February 26, 2022 KLSD BOE Meeting

001good morning welcome everybody thank you so much for being here with us on saturday morning we really appreciate it we are looking forward to an opportunity to revisit the proposed budget it's my pleasure to make a motion to enter into public session thank you catherine for seconding all in favor please say aye 6-0 thank you and would everybody please join us in the pledge of allegiance liberty and justice terrific thank you i know many of you were with us on thursday night we really appreciate your time here in the meeting and all of the time and care that's gone into developing the proposed budget and thursday night we had the opportunity for a high level overview and we started with a more detailed line-by-line analysis of the proposed budget for about 12 or 14 pages

002and this morning we will pick up where we left off and i think we're going to start with curriculum development and supervision but i don't know if you had anything you wanted to say first andre no i think we as you say we're going to dive right in and go line by line we probably want to decide in advance we usually go a few pages at a time we ask our board trustees to maybe take notes on any things you might have questions about and then we'll pause we'll take a pause at that point you can ask questions about any of those pages but at any time if you have questions about anything please you know make a note and don't hesitate if we need to go back we're happy to do that and then

003usually our practices we go through the detail in the morning if you have clarifying questions or any of that sort of question we're happy to do our best to answer them and then in the afternoon we think about kind of broader questions that you might have that then we would take time to go back and revisit at a later date if necessary so with that i think we're going to dive right in mary to your pages great thank you so good morning everyone good morning and before i begin i'd like to express my gratitude to the board for the opportunity to present this part of the budget i'd also like to thank my colleagues fellow cabinet members principals assistant principals directors assistant directors all who've worked collaboratively for the last few months on the budget

004it really is a dream a team effort and i'm grateful to work with such dedicated colleagues so the blue pages that i'll be reviewing this morning represent more than 61 million dollars of our budget these pages focus on some of the main budget drivers that we discussed on thursday night the school program enrollment in class size and professional learning the overarching focus of the budget is to provide an experience for a student that's aligned to the learning commitment and pays particular attention to our three focus areas diversity equity and inclusion social emotional learning and sustainability our goals for this work include curriculum that's aligned to the most updated standards instruction that's active relevant and intellectually engaging professional learning experiences for faculty and administration that are relevant reflect the most recent research on adult learning and

005provide teachers with ongoing opportunities to enhance their craft and class sizes that support a responsive student-centered approach to instruction so as andrew mentioned as we did on thursday night we'll stop periodically as i review the pages and then after we finish the budget we can spend time on some of your bigger picture questions and topics so the first four pages will review identify some of the costs associated with salaries and other compensation for the members of the department of curriculum and instruction building administrators directors and clerical staff as well as stipends for our innovation grant cohort and costs associated with in-service courses we'll take a look at page one so page one of the blue pages represents the costs associated with the office of curriculum the overall proposed budget for these codes for the upcoming

006school year is one million one hundred eighty four thousand five hundred ninety four dollars which represents an increase of about one hundred sixty eight thousand dollars closer to 169 actually the funds in these codes are used for the salary of the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction the salary for one clerical person and half of the salaries for five staff developer positions in this budget staff development positions are budgeted in these codes as well as codes on blue page four in these codes are funds for anticipated hourly curriculum development to compensate teachers for summer and after school work in the coming year this has been an area where the board supported growth in recent years and has allowed us to support ongoing teacher collaboration on the bottom of the page you'll see there are funds

007designated for contract services so in addition to other contracts the increase in this line is to provide greater opportunity to work with consultants specifically those with expertise in equity and culturally responsive teaching practices you'll also see an increase in our boces fees which include participation in the region's curriculum center and some specialized professional development we've included funds on this consultant workshop line to support ongoing partnerships with facing history and ourselves the bard institute for writing and thinking and teachers college reading and writing project for some k-8 literacy work we'll also be using funds in these codes to support us as we update the elementary science curriculum provide continued training on early reading instruction and interventions and to support ongoing professional learning around social and emotional wellness as well as the thoughtful and deliberate use of

008instructional technology to enhance pedagogy in our classrooms k-12 so page two this represents the costs associated with the supervision of each of our schools and departments including administrators and clerical support building and department administrators play a key role in supporting and supervising staff and students so the overall proposed budget for these codes in the upcoming school year is 5 million eight hundred forty four dollars an overall increase of five hundred seventy one thousand four hundred fifty two dollars in addition to salaries these codes include contract service expenses including funds for the cost of a full-time school resource officer position and greeters most of the other contract service items in these codes are at the secondary schools for programs like high school awards breakfast and graduation which we hope will all be in person celebrations in

009the future we've also have some conference and travel funds and funds for general office supplies and we move to page three page three represents the continued funding for the third cohort of the innovation grant recipients with your approval next year will be year two of our third cohort of innovators this funding represents a small decrease of five hundred dollars from the current school year and then we move on to page four so page four represents the cost associated with in-service training and professional development the overall proposed budget for these codes is eight 670 sixty three dollars an increase of about eighty one thousand dollars on the top half of the page are a portion of the funds for the five staff developer positions that i referenced on page one this represents the other half of

010their salaries there are also funds for professional development for teachers teaching assistants and other support staff we work with teams at both the building and district level in making decisions about what professional learning is needed we anticipate supporting faculty in the areas of culturally responsive teaching practices reading and writing instruction new science standards and science instruction at the elementary level and new computer science and digital fluency standards k-12 in addition we will support ongoing work on performance-based assessments instructional technology and social emotional learning we're planning enhanced opportunities for teachers to integrate sustainability in their curriculum as well on the bottom of the page are funds for travel and conference as well as the consultants who come into the district to provide professional development for staff both of which are increased in this budget these increases

011are focused on enhancing the work on our three focus areas dei work social emotional wellness and sustainability so i'll stop there see if anyone has any clarifying questions on the first four pages great thank you covers a lot of ground already sure thank you can you tell me a little bit more about um twenty ten four ninety ten so the first page each one as well as the top of the second page significant increases so a little bit more detailed what's what's what's inside of that yes so the the work that we intend to do with diversity equity and inclusion in particular we've wanted to focus much more on that so it's a combination of places where we would contract with different consultants because when we think about that work we're thinking about the different

012types of professional learning that need to happen some is very broad and you know it's appropriate for everyone to have something very similar and in other cases it's very much directed towards a specific department or group of teachers who might be further along in their learning perhaps or administrators so they're different types so that's where the other part of that particular code on page one we also um have some science work that goes on there so we at the elementary level we've been piloting two programs this year um one is amplify science and one is science 21 so the science 21 is through boces and the professional learning comes through that code that's a significant increase from prior years okay and so that was on page one and can i can i jump in with

013a follow-up question for that code sure um i was just curious sort of what the difference is between the contract services and the boces consultant workshops and why i guess one question is is when we consult with boces is it a different cost or is there any reimbursement associated with it yeah so so all both all boces um is coded at 490. so you'll see any boces expense throughout the budget as a 490. and boces does assist us with maximizing our state aid they're also a great resource because they have a larger purchasing power and larger networks um so we do work with them quite a bit and mary i think you we're going to say something as well i don't know just that some of the the contracts will run through boces because we

014have coasters um very specific to some of the literacy work so it's not only when boces is running a workshop it's when you know several districts are working together and they can kind of maximize the efficiency and help us to get some state aid we'll run the contracts through boces and we also do cross contracts with other boces not just our own local boces thank you there's also i think there's connection here with a question that was asked the other night about whether we're overly relying on an increase in state aid in our budget increase and whether we're setting ourselves up for the future so when we put money into consultant lines or contract services lines those are places that don't have to be recurring costs rather than putting them into positions which could set

015us up for uh more difficulty down the road right the idea being that the consultants impart the knowledge and then we become expert in new areas and and can work with our staff yeah yeah it doesn't have it's not necessarily ongoing for many years right and i really appreciated the the framing just now mary of that these are areas that you've continually talked about and presented that are a priority and sort of support the learning commitment and then recognizing where we need to learn and grow more and then investing in that so that we can actually affect that so it's nice to see that reflected in the budget thank you and then the top of page two there was increases in directors principals assistant principals so the first line the director position that's where um

016any new administrative positions are coded so you'll see an increase there and then principal and assistant principles those are um based on projected uh uh negotiations and contracts okay so the first one is is that where the special ed administrator that's where we put that yeah okay okay okay is that the only is that the only administration increase that that's or are there others embedded there are others embedded in there they're contractual increases contractual contractual increase that's one position and then the contractual increases of the existing yeah staff right correct yes sorry those existing contracts are projected contracts um with those uh those employees are projected contracts and then the same is true in the second line item there i know we're engaging new aps but they're not additional aps because that's more contractual or

017sort of new higher obligations that that additional 145 okay any other questions on those pages no you mentioned the sro is the sro somewhere on those three items where where would that fall yes sro 20 2410 2020 no 410 contractual services no no no no uh yeah was a contractual service yes page two oh i see it's 20 20 400 contractions we've got you know so the sro is a town employee so we contract out with yeah that's a full time so that's a full-time position so there's been some discussion around that this year that yeah full-time position last year we had a our position there we've expanded that now for a full-time sro yeah yeah in the high school serving the whole distributing the whole district thank you are the roles is the role

018or are the set of is the set of responsibilities envisioned to be the same or somehow different that's something we'll you know we'll work through that with the town but yeah we do we envision that to be while primarily housed at the high school we'd like to see it servicing all the schools and we've we've begun those conversations with the town and the reality is that even though we had a part-time budget line item we actually had more than part-time person they spent more time in the school district really essentially than we paid for right so i'm not sure that we're going to see a lot of additional sro activity are we by virtue of the fact that i think we increase the budget i think we do expect to see some change in the

019practice that's good okay yeah okay thank you thank you sure so we'll move on to pages five through nine so when we look at the next five pages we'll see most of the staffing costs for our five schools and these five pages total more than 29 million dollars there's a decrease of one million one hundred thirty seven thousand six hundred ninety four dollars from the current school year this is based on enrollment projections prior spending different configurations of leadership positions at elementary we see a slightly decreased cost at four of our schools with the exception of increase miller where there's an increase based on increased sections so if we just take a look at pages five through seven this represents the cost associated with staffing in our elementary schools so in total the k5 staffing

020is projected to cost approximately 12 thousand three hundred six i'm sorry twelve million three hundred sixty four thousand three and fifty three dollars next year which is approximately 711 296 dollars less than the current year the actual expenses and other variations on each page have to do with step increases lane changes and retirements based on current staff assignments they do vary each year and we continue to present a superintendent's budget which includes funding for a developmentally appropriate elementary program including full-day kindergarten art music physical education library and rti support for students in k through 5. these funds also include stipends for curriculum leader positions in the elementary building so we reviewed staffing in projected class ranges class size ranges on thursday night so we may revisit that later this afternoon if the board wishes to

021discuss any particular sections for kindergarten as we mentioned our district-wide enrollment is projected to be 207 students based on our preschool census and the information we have on registration to date however the numbers continue to fluctuate for a few months as parents decide about their children's readiness for kindergarten our october 21 enrollment was 204 kindergarten students so we're projecting just a slight increase and as you know that's 10 sections as for the other grades we have the same number of sections overall although there is a decrease at katona elementary school and then a corresponding increase at increased miller so we'll continue to monitor those enrollments through the summer and as you know we have four contingency positions that are available district-wide to support any changes in enrollment that may occur mary those contingency positions how

022did we how do we allocate those on the budget are they on a particular line item are they split across the various schools or so the four are we put one at each elementary school within the budget and then split one between the middle and high school there's four total three at each elementary and half and half we did something similar last year so that wouldn't cause much of a variance year over year right it's not driving any of that increase or decrease if you more or less the same expense to the district because we did the same thing last year right unless we did we we didn't use any of the contingency if we've used the contingency positions we might have transferred for something i mean budget to budget though yeah four positions yeah

023thank you actually speaking of how how are the contingency positions used this year we have that information on i don't have that information right i think also i'm not sure but if we can also touch on the enl increase here because we budgeted for 3.6 ftes for enl but it looks like we're actually utilizing 5.0 ftes already in the current year so although it might not be the manner in which we've envisioned the contingency dollars being allocated maybe it's actually appropriate to say that one point or uh fte is was was enabled we were able to be able to fund that position because we had put those contingency positions there and i know we've heard it mentioned that our enl population has doubled can you provide you know approximately a number for how many enrolled

024students we have who are we're close to 70 right now thank you yeah thank you so that is is a big change district-wide yes i think when i started here it was high 30s yeah so we have five now in the budget we had 3.6 for this year so we had increased that and that was part of the contingency that was used we also had a staffing change resignation so we have four out of our five enl teachers are relatively new to the district okay and so does each elementary have its own dedicated full-time enl teacher now katona elementary and increase miller do have one full-time dedicated person meadow pond has a smaller population so they have some shared staff there the high school has a dedicated person and the middle school as of now

025we just had some very recent changes so we will have one person dedicated to the middle school as well thank you other questions on five to seven and i just um the increase in the increase in the current budget for the salaries the monitors and aids i assume is related to covid classroom supervision um with some of the splits of the classrooms having to be in two rooms in that budget year last year last year's when we budgeted it so they're going down because obviously we're not right budgeting for that i'm assuming that's the swing up and then the swing back down is related to that is that correct okay great thank you okay so we'll take a look at um pages eight and nine for our secondary schools wait did you did we cover

026i'm sorry do we cover six and seven yeah five six and seven and three okay yeah thank you thank you sure so um pages eight and nine is the 6-12 staffing which is projected to be sixteen million nine hundred thirty six thousand nine hundred twenty six dollars next year which is four hundred twenty six thousand three hundred ninety seven dollars less than this year much like elementary there are annual variations due to shared staff and assignment changes so page 8 specifically represents the costs associated with staffing at the middle school the overall proposed budget for middle school staffing is 7 million one hundred forty three thousand five hundred ninety eight dollars a decrease of about two hundred thirty eight thousand dollars so the middle school as you know from thursday night will experience an overall

027decrease of about 19 students next year with a decrease of two sections in grade six and some decrease in grade eight but an increase in grade seven so this proposal includes teaming in grades six and seven world language health physical education music art tech ed family consumer science and rti support we've also included funds for both middle school team and curriculum leader stipends on this page then if we take a look at page nine of the document we see the costs associated with john jay high school and the overall proposed budget there in the upcoming school year is nine million seven hundred ninety three thousand three hundred twenty eight dollars which is a decrease of a little over one hundred eighty eight thousand dollars the funds here pay the salaries for all monitors substitute teachers

028and high school teachers as well as high school curriculum leader stipends the high school will also experience fractional additions or reductions in different subject areas based on their master scheduling process so the 10th grade next year is predicted to be higher than the current cohort while 9th 11th and 12th grades are predicted to be lower the overall enrollment at the high school is predicted to be down by about 64 students i'll stop there for any questions on eight or nine so this is a very specific question that maybe you won't have an answer right away but um in the high school the substitute teacher line went up significantly and we're maintaining that but in the other schools the substitute teacher line is pretty consistent across the last three years is there um like do you

029is there what's the reason for that is it interesting you know at the high school many times teachers will take over an assignment for a period to substitute which actually costs more than what we'd pay for a substitute for the day but as you know and i think we've mentioned it meetings before it's been very difficult more difficult since covid began to find substitute teachers so it's actually a help which isn't possible at the elementary schools for teachers to do that right right because they're in their classroom the whole day so they don't have that okay any other questions from those too we'll move on to page 10. so page 10 represents costs associated with certain district-wide curriculum leader and liaison positions the overall proposed budget for these codes for the upcoming school year is

030one hundred nine thousand five hundred twelve dollars which is a significant increase of seventy six thousand eight hundred fifteen dollars that's due to the changes in the types of leadership positions included in the most recent kldta contract so in our new agreement we increased the number of positions and made stipends more equitable across levels and then other grade level and department stipends for curriculum leaders are included in the codes for the appropriate buildings as mentioned earlier so you know kind of big picture of this some of the elementary positions we have something called grade level representatives now so if you're for example meadow pond fifth grade there's one person who's the representative for that grade level that's in the meadow pond codes but we also have district-wide positions for k2 ela k2 math same for

0313-5 ela and math and then we have the curriculum integration positions that we've also added so all of those are stipends would be included here and that's why that's so much more significant and the grade level representative positions the stipend is less which is in accordance with their responsibilities mary overall how has that change worked out are we seeing benefits from the additional curriculum leader positions and the sort of change in that structure over the last year yeah it's well it really you know we kind of had a late start and you know we just really did the training and everything in october they really got started in their positions in november right so it is early to say but i will say that at elementary we've seen an increase in the number of grade

032level representatives um so that was helpful we still have a few positions that were not filled through the new process so our hope is that we'll you know put out applications again and have all of the positions filled um this year so it's been a nice opportunity we've only had a few chances to meet together but for example at a curriculum council meeting district-wide we had one in january we had you know let's say the curriculum leaders for math k2 3 5 6 8 9 12 getting together and they were all discussing at that particular meeting our focus area of um diversity equity and inclusion how it's been embedded in addition to the liaisons and the representative the curriculum integration leaders as well and then we anticipate doing that in the next two meetings their

033curriculum council meetings sometimes they are led by stephen and jeff at their buildings and sometimes we all get together as a district i think those district-wide opportunities really give us a chance to look at things more holistically and take a more systemic approach to curriculum right so it's been working but it is early stage yes so so far so good okay yeah thank you so we'll move to page 11. so this page represents the costs associated with instructional equipment and that overall proposed budget is one hundred eleven thousand twenty dollars which is an increase of about thirty eight thousand dollars and the funds in this code are used for needed equipment especially in physical education art music and science in this coming school year the increase is mostly related to an increase in the purchase

034of large musical instruments to be housed at school so students no longer need to carry them on the bus um there's actually been a lot of conversation about that is a tuba player so i can relate so and then there are also some funds in there for new treadmills bikes and other exercise equipment there are also funds for 3d printer a photo studio printer replacement some flexible furniture and science equipment for the high school so that's anything that's over one thousand dollars has to be in that account just on that i know we uh the the musical instrument topic it's not just about the convenience there's some compliance issues i believe around state regulations around what the size of things that can fill the aisles et cetera on school buses so good so take a

035look at page 12. and so that page represents costs associated with contractual services and repairs and that overall proposed budget is sixty six thousand six hundred eighty three dollars an increase of ten thousand two hundred eighty dollars um the funds that are in this code allow student participation in academic competitions including science olympiad and robotics competitions as well as to maintain microscopes and district owned instruments we've also included you'll see some increased funding there at the high school for curriculum retreats and possible consultants as we revise our student leadership program so any questions on pages 10 through 12. mary could you talk a little more about the student leadership program that that's being invested in sure the peer group yes peer group oh yeah so um you know that's been an ongoing program and obviously

036through covid you know had some changes and challenges as mostly everything did but we've been working closely steven and the high school team as well as the teachers who've been leading this work have been working to revise the program we're also hearing a lot of student feedback on the program and what works we had a visioning session back in november with diane cunningham i know she's spoken to the board before to kind of help us vision what it means and think about leadership especially in terms of our focus areas you know and the students were actually very concerned with matters having to do with equity and inclusion sustainability um you know their overall well-being so you know there have been some challenges this year and we're looking to improve and increase them for next year

037and give more opportunity to more students we've been researching different curriculum so it's it's an ongoing it's kind of in process but the hope is to provide more experiences for students to become leaders to learn about leadership and more opportunity for students to interact with one another this year we had a freshman retreat that was very successful early in september so we hope to do more with that program in the coming year mary one follow-up question and stephen might be better for this did 10th graders and 11th graders have an opportunity to apply to be a leader for next year yes and i believe stephen that's uh in april we're planning to have the students apply sorry maybe just good morning thank you game plan is to meet with all the students who have signed

038up for this and wanted the the opportunity so we're looking at a rolling out in april and trying to set the stage for what to expect over the summer and then what is to happen in september so i think right now the current planning is that we want to do a number of conference days we're all student leaders and it's not just those who applied it's team captains it's those who are in clubs to bring them all together for these intensive long day workshops to get some leadership theory and mainly we want to do is to set up the activities that are happening in the high school that they are run by students so i think those are the things that we're still fleshing out thank you thank you and i'm sorry which line item

039is that on is that is that 21 21 10 401 page 12. is that 10 000. yeah that's the jump there ten thousand dollars any other questions on those pages okay so we'll move to page 13. page 13 represents costs associated with travel within the district for employees work in multiple buildings and the mileage reimbursement we're required to provide staff members who travel to conferences as part of their job responsibilities it also includes travel associated with participation in nisma music competitions and the overall proposed budget for those codes is six thousand six hundred dollars which is an increase of a thousand dollars and that reflects realistic expenditures for the 22-23 school year based on the analysis of prior years and the presumption of some increased travel and clearly covert seriously impacted that right so when

040i look back at those 2019 2020 numbers they're kind of irrelevant right i mean yeah the 1920 school year we had some of the school year obviously but last school year there was very little travel obviously shared staff is an exception people were still traveling across the district but that's much smaller numbers typically yeah it just looks odd right because it's a downward trend on actuals but an upward trend on budget substantially different from actual it looks like yes but i but i get it thanks and then we move to page 14. um that represents the costs associated with some specialized boces services um the overall proposed budget for those codes is 296 820 which is an increase of based upon past usage and anticipated need so those codes include funds for alternative and distance

041education environmental education and arts and education all of which support a number of programs and assemblies for our schools this would be another covet impacted area i would think right absolutely yeah does that account for the increase at least it accounts for the very low actual numbers but the lower than we would have expected actual numbers this uh past year yeah yeah we would assume that would go back to something closer but also knowing that everything is costing more so you know all of our contracts and services have anticipated increases yeah i think if i remember the arts and education line for example supports student performances correct which weren't happening you know to the usual degree in the year in the co in the cover years and they recently expanded their program to include not

042only environmental education but a science component to that overall budget line it's okay we'll move on to page 15. please we should say that on the benefits section it's not it's not clear that that line item is related to student performance which i think we would all be in favor of supporting but it really isn't clear what that 245 is i just don't know whether that's worth commenting that and the left hand column if we should we should say something specific to that thank you so page 15 represents the costs associated with nearly all of the instructional supplies in the district the overall proposed budget for these codes is six hundred nineteen thousand one hundred thirty one dollars which represents an overall increase of about one hundred ninety six thousand dollars so requests in these

043codes include mostly non-textbook supplies used by students for all courses from math manipulatives to science lab supplies to paint and clay and priority in these requests is given to those items which support our work with the learning commitment and those that enhance student engagement but this year's increase is mostly due to code compliant flexible furniture for our elementary schools sorry code compliant so code so fire codes fire codes fire code compliant is i think the big driver there right yeah right so um we've just taken a look at some of the flexible furniture that's um that we removed because of covid and in the transport we really looked at the fire code ratings of those furnitures um and where we need to get the proper fire code rated but burn less to burn more the

044burn rating would be less yes we had bill we had some very generous donations from ptos in recent years of actual flexible furniture which was lovely of them and unfortunately what we learned after the fact was that quite a bit of that furniture doesn't meet school costs for safety okay but we want to make sure that we're replacing it and even going beyond uh with furniture that we order from appropriate vendors that meets the codes that schools have to meet okay great thank you we should engage with ptos and advise them of the compliance standards yeah right so we've um we have engaged with them and said if you're thinking of purchasing something let's let's purchase it through our purchasing department we will work with our architect on making sure that those codes are you

045know suitable for new york state and this may not be appropriate for today's but uh have we ensured then that all of the furniture in our buildings is up to code is compliant with code are we comfortable from a safety perspective but that's the case we do have inspections by the fire marshal um each year so anything noted from the fire marshal's inspections we certainly address probably thank you and then we'll move to page 16. which is our textbook code so the overall proposed budget there is three hundred twenty seven thousand six hundred fifty eight dollars which is an increase of over one hundred eighty thousand dollars the funds here to purchase textbooks at every level some class sets of text replacement texts for many courses at the secondary level the district does receive state

046aid in the amount of approximately 58 per student for textbook expenditures so this year we plan to make significant purchases of additional texts for classroom libraries at the elementary and middle school levels with a special focus on representation of diverse authors characters and perspectives so those are trade books for elementary school libraries book club sets for middle school ela classrooms and to enhance classroom library collections to encourage choice and engagement in independent reading as well as some new titles in our high school english classroom that promote that love of reading but at all levels teachers are auditing their collections and paying attention to this focus of diverse authors characters and cultures so students can both see themselves represented in books and learn about experiences of others there's also a replacement cycle for textbooks at the

047upper levels and in world language i know there's a new textbook i think the textbook that we were using now is it needs to be replaced it was discontinued and then some replacements in math science and social studies as well i love that we're refreshing our elementary school in particular libraries to meet sort of to align with our di goals i assume sustainability is characterized as part of dei in that or are we also considering our sustainability i think we are it's not probably the same umbrella but i think where you would see more of that is um increase in our informational texts and non-fiction collections um so it's important you know it's interesting when you think about an elementary classroom library there's typically lots of narrative text the lots of literature which is wonderful

048um but that we actually have units of study at each grade on reading nonfiction text and that's a great place to bring that in we're also looking at places where we can integrate science and or social studies in the ela curriculum so that it feels more connected so when we're learning how to read informational text and we're learning about you know sustainability at the same time that a lot of the texts we're reading are connected to those topics we're trying to infuse that it's just i think it's kind of a different conversation when you're talking about the kinds of texts you'd select sure thank you are textbooks today i imagine at least in the high school is it is it a physical textbook is it online is it both typically when you buy a textbook

049now there's an online component that goes along with it so sometimes it's you can access the full text online as well as the physical copy sometimes it's just supplemental resources there's a student subscription that goes along with it those usually have a yearly cost associated but they're usually not just the textbook anymore and the selection i remember in the past there was some review i don't know the board was at least appraised of what yes right that's the um the world language textbooks that we're looking at now you'll be seeing that soon they're going through that process in the department but these other these other textbooks that you know the appropriate committees or whatever were involved in selecting the textbooks yeah these aren't those in those cases they wouldn't be new textbooks but just replacing

050let's say a new version of the same one came out or having the online version in addition i see okay along that same line um because there is a board policy on textbook adoption so anytime we are bringing in a new textbook whether it's the physical or the online version we will become aware but increasingly i think in the elementary level and maybe also in the middle school we're moving away from traditional textbooks serving as the center of gravity for the curriculum and i think it is just a question from my perspective for us to think about is how to ensure that the board does have visibility into new curriculum materials we really appreciate when we're able to walk through the buildings and be in classrooms of course you know administrators will point out opportunities

051for us to see things in action but separate from those learning walks i think it has become harder over time for boards of education and really for all of us to remain apprised of the many different dimensions including occasional videos for example that have become i'll say a mainstay of the curriculum in certain department areas in the pandemic and this is actually something that i have as a concern is a little bit the extent to which print materials might be replaced by video materials and i'm sure sometimes there's there's benefits and that's appropriate and then other times it's just a conversation around how everybody is working on literacy all the time so again it's not something we can solve through the lens of the budget but it is something i think related to our responsibility

052with respect to this opportunity to support the budget and then to support the textbook adoptions but then there's so much else that's happening in between and i think it's just a different um a different mechanism now that we might want to consider in terms of the board remaining apprised of of the new resources right which are very exciting and thank you term curriculum you know it's you know i think in the years ago you think of the textbook kind of being the focus of the curriculum and that's your framework and that and now it's one resource if there is a textbook right and so there's so many different resources which is wonderful in so many ways and yet harder to get a sense of everything that um is a part of any curriculum i wonder

053if there's a way for us to like almost like a outline of the curricula for different i love you know what's the outline for american history in 11th grade what's the outline for you know science in the fifth grade and just very broad strokes would be interesting yeah it's an interesting question certainly at um back to school type evenings teachers provide an overview of the materials that are used to par for parent awareness right um you know it's a great question as to whether there's an opportunity to sort of collect some of that material and provide you know a synthesis i don't know i'm sure we can't solve it here but just wanted to sort of um share that perspective that you know we've got this policy on something very narrow related to textbook adoption

054which you know perhaps isn't really keeping up with the times in terms of how we're really educating students there aren't board policies related to these other materials and so this is our opportunity it's just to hear about it in the budget and to support the budget but thinking about other ways to make sure that we're surprised thank you thank you i just wanna as one other question on that relatedly sort of building on what bill was asking about um how are digital texts like it are we moving toward replacing textbooks is that still kind of in the classroom what's the trajectory of purchasing textbooks into the future yeah i mean it's hard to say i think right now we definitely are at a place where we value both the physical and having digital access so

055i think it's really helpful especially in the upper grades where students you know are not necessarily having to carry home five textbooks but they have some access online it just you know i think the way of work for students and adults but i think you know especially when we think about elementary classrooms learning to read at an early age it's so important to hold that physical book in your hands um but you know in the future and i think people have different predictions chris nelson probably has some thoughts on that right where it's it's going but i think right now we want students to have both um and we know both have you know value in different ways so it's not that we're looking towards becoming fully digital um at least right now but we

056you know we want to provide as much choice and opportunity for students in both realms can i can i have some question about um the expenditures for digital resources so um for example i would be very much um interested in knowing like are there digital resources that would reduce the use of online resources that have advertisements where like if we could pay additional money to have advertisement-free digital access for different applications that we're using where might that be in the budget and and is that something that we are budgeting for yeah chris do you want to yeah so depending on the resources that we purchase from depending on how they drive their revenue as a company sometimes we get resources at a discounted rate with the assumption that advertisements are part of the mix for

057the company to make their complete revenue on their side so so it's it's it's hard for us to predict at times which resources advertising and what other resources are in advertising because that would increase our cost overall uh because if we were trying to get a fully non-advertised environment then we would pay a premium in order to get those services so it's always a balance between how many advertisements can we live with as an organization at the same time paying a premium to to eliminate those uh that being said uh we have more and more uh safeguards on our network that allow us to kind of control some of those advertisements uh so our internet filters for example whereas before it was just blocking a web page or allowing a web page now we can

058kind of go in and say okay a certain content from an advertising standpoint can be blocked in in such a way uh it's it's not a hundred percent yet uh in terms of eliminating all ads on our network but we have gotten better with that uh and and i think we're committed to continue to to understand those technologies to get there chris can i this is it's an interesting and complicated shift from you know those of us who can go back many years in schools i can think of the times when the debate was around whether we would allow an advertiser to put their name on a sports facility for example and it was quite easy at that time for school districts to say we're not having any kind of advertising whatsoever and now we've

059had this sort of creeping in is it is it a question that that technology directors discuss among themselves around you know the opportunities are are to to be back where we used to be of there being no advertising whatsoever in schools or has it become the world has just changed so much yeah that that that's not even the conversation anymore it's becoming more and more difficult to have an ad free environment because of the fact that our vendors are partnering with so many different folks and and and i guess it also goes back to to print materials versus digital materials digital materials are not a static website from a standpoint it's not a snapshot of just printed materials it's it's an interactive type of environment that might be pulling in resources from several sources onto

060one one page so so that's where we have to kind of understand how we can kind of filter that material in such a way that it's appropriate for kids at the same time eliminating the distractions that take place within you know what our goals are for those pages so so it's it's it's i i see it continue to be a a talking point um but it's i don't know if we always have the solutions as quickly as we want to have them to kind of slow that process down um because everything is going digital and and that's where marketers feel that that's the best environment to kind of get right to to folks so i think here in these budget pages we're looking at codes associated with for example a textbook program that would also

061offer digital companion resources are you saying that those digital companion resources sometimes come with advertising opportunities for the publisher for the vendor is that what we're talking about here because i think then separate from that there is just the hosting of i'll call it occasional video content that somebody might want to incorporate into their curriculum which for example could go into schoology or through ed puzzle which is i understand an ad free environment or just post it on youtube uh which could i think be an ad free environment or not can you just clarify are we talking about all of the above that that that a digital textbook adoption with companion virtual resources would potentially include ads unless we paid a premium to not so so there's the digitalization of a textbook for example so

062if you were to take a printed material and then just digitize it and create pdf as an example is your most simple digitalization of a textbook and and if we were five years ago i think most companies were giving you a pdf copy of that in such a way that you could see apples to apples the same textbook environment in a digital setting uh we're finding that a lot of the content that's being created is not just simply the digitalization of a printed material it's an accumulation of a suite of resources that point you in on a topic to different different things so so we might have a textbook company for example that doesn't want to get into a video environment choose to partner with say youtube or other folks to point to those resources

063that are appropriate in terms of the content of the video but come with the expectation that youtube will be using ads and doing those types of things so so it's it's that conglomerate of partners that the vendors work with to build their business model to be effective uh from a from their revenue standpoint that that sometimes we don't have the choices to offset um a premium account that might distract from that i don't know that's clear that that does clarify that really i'd love to know what the premium is though because i do think this is concerned you know in terms of advertising not just that it's there but also what are they advertising is it sports drinks is it is it things that are not entirely benign yeah if the premium is exorbitant i

064guess it's a discussion if the premium isn't exorbitant that could be something that we decide to support i also i really agree and i also think that just the the trade-off has to be constantly evaluated not only with respect to the premium or not the premium but is it appropriate and worthwhile to use the video content in the first place if it's going to come with the onslaught of advertising and that's you know getting far afield from the budget conversation but do we have um safeguards or is it part of our practice that we are um attempting to understand what the day-to-day student experience is like at the different grade levels or day in and day out of our buildings and classrooms to ensure that it is you know we have we've had a lot

065of conversations in the last three years especially as we've provided devices to students to take home and and work in some some different environments um we're learning a lot i think our expectations to be completely ad free um are a much higher standard than what the tools are there available for us right now to be able to create that um we we do have our filters uh do a very effective job in terms of of of the uh the extreme content filtering you know things like pornography uh gambling uh you know alcohol guns uh tobacco all those types of things uh the technologies are very good at it's it's the grayer areas in terms of of the the advertisements that pop up that might be inappropriate in one setting uh but might be more effective

066uh you know say in a high school setting in terms of doing that so so so it's those grayer areas that we're having a lot of conversations around and it's also a trade-off in terms of productivity if we spend all our time vetting content and and advertisements and doing those types of things it's a different workload than it is um to offset that and i'm not recommending that it's not worth that that endeavor it would just be a change in practice in terms of how we currently provide some of the web services that we provide so so so it's an evolving technology i think our our marketing companies out there are quite smart in terms of how they squeeze in the ads but in the same regards uh we're working towards you know closing out

067more we appreciate the overview that you're providing and it is a much broader conversation than just something that relates to technology and the expenditures it's really a leadership conversation in every school building and with every staff member around practice and utilization of video and finding the right balance and trade-off because it's a very different environment where we're talking about you know asking a child to access curriculum and accepting that as part of that ask they are um quite frankly being exploited by advertisers um it's you know it's a really new environment and i think something we have to just remain vigilant to understand and and safeguard kids to the best of our ability broad strokes what types of things are advertised it's not it's not it's anything it's not like that it's the advertising itself

068is explicitly for negative things it's just advertising you know it's um a youtube if it was for caffeinated sports really good reassurance i think it's really important to underscore that the filters are working and that's critically important but then i think bill it is also the reality that any parent could appropriately have an objection to any ad content when the expectation is that a child is being asked to encounter a piece of the curriculum it's a requirement go watch this video uh i don't think parents expect that in that encounter children are being uh barraged by ads so it's but we're not alone this is not unique to catona lewisborough at all i think in the pandemic it crept in more precipitously than it would have otherwise like so many other things and we always

069say for better and for worse and in this case i think we would all agree for worse i think it's really helpful to have the context and to know that you're in partnership and conversation with colleagues in the region and also you know to provide this clear message of support that when it costs more i think what we're hearing is that you know we we want to spend those dollars to maintain as ad-free and environment as we possibly can to the extent that that is reasonable and we trust you to you know be in conversation with our administrators around your recommendations at risk of keeping us away from budget conversations a little bit longer um as i understand youtube advertising for example it's algorithm driven based as much on if it's me what i look

070at on youtube or on any other websites as it is driven by what that particular video might be about can you talk a little bit about how that algorithm might work in conjunction with the filters that we use or maybe that's another day so all advertising and again i don't want to turn this into a whole lecture in terms of advertising marketers are required to flag their content based on certain categories that they all agree on so so some content for example uh and this is where the state sometimes doesn't help us they just approve the legalized gambling uh so this sports betting and those types of things each of those sports betting ads that are uh you know available either through an algorithm or just you know static web pages and stuff have behind

071the scenes a flag on it that indicates the type of advertising it is and kind of like your movies are rated in terms of mature and adult and pg4 13 or whatever the the rating scales are advertisings are very similar to that so so our filters look for that keyword and or that that rating scale and then depending on how tight we check off those boxes it will either provide uh either an empty screen or it will block those ads so so the algorithm itself um you know i can't speak to exactly how it works but but once it's decided what video to post then it gives us an opportunity to flag it based on the fact that it has to be in terms of what's there thank you so can i just have two

072quick thoughts first margin i think you touched on it this is not unique to klsd and so we should seek help from i don't know who wes putin is but somebody to say hey who what other school districts are tackling this problem and what what are you guys thinking about doing it's also not limited to advertising we we've seen cases where certain pieces of the curriculum include sort of ideologies or political persuasions or it's not necessarily just somebody targeting ads it's that the content may not be entirely appropriate or it might be sponsored by a group that if a student were to research that group they may find something that we hadn't anticipated so i think we have to certainly adds our problem but i think we also need to be much more careful about

073when we do provide technical content that that the the context of that is correct and that we're not inadvertently sending some ideological message to our students so there's a there's a there's a big issue here that i think school districts in general need to address and you know maybe we can we can carry the flag for a little bit is there a process by which a teacher like every teacher is teaching something and they want to show something is there a process where they ask or get approval or the individual teachers say i like this video on youtube i'm going to show it yeah it's not for every single thing but usually what happens say at a department level people who teach the same course decide on some resources that they're all going to share

074um or at a school you know fourth grade oh we're going to use these resources so it's usually vetted through colleagues and that doesn't mean that every you know single source so for example i might read an article in the new york times and say this is so relevant i'd like to share this so i think the the bigger chunks yes but not necessarily every piece you know every video or article you know obviously this is part of professional judgment yeah yeah i'm wondering if this is also just covet obviously accelerated our our step into the digital content area but just as as technology and as teaching tools change in the classroom if this might be an opportunity again to re-articulate what are some of the the values or the parameters by which we make

075decisions and also i think having to adjust as as it comes in again this question coming up around textbooks and maybe we need to revise policy a little bit sort of expanding what that might mean to not just be textbooks but digital content but i would think it's more sort of parameters on like it sounds like there's a clear thing we don't want advertising for our children when they're accessing curriculum i think that's that seems clear um sort of back to the budget question i mean one question is policy-wise like are there what are the best practices in this in in vetting digital content and thinking about that and then from the budget perspective do we purchase technology and access to technology not just as a district but um in larger like in the way

076that we do yeah the state has um through their boces system a statewide aggregate bid i guess it's the best way to describe it where they work with software companies uh to to get a statewide perspective in terms of purchases and we participate with that uh so we we do our best to to price out with boces whatever we can to get the best pricing for that but we can't ensure that all all software companies are participating in that so we we do have a local software uh purchase line uh in our budget as well and we will get to that later in the budget overview too so great thank you folks thank you thank you thank you mary we digressed a little bit yeah you remind us what page we're doing and getting more

077complicated you know with yeah the way things have grown and changed you know it's instead of thinking that the next page is about workbooks but it's a similar conversation right many um textbooks have workbooks associated with them um but again you know it's becoming more curricular resources rather than just textbooks and workbooks so so on page 17 we have the costs associated with all of those workbooks the proposed budget is 149 452. which is a decrease of approximately seven thousand dollars those funds here to purchase consumable student materials and we do receive some state aid on those workbook expenditures as well and so workbooks that we purchase in elementary foundations for grades kindergarten through third our envisioned math books that can at a kindergarten through sixth grade and big ideas math at seven and eight

078there are also some workbooks at the high school for certain classes i know some of the world language classrooms as well and the workbook code does include online access in some cases so there are some cases where you can kind of write on a pdf or print it out as well so any other clarifying questions on pages 13 to 17. i i'm just um curious i think that point that rory made before about sort of the comparis the relative value of the comparison years given that 19 20 and 21 like the last three have all been covered and sort of to just know where that falls in the budget like so i guess the question for textbook is how often do we upgrade the textbooks and and this number i don't know how it compares

079i see the increase but i don't know the relevance given the different sort of the context of like we needed different resources at different years given covet and so yeah yeah i'm having trouble just evaluating some of the numbers against past years given like that five eighty eleven for example textbooks for the high school we're forty thousand fifty thousand eighty thousand and then we're budgeted at 127 is that yeah something like yeah like what is yeah i think was that the world language textbook the world language is definitely what so is this year's increase yes like they'll be like and then a job of a specific textbook being goddess yeah and i think it comes up at different times for different departments so you know there's not a uh a specific like every five years

080they're going to adopt a new textbook but at the same time you know in this particular case let some of the world language textbooks that we were using are being discontinued so we had to find some new resources and just and so and just to know like about half of the money for this year's would come back through through a reimbursement state aid so so this year we also have some math textbooks um we're purchasing so it's math world language and english so the biggest jumps in there and then the state aid you are correct we get state aid they actually bundle workbooks as the same state as textbooks so those um two sections combine and then we get a little bit over 58 a student for both for workbook and text correct okay so

081it's a little bit okay in addition to state aid right that's a separate item is it is the state aid expenditure german so can you explain how the state aid comes back yeah so the state is is expenditure driven as long as we spend over 58 dollars per student we get that money back in our reporting and that shows up in the revenue line as part of the state aid the bundled package and when is it and is it like per student or sort of total student number so if we were to buy textbooks for example for just the middle school would it still be applied across the entire district numbers or is it just to the middle school numbers it's per they look at the total spent for the district and the total number

082of students so if we spent that the bulk at middle school we still get the appropriate the 58 times the 2800 students and then just a quick clarifying question about codes are these state codes that the numbers that we're using are they are internal codes yeah there's a there's a whole there's some of them are state codes and then when you get to like for example when we talk to the high school you can see there's an 11 so anything at the high school it's 11 anything at the middle school so those are our internal codes but the 2110 is a state code the 580 is a state code got it so i just can get that idea conceptually like if if for example we started to think a little bit differently about curriculum is

083not just the textbooks but sort of the all the resources the physical resources associated with it with is there a code that exists for that or that have to be also a change so it would be in your workbook yeah so because we get state aid specifically on textbooks and workbooks we wouldn't be able to change that coding when we report because we do report all this to the state but supplies we also report to the state so anything these budget books are based on those state-aided codes which is helpful because there are times when there might be a certain topic of study where it's really valuable to be able to compare across the region and that sort of thing and we've certainly done that for a number of topics over the years so we're

084using the state codes but then also where appropriate we have our own and as does every district their own additional internal codes correct if we're okay to move on um i'd like to invite my colleague catherine mcnulty to join us katherine is going to review he blue pages 18 28 and 29 and then following katherine dannell will review pages 19 and 20. great thank you good morning good morning okay yep thank you for having me um i'd like to have everyone turn to blue page 18 please um that's the blue page 18 represents the proposed special education instructional budget this budget represents our best projection based upon our needs for 2223 school year it's based upon our current enrollment and also what we're projecting from what we know about students who will be coming into

085kindergarten the first line uh represents the change and there's an increase of about thirty five thousand nine hundred and seventy dollars uh this is attributable to a salary for a teacher district-wide this represents we have one of our school psychologists serves as a chairperson for our committee on preschool special education and because of that we can charge a portion of that salary to some federal codes we're not changing the position at all but it looks like for this upcoming year we've just reallocated differently to those federal codes in terms of the amount of the salary that we put in federal codes we put less for this year because we're purchasing some other things with the federal money that we have but there's not a change in the position the next line is for salaries teachers

086and school psychologists assigned to specific programs i will be talking about school psychologists also on my next page blue page 28. we are maintaining our number of school psychologists that we have this year in next year's budget and currently we have 42 special education teachers we are requesting in this budget three additional special education teachers for our department and i just want to give some context as to why in our district we provide a continuum of special education programming and services our charge is the committee on special education is to educate students in the least restrictive environment and what that means is to the maximum appropriate students are educated with their non-disabled peers in the general education classroom in order to achieve this we provide supplementary aids and services in the classroom and so when

087that's appropriate to do so we do that in order to meet a student's needs most of our students in catona lewisborough are educated in the general education classroom but in order to expand our model so that we could provide more services in the general education classroom keep students in the general education classroom i am requesting two special education teachers added to across our three elementary schools so this would continue to ensure that we're educating students in the least restrictive environment for students whose needs cannot be met in the least restrictive environment we do provide special class instruction and the decisions regarding how much special class instruction a student may need are completely individualized by the committee on special education what we are projecting is that based upon our kindergarten possible kindergarten enrollment we may have

088a cohort of students who may need some um special class instruction i don't know at this time we have not had all our meetings about how much time but based on we always look at who are exiting students who what is the group leaving us from katanas pearl who's coming in and it does seem like we will need one more special education teacher to possibly run a special class program to support the needs of our incoming students so that is the the third teacher that we are requesting as part of this budget okay thank you i'll just go back uh teaching assistance this shows a decrease of about 19 000 but i want to clarify that we are not decreasing the number of teaching assistants we have supporting special education students this year we have

08931 teaching assistants who are working with our students across a variety of settings so we're supporting students in the general education classroom we're supporting students in special classes we have teaching assistants who support students out in the community and on our boces tech placements if that's if that's necessary last year we had budgeted 32 teaching assistants our actual right now is 31. the reason being is we had an extra section of kindergarten that needed a support so one of our teaching assistants is supporting a kindergarten classroom which also has students with disabilities in that classroom but i would like and i'm requesting to go back to 32 teaching assistants for next year to support that special class that we're anticipating that we need to build in one of our elementary schools so we back up

090to 32 teaching assistants for next year the reason for the decrease is that we have had some retirements in our teaching assistance so the decrease is just the offset of the salaries from people who have laughed for people who have coming in speech and language therapist i am requesting an increase of one speech and language therapist as you heard the other evening when developing the budget for our department one of the factors as they said we look at are the the needs and services of the students who are exiting us versus the needs of the incoming students um in the kindergarten group that we potentially see coming with us some of those students have aac devices that's all augmentative and alternative communication devices those devices need to be programmed is one of the things which

091is we update the vocabulary on those devices as we work with the students so we do need as i'm looking at all of our numbers i am requesting a speech and language therapist to help support the needs of our incoming students including the students with the aec devices and one thing we really develop value as a department is even providing building level services largely in our elementary schools and what that means is even before a student would need to be referred to the committee on special education it's like those pre-referral interventions and speech and language is a great area in which we do that work early on and a student may never need to be referred to the committee on special education so i'm requesting this additional person to help support that work as well

092uh the next line are the hourly special education home and hospital tutors um that is an increase of sixteen thousand five hundred that's simply because of the contractual um rates and things like that that vary that if the tutoring agency has changed their rates we need to adjust ourselves um but these these are based this is just based upon the request um that come from students who have different medical needs or social emotional needs for from some instruction outside of the school setting the next line is our salaries for our physical therapist and occupational therapist the change of eleventh around eleven thousand seventeen dollars is really just based on the contractual increases that we have there's no change to those positions similarly for teacher aids we have 30 teacher aids again supporting our students with

093disabilities and all those different environments that i spoke about earlier we're maintaining the same number of teacher aids but the increase of 22 552 is again based upon the contractual obligations that we have for changes in salaries so all of that combined does increase the top half of the page regarding employee compensation of about 400 000 the bottom half of the page is some of our other areas equipment district-wide we are not maintaining an increase in this code equipment as you heard it are items that cost greater than one thousand dollars things that something that we purchased in the past is a highly specialized aac first a device for a student who needed more of a head script switch as opposed to being able to navigate a device with his hand so that's something we've

094purchased you'll see that in 20 2020 2021 i think that's an anomaly year um for a variety of reasons so i don't think that that one thousand dollar figure sort of an accurate representation of our typical purchases which is why we were maintaining the request for five thousand dollar in this budget line in the event that we have a high cost item such as what i described the next line are contract services and you will see here and you will note there has been a steady increase in contract services over over the years um our main reason for our increase of 125 000 on this line um some of our students require highly specialized behavioral services which we have been contracting out again we were working very hard to support our students in least restricted

095environment within our special classes and to maintain that the students can be successful within our schools another reason for that change is we have had to contract for highly specialized nursing services and with covid as you probably know the demands for nurses the rates have increased um and we have looked at different agencies but the rates have really increased everywhere um so we needed to up up that request in that line to make sure that we are covered for next school year uh travel and conference uh we you know we it's we've been doing a lot of conferences over zoom which has i think decreased sort of any sort of mileage request for that and i don't know what that predicts to be next year but our industry we still have in-district mileage requests and

096we still have conferences whether they're in person or online but we really value understanding sort of the changes in the field and getting our our departments invested in professional development so we don't have a increase in this code for next year we'd like to maintain the same budget that we had requested last year if you just skip down for a second because i want to look at the next three together supplies references and materials these are our instructional supplies our reference and library materials workbooks also a big factor in this line are re-normed assessments our school psychologists our educational evaluators our speech and language evaluators have a number of tools and resources available to conduct assessments every so often those tests are renormed by the test publishers so that the norm group is more current

097than the one that was previously used so we stay on top of that and when that happens we purchase the new assessment they're they're not inexpensive um but it's something that we're required to do so our line here is not increasing um by a significant number it's we're asking that increase by 1 400 but those are really just the materials that we buy with that that budget code and as you see looking at our actuals that is about what we spend every year to go to those three that i skipped over for briefly you will see there's tuition new york state public schools tuition all other and boces services tuition related services if we take a look at the boces services line first this boces code represents both services that we received and tuition in

098talking about services these may be evaluations that we have conducted by some experts that work our contract with boces this such as like an assistive technology evaluation there's some vision services that we acquire if we need additional hearing services beyond what we can do in the district there are some specialized consultants that we use both to support say a student with a particular need we need to do some professional work with our staff we have consultants to support our therapeutic support programs middle school high school and elementary so our boces uh request is increasing by 290 thousand dollars both because of the consultants and things that we're doing that i just spoke about as well as the tuition um we have 15 students who are currently placed out of district and so that number though

099can change it does change so these numbers are really based on the number of students that we have knowing that it may fluctuate um so and we also building pending placements um because you it's not something we want to be surprised about at some point and we also have students moved in this has happened where a student has already been placed in a highly specialized program that we may not have in the district or any of the students may not have but the student has already been in that program the committee on special education meets and determines we don't have a program in the least restrictive environment for the student that wouldn't be appropriate so we maintain that current placement so these are just the things that happen during the regular course of how the

100committee on special education operates but those three lines together the new york state public we have one student in place in a new york state public school program another public school and we had we kept two placements there as pending um if the line that says all other we have 10 students placed in that line as well as some pending now the all other cat line represents new york state approved day pro placements these may be therapeutic day pro placements it also includes residential programming and we have seven students who are placed residentially as as of this meeting date so we are obligated by a committee to have this full continuum of programming so if we cannot meet a student's need within our building the committee is obligated to find an appropriate new york state

101approved program placements however placed into when students are placed into a new york state approved program we do receive back aid from new york state on those placements okay do you have questions about any of what i presented i know it's a lot of information it was really helpful overview thank you for the detail that you provided for each budget line questions so just i'm glad you explained it a little bit so thank you for going through that because you know looking at it on paper i was like oh we're hiring more staff so that we can do more things in-house and that's why the tuition is going down it seems like that's not they're not connected the tuition is going down because the particular needs of the students are different and so um high

102tuition is falling off yes and but i would also say that as we build our capacity in-house uh we do have less students who are needing to go out out of district uh one example of that is our therapeutic support programs that we're operating uh we've had students actually rece as recently as last year there was a student placed in a a different school the day program that student has now returned to us within the district so it's a little bit of both okay it's just it's so individualized in terms of i can't say that they're unrelated but i can't say that you're automatically going to see you know an increase here automatically means a reduction here because that's not really how the cse looks at things we really look at what are the needs

103and goals of the students what's their present levels of performance and what are the supports and services they need to be educated appropriately okay i think we'll talk i think the administrator we can talk about i think i guess it's covered differently but at least for now about the three new special education students um so you said teachers teachers you said students i think you met teachers teachers yeah watch me closely um true is to keep to be able to offer a less restrictive environment is for some students keep them in regular classrooms is this a new thing like so why year to year is there a change is it is it we desire to do this so we need staff or is it a change in the needs of the students um i think

104we've always been doing it um i actually think since i've been with the district and proposing the budgets even when i was overseeing the secondary program i don't think i've ever ran the same exact program year after year that's part of the work we do you know we we make recommendations as our the csc our teachers work with our students we monitor their progress on goals and then as students progress we can recommend potentially less restrictive services and we we we look at okay so you know this here's where we are now where do we want to continue to grow and improve so really i think that the two teachers that we are requesting for elementary is really to help us grow and improve the work we're already doing doing students are being successful they

105are making progress in least restricted environment but when we look at are we can are we doing everything that we want to be able to do in the general education setting i think we've identified that there's more we want to do and some students may need that more so really we're just looking at their needs and proposing a recommendation saying if the csc recommends that a student needs more support um that we have that support available okay and then the other new uh staff member is you said um i guess are we anticipating in the incoming cohort some particular needs that we are preparing for yes yes we don't currently have a special class like that at the kindergarten level we do have our special class program at increase miller which has students obviously in

106kindergarten and the csu would recommend that program if it were appropriate but if the csc deemed that that program was overly restrictive right so maybe students need ela instruction and math instruction in a separate in a separate setting but then they will rejoin their general education class science and social studies specials all those other experiences we want to have that program available so we need to build it in order to have it if the csc recommends it thank you i just want to clear up asking these questions i mean you do wonderful work and it's it's one of the areas we are eager to support and i do note that your bottom bottom line turns out to be like a two percent increase you know so you know i'm not giving this outside attention due

107to that it's more just curiosity and um we usually don't see i guess you know three new teachers is you know just it's a larger than usual yes i i do realize that our teachers are doing fantastic work absolutely with students and we really have ongoing conversations with them we meet together as a department monthly about who are your students what are their needs what do you need and really how do we support the general education teachers who have these students in in in their classrooms for the day and so that's why we want to be able to have that time and our teachers are fully scheduled right now so we we're not able to sort of expand our model and continue to do everything we're currently doing it doesn't mathematically work right it's great

108that you're thinking ahead along those lines because it's all too easy to say we'll do more with the same resources and sometimes that's just not possible yeah and you we have changing cohorts you know it's it's you look at who are our fifth graders going up to middle school let's change the high school things like that great thank you catherine in the seven the 472 10 line i know in the 471 10 you have um budget for two pending do you i just want to make sure do you have pending in that line you said you have 11 actual but i can't i just yes there's yeah and it's it's difficult to sort of say the number um like for example boces boces tuition while we do have pending their programs charge different rates depending

109upon the intensity of the needs in those in those programs and one of their programs um did go up more than the others so we have to just anticipate some changes like that i just want to make sure that you have pending resources in all three lines we do it we're adequately budgeted okay catherine just a quick question on the um i had anticipated from having read the summary that we would be adding a teaching assistant yes but when i look at the numbers and you explained that there are 31 currently but actually the budget line item i think you said has 32 and that one person have been allocated to kindergarten where they were also supporting special education students so are are we accurate in saying that we're actually increasing the teacher assistance position

110in the special ed department by one fte this year or is it is it even net net i guess based upon actual of how we typically assigns teaching assistants um for in special education it's an actual you know an actual from the 31 to the 32 budget yes we did have 32. now and it's it's hard sometimes to put these things into like a specific black and white line yeah um because our teaching assistants you know i spoke about the teachers doing great work our teaching assistants do our teacher aides do we're supporting students in all kinds of settings and i we i work very collaboratively with the principal so if there's a need that changes the schedule will adjust um to so whether it's in a kindergarten classroom or in a fifth grade that

111previously didn't have teaching assistants where we're making those adjustments which sometimes on a weekly basis um but the actual 31 to 32 i guess for what is what i would consider to be the the teaching assistants in special ed i would say there would be an increase from 31 to 30. that's helpful an actual physical additional person's supporting special effects even though it doesn't reflect on the budget and then just just briefly on lines i'll call them lines well the the i noticed for the special ed home hospital tutors the increase which you said was primarily contractual is about a 10 increase whereas on the next line for the therapist it's about a 5 increase which was also outlined as a contractual increase and on the teacher aid line it's only a two percent so

112there's quite a variation in the year-over-year increase even though you said they're all contractual is that something i i would just expect that we would increase that by some sort of at least similar percentage so that would depend on where those particular employees are in the stepping process so it's based on individual employees current status i guess yeah so that top half of the page is contractual okay so so okay so there's a calculation behind it rather than just applying a specific percentage increase it's based on specific individual stuff i think is it is it is it accurate to say that some of those contracts are our own internal bargaining unit contracts but others of them are might be individual contracts with an outside vendor right so the top half of the paid would would

113be our individual union contracts the bottom half would be our contract services and individual vendor thanks to that makes sense thank you okay uh i'd like to turn sorry can i ask a couple i'm sorry yeah um just to so just to clarify with the additional teachers two would be in the integrated co-teaching roles a consultant teacher role okay consultant teacher do we do ict or is it like it's a similar model we have integrated co-teaching in our middle school in our high school consultant teacher is a similar model in which that that special education teacher is in the general education classroom working on the student's individual needs and goals in that classroom setting got it okay and why is the model different at elementary and and like middle and high school yep we have

114been talking about that as a department um we feel like the consultant teacher model is the most effective to address our our students needs at this time but we have harvey are having conversations about if we need to shift the model what would that need to look like but that's just not where we are right now in terms based on the current student's needs got it um i'm just this is not for now but just sort of a question around if as the goal has always been to keep students in the least restrictive environment and integrated with their peers as much as possible um does investment in this now i mean i i really hear that sort of training the teachers getting the support in place help to bring all the teachers to be able

115to address more needs in the classroom like what what might what might support that what might like long-term kind of support if they're i don't know growing the teacher teachers capacity i know we have a number of special ed teachers that also that are certified and special that also teach in general but kind of in that way of that we invest in consultants or other people to build our skill level how do we do that if the as just as populations constantly changing of student needs and special needs in the classroom is how do we grow capacity to address those needs yeah that's a big picture part of professional development i know katherine and i have worked with um goldman saur and rutherford is one from they really focus on co-teaching strategies but it's not

116just you know when we think about special education official co-teaching right it's even thinking about our enl teachers who do some integrated work that has to you know happen in the classroom are interventionists at times do that kind of work so that kind of model of collaborating co-teaching co-planning and working together to support the differentiation of the curriculum and all the needs of students that's like a bigger picture goal we have for everything we do really right but i think very specific to special education you know when we have those teams and then catherine will support some summer work for them as well right that's always going to be a goal yeah you know we're never going to stop that work there's always more to learn and to do and then just for my clarification

117what's the difference between the teacher aides and the teaching assistants there are different certifications teaching assistants uh provide i guess more instructional support um so the if you picture maybe an example would be the special education teacher provides the over overview lesson and then the teaching assistant can follow up maybe with a small group and some do some review and reinforcement of that lesson um our teacher aids um we they we have a variety of needs that were that our teacher aids are supporting we have students who have some mobility issues there are students who have maybe toileting needs they have some physical needs um and our teaching assistants are working with those students in our classrooms or teaching aids i'm sorry teacher aids yes any other questions on this page thank you thank you

118and if we can go to blue page 28 please this blue page 28 represents um our school psychologist um these this is the remaining portions of school psychologist salaries that were not represented on the second line of the the first page our school psychologists serve a variety of functions for us in the district i think as you know they provide counseling services to both students with and without ieps they're a member of the rti committee they provide their consultants to teachers they talk about ways in which to differentiate the learning environment and support teachers in that in that way we have 11 individuals in in klsd who are certified school psychologists we are requesting to maintain all of the same uh per school psychology personnel that we requested in last year's budget the reason for

119the increase is there's less as i had indicated some of our school psychologists perform functions related to cse evaluations that can be attributed that can be charged to sort some federal codes so we have less allocation of federal codes and we also have it's not a change in budget to budget but there's gonna i'm requesting um a change from i guess actual to to budget and what i mean is we had a school psychologist with us who resigned uh late summer um that particular person we were we've been looking to replace but there's some specific uh certifications we were looking for namely having someone be a bcba which could help with not all but functional behavior assessments behavior interventions plans neil and i have been working to try to replace that but i think as

120you've heard it's a difficult time in which to hire and to find uh qualified applicants so although we continue to post and look we have not found the person who's the right fit for our district i am optimistic now that we are in the spring that once we repost we will have a suitable candidate so while it's a change from actual namely we have 11 i would like to have 12 school psychologists employed in serving our students we budgeted 12 last year and we just were not able to fill the one what's bfc uh i knew you were going to ask and i was going to introduce two skills a board certified behavior analyst so just for example in a recent diversity hiring fair and other hiring fairs there are psychologists who applied for in

121that certificated area but not one of them had to be cba that's an ongoing story yeah we we do have just so you know where we need it um we are contracting with bcba so we are getting that support um i think as as you know i i value having that staff in-house as opposed to contracting out so that's why we we continue to search if if we're not able to find that person i would still like to bring a qualified school psychologist into into our district next year and then just continue to contract for some of the specialized bcba services um our plan this year had been to have uh the school psychologists have part of their role working at uh as a bcba in terms of developing behavior plans um and part of

122the time was they were going to be supporting our programming at increased miller that's still the goal for next year sure yeah thank you just one sort of strategic question on that when we want a certification is that ever something that we're able to offer incentive for current staff to pursue that to sort of keep those skills in-house i mean i know this sort of i mean it's very different the bcva but you know we have we have uh wilson certification so we supported teachers in right getting that certification although it's not a state certification i think bcba is similar in that way it's not a state certification but a skill and a certification that we value and hope to bring so something we could think about right we have many doctoral level school psychologists

123um but you know they've made their own decisions maybe not to pursue a bcba it's certainly not a requirement even develo to develop an fba and vip you may not you don't need to be a bcba in order to do that a school psychologist there could be special education teachers who develop them but sometimes you you want you want to maybe a fresh set of eyes or someone else looking at the data to make sure that we're doing everything we can to support our students needs and that's why we want someone with that credential to really be be a partner with our teams at times and the individual that left had that credential yeah yeah any other questions i kind of have a housekeeping thing it's on my mind and it probably is irrelevant on

124page 28 at the bottom section of the page we see two codes under the other than employee compensation whereas on page 29 and on many other pages there are no codes and it just makes me wonder why are we showing the codes when there's no amounts against them is it that they were used in prior years it just kind of draws my eye and it makes me wonder well should we be using boces shared psychologists and do we need travel for our psychologists so i'm just curious why we would show the codes on some lines and not a little bit is it just because they were there in previous years and perhaps just never rolled up right i think in previous years there has been expenses we do try to when we haven't used them

125for the past four years um we omit them so we can clean that up for the board's budget if that would right i know what i mean it just makes me wonder like huh is there an opportunity to use boces shared psychologist services when i see it there if i didn't see it there it would never pop into my apartment so i was keeping on it but maybe we should that that for my experience uh that for the shared psychologist that definitely predates the time where we made a concerted effort to increase the number of school psychologists we had in district because the school psychologists really can do have a lot of roles for us there's lots of ways they participate a part of our teams so we haven't needed to contract out for a

126person um or a part of a person because we we've made a conservative effort to add to our staffing and that's great and that's great but i could see that we may want to do that again in the future so i'm not challenged i'm just it just seems a little curiosity to me thank you we are really fortunate that we had been building our capacity prior to the pandemic and to know that we have 11 people on our staff who are certified psychologists with the hope of bringing on the 12th you know certainly we're aware that this is an area where needs have really grown and we feel grateful that the therapeutic support program has been so well established and was able to be expanded at all levels of the district so just an area

127where we were able to meet the need before we even knew how intensely we would need to yes thank you and thank you for noting that that's a great segue to page 29 which reflects our school social workers similar to our school psychologist our social workers provide a significant amount of supports mental health-based supports in our schools it ranges from meeting with students who have ieps for individual or group counseling students who do not have ieps but have social emotional needs they provide classroom based lessons so pushing into our general education classrooms they're doing a lot of that work in our elementary as preventative work for really all students and we highly value the work that our social workers are doing um so as as a result of that we are recommending to maintain the

128same number of social workers that we have we currently have five um currently they're all each each social worker is placed in one of one of our schools and the eleven thousand one hundred ninety two dollar increase is really related to con uh you know contractual obligations but we're recommending to maintain the same number of social workers that we have in klsd next year questions on that page okay thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you catherine catherine so janelle now you're right right over 19 and 20. yes so i know we're flipping a little bit through the budget but uh blue page 19 is now what we're looking at and that's a career and technical education so on this page of the budget we show the anticipated expenses associated with 11th and

12912th grade students who attend tech center at yorktown uh the career and technical education program prepares students for post-secondary education as well as entry level positions in a wide variety of occupations so some of the examples of the academy that are offered at yorktown is an environmental career academy business career academy teacher teaching career transportation career communication career construction cosmo cosmetology hospitality and health service career academy so the annual participation fees based on the number of students enrolled in the program and we do look at uh where we've how many students have enrolled in the past few years also last this current year 20 or excuse me last year in 2021 they expanded the program to ninth and tenth graders um and this year we had two students who enrolled as ninth and ten tenth

130graders into this new program so the cost of this uh program is slightly increasing and we're seeing an overall budget for the tech center at yorktown an increase of 13 thank you any questions can you can you provide a day in the life of one of these students are they all full time at boces or are they sometimes in our environment and i guess when i see a 430 000 line item it sort of makes me wonder and i read the piece where it really is hands-on experiences for these students is there an opportunity to bring any of that in-house are they so specialized i know there's like some folks who do work on cars it's like mechanics and probably we're not equipped to do that sort of thing but can you sort of help

131me understand what what a student who's in this program what their day looks like is it full-time first of all and then sort of why why would we not be able to provide those facilities at all uh i think we wouldn't be able to provide those mechanic um opportunities cause mortality hospitality you mentioned business health service like you know it feels like some of those might be more academic classroom settings but maybe i'm wrong about that oh and steven's coming in also about that uh when you're looking at culinary uh urban forestry a lot of it is infrastructure okay so that would probably be a huge capital investment to take those and bring them here and then as always we're always dealing with fluctuation in terms of who would take it year by year and

132you run the risk of having a white elephant in the on ground so sure yeah so uh you know again we try to have kids be part of this of the community so some will have the morning sessions some will have the afternoon sessions so they'll take some of their courses here oh and then get on the bus and it's it seems to work um good so they're not so it's really a hybrid approach that they're here part of the day right okay because i know we've had some fantastic students come through and they get that recognition and it's really wonderful to hear about what they've done but it's sort of one or two students and and it really is very encouraging to know that we have these sort of alternate avenues um that our

133students can explore i just wasn't quite sure how it all works so that's that's super helpful and i get the capital investment issues for parents who want that um that's something that we we tell them that no we do have it it just happens to work through bozies yeah so we do champion vocational education for those who feel that that's where they want and that was my child so i wonderful i can speak to it pretty well and so i'm sorry if i missed it but you mentioned that we have a couple of ninth and tenth graders now who are able to take advantage did you mention how many 11th and 12th graders we currently have enrolled it sounds like the enrollment is pretty steady but i just have a picture of how many students

134are represented sure so the enrollment does fluctuate throughout the year this current year we have 25 students but um in prior years the prior three years we had 27 37 and 36. right there so when we're projecting the budget i ki we kind of look at that the history so 25 seems like a bit of an anomaly so we're projecting more um in that 30 range the mid 30 range thank you what a wonderful time i'm going to have you stay for the next one because it's driver's head wonderful thank you we're going to move on to driver's ed did i hear you say yes i said uh stephen just just stay with me with driver's ed so this year we we work drivers at a little bit differently than we have in the past

135um we actually partnered with mayo pack school district so our students are receiving the driver's ed program at mayapac so you'll see the budget line is um is decreased by the cost of the driver's ed program because the students it's always been a self-funded student program where the students pay the cost of the entire driver's ed program and then we picked up in the budget side the instructional costs because there was some state aid associated with that and then to offset that we had the revenue from the parents for what that cost but this year they're all going to may pack and we're hoping to continue that partnership for next year and if we can't have that same partnership we would do some adjustments in the budget at a time but it's a 6 500

136so it's not a big ticket item but i just wanted to explain the reduction thank you for pivoting i know this has been a challenge for many school districts and a unique opportunity that has been created by virtual learning and did you want to say anything more about it well again i was cold-calling driving schools over the summer and some of them were just like no we have no interest we don't have enough cars yeah uh because i know some parents have talked to me especially the football games that hey when's driver's ed coming back the thing that's going to be interesting is i don't know if the department of transportation is going to maintain the provision that parents can act as the driving instructor yes if that remains then we can probably continue as

137we've done if they do not then it'll probably be incumbent upon us to try to find a driver's school that can meet the bid report absolutely it's a really unique model and we might all pay the cost dearly next as far as budget-wise it's always been just the instructional portion that's been in the budget so that you even if that shifts so we do have to find a school hopefully we can still partner there are you trying to steven we've partnered with mayor and so is it it was virtual this year and we anticipate next year that it will continue to be virtual or that our john jay students would go to mayor pack to be instructed i haven't heard what their plans are um that's something that probably in the next few weeks so

138i can reach out to them and i think that it's probably working well for them as well so as they continue the virtual they continue to get more students it's just it's the driving lab piece that's the the wild card this is the new model many school districts are offering this virtual instructional instructional component but then the the burden or the responsibility so to speak of the the lab component falls to the parent to sign off on those hours so that's some analysis on whether this was a good idea or not but thank you for finding that opportunity for students that's great thanks for jumping in and i think we're turning this back over to mary yes thank you thank you so now we'll take a look at pages 21 through 23. if we look

139at page 21 this page of the document represents costs associated with the salaries for staff members assigned in our library media centers and the overall proposed there is seven hundred fourteen thousand seven hundred thirty four dollars which represents an overall increase of 8 600 and then on page 22 those are the costs associated with the contract services and supplies needed for those same library media centers and that overall proposed budget for the codes is one hundred eighty three thousand one hundred twenty one which is an increase of one thousand two hundred thirty dollars so it includes contract services for certain online services subscriptions and multimedia our library automated system general supplies and new titles for our library collection it also includes online databases and streaming services used by our students needed to support curriculum that

140are not available on the internet for free so our library specialists uh play a significant role in the integration of technology and digital citizenship in our curriculum so along with our staff developers they support teachers in learning about the newest technology and they model the use of new tools and collaborate on units of study across various disciplines we're very grateful to them and then page 23 was related to the area video production we have not included anything in the budget as we've not spent any allocated funds in this school for a few years that may be another area of cleanup when we think about the future so any questions on 21 through 23 is it just one library media specialist per school yes do we have five yes correct thank you sure and now i'll

141invite uh chris nelson back talk to us about the technology budget on blue 24 and he'll also reference pink page 20. reminder you're still under oath [Laughter] well thank you folks it's always pleasure for joining us just a couple notes here i'll be covering two different budget categories one is in the blue which is instructional and then there'll be a pink review which is not instructional new york state asked us to break out our costs in regards to expenses that are related to the instructional environment as well as the non-instructional environment and because of that we're also able to identify some state aided categories and some some grant funding that might come at different times throughout the budget process so um so we'll be covering both of those uh the blue sheet the instructional i

142just want to highlight that this is a part of a required technology plan that we file with the state so we have a lot of stakeholders that have participated in that technology planning process so i'd like to thank you know the the technology uh district technology committee as well as our administrative team and cabinet and such in terms of guiding some of these purchase decisions and more importantly i think one of the goals in that current plan was a commitment to forecast and and make more predictable the costs around technology for the district and so as you take a look at this a lot of the the budget lines are fairly even uh but understand that we're making choices within each of those categories in terms of how to better spend each of those so

143so though we're recommending um a relatively low increase in technology uh know that we're constantly reviewing and adjusting and the technologies behind those purchases are changing so just as a precursor to that so just before you yes so actual actual teacher salaries so teachers who are teaching technology computer science in the high school or whatever those are not on these line items correct those are back in the teaching yeah and i might add for these categories too uh the technology plan addresses uh technologies that impact the whole instructional program so if it's good for all students or it's good for all classrooms or it's it's a tool that might influence all teachers you might find it in this category whereas as mary's identified some of the as a department specific type conversations is that there's

144there's subject specific or department specific technologies that might come out from a different budget line so so we we are becoming more technological in the work we do um and and my goal is to try to create a common infrastructure and setting that's for predictable and dependable enough for all areas to be used um and then you know folks that at different you know curricular needs might enhance that with with with additional purposes thank you yep all right so blue sheet that's our 20 630 code we'll start with staffing uh director of technology our computer systems manager which is a civil service title but this is our cio in the district is responsible for all the state reporting and data needs for the district the director of technology actually plays two roles it's an instructional

145leader for state compliance issues uh but most recently over the last few years we've had to appoint um a data protection officer uh and and that plays a role in that as well so we'll identify some tools that we've purchased to help in that as we go through the category uh a few budget cycles ago we moved one of our computer aid positions to a teacher assistant position um much like catherine identified there's there's different reasons why you would hire an aide versus an assistant and that position is at the middle school and it's helped us advance a lot of the work that we have in our tech ed program uh in our makerspace program it's really been a good shift for us in terms of looking at that that so not a lot of

146change except for contractual requirements on those positions additional tech support that we have we have a network support specialist a data analyst position which supports the cio we have computer age and aids in each of the buildings which for our middle school and our high school are full-time positions and there are three elementaries they're part-time positions which allow us to have i think a 0.7 coverage in each of those those buildings which gets us through most of the morning in terms of of making sure the buildings are in good shape for the the day with the technology needs uh and then the help desk analyst position has actually been retitled um we had a retirement this year uh we worked with civil service to identify uh the needs for the help desk position we found

147that um by definition civil service had requirements that we felt were too limiting uh so we we brought in somebody that had a broader set of skills um so we uh have a now a junior network administrative position that we hired and because that person is under different title a different salary scale you can see that there's a difference in the salary of a decrease of almost 12 000 on that line so that was just because of reclassification and a hiring uh sewn at a different salary scale so that's our team as we go down the second half i'll identify that equipment i think was mentioned in other budget codes that equipment's anything over a thousand dollars so when we have equipment that needs to be purchased at that threshold we would buy in that

148category uh the bulk of that purchases are things like flat panel displays switching equipment those types of things that are needed at a higher threshold of purchase we have been systematically identifying older equipment in the classrooms and and retiring the old projector systems with flat panels and those types of things so the bulk of the equipment this year we'll be continuing that initiative contractual services has a whole array of different things that we uh bring on the bulk of that is um we we work through a company with edutec which provides us some specific technology skills uh this year we've been using that contractual services to to work with um cyber security uh there's a national uh standard for technology uh frameworks uh that we've been trying to adhere to and it's not a formal

149audit but but it helps us become a better alignment with that we we rely on the outside of a contractor to help us out with that and that's where those costs are related there but we do have time to time the needs to somebody come in and reprogram some of our switches or do that type of work so that's that's where contractual services come into play there uh state aided computer software you can see there's a decrease there i can't recall earlier in the conversation we said we would take advantage of some boces services we actually shifted almost nine titles i think this year from purchases from a district level to the regional aggregate purchase that we had talked about through boces so although there's a decrease in software it's not necessarily a decrease in

150access to software it's just a matter of where we fund that so we we were able to decrease the the local purchases uh to the boces purchases so you can see that there's a decrease in almost a matching increase to to the boces services um there as well so we have a a large purchase in terms of of oc services we try to take advantage of that as much as possible uh but we try to keep that as flat as possible if you look back a few years ago um we we had the pandemics start in in march of uh 2020 so you can see an increase in our boces services in that category which was the the the shift to to provide devices for students um the following year uh the district absorbed some

151of those costs uh with the ipads for the elementary folks which actually are under a thousand dollars so we use supply monies for that so if you're looking in the past years in terms of why we spent so much in those categories it was simply a reaction to the pandemic overall we've been trying to keep those budget lines as flat as possible other things that we purchase for instructional purposes is a as i mentioned instructional software we have professional development services that are also listed in there we participate in a model schools program uh that gives us an opportunity to have uh consultants and and and um instructors come in and work with our teachers both on an individual basis as well as provide workshops um last summer we had nine days we're dedicated specifically

152for technology conversations in pd we refer to them as tech summits and we do um three days in june as teachers go into the summer with the hopes that we can uh provide that service we have a few days in july which allow more curriculum uh review and and and uh support there and then we have three days in august which tends to to catch the new teachers or or folks that are coming back and and are refreshing to start the school year so so part of those services are not just uh you know purchases for you know hardware and devices and those types of things boces provides provides some support at those levels supplies again ipads those types of things are listed as purchases in those categories but we're finding that we're not needing

153to buy as much our class sizes are shifting a little bit which is good um and we've been able to free up some monies in supplies this year to engage in classroom supplies for uh steam technologies so so with the conversation that we had i think last board meeting in terms of trying to help the elementary schools expand on access to design thinking and having appropriate supplies to be able to support those activities we'll be providing uh opportunities in there so although the budget hasn't changed much as i indicated we're we're reinvesting differently uh in those categories so so overall uh we're asking for um just a little bit over uh eighty six thousand dollars which is about three percent increase which i think is in alignment with um overall increase in terms of cost

154uh the unknown here is is just inflation uh we're already experiencing some price increases in terms of things like toner cartridges and and those types of things that we kind of take for granted are kind of a fixed cost but but we're managing that internally and i think we're doing a pretty good job with that so so thoughts on the instructional budget for technology thank you for the overview yep are there any questions comments maybe just one maybe just an observation and a question so in our current environment sort of data privacy is front and center and you did mention sort of our data dpo capabilities and so forth are those is any work we're doing in the data privacy area would it show up here or is that in the next step that's in

155the non-instructional piece although it's related to instructional yeah it's really more of a function of safety and security um so it's we have tools and software that we purchase um out of the next category that we'll we'll address some of that and i'm i'm specifically thinking about certain applications that we use that may capture quite specific medical or other types of health information around our students and how how prepared we are to ensure the integrity and the privacy of those data and [Music] i mean maybe maybe it's a separate conversation i'm not sure it's necessary related to the budget i just want to make sure that we're adequately funded to ensure the integrity of our data that needs to be treated as private as of right now that we we have a budget that supports

156those tools i think as we look down the road at the scale and the scope of how we're using technology continues to grow and adapt yeah i know other districts have hired you know technicians there more you know security and data safety type positions which their sole job is is to ensure that the safeguards are in place um our team's been working really hard and i think is is doing a an excellent job in terms of of of using the tools but um and we've automated some of that as well you know my phone goes off every morning in terms of you know alerts and those types of things that just indicate you know certain activities have taken place on the network so so so we've automated some of those tasks but but you know

157for this year i think we're in good shape but but as we continue to assess in a review uh that might be an area to kind of grow in yeah to have some so for expanding industry and it's an expanding risk and i'm not surprised that other school districts have have begun to explore that and consider resourcing it so it's just it's definitely something for us to think about and then the other well i was just curious where our sort of software licensing and maintenance falls probably in the other category too or is it embedded here i guess it depends it depends on the purpose of the tool right so so as you look at the that the boces code in our local software all those licensing tools if they're if we can connect it

158to instruction things like schoology or or microsoft tools and and and and those types of resources are in this instructional side um any of the um logistics of our internet filtering or our logging technologies or or having the opportunity to kind of do our active threat management which is the term that we use to to be able to ensure that the right people are logging in and doing those types of things fall into the next category which is the non-instructional piece okay thanks chris just while we're on this page i think i can understand it um from an enrollment standpoint and i trust that our principles would let us know if it wasn't working but the model of having part-time computer aids at the elementary buildings and then full-time at middle and high is it

159safe to assume that that's in part because at the middle and high we're bringing together a much greater number of students and maybe more complexity around the technology needs is this a conversation or is it is it is it just completely you know this is the right model for our needs i think i think it's an evolving model when i started a few years ago they were at halftime and we were able to scale their hours to provide for you know a 0.7 which gave us a few more hours in each of the buildings what we're finding is that that teachers are finding less and less issues with break fix type of of things and probably are looking for more support in terms of uh instructional design or being able to to apply the resources

160they have in a more meaningful way um and and so uh we're always curious to see what kind of support we can provide for that uh the these these computer aids now that we uh have shifted past computer lab environments um have been more you know you know getting into the classrooms more being able to make those connections in terms of supporting teachers uh with that model so if you were to ask our professionals at each of the elementaries uh i think more would be appropriate at some time down the road as we learn more about the technology um but but you know that's our current level is point seven that makes sense i understand that's actually a conversation we've been having because the other part of this conversation is those computer labs are now

161becoming stream labs where we have the room um so as that you know the model is changing the focus is changing you know it just begs the question is this the right model of support because the library media specialists obviously are doing other things as part of their program as well sure um yeah so i think more to come but right now we feel like the model's working with what we currently have um but it's certainly something we're looking at thank you and just for clarification these staff are when you i like the term break fix these stuff are really like is the technology functioning are the computers on is it crashing do you can you not log into something that type of support and so potentially i'm making this up my apologies but it

162would be maybe even like a slight reduction in this particular type of employee and an expansion in a more integrated curriculum oriented technology perspective that might work across the top how we approached it at the middle school with a retirement there a few years ago we had a similar conversation in terms of what was the right sport model there seeing that our offices are located in the middle school we provide a little extra convenience in terms of support so the break fix type of stuff could be more addressed with with the folks that reside in in the office so so we we said that um perhaps maybe in a teacher assistant role was a better approach to it than an aid role in that regards um so so i agree with you that that as

163the needs change maybe the positions change and as we put more thought into that um you know gives us an opportunity to maybe get a better fit at those levels thank you can we move back to the pink pages yeah pink page uh 20 i believe is where we're here thank you and as i look at this budget too i want to also thank christensen and his team as well we do a lot of collaboration in terms of of non-instructional uh connections in terms of tools and resources especially as a lot of systems become more technological things like our pa systems and our phone systems and those types of things are all listed here so again contractual services are those folks that we bring in that that kind of complement that the skills that we

164might need to you know complete projects and and update certain pieces of equipment uh so that's listed there with a slight increase for for no other reason that we see increasing costs for those folks as we ask for you know service contracts and those types of things uh the boces piece uh this uh is primarily software uh but it has a portion of licensing that takes place in terms of of some of our phone systems and things like that you got to pay per phone per year type of thing so so there's some service contracts and some things that are listed here but with the software related to here are things such as our cadet connect ad services so when we do mass communications to the community uh being able to take a look at

165our district website uh it has those tools i think neil mentioned in his his budget proposal that we uh have uh an employee management system and a recruiting system that that we use uh right now it's currently frontline and it gives us a lot of resources to manage attendance and do those types of things our data warehouse or requirement to send data to the state is included in this area and most recently and again some of the increases here is the addition of of tools to help us with the data protection and the cyber security pieces there so we've added a few different titles that have given us some tools to be able to manage and protect the network especially most recently we got a message from the state just asking us just to confirm

166that that we're ready for you know any cyber attacks and things that take place so we've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes uh the team was just here last friday when we had teachers and students off uh to do some major upgrades on our firewall it gave us an opportunity to make sure that we were you know protected in terms of some of those cyber and data protection pieces so so um again just uh we're just gonna kind of expand it we approach it two ways right we so so we provide the uh the safeguards and and blockers and those types of things to prevent people to get into our network and then we have uh tools and reporting that allow us to monitor any activity that takes place so so so

167we're constantly being reminded of how many people are knocking our door and then you know you know if anyone you know tries to get in from from areas that just are unpredictable we can take some action on it in terms of being able to adjust that so so that's kind of our security approach at the moment uh in terms of doing that um so so again a few additions of software titles uh our supplies are kind of flat uh the 200 decrease was just to route it off to 14 000 uh you just get a round number for supplies uh you know moving forward those are things that you know toner cartridges for offices being able to you know look at you know maybe some repairs and some replacements of things that might take place

168in terms of technology that's used for for non-instructional purposes chris a quick question on on the major line item here so the actual is burning ten percent hotter than our budget but yet we've only increased the budget next year by i don't know what is that five percent or three percent or something about four and a half yes so why would we not anticipate the spend next year the expenditure next year to be closer to the actual versus the budget or am i looking at oh i'm looking at 20 20 actually i'm so sorry okay 20 20 yeah so it went down last year and why would it well okay we don't have this year's actual yeah yeah that's fine i'm sorry yeah yeah yeah and and and to be fair where we had that

169increase uh uh if you go back to 1920 was about what 437 000 um you know again march of um 20 was a big shift for us we had to install some new technologies uh to prepare for the fact that we're printing devices in the community so that that that's cyber security that that that layer um our assumptions on that design was the fact that it was campus based uh so so we were filtering and doing those types of things while students were on campus now we're providing technology that's going into the community we had to put those tools in place in such a way that we could make uh those those resources extend there but of course then that gave us the ability the following budget cycle to retire some of the older you

170know subscriptions and licensing and that's why it came back down again so so that's where there was a little bit of a shift there but we're confident that that we're we're revolving and adjusting within the budgets that are provided for us um and that's been our budget strategy uh aside from the pandemic uh pieces there um now that being the said you know we might want to look this year to kind of reconsider some of our tools are they aggressive enough are they are they complete enough are they are they meeting the goals that we want to because we provide a strong standard of safety and security uh but with the subtle pieces in terms of you know advertisements and those types of things we can still grow in and and tighten up some of

171those and the human resources from what you shared earlier about directions that other districts are taking with a specific individual you know being charged that's interesting to consider yeah and i give a lot of credit to it to my team that they're they're great learners they're adjusting it's uh and evolving uh it's it's been a uh uh uh they've been very responsive to the needs of our community members and stuff like that so so although it's a pleasure to provide uh resources through a budget process i do want to give them a lot of a lot of kudos and stepping up to the work that they've done thank you very much yeah we really appreciate that and certainly it's been a transformative period for our community and we certainly could not have done it without

172your leadership and your team so an enormous thank you thank you thank you just a point of information on that when what would be the form where we would kind of hear and get to discuss a little bit more um sort of the strategic initiatives with technology but particularly the resourcing needed to apply it in the district beyond beyond now but kind of just looking forward from an instructional or not instructional perspective i mean i think it's instructional but also infrastructure perspective too because this is now technology's now new infrastructure that we have to invest in and i don't know that i mean there's aspects of that in the budget but just kind of as this new technology emerges the needs for the infrastructure in terms of the human resource needs the technological needs the

173training needs and then the maintenance needs which are different it's not the same as a building maintenance but in the same way that it's a rese a valuable resource it needs that kind of care as well and so i just wonder have we done any discussion on that or would that be something that am i right i'm remembering that the technology plan is also on a cycle the way our building and conditions yeah so this is the last year of our current technology plan and the state is asking us to refile a three-year plan um in july so so our district technology committee um is is currently working with that and and uh there's a step uh before it goes to the state that has to be approved by our boces uh so we're in

174that position where we're renewing the plan uh it doesn't always cover uh the subtleties of this or the specifics of you know the cyber security and those types of things those are more compliance pieces they usually work through the our auditors and some other folks not so much for privacy purposes but just because of the sensitivity of of of how the how that system works but you know i'm welcome to review that and provide an updated presentation i think in terms of opportunity my recollection is that does come before the board for approval and typically there is an evening where that's presented and discussed so there may be items that are like a little bit ancillary to the plan but that would definitely be a forum where we would have i would say more extended

175opportunity for that kind of conversation and then we did that time is so abstract right now but we did do a two-part we had two board meetings dedicated to two technology i believe right before the pandemic started and we really talked about it was two parts because the first was really sort of philosophical in terms of you know what is technology how do we want technology to interact with our students you know where is there sort of the world's moving at a certain pace and do you move with it or stay behind we had a we had a two-part board meeting like you know so we discussed the first meeting and then sort of some of the more technical things in the second meeting i believe that was in 2019 or early 2020 that we

176did that and we haven't revisited that which is interesting is great with the plan being renewed and now that we're stabilizing back in school that would be a great two-part conversation to build into our next year's board of education calendar agenda yeah yeah and welcome the opportunity thank you thank you thank you i do apologize thank you very much chris i know we're running just a few minutes behind i think we should push on because we have administrators who joined us with the expectation that they were going to be presenting at certain times so let's try to push our way through these blue pages take a very brief break and then come back if that's okay okay so where are we so now if we could look back at pages 25 and 26. thank you

177and those pages have to do with the high school attendance office and guidance department middle and high school guidance so if we look at page 25 those are the costs associated with the attendance office at the high school so that overall is 58 07 which is an increase just under a thousand dollars nine hundred forty four um the position is necessary to meet our responsibilities as set forth by state education department and plays a key role in helping us to respond appropriately to attendance audits and record keeping requirements so this code includes salary hourly and overtime costs and then on page 26 those are the costs associated with guidance services at the middle and high school and the overall there is one million eight hundred four thousand twelve dollars which is an overall decrease of

178one hundred forty three thousand six hundred sixty eight dollars so that represents the salaries of counselors and clerical staff as well as tutors we may need to provide for students in homebound instruction they also provide funding for infinite campus and naviance systems as well as general supplies why is it down 10 yeah i assume that's um staffing you know salaries there's some retirements new staff coming on so those kinds of changes there's not a reduction in the number of counselors mary do you know how many guidance counselors we have at the high school at least even the number of counselors is it four no it's 16 yeah sorry the number of number of counselors currently is it six six six yeah across four schools no high school three at middle school you want to bring

179it home with page 30. [Laughter] okay so yes catherine presented on 28 and 29 and christian took us through 27 and 31 on thursday night so page 30 is actually the last page for this section 27 and 31 christians we did them the other night on thursday night gotcha thank you so page 30 shows the costs associated with our co-curricular activities the overall there is 502 350 which is an increase of thirteen thousand five hundred sixty dollars so it in increase reflects an increase in the number of stipends and costs of contract services and supplies for musicals boces consultants related to musicals are also reflected there for example accompanists and costume designers who work with our students funds here also pay stipended positions for some advisors such as yearbook newspaper and science olympiad it's also

180a dedicated amount of funding for performing arts programs at the secondary school as well as additional funding for arts and education associated with our secondary school place so these funds are important to the overall school experience for students and are key to helping students become and remain connected to the school greater community we hope to return to an even greater number of fully in-person practices performance and gatherings in the 22-23 school year wonderful thank you sure i think at the outset you mentioned that we were covering about 61 million dollars in the blue pages and then i know we referred back also to a pin page so we have covered an enormous amount of ground um i'm not even sure whether were there some bigger conversational items captured for discussion later or everything was a

181clarifying question and we're kind of caught up which is great i really like the question though around the advertising and the sort of infiltration of the curriculum by external influences i think we should we should explore that further yeah it could be yet another facet of a presentation that we bring back in the next calendar year i think that would be great so thank you so very much mary and to all of the administrators who joined us it is now 1105 and um i'm going to suggest that we take a brief recess i'll make a motion for a recess if i could have a second catherine thank you and before we vote on that shall we come back at 11 15. does that feel comfortable for everybody terrific uh all in favor please say aye

182all right we'll take a brief recess thank you so much i think we're ready to reconvene may i have a motion rory would you mind making a motion thank you so much with somebody second the motion to go back in thank you bill all in favor please say aye aye great thanks everybody for your patience and thank you for joining us this morning um i think we are ready to push on to our next section of the budget which if i'm not mistaken is operations and maintenance is that where we're going to pick up yep thank you so much and i know we're joined by our director of operations and maintenance paul christensen thank you for being here welcome good morning [Music] and maintenance okay thank you is pink pages 13 through 19. okay 13

18313 the proposed budget for the coming school year and for the thank you for the this opportunity for presenting this proposed budget for the coming school year and for the continued support both financial and philosophical over the past few years o m has been able to maintain and improve our facilities due to board support this year we have a number of projects that we are requesting board support to fund via enter fund transfer to capital it is this sort of influx to funding that allows us to prevent emergencies stay ahead of repairs maintain equipment and in general keep our mission which is clean healthy and safe at the core of operations pink pages 13 through 19 account for seven million three hundred and fifty one thousand eight hundred and eighty seven dollars of the proposed

184budget if expressed as a percentage that's 6.35 percent of the total for school year operations is responsible for the district's buildings and grounds six school buildings which is 658 960 square feet under roof 174 acres including the 11 playing fields our operational personnel for school year 22-23 is a staffing total of 46 here on page 13. there is an additional fte for the printer courier shown on page 19 and as we go through we'll bookend the total staffing which for next year will be a total of 47 fte on page 13 employee compensation it's a budget to budget increase on this page of and nine thousand seven hundred and seventy eight dollars but eighteen nineteen show a decrease of forty six thousand eight hundred and twenty four dollars so the department budget to budget is

185an increase of sixty five thousand seven hundred and fifty four dollars thank you by 18 19 pages 18 and 19. yeah the page is eight i'm sorry you left it open to interpretation thank you any questions page 14 equipment sorry paul can i yes sir it's just reading the line i guess or between the lines you're essentially saying you're adequately staffed yes sir thank you page 14. equipment as chris nelson just said equipment is a threshold of a thousand dollars and in operations we have three sections we have custodial maintenance and grounds which are represented by base code 1620 1621 or 1622 and in o m we qualify purchases using metrics of replacement needs something needs to age out we it's not just because we'd like a fancy new one including the maintenance reduction is

186part of the equation safety we will run life cycle and or total cost of ownership analyses on these things and we always include considerations of green purchasing and sustainable guidelines and they're fairly extensive things in terms of are off the table having to do with maintenance of grounds in regard to pesticides and herbicides etc so all of this is considered as we line up our material supplies and equipment for the future custodial equipment this year we are replacing four floor care machines one is a stand-on and one is a mini floor scrubber one is a dry stripper and one is a burnisher in maintenance we have heating system pumps three of them two primary pumps pump fittings specialized tools also included in this code is safety equipment necessary for the school security and in grounds

187we are asking for a new ventrac tractor this is not actually a tractor it's a stand-on or ride-on device that's used for hardscape maintenance it has a rotating brush or it could have a blade or it could have a snowblower attached to it and we are finding as the weather changes and we get different kinds of snow and ice that equipment like this is much more efficient and helps us keep our hearts get stape clean the proposed total is eighty one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars and budget to budget this page shows an increase of a thousand dollars thank you welcome page 15 utilities the utility codes 1620 or 481 82 83 84 85 and 490 and i'm going to read down through them and where we get to big changes we can stop

188and discuss 481 is telephone it's copper lines this is emergency phones alarm dialers and fax machines it once again remains neutral 482 is electricity purchased district wide and you can see it's nearly flat with a slight decrease in 86 dollars and it's just due to the process of rounding and recalculating there's a big jump four of our school buildings are heated with ultra low sulfur number two heating oil which we buy through a state contract one building is heated with natural gas that's the katona elementary school those two fuels account for a bus a budget to budget increase of a hundred and eight thousand six hundred and eighty six dollars which is for the most part due to the volatility of crude oil to a smaller amount it's also due to forecast average temperatures changing

189together they collect into this estimated increase at this point any questions about that big jump even inside a cooperative we're expecting it to go up yeah yeah it's just as we all know from watching it go from the pandemic of being near two dollars a gallon for gasoline to being four this is also affects us i'm sure you know bill that we don't pay tax on it so we're not paying at that level but we're looking at fuel oil prices that have increased by a third over last year in terms of the future a third over the last year not just in the past week no sir it's all year yeah no sir we're expecting it will fluctuate that we're going to see it go up and down but there was no way in november

190to necessarily take into consideration the recent two weeks we have mechanisms working with danelle and her folks we have mechanisms to avoid uh situations that prohibit buying fuel so we'll we'll we're prepared if it fluctuates even greater than this that helpful yeah very good thank you okay welcome propane which is used in the cooking in kes and the high school is going to go up by seven hundred dollars propane is a byproduct of refining refining crude oil and sort of follows the map as it goes up and down it's just not quite as volatile 485 this has got some good news even though there's an increase here this is the water and sewer for the katona elementary school and the new word here is sewer in years past this was just a water code next

191year this shows a 2 800 dollar increase due to the newer sewer connection but later as we get farther into the report you'll see an almost 12 thousand dollar reduction and that has to do with the maintenance monitoring and oversight of the system the new sewer connection replaced 490 boces in telepath we share that with technology and i'm showing an increase in this of three thousand five hundred and ten dollars page fifteen budget to budget increase of a hundred and fifteen thousand six hundred and ten dollars which is largely due to the forecast of the volatility in fuels go ahead i was just going to say that electricity we we have on our agenda to sort of sort that out because we're due to re-up they've served us very well with logging in our rate

192yes we participate and have done so for almost five years in an aggregated prop product that was put together by putnam boces and our current contract runs through next school year actually doesn't quite ends in may so the most recent uh board no no in terms of the future is giving permission to go out and get a new bid and we do this really far in advance and we work with a group of consultants that help us look into the future and they will give us advice and say it is now the best time to go out for a bid and so it could be eight months it could be six months but we'll do it well in advance of the sunset of the existing agreement right and just as a reminder we do go

193out for green energy in that bid i've looked at it it's great yeah no it's a it's a really good pr really good deal and we are saving approximately well it's ever so slightly greater than a penny a kilowatt hour but that amounts to about thousand dollars annually in savings and purchasing in this manner plus it's a flat predictable uh rate and great way to budget that's great thank you paul just before we move off that page sure can you help me understand what is that in telepath telephone services well i actually need to ask for dannell to help me with that because it's a shared i was actually curious why it's on this line item i think it's related to training server online training services the two departments technology and o m share it

194but i actually don't have much of a hand in it it's just in my code chris do you have can you give us a little bit insight on the intellipath and what that entails intellipath is a system that kind of connects some other systems together i don't have all the specifics in terms of what we currently have connected but you know for example if we needed to get a text message out to staff based on a systems alert and that type of stuff that this is a as as the name expresses it's an intelligence path to be able to connect uh different monitors on the network in such a way that we can communicate to other systems those systems could be cell phones they could be just other systems logging it could be something that

195it triggers another system to react to another system so so that's uh really uh when you look at heating and air conditioning fire panels those types of things although not all those are connected currently uh that's the type of software that would be used for that so i see okay so it's called communication yeah it connects all the systems together yes okay thanks yeah just it seemed like it was on the wrong in the wrong section here to me yeah it is related to all of the sort of fire panels and network yeah in that scenario i think that both paul and i have been talking about that recently in terms of you know where's the best place to identify that is it is it the non-instructional uh you know portion of the technology budget

196or is it you know the subsystems that that maintenance and operation uses to to be able to complete their work so okay i think in previous years it was heavily dependent on telephone and that's how it wound up in the 1600 codes but now as we evolve through technology a discussion between the two departments for future budgets thank you i'm not sure whether it would be captured on this page so please feel free to defer it if it's elsewhere but i think in the overview of the proposed budget the other night there was an item related to water am i am i correct right and that was in the inter fund transfer so that'll be later on thank you after lunch okay great thank you i just saw water here we talked briefly about the

197water uh sewer at kef so thank you for clarifying anything else on page 15 before we move on okay thank you let's keep going page 16 services and contracts for building maintenance and repair these codes include school property school property insurance all minor repairs minor building improvements mechanical system repairs contracted compliance inspections such as fire drinking water elevators lifts playgrounds gym partitions professional services general operating services and repairs recycling programs small equipment maintenance landscaping services sports field servicing and many more related and like-kind items the list could be forever 420 insurance increases by 10 1624 30 and there are two of them is for travel conference and we would like to thank you for your continuing funding this code it permits the members of operations to become members of new york state school facilities association

198where we learn a great deal from our peers at annual conference and monthly meetings it increases by a thousand dollars next year 162402 project save safe schools against violence in education act remains neutral 401 contract services compliance and inspections decreases by eleven thousand six hundred and twenty eight dollars which is the aforementioned decrease in professional services needed at kes for its uh groundwater and waste system 1621 402 equipment repairs also flat 1621 405 architects fees increasing forty thousand dollars in anticipation of the increased activity the architect is serving the district with and then 1621 434 building repairs and maintenance increases by a hundred thousand dollars this is to catch up with preventative maintenance in terms of ventilation systems and other things it has to do with the increasing cost to stay compliant with these and

199it has its seesaws this number goes up and down based on needs some things don't have to be annualized they can be three every three years or every five and then contract services for grounds increases increasing need in terms of the maintenance of our playing fields and other outside facilities arborist work etc and we are catching up as we are playing outside more often so we're putting more attention into it this is a budget to budget increase on page 16. of two hundred and twelve thousand eight hundred and seventy two dollars some of these items the um and were much larger in the past is the current number ground state or and there was something special during covert that was quite expensive so that was the normal an hour below well what happens is we

200look back across this as as you're looking back also into expenses and occasionally not every year but occasionally there is a surplus in operations and one of the best ways to to deal with it immediately is to work on projects that either in the five-year building condition survey or we know these are needs that are coming within the next 18 to 24 months and so we do things with those funds such as paving etc so you'll see the expense fluctuate but what we're not looking at is what the initial budget was year to year would you like to have it okay thank you thank you i think some of those minor building uh repairs and improvements in 1920 and 2021 were some hvac work that we had done related to cobit and getting ahead of

201our our replacement cycle with hvac because we had an opportunity so so on this point and maybe this is not the right time to raise this but i think in the past when we did some of that hvac work we transferred from or transferred to capital to support ups and maintenance and that seems to be a recurring theme year over year and i guess my question in general is are we budgeting all of our anticipated operations and maintenance expenditures to ups and maintenance line items or are we anticipating budget transfers to support items we may already know about in the opposite maintenance budget the general fund asked is ongoing preventative maintenance and repair the transfer to capital helps us when we have as we did with our hvac system equipment that was 20 plus years

202old that needed to be retired and replaced and so even though operations had planned for it over a longer period of time the cove had pushed us and the the funding gave us the ability to fast track it so it's a kind of blend rory yeah so the the the general fund ask is what we need to keep the status quo transfer the transfers to funding and the capital codes give us the ability to then do future planning for big items but if and then just to clarify because you mentioned a couple different terms budget transfers so if we transferred funds into this particular line yeah um that would be a budget transfer and then the transfer to capital that's the transfer into the age fund and that's that 99 code that one of the

203last budget codes that we see in the in the budget line so not all so the actuals that are showing here wouldn't necessarily include the budget transfers that went to ona the actuals here do we really do okay but they don't include those transfers to capital right so that's okay i think i understand so that makes sense we'll come to that later in the budget yeah yeah okay let's deal with it when we get to the next section can you speak to what project save is so project save is um something that the state started oh gosh i think it probably in 2010 as a reaction to columbine actually and um you'll see projects saved throughout the budget in this instance with the equipment or this is contract service excuse me that is where our

204raptor system is charged to where our security greeters monitor our visitors that come into the buildings and then also some of our security cameras if we have some contract service you know repairs to those um that's in that line item okay and then the next line with with the water also there it looks like there's a big jump in last year's budget and is and now we're sort of at that level is that i'm sorry to rory's question before is that an ongoing are we now at the level it will be or is that a fluctuating budget item the way the town of bedford charges us for water at kes is that they have a meter in terms of the water on the way in and they basically charge us the same amount of gallons

205for the water on the way out that's how the sewer so that it used to be we were charged about twenty eight hundred dollars for the water we used now we're being charged an additional twenty eight hundred dollars for the water that they're going to process through their uh new sewer system but i think i think that elon is referring to that we have the increase from 394 643 actual this is on 40110 is that what you're looking at yeah yes so we were at 394 643 and we went to 641 628 in the budget in 21.22 so that was an increase of 250 000 and then this year we're still budgeting at 6 30. so um can you describe the change in budget from 20 to 21 that we're now maintaining in that line

206is that what you meant yes okay i don't know if paulie's just answered that if it was now we're getting charged in and out for the water yeah so that's am i looking at the correct line i'm i know it's understanding the compliance the compliance layer we're looking at oh compliant twenty sixteen twenty one four oh one ten yeah yeah 16 21 401 are compliances not all compliances are annual some of them such as inspecting the fire rating of curtains district wide we have stage curtains and other things are only once every five years so that number fluctuates some of the compliances in terms of water systems go up and down by uh legislation two years ago um two years ago no five years ago the state mandated that we test every single drinking faucet

207for lead they do it now every five years but it's only a five year cycle that that takes place so this number in 401 is going to move slightly sometimes if there's something brand new and really big it's going to jump a lot sometimes it won't it'll move down and the technique that we try to use in operations is to try to keep the overall operations budget as flat as possible and so we'll toggle 1621 401 and 1621 434 back and forth a little bit to adjust so that we can keep as flat a budget as possible the compliances drive the equation as i said they're just required by the state thank you and then just to clever with the the um the 401 there were the two co what were the difference between the

208two travel conferences it's just broken out because yeah it's the same thing it's it's i don't know why it's broken between custodians and maintenance but one of us there's two of us in in the uh operations that attend this one of us travels under the custodial line one of us travels under the maintenance line so we spoke previously about those state coding yeah some of the 1620 means the custodians the 1621's means the maintenance so that's just breaking them apart for state reporting okay great thank you welcome page 17 is supplies custodial maintenance and grounds supplies including paper goods cleaning solutions fasteners wire plumbing components driveway patch road salt field paint and a list that it goes on and on in 1620 402 we have office supplies for project save a decrease of eighty dollars

209sixteen twenty five oh six custodial cleaning supplies a decrease of four thousand seven hundred and forty and this is due to changing to a new concentrated solution set from eco lab so not only greener but cheaper 1621 500 office supplies also decreases by 200. 1621 507 maintenance supplies including such odd things as fan belts and air filters increases slightly 200 ground supply 1622 507 is neutral so on page 17 we have a budget to budget decrease of 4 thank you it feels like we would be remiss if we didn't ask about the geese and the beneficial nematodes the previous pain okay thank you just want to make sure they're here somewhere yeah now the case of the the geese control is still going on and so also is the maintenance on our growing grass with

210things that are complying with the state regulations thank you we appreciate the creativity of those solutions you're welcome page 18 and 19 they need to be somewhat spoken about together because they represent a slightly separate area within o m they have to do with the central store room which is located in the basement of meadow pond elementary school next year to be staffed with a single employee filling our in-house printing storage and related courier service as mentioned earlier on page 13 the base fte is 46 18 and 19 bring one additional fte for a total of 47 for the school year 2223 on this page code one sixty 166160 a decrease of twenty eight hundred dollars the following page shows a bigger district uh decrease in the two together add up to what we mentioned

211on page thirteen also on this page we see a decrease by 500 dollars in supplies and this reduction in force plus this reduction in supplies is a reflection of the good work that chris nelson and his team did over the course of the pandemic to reduce paper use and need going more digital means that fewer things are printed and fewer things are delivered so in response to this efficiency we're staffing accordingly that makes sense okay um page 19 yes please this is the other part of it and here is the big portion of the reduction in salary forty four thousand twenty four dollars on this plus page eighteen makes a total of forty six thousand eight hundred and twenty four dollars all together for this change in the staffing there our equipment ask is neutral

212no new equipment is required this year contract services 1670 402 and 417 these are the maintenance contracts for large copy machines and i think now some leases there right chief correct okay um located in the warehouse it's their repair service and we see this year that it is a decrease of eight thousand six hundred and ninety eight dollars sixteen seventy four ninety voices boces printing boces has bigger fancier printing presses than we do however we don't need them as much because we're more digital so there's a decrease there of four thousand dollars our printing supplies are decreasing by four thousand dollars age nineteen b to b decrease which is a combined page 1819 for the this department of 80 722 dollars so in summary pages 13 through 19 are a budget to budget increase of

213370 438 dollars for the ask for the general fund for operations 22 23. thank you very much any remaining questions i i was just i had an overall question the number that you cited in the budget looked different from my summary on page eight and i don't know does that include other things that sort of aren't what you were talking about page eight of our budget binder maybe i heard the number wrong but just sort of the big picture i don't know if there's other aspects that are included in this summary document of maintenance oh the statistics section yeah the statistics just the number it looks like it's 9 million 155 that's because we do include that interfund transfer got it okay that 900 later on in the budget so yeah the statistic looks a

214little bit different but that's because this was the 1600 portions and then in that portion of the the statistics it also includes the 1.8 down in the 9900 codes thank you wonderful thank you so much it's good to see everybody appreciate it thank you great to see you thank you so now uh we're going to look at page 21 pink page 21 of the budget which is undistributed so this budget page is associated with a variety of expenses which are not assigned to any particular function area within the pink pages so you'll see at the top it does say undistributed expenses so this represents on this page an increase of twenty two thousand five hundred and fifty nine dollars um there's a small increase of five hundred dollars in insurance but i wanted to take

215the opportunity when we're speaking of insurance is insurance is throughout the budget on different pages in the budget so on page one uh you can see in the 1010 code pink page one insurance was 4 100. paul just spoke to 1620 page 16 of insurance the transportation codes which are yellow pages that nora will speak to in just a few minutes that shows uh insurance cost of 98 000 and then here on this budget paid the six the 1910 represents the cost of liability insurance student accident insurance catastrophic insurance and excess liability insurance and a crime policy and that's all through nicer and then some other for the crime some other smaller insurance depending on the student what what the insurance is so overall our insurance actual to budget increase our budget to budget increase

216is about 1.95 so even though it's 500 on this page there are other portions with throughout the budget that there is you have the number for that 1.95 you know so the total uh proposed budget for insurance is and prior year it was i don't have the prior year i just have our uh 21 oh no 21 22 budget was 5 12. that's okay i can calculate it but that's a big number just are we obligated to pay that through some sort of new york state arrangement or can we put that to bid or so we use nicer it's um we share that with a lot of component districts and really within the industry nicer is the schools that's the standard insurance policy we've had them for years so there's some benefit to the institutional

217history that they provide and um you know we must carry the insurance so this is the number thank you so school association dues is also on this um page uh this is keeping staff and the board of ed up to date with the developments and areas of an instruction curriculum negotiations litigations education legislation etc judgment and claims represent a cost associated with any tax search areas that we haven't previously reserved for and then katona along with 17 other school districts participate in boces or a component district and there's an administrative cost associated with that and then also a capital charge so those are set by boces each year um and new york state requires boces to include the entire cost of their health insurance benefits for their retirees and their budgets so that also is

218reflected in this budget code so overall we see on this page 22 increase thank you and thank you for helping us to see where insurance is distributed throughout and then um uh we're going to flip over to yellow page number three and that is uh described as recreation um so this is the budget page that accounts for the school district um that that we incur expenses through tana lewis borough and bedford their summer camps you can see it's primarily overtime expense custodial expense we do have inter-municipal agreements which allows our facilities to be used by the town in exchange this school district can use the town facilities without being charged the funds are used to pla pay just for the custodial overtime we did increase it slightly anticipating more use of our school buildings as

219we open things up and so that increase is approximately five thousand dollars thank you that brings us to the end of this section of our agenda any questions before we move on thank you okay so i think next up is nora she's going to go over yellow page one and two thank you welcome and thank you so much for the treats so we really appreciate it board members on our break okay um there are two pages associated with uh transportation uh the yellow page one is um the cost of operating the transportation office as well as the drivers and monitor salaries also included are expenses associated with food fuel bus parts tires insurance drivers physical random drug screening contract repairs contract transportation overall the 5510 budget codes are projected to increase by 181 staffing includes

220four office staff 57 six-hour drivers and nine bus attendants contractual service is for equipment work repair that we cannot do in-house these are major overhauls big damage or anything that would keep our one plus lift out for too long so we would need to contract out for those um we're we are expecting a 11 000 decrease in this area uh also contracts and services included is the expenses for radio our gps system contracted to transportation which is uh coach buses that take our athletic teams to different places and also field trips also d.o.t fees and waste oil bus parts and supplies are used to repair the buses of all our buses also o m vehicles as mentioned the above overall projected association with the budget projected associated to increase one thousand eight hundred one thousand

221eighty one three six thirty five uh the largest one line item is the diesel and fuel which we're increasing to 115 000 and basically paul went over the reason for that you know we're expecting a lot of volatility and we've seen a large increase so far pages yellow page two the page of the budget reflects the cost associated with the mechanics and our bus garage many of you know that our bus garage is located over at katona and we have six mechanics and one hem mechanic our mechanics really do an excellent job we have a great dot score of 97 percent uh our buses travel about 980 000 miles a year we have two inspections for each vehicle every year that isn't expected to increase 31 for an overall budget to budget increase of 213

2220.25 thank you any questions for nora we really appreciate the overview and i guess we will later be talking about some of the enhancements related to electric vehicle infrastructure with the inter-fund uh transfer to capital we look forward to that also are there any questions for nora on these pages well maybe on that note it's just notable that the increase in cost related to diesel fuel is almost the same as the increase in cost related to heating oil that we saw on the earlier page and obviously our electronic infrastructure will help alleviate some of that volatility there are other other expenses associated with it i get it but it's it's increasing substantially that's a pretty major yeah 40 increase well it is and on that note some of the advocacy that's coalescing in the region

223is you know while i think school districts appreciate the governor's ambitious plan with respect to electric vehicle fleets the reality is that we're in a very fortunate position to know that the greater percentage of our fossil fuel emissions comes from our buildings and as we saw with those heating costs associated with the buildings you know to the extent that the state is interested in shining the light on school districts and ways in which we can evolve through the lens of our infrastructure it would be arguably more helpful to us and to our planet to shine the light on our infrastructure than it would be to you know exclusively focus on the electric vehicles that being said we're thrilled to be able to focus on the electric vehicles but we are trying to really push for

224a more comprehensive we have made great strides in that area and paul and his team have done a phenomenal job in improving the efficiency and the the greenery of our infrastructure we are and with our electric um uh our electricity being green tower i mean we've done amazing work in this area we're also replacing all the light fittings in all the schools and some of those other projects yeah so are there questions on these two pages before we move on would you mind just taking a minute it's so nice to hear this 97 dot score thank you for sharing that do you mind just providing a little insight into what all goes into that metric oh my goodness um i wish i knew you were going to ask me that because i would have brought

225the paid it's it's a lot of every single detail of that bus goes through meticulous scrutinization from the d.o.t inspector and you could check up us four times and then if a light bulb goes out when the dot inspects it there you could get downgraded just like that even though it's just a simple you know like hey the bulb went out it shouldn't be an a an a not like it is in the school district and a is very good but in dot and a is not good you definitely don't want to get an a and we don't get many a's we are a little short on our staff now because we have two men down but our head mechanic is still doing a phenomenal job and that's why we did go down slightly from

22699 to 97 but we're still keeping our head above water that's amazing thank you for sharing that yeah congratulations thank you thank you thank you thank you for joining us okay if we're ready to move on so we are now on green page number one green um i i think we've always mentioned in our summary on thursday night that the largest portion of our budget is salaries and then the benefits associated with those salaries so green page one does speak to our employee benefits so the first line on this page is our new york state employees retirement system this is the retirement system which is utilized by our support staff and including but not limited to clerical staff custodians bus drivers monitors and teachers aid the percentage contribution for the mandated benefit is not projected

227to change very much they do have a different fiscal year than us they go april through march so we don't know what the percent of contributions will be for a third of the year but overall this budget line is projected to decrease um by 79 236 dollars but it's important to note that last year that this budget line did increase by 270 thousand 919 so these are rates that are set by the state and um you know can fluctuate greatly throughout the years so the second line item is the teachers retirement system it's similar to the new york state employees retirement system these are required employee employer contributions for the teachers retirement system and it's it is projected to increase from nine point eighty nine point eight percent of the salaries paid to an estimate

228of ten point two nine percent so total you can see that this budget line is increasing a hundred and thirty thousand seventy four dollars next on this page is social security so employers are required to contribute rate for fica and medicare fica for the calendar year uh 2021 um the earning cap is changed from 21 to 22. so in 21 it was 142 800 and for 2022 it is 147 000. we don't know what the cap will be for 2023. so this this increase is offset by higher salaries within the budget and the new staffing that we have so we're projecting to increase two hundred and twenty six thousand twenty six dollars um i'm gonna skip over to the next highest line on him on this page which is medical insurance so we use nyship

229as our insurance plan um the premiums have raised between 11.28 and 12.7 depending if an employee takes individual coverage or family coverage and that's for our active employees we do have a small offset of a decrease of 20 percent for retirees who are eligible for medicare and are in a certain bracket of one person on medicare and one person not on medicare so there's different premiums based on um where you are family individual and where you are in your medicare eligibility so other factors offsetting the health insurance costs is that we've worked with our unions and in recent years they have agreed to pay a different premium toward our different contributions to their premium so that offsets a little bit of that large increase that we see just below the health insurance line you see

230a line for medicare reimbursement so when a retiree becomes medicare eligible per our planned document we are required to reimburse them what they pay in to medicare and that fluctuates because there's also there's a minimum weight minimum rate for medicare reimbursement and then there's also what's known as irma so it's an adjustment if they have a higher um income when they're medicare eligible they have to pay in more for medicare and then likewise we have to reimburse them that higher rate so um let me give you some paid figures for a retirement retiree who files a joint tax return and earns above 176 000 or an individual who earns above 88 000 then their medicare premiums can increase either from anywhere from 68 dollars a month to 408 dollars a month and that's right excuse

231me report b for part b yes and that's what we're required to reimburse but the basic require required reimbursement is 170 10 cents um in 2022 and again we don't know what the if there's there'll be any increases in 2023 so that is a moving target and we pay for the insurance we don't this number doesn't include co-pays or anything like that that's on the employee right so we pay for the insurance and when they do become medicare eligible the premium does go down because medicare becomes the primary but then we also have to reimburse them for for having medicare but as far as deductibles or co-pays that's on the individual insured the final increase on this page is hold on a second um is our 9089 code which is actually a part of me

232a decrease so the payments associated with these um with this budget line item is length of service paid payments which come from a 401 line so and um length of service is um payments to tax shelter annuities so we do save some money um on social security costs when people are eligible for that anytime an employee goes out in a paid leave absence we pay them through this budget line instead of this their salary line this is for and their replacement position is paid out of their salary lines and then certain groups of employees such as support staff administrators or teachers um hired after a certain date are eligible to get paid for accumulated sick leave and or vacation time depending on their particular contracts so to summarize this budget is totals 33 million 161

233839 or 28.64 of the budget and that goes along with you know mary's co mary spoke a lot about her salaries and these are the benefits that go along with the salaries thank you and when you look at this page and just the the biggest ticket items and add them up i mean that really accounts for about nine hundred thousand dollars of the projected budget-to-budget increase right here on this green page one right right would you mind danielle i remember there was some volatility around unemployment insurance in the pandemic and we see that noted here this is the 90 50 810 code right where it went skyrocketed up to 91 000 and then seems to be coming back down can you just remind us what was going on so we did budget 91 000 this

234current year because we just quite frankly didn't know what was going to happen as far as the pandemic you know and what was what was going on um you can see that there was no actual expense in the prior year and that is because um the federal government actually took that burden away from the school district okay and paid that uh we did not know that at the time of budgeting for this school year yeah they've actually just i believe it's this month or last month stop taking that over okay so we'll see some actual expenses on that line and then next year we look to we looked at the prior years pre-covered to come up with that that dollar amount we do have a reserve set aside for unemployment we do access that in

235july when we allocate our reserves to offset uh different revenue sources so that's our backup plan that's great thank you so much for the reminder and the overview that's great thank you marjorie just one item of interest not really a question here but the i don't know if it's the single biggest line item in the budget but it may be the medical insurance line item the finance committee a couple years ago in fact for two years out of the last four years reviewed our optionality around medical insurance and while there are other options there are substantial barriers to entry that would incur substantial upfront costs to the district and so i think it's just worth pointing out that while we are seeing an increase of 11.2 to 12.7 percent for nightship um there are similar

236increases it's it's a little bit more than we might have anticipated but nevertheless although the finance committee is working on something else this year we took a quick look and and we're fairly confident that we're still in a very good place with nyship and it probably is worth considering next year's charge of the finance committee to at least spend a meeting or two looking at this number again maybe sort of january time frame of next year when the rates are available again but just wanted to point it out because it does look like it's increasing substantially and it's the biggest line item but there's a lot of focus and attention on that both within the district office and then more broadly with community members on the finance committee thank you for mentioning that rory i

237think that is really important to be able to provide that reassurance to our community and our staff that we are looking out for everybody's best interest and so despite the fact that the reality of the market is that we're experiencing a significant increase it's it's not something that we don't always look at and that's a great idea to think about doing that again next year thank you thank you actually this is the page that gives me the most angst because this is where the perfect storm is going to come from where our fuel costs our market goes down the retirement costs go up and the health insurance goes up like if all of these go bad we can have a million and a half to two million dollar increase in our budget that does nothing

238for kids in school so this is sort of the source of my concern when we we have to have room you know we have to have tax levy room to account for a perfect storm should it happen and if it happens it might be for a few years this this is the area which the health insurance is you know complete wild card fuel is going to be higher at least for a while and if the stock market has less favorable years his retirement systems cost will go up a well so we we could well be entering you know where all of these are going to be pointing in the wrong direction yeah i can agree more i mean the volatility is high here and our control of it is is very low so you're right

239in a perfect storm situation this really really could hurt the district financials and we need to be prepared and i think this goes to the question that you had asked the other night just with respect to what's in our control here with respect to looking out over the total budget and thinking about a tax cap environment and you know that's why i think it is important to note that you know who just by standing still our budget to budget costs will increase by nine hundred thousand dollars thank you very much any other questions on this page so we look at are we ready to move on to two so a green page two this is our debt service so this budget represents um debt so associated with large construction projects um that's we borrow through

240the issuance of bonds overall the expense related to principal and interest for school construction and renovation projects is expected to decrease eight thousand seven hundred thirty two dollars and a majority of our debt for outstanding um construction product projects will be satisfied in a year ending 2024. i think the facilities committee is looking at that as well thank you green page three you can see um that there is no items and there hasn't been for a couple years um i know rory you expressed some concerns about when we don't have anything on a page but these this page three and then you'll also see on page four there's been no activities those are for bands bands are bond anticipation notes which are only five years and um sometimes you do see that when you have

241construction projects and on page four we currently purchase buses through propositions but another avenue to do this and we have in the past is to issue a ban and have a five-year borrowing note for bus purchases so they're still in the budget for future use as always an option to use but currently this budget and in the last two prior budgets we haven't seen any activity gotcha so uh that brings us to green page five this is our installment lease purchases this is associated with our energy performance contracts and that we will have we began that in 2014 and that is for a period of 18 years their net change is minimal one dollar and you can see as principal drops off interest rates go down and it equates to that and finally we have

242um on green page six which is our transfer to special aid and our transfer to capital fund let me just talk about the transfer to special aid first because i think that's a little bit simpler and it's a smaller amount so we do have a extended year school year or our summer school program and the state does cover 80 percent of those costs but we are pr we are responsible for and then there's also some maintenance costs involved in that um so that's a 30-day program throughout the summer where related services are are um are are offered so that's the cost for the interfund transfer the reason that's an interfund transfer is we have different funds within the school district so that gets paid through what's called a federal fund or grant fund because it

243is through the state with state aid and then the bigger portion on this green page six is the interfund transformer we've mentioned it a couple times that it goes to what's called our capital fund or if you're looking at our trial balances and our quarterly reports it's also known as our h fund so this just gives us an opportunity to transfer funds to help with capitalized assets some of the highlights in this interfund transfer is continued electric vehicle infrastructure so later this spring early this summer we had electric vehicle infrastructure in this line item last year those are for commuter vehicles this we are hoping to help with electric vehicle infrastructure for an electric bus those don't get charged with the same stations that you would use for commuter vehicles it is a little bit

244more involved and entailed it requires hooking up to the uh the pole source and such other things outlined in this transfer is replacement of stair stair tread wells vanities and bathrooms plumbing fixtures some roofing work repairing parking lots and driveways corridor flooring an awning near the cafeteria and then we always put in this line item is any other items identified in the five-year building condition survey the facilities committee again is really looking at our five years building condition survey but sometimes we have to prioritize things as they come and move them up the ladder depending on the condition or events that happen that is unknown for us thank you i'm not sure whether there are questions am i right we are at the end of our page by page analysis i think so other questions

245on these pages please i was just curious with the electric vehicle infrastructure that we're thinking of putting in for buses how many buses could it serve uh well we're still just in the very preliminary preliminary stages we do have a proposition that we spoke to on thursday for one electric vehicle electric bus and then we're also looking at an electric vehicle and replacement of a rusted rusting out of the vehicle the transportation director drives at four o'clock three o'clock in the morning on these snowy days but as far as the bus infrastructure we would be looking forward to based on the governor's mandates and what we're hearing from the community we're not going to just set up the infrastructure for one we would set up you know look into what's the most cost effective way

246to go through this process okay so it's so you don't know yet in the budget what it is but with the idea of doing whatever is cost-effective with the idea of eventually moving in that correction so can i just ask the question i was trying to get to earlier janelle i think maybe now i get it so this transfer the the transfer capital fund is really to support capital projects so projects that can be capitalized i assume we're able to depreciate them over some number of years yes and that's what makes them different from other projects that might show up in the o m budget that are not capitalizable correct so is that right yes so that 434 code that paul spoke about the title of that code is minor building conditions and repairs so

247that would be like kind replacements the transfer to capital is capitalized assets so really you know where could i go to look at what types of projects is it is it a dollar threshold or is it a type of project or is it based on depreciation where can i go to get the guidance about what can be capitalized and what cannot be capitalized uh so in our audit report you can see our construction and project progress and then capitalized assets um within the audit so anything in those 200 or equipment codes that you see throughout the budget those we do capitalize those and and market on our financial statements as assets and then anything in the the capital funds if they're currently in a work in progress they're shown in our financials as construction in

248progress and then uh once they're completed we um recognize them on on those financial reports that's helpful that's really helpful thank you any other clarifying questions we will have an opportunity after our break to come back and have a more conceptual or philosophical conversation with questions or comments related to the budget but if there aren't any other clarifying questions then we can continue to move forward in our agenda and thank you danelle and thank you to our administrators for sharing your respective budgets with us we really don't hear from all of you throughout the year and this opportunity to hear you talk with such pride and thoughtful care about your departments and the impact of the work that you're doing on students and our infrastructure it really is inspirational and we are grateful to you

249for your respective distributed leadership throughout katona-lewis pro school district and we also really appreciate your willingness to be here with us on a saturday morning and to indulge us in detailed questions related to various line items that are just our best effort to really understand the impact of every dollar on every day so thank you very very much and i'm not sure whether staff members are staying throughout the entirety of you know but i leave that to individuals but we did just want to take a moment while everybody is here to express our gratitude and sincerest thanks for your work developing the budget and um participating in this deliberation process thank you um if there's no further comment from the board then i think can i take a comment in question one just just to

250add to that i really throughout everybody's presentation appreciated hearing the alignment with elevating the goals of serving our students to the best we can both in space and programming as well as um keeping to our board goals of keeping like being very fiscally responsible within that yet also growing the programs as much as possible so it was really it's nice to see that reflected in the budget as well as in words thank you and can i just ask a question on the agenda it says that for this the last item we did was action was a consent is there something okay sorry thanks okay so then i think we are ready to open up our meeting to public comment thank you for joining us members of the community now we're at 5.01 and just a

251reminder to individuals that we have a sign up sheet in the back for anybody who hasn't yet signed up we're looking forward to listening to your thoughts and questions during this portion of the meeting please introduce yourselves let us know where in the district you are and if you have children in the district we'd love to know where they are please keep your remarks to three minutes and a reminder that we're all abiding by the honor code and we will do our best to listen and then as i said later there will be opportunity for some board discussion and i think we have a couple of people signed up or at least one person gia miller it's coved oh i think it's working yeah okay hi everyone i'm sure you all know me my name

252is gia miller i have one student at kes with an iep and one student at john jay middle school with a 504 plan i want to start by saying that i recognize you all view me as an angry and aggressive parent but i'm honestly just frustrated and exhausted after years of fighting so hard to make sure my children receive the services they're entitled to so they can best access their learning and reach their potential but i'm not here to complain today so you can breathe a sigh of relief i just have a couple of questions regarding various special education items in the budget i've actually listened all morning via zoom while parenting my children and i want to thank you because i do appreciate you offering this option for parents like me who can't spend

253the entire day here with you and before i even get to my questions i do want to say i'm really happy to hear that the tsp programs are allowing more children to remain in district and even bring children back to our district that's amazing i've heard such wonderful things about these programs and i hope they continue to grow and support students who can regularly benefit from dbt skills training and extra support in the classroom in my opinion this is a program that the district should actively promote and offer to students in other districts who do need out of district placement it could be a really great way to bring more funds into our district i also want to thank the cse for providing a twice exceptional consultant from boces for my 2e child this year

254twice exceptionality which means a children has two exceptionalities one is giftedness and the other is a disability is not well known or understood and teachers have definitely struggled to understand my child's unique needs over the year lois baldwin has really been a great addition to my child's team and i hope that she will remain with my child's team throughout his education now to my questions my first ones are for catherine mcnulty she said that klsd currently has 15 kids at a district this morning she said that she then broke it down into the following one kid at another public school 10 in other schools and seven in residential that adds up to 18 not 15. everyone makes mistakes i'm not trying to criticize her i just would like to know what the correct number of

255students placed out of district actually is and the breakdown next i was also pleased to learn that you'd like to hire more special ed teachers and an additional speech therapist as you conduct a candidate search for this new slp i want to know from mcnulty and whoever else conducts the search if you're considering the needs of the students who would benefit from a motor planning approach such as prompt dttc etc i hope that you can make one of the candidates criteria that they have a certification and demonstrated comfort and methodology suited to a motor planning-based disability my last questions are from mr celesnek i know some parents said thursday night and i want to echo that i was also pleased to hear your proposal for an ancestors assistant superintendent for special support services but i

256along with a number of other parents in the special education advocacy group do have some questions about this new position first i'd like to know the reasons for recommending this new position what needs developed or were identified that brought about the need for this role next i'd like to know what exactly will this person do for example will they approve all out-of-district placements will they review all ieps and 504s who will report to them will the director of special services report to them what about school psychologists social workers guidance counselors and special education teachers you know what's their scope also it appears from the listing that you provided on thursday that this person will oversee the special services department along with enl and rti services so we'd like to know if that means that enl

257and rti will be moved from the general education umbrella to the special education umbrella going forward and if they are moved will the funds that are currently allocated for these services under general education be shifted to special services or will special services now need to cut their budget in order to provide funds for these enl and rti services and my last question is will an independent audit of the special services department and the other services enl and rti be conducted prior to this person being hired so they can understand what's working well and what needs to be improved i do hope that as a board you ask mr zlesnick these questions about the new role so that you can fully understand the position what it will entail before improving approving the recommendation i've printed out

258a copy of the questions in case you all weren't writing them down as quickly as i spoke so that you can make sure they're answered thank you thank you is anybody else waiting to speak today okay if not then i'm going to close the public comment period and we actually um i think are scheduled for a break at this point and i'm not sure whether um anybody has a different vision in mind but if not then i'm going to ask for a motion for a recess thank you ilana and seconded by julia uh there's no discussion then all in favor please say aye aye thank you it's currently 12 36 we're running a little bit ahead of schedule i think uh and so perhaps instead of coming back at 1 30 which was anticipated instead

259is it too ambitious to come back at one o'clock a 24 minute lunch thank you very much okay we'll be back at 1pm thank you good afternoon welcome back uh would somebody please make a motion thank you julia seconded by rory thank you very much back in session all in favor please say aye aye aye aye aye six zero so again thank you to andrew to the entire cabinet um to our administrators uh this was a very smooth and comprehensive opportunity to review the budget line by line we really appreciate it and as we said on thursday it's also helpful to visualize how our student needs are changing and how this budget proposes to meet the needs where they are changing so we really appreciate all the thought that has gone into the preparation and

260that really made our jobs very straightforward over the course of the past two sessions and really here we have an opportunity for some further board discussion i know we've already asked clarifying questions we had some conversation on thursday night but do board members have topics or dimensions of the budget that you'd like to hear a little bit more about or also this would be an opportunity to ask for any further research or information that could be helpful to the board of education in better understanding a particular aspect or proposal in the budget and as was mentioned on thursday we have a couple of additional board meetings lined up where we can come back and have those questions answered or that information provided and if there aren't too many substantive requests of that nature we can

261also decide that perhaps we need fewer of those budget meetings um we build in quite a few of them as a precaution but if we don't need them then certainly we can free up a couple of thursdays so with that i'll turn it over to all of you just another clarifying question on the revenue side because we didn't go as much line by line through the revenue um i i had a couple of questions there i don't know if it maybe would make sense to do some orientation before that or if i should just start with questions please why don't you ask the questions and let's see where it leads um so i was curious i know that we pay tuition to other districts and i was wondering how many to like if we have

262i'm not sure that's if that's in the um in the revenue side of it tuition that we get from students coming into our district i see is that is that maybe admissions and fees it would be if we did and we have at times had tuition and paying students i don't know that we do at the moment okay it depends on needs and surrounding districts depends whether we have programs that meet those needs i don't know if we have any do we know if we have any currently yeah we think we don't have any currently but we have in the recent past i was curious if that was like a significant or at least an offsetting revenue source kind of in the way that it looks like the um the health services seems to go

263in and out in an equal or this year looks relatively equal um yeah and we were actually coming out ahead sorry we're 40 000 i had this yeah but the health services correctly of our own health services has more to do with the fact that there happens to be private school in our boundaries right so some districts have a private school in their boundaries some don't so they'll bring in income that way in terms of tuition paying students there are there are some districts that really create programming uh with the intent of drawing i would say or i don't even want to say it that way but there are definitely there are districts that tend to draw students more so than for tuition paying programs than other districts there are many districts that don't necessarily

264have tuition paying students attending their schools yeah because i heard correctly i think wasn't it stated that we are sending one of our students to another public school for a program of that nature if we're going to go there i would i would appreciate if we could actually just give katherine a moment to clarify one point that was raised during questioning and then please we could also allow catherine to leave at that point oh that'd be great thank you thanks for staying katherine thank you thank you would you mind just telling us that page of the budget we were looking at again would that be okay oh maybe so no yeah it's not on no no rich can we turn page 18. yes so we do have one student from uh we place in a

265new york state public school and i'll talk about that in a second um i understand there was a question earlier just about the breakdown of the number of students out of district and i apologize if there was confusion i did present the numbers two ways um the first way i presented it was just the overarching of the 15 students that we have placed out of district how many of those students are placed residentially and how many of those students are placed in approved day programs we have eight students who are placed residentially and seven who are i'm sorry seven students who are residential and eight in approved a program so there's 15. but that breakdown doesn't match the budget lines that i know everyone sees so that's why i presented it to match the budget

266lines there is one student place in another new york state public school district so there's one our bose students we have four students placed in day programs or boces and then tuition all other programs is 10 students seven of those 10 students are placed residentially and then there's the remaining three who are day students um so that's how you get the day count of eight um what's that last category is that it's tuition all other that we are sending we are sending correct so those are non-boces placements um they're not in public schools but they're considered to be approved private schools and within the overall category of approved private schools there's approved private day and approved private residential so that's how day and residential come together in that one line and that number is 10.

267great okay to answer the question we have taken students from other new york state schools i receive referral packets if we think the student is appropriate for our setting if we have a room in that cohort we do then participate in like an intake process i know i for example have gone to observe students in their current setting to see if they would be a fit during covid times we did not engage in the process of bringing more students in as we were working very very hard to maintain and keep our classrooms and our programs running for the students who are currently in district but that is something that we are are looking to do for next year again that it has it has to be a student who's appropriate for our cohort but we

268have done this in the past and we we are open to receiving those packets thank you catherine thank you thank you were there other revenue requests uh pardon me revenue related questions that you had in mind i was just on the revenue side here's why the rental fees are the rental inc revenue is going down this year so we currently rent rentals are two different things we rent our school buses during the summer program to the town of lewisboro for their camps and they use our school buses for that purpose and then the bulk of that is our les rental which we currently rent to both the town of lewisborough and then ccc which is uh country children's center so that was a covet related rental they started that last year so that they could

269help during the hybrid they continued that rental this year and we have we've had preliminary conversations back in the fall where they didn't even know if they were extending that lease for this whole entire school year they has have as of now but there's no guarantee that they'll continue to rent that space that's why that was a slight decrease i have i also have a topic on revenue yeah so on the state eight so obviously our budget to budgeting our budget to budget increase of 2.5 million is made up largely of state a an increase in state aid of one point 1.4 million we could call it is that 1.4 million related to covert and sort of one-time funding or do we anticipate that 1.4 million remaining in place over the coming years all right

270so the our governor has um made clear her commitment to public education and has and has made clear also that in this year she's really in her budget has proposed a larger than we've seen in the recent past commitment to schools i don't know that it's accurate to say that it's necessarily covert related but it may be in part because there's a feeling that schools have taken on additional burden have additional needs etc so that might be part of the justification in addition to just an overall commitment to public education whether that goes forward in the future there's there's really too many factors to even think about to know you know certainly and to the governor is depends what that person's commitment is depends what's happening in the world around us as to how state

271funds need to be allocated in other ways so that's why we've budgeted very carefully so that we're not overly reliant on the continuation of state aid in that amount because it is a significant increase right for us this one year and in a tax cap environment it's it's complicated if we receive one-off funding that we can't rely on into the future and so that's really it's 50 of the increases related to additional state aid which hopefully we can depend upon and if we cannot then i just wonder whether the tax levy is appropriate as we go forward i mean obviously for this year this looks like a really solid budget and i thank you for having put that much effort into it but it really is a big question as to whether that 1.3 million

272is so i asked that exact question yesterday oh you did i'm sorry sorry and the the answer was i think that um some of the the the changes in the budget that are expected to be recurring will be from the tax levy piece and that the this increased state aid is being considered as a one as a one shot and they're doing things along those lines that are not going to be recurring some of the consulting services that you mentioned earlier makes sense so okay so we've okay i have the same thank you for you can do yeah it's complicated it's actually it's questionable as to whether it's beneficial if it's a short-term allocation the real benefit of it because it really does sort of handcuff us a little bit in terms of our tax

273cap well yeah i mean specifically with regard to the tax levy um it was also observed in looking back historically that the the increase to the levy this year the 1.25 percent looking back i mean it's actually one of the lower right increases that because state aid is higher right yes it's not if it doesn't persist then that puts us into a little bit of a right challenge i guess next year as we start to consider the tax levy for next week which is why so many of the funds are envisioned to go to one time exactly okay thank you and then rory i just also wanted to clarify because you mentioned are these coven increases so we do receive some federal aid filtered through the state but that's completely separate than this increase that

274we're seeing here how much will that be all right so that's the art money of approximately 658 000 and the curse of money which is about 289 000. but just clear the six but the six thirty is to be spent over three years yes over multiple years correct two years for the cursa and three years for the arc that's this year's money i know it's yeah we discussed it last year during the budget season so it's it's it's not included in this this is that's in a separate fund we talked about the h fund before that's um those funds are in the federal funds the f funds thank you and just to clarify that those expenses are not in this budget that's sort of extra right those are outside of the budget yeah and just

275for for our understanding i mean people have been sort of asking about this and we've said it before but thursday we talked about those funds being used again because they're not recurring to support and build capacity or infrastructure but if we wanted to look back at that again or the budget or sort of know where that fits in you know the budget is one representation of the implementation of our vision and values and things like that but this is this is another very small piece compared to the larger budget like one percent of it but where where would that be it's on the website you said it's on the website yeah there's a whole page dedicated to the american rescue plan that you can get to through the business office oh okay website so under

276district offices business yep in a non-revenue so much overdone with revenue i have a non-revenue question um sort of along the lines of what was asked during the comment period a little bit more detail about the need for the administrative level so special ed support what they will do and how does it change reporting relationships up and down i think would be the first set so i'll talk a little bit about it and then also happy to come back at future meetings and talk even more about it one one thing i want to say very clearly though and bill you you did phrase it this way it's very intentionally not called an assistant superintendent for special education calling it an assistant superintendent for uh student support services which is a broader yeah phrase so it

277encompasses special education and also for now encompass we're projecting it to encompass enl and rti that does not mean that those services are becoming special education services right i want to be very clear about that and it does not mean that there's a change in funding allocations actually as we've heard we're increasing uh enl staffing under one part of the budget for for next year we're also increasing some special education staffing and there's no co-mingling or taking away from one piece of the budget for another piece because of a a new title or a new supervisor so it's it's broader and and a title can certainly encompass you know more than one area right uh in the school in that way uh in terms of i don't i'm not sure how far your question went

278why is it needed yeah and what do you envision them doing and or what will be different because we have the person so so i would yeah again in somewhat general ways but i would say it's a balance of needs and opportunities right there's um we know that all of those areas we've we've heard particularly about the the rapid expansion of enl that certainly special education services over time have grown also the number of students who are served the types of needs that are served the types of services that are provided all of those areas have grown over time uh become more complex over time and so uh so the needs there are in terms of capacity to always be providing the best services we can and looking ahead to developing program that best meets

279the needs of all students what we said the other night and this is shifting a little bit more to the opportunity is to think about the services that are provided to all of those students in all of those categories in conjunction with how they meet the needs of all students in the district in other words how how are uh special education services integrated with the education that all students receive how to same thing with enl and also with rti we don't as as we move forward you see we see more and more benefit in thinking holistically and inclusively about the programs that we offer to all of our students and we see benefit to all of our students the more we strengthen programs in one area we anticipate benefits in the other area but to

280think about that obviously again takes takes capacity takes planning time takes thinking time takes resource to you know it can't just be piled on top of people whose jobs are already very very full providing the services that we do so that's where i say it's it's opportunity as well as it is need the vision is that the director will still in terms of the committee work and you know all the things they do now this will still largely be at the director level yeah to a degree and and they'll necessarily be be likely some sharing of that work um but in terms you know we can we can speak broadly today about the reporting structures so certainly a director of special education would be reporting to this person um the assistant directors you know in

281a chain would be reporting to the director and then to this person uh but we'll still be thinking more about that in terms of some of this right yeah so we'll be we'll be thinking through more of that in the weeks and months ahead i think the um excuse me the integration of all of those services you know when we look at numbers we think about all three of those categories it's about a third of our student population receives some form of service yeah and alan i think you asked a question earlier about how you know the professional learning and the way we structure our instruction how it can help all students right it's not so you know if i'm an enl teacher and i'm partnering with a general education teacher it doesn't look unlike

282special education partnership might look but everyone benefits because everyone gets some more attention um we get to know you know a goal of ours for a very long time is knowing our students really well and obviously with more adults in the room and integrated looking for some of the same things that becomes easier more seamless and more seamless for students to receive any type of service ideally you know you have teachers and you have students and they're all working together but the integration of all of those things is helpful but the two rti and enl on the general education side of things and then obviously special ed right and you said this it would be a cabinet level yes position yeah okay is this a unique position to ksd not at all um there are

283there are assistant superintendent positions all around the region and that the titles vary so in some places it may be called an assistant superintendent for special education and other places you'll see the title that we have that we're proposing and in other places you might see assistant superintendent for pupil personnel services and and the titles vary uh to some degree in terms of what uh falls underneath that person so in some places uh guidance for example could also fall and counseling services could also fall underneath that person so um you know we we wanted a title that gave us some flexibility so that we can continue to think about so and we liked student support because our focus is really trying to provide support for all of our students as best we can i have

284another question is marissa marillo is she the director for the guidance just in the high school or into the middle school as well he's middle school too okay thank you i think i missed the beginning of your question so you were saying that this proposed position is exists in other districts as well yeah not in all of them all right so some districts and it can depend on the size of the district some districts as will be will look the way our district has looked for a number of years which is a director position other districts will have an assistant superintendent position and there are also districts that have both positions okay and just to clarify this position would be would it be supporting all students or is it particularly for this third of the

285population so again we we think it will we think it supports all students sure with particular oversight in those areas that we've identified and then what right now if you have a vision what qualifications might this person have and what expertise would they be bringing and skills are you looking to kind of add into the cabinet so there's there are certifications they're going to have as a as a district level uh administrator there are certain certifications that have to be there most likely we'll be looking we will be looking for a background in special education services for sure uh ideally also in those other areas enl and rti we'll be looking for background there and then we're going to be looking for someone who thinks uh holistically and inclusively about how these services can meet

286the needs of all students and how they can be integrated in a district margin can i ask a separate sure quite on different topic and i really apologize because i'm certain this was covered on thursday and i missed thursday as you know but i did notice a class size sort of weird discrepancy in meadow pond and i think i've figured it out where we have 17 students in first grade i think but then we have elected to go with only three sections in fourth grade uh even though we have the same 53 and i think that's because at the younger grades we've agreed that we should try to keep the class sizes smaller whereas in the higher grades were okay even though 26 is sort of pushing the boundary a little bit it's it's more

287than uh just an agreement rory we have um documented we have we have documented guidance policy where we talk about the goals which is the what we describe as the ideal class size or and then we have a range or a maximum number yeah and in grades k2 the goal number is 20 the maximum is 25. when you get to uh third grade it shifts to 25 to 28 yeah in grades four and five it's 25 to 30. so we said we did say on thursday night that number that particular grade is still well within our guidelines it is and we said we would continue to monitor it it's one of the reasons we put those contingency positions there and if it grows to a point that we become uncomfortable with it should the budget

288move forward as it is we would have the contingency available to make a change yes if necessary and the number looks a little bit more like an anomaly this year because them the numbers around it are smaller but there have been other years when we've had numbers much closer to or at that level in those grades yeah yeah thank you it's the only anomaly i saw i mean i think that this has been a great job of managing the the class sizes across the entire district it actually looks better than any previous year but there was that just that one little outlier and some of that you know we we're we're happy to take credit but some of that's luck of the draw of course what the numbers are and how they break down when

289you divide them i understand the math yeah yeah thanks thank you and then oh probably one other thing that was probably covered on thursday night if i may i noticed that we're increasing the uh nurse fte by half a nurse at the middle school and i would have thought that during covert we were probably trying to ramp up our nursing staff and now as we head into a postcode era that maybe we could actually ramp back down a bit or even keep it level can you help and i'm sure chris yeah we did some justice to this on thursday but again sure so uh to to a degree you're right that we did try to ramp up your encoded we found and we don't anticipate this changing anytime soon that maintaining nursing staff in part-time

290positions was very very challenging well right this great demand on nurses right now and the work of being a nurse right now is more demanding than ever before so trying to maintain a person in a 0.5 position proved to be very difficult we don't want to go down at the moment so we're asking to increase to a full-time position and if at some point in the future you know things do start to go back to normal you know we can make an adjustment in a future year is necessary but for now we think it's important to maintain those thanks although full time at each school it'll actually result in each elementary school has one full-time nurse this would put two at the middle school and two at the high school yeah so i'll just i'll

291just point out that we're now at the point in time where we were supposed to begin our board dialogue so we're doing great but no no no no it's good we're way ahead of schedule but this just does so happen to be that time so just just for housekeeping purposes go for it julia so i'm just wondering is is the nursing number also but imagine it also depends on the composition of our student body i mean i think if we had let's say an increase in the number of type 1 diabetic children in the district we would have to think about some of those things in terms of balancing the the daily regular needs of our students with the um you know specific like incident-based activities of a kid having a certain thing occur that

292you know i think we do in our district have students that have regular daily needs for medication you know medication drops and and monitoring of blood tour levels and things like that and that it feels to me like to have sort of one person that can be managing that and really know those students and be working with them and then someone else who's more of like the drop-in staff probably i don't know whether that number kind of can ebb and flow based on the composition of our students so for this year you know thinking that it would be two but maybe in other years we would shift that back to one in each building with one who floats back and forth that's possible possible and and nurses do get used i mean i i think

293you heard katherine maybe refer to some of the particular needs um but there are other situations in which nurses are absolutely necessary and by having the two at each school uh it can actually serve some other needs too you know they they do fill in at an elementary school if a nurse has to be absent if we have a field trip that requires a nurse to attend because of a particular student's need that allows one of our nurses to attend and still to have a nurse in the building for other people for other children so it has a lot of value yeah i'll just i'll just add in a tiny bit that we've um as sandra mentioned we've had real difficulty in keeping the part-time nursing staff and when we did have someone here earlier

294in the year um they were being asked to work overtime in that part-time job because the the demands were so intense um and unfortunately we don't have that person anymore but but it just goes to show that's just one microcosm of one one experience i think it's worth sharing um and in the coming weeks i'm planning on speaking i've already reached out to the nurses to speak with them each one to uh to to kind of further and deepen my sense of their everyday routine and what's going on even though i have heard a lot from them over the past couple months but it's um they they are certainly working really hard and um i i do think it requires our attention here thank you yeah i will say they they do really stay on

295top of anything that's required nothing some parents should grin like like they're very good about making sure that we are compliant with everything that's necessary for our students to be in school i've only heard great things any other topics or requests for additional information or contacts for our next budget related meeting i had a context sort of question i i'm impressed i mean i really appreciated the graphs in the beginning of it and describing seeing that so much of our budget is spent on instruction um and and our overhead is relatively small even for such a large physical plant and large system and that our benefits are just sort of something out of our control right it's largely contractual and outside of our control so um i was just curious how our breakdown compares to

296other districts the sort of percentages usage and also best prac ideas about best practice in public education so i can't i can't speak to all the categories i can't say that broadly speaking salaries and benefits in all the districts around our region generally account for between 75 and 80 of the budget i think that's roughly we fall in there somewhere i don't know the exact number for the coming year danelle i don't know if we can we i we usually between andrew and i we we do speak to our counterparts and get a sense of where they are with their budget um but i can say areas that might we might differ from other districts is transportation some of our other districts have um we're a self-opt transportation and some people contract service out for

297that so that can show some variability where we where we rank with other school districts and then debt service so depending on how much debt other school districts have we might rank a little bit differently but those are the two areas i would say vary between district to district but primarily you know we are all in the business of instruction and benefits just from conversations that i hear with board members in the region i would underscore everything that has been said and would add that years ago another factor for our school district was health insurance but that health insurance and transportation really have been over time the focus of the work of the finance committee so thank you to the community members who have served on our finance committee over time but a lot of

298thoughtful careful planning has resulted in some other opportunities in you know pretty recent years so that now with respect to healthcare we're much more in line with regions districts in the region and completely agree that it's it's really sometimes just a conversation around transportation and then also i'm hearing more conversation related to special education costs and specifically the bonus on schools to fund out of district placements and to what threshold and things like that on the on the revenue side there also can be quite a bit of variability so the districts comparable to owls we'll probably see state a comparable to owls in the in the 809 percent range of the budget something like that but there are other districts and and particularly upstate districts that might get 50 percent of their revenue from state

299aid so huge variation there and and much more significant impact when state a goes up and down also right and we have a not only a higher reliance on attack levy i think we are particularly reliant on personal property owner tax celebrity as opposed to commercial right and some other places might have so it's we have an area where it's really about the local homeowners paying their taxes which you know makes it all that much more personal and a heavy topic actually i think that's really important on the revenue side you know i think about it neighboring districts you and some of our comparable districts that have a much even though it's property tax they have businesses that own significant pieces of property within their district and get you know really helps to offset the

300tax individual taxpayers property tax you don't have there aren't any other questions right now we do want to just take this opportunity again to say thank you for your leadership in facilitating conversations across the district so that we could have smooth respectful collaborative deliberations it's such a pleasure to have principals and directors join us and the manner in which they speak to one another and also about our students and about our school community and the ongoing culture of professional learning that has so clearly been established in recent years thanks to your leadership mary and andrew we really thank you for all of that and for the reflection of your leadership that we really saw from so many individuals here today and danelle a huge thank you to you and to your entire team for what

301we can't even imagine must be an inordinate amount of work going into this proposed budget and also a retroactive thank you for this current year's budget with which we're living right now and that is working so successfully on behalf of every student every day when i think back to how we pulled this off last year at this time in a hybrid learning model not even knowing whether we'd be able to bring our students back to school in person for that school year and that we still manage to project out a budget and have our community support it roundly you know that's really a testament to your planning and to the trust that our community has placed in you and we really thank you and your team i know you took the time the other night

302to thank your team but we really sincerely thank you and neil thank you for your walking us through your budget and the exciting changes and improvements that you're envisioning in the coming school year there's so much exciting work and this has been such an exhausting depleting time for school leaders for so many reasons that are obvious to all of us and you all have done herculean work every day on behalf of this school district and this budget is really exciting and includes some enhancements that we're excited about the reality that this was such a quiet morning of deliberations really couldn't be a louder testament to your leadership your farsight foresight and dedication to our children and this community and we're very fortunate very grateful it probably means we can save a thursday or two in

303the near future um but it's it's really important to us to take a moment to express that gratitude thank you to all of you thank you very much thank you thank you thank you very much thank you so i think then we're ready to look ahead to future meetings i have one announcement let's do that unrelated to budget yeah let's do that relate to one of my other favorite topics absolutely asks i see where you're going yeah um consistent with other uh announcements throughout the pandemic late on friday night uh last night the cdc issued new guidance i don't i actually don't know how much more broadly but i do know that some of its new guidance relates quite directly to masks and uh that's been a topic of interest in our district and in

304all school districts of course around us and so the first thing we have to do is issue a reminder which has also been true throughout the pandemic which is the cdc issues guidance and then the state department of health takes a moment to interpret that guidance and to think about its own guidance to schools and schools continue to be obligated to follow the guidance provided by new york state so as of to today we have not received any new guidance from new york state in light of yesterday's announcement and i could fully understand people beginning to have questions about that when you look at the new cdc guidance they've changed the metrics you can now look up your county to see where you fall westchester county is indicated as having low whatever category low is

305i don't know if it's as low risk or low something but we're in that low category and underneath that it says that the uh wearing of a mask becomes the individual's preference under that category i could understand community members thinking well does that apply to schools and the answer is we don't know yet but we do i can i can share that uh superintendents in our region have already reached out to the department of education as well as the governor's office to find out when and when guidance may be coming to help us to know what's what are the regulations to be in our district and as soon as we have more information about that we will share it with our community it might be as soon as this weekend it might be sometime next

306week or the following week we just don't know until there's new guidance the mask mandate continues to be the same as it has been and as soon as we hear more we'll let folks know we hope it doesn't come monday morning after everybody's in school we hope that we certainly hope that's the case or at least it doesn't change back and forth right right there probably also be some sort of exceptions for health care scenarios and stuff like that but schools particularly are usually singled out so it'll be interesting to see how they how they parse it yeah i will i will say that our our building administrators have been thinking about this transition for some time they already have letters and in some cases videos to prepare to share uh with an emphasis on

307respect or if if it's if we're going to be at a place where people are allowed to make individual decisions with an emphasis on being respectful of people's rights to make whatever individual decisions they need to make for themselves and do i have a related quick question before so yesterday i saw a notification from the town of lewisboro that they have lifted my mass mandates in the town okay which they explicitly said included events at lewisburg elementary school which i believe is their prerogative as the renter do we have any activities do we have any district activities that occur at lewisburg elementary where we might need to provide clarification that if it's a school district event bluesboro and if not then that's fine a great question we've occasionally used or at least during the pandemic

308i think we use the gym as a facility but i'm not sure that we are currently i'm not sure either but if we were to use a any space that we rent it would follow underneath the school's guidelines it would it would be like a field trip for us on the field trip students would still be following the school rules the school guidelines would still apply in that case at least yeah okay thank you thank you very much i guess one other question with this liz brought this up the other day with the changing potentially changing guidance where what have been sort of are different bargaining units and if anything expressed around that around masking they've they've expressed um what's the right word satisfaction i guess that we've followed the guidance from new york state

309throughout the pandemic and that it seems that so long as we're following the guidance you know we all feel good about that thank you for the update on that and i think then we are ready to look ahead to future meetings perhaps we should just reach a decision related to thursday march 3rd which as was mentioned this past thursday it's not customary for us to meet the thursday right after the all-day saturday budget session and i'm not really hearing a need to come back this thursday so if the board's in agreement then i think we will look to cancel that particular meeting and then we can kind of play it by ear so the facilities committee will meet wednesday march 2nd at 7 00 pm and then the sustainability committee would meet friday march 4th

310at 8 15 a.m the board would next come back on thursday march 10th 7 30 pm john jay high school library and we will have an opportunity to revisit the budget at that meeting finance committee scheduled for tuesday march 15th 7 o'clock p.m facilities again on wednesday march 16th 7 p.m and then a couple of board meetings currently scheduled for thursday march 17th and thursday march 24th one of which is our budget hearing which of those is the mandatory no not so much oh that's may sorry do we have something march 17th or 24th that is adoption the adoption sorry and where is it currently scheduled the 24th it gets to either one either one okay so tbd sometimes it can depend on when the governor's budget is actually finalized so we're not sure when

311that will be okay we'll play that by ear and then friday march 25th policy committee at 9am and i think yeah go ahead julia we're all going to say the same thing so we did actually just recently add an audit committee meeting on march 7th okay thank you march 7th so we just scheduled that so it's not on here but okay great thank you for adding that we're not doing march 3rd correct i think that's what we're hearing is that we are not going to meet on thursday march 3rd thank you and would somebody like to make a motion to adjourn thank you bill seconded by catherine again our most heartfelt gratitude to all of you thank you so much all in favor of adjourning peace thank you