CCSD Board of Education Business Meeting on Monday, March 24, 2025 @ 7 00 PM

001Hello. Uh, good evening everybody. Uh, thank you for joining us here at the Monday, March 24th Board of Education monthly business meeting. Uh, I'd like to ask you all to please join me and stand and say the pledge of allegiance to the flag of America and to the stands one nation under God indivisibley andice for all. Uh, our first order of business is public comment. The board of education um recognizes visitors for any item on the agenda or any other concern. Each person wishing wish wishing to speak is asked to speak into the microphone, identify themselves, and respectively limit their comment to three minutes. Two opportunities to speak are available, one early in the meeting, which will be limited to 30 minutes and one at the end of the meeting. Each speaker may address the

002board only once at both the opening and closing portions of the agenda. Please remember there will be no cross dialogue between speakers and between members of the board. All speakers are to conduct themselves in a civil manner. Obscene language, lielist statements, threats of violence, statements advocating racial, religious or other forms of prejudice will not be tolerated. [Music] Persons or students should present comments and or concerns to the superintendent during regular business hours. Uh with that uh body would like to join us for a comment please come up and regalis. Hello. Hi. My name is Bianca Martelli and I'm a junior in student council at Coral Central High School. Hi, my name is Marissa Barnesby and I'm the junior class president. I'm Nicholas Ki and I'm the student vice president for the PTSO. And we are

003here today to propose a senior privilege initiative of painting our parking spots. We believe that this privilege will of allowing seniors to paint their parking spot can add creativity to our campus and can also serve as a fundraiser to help offset the cost of senior prompt tickets which we all know are a little expensive. It also can serve as a meaningful way to bring our class together. More than this is this initiative is more than just parking spots. It is about school pride, self-expression and can create a tradition for seniors to leave their mark. Our survey revealed overwhelming support from 96.3% of next year's seniors, demonstrating how important this initiative is to our class. Many schools in our area, including Monroe, Woodbury, and Goan, have implemented this program, proving it can be done effectively, allowing

004uh we have been working with the administration at our school to ensure that this aligns with all school policies, and we are excited to make this an initiative for years to come and generations of students. Allowing seniors to paint their parking spots also introduces an outlet for creativity while supervised. Similar to a custom t-shirt, designs can embrace uh individualism while remaining inside the designated parking spots. We are going through an approval process for every artwork and we will ensure that it will all be within school regulation. We're super excited to bring this to the next class. As you can see, you have handed out examples of our interest survey and ways that other schools neighboring have implemented this process to make it smooth and efficient. As you can see, these these parking spot designs can

005be a meaningful way for students to express themselves and create long-lasting memories. Let's work together to make a tradition, ultimately enhancing our school and the senior class, giving them a celebration they deserve. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you uh very much for that. Could I ask one of you to grab my copy? Could I get the the three of your email addresses so I could follow up with you? Thank you. Or perfect. Thank you, Linda. If Yeah, if you just read it. Thank you. Uh wonderful. Any other public comment? Is this on? Hi, I'm Steve Jones. I I live at Tilford Place up in High Mills. And I'm Fred Miles. I also live Oh, this is my neighbor. So, I also live in Tilford Place as well. Uh we're here as a

006group uh the UPK for Cornwall. And um we have over 400 active members uh watching this program grow for our children. We're here tonight to uh to just request that this uh program be treated um just like kindergarten would and it be prioritized like kindergarten. Uh we request that the communications uh be handled exactly like kindergarten would. Um and we're also here to ask for 47 new spots so no kids have to be weightlisted. And uh yeah, and and just to piggyback off of that, we would like the monies um needed for the additional 47 slots to be allocated now so that um they are set aside if the board budget is approved by the town. And um we as a group would like to know the district's plan and UPK expansion. Um that's my

007daughter over there. She was hoping to uh go to elementary school or UPK. Um and uh he has a son that uh is now in UPK and we're neighbors and uh the kids know each other. But um I say that to say just just want to understand uh what is the expansion plan. Um Terry had told me that a few years ago there were about 50 slots and it has since doubled but it's not really it's not aligned to the population growth. So thank you guys. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you both. Um, thank you for your service. I will say that's a timely comment as we are discussing our budget tonight and I believe it will be an issue of discussion on tonight's meeting. So, thank you both.

008Anybody else for public comment? All right. Thank you for both of our groups of commenters. Uh, the next item on our agenda, student representative reports. Maline is flying solo tonight. David couldn't join us. So please, thank you. I think AA's at Villanova doing um scholarship interviews, so hopefully she does good at that. Anyways, so the good news for CO during the afternoon of March 10th, the student council walked to the district office and visited the superintendent. Each student prepared a question for Mr. Dade. The students learned many interesting things about the leader of our district. For example, how he became inspired to become a superintendent, his favorite sports team, his favorite color, and what's he want what he wants to do in his retirement, and the many hard decisions he has spent has to make

009being the superintendent. The students thoroughly enjoyed this company. On March 4th, 87 fourth grade band and orchestra students from CO Willow and Lee Road participated in the instrumental recital held at CO. All the students had fun preparing for this event and enjoyed showing off their hard work. Musical selections included folk songs, pop tunes, and selections from Harry Potter, Disney, and Star Wars. A good time was had by all. Pick a part pick a reading partner is in full swing at CO. It started on March 3rd and will conclude on March 25th. This year's theme is read, feel, share, feel the book, emoji, the feeling. The number of minutes that students read are being recorded and will be converted to points. The class with the most points will be rewarded. So far, the kindergarten has read

0105,257 minutes. The first grade has read 3,720 minutes and the second grade has read 2295 minutes. The third grade has read 3,980 minutes and the fourth grade has read 4,22 minutes. The building goal was 18,743 based on past performance and to date the building is at 20,454 exceeding the goal by 1,711. On March 21st, CO recognized World Down Syndrome Day Awareness Day by wearing mismatched socks. March 21st was selected to signify the uniqueness of the triplication of the 21st chromosome which causes Down syndrome. In 2013, the theme of the wearing mismatched socks was initiated to raise awareness about Down syndrome. The idea was created because chromosomes are shaped like socks and people with Down syndrome have an extra chromosome. Please come and support the co PTO drama production of Newsies Jr. being held on Friday,

011March 28th at 6 PM and Saturday, March 29th at 6 p.m. The cast and crew have been working really hard and are looking forward to putting on a great show. Don't miss it. Okay, Will willow. Good news for March. We kicked off March with Dr. Seuss week. Students dressed in themes based on Dr. Seuss book of the day, including The Cat in the Hat, Fox and Socks, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Bluefish. We are continuing our love of reading with our March Madness of books. Each day, students will listen to a picture book being read by a staff member, and at the end of each week, they will vote on their favorite book. Last week of March, we will vote on our top three books in the bracket to crown the winning book.

012Our fourth grade instrument students wowed us with their musical talents at the combined fourth grade instrumental recital. We are incredibly proud of all their hard work. The third and fourth grade classes have been learning about immigration and took a trip to Ellis Island last week as their culminating activity for wait for for the unit. This week they participated in an immersive experience, the journey in PE. We kicked off our annual Mission Impossible unit. Students are participating teamwork, cooperation, patience, and perseverance. This week, our fourth graders will attend the Medal of Honor observance ceremony at town hall to honor and remember. Lastly, we welcomed our newest Dragon families for kindergarten registration. We are excited to meet them all in September. The CES good news. It is hard to believe we are already almost done with the

013month of March. Our students have been enjoying the longer days and warmer weather and are looking forward to all the activities we have planned through the end of the year. Miss Harter's classroom was transformed into Andy's room for Toy Story. Their students tackled the challenging skill of text structure while fully immersing themselves in a world full of play and discovery. They built Lego towers for the toy soldiers by identifying text structures and reading passages. coded dash to escape Sid's room, used Play-Doh for fraction lessons in math, and constructed a bridge to help the toys get back home. The combination of rigor and engagement made for a truly unforgettable learning experience. Miss Gleason's third graders have been making exciting discoveries in science. After researching wildlife corridors that help protect animals when their habitats change, students designed,

014built, and tested prototypes to help salamanders cross the road safely using rolly pulleys as standins. They then observed their prototypes and actions, gathering evidence to support their claims. This hands-on STEM activity was a great way to connect learning with the real world problem solving. On Friday, March 21st, we unveiled our new PBIS initiative featuring dragon dollars designed by our talented fourth graders. Students will earn dragon dollars for positive behavior and can learn or can later redeem them for prizes from the PBIS cart, which will make its rounds every few weeks. A huge thank to our PBIS committee and our GTO for making this exciting initiative possible. As we look ahead, we are preparing for our computer-based third and fourth grade New York State exams. The fourth grade visit to CCMS and of course spring break.

015This is the middle school good news. In March, students at CCMS have celebrated our diversity with foreign language week. Students had the opportunity to celebrate their heritage and the many languages in our students and families speak. The LOT department held contests and trivia. The CCMS drama club presented Oliver the musical. Performing two soldout shows, Oliver is a musical adaptation of Charles Dick Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist following the young orphan Oliver as he navigates the streets of Victorian England, encountering both kindness and cruelty and ultimately discovering his true family. Thank you to Miss Molton, Miss War, Mr. Miss Firestone and Miss Reikov and all of our amazing parent volunteers who helped our students have truly magical performances. CCMS is testing out a new recess spot in order to get our students outside and moving around

016even after inclement weather. We are excited to work with Mr. Moran and buildings and grounds to add foursquare and hopscotch to our front loop. Our students have been loving playing and being active. Okay. Lastly, we have the good news for the high school. With the end of the third quarter approaching, students are working hard to finish their term strong. Teachers and staff are continuing to support students as they wrap up assignments and prepare for the final stretch. Last week, CHS hosted the Morgan's Message 3v3 basketball tournament, which aimed to raise awareness around mental health. This event was not only a great opportunity for students to come together in friendly competition, but it also sparked important conversations about mental well-being in our school community. Spring sports officially kicked off this month. Our student athletes are already

017hard at work preparing for their respective seasons, which include track and field, baseball, softball, and other sports. We look forward to their continued success and community involvement. The Leadership Council is currently planning Dragon Day, an event that will promote school spirit, community engagement, and teamwork. This event will provide students with opportunities for collaboration and will encourage a sense of pride in their school. Congratulations to our math team for winning their sectionals competition. Their hard work and dedication have earned them the chance to move forward to in regional competitions. We are proud of their success and continue to support their academic excellence. The National Honor Society has launched a cookie fundraiser to raise funds for their charitable initiatives. This event not only supports community service efforts, but also showcases the leadership and commitment of our NHS

018members. On March 19th, the senior class celebrated their 100 days until graduation milestone with an ice cream social. Students signed shirts and enjoyed sweet treats while participating in a raffle where winners received gift cards to Apple, McDonald's, Duncan, Starbucks, or Buffalo Wild Wings. Thank you very much. Any uh personal observations you'd like to share about going on the high school as we get through daylight savings here? an extra hour of daylight. Spring is starting. Hopefully having some more fun and preparing for the end of the year. All right. Thank you very much. Um I will extend our our normal offer here of you're more than welcome to join us and and participate, but if you have studies um you've got homework, please feel free to to sneak out and do that. So the stand standard

019offer applies. Uh next uh item on our agenda is superintendent's update. Uh thank you, Jim. Uh so I'm going to uh use my time uh this evening as I do annually uh because we typically have uh UPK speakers uh every year at this time of year because the demand um continues to exceed the number of seats. Uh so tonight I just want to kind of go through the history of UPK in our district and make sure that the board is aware of all of the complexities that are involved with um trying to accomplish what uh is easily put out in headlines as um UPK for all. Uh so in the spring of 2022 uh the board at the time approved 58 UPK seats at a cost of $182,000 uh in our annual budget. In 2023,

020we added uh 20 seats to bring us up to 78 seats, added an additional 78,000 uh dollars in our budget. And then last year in the spring of 2024, we added another 20 seats to bring us up to 98 seats uh for an additional $52,000. Uh so all in over the past three years, this board, our community, and our staff has has really shown a true interest in investing in UPK. That comes to $312,000 um added to our budget over the past uh three years. uh to bring us up to speed on how what is the demand. So last year there were 132 applications. How do I know there were 132? Because Terry Jr. was number 132 in the lottery. The very last ping pong ball picked. So um and there were uh as of

021October uh we reached number uh 114 on the list. That's an important number for the board to know because we went through uh 36 families on the wait list. Which brings me to my point of UPK for all is a very nice headline, but as long as there's a lottery and there's not a voucher system, it's really uh difficult to accomplish UPK for all. So going through 36 different families on the weight list means that they were offered a seat and for one reason or another they de they declined it. So then you go to the next family and the next family and the next family. Um this year we're up to 144 applications. Um so far uh there are eight families that either declined or do not qualify. Um another interesting caveat for this

022year's uh UPK class is uh there's at least four sets of twins. Again, UPK for all is a nice headline, but once you have a lottery, one twin can get into said provider, but you don't get the bonus golden ticket of getting your other child into the same provider. So, imagine that family's choice that they have to make. they can send their one child to X provider and then decide to send their other child to another provider or are they deciding to pay for both to send them to another uh location that has space. So again, these are some of the complexities that our families uh deal with. Um, and again, my advocacy for Senator Scufus and the and the powers that be is that the only way to truly accomplish UPK for all is

023to take the funding allocated by the state, divide it proportionally to the number of families that apply and give them a voucher to go to a UPK facility of their choosing. That is the only way that you accomplish UPK for all. Unless you're able to bring it in-house like we did in Rochester, you have space available in your elementary schools. You hire your own UPK teachers and assistants and you have a lottery for ample seats and they're just choosing which school they're going to attend. As as this board knows and our community knows, we don't have space. So, we would have to add on to um additional elementary schools. So, I'm saying this as a proud dad who has now I have another child in the lottery who's on the on the wait list. So,

024please know I'm advocating for, but my job is to make sure that the board and the community has all of the facts um at their fingertips to make the right uh decisions uh moving forward. Uh so the the last thing that I'll um say that I said uh two years ago is um we have to make sure that the number that we increase for allocation matches the the eventual demand. So again I'll go back to 20 um 23 where we're uh went through 36 families on the wait list. we would not have been able to fill another full class with the number of families that applied. So again, that's just another piece of complexity uh for the board to consider. So I will say to end because people often confuse my remarks to advocating or

025not. I am fully advocating for um additional uh seats when um it makes uh budget sense and and it matches with the numbers. Uh, but I also want to make sure that we're not falling into the um kind of the allure of UPK for all as the requirements exist now is really difficult to accomplish because parents really have their they rank their preferences when they send in their applications one, two, three, and four. a lot of parents who get their fourth choice decide to pay for UPK on their own and they're declining uh the seat. So, um that's kind of where we are now. We're excited for um our four providers and and whatever the board and community ultimately decides for uh the 2425 uh 2526 school year. Thank you. Um, next item on our

026agenda. Go. Oh, Terry buzzed in first. The Jeopardy buzzer here. Only uh only follow Thank you for that. Only follow-up question. Um, of the four providers, do they have any capacity left for UPK? I know that I mean they're under no obligation to make their seats available. So, what is the situation there? Uh, so this was another I really appreciate that question, Brendan. Uh so a very interesting um uh concern that uh parents have and our providers have is if you allocate all of your space to UPK lottery recipients, you have families who have been a part of that program since the time that they their kids were infants and want to continue on in that in that program. So they could essentially be locked out. So I'll I'll use Butter Hill as an example.

027if they made all three of their classes Cornwall Central School District lotteryies, all families that don't get the lottery be would be locked out of um Butter Hill. Uh so currently Butter Hill has two uh Cornwall classrooms um and one four-year-old uh class for um general. That's what Terry Junior's in. Um Sportslex has one Cornwall classroom and one uh general public. They are at capacity. Um so both both Butter Hill and Sportslex are at uh capacity. Uh Windsor has one Cornwall and I think two other uh with neighboring districts other classrooms. Uh they could increase uh another classroom. Uh Arc of Learning um with their building set up now they have a UPK form wall and a non uh UPK classroom and they're at capacity with their uh building. Um we also put out RFPs.

028So we do have other providers that are interested in coming online so they would have additional capacity as well. Good, Brendon. Christine, that was all right. Uh, thank you for that. Uh, next item on the agenda is the president's update. Um, I don't have anything to report outside of the agenda. Uh, so we will just continue on. Uh, next item is our consent agenda. We have nine items uh on this meeting's consent agenda. Uh use of the consent agenda permits the board of education to make more effective use of its time by adopting a single motion to cover those relatively routine matters which are included. Any member of the board who wishes to discuss individually a particular piece of business on the consent agenda may so indicate and that item will be considered and voted

029on separately. Um so let me have a motion here for items two through nine and then we will pull out um a motion in a second and we'll pull out if anybody has an item they like to discuss. I have a motion. So move from Eleanor. Do we have a second from Richard? Uh any of the items here two through nine that somebody would like to pull for separate discussion? Uh Christian, I saw your hand first. Number number two. Number two. Uh Bass. Number seven. Number two. Number seven. Anybody else? Um, and I'm going to pull number um, eight and nine as they're really tied at the hip. Um, just to make a comment there to make sure that we're there. Uh, so we will go in numerical order. Christian. Uh, item number two, actually,

030sorry, let's take a vote on items, pardon me, items 3, four, five, six, uh, 7, 8, 9, been pulled. So, items three through six. All in favor? I I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? Okay, so items three through six are passed. Uh, now back to item two, Christian. So, this has to do with the approval of the minutes. Yes. Um, I think the minutes should be revised to spell the name of our National Merit finalist correctly in the minutes. I think that's at least a little honor we can do them. I would like to make a general comment that there's been some editorializing in the minutes, but I think as someone who was once tasked to take minutes for an organization is it's been a common thing. There have been times where I think people have

031characterized what people have said and generally what minutes are for to record actions and to record the attendance of people's and when you do it for some and not others that is not the best standard for minutes but I think just for now I would like to correct the spelling of the name just because I think by not spelling one of our students names who wins a relative relatively high thing just shows a lack of respect I'm just going to push back a little bit everyone realizes that people make mistakes so there was no ill respect mentioned just like if any of you pronounced a name or something of that nature, we wouldn't jump to that conclusion. So, just wanted to make that note. I, you know, t just that it's not always I I

032disagree with your characterization, but I would also say that when I had made public comment before I was on a board, uh, you didn't spell my name correctly once over three times. So, it happens more than often. I don't generally those things aren't corrected because I don't think that matters. But I think that there's a general point that generally we approve the minutes and it's just a thing. But I think we should get certain things correct and we should know how to spell our own students names. Okay. So can I ask you Christian to follow up um with John and Linda on that spelling and uh we will reflect that spelling change and then we can take a vote on the minutes uh with the spelling change corrected. Uh, all in favor or all of

033item number two, so the minutes and the the remainder of the other items of item two. All in favor of item two. I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? Thank you for that. Number seven um are the list of policies, the second reading um of several policies. Uh Bass, you had a comment there and I also have a comment here as well. Go ahead. Sure. I uh yeah I meant to pull this item just for clarification for me and for the general public. Last time we had a kind of a technical problem with uh the policies that came as a first reading because uh there was a conflicts like timing conflicts in uh during the policy committee. Uh and these uh all policies came from out of that committee that didn't have everybody included. uh we agreed

034that we'll wait for to get comments from uh the members of the of the policy committee that were absent me included. I forwarded those uh my common sense and we said we're going to take them I have them one two three four five policies back to the policy committee to review everything together where all those policies come again I'm rehashing right I mean tell me if I'm wrong anywhere uh coming as a second reading to be ready to be voted on in this full committee now that said I this I'm I pulled back the agenda of last meeting here on today's agenda. I went through those uh policies that are here tonight with us as a second reading, not first, second, and I found one uh the second line says 0310 that was one of

035the uh uh policies from last meeting that you say is going to go back to the policy committee. So why is it showing on tonight's uh list as a second reading ready to vote on? Yeah. So my recollection of 0310 and that's the board self-evaluation was the discussion around the timeline and that the policy was uh as submitted for first reading last time said um that the board will do self evaluation by January. Um there was a little confusion that hey that's not the end of the year. Um and we all agreed here at the table that the intent was to say we'll do a mid-year check-in by the end of January and then a final evaluation by the end of the year. Um and we said we'll just make that rewarding and put it

036back up. Um, so Linda reached out to myself and Brendan. Uh, Brendan being the policy committee chair. Brendan Si, um, supplied that language just to update that for clarity. Um, so that was my recollection last time at the table as we said we were just going to make that update for clarity. We were all in agreement verbally. Um, so that update has been made um, in 0310 here. And I'll add, yeah, that was my understanding too. I mean best we did pull a number of those and I remember at the time of that list I had mentioned that those two seemed like they were pretty light edits to be made. So it was my understanding that the conversation we had ensuing covered those edits. I'm I'm trying to reconstruct my memory but now it's clear.

037Thank you. All right. Thank you. And I've got a comment on policy 011 title 9 sex discrimination and harassment. Um and and my comment here is only that on page three of 13 I didn't print all 13 is we have two title N coordinators named and we've kind of taken um steps last year when I was on the policy committee to to remove names to individual persons and to reference roles to make policies more evergreen. Um I don't know. Um so these could be referred we we at each reorganization meeting we um we appoint um title N coordinators for the year. So we could update that to say, you know, reach out to the title N coordinators done at the reorganization meeting. Um or this may be, you know, title N is obviously very fraught

038legality. U you know, that may be mandated that those people are in there by the law. I don't know. Um so I'm going to vote on it as is, but something maybe to think about or maybe just to ask legal of do we need to have names or can we just change that to a reference to a position? um you don't want to send people on a wild goose chase of okay now I need to track down July's meeting minutes um but also we want our pol you don't have to update a policy every year if somebody changes that applies to other policies that do name individuals that are responsible for certain roles so that would that would simplify that yeah so just you know when last year I know specifically and I'm sure you

039guys are doing this year when the policies come up for review if an individual person is named we've been trying change that to a title or a role. Uh so the policy itself is more evergreen doesn't change you know the policy at all just just whose reference to Christian just on that point so I agree with you about this and I find it strange that their names are in the policies themselves because the policies are for longer stretches of time. Uh my understanding is that what most districts do is they put the name on the website easily find you know easily accessible on the website and it's not in the policy because if you only update your policies review policies every three years there can be a turnover in personnel right and therefore you have

040a name in the policy that is outdated and incorrect and it's much easier to update the website than it is to update the policy when those those occur. So, I do support that and I think that we might in our last meeting just do a full search of all the ones that name individual people and in a sense correct that in one fell sweep of their support from the other members of the board. Yeah, I mean I you know I'll leave that to the committee to look at if that's too much work to be done in one meeting um because it'd be a lot of wholesale changes but I'll leave that to the policy committee to discuss and see if that um certainly could be started the next meeting continued next year. Um, so anyway,

041I'm going to vote on this policy as is, but something I think for you guys to take back to your next meeting. Um, I meant to raise it last meeting and I printed it out and my paper got shuffled on other papers and I didn't. So, um, so all in favor of item seven. Oh, yeah. Go ahead, Carl. Yeah. I would like to see us remove uh 2150 filling board vacancies. Okay. That was something I brought up at the last board meeting and um and uh I would like to see that happen if possible. I think I brought that on up. If I didn't, I am now. Um I don't recall you making a comment on it. I Christian and I had thoughts about it. Possibly you did it. I just I'm not recalling it.

042Yeah, I may not have. With that being said, 2150 uh uh filling board vacancies. That's one that I am looking to have seen removed. Okay. And what would be the reasoning for that? Um I think the board makes these decisions and that doesn't the way I understood it that this goes right to the superintendent. No, no, no. Okay. So the it's updating the the current language is is not very clear and and again I'll rehash. So the updated language makes it more clear. Christian has some thoughts to make it even better in future meetings. Um what I said at the last meeting, I'll repeat is let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This policy here is an improvement. Um, so the options are number one, uh, if there's a vacancy, the

043board, my majority vote of the board, so five members of the board can take a vote to fill the seat until the next regularly scheduled election. Or number two, the board may call for a special election. Um, and that person would then fill the seat for the remainder of the term of the seat. Um, or option three is if the vacancy remains unfilled for 90 days, so if the board does not act on items one or two, uh, the supervisory district superintendent fill it by appointment and this is all this Bosei super this is state law this is not like we're making up our procedure here so at 90 days is what you're saying correct okay right gotcha gotcha Christian and then bass I think I spoke already so bass yeah I think the discussion

044that took place last meeting was about the superintendent I don't think used to explain it who superintendent so I think uh correct so we added the word supervisor said who superintendent and the answer was bosses not us and and the change based on last week's discussion we added the word supervisory district superintendent to make that clear Christian so I'm aware of the changes obviously I was involved in that discussion at last meeting um but I will rephrase the point that this board has no jurisdiction over the Bose superintendent so for us to announce a policy over the Bosei superintendent would be like us dictating a policy to the UN. We just don't have it's for them. It's for the Bose superintendent as a supervisory district superintendent to make that judgment that that is necessary for

045the board to operate and therefore can fill that in their role as the agent of the the education commissioner of the state. So for us to put and that's really the only material change in the policy from the old policy to the new policy. So with due respect, I don't think the new policy is actually any better. I think it's a rearrangement of language. I I as as we voted on that, I did not vote for it last time. I do intend to go back to the third our next policy committee meeting and improve the language for and I won't recapitulate for reasons I gave at the last meeting, but I would support that just like I didn't vote for it on the first reading. I wouldn't support it on the second reading because I

046think it changes nothing. And as you say, it is already established an education law for the state. And uh it did not require us to do this. We're there's no procedures that we didn't have before that weren't in the old policy. And as I also said last meeting, it did not go through proper order in terms of how we are supposed to adopt policies, which is our policy that we have on the adoption of policies 2410. And I would prefer that it goes through the proper order and the proper channels. Um, and especially and look, this is not the most important policy because I look around this table and everyone looks relatively healthy and I think I have respect for everyone sitting around this table. So, it's kind of odd this policy gets inserted midstream

047without going through the policy committee and I would rather do it through proper process and proper order. Thank you. So, um, I responded to that comment last meeting. So, if anybody would like to view my thoughts on that, uh, you're free to go view the YouTube. I'll respect the public's time and not, uh, rehash that. So, um, all in favor here on item number seven, dispatch policies. I I Any opposed? Eleanor is opposed. Next choice is abstain. Okay. So, we have So, can I just ask a question for clarification? Yes. So, Mr. Mr. Bernelli, when you say I didn't vote for it last time, you mean you abstained. You didn't you didn't vote no. I um yes, I abstained last time because it it was in a bundle of policies on a first reading. Okay.

048So, we have uh nine members here. We have seven eyes, one no from Elanora, one abstension from Christian. Okay. So, we have six yeses. Uh a no from Elanora, a no from Carl, and an abstension from Mr. Grenelli. Uh that moves us on to item eight and nine. Those are tied here. It's a readoption of the budget calendar. Um and a readoption of the meeting calendar. And I just wanted to pull this out to uh publicly comment on this to make sure that the public is not unaware. And of course I didn't write down the date. Um do you have that date handy? It's um changing uh the first meeting in May to move it from a Monday to a Tuesday. Uh there are state prescribed deadlines with which one has to have your public

049budget hearing in relation to the budget vote. Um we were one day outside of that window. We're moving from Monday the 6th to Monday the 6th restart. We are moving the first meeting in May from Monday the 5th to Tuesday the 6th. Um and that is to that Tuesday falls within the timeline uh laid out by the state for the budget hearing. So, I just want to make sure that everybody uh paying attention notes that in their calendars to move Monday the 5th of May to Tuesday the 6th of May. Uh all in favor? I I Any opposed? Any abstensions? Can I just for clarification? So, we don't have a work session on Monday the 5th. It will be moved to the sixth. The whole work session, not just portion. Correct. And that was the

050you know, we don't want to have two meetings in two days, right? And in fact, I'm gonna I'm going to pull up my calendar right now and do that um before that gets lost. Um so that takes us to the end of our um consent agenda and moves us to uh next budgetation budget presentation from our assistant superintendent of business, Mr. Frink. Take it away, please. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Uh, thank you to the board of education. Uh, March 24th, we're we're getting through our budget presentation, so let's get started. Uh, as always, we envision a school district in which every staff member is a source of knowledge and inspiration. Every building is a place of safety and support. Every leader is a pillar of integrity and every student is a source of

051pride. Those are our sources of pride up there. Again, um I've talked to you about how I love to get these pictures. Um our athletes, all of our students. And then I'm just going to point out the the girl on the right hand side. I'm not sure what's going on there, if it's crazy hat day or crazy hair day, but she was certainly brave enough uh and somebody had some serious creativity um to to do that with her. And I really appreciate our administrators for sharing these pictures with me so I can put them up there. Um because we get to see our sources of pride up there. Here's our agenda again. Um we're going to go through a number of our budget uh items, essentially our recommended budget, our recommended revenues. We're going to

052talk about the tax levy. We'll talk about needs assessment. We'll talk a little bit about our contingency budget. Um but I'll shy away from that just a little bit. Um, and then we'll talk about our capital reserve proposition. And I'm going to point back to that picture up there. Uh, because if I was a kid in that class, man, would I excel hiking to the top of a mountain and just hanging out. That's that's that's where I'm at learning about nature. So, again, thank you to our our our administrators for for passing these along, but I'm sure it's comes from our staff and our building, which is which is awesome. So, um, we're going to come out with our 2526 recommended budget, our expenditures. Um there's no change from our last meeting. Um the superintendent

053and I have met. We're looking at 92721 136 for our recommended budget. The change from u year to year would be 2.460363. We still have some of those open items that we are currently working through. Um and hopefully we'll settle them before our budget is adopted. This is our recommended budget in the expenditure summary. I showed you this slide before. There was a little bit of different numbers. We've changed those numbers as our expenditures changed. We we did some reworking. So, I want to reintroduce this slide with those updated numbers associated with them. And you see the compared recommended budget versus the approved 2425 budget throughout the different categories of the salaries and pensions and health insurance and contractual items out of district tuitions so on and so forth again. So, a reintroduced numbers. Um,

054you've seen this slide before as well. We rescrubed our numbers to get to this. How how did this happen? What did we do? So, um, we have teacher attrition. So, teachers leaving the profession and in this case retiring. 10 total teachers are retiring. Five of those teachers we will replace through the natural traditional posting and hiring process while five of the other teachers we will be filled on a redistribution of staff due to enrollment or program shifts. The highlights here are we will not cut staff. Okay. And we will not excess uh excess staff and our instructional programs will continue to develop. On the revenue side, our recommended revenue side again doesn't change much from the last time that we've met. 90 million 364 365, a difference of $2.9 million. Our maximum allowable tax levy,

055which we talked about early on in the budget process, 3.08 would get us about $1.6 million. In this case, we're looking at a recommended 2.5 tax levy increase, which gets us $1.3 million. We're looking at our state aid uh to be about a little over a million dollars and we'll talk about state aid in just a few more slides and our uh increase in our miscellaneous revenue that um has increased a little bit. Again, we're waiting on those final state figures and I'll comment on that in a in a future slide here. So, here's what it looks like on our our sheet here. Our recommended budget at 92.721. Um, and then you add up our revenues. Our property tax levy at 2.50 is 53 million773900. Our state aid at 34,997138 and miscellaneous 1.593327 leaves us

056with a uh a shortfall of 2.356771. And then the district has been using an assigned fund balance to help um meet some obligations. Typically, it's been around $2.5 million. In this case, we would be just under that $2.5 million, which is decreasing the amount of assigned fund balance, which we recommend. So again, you have that 2.356771 and our balanced budget at zero. Here it is again on our recap slide. um presenting the balanced budget of expenditures at 92721136. Our projected revenues at about $90 million using $2.3 million in um assigned fund balance gives us that balanced budget. You have the 2.5% property tax levy increase. We talk about our state aid, our our uh miscellaneous revenue, and then just some of our outstanding items that we have. again, reintroduction with updated numbers. So, just to

057recap some of our goals that we've talked about again, uh lowest possible tax levy increase, but stay within the property tax cap. We do. We have a 2.5% um property tax levy. Maintaining our programs, no programs or staff will be eliminated. Continue to support and grow instructional and operation programs. We will not impact them in this budget. And then additional budget accomplishments reducing that reliance on the fund balance. And we talked about this last time we have decreased that. So in for 2526 we'd be looking at 2.3 whereas this current year 2425 we had 2.8 and previous to that was 2.5. And again going back to your other slides you can see some of the historical perspective with that. So, New York State Aid, um, we don't know what's going to happen at this point,

058but we are getting some positive information back. So, we'll remain optimistic. So, New York State budget is expected to be voted on the week of April 1st. We're optimistic. I'm hopeful. Um, I hope you're hopeful, Jim. You're you're giving me a face that's making me nervous. Um, this will present us with some options. So scenario number one, if the district receives more state aid than we currently projected, what can we do? We can reduce the 2.5% tax levy increase. We can reduce the amount of signed fund balance that that reliance on that fund balance. A combination of those two. We can do nothing. Um the state aid increase will create will uh create and add to next year's surplus or we can expand recommended programs. So program staffing capital to match that additional revenue income.

059Scenario two, if we receive less than currently projected, so we could increase that tax levy. So 2.5% could go up to that 3.08. We could increase the amount of signed fund balance. We're currently at 2.3. Historically, districts been at about 2.5 or a combination of the two. So again some options uh in previous discussions we talked about the needs assessment that the district has undergone each year year after year and this is a summary slide again being reintroduced. Um so 1.0 guidance counselor which will go at CO uh and willow 1.0 early intervention at COA and Willow 1.0 O early intervention at uh CES instructional coach that would be split amongst the elementaryaries uh guidance department chairperson that would be at the middle school uh 1.0 ELELLL teacher at um the high school 1.0 CPSE

060chairperson for special education uh 1.0 custodian that would be buildings and grounds and that would be C uh CCHS uh 4.0 0 safety monitors, all three elementaryaries and the middle school. And then we added the two below. You'll see uh we had a request from our board members to what would universal prek look like at 20 additional seats. So up there you'll see the cost out for 20 additional seats for the district. As uh Terry said, we're at uh 98 seats. It gets a little more complicated as you go through that UPK process. And then the last line there is an increase in uncertified substitute teacher compensation. I use the word uncertified there. It actually covers uncertified and certified teacher compensation um to increase the um the value that we pay those those individuals. So

061you're looking at a total needs assessment of about $1.2 million. May I just a quick question on that. Didn't we just increase the substitute teacher compensation last month or the month before? We had increased some of the uh substitute compensations in recent time. Yeah. May I just respond? So obviously yes we did back in um December uh because of the increase in the minimum wage requirements um and the increase last uh next year and I think we both voted to support that. Um I think also at the time I mentioned a higher number and that that would be dealt in the budget process which is what we are in now and so as you know I requested to that number and this number reflects the original number that I had asked for back in December

062uh for our consideration. Um while minimum wage is going to be increased uh last January f last January 1st and next January 1st to the level that we now h are above uh the state laws also that it'll the minimum wage will be tied to the inflation rate or the CPI and so that will go up in the future by whatever the CPI is. I think uh I've made my argument before so I'm not going to capitulate it here but I think that clarifies the question you were asking. We are currently in compliance. Correct. With the for these two groups, correct? Uncertified and certified teacher though. Keep that in mind. Yeah. So, sorry, just for my clarification, just to make it real simple, this though number is on top of the number that was voted

063on in December. It's an additional correct. That's an additional increase. Yeah. So, just want to make sure that Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So, summary 1.2 to in total needs assessment and again readjusted from that that earlier slide as we've gone through this budget process. Um at last meeting uh we talked about approval rating. So again a reintroduction of a slide with the additional right-hand column. We took a look at um what our maximum allowable tax levy has been what our adopted tax levy has been and then I added the column there of what our pro uh approval ratings have been. So um it'll allow you to digest what that is. Um, Superintendent Dave Terry talked about what that kind of sweet spot is. Um, and we've had those discussions about what our what our tax

064levy would be, but again, you look at a 10-year average, 1.66 versus a 2.62 and a 66% approval rating. Uh, we were also asked about the tax levy impact. So on this slide, you take a look at that fair market value of the homes in in our uh, school district. And this is assuming uh those assumptions on the right hand side. So increase in the tax levy of 2.5%. Um appropriated fund balance of 2.3 um star exemption included. No change in town assess value and I caution you about that. That comes from uh the um from the towns themselves. So that could change and it could change quite drastically. And no change in equalization rates and those come from the state. And again, those can change as well. Um, so you'll take a look there

065that the year-to-year increase is about $26 for a property of $250,000. Um, $288 for a property of $350,000 and $371 for a $450,000 property. Um, again, uh, these rates were based on the 2425 assessment levels and equalization rates, and we know that those can change. Mr. think just um and I think I understand the concept of fair market value but I think for people listening at home when when they're thinking about it you know they go on Zillow they go on Redfin and they look at their assessed value and as you just said right now the fair market value is the fair market value for the assessment purposes correct correct yeah so again this can get tricky um so not to over complicate it here with um those assessed values and equalization rates Okay. Uh

066I do want to talk about contingency budget just a little bit. Um so the board is aware so our community is aware what happens what happens it. Okay. If the budget um passed or defeated passed, we're good. Budget goes into effects July 1. Defeated. Okay. We have some options. Resubmit the budget. Resubmit what we've what we've recommended. What the board is going to recommend. Submit a revised budget. um and allow enough time for legal notice or adopt a contingent budget. I'll get to that. If the resubmitted or revised budget is defeated, the board must adopt the contingent budget. And that budget vote, that second budget vote is going to happen uh that third Tuesday in June. That's statewide. So, just as we've adop we adopted the uh the calendar this evening, we would not be

067able to change that structure of contingent budget. We can get into a lot of detail here, but it becomes quite restrictive on a contingent budget. Um, I'll slip over to this slide which talks about some of those contingencies. So, Taylor law, I'm going to skip way down, must apply to ordinary contingent expenses. The board gets to determine what are ordinary and contingent expenses within limitations. Uh, one of the big ones that comes up is that last one, certain field trips are eliminated unless fully reimbured. And that becomes kind of that hot button topic. We do fund some a lot of our field trips. Um the other hot button one is the third one from the bottom. Uh no use of school facilities by outside groups unless we're fully reimbursed. So all of our community groups

068that may or may not use our buildings and may not get it for a a cut rate or whatever is going. That's it. That that is hard and fast on that. So again, not a scare tactic, a reality tactic. And that's why I said I don't want to spend too much time on it because I'm hoping we don't end up in this position. Mr. Fin, could I ask you a question on the contingency budget? Sure. Um, so can we decide prior to the original budget that we will go to straight to a contingency budget? And let me just set this up. So in 2005 in this district after several budgets had gone down three years in a row, the board announced that there would be no second vote. It would be just a contingency budget.

069Can we decide that before or does that something we have to decide after the original budget goes down? Uh, I guess you could preemptively prepare yourself if it went down. I don't think I don't know if you want to make that a public decision. I mean, it was made public at the time. I don't know if that was an official board decision. The board docs doesn't go back that far, but it was announced by board members at the time prior to the first vote and it was to say, "Look, uh, this is the alternative and we're not because There have been three years of revotes on budgets. Yeah. And I I was wondering if you were aware what the law is or whether that's allowable or I'm not asking to do it. I'm just asking

070what is the procedure for that. So I would I would seek legal guidance from from your attorney on that whether you want to make that decision prior to or if your budget goes down the next day there's an emergency board meeting to decide what we're going to do. But I think the legal guidance on that uh would be the way to go. Um, at the last meeting, um, the board approved a resolution that will be on the ballot. That resolution is up here as well to establish that capital reserve fund, a brand new capital reserve fund, um, in um, not to exceed $5 million for district-wide projects. And that is the language. That's the language that will be on the ballot. So, you'll see the budget vote, the proposition language up there as well, as

071well as the three seats for u candidates for the board. With that, I'm going to talk about the budget calendar real quick. Um, we've accomplished a lot. You can see the dates that we've accomplished. Four four total meetings, including tonight. Our next meeting will be April 7th. And then after that, April 24th. That's a Thursday. It aligns with Boseies and the Bosey's budget adoption where we will need to adopt the budget as well, the corn Cornwall Central School District budget. Then our budget vote, our sorry, our annual budget hearing is that May 6, the Tuesday. Thank you for adjusting that calendar so we're within guidelines of New York State and and uh all the public notices that will actually be going out this week for us. And then the 20th is our vote. With that,

072I thank you and welcome questions. Thank you. Um, so I'll open the floor um to questions. I I guess just to set the stage on how I envision this discussion going. Um, before I get to your question, Bass, first let's open the floor to questions. Um, it's Mr. Frank on specific items presented here. Um, we've now had four meetings on this. Um, the administration has presented, you know, their proposed budget, their uh, I guess recommended budget. I should be the word I want to say. So tonight, uh, I think is really the night that we as a board discuss. Are we in favor of the recommended budget as is, um, or are there other items, um, that we want to add. You know, Christian, uh, we talked about the U, substitute, teacher compensation, uh, UPK

073discussing if we'd like to add more seats there. So, see if there's other things we want to add. See if there's things we want to cut. I don't anticipate anybody proposing cuts in programming, but stranger things have happened. U, but I'd like to have everybody throw that on the table tonight. um try and come to a consensus on the board um on where we want to be moving forward. Um as John said, I I I I don't share your optimism on the timeline for the state budget, but I do share your optimism that the funding level um is not going to change drastically from what we know now. So, April 1st is all I got is optimism. April 1 is very optimistic. Yeah. Um so, we'll go to Bass and then to Tiffany. So Bass,

074so first we'll we'll questions on this specific presentation, then we'll move into a broader um discussion. So Bass, yeah, thanks again for great presentation tonight. I do have my my I'm asking for clarification to compare two numbers. The total dollar value for the needs assessment is 1.2 2 million 213,000. Uh on the budget recommended expenditure expenses summary, the salaries are 1.287. That's not uh the same number. What's the difference? And can you give me the other slide number that you're on? Uh lower right hand corner. Five. Yeah. Compare slide five. What? Okay, that's year-to-year salary increases of $1.2 million. So, I compared what was adopted for this year, 2425, versus what we're recommending for the 2526 broken out by salary codes. Yeah, the salary 1.287. Isn't that Isn't it the same as No, it's two

075different. We're not recommending that. We're not How do you compare that to the needs assessment of 1.213? So, the needs assessment would be an addition to um the recommended budget. So the recommended budget I'm we're coming out with is this that 92721 which is 92721 uh 136. The needs assessment would be on top of all of that. So we have not included any items on that needs assessment slide in our recommended budget at this point. So the needs assessment for our own kind of discussion purposes if the board wanted to. So that's what bass in the first budget meeting we had the administration presented this is this what's you know bubbles up in talks with building administrators and their talks um with their folks in each building and then the recommended budget that the administration

076put forth has none of these positions in it. So in further discussions they said in light of how the budget picture is coming together what the tax levy increase what state funding is all of those puzzle pieces putting together they've said we will you know we recommend delaying filling these needs until future years I remember a discussion I don't know if it was last year or the year before discussing budget uh we were given like list like this like needs and it went around the table like I like to pick number one and number five and number nine And somebody says, "No, I prefer three and seven." And I remember monitors in every single hallway. Should it be one, two, or none? Yeah, we had that discussion. We did, but we had it in order

077to go to slide five and see the impact on the first line on top in salaries. Now, when I look at slide five and I see the top number is 1.287 and I see that, you know, really we're balanc balancing the budget with that like shortfall coming from you know the funds that we have I I see the zero now this kind of like just closes the conversation because I like the zero I like to balance the budget so when when I look at this list if you pick any item from this list now you you have unbalanced budget you have to to do something well we have to so that's the that's the second part of the discussion is if we pick any items from this list then we have to either raise the

078tax levy or spend more from the assigned fund balance. I mean, raise the tax levy raise the tax levy above the 2.50 or or take more from the assigned fun to the throwing table and then he's going to juggle the numbers again. Correct. And that's our task tonight after we you know have any clarifying questions here. Any other questions? I think Tiffany a question on tonight's presentation. Can I can I just clarify one thing before because Bass brought it up. the salaries associated or the numbers associated with the positions up there are salary inclusive of benefits right so benefits include the health insurance TRS social security okay so so that's not just a salary added into the salary category it's going to be a reshuffleling as you said bass that it goes back into the

079budget and then we rerun rerun these charts thank you Tiffany uh though I am wholly impressed with your work um particularly bringing the tax levy from 3% to 2.5. I'm still tremendously concerned about the tax levy being proposed at 2.5. If we're looking at the um the slide with the tax levy and the approval rating history data, we'll we'll see that the t the approval ratings dropped significantly in 2019 2020 and we'll all agree 202021 was a wonky year because of COVID, but even before that uh the 3.16 our approval ratings were the lowest they've ever been. Um, since the the the crazy COVID, um, our approval ratings have gone up significantly. Um, and those adopted tax levy increases have all been below 2%. I I'm highly concerned about putting 2.5% before the public. Um,

080I'm not certain that it will pass. I don't want to have to go to a contingency buzz budget. I I understand what you're working with and I I I I support, you know, uh the contract negotiations and everything that that are moving forward. However, um I think we need to start to think um about realistically 2.5% not being approved and having to go to a contingency budget. Um I don't want to make a pronouncement, but I doubt my household will vote for the budget and my friends and family at 2.5%. I I think we need to really take a hard look at getting below 2% or at 2% even if if we were going to get this budget passed. The approval ratings are concerning to me. And um just to stick with um Tiffany's point

081and the presentation. Uh just a quick look back in um history. We presented uh needs assessment and we were scrubbing kind of where we were going to end with the rollover as much information and we hit that 322k deficit. That's why you see the attrition slide and what we were able to do in in concert with our buildings and departments to just try to drive it down as much as we could knowing that ultimately this board is responsible for making those hard decisions of how do you how do you make the math work? Um but our contribution which is why it's our recommended budget is not touching the needs assessment um for this year and um absorbing five of those 10 uh positions knowing that could still be more work to be done as Tiffany

082said, but we wanted to take our first stab at what can we um keep the quality of the district up at a high level. Um but also pay attention to our current budget reality. Uh thank you. So yeah, that's good discussion and that's kind of what we want to have tonight. I I just want to do we have any more specific questions on tonight's presentation? I mean I have a comment on the current topic which tax levy and support but I can hold that till later. I just want to I'll go to you first when we go to the broader disc but do we have any more specific questions on tonight's presentation. Okay. So Christian it's yours. So I mean when you look at a table and you'll say oh gez these are low and

083look at the support. That's generally not how you look at a pattern. That's saying one little data point is the pattern. And if you took the last 20 years of budgets, including the failed budgets of 2003 and 2004, and you just said, here's the tax levy that we prop was proposed by the boards, and then what support they got. You can just regress that and kind of look at what is the line to best fit through that. And if you look over 20 years, okay, the crossing of 50% is at um 8.6% tax levy. Now that's 20 years and those which means that if you took that line, where does it cross 50%. And that intercept would kind of indicate what was the maximum that the community would bear over that long period of time

084with more data. that's that's more and that the sacrifice of every additional percent of tax levy increase loses about 2.5% support. If you just want to look at the tax levy era, which is a different world, and obviously there wasn't always tax caps back before 2014, it's still over five, you know, five is where it crosses. Now, this is not an advocacy for this, but if you want to say what has the community supported and what is the community likely to support, that's probably a better indication in the empirical data. And it seems like uh I would say that the community seems to support education to a greater degree than what the board proposes because if you look at the last way of looking at this and you just look at the residuals of that

085scatter plot and you can say well did the board in their budget choose students or did it choose taxpayers. And if you look at you know 2005 to about 2018 you can see what the boards did. If they basically cho consistently chose students, they used the maximum amount of the tax levy allowable. And the only exception to that is 2008. And I think most of us who are older know what happened in 2008. If you look at the pattern from that forward, you saw boards consistently choose taxpayers over students programming, etc. I'm not saying there wasn't anything passed and no programs were passed, but relative to what they could do and relative to what the community would seem to support or implied, you basically had four or five years straight of like 2008 in terms

086of what the board proposed, including 0% when there was a tax cap, I believe almost between four almost 5%. And that has an impact. And I I don't this is not an advocacy for a particular level. But the point about it is we shouldn't blame the community because the community has come out and supported budgets. And yes, sometimes like in 2018 and 2019 it was low because there were other things going on like a very unpopular capital project that no no doubt affected how people viewed the overall budget. And so if we want to look at data and people last last meeting and this meeting talked about what the you know the support was and pulling out individual cases. I think we should look at the most data not that we support it but to

087be more informed about this is a pretty good survey not just of attitudes but actual behavior of our community. And maybe the problem isn't that the community doesn't want to support education at a certain level, but they're unhappy with our decisions about what we're presenting to it on our menu of choices. And I would just think that would be a better way to present that than a three column table of individual data. If you're asking a causal relationship, there's a better way to show that with the same data that I think is better. And I've shared this with some people on the board and I'd be happy to share it with anyone who's interested. So I please don't misunderstand. I'm certainly not blaming the community. I'm simply empathetic to the community. We are in the

088past year p faced almost 21% inflation. We're still paying, as I said last meeting, $7 for a dozen eggs. Um, I think we need to be we need to read the room and we need to understand where the community and the taxpayers currently are with their pocket pocketbooks. Um, so I'm certainly not blaming the community. I've I've made statements repeatedly how uh wonderful this the support and and supporting students and voting for students. Um, how wonderful this district has been to my collectively five children, not including my um my in-laws. Um, as far as the 0%, I would also say that we were perhaps maybe still feeling the benefits, fiscal benefits of COVID um, and the funding that we were receiving. Um, but I do I just wanted to clarify that I'm certainly not blaming

089the community for not supporting the schools. I'm simply sympathizing empathizing with what people are in real life paying out of their pockets right now every time they walk into ShopRight or Hannifford or wherever. Yeah. Look, it's a complex picture and this is, you know, one of the toughest jobs that we have a board every year is putting this together and balancing all those factors. Um, and you know, I don't think it's a simplistic choice between choosing students and choosing taxpayers. Um, you know, there's lots of shades of gray here and this is our job to put together a budget and put together what we think, um, the board will pass. Certainly, one little data table is a data point and it's not, you know, um, indicative of the whole thing. Each year has different factors

090going into it. Whether or not they had capital projects attached, not attached. Um there's a whole bunch to that. So, uh Bass, yeah, just to add to Tiffany's point, very, you know, very obvious point, I would say, uh in these economic circumstances, I mean, the last thing you want to do like I want to increase taxes. Uh there was in the presentation, uh kind of like two ways to deal with that. you increase that uh reserve money that you can allocate I mean make it uh you decrease the tax levy increase like you know we were kind of very happy that it's slower than it has been in the last two or three years maybe you can increase that and decrease the tax uh percentage a little bit uh playing with numbers you know when

091they say this whatever this uh sweater cost, you know, $69.99. They do it because they don't want to tell you it's $70. The difference is one cent. I don't know if we want to play with the numbers a little bit, but I would see that let's decrease, you know, I mean, you gave us the choice. You said like, you know, we can play with these juggle these two kind of, you know, items. Uh decrease the tax a little bit and increase the other reserve money for those moments. Christian. Uh, first I just uh in case I don't think I mentioned your by name is Scaliano, but if you took offense I apologize that was not my so I'm making that clear that it was not directed. It was making a comment about my interpretation of

092the data. Um, just uh in framing this in terms of inflation like standard eco 10 econ 101 says if your inflation is your concern uh raising taxes is anti-inflationary policy. It's the expenditure that drives inflation, not the tax policy. So, you should tax more and spend less if you were, you know, a taxing entity. Now, I don't think the Cormal school district has macroeconomic implications, but to the extent that people are talking about that, we also have to look at terms of like the increase in prices affects things that we pay. Uh we are one of the largest employers in Cornwall. Uh uh we also employ a lot of Cornwall residents uh in a variety of different ways. And if you basically say, well, you know, these people are trying hard to get by and

093we're not going to do anything on the wage front for them or we're going to keep the demand for low because we've limited five positions. Um, it's not clear or if they're buying supplies to their classroom, those have gotten more expensive and there's no additional funding for it. So, it's not clear if that's what your concern is. It's not clear about what our budget does to the price of eggs. Although I do appreciate the fact is that everyone has a budget and everyone is spending money and paying for education is one of those things and uh you know I would say that I think we are kind of having a loose economic discussion about the impacts of inflation our budget and I think what we really should focus on is what the task of a

094school board is is to make sure we have the resources in the schools to achieve the goals for our students. Um, and that is our primary concern and then having to pay it is a second step in that process as opposed to deciding how much we're going to spend and then cram whatever we want into that number. Because eventually what happens, you might reallocate five teachers to something else. But that means that you're restraining your resources in a one one time one-off way and eventually you won't get that back. And so the point is if you keep kind of addressing budget issues that way, you're stretching the resources thin and what you get is lower quality services. And if you look over the long term since the time that I was born in the 1970s,

095if you look at business investment, the age of u um of fixed assets for not non-residential, which is business, the average age has been pretty consistent, 15 years. If you look at residential investment, which is basically people's homes, is pretty consistent from 1970 to present at 30 years in terms of the age of that infrastructure. But you look at public infrastructure which school districts and buildings and things of that sort or things like water systems and roads over that period of time the age has gone from 15 on average in the 70s to an close to 30 meaning that there's been complete change where the other ones have pretty much consistent in terms of how people reinvest in their assets in in their fixed assets like school buildings etc. And that is an underinvestment. And

096that's how generally people have looked at what that change represents. And at some point, if you don't reinvest in those assets, the age goes up and that creates problems like a roof falling in or built, you know, a hole in the uh gym floor, etc. And if you keep going at it with a patching mentality, it's going to cost more in the future. And I'm I've said this before, but I'm still concerned about that. Okay. So, um, let's let's it's time for the rubber to meet the road. So, I'm going to go I want everybody um to participate here in terms of we have now um a budget an administration uh recommended budget in front of us. Um so, I want everybody to let me know um yes, I agree with this budget and that's

097what I want to put out to the voters absent last minute changes from New York State of course which we'll deal with. um or I would like to um you know any other changes that you propose you'd like to cut the tax levy. Uh if so, how would you propose to do that? Or you'd like to add um add some of these items on the wish list. Um so we'll start uh we'll start with Bass. Yeah, I go back to my last comment. Uh we don't want to propose an increase in the property taxes uh in a way that would chock the voter and because they don't like it, they would turn down the whole package and you don't get it approved. So we have to really think about that number. uh play some math,

098see what kind of you know the community would would accept, would approve, would be something easy to swallow. And I uh go back to the choices and that was on slide number 10 and when uh John was uh kind of saying what if you know the budget uh uh if uh here slide number you'd like to increase the allocated budget allocated ated the allocated and in a way it was sent it was noted as way to brag about that yeah what we're proposing is lower than the previous two years I think we can go back and increase that number and decrease the tax levy okay so you would like to increase the appropriated fund balance to lower the levy thank you uh Christian I'm doing some calculations can I just pass can pass and come

099back. Carl, somebody's got to talk. Elanora, I agree. I think with Bass, I think we can um pull some of the money from the reserve and either keep this as is or add, you know, add things that we have taken out. Okay, which is it? Let's go with it. this you're talking about. Yeah. Well, you said keep things as is or add things back. So, I say which of those two do you want? My concern is what keeps coming up is the UPK, the substitute teacher. We know what comes on the chopping block first and I don't want to see those go. I think UPK is an important part of our program. I think adding seats is an important part of our program. So it if it means cutting those things then I let's just

100put it through as is. Yeah. So it's not Yeah. To be clear, not cutting but not adding not adding. Staying the same. So you would like to uh add You'd like to do the salary increase for the substitutes. That's $7,000. That's Yeah, we can we can find that money. Um the um so you want to say the so you'd like to add UPK seats. I would. And you would like to pay for that out of the appropriated fund balance and stay at the 2.5 tax levy? Yes. Okay. Just trying to get I'm trying to get all the options. Nope. I'm trying to get all the options on the table here. This is, you know, this is the um this is the the puzzle that we need to do um to set the budget. Uh Brendan,

101now that the uh assigned fund balance theory is uh back in vogue, John, I want to ask you a followup. I know that you've you've presented these numbers before. I just want to confirm. So our the amount of assigned fund balance that was dedicated to lower last year's tax levy was 2.5 million. Is that correct? 2.8. Okay. So the year previous to that was 25. Got it. Yeah. So just let's talk about 20. When we say last year this year type deal then we start getting confused. So I say 2425 we appropriated 2.8. In uh 2223 we did uh 2.5. Got it. And just as a um well a reminder and and and correct me if I'm wrong about the mechanics of this uh that 2.8 then is the the par for this year and

102that if we go over that we need let's say we go over it by 200,000 we need to apply 200,000 to backfill it next year. Correct? Yes. You're creating succeeding holes. Yeah. So we could we have space to go up to 2.8 without this year without having to backfill next year more or less. Yeah. Yeah. Um Okay. So I mean personally I this is all um I I think we are not rocking a hard place necessarily but there are um restrictions on either side. I mean, you know, we I don't know if it's realistic to start going through the needs list and picking and choosing. I mean, there's just there aren't clear tiers as to, you know, what's more important. You basically just be choosing favorites. So, um, if we want to add the $7,000

103for substitute teachers, I'd be fine with that. Um the problem as I understand it with adding 20 more UPK if we had the um the same level of uh the same number or the same percentage of people not take their uh take their slot. We'd end up with 10 we'd end up filling only half of the seats that we'd be paying for. So this doesn't seem like and particularly with the twins that worries me. It may be even less than that. So, I'm I I think the issue with that in the past, and Terry, correct me if I'm wrong, has been, you know, we're basically promising providers, we're going to give you I mean, there I think there's one with 18 seats, but we're going to give you 20 seats. So, if you go to

104provider and say, we're going to give you 20 seats, and then you do the lottery, you go, I've only got eight kids that want it. Um, that creates problems. Is that that's been my understanding in the past, Terry? Yeah. So, they uh engaged with us. They engaged with us probably a month ago to see what our reimbursement rate was going to be and how many seats each provider would have. And they baked that into everything that they sent out to every other 2-year-old, three-year-old, four-year-old student in their program to set their rates for beforeare, afterare tuition. So, the promise that Jim made, I said two years ago, if we say we're going to give 18 seats to Sportslex, we're cutting a track for 18 seats, even if we only had 10, because we don't want

105to ruin businesses um based on them uh partnering with us for EPK. Uh yeah. So, so based on that, I'm I'm hesitant to uh to fund 20 more when it doesn't seem like we would fill 20 more. Um, it would have to be a historically low I mean, historically, what is that? Three years, but still a unusually low number of people to reject their seats for for that to work out. Yeah. And to be clear, the way the lottery is conducted is specified by the state. We're not making our own rules for the lottery. And people who win the lottery reject because they win maybe their second or third choice and they say, "I'm gonna pay full freight to go to my first choice." They're just kind of saying, "I'm sending my kid to this

106school no matter what. If I win the lottery and I get it for free, well, that's great. But if I don't win the lottery, I'm going to write a check for it." So that's why there's people rejecting seats. It's not that they're saying, "I don't want to do my kid." It's just saying no matter what, I'm sending my kid to the school because this is my chosen institution and uh if the school district cuts a check instead of I do great. Yeah. Um so back to the uh the answer that you're seeking. Yes. So I generally uh like well clear to to clarify like um if we put a budget to the public and it's voted down, we don't immediately go to contingency. we would have the option to modify the budget. Absolutely. And put

107it in front a second time. Yes. So I would like to hold on to some uh gunpowder so to speak uh for that if that if it came to that and uh applying the fund balance uh at that stage would be a move that we could make to lower the tax levy and put it out a second time. Um so for now I would I'm fine with sitting where we are here for I think it's a good addition and then uh put that to the public. Uh if that passes, we have funded our our programs. We're in a strong fiscal position for next year. If it doesn't pass, we have options. So in short, plus substitute pay increase 2.5% tax levy upon that $7,000. Yeah. rather than rather than go to a 2.51. It's my

108job here is to try to distill it all down. All right. Yeah. There we go. Okay. Uh Bass. Yeah. Thank you for giving me the turn again. I raised again my hand just to finish my thought with numbers. I did my homework. Yes. Everybody's talking. Let me give you math. Let me give the numbers. So when I said like 2.5 wouldn't be easy to swallow and I gave the analogy of buying a sweater, right? I went with 1.9. It's not two, it's 1.9. If we go with 1.9 instead of 2.5, the tax amount would decrease to by $314,000 769. You go back and you add that amount to the appropriate fund B balance and it goes from 2.3 million to 2.6 million which is between the 2.8 million in the previous year and the 2.5

109of the prior to prior prior year. So the increase in the appropriated fund would be 2.671480 671480 and it's not like something that would be out of the norm as I said it would be uh between the two numbers the two previous years and this will give the voters a 1.9 uh tax levy increase instead of the So let's just double check numbers with John and what I've got real briefly here is I've got 01 at 54k on the levy just as we talk numbers here I mean it's 01 sorry is 54k correct so excuse me 0.1 not 01 I knew I knew what you meant um I wrote down yeah so if Bass is proposing I I think his numbers sounded right to me um of of buying it basically buying down with the

110appropriated to go to 1.9 would be 54k * 6 would be 324. So round numbers here taking the tax levy to one nine and taking that appropriated fund balance from 235 up to 26 yeah 267 268 whatever it may be. um does that sound right to you about Yeah, I think I think we'd like to run through all the calculations again, but yes, I I understand the concept of borrowing from fund balance, right? Using the term borrowing because you know short-term um and then adding sorry reducing that that tax limit. Yes. Okay. Uh Christian, have you done your please? based on that scenario. So, can you re um just quickly walk us through again, we're borrowing the money. When are we paying it back and how are we getting the money to pay it back?

111That's that's from your uh underspent budget lines or taking in additional revenue. So, you're relying on that year after year. And that's why you know when I presented about fund balance and that assigned fund balance is that you become reliant on it. So, we've gone from 2.5 to 2.8. And now again, our our recommendation was to start bringing that down, to start not relying as heavily on it. Ideally, dropping it further down below 2 million would be great. Um, but now you're asking you're you're anticipating your revenues to come in higher and to not spend your budget as much as you you normally do um in order to get that money. And that money is not currently or is it sitting it? It's not it's not rolling over from this year. It is genuinely like

112we're hedging our bets that we're going to have it next year. Correct. Okay. And then you're signing it to help offset the Can I just clarify? Yeah, please. Receeds it. So I just need clarification. Yes, please. So basically we are paying ourselves back. Correct. Because we are Isn't that our money? It's right. So Christine, when you said we're borrowing, it's really borrowing from our future selves, right? From us and then to Right. Exactly. But I just want to make sure that I'm understanding we're taking our own money to use so that we can lower the tax levy and then we would be paying ourselves back. Right. Okay. So I but it's yeah I think I think what John is cautioning is in trying in his goal to try and lower that assigned fund balance uh

113it kind of dubtales with you know Christians it's two different ways to attack a problem said multiple times of you know he thinks that we should or I there's an argument I won't make I won't say that you're proposing this we'll see what you're proposing in a minute but there there is an academic there is an academic argument to raise up to the tax levy half because you're providing more funding which provides some cushion in rollover budgets um in in years in the future. Another way to provide that cushion is to decrease your reliance on the assigned fund balance. That way if the state comes in and says we're cutting your funding, um, you know, we don't get a lot of federal funding, but if federal funding says we're cutting, you know, any any if

114we have a drastic decrease in revenue or a drastic increase in costs, um, raising the tax levy and decreasing that assigned fund balances are two ways to better help you prepare for those situations in the future. Christian. So before I talk about priorities, let me just enter this debate about um allocating fund balance versus tax levy. Um I generally think that using the tax levy simply to lower the tax levy like using the using the fund balance the fund balance to lower the tax levy is not prudent and we're kind of as you implicated and I think is that the fund balance if it doesn't get recharged by overbudgeting meaning like it is credential to budget more than what you're actually going to spend because we don't know every single thing that will happen in

115the upcoming year whether special educ students, transportation costs. So that's a finite resource and it's kind of there so that we have the ready money when those things occur that we can't predict at this point in time. And so if you use that finite resource and you go back to it again and again, eventually your well is going to be dry. Now, given past recent experience, we're probably going to over I'm sure that there is some slack built into the budget because that's credential budgeting and there probably will be some money left over at the end of the year and that might recharge it a little bit, but that's, you know, history does not predict the future. And so, that's why I would not use that as a policy simply just to lower the tax

116levy in an individual year. And the second thing is what you were alluding to is that if you use the fund balance, it kind of restricts our fiscal capacity going forward. And that was a question I asked before and um Dr. Tims talked about this about what you do is you basically make it harder and harder. So you either have two choices. You're going to cut programming or you're going to have a huge tax levy increase if you want to keep the current programming. And I don't want to hand that situation to future boards for the convenience of this year. That's just my perspective. So my my So that's just kind of I would rather use the up to the 3.08 that we have because in the last four or five years we've gone well

117below that and I think that there has to be a little bit of rebalancing on that. So, I would rather address needs that we have now as much as we can because I'm relatively confident the community if we make if we make that argument that this is really as most districts do somewhere between two and three when they can is not necessarily out of out of line with what school districts do in our region. So, from that to um my priorities. So, as people have said before and because I proposed it. Yes, I think the substitute um the uncertified substitute teacher compensation increase is a good idea. That's why I proposed it back in December. I'm not sure why it had to be part of the budget given the scale, which is right in line

118what I said was going to be in December and people voted against it at the some people voted even less against it at the time. So, I think we all think that that's affordable. I don't think anyone's disputing that. So, that would be on my list. I would add to that the guidance department chairperson for the similar reason. Um I think that is a small amount of money and I think addressing that need that's still $4,496 so even less than the substitute increasing compensation. I'm just waiting because you look like you were I was just trying I was trying to find my needs list here trying to write down numbers. Um shoot the third and this is not necessarily in the order. I would also then add the universal prek, the additional 20 seats. One,

119because I think it's affordable. Two, because I think there is a need, and I'm not going to recitate. I've made that argument many times, but it also brings in more money into the district because there's matching of funds attached to that if we spend it. And I think it would be good to spend that. And uh we have 47 um children on the waiting list right now. Um, even if we increase it 20, I'm sure that we every one of those 20 seats will be taken before we get through the 140 47 that are on the waiting list right now. And I don't say this thinking that there are no logistical problems. And this is not just, let's say, a political line. I have a lot of credibility because back in 2007, you can look

120at slides I used to teach talking about UPK well before I was on a school board, well before I had children. Um, and I think it's worthwhile for reason I've given that it's a good return on investment. I think it's something that the community supports. I think the increased demand for it reflects that that people when there's a good program people like it and they demand more of it and I think that's what we're seeing and we are probably going to increase it at some point in the future and I want to get to universality as quickly as possible and if you look at our historical numbers in kindergarten which might be an indication of what is the total amount they're roughly around 200 students plus or minus 10 and that's where it's been for

121as far as back as I can see in terms of our records. And so if we get up to 137 and remember from that 200 there going to be students that are getting um pre kindergarten special needs treatment which would not be in the UPK program. And yes there are going to be some people who are going to opt for private options because that's what their preference is. And I think if we get to roughly around 150, it will be effectively universal in terms of what I think, you know, taking those numbers and then subtracting out what I think based upon what we've done with CPSC placements roughly what those numbers have been. And yeah, some people are going to reject it and I so I would add that to my list and I would

122also add and this is in priority. If I had to go one more, I would go to the ELLL teacher at the high school uh for two reasons. One, because our budgets recently have been very elementary heavy, and I think that there needs to be a little bit of rebalancing because there are needs at the high school. And secondly, we've talked about the uh increasing need of ELLL students in our community. And lastly, um the total number for all those things together is 216,380. That's what that math I was doing before. And that would bring us to somewhere close to three um in the tax levy. I've got your five numbers. I agree with you. 216 380. Um it's four. So it gets you to 29 back of the envelope. Okay. Okay. Uh, Tiffany, pardon

123me. Just fixing that. Um, well, I fully support UPK. Um, I'm not confident as I sit here today, um, as and I'm I'm agreeing with Mr. Cardi and after listening to Mr. Dade's rationale of of the additional 20 seats, um, I'm not certain we could fill it and I would hate to to pay a provider for 20 seats and and give them eight students as as somebody pointed out. Um I I would support it if I knew we could fill the seats and I don't feel comfortable um as I sit here being assured by our administration that we could. Uh I agree with the substitute teacher comp compensation. I disagree with the ELLL teacher. Um however, I would agree to perhaps maybe two safety monitors instead of four. Um I don't think that our ELLL

124um population will increase. I think it might decrease going forward. Um also um just to clarify never um I I did take macro and microeconomics in undergrad um not in my doctorate but in my undergrad. And I can assure you that I do not believe that the Cornwall Central School District macroeconomics um would have an impact on the price of eggs overall. However, um I do believe that a 3% increase or even a 2.5% increase does impact the people in the district, the actual human beings in the district who have to pay for it. And as I have said before, it impacts them when they walk into the grocery store, when they go to the the gas tank, and when they faced up to 21% inflation um this uh past year. So yes, I don't

125I don't believe we as a board are impacting the price of eggs, but it does affect the people who have to pay for them out of their pocket. Um I agree with Bass. I would like to see it come down to 1.9% under 2%. Um I I just don't see how now um as people are struggling financially is the appropriate time to um hit them with a 2.5% or as one member suggested a 3% increase. Um just again read the room. Now is not the time. Um but I would support a 1.9 as Bas proposed and um I do support the uncertified substitute teacher compensation and perhaps a safety monitors. So, I'm going to nail you on your perhaps. Is it a perhaps? Is it a yes or a no? Because if you want to

126do that in conjunction with a 1.9, you're going to run that assigned fund balance up. Not necessarily. if we look and cut in other ways and I can rely on our our administration to look at other ways for them to look at our needs and prioritize um you know everything that we're facing. The money that we get from the state which remains undetermined however is hopeful for Tuesday from what I'm hearing tonight. Um so so we can prioritize and and reallocate where necessary or where um they they think that we can do it. as I sit here, I'm not the person who though we make the decisions as a board and I have input, I'm not in the nitty-gritty gritty of it every single day. And that's why we we hire the best and the

127brightest to run our district and I'm hoping that they can figure that out. So to hold me to it, if we can figure it out, I support it. If we can't, then perhaps next year. So Jim, just to be of assistance because doing the numbers, just assuming that the safety monitors are proportional, which means two is going to cost half of what four is. Um, I come up with a number of 128,740 and in tax levy terms, that's a 2.4.24 above. So just we're keeping track. Only if you're assuming that we're taking it from the tax levy and not taking from I think it's equivalent. So either we're cutting 2.4 for to make room for it. But there's other options on where to take the the money from. Absolutely. I'm just trying to make it

128so that we can do our calculations if we're we're comparing a different thing. Um okay, thank you. Um Richard, thank you. So two needs that I absolutely support. One is UPK. I've been a major supporter of that since uh the district started this program. I do think the seats would fill the additional 20 seats. Uh it's unfortunate how the lottery system takes place in New York. It's mandated for us to do it that way because there's a lot of families that can't afford preschool. And it's proven that kids attending preschool have better educational outcomes. And I think it's a great investment. I totally support that and I support increasing uncertified substitute teacher compensation. Um, put us farther up the chain. Regarding the tax levy, for right now, I support sticking at 2.5 and with my

129two needs I support it would be about 2.514, I believe, if I did the math correctly. Um, obviously we can adjust that if needed if unfortunately the budget were to fail, which I don't think it will, but for right now, I support keeping that tax levy at 2.514. Thank you. Sorry, what do you mean by 2.514? I I added those two needs that I adding those two to the top. Yeah. Um, quick math. I could be wrong. No, no, it's like two. It's 2.6. 2.64. I have I think that's in line with your number. Uh, that sounds right. I didn't do the math, but that that sounds I'm dividing it with the total amount by 54,000, which we're using is 1.1. So, and that gets 2. Yeah, it's in between. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's definitely

130over 2.6 because 2.6 would be 54K and those two needs are seven grand. and change and and 54 grand and change. So yeah, 2.65 we'll call it for round numbers. Yes. Ask you a question. Yes. So but we can take it from right that's what we're doing. I want to get everybody on the table and then we're going to make a decision is Yep. I would that is our the administration has given us hey here's what we recommend. We can take that. We can just say hey I'm good with that. So we so we don't have to keep increasing the levy. I I would just like to piggyback on what Richard said when you know I strongly feel those 20 additional seats are important as a primary teacher, former primary teacher. That when I taught

131first grade, there was an enormous difference between the students who had attended preschool and those who did not. And so those students who are coming in without that preschool background are already at a disadvantage. So if we can provide more seats for more students to take advantage of that UPK, then I'm 150% for adding those those 20 seats. Yep. Absolutely. And that's I've got you down for the substitute pay 20 UPK but using the appropriated fund balance to get there to leave the tax levy 2.5 is what I've got you down for. So Richard is the flip side of that coin. Same two um needs but pay it out of the tax levy rather than the assigned fund balance. Um and that's what we're going to put together. That's our charge as a board is

132to do that to put that together um and then to present that out to the community and hopefully it'll get passed. Christine So, I know better than to try to outmath the people at this table. So, I'm not going to even go there, but um because mine are rough rough um my numbers, but um gosh, I am really struggling when I look at this needs assessment list. What I my question before we started talking was where's our biggest bang for the buck, right? when we look at these these um early intervention specialists, instructional coach, guidance counselor, you know, what is the real pain if we don't do those? I agree with Tiffany, the safety monitors. That was like when I saw that, I thought, gosh, if we need four of them, then that tells me

133we need something. It's safety, right? Um so that was really a red flag for me. um about the safety monitor. I would agree that the guidance department chairperson and the increase to substitute teachers is negligible in terms of the impact on the overall budget. And I'm really split on the universal prek 20 seats because yes, theoretically I agree with everyone who's saying we should put it in the budget. I agree it has benefits. However, when we look at each year the um number of seats that are declined and right now we're talking about there's one facility that would be able to open up for us, I believe was what we said. Um and so I I I'm just I'm a little on the fence about that one. So, however, in the big picture, what I

134would like to see us do is I am concerned about dipping into the assigned fund balance from the getgo. Um my concern is that at the end of the year if we don't have that money because some other catastrophe has occurred now we're we're deeper in the hole and I would much rather do a really good job communicating and appealing to to our um community as to why we need to increase. What I'm wondering is can we take a smaller amount from the assigned fund balance and maybe just increase the taxes 2.25 2.2. So it's a little bit of give and take. Um yeah I mean bass throughout 1.9. Um that's you know we can certainly but we can do two and a quarter. Yeah. Yeah takes 2.6. Like I don't want to I really

135don't want to go above what we've done in the past when it comes to that fund balance. I would really like to leave a little bit of a cushion there um going forward so that we're building that that if if we want to do something in the future that's even bigger, we don't have to raise the taxes 4% to get that extra something. I think this is what Christian proposed last year even in terms of you know if we can increase a little bit more now in the future we have that then you know to to work with. Um so I guess the long way of saying I would like to see us land somewhere around 2.25 25 use the other the money from the assigned fund balance to get us what we need and

136then we also have some in the fund balance in case we need to go back and redo the budget. So you're um so 2.25 levy I understand that uh additions. Yeah. So, I I'm in agreement to safety monitors um increase the substitute teachers, the um guidance department chairperson, and honestly, I just don't know that I'm in the position to decide which teacher position or which, you know, classroom position has the has the biggest impact. Um which which would best support our teachers and our students. We can't do all of them. So, um I I maybe we don't have to do any of them in terms of like a real need. I just would hate to say what we can't none of them can get done if there's really one there that is um makes a

137significant impact and I would just have to count on the administration to give us that guidance. So, I don't have a hard number when it comes to that extra body. Okay. Um, I guess just leave it out. But philosophically, yes, I don't want to say no to all these positions. They're on this list for a reason. Is there one that we can get, you know, more out of that would make a bigger impact for um the district? Yes. Okay. Got it. So, we're going to mark you down for a two and a quarter uh levy, tax levy, two safety monitors, the substitute pay increase, and a guidance guidance uh department chairperson at the middle school. Okay. Um so, I'm going to go I'm going to go off menu just to throw everybody off, but here's

138what I'm going to say. Um I will say yes to the substitute teacher pay increase. I think, you know, we can take that off the board. Everybody's on for that. Um, I'm going to throw two different options out here. Um, and maybe get one feedback from Terry UPK. I'm kind of conflicted. I'm I'm in the camp of of I see the value in it. Um, I like how we've done it as a board. Um, in my time here, very strategically adding it slow and steady, methodically. Um, you know, when you've got that public money, private um, schools providing it, what's that interplay? How's the lottery work? We learn something new every year. I feel like 20 is too much. Um I think 10 might be the number. Uh do you think there's a provider that

139would take us up for 10? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to go off menu and say I want to propose 10 for UPK and then I'm going to go further off the menu and go back to a few meetings ago when we discussed strategic planning. Um and that was $45,000 approximately. Um, we all agreed that was a good idea. In light of the budget situation at that meeting where it came out we were in a deficit. We all said no, we don't want to do that. Um, I'm going to throw that back out there is I think there's a lot of value in that for us as a district to focus our energies um, moving forward. Um, I think ultimately um, that initiative will save us money as a district to make sure that we're

140all working together and rowing in the same boat. it will garner a lot of community involvement and I think it's worthwhile. Um so for my needs that comes to 87,000 total um which is about a 0.15 um and I'm going to say for the first time ever I'm going to say raise the tax levy um above what's proposed. So go from the 2.5 to 2.65. Um and I'm going to align with Mr. argument that um decreasing that allocated fund um is a good thing for us to do as a district. So that's my proposal. So if I can just we'll kind of get broad themes here. I think we'll take the substitute pay. Did I get Carl? Thank you. Carl Carl asked to be skipped and I didn't go back to you. Carl, can you

141is the microphone on? Sorry. I'm good with you know what I say. Um I want to support the the universal pre uh prek program and the uh let's see here was the substitute teacher compensation. Yep. And um that's it other than that. Okay, I'm good. Uh you want to pay for that? You want to join the Eleanora camp of pay for that out of the allocated fund balance? Yes. Or the Richard camp of pay for that out of the tax levy? Yes, I'd like to pay out of Elanor's suggestion. Okay. cut the bill. Um, okay. Thank you, Terry. Uh, thank you, Carl. All right. So, I think we can take the subs off the table. We're all in agreement in there. Um, the money that that money is going to shake out. I don't think

142we need to argue about if that's going to come out of the tax assigned fund balance that's going to work itself out. So, um, are we're all in agreement with that line item adding that? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So, um I think the other the big common theme here is the UPK. Um I would like to we'll come back to that. Um I want to tackle some um outliers here. Um so I want to I want to get everybody's buy in on UPK up or down. Um that guidance um that came up multiple times. So we'll get um we'll we'll close back in on that. Um so let's talk about the um the outliers that came up just once were Christian your um high school ELLL um I guess thoughts on that u from other members.

143Let me just say like um ELLL is by my if you had to rank the priorities would be the last. Um it's more in the idea that I think we should spend more. So, it's tied to the idea of addressing needs. And this would be just the one I would pick. Um, but the amount for the two safety monitors is basically the same amount as the ELLL teacher. So, about $5,000 less. Um, if there's more support for that, I would fold into the support of the people who would want the two safety monitors. So if that makes it simpler to to consider fewer things, we can I will join the safety monitors. Okay. So we'll roll that into the safety monitors then. As we're talking, I'm just thinking out loud. Does two safety monitors make

144sense strategically or from a I don't know. I I wanted it, but now I'm thinking it out. So Christie, just one thing. I just wonder if I could get your opinion. Um because this is four because there's four different schools, right? And the question is we do two are we giving it to one school or the other or both? You know what I'm saying? So that that's what I'm asking you. Is it does that does that compromise make sense? I think it's a question for the administration. Terry, your thoughts and I before you you know um when it comes to all of these needs list, I think it's important for us to remember they were here in the initial presentation and in the administration's proposed budget. None of these things are there. I think the

145UPK is sort of a different beast. Uh but when we start talking about all these other individual line items, I think it's important to remember that the administration has talked to their building administrators um and others and said we we can forego these this year. That's just important baseline to remember. Terry. Uh, so we always tackle the recommended needs assessment by looking all across um the district and we've already made a recommendation uh to enhance the safety and security of our district with uh the transfer. Uh Mr. Frink, I always get the wrong terms, but um to enhance the um lockdown uh buttons, things of that nature. So I think when we're communicating to the community that is something that they can wrap their heads around where we're infusing 300k into enhancing the safety and

146security. So we wouldn't be in favor of any safety monitors although we see the importance of it and we're trying to balance a whole package. When you say transfer just you mean transfer to capital. That's what I need. It's transfer to capital and that's the project to um if you want to describe it in more detail. Yeah. Sure. We we had proposed a transfer to capital of $300,000. That project would include panic buttons and strobe lights and various safety measures to enhance the safety and security of our buildings. Um some of our upgrades and the servers necessary to support that. So um we would move forward with that project and that would be again all-encompassing for all of our buildings. um and then provide, you know, uh phone access and cell phone access to our

147administration in order to safely and securely lock a building on a moment's notice. Thank you. And I'll add in addition to that um in prior years, we had a project um which I think is still ongoing. I don't know if it's completed yet, but to replace uh classroom doors um really in almost every building except the high school. high school met the current um requirements code, but um replacing classroom doors in and a lot of our older buildings uh to make them more secure. So, there's been um you know, it's something we regularly talk about at facilities committee um and and in addition to the project that's finally being completed this year of of increasing security vestibules um at most of our buildings, which has been only five or six years in the making. And

148I won't go through the tortured history there, but um that's actually happening. So, um, we're taking physical steps to harden our security infrastructure. Yeah. I just want to clarify. So, Terry, you're saying that we're putting the money into safety things. So, this really isn't recommended for us. If we were to rank um that needs assessment, because we're already addressing it elsewhere, it wouldn't make our recommendation. And having been in the buildings, I have to agree that when we do our safety drills and you have a glass this big on half your door, it doesn't matter where you're hiding in that room, you know. So to put the money towards something replacing those doors, as you said, Jim, I think would be a a better idea. Can I have a follow-up question on that, please? Um,

149so we're we're going to be pro proposing a new uh bond, right? Uh we are I mean the current any of those items including doors included in that that money has already been allocated over the last couple years. So it's already allocated. So that's already happening. So these two safety monitors would be in addition to that, right? Correct. So my next question would be so perhaps there's a safety monitor in every school already and a sheriff's deputy. Is that accurate? There's security and uh a deputy. So would the safety monitor provide a different role than security? Yeah, the primary reason uh for this so just a few things. The doors already taken care of in past budgets. The new funding in next year's budget would be uh panic buttons, strobe lights. That's again going on

150our Orange County deputies recommendations. that would be um a top priority uh for the safety monitors with the vestibules. So, let's take Willow Avenue as probably one of my top and and the middle school. We're moving the vestibule down at the middle school down to the first level. We have a greeter up at the top. We don't want security tied to just letting people in and out. So, a safety monitor could let people in and out and then still frees up our security to to monitor hight traffic areas, things of that nature. So with the bifurcation of where the vegetables going at the middle school and Willow in particular, that line of sight is a concern um which is why we initially um proposed these positions. So then it does sound to me like there

151is a valid need for at least two safety monitors and um of course we would never want to see it happen. I would hate to be the board that says no to that and then have tragedy occur, which we've seen in so many other schools around the country um if another line of defense or um uh could could save our children's lives. Not to be dramatic, but we we we've all watched the news. Um so I'm going to stand by my my two safety monitors um roles because when push comes to shove, it's kind of like what Brendan said at the last meeting about having a policy in place like you don't think you need it until you you need it. Um so I will I'll reaffirm my position on the two. Jim, if I

152could come in on that. Yeah. Um so I think where I see the safety monitors is evolution of something that's been on the needs assessment in the previous two years which is the middle school's one ask was for hall monitors. um in the previous year and the year before was there you know was asked for more than once and I think this is an evolution of that same uh function and I think the other value to this is that it's not simply as Miss Galliano referred to the emergency situations it also makes some of our other things like teachers relieves them of doing that helps them focus on what they're doing by having people in the hallways and essentially we're increasing the efficacy of some of our other assets meaning our teachers and staff because

153it frees them to do other things and focus on those things better. And so I've always seen it in that way in addition to what you're referring to. So, you know, when you have to make choices, you're going to choose against something worthy. And, you know, ELLL would be my first choice, but I would also still support the uh the two safety monitors in that slot. Just the last thing I just want to say just because I want to make sure that you all know why I put my head down and sleep well at night is I've never seen a district and this was far before I got here invest in armed deputies in every single building. You just don't see it. Cornwall made that investment. So when you talk about a tragedy, this community

154made an investment a long time ago. You would never see an armed deputy at every elementary school with one building being 230 students, another being 240. So again, I'm the son of a law enforcement. You'll never hear me argue against it. I'm just saying when I wrap my head around the investments that our community has made. I do sleep well at night knowing their personnel. Um, and this really came to be uh to Christian's point, the the middle school asked for five home monitors. This this really is because of where the vestibules are now being located of how can we free up um personnel. So it's not these aren't armed people. I'm not this is not if you're if that's what we're trying to get at that's that's not going to do it. Um this

155is really to free up eyes on and and not tie someone to the the vest. So that's just when I think of Cornwall as a dad's is no greater investment in my opinion than those armed deputies in in every single building. Mr. J, can I just clarify just what you said? So you're you are seeing this as an evolution of what the hall monitor is and freeing up staff or you're seeing it more as a security in terms of what the ask is for here on the on the line? Yeah, more just an evolution of where when I first got here, I kept hearing about the vest rules and now they're finally in place. So now just putting where the location is and having a need for eyes on both. We know that we can

156reallocate staff to make it happen, but this this request came out of the location of those vegetables. Thank you. So is it safe to I'm sorry, mayor. Can I just say one thing before I I know you have a question. I just want to really piggyback on Terry's point. Um I think it's important point to make to our community. Um and it's been said before at these board meetings, but um I'm also feel very confident in the security that our schools provide. Um and in the past, um it's maybe two years ago, three years ago, we met with uh in the wake of the terrible tragedy Duvaldi, Texas. We met with um some folks from the sheriff's department as well as um local uh Cornwall Police Department chief um and uh they laid out steps

157for those board members that were here um that really, you know, made us confident in what we're doing as a district, which isn't to say, you know, it's a never- ending struggle to constantly evolve and get better. Um, but I think it's important, you know, this is not the distinction here between we have a problem and this is going to solve it. This is we are in a strong position and this will only make it stronger. I think it's important for the community to to recognize that. Christine, your your question. Um, so we have money aside to do these improvements and to make these upgrades with the buzzers, etc. Is there any cushion in that budget that could fund because I am I am curious. I it sounds to me like this is more of

158like a um specialized hall monitor let's say right not necessarily safety per se but where the because of the location of the middle school and such like I could see how that's necessary is there any cushion in there like a fund balance of that budget capital expenses not not staff expenses so all that money the the door hardware project which we're going to start designing the door hardware project um very soon is all just Got it. Not personnel. Same thing with the the security vestibules. All hardware software associated, right? And then the the the the project we're pitching for next year. Again, all hardware software. So So can I just clarify as well because I I know what they look like. Best of fuels with this safety monitor. So the greeter is up, right? They

159self monitor that front entryway. This safety monitor would be posted in that downstairs where people are buzzed in and out. Is is that what I just want to clarify what this what the responsibility of these safety monitors would be? Um yeah, and it could be varied. So, uh, all of our security personnel, I wish we could ask, uh, down over there to come up and speak, but there is no there is no such thing as, you know, a post. So, we we would see them on like a rotation basis of deputy is now moved out to recess. So, who's going to who's going to watch the door and then who's going to be on that main landing where my stepdaughter and others are constantly going by asking for passes and and things of that nature.

160So, we see it as to Eleanor's point now there's two locations that are going to be high traffic. How do we staff those two areas particularly at Willow and and Middle School? Okay, so um here here's what uh I've written down buckets here. So subs we've checked off guidance we'll come back to. I've got the safety, strategic planning, UPK. Um, so those are the buckets I want to get everybody on board, you know, show of hands, whether we support those or not. And then we need to tackle the issue of once we end up there, um, are we going to fund that via tax levy or assigned fund balance. So that's where I'm at right now. Does anybody want to besides substitute teacher pay which we're have already approved um the guidance um department chair

161safety personnel strategic plan UPK are there any buckets that I'm missing for discussion Christian you want to include the strategic plan I do yes did you mention that or I miss I did okay my ears need help pass I have different approach uh just for me Uh I can make a statement which kind of uh answers all the questions that you wrote down. Can I do it? No. Okay. Thank you. Um I have a question if we could ask Terry. Terry from of those top four or five things that are there. I mean we probably should have asked this to begin with. Um are there any that you think gosh I really wish they would pick this one? No, and I don't mean like pick a favorite child. I just mean in the sense of

162um like it really will make an impact that we can't out of the safety any of them even. Yeah. Um all of those would be would be great, but there's no leading the safety monitors at those two schools would would probably lead. Okay. Um the way my caveat being that's still one teacher position and my recommendation already was to absorb five. So I would have a hard time recommending okay monitors just because of our approach to trying to tackle the deficit. But there aren't those teacher positions on here that that if we don't do it it's oh we're going to absorb all these. Forget it. Forget it. So, I I would I would be looking at those safety monitors of would I be picking those two over one of the teaching positions on that page?

163Okay. So, um since we're on the safety, let's just go um safety. Uh, let's get a quick yes or no pass or you can just everyone can give me a thumbs up, thumbs down. You said you don't allow me to make my point, but uh I I I own this now. Um, as a fiscal conservative, okay, I want to make three points. One, I like the fact that the proposed budget results in no teachers or staff will be cut or excessed. I love that. Thumbs up. My second point, the needs assessment and I did ask a question during the presentation about it like what does it represent and uh I heard something along the line that it's a wish list. So I accept that it is a wish list. It is very nice to have

164and your buckets Jim said like how many would vote for this bucket that bucket. I insist on that being a wish list. nice to have maybe next uh year's budget, not this budget. And I finish with this repeating, reiterating that I like the tax levy to be uh see I mean sealed at 1.9 uh as a psychological factor and make that difference up from the appropriate fund. And I have nothing to add. So you're no across the board on all the buckets and fund out of side fund balance. That makes it easy. That's actually an easier way to do it. Let's just get everybody to give me out of the buckets, you know. Well, I think we can just do thumbs up, thumbs down. We've beat we've beaten it to death. So, safety, we've got

165to know safety. Let's go. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Safety. Two people, two or or I need to I just need to clarify with Terry again. So, I if if we do hire the two it it's going to impact have an impact on something else. Yes. I mean, I know everything always has an impact on something, but I thought I heard you say just a few minutes ago when Christine asked the question. Yeah. So, um if we were So, in other years, and I think uh Bass brought this point up, we've always had uh two meetings ago kind of a a plus. We we're working with 312K. What how might we address some of the needs? If we had 133K to play with, I'm not sure that the two safety monitors would rank above some of

166the other needs like early intervention or ENL or or something of that nature. So that's that's why it's hard for me to say yes or no to to that in isolation. Yes. Yeah. And and let's make it clear as a blanket statement. If somebody says no, they don't support it doesn't mean they don't support the position means they don't support it in this current year's budget because of the funding realities, right? Um, so safety safety I'm seeing one, two, three, four, five, six up. Uh, UPK, I guess the question here, I threw out 10 seats. 10 or 20 seats. Okay. Uh, UPK 20. One, two, three, four. Yeses. So, that is not enough. UPK 10. He has given us the categorical He doesn't want to play thumbs up. Okay. So, UPK10 is plus eight. Uh,

167guidance department chair at the middle school. Guidance department chair at the middle school. One, two, three, four. So, that is a no. Um, and last strategic planning. That's all. I These are tough choices. These are tough choices. So, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six. So to recap, we've got yes to the substitutes, yes to the middle school guidance department chair, uh yes to two safety positions, yes to I'm sorry, can't read my own. Thank you. I wrote a four in such a way that it looked like an up arrow. So, yes to substitutes, yes to two safety, yes to strategic planning, yes to UPK 10 seats. Okay. And then, uh, Terry just said, you know, hey, we can come back with funding options. I think it's important for us. We're not going to

168set that funding tonight, but important just to give a um we we can nail down the exact numbers at our next meeting, but just to get an indication from folks if they would like it to come out of the tax levy or the assigned fund balance. Um and and the answer may well be a mix of both, but just giving indication we'll give them, you know, perhaps you'll present us with an A and C or an A and B. Um but we'll give you some indication there. Um, Bass, I'm going to put you down for um assigned fund balance. Tiffany, I'll put you down for fund balance. Uh, Christian, I can put you down for tax levy. Um, Carl, tax levy or fund balance? Oh, well, um, I mean, a lot of folks are already

169on record. Eleanor is on record for fund balance. So you go to if we want those needs, it's needed. Yeah. Everything that we just talked about, the additions we made and Terry just tallied up the number. Um, yeah, about 215K was my math. Mr. Fink, I don't know if you were calculating. I didn't do the math. I'm just going to sit with the spreadsheets, and I'll I'll go back to the drawing board. I I think you're right. Some options with tax levy, some options with fund balance, some options with balance, and if my April Fool's joke comes in and the state says we're going to get, you know, $250,000, we're right here. So, if it's if it's 215, that's roughly 04%. So, all tax levy would go from 25 to 29. back of the envelope.

170Don't hold me to that, but um and again, we're going to present options to look at each. So, um Brendan levy fund balance. Do you want to guess? Uh fund balance. I would be uh a mixture. I would want to uh we'd have to hold ourselves to some rules. So, I would put I'd put the fund balance no higher than 25 and then the rest tax which would amount to about two 2.5 from I'm sorry 2.5 from the uh assigned fund balance 2.5 million up to 2.5 which would add 130,000 of that 215 and then fund the rest out of the tax levy. So we have some so a tax levy of 2.7 and the rest I think it would be like 26 something but yeah yeah um so that's a we're going to that's

171a half and a half I'll skip to the end and say that's what I was going to suggest. So um Richard Levy but I'm okay with the half half. Okay Christine um 2.5 tax levy and then anything else is the fund balance. Okay. So, we've got four for fund balance, two out of the levy, and two dipping their toes into each pool. Um those of us who have been on the board the longest, splitting the baby. Um so, good. I think that leaves us in a good place. I thank you everybody. Um it's a long discussion, but you know, obviously it's one of the most important jobs that we have is to um put this forth uh to the voting public. So, um we will hopefully wrap this up next week. Uh to your point,

172John, we may get a happy surprise from the state. I It happened last year. The odds of it happening two year in a row, I don't have a lot of hope for, but there we go. Um next item on our agenda is public comment, recognition of visitors. Has to be worth the wait. Am I on? There we go. John Hines, CCTA president. Um, first of all, the association will absolutely support a 2 and a half% tax levy, 2.6. Um, I I'd like to take credit for the 70% approvals based on our postcard, texting, and calling campaign. Um, I'll give ourselves a little bit of credit for that. Um, I do need to point back to three years ago, this board made a choice to do a 0% tax levy. We're feeling the implications of that

173now. If you did a 1% tax levy three years ago when putting up the capital project, the district would have an extra $500,000 that could have been used to find one on one time cost yearbyear. And now it could roll into positions. And Terry, thank you for bringing up the fact that we are losing five teaching positions through this. I'm not here to defend five. Some of them might need to be folded in, but I'm struggling with the conversation of picking the needs assessment, which was created before building administrators knew that five teaching positions would be folded in through attrition. We're losing a behaviorist. We're losing two early intervention teachers. We're losing five sections of social studies at the high school. We're losing a special education teacher at the middle school. Some of those positions

174may be warranted based on class sizes and everything. I'm not here to throw a monkey wrench into this, but I'm struggling with the conversation right now about a 0.1% tax levy when we're losing five teachers. Those are things that affect our students. And again, maybe based on the seventh grade being smaller, we can lose a special educator. But I walked into the high school and said, "What do you mean we're losing five social studies sections? Maybe we need a point4." I don't know what the answer is, but I am struggling with the conversation that just happened for an hour and a half regarding picking and choosing, picking and choosing from the menu when that's the reality of we wouldn't have to be picking and choosing if this board three years ago decided to do a

175modest 1% tax levy to fund our schools. Um, I'm going to stop there. Uh, I will comment that I'm glad that we can all agree $7,000 $4,000 is negligible. I'm glad we can agree that's going to get folded into the budget and I look forward to seeing your future discussions. Thank you, Mr. Hines. Anybody else? All right. Uh, thank you for that. And, uh, our final item is closing comments from the BOE. I have to leave. Bass, would you be so kind as to let me go first since I have to go leave, but that I have to depart? I don't have any comments. Oh, would you mind me going next and taking your time? Christian, I guess it would be. We'll go. I'll we'll we'll ping pong it. Thank you so much. I appreciate

176your courtesies. Um I am just going to briefly say thank you everyone for your participation. I appreciate this cordial, professional um discussion regarding the budget, which which is one of our most important jobs. Um, also the Cornwall Elementary School Toy Story room sounds fantastic and I wish I was in that classroom. Um, also administration. I fully fully support painting the senior parking spots. I think it's so much fun for the seniors. It's done a lot of places and it it really uh boosts morale a lot. Thank you, Christian. So, Miss Scaliano is still one of my points about the painting parking spots, but um I'll just uh echo that in the sense that I've been at schools that have done this. It has been definitely been a positive thing. Um obviously, there's some things where

177you might have some prior prior approval of certain designs. I think we need to work out whether the class can charge $10 for a spot since they're not their spots. But whatever the legalities of that is, but that is that's a minor issue. But I think this is a worthy initiative that we should not get in the way of and I think we will it will solve I think other problems. So for example when you paint your spot in a certain way and you have a designated spot no one takes your spot because it's very clear that I painted it and this is my spot and I can tell you that the number of headaches that were solved by simply people clearly designating their spot at other places was an additional benefit from it. And

178perhaps what we can do is provide some of the materials because usually what they did is they would paint over the spas every year with a solid background and that generally was provided by the school or a budget and you could use interior paint because it's only there for a year. So on that um I'm just going to cite uh two facts um related to UBK. Um, in New York State, the average ch uh child care for a single child for a four-year-old is just shy of $15,000 for a family. And that amount will probably get paid by someone. And I think UBK in addition to what it does for the child and for the student, I think is worthy of supporting because of how it impacts other things. And that if you look at

179UPK or providing those things, if you did it really universally, the amount that it frees working mothers to go in, earn money, increase the tax base is one reason why it pays for itself. And the last point on that and what has been made about UBK in the past is that the primary impact of education is not the education you earn yourself but the education of others and how that helps set your higher wage level. And it's important that when we spend on other people's education, we're really also helping ourselves. Thank you. Thank you. We'll pigg it back. Richard, it's already been a long meeting, so I'm just going to say yes to the parking spots being painted. I think that's been discussed for a couple years now. I'm glad to see them come up

180and bring it to our attention and advocate for themselves. And thank you. That's it, Carl. Um, I just got a couple things I wanted to bring up today, and I was hoping that Terry would still was still around. Uh, one of the things I'd like to see happen here is um, every meeting we hear from the the girls down here about the sports, but we never seem to hear about the music, bands, stuff like that. I think I think I'd like to see some more some reports like that, not just, you know, basketball or hockey, you know. I want them I want to see something more on that. Um, maybe if somebody could bring that up to Terry. The other thing too and I thought that this was important for Terry was I was part

181of um a thing in in at the clo um in Boseis. It was called the Odyssey of the mind and it is an awesome thing. I had the opportunity to work with one of the schools in the county which was um Middletown and it was just it was awesome and I would really love for us to start to look into that for Cornwall. I think Cornwall, there was only a couple that I didn't know that didn't show up and I saw Lewis and everybody there, but I just think that that was something that um I'd like us to look into for for the future is the uh it's called Odyssey of the Mind. Maybe you Terry, you can I mean uh Jim, you can pass that off to Terry to have somebody look into it.

182We do that. No, we don't. Okay. Yeah, we do not do it. We did it previously. Okay. Yeah. Long time. And I just it it was just I'm telling you if you've never been to it, you got to go. It's it's just unreal. And I actually got to volunteer with volunt uh with Middletown School District and um it was it was awesome. That being said, the parking spots that were suggested are fine with me. Great. And I'll I'll just say for clubs, you know, a lot of it comes from student interest and building administration. Uh Principal Wilhelm was here earlier. I would imagine she'll be watching on the replay so she can take that. Assistant principal Ray, if you want to bring that back to her tomorrow already. There you go. Yeah, if you already

183look into it, I would really appreciate that. Thank you, Elanora. Okay, so I'd like to start by saying parking spaces, absolutely. Juniors, soon to be seniors, I'd love to help you paint them. So, just let me know and I'll be there if we approve this. Um, I also would like to reiterate what John said. That was kind of the question I was trying to ask Terry about the the needs are great, but if it's impacting if it's going to impact those teaching jobs that are being lost and we need those jobs, then we have to go with what is needed as opposed to our wish list. Uh, and lastly, I'd like to tell all the teachers and students in there. Spring break is coming. Thank you, Brandon. Um, yeah. So, first of all, uh, John,

184thank you for all the, uh, the diligence on the the presentations. Really appreciate having all the the timely information. Um, yeah, very impressed by the student presenters about the parking spots. Uh, really won me over. Uh, great job. Uh, even did some of them without notes, which was, uh, impressive. Uh finally I just want to uh very quickly recognize someone who does not get the public appreciation that she deserves and that is our board secretary Linda Menerson. Linda is I have been on this board for six years Linda is easily the most reliable uh district employee. This is due with all due respect to all district employees currently in this room. Uh she is clearly the most reliable and helpful person in this district. Uh, anytime you have a request, you just ask Linda and

185that request is done. Even if you give her like uh 12 hours before the request needs to be f uh filled, she is always on top of everything. Um, and every time she does it, she makes you feel like like your problem is the most important thing that she's doing all day, even though she's solving those problems for a hundred other people. So, Linda, thank you. You are respected and appreciated. And just really a magician. Yeah. I always feel bad like, "Oh man, I'm really uh not giving her any time and she just responds immediately. It's done. It's good." Happens. Yeah. Yes. And she doesn't get upset if you have to ask for your password reset more than once. Um so, Mr. Hines, thank you for sharing your perspective. I think it's helpful for us

186to have um that insight. I love the idea of the parking spots. I tried to get my kids to like push for that last year, but I have an idea. Maybe the visitor spots, the board could um sponsor one or they could sell those spots for a higher rate to have people in the community sponsor it. Like they wouldn't own the spot, but you sponsor the spot. John, can we run the numbers on how many spots we'd have to sell? I think they could make a good like $10 since there's money involved. I don't even know if I want to know about this right now. A lot of schools a lot of schools do it as a fundraiser. They they're really public about it. Some of them are charging a hundred a spot. I think

187he could do that for the sponsors. Mr. Scufus could have a spot. I'm just saying. Um All right. Well, at any rate, um you can build it into the Sorry. No, that's okay. Saying you can build it into their request for their parking spot and just increase the There you go. charge. I just want to mention something that you we didn't I didn't have a chance with public comments. Um when we did our our school visits, we observed a seventh grade classroom doing and learning about a Socratic method for questioning. And I was so impressed with these students and and what they were learning to do. They were really learning to have how to have cross dialogue, how to encourage people in the group to participate, how to draw quiet people, how to have a

188differing opinion respectfully, um how to draw out differing different opinions. So, you know, for work, I work with adults and try to teach them some things like this that don't always go well. And I was I'm asking like, where do I get a copy of this these questions, this list? because it is so it was so powerful to see it in action. Um and it was that was an advanced class, but I was told it happens in all EL um English classes. I forget what they call it now. Um ELA classes in uh seventh grade. So just kudos to that level of um instruction, you know, thinking. It was really powerful. Thanks. Thank you. Um I think you folks have said it all. I'll just thank, you know, everybody at the table as well as

189the administration for, you know, I think a really fruitful, productive budget conversation tonight. Um, and, you know, especially hats off to you, John. um always a little trepidation when you've got somebody new in the seat and we're used to working with Harvey and how he presented things and um you know as our work comes closer to a conclusion this year um the information you've presented and the way you've presented it um has made our jobs possible here. So thank you for that. So um with that I would like a motion to adjourn. Got a motion. We'll take that as a second. All in favor? I I Any opposed? Any abstensions? Thank you very much. See you in a couple weeks.