it common but it was the story we told especially after a year where we made practical cuts or didn't refill positions and there were quite a few and

110we also were very conservative in our spending. So you combine the two and that's really where it >> and let me be clear that's been hard. It's been two years of us saying no to people. So, two years of us not filling positions, two years of us thinking about how we do this work with fewer people has resulted in us having a significant amount of savings. And in that at that April meeting, I was sitting here thinking we were going to lose $4.5 million in federal and state funding overnight. And so, we were accounting for that. So, that four and a half plus million dollars plus about a four and a half$5 million variance in staffing makes up a lot of that. Um, and the audit has revealed that. So yeah, it's different and you

111recognized there were some changes. I recognized there were some changes and this is a good place to be. Now I said to my team early yesterday, I said, uh, my toughest time as an administrator doing budget development was when things were going well like this because now you're making decisions about what to do and what not to do, want to know how how you make it sustainable. You're questioning what you did before. These are the hard times now. Um, I've been in here when we're cutting and the room is packed about what program we cut. That was hard, too. But it's nothing like what we're about to face now when we're healthy. And now we're figuring out how to make this stay in this space for a long long time. >> And the the $4

112million that you referenced, I might just not know about this because of when I was on So that's there was an assumption that we were going to lose $4 million and now we know that we're not. >> Well, we don't I guess we won't know it, but uh we were being threatened with federal funds. halted everything from my prek program to other federal fun including our lunch transportation. >> We were sitting here thinking about it as we were putting together a budget last year >> and negotiating contracts. >> Yeah. And if I can clarify, $7 million actually was the figure that we were overall for federal funding and $7 million to bridge that gap >> was certainly part of that conversation and that thought process because we didn't know at the time. It's not the

113same, but it' be it's similar to Cornell us sitting here in that April meeting thinking that Cornell is going to lose close to a billion dollars, >> right? The threat of an $800 million withhold, which I had to remind people is $800 million not coming to our local economy. That is significant. So, you're taking all these things into consideration. So, not just our positive audit that happened at the after the April meeting, right? not just our local economy and both Etha College also being impacted that those things did not pan out the way in which folks rightfully so were being extremely cautious. Now, we didn't get that full 800 back, but it's enough to be able to to breathe for a second, be like, "Okay." And so, part of it is to be mindful of

114that. There's still a possibility at any point in time, right? We know what's taking place at various governmental levels that things can take place. And so, the idea is to be cautious. And I want to reiterate something that Dr. Brown said, and I understand the questions like, you know, there's a pretty significant change from one year, not even a year, right? where however many months we are away. Um, but I've watched other educational institutions during times of fiscal health uh get a little too eager. And so the goal is not to get eager. The goal is to, you know, stay the course, be strategic, be smart about what we're doing and finding ways in many regards that if there is uh fiscal health to find ways to invest in people as much as possible has

115been what I find to be the most sustainable uh for a variety of reasons both in terms of uh morale, in terms of recruiting significant talent. Um this puts us in a much different position than we were uh a year ago trying to recruit folks if they felt like we were not as in that sound financial health is probably the best way. >> If I can also add I have Emily Ship is on here tonight our business manager and I just want to point out that one of the other aspects that came out in the audit was that our investments did exceptionally well far more than we expected and that's directly attributable to the work that Emily's been doing. Additional questions for this is not we are in budget season y'all. I think I said

116to our board members in December like December meetings are going to be light uh but once the clock turns uh that we are going to have a lot of work to do between now and April uh let alone now and May. So uh there will be a number of opportunities and conversations around the budget process uh both in the committee level uh chaired by uh Dr. Blot as well as at our board meetings. There'll be regular conversations as well. >> All right. There was some expenditure assumptions on the document since we're at any account for the 2025 contract to that's not stated expenditure assumptions. It has teachers contractual salary increases 7% 2026 27 6% 2017. >> We also put in there the retroactive. >> Yeah. If it was assumed in budget when we actually did

117the projections it was assumed as part of this current budget. >> So Oh, so it's not part of the three-year projection. Correct. That's right. That's correct. Right. All right, good folks. If again an ongoing conversation, uh looking forward to us continuing this this dialogue. Thank you to Emily. Thank you to Dr. Lacy. Appreciate uh your time here as well on the website. I would dare say board members uh if your questions aren't answered to reach out. Uh and or if there's an FAQ that you feel would be helpful for folks, please share that. Um, it's a robust FAQ page that really helps folks and we have been trying to continue to build that out as well to get as many answers as possible. Uh, the last thing I'll say before we transition, I had this

118conversation with a couple of board members. Um, and this is no um knock against any of our neighbors or anyone else in the southern tier. Uh but as I was doing some research uh last week, I was realizing the amount of information that we have. And for many people uh that may translate to what some folks think is a lack of transparency in large part because the information is difficult to find. Um but not because it's not there. Uh in fact, there's so much information there that it makes it difficult to find. So if you are having difficulty finding something, reach out and let us know and we can help point you to exactly where it is because uh there is a sizable amount of information to try to get through uh on any topic

119but the budget most specific. >> So thank you both. Appreciate it. >> Pleasure. Thank you. >> Uh we'll move on to our next agenda item. We're good. Keep moving good folks. Uh which is our RFP study and uh we'll invite folks to come join us. I guess I do not know who we have with us. >> And maybe Zach, you'll introduce our friends and yourself to see you have that we'll put up your slides. You have that call from Cornell Cornell professor of public policy. There you go. The Cornell population center. >> Yep. I'm happy to introduce myself as well. welcome or thank you for inviting me here um uh to talk about the work that we've been doing at the Cornell Population Center. As Zach mentioned, I'm Matt Hall, professor of public policy and

120sociology at the Brook School at Cornell and also the director of the Cornell Population Center um and part of uh and and one of our one of the areas of work that we do at the at CPC is in um applied demographics for New York State um through our program on applied demographics. We've been doing this work um for over 40 years. We've been acting as the New York State representative for all population estimates and projections. We've been doing New York State's official population projections over this time period for the state for local areas. Um we have an incredible staff that has been doing doing this work and supporting population planning and policy making for the state for local community for for a long time. Um, we're also we're thrilled to be able to to

121do this work, not only because it builds on our expertise and the stuff that we love to do and getting our hands dirty with data. Um, but also as part of the the uh our commitment from Cornell to to service uh ICSD. Um, there was considerable portions of this work that were done through inind uh contributions um especially through the from the the budget team up at um in day hall. Um, and we're also committee members. I have two kids at ICS and um and uh and you know so these are these are these these questions are are dear at least in my heart but but a lot of the people that work in this project so this works right great so I'll try to be be quick here um there's an accompanying report that

122that goes into our work in much more detail but what I want to do in the presentation this evening is talk a little bit about the enrollment patterns over the last 10 years and then in for the next 10 years and kind I can talk through the details about how we've done that but um I'm trying to keep it focused on kind of the trends and the implications of those trends. We're also going to connect this to um the the the capacity of the the existing uh facility footprint and think about um where there might be opportunities for potential consolidation and then describe some not recommendations but some maybe kind of suggestive scenarios that might be uh considered for for further analysis to further further discussion. So this is the kind of the the main

123executive summary executive findings. One is that the ex and I'll jump into each of these in more detail. The um uh Tomkins County, the ICSD area, in fact New York State, the United States, really all over the world has been going through a pretty significant period of fertility decline. And we're seeing that in the the local area. So there's been a 38% reduction in births in the ICSD area um since uh since 2007. Um and it's been sustained. It's continuing to to to decline. Um the uh the footprint of of of ICSD already has a lot of excess capacity in terms of it. It's its elementary uh schools uh especially the elementary school purposes. there's there's already existing um uh excess capacity. Our projections as you as you'll see that are driven by the fertility

124decline are suggested over the next 10 year 10 years there will be 20 to 27% reductions in enrollment in in ICS. Um and so that's going to drive even further excess capacity um in in the schools. And then we'll talk through a little bit about the potential savings that could be generated through through these patterns. >> Dr. Hall, would you like to go through the entire presentation or have us ask questions as you're going through individuals? >> I'm happy to I work with a lot of economists and they we never get to the first slide. So, so feel free to ask questions as they come up. But um >> so just one question as I'm looking at this, we know that Ithaca is uh any college town is a very transient community, right? And so

125it's not sort of just folks who are born here, but folks who move here or bring their families here as well as I would assume that's and taken into account in these numbers as well. >> Yeah, I'll talk I'll talk about it um in a second if I come back to it and if there's still questions about it, I I can I can elaborate. >> But so here's the here's the trend over the last 10 years. So over the last 10 years there was a pretty significant um reduction. I mean maybe not significant but there was a a meaningful reduction in in in enrollments in ICSD. You can see that there um in the elementary uh schools there were reductions in in all of them with the exception of South Hill. Um and uh so

126so this is the historical trend that we're that we that we are are basing some of our numbers off of the what's been driving this the the existing trend and what's going to drive the trend in the future is this fertility decline that I uh um just described. And so again, this is not unique to to to Ithaca. It's not really unique to anywhere in upstate New York. there's been a steady drops in in fertility and um and and and births um over the last several decades um and they've been kind of continuing to to to kind of levels that the demographers um thought were quite low, very low. Um and so that that's been continuing. there's been there's historically and this is important to to Sean's point there's been a very strong relationship between

127fertility and enrollment trends in in Ithaca. So we can see that for instance that 85 if we look if we look at the number of births in one year and we go forward five years when those kids are going to start kindergarten 85% of those kids appear in the data. Now it's not exactly it's not exactly how the math works but but that it's basically how we're going to to to make that assumption. And so that that is if you track the trend and this is you can see this in the report. If you look if you plot the trend in fertility and plot the number of kindergarteners five years later right over that they're like perfect. They're like just parallel lines right on top of each other. Okay. So that's to say that fertility

128really is the key driver of these trends. Now um you're exactly right. There's a lot of the Ithaca is a transient place. It has a lot of of of migration churn. And we can we see this that um you know something like 20% of of residents in Ithaca move year to year. That's far higher than in neighboring districts and in other areas. The thing is is that and so Ithaca does have a lot of migration but it almost historically we see that it it it counterbalances itself right around right around zero or below zero. That is that Ithaca does have a lot of in migration but has a lot of out migration as well. And in fact it has more out migration than it has in migration. And a a large portion of that in

129migration is from international migrants, international students. And so if there and we can talk more about this when we think about the implications. If there were to be changes in immigration policy that impacted the number of international families, international students, the migration story would be it would it would put negative pressure on these members. Okay. Um and there's there's ways that we can we can see this in some other ways as well. We can look at grade progression ratios, right? So we usually think of that as the the conversion of kids from one grade to the next and that's how we talk typically think about it. But it's all it also picks up migration, right? So if there's if there if there was a if there was you know tended to be a surge of

130students in say second grade or in eighth grade that would be reflected in these these grade progression ratios that were different from one. But if you look at the historical data over time for every school they're all they average like almost exactly one in every break. Now it's not exactly exactly one but it's pretty close to it. Okay. So the point being that migration really isn't what's driving the story, at least from historical patterns. Now migration is the wild card, you know, and we don't know what's going to happen with migration in the future, international migration or big new housing construction that could that could drive uh families here. That's the wild card. But if we're, you know, looking at what is in the future based on what's happened, it's really being driven by by

131fertility change. just for the previous slide. Um do you does your work get into like the why for the percent change over the last 10 years like why such a significant negative change in enrollment at at Cuba Heights versus like a positive at South Hill? >> Yeah, it's it's a it's a great question. It's it's the short the short answer is no. The the the longer answer is that it's hard to get really granular data on these areas, right? So, we don't know. We know how many births there were in Tom Hatkins County. We don't know how many births there were in the Kauga Heights catchment area. Okay. And so, um, uh, it's it's a it's a we can kind of kind of squint and look, um, at at the at the patterns and we

132can see that there's there's like that fertility decline is happening in all of the elementary areas. Um and and the areas where the kind of the numbers are the largest here, Caillou Heights and Field in particular, there is kind of they're looking to even kind of sharper declines in those areas in kind of the data that we do have. So we can't fully answer that question, but that that's part of it. >> Yeah. >> So that's um decline in enrollment, this percentage change. >> Yes. Yes. >> Okay. Decline in enrollment. Then um we as a school district have to give our numbers on a certain day to the state how many enroll. So did we were the numbers the same the period? >> Yeah. >> And then going back to your migration is that just

133international migration or this domestic? >> No, it's both. It's both. And and so you know and uh and again not unique to really upstate New York anywhere. There's most upstate communities have what we call negative net migration. It's just they lose more people than they than you bring in. Um and then international migration really compensates for that. Um okay. So we take the historical data and we run um a a series of projections and these projections the question about crystal balls came up earlier and and it's these aren't crystal balls right but they're kind of windows into the future and and and the idea being is and if things stay the same if if kind of demographic dynamics are stable what will the next 10 years look like right and the nice thing about demographic

134projections is it's actually a very simple science. It's just the way populations change is babies are born, people die, and people move. That's it. That's the way. So, if we know if we if we if we know a couple of those and we can make some assumptions about the others and we can we can have some pretty good confidence about what the numbers are going to look like, again, assuming that doesn't change. And so, we start with the enrollment data that we have by grade. um we draw out the the each year's kindergarten cohort based on those trends in fertility and we do so under two different scenarios. One where we say okay fertility is not can't go any lower. It's already gotten so low that it can't go any lower. We're just going to

135hold it flat with some randomness around it and hold that fix. That's what we call our stable K. You'll see this in the slides here. Stable K projections. and then another one where we're going to let it continue to decline, not totally linearly, but kind of they decline at a reasonable pace. That's our decline case. So, those are our two kind of scenarios that we're assuming that fertility is going to stay the same or it's going to decline even further. Um, and then we're just going to age those cohorts for we're going to age them them forward. Um, and we're going to do so in a way that uses those grade progression ratios. So that's accounting for the the progression between between ages, but importantly it's also accounting for migration and it's accounting for differential

136migration at the different schools at least based on historical patterns. Um and then we're going to allocate um them so that we make that they kind of all count up to the right totals and we're going to run these over a series of simulations um so we can generate uncertainty around them. One thing that we did is that we we tested this model out of sample meaning that we tested it on historical data. So we took the model we developed for the next 10 years. We applied it to the last 10 years using using even older data and you can see in the graph there that it performs very well. Right? That that the the little I know you have to kind of squint to see it but that blue line there that's the actual

137enrollment of ICSD between um 2015 and 2025. And then this the purple and the yellow dotted lines are what the projections what our model would have projected over that that that period. So they they're kind of right in in line of those estimates. So so that's some evidence that that our model works quite well. We think >> before we go on, uh, in education studies, there's a significant conversation about, um, a notable 5 to 8% increase in families that have homeschooled as a result of COVID. And so, we see a pretty significant drop from 2020 to 2022. And so, I'm wondering how I know there's no crystal ball and we can't plan ahead, but we know CO was a significant uh, event. I call the global trauma. Um but do we is there a way

138in which that does the projections take into consideration anything like that that families may there may be the same number of families but are taking other educational options? >> Yeah, we we didn't explicitly um model that that that's that's to some extent built into those grade progression ratios. Um they're going to be that's going to be reflected in there. Um it it's and and and we didn't so we're not modeling out homeschool or other alternative arrangements. Um it's a good question. Um but I think you know the the the >> the sense is that again that would probably put even further downward pressure if if the if the movement is toward more homeschooling other sorts just going to kind of depress these existence a little bit further. >> Thank you. >> Yep. Well, and given

139the um 2020 co and all, I was somewhat surprised that we just went back 10 years and not 15 years to just really get a better look at things. 15 years. >> Yeah. Yeah. We actually have we have the data over a longer period. We're just just trying to >> trying to make it as simple as possible. Yeah. Um Yes. Okay. So these are the result of those projections. The again the blue line here is the observed patterns the historical data from the last 10 years. The green line is or the sorry the orange line is the projection using those if kindergarten if fertility stays the same at this low level. That's the orange line. That's a 20% decline. Um and it's about see it there. It's about a thousand kids. Um and then the

140the green line is the one where we allow fertility to continue to fall and that projects even larger uh decline. Okay, these when we do these projections by school um we see that these declines are happening for the most part um everywhere. Um the exception being Fall Creek is kind of at a stable level. Um but uh um but uh but but all of the other schools have somewhere between kind of modest and and substantial uh projected declines. On the left side is showing you the percent change in enrollment. The right side are showing you the raw numbers. So you can see for instance that heights is expected to drop from 258 students to 180. Enfield is expected to drop from 148 to 101. And and I should emphasize that these are the more optimistic

141of the the the numbers that we present. These are the these are under that stable kindergarten. These are assuming fertility stays where it is today. >> I might just be missing it. Is are we not are we not looking at LACS as well? >> Next question. Yeah. So we we we we do have some LACS pro projections but but because it's not based on um local population like resident populations we are we we those and and they've been largely fixed over time right because my understanding it's based on somewhat of a lottery system or a some sort of and so that there there's a fixed number of slots. We're we're we're assuming that those that LAS stays the same over this entire period. Does that make sense? >> So, LS has a certain number of

142slots and they're almost always over. We control that, right? Yeah. >> Yeah. I guess >> Yeah. >> No. Yeah. My question was probably more relevant in a later slide. So, okay. >> Okay. We can come back to it. Um and so there's a number of implications for this. One of which is that there is um there there is the the the excess capacity that I already mentioned is going to expand because there's going to be fewer students. Okay. So this is the capacity based on the number of classrooms in that um is elementary capacity about 3700 based on the number of classrooms in in the district and an assumption that there would be 18 students per classroom. Okay. And so that's the left side is where the district is currently at a gap here of

143know 1600 students and that is expected to grow over the next 20 or sorry the next 10 years as as um as enrollments decline. Again this is under this stable assumption that capacity is you know different across different elementary schools. Um and um and so what you're seeing here are those excess seats. So the the G the blue bars are the excess seats today. The orange bars are the excess seats 10 years from now. So you can see for instance that Bell Sherman has 204 today excess seats and is projected to have excess seats 10 years from now. BJM has is a bigger facility. Um, and so they have they have more excess seats, but that's also expected uh to go and you can see that they're all for the most part they're all the

144same direction. >> Just I think you probably explained this. I might have just I might just not. So, so essentially at Fall Creek for example, the maximum number of students you can have in building is 206. Is that what I'm trying to >> No. No. At at I'm not I'm not showing you that. I'm not showing these are the maximum number of seats. These are the excess seats that aren't being used. >> Okay. >> So, um yeah, the I don't know what that number is in Fall Creek, but for the for the district that number is 37 3708. >> Okay. And but today only 296 of them are being used. >> Okay. shifting gears a bit to think about operating uh costs operating costs. So so we work working with the budget team at um

145at Cornell and with the data that was provided with us we were able to calculate um operations expenses for each of the facilities and these are showing you that the differences in those those expenses. The point here being though that these expenses are fixed. So this is this is not instructional costs, right? These are fixed operational costs of of running a building regardless of whether you have 80 students or 300 students that those costs for the most part they're fixed. So we we've done a lot of careful work to to to to go through kind of line by line to make sure that we're adding those up those uh up correctly. Um, and that as enrollments decline, the fixed costs stay the same, but then the fixed cost per pupil, you know, search. Okay. >>

146So that's the amount to have lights on, eat a building. >> Exactly. >> Whatever may be clear the snow out, whatever it may be. Exactly. >> That's exactly right. You have a lot of cafeteria, right? And so there's there's fixed costs that that are no matter what the number of students is for the most part, right? within limits um it's going to remain fit too and so again these are all detailed in the report and more in in sense of detail um and there there's kind of components each of these just a quick question before you go on I think it's relevant more to the slide before this how much um do we know how much the data is impacted by open enrollment like I I I believe that Bel Sherman has the greatest number

147of open enrollment students. I could be wrong. That's what I believe. And it looks like, you know, it looks like they're closer to capacity or closer to um total than than the other schools. And so if we were thinking about what this kind of means for and other things. >> Yeah. >> Is that a factor in house? >> It's not something we're able to explicitly bottle here. That that could be that that certainly could be part of that. Um and that's, you know, a reflection of famil family's different preferences. you know, for different schools. >> Absolutely. >> Can we get that? >> Thank you so much. Can >> I ask a quick question about slide nine? >> Uh, is that from anywhere? >> Okay. So, I think it's the next >> this one. >> Yeah.

148Whichever one the one that references the 18 students per classroom. >> Current future elementary. cranky trouble. >> Thank you. >> So 18 students per classroom. Is that an average or does that take into account you know specialized classrooms? >> No. No. So that that's I'm glad you mentioned that we have we have a count of the number of classroom classrooms in each facility. That's just building space, right? that doesn't say anything about you know whether uh you know uh special special uh classrooms for special education for for arts for science for for you know and so these and many of these classrooms are probably being repurposed I mean all of them are probably being repurposed for all sorts of important programming but it's just based on the count that we receive from the district on

149the number of physical rooms within the building classrooms within the building >> and we all I don't want to hear my quick math is the side slide out the right at 2035 between 3708 and 1716 is about 111 classroom spaces if we use that 18 as an average for and I understand you're saying right the reg for a variety of reasons that's uh that caught me that's why >> okay now if you put these pieces together that is you put the op the the the operational cost of the building, you put the projections together, and you make some assumptions about those. And and another thing that we're going to do here is we're going to we're also going to um uh use the the um capital expenses for each uh building. So, the district provided

150us with the estimates from Tetrate Tech um on the capital costs of the facility and we um use all of those pieces. So that's again that's the operational expenses that's the expectation of the annual spend on capital expenses and our what we're assuming here is that those are going to be smoothed over 15 years. So that's a 6.7 annualized uh allocation. Um and then modest instructional staffing savings and by modest these are like 10% of selected cost. They're actually they're they're very modest um by standards of how this work is is is typically done. You put those all together and you get on the left side here you get the potential annual savings by by um through disposition and so you can see that shutting down IA high school for instance would have savings of

151over 10 what's that 102ish million dollars per year. Okay. Now I don't I I doubt that the district is going to shut down the high school. Um but you can see the range in the estimates for per for the other the other schools. So um Bell Sherman has or not Bel Sherman BJM has one of the highest and that reflects a number of factors. It refle reflects the fact that it has a larger building and so it has larger operational costs. It also has I believe the highest capital um uh spent for the for the expenses for the for the entire among the elementary schools. Okay. So it's all of those pieces together that are generating that the number on the left sort and then on the on the right we're we're calculating those on

152a per pupil basis, right? And so that's again projecting it out 10 years from now and saying what is the district spending per student on operating these facilities. And there you can see um a few what I think as a standouts EJM Enfield and Kaunga Heights um being most um kind of clearly indicated here like Enfield being 15,000 what's the correlation between that number and like is part of transportation like I'm cur >> transportation is not included in any it's I mean what's really like Edfield and BJM are actually interesting comparisons because what's driving the high number for BJM are the high facility costs. Yeah. >> Right. What's driving the number for Enfield is the really low enrollments, >> right? >> Um so I should frame my question by saying all of this makes me

153uncomfortable because I'm you know looking at the next slide and I know like while these are ideas not recommendations like we're talking about enrollment and therefore the like you know there's a lot of school closures happening around the state and the country right now. It is weird to me now at this point to not see data for LAS because where's like because now we're we seem to be moving beyond enrollment and into operating expenses. So does that data exist? >> Point we do we we we we can provide that data and we and that was something that I um I don't think I put it listed in here but in the report I call out as being important for future analysis. Okay. And so it's something that I think would be smart for the for

154the district to to look more into. >> Yeah. Not Yeah. Not not putting out a position on that just yet. I just want to >> No, that's that's >> um Okay. And so this all comes together with not a set of recommendations or even a set of suggestions, just some kind of suggestive ideas for how the district might think about planning for the next 10 years. And um there's three um sets of again illustrative scenarios that that um are gleaned from these data that we would advise you think about um as board members and as as administrators and as a community. um uh because of the the the the substantial capacity that is that is already available um and that is going to is going to grow over time. So there's these are organized from

155left to right in terms of the expected annual savings um they're also organized from left to right and probably feasibility of how hard it would be to do one of these changes. Um the first would be to close one elementary school um that is underutilized. Um there's as I just noted there are three candidates that that stand out from from the data based on those expected savings um and field heights and BJM. Um again these are based on all of those factors that we just considered. It's not just driven by enrollment. It's driven by the age of the facilities. It's driven by operational costs, right? And so each of those you might put you might put different weights on those those those considerations. There's also should emphasize that this doesn't consider any all sorts of

156other really important factors around transportation, around uh racial and and economic equity, right? Around um academic integration, um around staffing, right? So there's all sorts of other areas of analysis that would need to go into the next phase of planning, but these might be the building blocks of of of that next stage of the the conversation. So option one, one elementary, option two, close two um elementary schools. again thinking carefully about the implications for that for all sorts of equity considerations for transportation for for um for reasonzoning um and and how that would affect the boundaries of these different areas. And then a third option might be to close three schools which is which is you know the the data suggests possible based on the capacities limits. What we are um noting in in the

157report is that if that third option were to be one that would be um considered that it might be combined with a reconfiguration of the middle school grades that would allow for more flexibility. Right? So again, these estimates, they're not a prediction. They're not the crystal ball. They're just kind of a window into what it might look like. Again, assuming things stay the same. And so that reconfiguration of middle schools and the reconfiguration we're suggesting here is a lower and an upper middle school, a five, six and a seven and eight middle school um would give more flexibility for some of those changes to elementary school level to to to play out. Again, there's all sorts of considerations that would need to be factored into any of these discussions. There's also big educational policy discuss

158discussions or um evaluations about whether that's even the right pedagogical model for for Ithaca for for for um for schools in general. Um but it's potentially you know uh one uh uh outcome that could be um come out of these data. So before we go on just and I understand these are all conjecture right but just throwing things out for consideration if I do some quick math on the first side right adding up nfield and cougah heights and BJM comes to roughly about 5.5 million on the far right says possible annual savings of 6.5 million that so should I assume that reconfiguring middle schools into those two lower would be about a million dollar savings or that or that reconfiguring is conditioned upon the other moving parts that would increase the savings. >> It's that

159it's the matter that that the other moving parts would would create an upper bound. >> Yep. Thank >> y >> I feel like I should understand this, but how how does the reconfiguring of middle schools how how is that supportive? >> Because it would it would reallocate students from all of the schools, right? It wouldn't just impact those schools. There would be implications for all for school. So, so imagine if you have like South Hill, right? And we want to increase the enrollment there because we're getting rid of one or two other middle or elementary schools. You have more capacity if you take all the fifth graders out of there. Now you have more space for, you know, and >> I forgot that our middle schools were not grade five. Thank you. >> Yeah. >>

160So just the the reconfiguration just to be clear of the middle schools is not possible without closing three schools. Is it a >> Oh, no. It's that's not necessarily mutually exclusive. >> So that could we could like we could we move the reconfiguration if we only wanted to close two schools. Could that Okay. >> Yes. You could do it with one school, you could do it with no schools. >> Okay. >> Um >> you may not experience any savings though depending on the way in which the model would work >> depending I guess I'd be curious about that. It's just something that's I've thought in my head is just the uh consolidation of resources by switching that up a little bit thinking about teaching and co-eing models and all the things that come along with

161I I'd be really curious about the breakdown of the figures of just reconfiguration. I would I would love to see a separate breakdown of the reconfiguration of the middle schools because I'm just super curious. Well, I don't think we can see it separately without including transportation too to get a true financial picture of what would happen. Yeah, maybe that's a good segue to my last slide which is all of the additional >> my second to last >> which is to emphasize that there's a lot of additional analysis and work planning to get into this and transportation like you just said Karen is number one on on the list and that is like this a really key um consideration here. it's not going to like there's maybe potent there's I don't think there potential savings there

162but there's certainly uh potential implications. Um but then like I've alluded to earlier the issues around equity and integration are important whenever you're moving children around especially when their students are around when when the schools are so diverse in terms of their populations. um a really a much more detailed space utilization analysis. And so this Sarah, this was related to your question earlier about the actual are the actual number of classrooms that we have. Does that reflect the actual number of spaces that could be used for for for teaching and learning? Um the the the net fiscal model. So there's there's transition there's there's transaction and there's um and there's transition costs associated with any sort of change. So those would have to be built into any sort of real world or projection. And then

163really thinking about the disposition um out uh outcomes. So there might be so different buildings might have different market values for instance that might also be part of this analysis. Um how those spaces might be able to be re repurposed for other for other uses in the community. Um so there's there's a lot of work uh that that would lie ahead. um we'd be happy to help with with some of this. Some of this would would not be the kind of work that that we're able to help with, but um but uh it's you know there's there's hope hopefully it informs uh the decision making forward. >> So and this is my last thank you >> on our um scope of work work. We also requested the non-school buildings to assess that those need to

164sell them out for what's >> identify any of our facilities that may no longer run the district's long-term goals as well as um yeah conduct the thorough review of the district's properties including all the facilities infrastructure. So I didn't see any of that here. Our scope changed midway. >> Does that data exist? >> Uh well I we have so we have for instance but that's not included here. Um uh we we did not receive data from the district on on all the other ones. Is there still an opportunity to do that? I mean, was that factored into the budget for, you know, the scope? >> Uh, we could probably, you know, do it if the data was provided. >> That's the case. We got should do it right. We want to say what is the

165value of DM? I think it should be some regardless of some of the other assets. So, I'd like to know that information. ask for that additional questions while we have Dr. Hall here. Uh I imagine it's going to take the board a little bit of time to obviously digest the information, go through the full study as well. uh would there be an opportunity to invite you and or some member of your team back to either a finance or facilities committee or another board meeting at some point times as we're thinking and if we do have additional questions um I think we should hold off or share them together and send them over as a as a document as opposed to individual questions if that makes sense so we're not peacemealing it because I imagine if

166you a board member has if one board member has a question I'm for other board members probably are interested in that same information as well. So find a way to to coate those and um either get them to Dr. Brown or to to Garrett to go from from there. That seemed like a a good next step, board colleagues. >> Yes. >> So first, thank you uh to you and your your team. Uh thank you for uh answering all of our questions. Uh and I'm sure we're going to have much more. greatly appreciate it and we look forward to leaving the the fuller document and having some uh conversations. Uh I want to stress to our community that this was information purposes only that that was the that was the intent was to better understand state

167of our demographics and our enrollment and what things look like. There was no other intent beyond that at this point in time. So I just want to make sure that folks are clear the board is not moving in any direction other than just information gathering and proceeding from there. >> Fantastic. Thank you. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Uh board members, it is 8:13. All we have is a couple of policies before possibly entering into exec session. Do you want to continue through and then go into exe? Do we need to take a break? How would you like to proceed good folks? >> Yes. >> Fantastic. Agenda item uh I scratched out 9.3 policy 5605 student voter registration and pre-registration. Again, this is for a second reading and adoption. If

168you look at the document, uh Jacob had a asked a question, the same question that the policy committee had as well. There is some new language that has been added. Uh that was a conversation uh Emily and I had a conversation with um our legal team BSNK. Uh and this isn't the exact recommendation that they had, but this satisfies the recommendation that they had uh that's listed there. So um additional well one we should probably move it and then see if we have any questions or dialogue. So we'll entertain motions. Motion to approve policy 5605, students voter registration and pre-registration for first reading. >> Second reading. >> Sorry, second reading. That's what I thought. >> Second. >> Moved by uh Aaron, second by Jacob. Uh questions, comments should also add that uh Dan, Emily, uh

169and Meline worked with various folks to help put this together. conversations with both folks at LACS uh and at the high school. I believe Mary was a part of those conversations as well. Uh so um our goal is to amplify what the both schools are doing to get as many schools register as many students register to vote as possible. >> Thanks for the work and thanks for checking with me. >> Any questions, comments? Hearing none, we'll call the question. All in favor? That is unanimous. Fantastic. Uh the next three policies are for deletion. Uh policy 53114.4 damage to property is up for a second reading and deletion this evening. We will entertain motions. >> Motion to approve policy 5311.4 damage to property orderly by >> moved by Eric. Second by Jacob. Any uh questions, conversation,

170debate, discussion? Fantastic. Hearing none before call. All in favor? That is unanimous as well. Uh agenda item 9.5 uh policy 5250 student activities for deletion. >> I move to approve policy 5250 student activities for deletion. >> Second. Moved by Aren any discussion, debate, questions. Hearing none. All in favor? That is unanimous as well. Uh and then policy 5601-P procedures for school lunch for deletion. >> I move to approve policy 5601-T, procedures for school lunches for deletion. >> Moved by Aaron, second by Jacob. I will say uh this is attached to policy 5601 which is for school lunches. Uh and we did have uh Beth come join us have a conversation. We'll have that policy ready for the board for uh a rewrite approval at our next meeting. Uh and we learned some very interesting things

171about our school lunch program that we'll be uh looking forward to sharing with our board members. This procedure was specifically designed for DIT and Buon Middle School. It was also passed in 1979 and that's why this one is up for this. Any additional questions, conversation call the question. All in favor? Fantastic. Pass unanimously. And then our last agenda item for this evening is a conversation about the cell phone policy. In particular, I know a couple of board members were looking for some data points and we wanted to have a public space where those data points could be asked for andor any other additional conversation that goes along with our cell phone policy and we will open the floor. >> Um, yeah. So, I had I think you had I I I can speak to mine.

172I was curious to see data by school um the way at Boon LACS the high school. I'm curious for us to see sort of like a survey with quantitative and qualitative information from like principles, teachers, students, families on like to what degree the ban is being implemented, what's working, what needs improvement. Um disciplinary data on infractions. So like about just overall what is it and how is it being gathered um and propose next steps um to build on what's working this year and if that's what's not. I know especially from a schoolboard perspective in terms of the pol the policy and um when we're visiting and whatever date the term we visit like making sure we have information in advance of that date to inform whether the policy continues as is revised out of it

173to support the working schools. So I'm curious about those things. I'm not sure how my colleagues feel about that data request or how this works in terms of us requesting. >> I I was trying to find a policy and put itself student devices but um we did say that we're reviewing it. At what time frame are we reviewing all of this information? Uh part of the reason of putting it on as discussion is to give uh folks time to gather that data. Uh we are not yet at midyear. It's coming up quick. Uh and so it seems like a natural time with the half year point to have some sort of conversation but also um as I was reminding folks uh to not to give our team time to be able to gather some of

174this data be it sort of both anecdotal as well as uh some uh quantitative and qualitative. >> Yeah, I I agree um with the data request. I'm most interested in just uh getting the data from school tool. That's not something that was included in the original um presentation or sharing that shortly after um implementation. But the agreement which there was going to be all of these whatever you not to call them um actions or consequences or supports um in that step process were going to be captured uh in school to see that data. in that >> uh just to provide context uh I am probably going to be the me I don't know if I'm the one I am a dissenting voice in this area I am less interested in the data in particular I'm

175much less interested in disciplinary data because for me I wonder where that disciplinary data goes to what is the end result what is the and uh I'm much more interested in hearing uh from folks in schools teachers administrators, uh, students about their thoughts about how things are about for me as one board member and only one board member. Um, that is much the much more important data for me um than it is if we're checking than the disciplinary data. get one board member. And I'll just build off of that to say that the reason that I'm not data because of all the anecdotal feedback that I'm getting from uh teachers especially that uh this caused me a little bit of curiosity and concern about um the supports that they are getting from um administration and

176how many things are actually kind of like following the step-by-step process that that Mary and Carrie took a lot of um put a lot of effort and time to creating so less about are we holding kids accountable or more about are we um providing supports especially to teachers when they when I'm hearing stories of teachers just kind of giving up again which I I just hope is is a small selection of them but would love to know more about them. So some of this data we have in writing. Um as board members we have some of the data requests in writing. We wanted to make sure I think the request was for a public discussion so it is on record as well. Uh I don't know when we'll come back to it but probably sometime

177in February again if we're going to use the halfyear point as a marker and then giving a week or two for folks to be able to gather data. So can we tenatively agree that we'll come back to this uh the second meeting in February? um seems to be an appropriate time to give people time to to do that and also I imagine some things will be taking place at that point you know so movement we have it if we ask for data then movement tends to take place as well so is that agreeable to board members >> well according to the policy it should be march in March that I found policy that um the superintendent shall monitor the implementation and report outcomes to the board annual in March 2026. >> I have shocked me

178for that and policy and I should know better. >> I have not. >> Well then follow the policy. >> Dr. Brown, >> thank you for asking. Um because I have been thinking about this and I knew of that in the policy and I have been thinking about a month presentation on the layers of data just just now there are layers of data and uh the anecdotal information um the quantitative information we capture in schools the survey information and I would caution us around how we if we would present survey data at this first iteration because just today I've heard of four different requests for surveys to go out and and this school district particularly there is survey fatigue and so if putting out yet another survey I am wondering about the validity of the results

179and or if we capture the questions we wish to ask and the data we wish to capture in the survey we add that on to the survey that we already that we're planning to do anyway in April which is our annual survey so I will continue to massage the survey piece of this but the other data points I've heard including the anecdotal which I know the position I hold I don't hear all of the aneotal information but I have not heard that But I am going to interrogate it. Um what does that mean? Um so there's anecdotal and there's complicated information around discipline that we can pull and we were preparing to do that in March anyway. But if if the board wishes for us to well you make the agenda if you put it

180on in February we will be doing it in February. >> That's my challenge March. Briefly regarding the surveys, I guess I both understand survey fatigue and I I just I think about like I I would be very curious to know like from the principles even if it's something like yes no do you see the policy as adequate and what's working what's not or similarly like a one question survey like via like a teacher list or like >> again I cautions were around the art and the science of survey administration and just then you mentioned a bunch of qualitative information that we would gather and I thought I was hearing quantitative so again to develop a survey takes some time and when it is administered who's going to take it how that's something we need to

181think about significantly and I'm know I know that it would be hard to turn that around before February definitely in March it's possible but the science we would have to spend some time thinking about um and I heard quite a bit just now about what you want who's been asked in a survey. >> So beyond the clear challenge to meet Dr. Brown uh um partly what I'm hearing is that we have uh board members who are hearing various things and are curious about the I would dare say not necessarily the policy but the implementation of the policy and how uh students are experiencing it, how teachers are experiencing, how administrators, how teacher aids, how a whole number of folks are experiencing it. And so if the policy states that this would be taking place in

182March, then we will follow the policy. But in the meantime, uh those additional conversations will be helpful as well. So there may be a way for us to engage in additional conversations uh that begin to hint towards some of the things that were asked for. Um and then we'll put some of this in writing. We already have some in writing, but I'll try to consolidate it and uh see what we can look for as as much as possible. Um I would also say to the community and I know my board colleagues are aware of this as well. Um that this is a significant culture shift and um I appreciated a prior uh central office administrator who would say that this is not year one of the cell phone ban but year zero of the cell

183phone ban. So, we're just beginning it and we're going to learn a great deal and for us to figure out what we learn and take from that and that's what I think I'm hearing is what are we learning and what may need to be changed and that may not be something that's ready by February for policy. I'll get back with board members and we'll right now we'll plan for March with some other things that may happen in these is that good by you Dr. Brown members is that is that okay? I just want to suggest also that one of the reasons that surveys keep coming back is because of the the students have mentioned them as well and been really supportive and helpful in doing them. So I think as Maline and I were talking

184about right before this meeting about really empowering them to take on some leadership roles and help us really get some great information, maybe a collaboration with them so that they're not sending out a ton of them as well and maybe building some of those into one would be great. And I also just want to acknowledge that similar to what Julian had said, I have seen emails come out from both the principal at LACS and IHS recently that was laying out very clearly and kind of reiterating expectations and I would say um being more explicit about what the kind of consequences or whatever you want to call them are. And so I've really appreciated seeing that and clearly they're already taking steps to help help move things forward and strengthen them. >> Yes. agree as the

185parent of a high schooler. I I really appreciated the email from Miss Arnold right um before break or after break. Um I'm curious just to throw up one more thing like it's not a push just another consideration like because outside of surveys right there's also like regular meetings with principles regular meetings with teachers like if there is a five minute like I I think like I'm I I I guess for me personally as an individual board member I'm curious about the quantitative in a very general sense of do we feel it's working or not and the qualitative is more in terms of what as of like what as a board can we do to support you know orally like to support so I just wanted to throw that out there slightly different approach else you

186may imagine I would I'm not sure that the board has much to do by way of unless we're rewriting the policy that would be what we considering otherwise it's about implementation and we hold uh Dr. rather compliment you. >> Fantastic. Uh we have other business in a couple of meetings as well. There's a facilities committee meeting, finance facilities next week. Uh >> this week that's on Thursday. >> That's right. That's correct. That's what I didn't say. Um and then on January uh 27th, we have a curriculum committee meeting that and then another board meeting you'll see here. Um any other discussion items board members? >> Um fantastic. Then we will entertain motions for executive session. >> Motion to enter into executive session >> for the purpose of discussing negotiations between the city school district and

187the teachers association to discuss the performance and evaluation of confidential non-managerial employees and to discuss grant litigation regarding the seat. Second. >> This is all food related. I just want to get all all in favor. Uh before we are you in favor? Uh unanimous. Uh there is one more voting u item on the agenda. So the board will go into executive session. We will come back into public session for that one voting uh m matter and then we will uh end the meeting after there. I just want to make that clear. What do we think? >> So, yeah, literally still be >> I actually have to position myself. >> No, no, you're good. Everyone's good. Everyone is good now. I don't have the language in front of me. Does anyone have the language in front

188of me? >> I move the personal report as presented. >> Second. >> I don't think I'm allowed to make motions. >> I move to personnel report as >> second. >> Moved by Jacob, second by Emily. >> Debate, discussion, conversation, questions. All in favor? Yeah. >> Do you have the people who are in your room? >> I do. >> We're missing Todd and Garrick. >> and Adam. >> All right. >> Okay. >> Fantastic. The meeting has a good evening. >> See you guys. >> I think I'm joking. >> All right. Take some Mary's