001good evening everyone my name is ann savage and i am the president of the city school district of albany board of education on behalf of the board i welcome you to our meeting i'm joined in person tonight bye and i will go from my right tanya bowie our board clerk board member almanawi board member man secretary to the boards tour board member wilson board member creation and superintendent adams virtually we have board member smith who is somewhere in the virtual world i saw her smiling face a few minutes ago so the entire board is here and ready to go this meeting is being live streamed and the instructions to view the meeting are available as always at albanyschools.org forward slash boe if you want to share those with anyone we will show the relevant slides
002and documents in the virtual meeting screen as well as on the screens here in this room you can also access them at albanyschools.org forward slash boe if you prefer to be able to control the slides yourself you will also notice that we are following the school district's coveted precautions which are fewer than they used to be some of us are masked and some of us are unmasked just as it is in all of our schools every single day and we welcome people to do whatever makes them feel the most comfortable with that introduction we invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] in addition to saying the pledge of allegiance we always focus our meeting by restating the mission of the city school district of
003albany which is to work in partnership with our diverse community to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success and tonight we have with us some very special legislative guests assemblyman mcdonald is here with us as and senator breslin is here with us virtually and alyssa kane is here representing assemblywoman so we would love to have you make some opening remarks whenever you're ready and i'm sure we'll have a couple of follow-up questions thank you so much for being here with us we appreciate all of your support thank you so much i'm alyssa kane uh a proud resident of the city of albany and i'm the chief of staff to assemblywoman patricia fahey she sends her sincere regrets uh to not join you in person
004this may be the only year that she hasn't joined you to talk about the budget and how unfortunate it is that this is such a good year for education in terms of funding and she can't share that information with you directly um she also is so grateful for the outpouring of support for her and her family shown by all of the members as well as the many many staff of albany city schools who have shown her and her family deep condolences during the loss of their son brendan i she did want me to tell you i will leave all the budget stuff to uh the professionals here but i did want to tell you that she sends this message she says remember to say i was a proud parent of two albany graduates and brendan
005wore his cross-country albany falcon sweatshirt almost every day during his chemo treatments falcons came through and they were a shining example of what is great about the city of albany and so from the staff of assembly member fahey's and her family thank you so much [Music] i'm actually going to defer to senator breslin if he wants to say a few words virtually first first of all did you hear me can you hear me yes okay first of all i'd be remiss thoughts and prayers still go out to pad having lost a child after just an enormous two-year battle and we all know how uh passionate whatever pat is involved in and when it comes to the health and the safety of her son it was even more exemplified and our prayers will go out not
006today they will today but they'll go out for many more months and years to come so in terms of the budget i think i represent eight school districts it's the first one that wanted me to appear because they're all as happy as can be and they're afraid i'm gonna take away we're gonna take away money secondly uh i'd say that i'm sitting here remotely because uh i always have a saint a saint patrick's anniversary dinner with my wife and uh so that will await my departure from here uh i think uh and i my dad which i which i haven't i go to a lot of events with the school districts i represent from rensselaer county from albany county and i i would say by far this is the most involved school board diverse school
007board thoughtful school board uh not to the point of acrimony between it among yourselves but always good arguments with the ultimate outcome to better the the students of albany high school and the entire city of albany and i and i tell you again i frequently whenever i'm here i think of my mom who was a long time teacher at albany high and my sister was a long time teacher at albany high and the times that i was in albany high which a lot of you were way too young to remember the original albany high when i played sports there and i i think of it every time john and i argue for an additional 20 million dollars to finish off the engineering school there uh and hopefully we'll get there this year but uh in
008terms of foundation aid and in terms of all aspects we've finally met the financial i think directionally the financial commit commitments that we were obligated to start and finish many years ago so i'll turn it over to my dear friend john uh john and i had a press conference today it's easy for him to stand for an hour and a half less easy for me but it's a critical time we're going to i believe we'll pass an on-time budget so far i've been pleased with the acting governor or the governor now and it's been refreshing to deal with her she's willing to discuss issues and really the interaction has been refreshing and i have to remember what it's like to have it refreshing and she's helped me do that john thank you senator and uh
009president savage and the board and of course kuida our superintendent thank you for the opportunity to appear you know as alyssa had alluded to it is kind of a bitter irony there that what could argue be arguably one of the best budget proposals for the city of albany school district and pat who literally lives and breathes every single day for the district is not here but trust me she's here in many other ways in many other ways and as one who communicates with her pretty much almost daily for the last 10 years um she myself and senator brennan's breslin could not be more pleased um i represent nine school districts this is my eighth school board meeting my ninth one is in 20 minutes and you know i i always make it a point and
010this one's more special because it's with pat and neil just to say hello and let you know what's going on and when i look at the numbers i did a triple check and i'm like wow that's a significant amount of money it's a significant increase but on the other hand it's long overdue it's significant because this community above all the others i represent and i can say this unabashedly has the greatest need but also the greatest potential and as governor hochul committed to i think on day three when she took over we are going to make good on the promise that's been denied all these years on foundation aid so between this year and next year we are in a great spot a great great great spot three or four years from now maybe a
011whole different ball game so keep that in the back of your mind and i know that the number crunchers and the superintendent and the board members are very much aware that it's it's really the public that we need to be mindful of right um i do want to also share just a couple other tidbits and then i'll stop um one item that this board has brought to my attention and pass attention to neil's attention over the past couple years and we're going to make some incremental progress on albany was a very early adopter in upk and as quita knows as we are at a press event a couple weeks ago there are still districts in the state of new york they don't have upk albany thankfully cahoes waterville districts i represent early adopters but early
012adopters also have been shortchanged in regards to aid per seat as i like to call it we are not going to correct it all at once but we've in our one house budget included making a significant movement that direction to make sure that every child has a chance every child should be worth the same and that's really the principle that since three years ago you brought our attention pat and myself have been really you know the guy's in charge of ways and means education used to be six ten he's down to four seven now because we have just been really pounding on him so i think that holds promise that that may bring additional support and long overdue [Music] you should know that we're adding another 100 million dollars in community school funding to expand
013the program but also to support cities like this that have had access to it in the past and it will be about 20 to 40 million dollars added not confirmed yet in regards to mental health because we know that's a challenge it's definitely a challenge with the adults i know it's a challenge with the students so with that i know those are important aspects i mean uh i want to echo neil's comments and i know pat shares the same sentiment particularly last three or four years the engagement with the district with the board the administration has been excellent you guys have been very laser focused on the issues that are important to us it helps us cut right to the chase and quite frankly i think you're starting to see some great results thank you
014thank you very much to all of you for being here with us and alyssa thank you very much for representing pat so um well we have all i believe reached out to her individually but we we feel so hot so deeply for her in the loss of brendan who was a very important falcon as well as such a special special human being um so thank you so much for fulfilling the promises foundation aid or at least making part of the way towards fulfilling the prep and thank you for recognizing that this is money long overdue and that it has held us back um so while it is wonderful to see it come finally it is um it's money that we've needed for for some some time um we are going to try and ask just
015a couple of quick follow-up questions i think miss wilson did you have a question and miss crazy one of you guys who wants to go first thanks to all of you for coming out out tonight we were really happy when the senate and assembly budget both came out to see that both of them increased funding for uh pre-k education and we noticed that the senate is going to increase by an additional 250 million the assembly by 150 million and that some of that increase will go toward increasing support for districts with existing pre-k like ours because from members of the public who don't know as albany was one of the first districts in the state to implement pre-k we get paid at a much lower per student level than districts that signed on later and
016as a result we use our own general fund money to supplement that in order to pay our teachers a living wage and retain our staff so we're wondering is some of that how much of that money is going to go toward making us whole and bringing us up to the same reimbursement as the other districts my understanding and at least i can't speak for the senate and you know we don't know where the final outcome will be but i think what we're focusing on is trying to raise that tuition per child you know try to incrementally increase it over the next three to five years so maybe looking at a 20 increase over the next three to five years that hasn't been finalized but that is what our proposal is leading towards we'll see what
017the final number will be in the next couple weeks that's great news thank you senator breslin we cannot hear you is it possible that you're still muted but not muted anymore and uh i i would agree with john that we feel the same way we can't penalize you for doing the right thing and incrementally i think will make you whole but i also said that from the the the two the two budgets the the senate one house budget and the assembly uh one house budget uh don't view that we we are doing more because that amount of money one house budgets are very much quote aspirational unquote uh and i i sometimes argue that we we put in all the things we want to put in uh but that doesn't necessarily that we we can
018do that our one house budget was about nine billion dollars above the governor's budget put in things that we've always wanted and a lot of times the ones who have been denied our school districts but we've solved i think ultimately we've sound we've solved foundation aid we're doing much for pre-k and then in other areas the child care which really affects school children very dramatically i think you'll see an enormous amount of money placed in for the first time an enormous amount of money that will you know i'll digress to say that this pandemic showed the unfairness of our society it showed the the inequalities very much in front of us and hopefully that will be the lesson that we learn that that we're going to move very swiftly to make sure that we can
019eliminate some of those inequities that we've all known about but they were right in front of us during the pandemic and so i think again the final budget will be something that you all appreciate that we're moving towards the goal line and and you'll be happy with it thank you very much mrs wilson when you're ready hello oh thank you all thank you for your time and that's the perfect segue because that my first question was going to be somewhat around that but it's great to hear that and about the 20 40 million for mental health um so my second question was the ravages of the pandemic have highlighted the extreme challenge of being a teacher and not only an urban school district but just overall as an industry we saw increased retirements or simply
020attrition into other fields and it's estimated that the state needs approximately 180 000 new teachers over the next decade to meet workforce needs it's evident our urgent priorities for our district our region in our state as it relates to education are develop an innovative supportive pathway for teacher aides and teacher assistants to become certified teachers increase the diversity of the teaching force in high needs districts and schools and beyond because data shows that even non-black indigenous or people of color benefit from being exposed to non-white teachers and address the teacher shortages needs in high needs districts in high needs schools so recently governor holtzel announced a plan that will incentivize teaching as a profession and create a robust pipeline for future educators providing incentives for teachers accelerating the state um certification process and i understand
021that nyset had a teacher diversity pipeline pilot grant that was 500 000 over five years so my question is is there a way to significantly increase more funding for such a program or other incentives that could be devoted to this initiative such as pushing it down to the high school acceleration program or even removing systemic barriers to certification it's a very good question tabitha yes there's it's interesting and i said this last night i took a whole school board meeting you wake up like three months ago and said what just happened where'd everybody go you go back four or five years ago and superintendents know this we had people clamoring at the doors to try to become a teacher because they were so hard to get those jobs and to your point the pandemic really
022just wore people down they've decided i'm done and some of it deals with the demographic we knew some of this was coming i just don't think we knew it's the greatest magnitude to your point the governor has laid out and we are supporting several workforce development initiatives in many different aspects you know there's a large amount of concentration going on in regards to the construction trades large amount of concentration going on in regards to workforce development initiatives geared towards the port of albany with the wind manufacturing facility which is going to be between 330 and 500 good middle class careers not jobs careers we need to also triple down on helping bring opportunities for people to be teachers again and to your point there are a variety of different programs out there you've referenced one
023the nicest supports what i think is even going to be more meaningful is unlike past governors if this governor actually allows the money dedicated for the education department to hire people to help through the administrative process this has been the dark secret that's been going on for a long period of time kuwaitanosis construction products are held up indefinitely because engineers and architects weren't hired to review projects when it comes to curriculum development and guidance for these programs you talk about if there's nobody there to help develop that criteria you can't have the program so our hope the legislature has always been very supportive in regards to fully staffing the education department which will help if done properly because it's going to be funded just that the jobs have to be released will help in time
024create those opportunities you appropriately spoke about i i would just add to that that talking about the students and what's available the poor jobs are going to be terrific high paying jobs we just had another announcement just over the the bridge from albany to bethlehem about 1600 new jobs high-paying jobs which will i think we have to keep our eye on them and then in the teaching i think the initial proposals by the governor hope will show that she understands the problem she will do everything in her power to incentivize the track to become teachers and i included in that is obviously going to be health care workers health care workers are just horribly underpaid burned out not willing to go back and you know they get to the point where they say well i
025can flip hamburgers and make more money and less stress so i'll do that that's the time that we have to admit that we've done the wrong thing because we're not incentivizing those workers to do the right thing the same goes for the teaching profession and same goes for mental health in the schools i i when i told you i haven't had a lot of contact with districts who have been happy doesn't mean i've been happy all the time and i see tremendous sums of money and i find limited mental health workers going to school districts in the same time their turf field has been done over uh i i'm offended by that in terms of a priority we have to make sure our kids are safe and make sure our kids get all the services
026that are necessary and we can't assume that school is like it was when we went there it isn't and we can't assume that they have the same kinds of problems we we did they don't and we have a lot of work to do to stay on top of it well thank you all for being here i know it's emily mcdonald you have another school board meeting in five minutes so that'll be interesting you'll be the next paul tonko with your uh how fast you can get there but we really do appreciate your coming each year to talk to us at this time and particularly all of the work that you have done on our behalf we appreciate the kind words about the commitment of this board and the efficacy of this board and our work
027with the legislature because we see it when we look at our budget and we see our reliance on local property taxes declining and our ability to rely on the appropriate progressive redistribution of the state dollars supporting our high needs districts here in albany much more than they did five or six years ago so we really appreciate you so much so if if you have any closing remarks we're open to them otherwise we'll let you go a closing statement i would like to wish each and every one of you a very happy st patrick's day happy and safe and i will be able to fulfill my familial obligations by going to a st patrick's day celebration enjoy thank you very much and to everybody thank you and you know as many of you may or may
028not know um with the redistricting i will no longer have the honor of representing the city of albany or the albany city school district but know that you still have a friend pat and i obviously still will work very closely together because albany is the center of the capital region the capital city needs to be strong and successful and at the same token um it's hard to believe it's been 10 years but the relationships and friendships and the knowledge that i've learned from all of you is critical and will not be forgotten so thank you thank you very much we still may come visit you on delegation day because we still we still think of you as in our corner thank you so much have a good evening thank you uh melissa your mask um
029that is the end of our topic c bringing us now to the super intense report whenever you're ready superintendent thank you so very much madam president and members of the board i would like to start by congratulating coach decky lawson and the members of the albany high girls basketball team on their championship season [Applause] the falcons beat shenandoah on march 5th to win their first section two class double a title since 2013. it was a joyful experience watching our student athletes compete and succeed at such a high level and also watching our community come together to support them the team season came to an end last saturday last sunday night with a heartbreaking overtime loss against cicero north syracuse in the state quarterfinals but that doesn't diminish the team's tremendous success this season and if
030any of you were at the game or watch the streaming of the game it was the scoring was neck and neck the entire game and so everybody was like on the edge of their seats and so we look forward to welcoming coach lawson and the team to an upcoming board meeting in order to celebrate their achievements and we'll keep you posted on when that would happen after an intense two-day contest the albany high robotics team emerged wednesday as the runner-up in the 2022 new york tech valley first regionals robotic competition held at the mvp arena downtown first robotics competitions are the premier engineering challenge for high school students teams from around the world working closely with teachers and volunteer mentors have six weeks to design build program modify and test a robot to participate in
031a competition that changes each year i was honored to join the members of albany high team 1493 when they celebrated the launch of the 2022 contest virtually in january and i enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with the team in person on tuesday morning as they prepared to start the competition albany high was among 41 teams competing this year with teams coming from all over the capital region and from new york and other states and fro from other countries after the preliminary rounds the falcons had the highest score among all competitors heading into wednesday's finals for the finals leading teams pick a group of partners albany high's alliance included tech valley high school and spencer i'm sorry spencer port high school from the rochester area in the best two out of three competit champion i'm
032sorry championships championship round they matched up against an alliance that included schools from india west virginia and flushing new york the team split the first two matches and team 1493 fought hard up until the last second of the deciding match congratulations on the fantastic performance of our 30 students on team to our teacher advisors kevin allen brent katie andre castagna and ken i'm sorry and rich cassane and alan landman the mentor from national grid is jake ennis and of course ren the robot was the star of the show you can see pictures from the two-day competition on our facebook page at albany schools and get a list of all the team members at albanyschools.org we had another group of students participate in a competition and i would like to congratulate two of our albany high
033schools skills usa cte students for their outstanding performances wednesday in competition at schenectady county community college michael driscoll took second place in the food preparation competition and cassandra colton hines took fourth in commercial banking these competitions not only give students invaluable experience in their field with industry experts to guide them but they also help the students build confidence to be able to see themselves in these careers after graduation we are looking forward to supporting our cte students in taking part in the skills usa state competition in syracuse next month mother nature unfortunately prevented us from having the opportunity to see our marching falcons back in action at the st patrick's day parade last weekend both at the north albany i'm sorry yes at the north albany parade and the city's main parade were cancelled due
034to the snowstorm the parades have been rescheduled for this weekend but our talented performers unfortunately would not be able to participate because of the other related events that they will be participating in many of our marching musicians are taking part in the nisma festival on saturday and our winter guard and indoor percussion teams will be competing in syracuse while we will miss them at this weekend's parade we wish them well in their competitions i would also like to extend my sincere thanks to several community partners for their recent contributions and benefits to our students we have received an incredibly generous gift of one hundred thousand dollars from the charles e tui foundation to purchase diverse books for our students and professional texts for staff on the topics of diversity equity and inclusion in education we
035thank you dr wilson turner for your efforts in facilitating these donations this donation will support the one book one school initiative in our elementary buildings the chosen book is given to every child in the elementary building and administrators and staff develop age-appropriate thematic activities for children to engage in throughout the school year i would also like to express my heartfelt thanks to the tui foundation for supporting our students our schools and our community in this deeply meaningful way the albany fund for education we thank them because they have partnered with 518 asian alliance and the book house in order to donate 166 asian themed books to our elementary teachers assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and professional development karen bechdel worked closely with afe to coordinate this donation the books have a value eight hundred of
0361860 four dollars and we are very grateful for this gift as well our partners at the albany community action partnership acap recently provided two clothing donations that will greatly benefit our students we will be receiving 75 new prom gowns from macy's for our students to choose from this spring these gowns are valued at 300 to 400 dollars a piece acap also is facilitating the donation of several cases of new women's clothing from talbots to help stock our clothing closets at albany high a brooking career and technical center and tony clement center for education i would like to thank our community engagement coordinator kathy edmundson for facilitating these donations and we are so very grateful to acap macy's and talbots for their generosity we also have received two hundred i'm sorry two thousand and five hundred
037dollars from gold global companies llc to support our girls basketball team we will use these funds primarily to support our student athletes attendance at local basketball camps global companies has an office in the south end and we thank them for supporting our student athletes growth and development in this way a reminder to our families of students in grades three through eight that the annual new york state ela exam is coming up at the end of this month test administration is scheduled for march 29th and march 30th all students in the testing grades will have the opportunity to take the exam this also will be the case for the state math exams for grades three through eight which will be administered at the end of april you may check out the calendar of events at albanyschools.org
038for more information about this spring's state exams including the recent regents and nicely exams nice sorry exams finally we are so very excited to have our freight farm delivered to facilitate hydroponics in our curriculum we hope that you were able to enjoy the photos on the website please take a look and we will have more information coming forward in some of our curriculum updates so that you can see all the exciting things with our freight farm it is now my pleasure to introduce principal scott thompson to share information about the great things that are happening at tony clement center for education so please come to the microphone thank you for the introduction uh thank you board for the opportunity to present this evening and i'll just get started so i'm going to start with our
039guiding principles the vision at tony clement at tony clement center for education students are empowered to realize their individual aspirations goals and potential for greatness the mission that tony clement the mission of the tony climate center for education is to provide students with a safe nurturing and supportive educational experience that is responsive to every student's cultural emotional and social social development we ensure equity and access to rigorous and relevant learning opportunities through flexible and innovative programming through positive relate through positive relationships and collaborative partnerships with our families and community and each other students will develop skills to become responsible citizens as you're aware tony clement is a community school as a community school our goal is one of our goals is to have 100 of our students employed or participating in after school activities this
040is a breakdown of our students our demographics with 83 percent of our students being african-american 13 percent of them being hispanic and four percent of our students being caucasian our staffing consists of our leadership team which consists of me as the principal uh our assistant principal uh teresa italian ken dittmer head of security centeria to pass murray is our home school coordinator and marshay heinz is our community school site coordinator we're supported our students are supported with our student support team which consists of our psychologist jacqueline o'connor our behavior specialist megan britton uh social worker um annika dot wilson um our other social worker uh sarah murphy and our mediation matters mediator uh michaela cargill we're also we also have 18 teachers three teaching assistants eight security staff one food service provider a shared nurse
041and one clerical staff with another one slated to start tomorrow so our set focuses include the following an increase in ela and math proficiency increase in our passing rate on the regents as well as 100 of our students being either employed or enrolled in after-school activities certainly we're not without our challenges one of the biggest challenge challenges that we've had this year is our student daily attendance it's been something that we've had to focus a lot on this year and what in on this slide we have uh some of the um some of the interventions that we actually employ uh which include incentives through our pbis program for daily attendance and making sure students are on time to class phone calls home to parents referrals to our mtss team home home visits parent conferences coordination
042with our attendance teachers and our court liaison community partnerships we've also provided incentives through our pbis program for our students and staff that have been implemented to help improve the culture of our building and to help that and to help everyone feel that they're invested in our school community our successes consist of 42 students who are currently enrolled in our after school activities we have i know it says on the slide 47 but as of this morning we have 50 students who have applied for our summer youth employment program with the goal of 100 by the end of this month so we're off to a pretty good start there we have 67 students who are currently enrolled in our suny step tutor program for those who don't know about the suny step tutor program it's
043uh step tutors are a community partner that we have who actually provide additional academic support to our students in the classroom so it's very important and really helps out and students at tony clement center for education just recently during black history month spent time researching black wall street and then had the opportunity on and then had the opportunity on march 3rd for our black history celebration to recreate black wall street and they did a fantastic job with that so we're going to transition to a video uh in this video our assistant principal uh teresa dallian interviewed our students specifically looking or asking them for their true feelings about how they feel at tony clement center for education while we're waiting mr dallian if you'll please stand up so that they can see who you are
044so thank you very much and we appreciate all the hard work that you do thank you while we're waiting i'll just say it was important for us to do this video and i think one of the things that really stood out for me uh with this video is giving student voice we talk often in the district about giving students the opportunity to to be heard and to have a voice and i think they did a really nice job expressing their feelings as it relates to their time here at tony conrad i'll take a quick moment tcc is supervised by miss laurie mckenna who is on the line and i just wanted to acknowledge that we appreciate all the work from miss mckenna and her supervision of the school and as you know mr thompson was
045recently appointed as principal and we are so very excited and pleased with the work that he's doing so thank you all very much so hi my name is kiara i'm a junior at tony's climate center for education hi i'm will aarontown with junior tony clemson hi i'm tyrone morris and i'm in 11th grade hi i'm mark cowell i'm a junior at 2027 thank you um here i'm going to start with you how long have you been at the tony clement center um like four years since 73 thanks all right next question what is the best part about tony clement center um smaller like classic like you get more like one-on-one time with certain staff [Music] uh [Music] awesome thanks um okay tell us a little bit about your biggest accomplishment here at 20 climate center
046um i don't i make principles i haven't done that since like freshman year honor twice this year [Music] uh it's my first time [Music] all right tell us what you're looking forward to uh graduating and competing [Music] you know getting my diploma in my barbershop uh graduate that suspension school period get that on the way i'm looking forward to graduating going to college nice okay if you could change one thing about tony clement center what would it be like 18 hours tell me too about more about the perception but when you say you want to change the perception of the of the school what do you mean i have to think like people [Music] what they think [Music] okay well i thank you all for taking the time and you are all amazing and you
047should know that [Applause] thank you so very much mr thompson and thank you to your students as well and we appreciate everything that you all are doing and that concludes the superintendent's report thank you thank you at this time we will move right into our district update and our district update tonight is um going to focus on uh coven we always start with our guiding principles as well because as you know we want to make sure that we are making decisions and doing those things that align with creating those equitable opportunities for our students and those positive learning environments tonight we'll talk about covid we'll talk about the cases and current protocols and then vaccines and so as we move through to the next slide the status update as we are right now we are
048at 1396 uh confirmed cases and this is according to our school report card 1020 of them are students and 248 faculty and 128 staff as you can see our daily average cases are going down which is in the right direction it aligns with what what is happening in our county and so we're very pleased to see that those numbers are going down however we still ask our families to be prepared for backup plans in the event that some of those numbers start to go up and we have to transition to distance learning moving forward testing uh we do partner with quadrant uh biosciences uh one of the things that we have to remember is that uh we are still our employees that have reported uh proof of vaccination we're at 71.2 percent no proof of
049vaccination 28 so we're happy to see that that number is going in the right direction mandatory weekly testing for unvaccinated employees is still continuing and we have the time slots there um and then it could either be done here or they can bring in the proof from another location our current protocols just a reminder that there are no longer mask mandates masks are optional and this is the protocol for the schools we do know that we want to make sure that we have environments that are mask friendly so that those who choose to wear a mask can and feel comfortable doing so and those who choose not to or comfortable doing that as well if a student if someone does test positive though we do have the mass for individuals who test positive those guidelines
050have been provided our desk shields in the classrooms we have removed those we've been we're still in the process of cleaning them before we store them shrink wrap them etc but we've had we have had some cases where there have been some parents that have requested that the shields be maintained for their children at their desk and we've given them that option social distancing is strongly recommended but it is not required some of the areas where we are still kind of feeling our way through is in those larger areas like cafeterias etc we have continued using classrooms for lunches because we found that there were some students who were you know there's too many i'm uncomfortable going into a large area to eat i'd rather stay in a classroom and eat with the teacher that's
051supervising us etc and so we have also allowed that as well with regard to the covet 19 exposure quarantines are no longer required for individuals who have been identified as contacts or who have been exposed and we are transitioning to that language as well we still notify if there is a positive case and then there's a six foot radius with regard to being exposed we still notify families of that however it is still not a requirement that they are quarantined unless they also test positive and then they would have to we do look at the minimum i'm sorry the maximum of five days out of school and then they can test to return and if they return between days six and ten they are required to wear a mask etc we are continuing to encourage
052everyone five and older if you're able and eligible to please get the vaccination we have provided information for that appointments at cross gates mall you can click on that link and and make sure that you get an appointment and then additional locations you can go to vaccines.gov or call the number on the screen any questions board colleagues this is fairly familiar in material with just enough current updates does any board member have a question for the superintendent board member man first it's a comment and then a question um the comment has to do with um proof of vaccination how that number continues to go up for staff i think that's amazing um the question i have has to do with getting the results back from quadrant are we getting them back in timely fashion we
053do we get them back in a timely manner um it could be up to 48 hours sometimes at the most it might be three days but typically we get them back in a very timely manner okay good thank you anyone else with questions this time brendan preachy thanks i just had a quick comment and it's just in light of what's going on in europe and asia where where they're experiencing increasing cases and there's a variant that's extremely contagious i think it would be great if we can continue to focus on ventilation and i'd like to suggest that we that we can that we investigate portable air purifiers for each classroom my understanding is they're reasonably expensive maybe 100 a piece or so and they would be great not just for covid but for any other
054infectious respiratory type diseases and also for students with asthma or allergies that's just my plug thanks thank you anyone else otherwise then i think we'll turn now to public comment this is the time we set aside to hear from members of the public those of you who do not come to board meetings often may not know you need to sign up if anybody meant to sign up to speak there's a sign up sheet near miss bowie the board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions we are making for our long-standing policy the board sets aside up to 30 minutes of each meeting to hear from district residents parents students and other members of our community if there are more comments than can be accommodated in 30 minutes we may choose to extend the
055length of the public comment period or alternatively to establish a second public comment period later in the meeting it does not look like that will be necessary tonight per our new public comment policy we also accept comments in writing by virtual live participation and by voicemail comments that are not in person must be made at least six hours prior to the meeting to give us time to collect and verify them as needed written comments are limited to 400 words and voicemail comments to three minutes all comments must always include the commenter's name and place of residence we do not accept anonymous comments if you would like to submit a voicemail or written comment for a future meeting we encourage you to review the addressing the board information at albanyschools.org forward slash boe which would also
056give you the instructions about how to sign up for virtual live public comment we do ask all commenters to keep in mind that information about individual students and specific district staff should not be shared not only is that a violation of privacy but every student and every staff member deserves to know that concerns about them will not be aired in public for that reason board members who read written comments will pass over or substitute alternative words if individual names are mentioned we will also eliminate those names and descriptions from recorded voicemails when they occur also we ask that you keep in mind that public comment is not the best place to first alert the district to a concern you have we ask that you share concerns first with relevant staff such as a teacher or
057principal if you feel the concern is not addressed adequately you may appeal to that person's supervisor up the chain of command if necessary to the superintendent and decisions by the superintendent may be appealed to the board we do not have any voicemail comments tonight we do not have any in-person comments tonight or virtual comments but we do have quite a few letters i think we tell it around 17 and we're going to read those now please let us know if we mispronounce your name we really try hard if you're listening at home and we're reading your comment or if you're here and we're reading your comment we try really hard to pronounce people's names correctly and we appreciate it if we are corrected so i'm going to start with miss smith if you're okay with
058that miss smith's going to read virtually she's got a handful of letters to read actually she's not going to read virtually she's going to really read but she is virtual when you're ready okay thank you and i hope you can hear me okay okay my first uh letter comes from jessica usaltas who writes after reflecting on last night's forum i'm not sure this process has given thorough consideration to the needs and realities of dense urban neighborhoods downtown town albany residents often don't have driveways cars yards or homes with their names on the d's their parks shops libraries and schools are their backyards their resource centers their lifelines to sever these things from the local community and place in the hands of other more distant ones is poor planning at best and dismissively cruel at worst
059yes for downtown toast families having a walkable option for elementary and middle school seems like a luxury and not a necessity but tomorrow many of these families for whom agency is often limited and choice is a rarity will wake up to one less option one less thing that makes their lives just a little easier so that other families somewhere else can have a shorter bus ride thank you my next one excuse me comes from stephanie levay who writes my children are both currently going to toast my oldest we were expecting would be going to hack it next fall neither i nor their father own a chart car we are a family of walkers deciding to live in close proximity to their school was purposeful to that effect i know i'm not alone in this many
060live close to the two schools for this fact removing our choice to send them to hack it puts unnecessary financial and physical burden on those families thank you the next is from colleen smith lemon who writes dear district staff and board members i firstly would like to say that i do applaud your intent to address the inequities within the three middle schools i do recognize that there needs to be a more academically balanced population at each school however i need to say up front that addressing and equity in our school system cannot begin and end with changing middle school feeder patterns there needs to be a much more strategic broader approach i encourage the district to start sharing these broader plans with the public now that being said changing feeding feeder patterns requires a lot
061of time planning direct public outreach and communication to be successfully explained to parents and implemented there were a lot of flaws with how this process was laid out in the beginning lack of satisfaction excuse me lack of statistician support from beginning sending out surveys and material that are not written in plain simple language lack of targeted outreach to disadvantaged communities the way that two scenarios were added to make the process appear fairer for one school etc etc i could go on optics are so very important with a process like this in the 310 board meeting i heard the needs of the new scotland students mentioned the most 15 times much more than other schools this made it clear that this decision was going to be made based on the needs of those most vocal and
062politically active at the end of the day politics are the deciding factor regardless whatever feeder pattern is chosen i implore you to develop a better plan for implementation which includes meeting with the families from the schools that are most sorry i'm sorry um meeting with the families from the schools that are most impacted by the change to help develop plans to address all their concerns sharing transportation routes and plans with families early parents are mostly concerned about transportation as there are challenges with current trip or buses most importantly communicate about transportation and any plans communication about transportation and any plans should not come from the times union you do not build trust when information is published second hand in a format meant to persuade rather than inform thank you again for your efforts i know
063the intent of this change is to achieve more equitable outcomes but so much more planning and education needs to be done thank you colleen smith lemon eagle point elementary school and harriet myers that's not right um hackett middle school pta member my apologies um my next comes from kimberly uh ruchel or raquel i apologize who writes good evening board members and district staff i've spoken and written on this subject several times already so i will be brief i once again ask that the feeder alignment process remain objective as much as possible the goal is to provide equity to our students and that can't be achieved if the process is biased or focused only on one or two schools i understand respect and share the concerns of the families who have voiced fears and anxiety about
064transportation and violence in neighborhoods but i recognize that the board and district will make every effort to keep our students safe please do not believe that silence from certain schools or individuals equates to acceptance one of the wonderful things about albany is its diverse population but this means that there are also large populations of enl families and those who are disadvantaged and lack the resources to voice a response this is not an easy decision and people will be upset no matter what but i am once again asking that it remain objective and equitable thank you all right uh my next one and i will uh you bear with me i'll try to read first in spanish and and then in english translation and uh this comes from mary chuke uh who writes buenas tardes she
065writes good afternoon i'm sorry because of my work i haven't been able to be here i've always been informed of everything but thanks now i'm informed so i would ask you to please stay there meaning dual language to stay at hackett since that was the plan from the beginning thank you my next uh comes from luhana jimenez who writes hola my name is jimenez hello my name is johanna jimenez i send this email to let you know my discontent and concern about the upcoming changes i do not agree like other parents that my daughter is in a school other than hackett middle school since i consider it the right school for the bilingual pride program i prefer my younger children who attend the dual language program currently at aic to attend hackett mills school at
066the same time thank you [Laughter] see i believe the savage president established that that is it for me and thank you for your patience thank you very much and i appreciate your reading in spanish as well as in english very much appreciated board remember to tur when you're ready the first letter is from rudolph rose 67759c is an okay choice plea but please reconsider 25828a the second letter comes from stacy stump as a toast parent i was disappointed to see that the final two scores being considered have moved toes to myers these two scenarios also have the highest proportion of long-distance economically disadvantaged workers against the stated goals of the committee this action will have devastating consequences for toast i am asking you to reconsider hackett is across the street from toast those parents and
067haggard parents have shared in common frustrations the past two years as a wastewater facility has brought construction explosions detonated during school hours and heavy traffic to a common block but we are stuck through these hardships together because we are a shared community and await the promised improvements to lincoln park that both schools will access i hope that the two schools can continue their strong history of shared resources including having two students across the street to their future middle school to see the musical being performed and enjoy second grade gym please add this back to the budget drowning is the second leading cause of death for children is enormously helpful as children transitioned from elementary school to middle school to be familiar with their new environment and this was the major benefit toast was able to
068offer to its students because of its proximity to hacking and now it seems the relationship between the two schools will be severed toast is a diverse school that reflects the demographics of the city and part of the reason is its location it's near public housing projects and low rent apartments that house a significant number of the toast population many of our parents are new english language learners who may not even know that this process is going wrong they would be blindsided to figure out how to be in two places at once next year as both schools start at 8am many toast children are picked up by older siblings from hacking many children at toast participate in the boys and girls club also located right across from toast and look forward to continued participation as this
069club expands its programming to provide a safe place for teens a large portion of a population do not have cars and need to use public transportation themselves to attend school events these are the families who need our district's resources attention and convenience the next letter is from matthew green i'm concerned that the criteria that the board and the feeder committee identified as driving this process has been ignored and narrowing the eight choices down to two there are three scenarios with the lowest composite scores which i understand to mean that those scenarios most closely aligned with the state controls of the realignment 258282582b and 76882a however only one of those scenarios 25828b is being considered among the final two and the scenario that most closely meets the realignment criteria 27682a is no longer being considered at
070all i do believe that the community input is an important part of this process and i understand that the survey was meant to elicit those responses and provide that input however i'm concerned that a scenario that is now considered a finalist seems to be seems to solely be considered as such because of the high percentage of survey responses from a relatively affluent area of the city and large and influential elementary school like other parents who spoke at last night's forum or have voiced their opinions in other ways they have significant concerns about the efficacy of a survey that was so disproportionately responded to by certain communities but virtually ignored by others if community input is truly available part of this process i think greater efforts need to be made to get honest feedback from a
071broad range of parents from all elementary schools communities and neighborhoods again i know the purpose of the survey was to do just that but i think the results indicate that those efforts to receive comments and input from a wide range a wider range of families fail and perhaps another means to accurately gauge community input is required the different and more effective efforts are not made i don't believe the community input received thus far is truly valuable and if the board intends to proceed as planned they should instantly rely more heavily on the data in the composites course the next letter is from kira thompson we applaud the board for their efforts to create a more equitable learning environment for our students we live in one of the most segregated cities in the nation where racial
072divides in access to health and nutrition and educational opportunities are a reality for our kids thank you for striving to address these critical issues however i ask that the board please consider delaying implementation of the new middle school feeder plan one year until forthcoming and existing transportation issues can be anticipated and addressed in particular efforts should be made with cdt to decrease commuting times for our students delaying implementation may also soften the abrupt change daily routines that many district families may experience and since the data include used to inform the scenarios we gathered during coven and school attendance and student families family challenges were abnormal an extra year to collect and analyze new information if you're useful finally you consider the distance and difficulty in getting to a middle school far away from student homes
073perhaps requiring long walks and or bus transfers may hinder family and community involvement as the board well knows family and community engagement is enormous confidence in successful student working the next letter comes from jenny martin our son attends eagle point and i'm very concerned that he will have to travel so far to north albany to attend middle school i truly believe this would be a disservice to the kids at eagle point please look at other plans that involve that involves eagle point students ending up closer thank you for your time the next letter is from rachel palman i wanted to express some concerns i have as a parent of two fifth graders in the district the parent of a child who i pull from the district middle school i'm concerned that the plan to shift
074one class at a time will adversely impact the youngest kids in the school will triple buses serve as the same neighborhoods yet different schools how will it feel for 11 year olds to be the only kids from the elementary school at a new school do you worry about bullying i feel that the scenario is being considered as not taken into account how parents are to engage with a newly assigned middle school it is not just the kids you want at the school you want the parents some parents have cars but in a city many don't do not certain of the schools are much easier to reach via public transportation and long rides make even the easier to reach schools attract long commutes will decrease parental enrollment nothing new was built you have the same admin
075in place you have the same programs in place yet somehow shifting the students for exclusively sixth graders for now is expected to change the school climate is there any study that can be cited where that happened i'm concerned about attrition this whole feed alignment only works if your student body is willing to be realigned the student body is given a reason for why the realigning will be a good thing for their kids i believe more parents are not so altruistic that they will send their their kids into scenarios that can that they concern them for some greater good making every middle school the same is not workable there's an assumption being made that if the high needs population were to be more evenly distributed and the high achieving population were to be more evenly distributed
076then this would be helpful with albany's current staffing challenges i think it's unrealistic to assume that the acsd can staff the same programs at every school why not distribute the programs and support assign kids to schools with the programs and supports that they need i'm concerned about the property values in all of albany going down because prospective buyers will learn that the assigned middle school is an hour away from hour away by bus regards rachel clown the last letter comes from jennifer morton after sitting through several board meetings in free alignment meetings including the final meeting held on 3 16. it is both surprising and disappointing to see the concerns of a single neighborhood elementary school dominate the narrator in such a manner as i have written and said before this board should not rely
077so heavily on a survey that is heavily influenced by a single group especially since the survey was released and remained open after the board published narrowed down scenarios for the middle school realignment it seems that the vast majority of board members live uptown and in uptown neighborhoods all of us parents are asking that you make the best decision for the district as a whole and not cater to what the largest voice is shouting the decisions of this district should not roll over on what new scotland elementary wants to see happen achieving equity is about leveling the playing field so that the so that the block you were born into does not affect the quality of education that's it for me and our last reader tonight is board member crazy thank you the first the first
078uh letter i'm going to read is from michael woodhead and i just want to say mr woodhead does refer to two specific personnel in his email so for that sentence i'm gonna paraphrase and i'll let you know in advance what what sentence i am not reading literally okay i would like to send full congratulations to the members of the admin staff who not only were shielded from the massive staff cuts last year but who were rewarded with pay raises i was under the impression that the district just did not have the funds to pay people because of the outright refusal to pay the cleaning and support staff even fifteen dollars an hour okay here's my paraphrase sentence teachers schools have a hard time retaining teachers but we give cabinet members raises okay now i'm gonna
079go word for word again was the six-figure salary not enough to keep up with inflation it just amazes me that anyone can look at the job being done and think yup this deserves a raise especially when those salaries were already three to four times what a single teacher makes the level of contempt this district has for its teachers is astounding you just sent a message that there is more than enough money to pay the administrators the ones who have zero interface and interaction with the students but everyone else who is actually involved in doing the work is worthless all in for albany is such an empty hollow and insulting slogan and should be taken down the board and admin are all in for themselves not the students and before you say something like we have
080no choice but to pay because it's hard to find replacements save it you don't seem to care about that when it comes to firing teachers and support staff and they contribute way more to the district in education of the schools maybe it's time to look within and see if there are any educators that might be interested in bringing new outlook and ideas to the administration i bet it would come with a lower price tag and it would be refreshing to see people in the admin office who have actually taught a class in the last decade this board and administration have failed the community and you continue to double down on an admin that clearly has no idea what they are doing sure they work hard but you can work hard and still be bad at
081your job perhaps it's time to acknowledge that fact good next message is from jenna patera i'm gonna take this off it's a little hard the center square in hudson park neighborhoods of albany have some difficult schooling decisions giffen is an extremely long walk for a small child from our neighborhood but it is slated as our neighborhood school it's along a busy road and no buses available as we're all within the 1.5 mile radius of the school as a result nearly all of my neighbors choose a magnet school toast is a reasonable and much safer walk ash and montessori offer busting up options for people in our neighborhood we split our kids up and go through the lottery anxiety because while giffen offers great educational opportunities it is not very accessible to our neighborhood when the
082eight scenarios for feeder realignment were sent out i was excited especially about scenario 25828a which kept toasted hackett which is right across the street from it ash at myers which is right next which is next door and montessori at hackett with a diverse and well-represented collection of schools when a second survey was sent out about the eight options new scotland parents or families organized and flooded the ballot box their neighborhood is used to accommodation they have a highly walkable high performing school and easy busing to hack it currently they did not want to see changes a facebook group was created they advocated hard for the two scenarios that continued sending them to hackett even though these two scenarios made much less sense and caused much more upheaval for many other schools i was so excited
083as a hudson park resident to learn that theater realignment could leave my son walking to school with the kids he lived near i felt like this was a moment to really see the transportation issues that affect center square hudson park could be quelled it feels like by narrowing two scenarios two five eight two eight b and six six seven nine six six six seven 67759c the board is cow towing to avoid vocal and highly resourced minority please consider 25828a giffen toast in delaware should be at hackett it's in their neighborhood and these schools have much larger populations of lower income families that need walkability ash should be at myers they're practically on the same property it is clearly the best option please don't igno ignore the needs of our neighborhood just because we made less
084noise the next message is from vesna kagan in the interest of actual rather than perfunctory transparency and efficient effectiveness of the pro this process i urge the board to name which of the two criteria the district finds relevant making the decision one the majority of parental votes for a particular scenario or two equity in doing so please also provide evidence on the basis of which you have been prompted to name this particular criterion the evidence should come in the form of at least one relevant peer-reviewed study that takes into account the well-being of the children and the families whose lives this criterion and your decision effects thank you vezna kagan [Music] the next message is from dana kowalczyk dear albany school board members in school community i was looking forward to being annoyed about the
085school community being asked our opinion and then having our opinions being completely ignored as a standard with this type these types of surveys i am surprised to find that this isn't the case instead the loudest parents are being catered to equity to be damned based on the reported information the most responses came from new scotland parents while they may be the largest school the community is also arguably one of the most white in research resource rich in the district it makes sense that the whitest most resource rich people have the most time and ability to access this survey i'm wondering how equitable the questions and administration of the survey actually are especially when their responses are what is determining the outcome rather than research-based equitable practices there are so many working-class families one-car families no
086car families in our district who need walkable access to school if catering to their needs first is the most equitable because resource resource rich people have options like driving their kid if they don't like the bus ride or moving to clifton park if they don't actually want their kid going to school with black children then that's what you need to do or maybe that's not the most equitable way to do this i don't know because i'm just a parent not an expert on education and equity in busing i don't care which middle school my children attend but i do prefer it's not whichever school is attended by the unfortunate children of the grown adults who are selecting whichever option means their kids don't have to ride a bus too long with poor kids please reconsider
087and do right by all of our children sincerely dana kowalczyk and the last message i'm going to be oh two more the next one is from aaron boyce i appreciate the effort that the committee is putting in to consider a number of dimensions of equity in middle school education a theater pattern that is equitable will create middle school communities in similarly outfitted facilities that are similarly broad and diverse in regard to socioeconomic racial ethnic and academic factors and similarly accessible by foot and bus for the most students it's important to consider representation and methodology when making this decision and i am concerned that an unscientific unverified and non-secure online survey will carry too much weight in the decision making as a way to see what's in most important to parents and members of different schools
088sure it's useful but should the feeder options be narrowed down from these results if so how the input should be used to inform evidence-based decisions by experts which self-interest parents are not in examining the slides from the march 10th meeting two scenarios were identified on slide 34 as having a desirable fits well to fits poorly response based on the preliminary totals 25828b and 67759c however these results also show that one elementary school submitted more than twice as many votes as the next elementary school and that three of the top seven responding schools were not elementary schools what weight should those responses carry when the total fits well only ranges from 23 to 33 is that score meaningful further when looking at the first and second highest fits well choices from each school 25828a and 67759c
089fit well for eight schools and 25828b 26225a and 60348b fit well for seven schools point being you have a lot of raw data data at your disposal i hope that you have experienced quantitative analysis is working with it because it appears that the two scenarios identified on slide 34 on march 10th may not be the best fit for the most schools i encourage you to carefully consider fits well and fits poorly for whom from my perspective it's this fits well opinion should matter most for populations who have the highest needs and should matter less for resource-rich populations who are more likely to own cars and have driveways and two-parent households again i appreciate the effort that is going into this and the focus on achieving equity also that open enrollment may be available for students
090who simply want to walk to a middle school in their neighborhood the last message is from jessica brown my son attends montessori magnet school i am opposed to sending him to north albany middle school as there are two other middle schools much closer to our home i am concerned about the length of time he would be spending on the bus how it could affect getting to after-school sports and activities and the safety of the buses in general being a single full-time mom with a full-time out-of-home job driving my son to and from school would be very difficult with my work schedule and did i read i don't two more i had two more did i read the one from jennifer terry yet okay thank you oh yeah i did thank you very much that is
091it all right thank you very much we do appreciate all public comment and we find hearing from community members extremely valuable again our contact information for both public comment and routine correspondence is at albanyschools.org forward slash b o e we now move to the part of our meeting we call routine consent during this portion of the meeting we approve routine matters for the district these include items like contracts and field trips personnel matters and the like each board member reviews each item carefully but we vote on them as a group with no discussion that allows us to use our meeting time more efficiently nonetheless each board member has the option to set aside any routine consent item in order to require a separate discussion and a separate vote on that item with that introduction i
092now entertain a motion to adopt the routine consent agenda motioned by board member wilson do i have a second board member elmanawi are there any set-asides seeing none all in favor of adopting the routine consent agenda in its entirety that is unanimous thank you all very much and that brings us now to our first action item which is the epc resolution uh superintendent adams is deputy superintendent good evening again and thank you so very much at this time i will turn this over to um deputy superintendent roaring good evening board of education i'm pleased this evening to introduce several of our partners with us this evening from day automation we have josh edinger and steve hayslip they are going to once again review some of the components of the epc with you and we also
093have with us tonight on behalf of fiscal advisors andrew shrek hello hi everyone uh so i'm gonna be sharing my screen here and showing you some slides on uh the energy performance contract i just wanted to say uh jeff day who's also working with us wanted to be here but he's actually on a family vacation right now so he says he sends his um hellos and wishes he could be here but um he's somewhere warmer than we are unfortunately um so let me uh i'm gonna share my screen now and let me know if you can see it through a thumbs up if that's all right all right can you see this this powerpoint right here all good okay perfect so this is um we just wanted to give the board an update on the
094energy performance contract that we're uh doing here in uh for the building so we'll kind of just give you a brief update uh the four buildings like we uh we're talking about were myers middle school albany school of humanities hackett middle school and arbor hill elementary school and we're looking at a potential project size of roughly 10 million dollars and that that is the project size based on the uh ever increasing utility rates that we're seeing um around here and we're looking at about 30 energy savings and the important thing is that this is guaranteed zero cost impact to the district over the lifetime of the project so the energy savings and the state aid will uh fund the in the project in its entirety uh throughout the 18-year life cycle of this project so
095um i'm going to go into some more detailed financial highlights so i'm going to kind of pass it over to andrew at this point um to go through and you uh just let me know when you want to go to the next slide we're going to talk about the different ways to finance well though so with an epc project like this there's basically two financing options the first one would be what we would call a serial bond financing this would count towards the district's debt limit and for that reason um would require a super majority vote of that 60 percent um the financing would be done with bond anticipation notes if needed and then permanent financing for serial bonds both of those would be done through a competitive bidding process to ensure the lowest interest
096rate the repayment would be over 16 years to closely align with the building aid that would be received for the project energy savings over the 18-year window would allow for the final two years of the project to be a net gain josh if you don't mind going to the next slide and then the other option be through um the ratio change around 88 percent with a lease this doesn't go account towards the district's debt limit for that reason you would not require the super majority just the majority 50 leases generally carry a little bit higher interest rate so there would be a little bit higher interest expense expected with a lease financing that doesn't mean that uh the impact of the project size doesn't uh uh decrease the project size just increases your interest expensive
097touch um and then the last two bullets are the same as with a bond financing we would finance it over 16 years to align with the building aid and then again the final two years would be in that gain to the thank you andrew so and going into that uh so working towards the vote um we at day can provide some support through a marketing campaign and one of those things is some mailers flyers and videos and so i'd like to kind of show you an example of a video here that we've done for another district to kind of show you what um you can be looking for just creating without you folks here [Music] hello hello my patreon and as the superintendent of lisbon central school i welcome you to enjoy a short informational
098video regarding our initiative to provide clean and energy efficient improvements for our educational campus [Music] hi this is jeff day i'd like to thank the entire community for all your help and cooperation keep school open this year i'd like to take this moment to talk to you about something very exciting that's happening to the district in the midst of all the activities surrounding the current school year the district has not lost focus on their responsibility to be both fiscally responsible and environmentally conscious to the lisbon community lisbon central school district is eligible for funding aid to help meet their goals and you can help i'll explain how [Music] with each capital project we challenge ourselves to find the best ways to enhance the educational experience as i'm sure you're aware the community approves an upcoming
099capital renovation project which will improve the buildings and help to better the student learning experience for years to come at the same time the district looks to introduce updated energy efficient heating and cooling systems as well as led lighting that's much better for the environment and reduces energy costs so more of your tax dollars can be spent on the students and their experience at school the lisbon central school district and the school board have agreed to use an energy performance contract to meet their goals now an energy performance contract or epc for short is a project funding mechanism used by many of the schools in new york state and here's how it works the district has utility bills just like you and i do an epc helps the district to purchase energy efficient equipment like
100led lighting better heating and cooling equipment and make other system improvements that save energy engineers calculate just how much we will be saving over an 18-year period the new york state education department then certifies all these findings there's no risk to the district since the savings are guaranteed by the epc contractor the district then gets the money that we'll be saving over that 18-year period right now that money will be used to purchase the high-efficiency lighting and energy-efficient hvac equipment the district needs the entire epc is funded in part by new york state the district is reimbursed at 90 percent of their school age ratio the district can receive 100 of their aid if the public votes yes on this project remember voter approval provides additional aid for this project there is no impact on
101the tax levy and this initiative pays for itself february 23rd from 1 pm to 9 pm in the main lobby of the lisbon central school is your opportunity to vote on this energy performance contract as we plan for our future we are very excited to be partnering with day automation systems all right so that's just kind of an example and i think that does a good job of kind of explaining what an epc is and then also kind of lets them know what that vote would be so um i'm gonna go on to the actual project itself i know we presented this before but just gonna kind of do a brief overview again on this primary primarily we're focusing on mechanical and electrical upgrades in the district including um boiler replacements chiller replacements some domestic
102hot water heater replacements and then electrically transformers and some air handling units as well and there's some unit ventilators in the albany school of humanities that we're looking to upgrade as well um then the next largest component is led lighting that's kind of the driver for all of this and the savings from that helps fund the lower payback items like the chiller or the boilers um and then the building envelope improvements that's just kind of keeping the building tight uh not letting any of the heater heating or cooling out that you're just now upgrading and um then we're looking into uh solar as well on um we're looking right now on some of the new roofs at arbor hill actually so um and then there's a small portion of energy controls that we're gonna that
103are gonna be incorporated with some of these new units um and that's kind of where this project looks right now for those four buildings and then the the next uh part is uh education support and this is kind of something that it's kind of near and dear at least to mine and i know steve as well um we um we we're looking to work with the school and we have we're trying to get us a second meeting we have emails out to try to schedule something for in the next couple weeks with amanda and sarah to uh continue our discussions on how we can uh use the work that we're doing to uh help with help students and and you know help to increase the stem curriculum program and the big thing that we're trying
104to do is to make sure that everything's equitable and for for all the students not just you know one of the schools and one of the grade levels we really want to see how we can have the biggest impact and working with them and what they've already been doing um has just been fantastic and it's there's some we could spend a whole time talking about that but um excuse me they uh we're looking to see like i said how we can we can help and do everything we can to to leverage kind of all this great stuff that you're doing in the schools to help the students uh even more and then kind of the next steps so today we're looking for uh the approval for the seeker resolution uh and then we're also looking
105for the proposition the approval for the proposition to vote um to go to the voters in may uh and then obviously may 17th we're looking to do that um that positive vote to get that additional it's actually for here it's about 14 additional aid uh so it's rather substantial and um again once we will work with the district to help with that campaign to market this and um try to get that that vote um and then from a time timing perspective uh this is kind of how we we envision this uh phase one analysis uh obviously we're we're kind of at the march point right now right in the middle um for the proper seeker vote and then in may would be the referendum vote and our goal would be to submit to state ed
106in the fall and hopefully begin um you know the actual work to install some of these energy conservation measures in the winter spring of 2023 and um that's just for the those first four buildings we're also i'm gonna be looking in other buildings uh hopefully this summer slash you know fall winter time frame we're gonna work with the district the building condition surveys that that were done as well as work with bpi and the other people in the district to find out you know what other buildings could be in this next phase to see how we can get the entire district on to more energy more being more energy efficient and have better hvac infrastructure so that's kind of where we're looking at right now at this snapshot in time and um if you have
107any questions please let us know and i'll open it up and thank you very much thank you very much for the presentation for those who are listening at home or in the room we also had this similar but slightly more detailed presentation at our last full board meeting two weeks ago so there's more information there our policy and procedures that we always discuss something at one meeting and don't act on it till the following meeting in case we have the opportunity for public comment in between with that introduction board colleagues does anyone have any additional questions for the presenters i have one and i'm wondering i don't know if this is for deputy superintendent roaring or um one of the gentlemen i just want to understand the exact language that's going to be on the
108referendum how that works um visa vr debt limit ceiling and because i know to do the bonding we need to have 60 uh vote but to do the lease we'd only need 50 percent if i understand correctly so so does that mean we have a single referendum and it just depends if it passes 60 or more than we have both options open to us but if it passes 50 to 60 we can only lease is that is that correct is that how it actually is structured yes yes that's true yeah if you uh are going out for the the 60 majority and don't achieve the 60 percent majority you are still able to finance it through the lease yes okay and does it matter whether we get the 50 or it doesn't matter it's just
109you it still has to be approved yeah you still have to get the 50 it just you wouldn't require the 60 to to do the lease financing excuse me pardon my call i understand um other questions okay so we have a number of resolutions before us you'll see in the action section of this agenda item there are four resolutions we do not have to read these verbatim which is good because this meeting will be long enough even without the reading of the entire resolutions but i will entertain a motion to adopt these four resolutions that are before you on um item h2 board member wilson second by board member creation all in favor uh that is unanimous thank you very much so we now move on to the feeder alignment committee and i turn the
110microphone to superintendent adams good evening again and we will go through our presentation we will do an abbreviated version of the background uh just so that we can make sure that we are all on the same page and then we will go through the presentation just for consistency to make sure that everyone is up to speed um with regard to our background tonight our agenda we're going to follow what is listed and this has been the same agenda that we've had several times so i won't read each item but i'll go ahead and start with starting back in 2001 with the facilities referendum where the foundation was laid for rebuilding our and renovating our elementary and middle schools in the district in 2009 livingston middle school closed and a reconfiguration committee was established to begin
111the development of a new feeder pattern in 2015-16 this sets the stage for the great configuration model of all sixth graders attending middle school because at the time sixth graders were partially in elementary schools and in middle schools in addition writer choice closed and presented an urgent short-term facility solution whereby temporary a temporary feeder pattern was planned for the next three to five years in 2016-17 the phase two committee reviewed the options of a fourth middle school or a third larger middle school with that the voters approved a facilities project in january of 2017 and o'neil opened in the fall of 2017-2018 to be a temporary location to accommodate the influx of students in september of 2017 the district looked to achieve balance among schools and an equitable enrollment structure which would be the least
112disrupted the boe made the decision to have three 650 seat middle schools and north albany was selected as the third middle school in may of 2019 voters approved a facilities project to expand and renovate north albany in order to serve 650 students with facilities aligned with hackett and myers and we do have the highlights which are listed on the slide and some of those enhancements that were made to north albany elementary school now north albany middle school excuse me so the current committee overview in looking at the feeder alignment committee which started meeting in july of 2021 the committee was formed to engage community members and district personnel in a partnership to develop criteria so that a recommendation could be made to the board for an equitable feeder pattern for all students and that would
113be for students transitioning from elementary to middle school the committee began the work last summer with one representative from each school five members carried the work forward through the fall and then we added a layer with an ad hoc committee for with three board members and then joined in december which joined in december along with our statistician statistician dr robin so the parents included on that committee were dorian salat william lemon daniel katz talia harrell and marina marco o'malley our board members president ann savage secretary dr sridhar shattur and member hassan ahmed yahweh the overall goal all three middle schools would be roughly the same size all three middle schools would have students with similar needs so that the resources could be allocated appropriately looking at continuing the feed of elementary schools to middle schools
114to allow student relationships to continue the timeline would be that the implementation of the new feeder pattern would start in the 22-23 school year for sixth grade only and add a new sixth grade cohort each year until the pattern is fully implemented by the 24-25 school year and the students that are currently in grades 6 through 7 would remain in place until they moved on to high school so the enrollment pattern considerations looked at balancing the total enrollment for each building balancing the resources to meet the needs of the students looking at academics attendance discipline etc and the etc would include social emotional mental health concerns so i want to make sure that that's clear number of school changes from the current feeder pattern and then transportation factors so factors that were considered in projecting
115the enrollment of the schools we looked at the current students in grades three through five large number of new students entering the school district at sixth grade what would that return and new entrant be for our self-contained special education students also looking at the students in the continuous enrollment of students from elementary to middle school how many students are we retaining not meaning holding back in terms of progressing through education but how many students are continuing their enrollment from elementary to middle that was really information that was very important because we looked at the data and 81.8 percent of our non-self-contained students transitioned and stayed with us from elementary to middle while 84.8 percent of our self-contained students stayed with us from elementary to middle school and then we looked at the dual language program
116and for the first year it would be one deep and for the next years it would be 2d and that way we would have the space to grow that particular program the metrics that we used looked at academics attendance discipline and a risk score for returning students um we looked at weighting those components the new entrant we calculated a new entrance sixth grade performance as a percentage and use that to create a comparable composite score with regard to the number of scenarios that we would be able to examine through this process we were able to have over 500 000 possible scenarios and through discussion and you can listen to those board meetings and hear that process we were able to drop down from 500 000 to and then down to 60 and then the conversation
117that modified the 60 potential scenarios going down to the eight scenarios is at the february 10th meeting for community engagement online community survey we had an initial survey and we had 448 respondents we held 23 meetings since august and 16 since the start of january virtual meetings at all 12 of our elementary schools during the week of february 14-17 and in-person community meetings that were open to all those were on february 28th march 1st and march 16th we have a frequently asked questions posting um through our communications division with and it is located at albanyschools.org communications feeder faq our second online community survey we had 817 respondents we did translate the information into a number of languages and the videos of each of the feeder alignment committee meetings are available at albanyschools.org committee from the
118community feedback a couple things that we were that we received questions about the main topics about honors classes honors classes are offered at each of our middle schools we have worked to um have consistency among our middle schools not just for the horizontal alignment but looking at that vertical alignment knowing that all of our students will end up at albany high because we have one high school so trying to ensure that that level of consistency is there within the instructional program with our honors classes was very important sibling preference based on our numbers the district should be able to accommodate sibling preference open enrollment we have a process in place which is based on space availability and the needs of our students facility readiness came up because we do know that north albany is a
119construction site as well as operating school and so we are looking um at the results and we are seeing and you'll hear that in the presentation a little bit later with regard to the capital project uh north albany is on target we are looking to be ready in the fall and then the only component that is left is the theater which will open next summer just as a thought with regard to that our high school has been under construction our theater has been offline for a few years at the high school and it will be coming back up soon so if we needed to use a theater we could always use the high school or we could use you know other schools or other venues and so we we look to that completion especially with
120our classroom settings this coming fall and then we had concerns about transportation and for that particular piece i will turn it over to mr lesko thank you i'm going to talk for a bit about uh transportation considerations uh and then i'll also review the final survey data that from the survey that closed last friday afternoon um i'm going to start with a review of where we are currently with our middle school transportation for uh for the three schools we operate 13 tripper buses with cdta to serve the three schools three serve hack at middle school and five each serve myers and a north albany middle school the scheduled ride times for those those 13 buses range from 40 14 to 42 minutes six of those 13 buses are scheduled for uh 30 minutes or less
121there is um only one route is scheduled over 36 minutes and nearly every student on that bus is has a scheduled ride time of uh 28 minutes or less there are days when the rides are longer than the scheduled ride time but by five to seven minutes or so depending upon road conditions or traffic conditions along the way and all eligible students this year and every year have full free access to the cdta route network all day long our planning for next year will will take the shape of the planning that we have every year obviously there will be a new feeder pattern a new feeder pattern to consider but we begin by taking into account who are the students who are going to be going to school at each building in a given school
122year and as soon as as soon as the board of education has made a decision about the new feeder pattern we will begin to look at who those students are where they will be attending school and how we would best serve them from a transportation perspective in partnership with cdta next school year as you know we've our transportation budget proposal for next year includes funding for up to six additional cdta tripper routes at a total uh a total budget request of 270 thousand dollars we we receive 79 reimbursement for our transportation services from uh from the state on an annual basis so the total cost of the district for those six uh those six additional trip or buses would be fifty six thousand seven hundred dollars a few additional factors um we'll be transporting roughly
123the same number of students to our middle schools next year no matter which of the of the current patterns under consideration is selected buses for the middle schools will continue to serve every part of our community our goal will continue to be a walk of 0.5 mile a half a mile or less to a trip or bus stop it's not something we're always able to achieve we are mostly able to achieve and we'll continue to try and do that and do it in as many cases as possible particularly particularly through the addition of additional routes um we will ensure that ride times remain consistent with our current schedules and and do our very best to shorten those rides to the greatest extent possible we had talked about this last week and we've continued to have
124conversations with cdta about about the idea of using the highways that that loop around the city for some of our triple routes to to make them more efficient and timely we decided not to do that for uh for safety reasons we don't think that would be the best way for us to to transport our students on cdta buses so we would continue to use uh use city streets to do that and just as as one example we currently have a bus from north albany that serves the um as an example the eagle hill and point woods neighborhood and that's that's the bus that i refer to it has a total ride time of 42 minutes and it does make it makes the uh it makes the trip uh from north albany middle school to um
125uh the homestead avenue which is right before the ualbany entrance on western avenue in uh 28 minutes so it's it's that it's in line with the other trip or buses that we have citywide with the exception of the last spur when it has to make the trip out to the moon and uh cdt we've asked cdc to evaluate the entire secondary network including uh including the high school triple routes to see where we might be able to make some efficiencies and make sure that we're maximizing the the use of the of all the tripper buses that serve our secondary students in the best possible way as the superintendent noted we ended up with 817 total respondents to the survey which closed last friday when we met last on thursday evening last week we had 617
126total respondents as of 5 pm that day so in the final 24 hours of the survey we received another 200 respondents which was terrific it was uh it was great to see that level of response from our community to the survey in the five criteria that we asked our community members to to prioritize academic equity that was by far the leading of the leading criteria for the folks who responded to the survey with two thirds or 67 percent of the respondents indicating that that was very important to them in thinking about this decision total enrollment turned out to be the least uh least important of the five criteria that we we asked for feedback on with 34 of the respondents indicating that that was very important to them minimizing long walks those walks that are
127at the range of one to one point four nine miles just before you become eligible for bus transportation at 1.5 miles uh just a little bit over half of the respondents 52 indicated that was a very important factor for them maximizing bus eligibility maximizing the number of students who who live 1.5 miles or more from school was 41 percent of the people indicated that that was uh that was important to them and then among the fur the the the five criteria of minimizing changes from the current feeder pen was right about at half of the respondents 49 percent of the respondents indicated that that was an important factor for them the the fits well of feedback on this on the eight scenarios all range from uh in the end 28 to 32 so they were
128all relatively tightly grouped there were three scenarios in which uh and you'll see that in the last slide there were three scenarios in which respondents indicate more respondents indicated that a certain scenario fit well with their priorities then fit poorly scenario two five eight two eight a had 32 percent of the respondents indicating that it fit well for them scenario two five eight two eight b had twenty eight percent of the respondents district wide indicating that it fit well two six two two five a had thirty percent of the respondents indicating that it fit well for them 60348b had 32 as well of the respondents who said it fit well for them six seven seven five nine b had twenty eight percent of the respondents indicating that that scenario fit well for them six seven
129seven five nine c had twenty nine percent of the respondents indicating that it fit well for them 76882a was at 29 as well and 77107a was at 30 of the respondents indicating that it fit well for ford and on the last the last survey slide you can see how they all ended up in terms of fitzwell and fits poorly the the top and the bottom of the of the choices but the scenarios highlighted in green and yellow are the three in which more folks said it fit well for them then fit poorly and seven 77107a was uh was a dead eating those categories at a thirty percent of reach and i'll turn it back over to the superintendent when we look at our next steps um pending the force decision we will begin working with
130cdta immediately so that we can review and look at the building of the trippers but we do know that that is also based on the budget vote as well because we have asked for six addition the funding for six additional tripper buses um evaluating the plan with staffing needs in each of the buildings which is the appropriate time that we will be doing that scheduling spring orientation programs for students and families that would be starting later this spring right around the same time that we would do them anyway which is typically a little bit after spring break and then scheduling summer transition camps for new students at each of the middle schools which usually takes place in august so those things are still on schedule schools have the you know framework and the organization of
131because they've done it before and now that we are able to do it in person it's going back to something that's familiar and so um those those programs are you know in in theory and in practice in place and it would be one of the things that we would be able to do to return return back to some sense of normalcy so at this time i'll open it up for questions so sorry those of you who were there last night know that i was really coughing last night so when you can see my cold is progressing and i'm almost done um so you want to do questions on this and then we'll do the facility presentation and then we'll do questions on that is that what you want to do that sounds perfect to me
132board colleagues i know we have seen this presentation many many times there's some minor new things or viral various changes does anybody have any questions for the superintendent about the presentation we're not going to talk about choices yet we're just about the presentation any money comment is fine too thank you so um and like you indicated i won't talk about the choices but i do feel as incumbent to state that we did approve an equity policy and thus by that virtue we are responsible for its implementation and i do feel like you know just to highlight there are some indicators of equity three of them are ensuring just outcomes raising marginalized voices and challenging imbalances of power and privilege and there was a parent who was so kind to share um a document that had
13311 indicators which i could not access but i did find 16 of the 16 there are nine that are related to access to opportunities and resources and the three i want to highlight are an indicator of disparity is disparity in students exposure to racial ethnic and economic segregation um 11 was disparities in access to an access to an enrollment and a rigorous coursework indicator and 16 was disparities and non-academic supports for student success so like with that being said i do want to just highlight that there are of course and i won't talk about the choices i feel like everyone's choices sort of highlighted the the indicators in the composite scores that led towards equity was with very little variation so i just felt like that was incumbent for us to mention thank you very
134much other comments or questions on the presentation um one thing i just wanted to mention that came up in the public comment that i thought was a was a good idea that maybe you can start thinking about how you'll work in is individual meetings at elementary schools since roughly half of our elementary schools are going to be changing next year you know those those schools are going to feel very differently impacted than a school that's continuing so having going to them bringing the principle maybe to them so that and some of the key teachers or whatever however we can do that to make them you know to start orienting them to the staff and the program on their in their own home school i think would be a very uh gracious way to start orienting
135them other kind we will have plenty of time to talk about all the next steps we don't need to solve this problem tonight but it was just something in my mind anything else before we move on to the um capital project update for north albany so that we can get fully assessed on that okay whenever you're ready to move on so at this time i will turn it over to deputy superintendent roaring again for our capital project update i think it's important to note this is where the information with regard to north albany's facilities will be explained thank you thank you superintendent adams with me this evening i have two representatives from turner construction uh bill steele and john hunt as well as rich peckham who's the architect from cs march on this project we're
136pleased to be able to provide an update this evening on where the progress of the construction stands it's been about 10 months since we were able to get in and start work and they will provide very clear details on where we are and where we're headed over the next five months good evening everyone how to get started off area e this is one of the first completed areas turned over occupied over the holiday recess uh we have a work to complete list these are items that were either delayed due to scope change uh material delays uh uh and other things um so just going through them you know room signage uh some door hardware for the toilet room that was a change in the scope just some damage to an existing vct floor tile some
137case casement window installation which was a material delay a corridor storefront and some doors separating this space exterior egress store a couple of white boards some permanent signage waiting on the window replacement additional lobby floor discoloration just from some of the temporary provisions and some metal case work which was actually installed but there was some damage it's not really noticeable now but the contractor is going to be replacing as far as b3a this is the second floor in the 1952 wing uh over the most recent break the contract was able to install the lockers which were delayed due to material shortages over that break they also completed the unit ventilator replacement uh to these existing uvs that was an additional scope item and these are in all of the classrooms getting new units um along
138with that just some additional work to complete room signage a couple of white boards that wraps it up for this corridor classrooms an update for the cafeteria kitchen and serving you know progress is steadily moving along most recently completed is the floor and wall tiles exterior windows interior finishes drywall paint ongoing currently installing light fixtures closing up the ceilings there is a material delay in this area with a walk-in cooler this is the only kitchen equipment item and space item in the space that is currently delayed it wouldn't have an impact on the move-in uh to this space uh and i believe so the move into this space is gonna be um end of april and that cooler is gonna be showing up uh in the middle of may uh looking at the general neutral
139locker room uh this locker room was completed all but the lockers that have showed up uh over the winter break so just a little more work to finish up the fillers um seal the gaps on these lockers other than that it's ready for occupancy uh the albany public library space so this would say is about 90 percent done there was a change in scope regarding the storefront entrance mostly just to separate uh the school entrance from the library so there's a extremely long lead time on these aluminum storefronts we're seeing so over the most recent uh winter break the contractor was actually able to install a temporary door uh which looks just like the finished door with the exception of some thermal break in the material so that's completed and they're just vinyl file closing
140up a closet wall that will complete the separation from the school to this library space as far as the classroom edition goes mostly recently completed is the steel mainframe installation of the deck they're wrapping up all the roof decking i'm starting the exterior wall framing the auditorium edition with the warmer weather most recently i've actually started back up continuing uh the final piece to the foundations more upcoming work is going to be steel erection starting uh in the next month or so so area a uh we're doing work on the first floor in a classroom and work in the third floor uh in a bank of two classrooms and some offices so most recently completed mep rough-ins uh drywall taping upcoming in progress is the first floor uh so there is some cracking that was
141unforeseen condition in that floor uh the contractor has been approved to proceed on repairing these cracks on the third floor some of the challenges uh there was some slab elevation discrepancies between two rooms uh so work had to be completed to level out the floors to maintain a level uh height additionally there was some walls in worse conditions than others that required some additional patch on those areas looking at now the third floor area b which is the rear uh building throughout the month with demolition has been completed mep rough-ins and drywall installation upcoming work in progress is the final installation of the sprinkler completing wall taping and starting to prime the walls some of the challenges in these areas is that due to the existing plaster ceilings there were some items that were uncovered
142that were asbestos containing such as a pipe installation on some of the existing storm drain piping that was able to be abated over some of the most recent breaks additionally there was the existing conditions of these walls because it is older plastic some of the paints eliminating requires some additional framing uh to give it a good clean um finished look um so to date uh some of the most sizable changes from the last time we've met is a change order regarding insulation so with the material in the market they are there is material shortages the contractor was unable to procure some of the installation they needed for the class and the auditorium in waiting for this material it would delay the roof install to start in june of this summer so they've actually were able
143to find an alternate insulation material which has all equal properties we can maintain the roof warranty and that was approved for around thirty thousand dollars so that pushed the insulation of the roof for the classroom edition from a potential june install to april so we were able to complete the work turn over the space by the end of the summer another larger unfortunate scene resulting in a change order was some cmu wall removals the original contract documents showed a lot of these walls as jip or stud framing and uncovering some preferred walls it was a cmu that was encountered which was pretty extensive for the removals with the third floor abatement there was the uncovered mastic tack boards in addition to the insulation we originally held an allowance of eighty thousand dollars for this uh
144over the breaks when this items were completed we used a t m model basis for pricing we were able to get this price down to forty thousand dollars for the first um abatement of the mastic in all the classrooms and then fourteen thousand and nine thousand respectively for additional uncovered mastic and the insulation so today we've approved 36 uh 36 change orders for 350 000 uh still tracking open change orders or potential change orders for around 339 a number of these are in review with the architect uh just to verify the final pricing um tcco that's turner construction is currently reviewing around 28. 28 this is just final back and forth to the contractor finalizing pricing and backup information and 40 of them are still waiting for pricing from the contractor the starting contingency for
145this project was 1.4 uh currently with the approved changes and the total open changes the balance is 793 uh about 53 remaining and this based on the remaining construction volume is around seven percent thank you very much for that very detailed presentation uh board colleagues i don't know how many questions we'll have on this but as our usual as is our usual practice i'm going to ask you to prioritize your questions and ask one question at a time if everybody gets the first question we'll certainly go around again who has a question on north albany facilities remember eliminate thank you um so very simple question um in terms of what will be remaining uh at the start of next school year what is going to be remaining to be done in terms of projects uh
146construction projects so i can i can take that question um board member el mignon what will be left next year when we start the school year in september will be the construction of the auditorium this was indicated the foundations are underway but that is scheduled to be completed uh summer of 23. all the other spaces for the facility will be completed thank you board member wilson thank you and um not so much a question but just to tie the loop because um myself um board member emily allen board member smith are on facilities and we get the pleasure of getting the status update and when we see change orders we not only interrogate them because of our fiduciary responsibilities but because way back when when this referendum came up it did pass overwhelmingly in the
147community and their major charge to us that if if we were going to do this is that the school had to be equitable and the capacity to do so came out of the fact of course that the y vacated and we were able to make a similar size and scope school so thank you so much and i know people may hear oh well you know material delays but i don't know if you mentioned or highlighted part of what we question when you say material delays not only in terms of cost are you are also making equivalent substitutions so we are as far as our understanding on the facilities committees not only on task to start with our rollout of sixth grade for whomever goes but just in terms of we're just on task period to
148be ready for september so just wanted to highlight that anyone else i just have one question for mr hunt which is along the same line first of all i very much like the contingency numbers that was lovely thing to see 53 contingency with 7 volume left that is a very nice place to be so we uh thank you for for the tight management that has gotten us here um but then i wanted to basically follow up on what miss wilson was just asking and ask you given the number of supply chain issues that you mentioned that have been ongoing as you've been working what's your level of confidence that you're going to be able to deliver what miss roaring has just described which is all products all completion in time for the very first day
149of school next year which will be essentially labor day yeah i'd say we we have a pretty high confidence in the contractors to complete the work this summer you know we're rolling out a number of different controls to monitor what's left in regards to materials what has been procured you know pushing the contractor to get all the remaining available materials uh either on site somehow in storage into context boxes or into the warehouses in regards to trying to stay on top ahead of the work you know a lot of pull plans scheduling sessions which you know basically holds the contractor accountable to dates they give us and just a lot of other systems like that to keep everything on target thank you very much anyone else i have one last quick follow-up which is very
150small having been in north albany building number of times it's really quite an amazing and interesting building and i think i recall correctly that they they have a cafetorium kind of stage setup is that remaining when all is said and done so that would be in place next year or no that will not be in existence as i recall it i just don't remember what's happening to that space yeah so that space actually turns into the new media center uh in this stage will actually be modified with a nice glass rail there's actually a handicap or an ada elevator to allow students up there and then that will be a separate sort of uh computer area inside the media center ah i understand thank you very much i appreciate it speaking media centers i just
151am very excited that once again we will have a albany public library have co-located with one of our schools which we used to have many years ago but have not had for some time so it will be lovely to see those partnerships flowering again at that building um anybody else on that any other questions for our friends otherwise they'll be back with the rest of the capital project update in a little bit because we still need to hear about all the high and the five year facilities projects okay so now we're going to do exactly the same as we did last time which is um go back to our more formal structure where we ask people to give a short statement about their thoughts in particular around their scenario selections um you can say whatever
152you want to say but recall that our goal here is to come down to a single scenario that we can all live with so mr el mignoli you have the first opportunity and welcome to being in person to do this president savage do we have are we going to do three minutes a piece or four minutes a piece my intention was to allow people to go with short statements and expect everybody to be respectful of each other's time what do you think can we do that or we need to time i'm happy to time if you guys want to no all right thanks the general consensus seems to me we will be respectful of each other's time go ahead mr elena [Music] thank you colleagues and uh thank you to superintendent the cabinet and uh
153everyone that's been involved in this process from the feeder committee uh to dr robin and all of our public uh participation and comments it's been it's actually been really good to see everybody coming out so first i just wanted to kind of reiterate that what we have right now is an unsustainable temporary feeder pattern it is uh unsustainable because it's extremely unbalanced we have two middle schools that are have a very high population of the 700 uh students for for school and then we have one that is somewhere around 300. uh that is really something that we're going to have to resolve this year personally speaking i don't think we can put this off i've tried to do mental gymnastics about how we can pull this off but i just don't think we can we
154have a north albany middle school that is going to be 97 complete or whatever you'd like to put it and we need to utilize that building fully otherwise we're really not being good stewards for our taxpayers um so i'm resolved on deciding something tonight i do have a favorite and i've kind of come to a process of elimination with my favorite and really i started that process by understanding that these eight scenarios that were given to us uh were it's it's not magic it was data crunching if you don't understand it i understand you don't understand it it's very complex however there's math scientific research and i i have to trust that a statistician with a doctorate knows what he's doing as well as um and and anyone that was involved in creating these uh
155data sets so with that said i'm looking at eight of these scenarios as being as i was told uh by dr robin as we were all told um very very equal and that we shouldn't really nitpick the differences in the composite score um and that they are as equal as you're going to get you know these are the top top few percentages of plausible options so with that said i really wanted to consider things of going into that thinking that these are all equal options i wanted to consider things of really transportation and convenience so um i did some basic research on distances from north albany and there was just very uh clearly one elementary school that would have had to deal with what i feel like an unreasonable burden of transportation and inconvenience which
156was new scotland uh they are the furthest according to google uh on a monday morning or you know any morning 7 30 a.m to take you seven almost eight miles 7.7 miles and at least 15 minutes that was the minimum to drive your student to uh north albany if that is uh how you decide to get your child there the the next closest was five minutes shorter and uh a mile and a half less so that resulted in me really not wanting to send new scotland to north albany i mean just as a person who lives in the city i already think morning traffic is bad this would just you're you're sending one of the largest population schools across uh almost eight miles and you're just creating a lot more traffic so i was able
157to remove new scotland from that equation and it really brought it down to three options those three options are 67759c 25828b and 603 48b now i just wanted to again this process of elimination so i have three options in front of me and two of those options have quite balanced school layouts so i think it was four four and four um the the last one that i mentioned 60348b had a three four five situation and i didn't know how really to feel about that but ultimately i didn't like that arrangement because i feel like here's having five elementary schools feed into hackett and a lot of the time teachers need to be in uh consultation with the elementary schools and you're basically having five different connections through hackett whereas north albany has four and then
158uh myers would have three so i didn't like that option uh based on it's just inconsistent uh you don't know if if enrollment will go up or down at these places so it could it could ultimately imbalance it in the future so i wanted to take that out and that really left me with those two options of 67759c and 2582 and what i really wanted to look at again was the transportation factor and when i did there there are a few things i apologize that i did like about 67759c over uh 25828b and it involves both transportation reasons as well as our family's personal choices um i know that 67759c was overall the most most liked or um well-fit scenario and even even after um we just looked at so with all the votes it
159was the top scenario when we just looked at the elementary votes it was the top scenario and when we looked at kind of leveling out the number of votes per school it it dropped but i believe that was only because we removed everything else other than the elementary votes so i think if we included all the other votes and averaged out to 15 i think it would be higher than number three in that situation regardless um i don't want to i want to overly belabor the point but the number of on the transportation and the number of students uh over 1.5 which would basically require uh bussing was on the low end for six seven seven five nine c at a thousand and six whereas two five eight two b was 1043. i know we
160are already thinking that you know transportation is always complicated and it's been more complicated with covid and you know low staffing and stuff so i really think if we can get less long uh over 1.5 miles it's kind of where i would like to be so i i'm leaning i'm still leaning towards six seven seven five nine c and that's where i'm at i'm gonna yield my time thank you very much remember man okay so you know i looked at all of the um uh scenarios that were uh put out and recommended and i was pretty clear last week i think i'm coming i know that i'm coming from the same place this week as to the scenarios that i um prefer and so my number one scenario is two five eight and the reason
161that that is number one for me let me just go to my little table here the reason why that's number one for me is because it balances our high achieving and lower achieving schools and and as i shared last week what we know is when you have that heterogeneous kind of community those that are lower achieving tend to rise and um and that's a very uh and that's very positive and it's good for our students um i understand that the um the it will be a commute for our uh eagle point community to uh it will be a commute for our eagle point community to go to north albany and at the same time it will continue to be a commute for our hill community students to travel to hackett and they've survived that and
162they've survived it well so we know that we can do that the other reason why i liked 258-28b is because our lower performing schools are spread out among um among the three different middle schools and i think that's very important so there's not a imbalance of resources so i think that's also quite positive 25828b allows for the dual language program to remain at hackett and that allows for continuity of instruction which is very positive the enrollments in this scenario are balanced and that's really important and right now as um board member al-manawi shared the enrollments are not balanced as it as they currently exist so there is a need for for a change and with this option the enrollments are balanced the transportation is comparable regarding the number of students that we serve and that
163is also um quite important um and uh factored into um my decision to go with that as uh uh really my top scenario if i had to pick another scenario just for the sake of just if i had to pick another scenario i do want to go on the record the other scenario i'd want to pick and that is 67759c the concern that i have with this scenario is that there's not an even distribution of our high and lower performing schools and what i mean by that is giffin and schuyler achievement academy are paired together and that may lead to a slight imbalance of resources that would perhaps put it out of sync from the other configuration that i that i cited 258 28b but um that's and that's that's really what i that's really
164what i have okay thanks thank you remember wilson when you're ready thank you for not timing us because last time i was like out of breath but i'm still going to put my timer on so um as far as the options i would say two five the first two are the same composite score um 2582a a has arbor hill going to north albany which what they asked for um there's two things about that however dual going to north for me is awkward if we have a dual program we have to structurally support it and we are you know we embedded that program we invested in that program heavily actually last year and i think we have to structurally support it in addition to of course wanting to go to north albany i do remember that
165discussion about arbor hill staying arbor hill and not becoming the middle school and another aspect of that discussion is that part of that walk if you're walking to north albany is through an industrial zone which is a child safety zone so that's that with that aspect of it so that kind of more so eliminates two five eight two eight a and then leans me towards b um i do hear families when they say eagle point and new scotland is far from north albany scotland the school is centrally located within the city and eagle point is on the side closer to central but regardless of all that like you said as far and i want to highlight that for some north albany students might be on the furthest reach of north albany so thus if they're
166going to arbor hill they may also be going to hackett and thus be going very far similarly for our south end students who may be in the ezra apprentice or mount hope side of town they're going to be if they were going to be living there and thus going to north albany they're also going to be far so very empathetic about the discussion about how far things are and i'm definitely listening and um and i remember someone indicated well some folks said they had decisions before the survey only because for me personally we intimately spent time with this material we did not of course to talk about it but we were just thinking and me as a person who grew up here very well of course and well versed on how to navigate my daughter
167gets dropped off near eagle point so i have to get back downtown you know so i'm definitely cognizant of the navigation issues so we're not minimizing them we're empathetic with you about them i want to say um also our current executive director at a village made a profound point that north albany um is easily becoming the new south and we have to consider that as well um as far as you know individuals who indicated and i and one thing that struck me today and maybe it was meant to be when the young man said um you know we're a good school it's not what you think at tcce it made me a little teary-eyed because i thought about my coming up in albany and things people used to say to me in the microaggressions and
168people don't mean them that way but they embed you know they impact you that way and um you know an individual state don't move the students move the resources i understand what you mean and why you say that but it's almost like an indication of separate but equal still so we have to be cognizant of that too and i understand i hear people when they say they believe in equity but don't change it yet we have to remember that when we did brown versus the board of education there was a subtext called all deliberate speed and with that we did not do things quickly it took we still have segregation today thus and um i think another component of redlining because we talked about that a little bit there was a whole other part which
169um government agencies were involved in called racial covenants which had nothing to do with your capacity or your income or your ability or your worthiness as a person they just simply stated if you were non-white you could not move to this part of town and that's all over the united states and albany too so much so that my grandmother had difficulty purchasing a home when she got to albany in north albany it was not a predominantly black area so um another thing i consider too is we have been data driven for a very long time several years and that's how we've been moving the needle and i do want to commit um a community advocate and center for law and justice staff member lauren manning who said i'm tired of moving needles i want to
170move boulders i can assure you i can assure you i um you know we are systemically we are significantly i once i think the thing about rushing we're not rushing we are significantly delayed and so when you have an impression about north albany or what's going on there it's really rollover inequity because we have not addressed this yet to el nino the board member tell me at least point so that's something to consider and you know again i wrote down when the student said you may have a perception of the kids at tce similarly you may have a perception of north albany but again we're going to be making these changes and making these moves to move equity and move the needle or move boulders if you will so um like i stated i felt
171like the choices we had i'd lean towards the highest composite score oh why i made that point about being data driven and things of that nature is because there was overwhelming support in the community from the surveys about 60348b and again if we look at the composite score it's the highest one it's the worst one for inequity so i realized that it sort of like placates people the change isn't too sudden it's not the ch you know it's not a sudden change and it fits and it works and i understand i appreciate that but if we prolong inequity again we'll be right back here again not to i just don't see how sustainable to entertain that one it was in my top five initially and that's how it came to be eliminated at this time
172um another so two five eight two eight b i'm leaning heavily towards like because of all the components where like i stated would love for arbor hill to go to north as they desire but then there's that um safety zone issue and also where arbor hill goes it goes to hack it dual also goes to hack it and we do have that investment that we're making um seven another high composite score 76828a which is .92 which is pretty much similar to 28a the first one is there's many aspects of it i think because of the composite score and because like we stated i understand certain schools move again i'm not pleased with it totally because of north albany aspect of dual and then you know it's trying to reconfigure on that aspect of things there's
173also the aspect of um there's this very minor differences with that one and the final one that's like in my top three is the 69759c which is one of the higher composite score however it's arbor hill going to hack it dual going to hack it again because of those aspects of things and you know splitting the difference understanding that giffen in north albany there is a where ultimately it's like a straight shot from the south end or from that catchment area to north albany and we and of course we looked at scatter plots of where you're actually living in a catchment area in addition to like this charting and mapping on what the public transportation would be what the time would be and what the routes would be and another thing to consider also is
174that there are other um large-scale projects and proposals and developments coming to albany and these neighborhoods are subject to change as well so that's something to consider so the demographics will shift which makes 60348b a little uncomfortable a crisis caused the fact of you know our inequitable feeder pattern with the closing of charter schools and do we have that room do we have that flexibility before ap i don't think so thank you very much we remember creating when you're ready thanks um i i wanted to start by echoing something that mr elman yahweh said which is that when when these options were presented to us uh one of the things that was said to us is hey these composite scores are give or take they're they are all much all of these eight options are
175much better than what we have now and we can't know whether a 9.92 is better than a 0.99 or what not um the other thing is a lot of people have said yes you need to put equity first we need to put equity first not how people are affected and i want to remind people that always part of the process part of the quantitative part of the process uh was trying to measure the relative stress that various plans would have on the district because even change of any sort even positive change is stressful for people and one of the things that was put in as a non-biased part of the process was minimizing the number of school changes and minimizing the number of students who changed but that's necessarily a very rough estimate of how
176much discomfort you'd be causing to change because some some elementary schools might not mind a change they might actually want one and some elementary schools might be really adversely affected by a change so it's just a rough that was just a rough estimate and i think getting input from the public and getting input from specific schools was really edifying to me in that respect and it's not that we would say well the people who commented the most matter more or their opinions matter more but it's just knowing where the discomfort points are where the pain points are for people that was really helpful the other thing that was helpful for me was looking at the individual composite scores of each of the middle schools because i think one thing we really have to realize is
177in an ideal world we could create if school leaders were creating three schools from scratch and allocating the kids to each school you know they could do something that would be considering each kid considering it in a vacuum if you could teleport each kid to school let's create three equal schools that will be the easiest to lead and that will lead to the strongest academic outcomes but that doesn't really correspond to the reality of the city we have the reality of the city we have is for most people most people live closer to hackett or myers than they do to north albany and that's a fact many people do not want to send their kid to the school that's the furthest away and while a lot of it is about distance a lot of it
178may not be about racism or bias on the part of those parents it is important to note historically because people have said well why did you have this third middle school way the heck up at north albany it's important to know that structurally racism is one of the reasons why that third middle school is up there it's because livingston was closed it's because westland the neighborhood of westland hills sued to keep a middle school from being placed in their neighborhood that is why that middle school is up there but given that's a fact i think we need to make that middle school better than the rest to make it desirable i think it's very hard if you're telling a parent well based on the elementary school your child goes to we're going to set we're
179going to send him or her to the middle school that's furthest from their home you're going to drive by two other schools to get to your school but don't worry they're all equally good a parent's going to sit but if they're all equally good why can't my kid go to one closer and i think that's why i really lean toward despite some of the issues with it i really lean towards 60348b because that makes while the composite score is high the reason the composite score is high is because it makes north albany stronger than the other two schools it makes myers weaker than the other two old schools but myers is by far the most desirable location for people who live in the south and in the south half of albany um you know tackett
180is not near as as many residential districts you've got the hospital you've got the universities you've got a lot of traffic myers is squat middle of the walking dista within walking distance of a lot of elementary school students so for me it wasn't as much of an issue to have that school have a little bit higher of a composite score meaning that it had more at-risk students the 543 grouping did give me some cause for concern because it's more unstable should things happen in the future but on the other hand the other two options that are very popular this the 25828b and the 67759 represent real oh gosh sorry though those two options represent real real discomfort real inconvenience and real pain uh for the families of a number of elementary schools not simply uh
181the possibility of something unfortunate happening in the future the thing one of the things i like sorry one of the things i like about 60348b and one thing that really affected me of some of the stuff that's come in has been uh i like of 60348b that it keeps toasted hack it i like that it keeps the dual language program at hackett i like that it moves new scotland to myers because i think the overwhelming message we got from new scotland parents was about transportation and by shifting them to myers we're going to be enabling the more of them to walk to school which is really what a lot of them talked about that was a positive thing for them and so that would continue um i also really like that it splits up some
182of some of the very some of the schools with very activist very active very concerned very vocal parents among the three schools because a lot of how as a district we get things done is through parents that roll up their sleeves write letters hit grants make phone calls and spend their time working on behalf of those schools parents like the ones at montessori new scotland and dual language do a lot for our schools and having one of each each of those schools at each of the three middle schools for me would be very positive i think for me it's more appropriate to move montessori to north albany over new scotland because montessori is a magnet school and magnet schools were invented too basically the whole proposition of a magnet school is you give up the
183geographical convenience of the school closer to your home in order to integrate the school district and also because most most montessori magnet students would be relying on a bus to go to middle school regardless of where they go and that's not the case for new scotland i do it's unfortunate that this plan does move ash to new scotland because of course ash is right next to myers and that would be great but i like i like in general this plan comes out for me with more winners than losers and more winners across the school across the schools with more economic challenges and socioeconomic barriers not just winners among the schools that we get all the commentary from so that's that's my favorite however i understand it might be risky i understand it might be riskier
184than some of the other ones but i think we're in a position where we've had failures at not just at north albany because people have said it's you know hey you have to look at who is leading the schools you have to look at getting good principals good teachers etc there there have been issues with middle schools on the north half of the city for the past 40 years it's not about who's the leader in there it's about how are we how are we dividing up the kids and are we taking these taking kids in many many cases kids that are growing up in generational poverty and essentially condemning them to a second class education we can't do that anymore i think we need to take risks for that reason i think even though it's
185riskier i think this is this is the one that could really move the needle for me however if i had to choose a second choice 67759c although it bothers me this one bothers me because the composite score at north albany is a little bit lower than the others which seems to be the opposite of where we're going i still like it a little better than 25828b but i can deal i can deal with those two as well just wanted to just wanted to say my piece for the one that i really strongly bear thanks thank you very much secretary you know we've had so many meetings including last night this is a tough decision and it's a tough nation for every parent so i mean i don't discount anything that anybody said because that's what
186you do you advocate for your child we don't have the luxury to do that we have to look from a district perspective and as was mentioned before we wrote the equity policy so we made a commitment to fix things that have been wrong for so long that they need to be fixed so it's not a matter of let's kick the can down the road and fix it next year no that is not allowable we have to fix it so i'm glad that we are in this position today that we're thinking of taking a vote today and not kicking the can down the road um you know transportation was one of the things walkers was one of the goals that people in the committee suggested we want to minimize the number of people kids who walk
187long distances but a school the first thing a school you go to school for is your academics right and that is what we looked at those numbers first and that's what derives those composite scores so we did the numbers we came with the composite scores and we if you look at the current composite score as 4.3 something right so any of those scenarios that we had even outside of these eight we're better than what we have right so now you have to start picking other criteria and that's where transportation walking came and even in committee he said yes you can put people on a bus because they may prefer but that's an assumption we're making some people may want to walk right not everybody so it's hard to predict but regardless we are left with
188the task of making that choice for people without having had that input so another consideration that came up was dual just moved they just moved so they've gone to a new setting they don't have a playground yet but they've adjusted and they're doing so it's kind of unfair to have them to do it again being fiscally fiscally responsible well we're going to look at the staffing too so if there is a teacher available at hackett it's much more easier to manage those resources better so when dual wanted to stay at hackett it made sense right so when you look at these eight scenarios if you take out the ones that dual is not at hackett that leaves you with three okay now you get to the ju then you also have transportation to talk about
189if you're as was mentioned before if you're in a magnet school you have given up that neighborhood preference neighborhood schools have chosen their projects okay even even so it is it's sort of unfair to pet a school against another school but realistically if you were to look at geographically look at the schools and say okay where can you get to from point a to point b i did not know much about albany until i came on the board and i liked the practice that we had where we had the board meeting at every school every meeting was at every school pre-code right this is more convenient right now because with covet we can keep the settings hopefully we'll go back to that again and that allowed us to visit as board members to visit those
190different schools see those different parts of the city acclimatize us you know what's there what is it and you know what you know i don't care what people what you know times union says or what anybody else is you know this part of the city that part city schools are fine okay yes they have challenges the challenges come from outside the school we can fix everything what we can try and do is fix things that are inside the school the moment the kid enters the school provide them with the right resources that's what you know we're trying to do with this equity initiative so now you're left with three choices and then you have if you look at the transportation really new scotland is landlocked and there isn't really much of a public transportation may
191have a car you may not have a car that goes for anybody right but do i have public transportation i don't if you're in this garden okay for whatever reason you dual and new scotland were together so they were going out anyways because we just because we said dual had to stay at hackett u.s scotland also followed that pattern so that made sense okay there are two criteria now that sort of justify that that leaves you with the other three which was 603 4b 2582b 60348b 2582 8b and 67759c 60348b again had that 53 543 scenario that we talked about but that actually has a favorable new scotland is closer to myers than it is to hack it so even the kids who are taking a bus from the new scotland area to hack it
192right now they could walk so but the challenge that you have with the uneven distribution right now if you look at the current distribution hackathon's schools feeding input so you're really not solving that problem and if anything changes with any one of the schools we know things can change in albany in a jiffy we saw that would write a choice practice open virtual is closed now you're going to find a place for 300 students we're constantly looking for space and we live in a city where there is none right the whole north albany thing that that you know it was for two it is in a way that ymca was closing down we could buy their property and make an equitable middle school and if you go back to those discussions when we talked about
193equity all along classrooms everything there was the auditorium the initial proposal that came from the architects was a 500 people auditorium i'm like that's not equitable if you want to do it right do it right properly and in board meeting i flipped it and what's going to happen next year unfortunately i wish it was ready by this year but what's going to happen next year is an equitable auditorium regardless of which school feeds in there you will have the space that's cool because we've got the y also has a running track which other middle schools don't so there is inequity there right but you know so yes you got the challenge of distance but you got other perks you have a swimming pool the other schools have a swimming pool now i know we've had
194issues with the swimming pools in the current schools but those are getting fixed right so things will happen we have to give it time there are so many issues you can't fix them all at once and we are trying believe me we are trying the district is trying the board is trying and you guys have been great by voicing your concerns and bringing it to the board it's not like we can we don't listen we can listen but we can't fix it all at once it takes time now when it comes to those so six or three four the the problem i have is the uneven thing that leaves me the other two the other two basically the issue is is a flip between myers going or ash going to north album so here's where
195i'm torn right if you were to talk about equity and and you you want to make sure that you're you're spreading out your more challenging schools so there's good distribution then that leaves you with 2 5 8 2 8 b over 6 7 7 5 c however if you were to look at the transportation issue again and you want to minimize the number of walkers ash has more economically disadvantaged students and my montessori graduate school so this is where i'm taught one makes sense for one reason the other one again from an equity standpoint makes sense for the other reason for the economically disadvantaged population who we are trying to give more opportunities for so i'm going to leave it at that and hopefully by the end of the discussion i'll come to a conclusion
196thank you very much i'm putting you dennis 1.5 board member smith okay uh first again thanks to everyone who participated in in this committee process um and i i think i laid out who that was as well as my colleagues before me so i really just wanted to thank them uh and this includes uh obviously parents and uh and and any others who who provided input into the survey process and into the forums um i also just wanted to uh appreciate my pro my colleagues laying out the thought process because i think it's very important for the community to know how you know each person has come to their thinking um and basically everyone uh who's gone before me has uh i believe i've gone through that same kind of process um and it's been
197challenging i am probably would say that i'm focused more on the equity um and uh it's not that transportation isn't an issue for me but i'm really more focused on the equity and i will just start write it out let's say i identify 25828b as my choice and that really has to do with the lower performing and high need schools being spread out across three new middle schools dual remains at hackett we have an enrollment balance we've got i feel that transportation is comparable regarding the numbers served the low composite score does mean that we're going to have a balance of wrap around services that we need at each of the middle schools and so for that reason i'm sticking with my choice 25828b which i had come to before and my mind hasn't changed
198i do um i just again i really appreciate all that my colleagues have said because there are things that you've said that resonated with with me um and the only point i want to clarify maybe maybe someone did say this minor thing but um dr chatura when you mentioned the indoor track at um north albany uh the other thing here is that some of the other schools have some land mass around them um and you know so i i still think hey they got an indoor they can do you know that's great um and they have very little space to to roam around and wander but um there's a nearby park i think sometimes that the school has used but i i do think that i'm i just want to say uh you know any
199joking side with him uh that i feel that this is the most equitable and in line with our policies and so that is where i am coming from and um and i am more of happy about that choice because i i can see and understand what we do every year but especially what we will do moving forward to ensure that transportation is not a barrier for our youngsters so that's i'll conclude there thank you thank you very much board member smith and really i want to thank each of you for your thoughtful comments um i know this has been a very difficult experience and stressful as we try and do what we believe to be the right thing in consultation with staff and in consultation with community and it is not easy we have been
200through a lot on this board many difficult decisions that we have faced but this one probably has the most direct impact on the most people and it is therefore the most emotional for folks and it's really hard as i said last week what i know in my heart is that concentrating students with the most need in a single school is just not an acceptable situation even if it's caused by long-standing racial residential segregation i really appreciate board member wilson reminding us of our adopted equity policy and our commitment when we adopt a policy to live up to that and i also remind everyone that the superintendent and her staff have made it abundantly clear that they know they can do a better job of educating every single student if we disrupt the current concentration of
201at-risk students at north albany we know from the research that at-risk students as tamra says rise to the occasion as i say do better when there is a better distribution of students and that students not at risk continue to do just as well the research is perfectly clear and as i said last week i know that albany's parents who don't have at-risk children know that because otherwise they would have chosen a place where they could surround their not at risk children with other not at-risk children and that would not have been albany public schools they would have chosen a different set of schools but we know that our children will be successful and i want to be clear that what we're doing here is not shifting students around that's not what this is about the
202district is doing so many other things with curriculum with instruction with professional development but creating buildings which have a balanced set of needs will allow those other things that we're doing to succeed they will build the foundation that we need to succeed so just like you all i haven't changed a lot since last week last week i said that my two favorite were the two pairs two five eight two eight a and b six seven seven five nine b and c that's still true i really want to thank everyone who took the time to share their thoughts by email by survey by coming to meetings virtually in person i know how busy we all are we are all incredibly busy and yet people made the time to do that because they really think this is
203an important decision and their commitment of making that time was very helpful to me i read every single email and i have responded to about 98 of them those of you who are still waiting response the responses are coming and i read every single survey and i was at every single meeting and i heard every single comment i heard the concerns i heard the empowering really fabulous speeches from our parents in favor of equitable distribution of resources and i heard the real concerns from families and if i had a magic wand i would grant every person's request i would put every child in the school closest to their house i would make all of the bus lines direct so that every family could get to every school but there's no scenario like that we are
204living in a city that is described by by redlining we know what our city looks like it is what every northeastern city looks like and that is the scenarios that we're dealing with so there's not a perfect scenario we can't give everybody what they want there's not a perfect scenario in the eight there's not a perfect scenario in the 60s and i don't believe there's a perfect scenario in the 500 000 okay and that was all of them so there is no perfect tier what we have to do is figure out what we each believe will serve the district as a whole the best and i still believe as i did last week that the two two five eight two eight scenarios have the best distribution of schools i think that concentrating giffen with any
205other of the three lowest performing schools is really truly problematic giffen is only slightly smaller than north albany in new scotland it is our second largest school and i really am troubled by any scenario that pairs it with one of our other really struggling schools so that puts me at 25828 a or b and between the two i am really swayed by the fact that toast belongs near hackett and ash belongs near myers i just find it really hard to understand how we would not allow those natural pears to stay where they are they're so close to each other so if i were a board of one i would really seriously be looking at 25828a because i think it would reap those benefits despite the difficult transportation situation it creates for new scotland families and
206it does for new scholars families with cars it creates a difficult situation every new scotland families without cars it creates a very difficult situation but i think it's worth it because i'd also place this gif and hack it when giffin goes to hack it most of the families don't have reliable transportation and they can walk to school and i think that that is important giffen again is our second largest family or the second largest school this scenario was also in the top three for six out of the 12 schools when you look at the surveys school by school the vast majority or the half of our schools put it in the top three in every school even new scotland put it sixth or better that was the only scenario for which that was true every
207other scenario had at least one school putting at seven or eight i dislike strongly that it would create a second transition for dual families i really don't want that i've spoken about that from the very first meeting so i think that that is a strike against it but if i were a board of one 25828a is where i would put my vote but i'm not a board of voter a board of one and it's clear that there's nobody else who is enamored of 25828a as i am so that leaves me at 25828 b again because i think that the two five eight two eight pairs have a better distribution of students than the six seven seven five nine pairs so i that would be my second choice would be two five eight two eight b
208and that i think is the key thing i wanted to say um about how i got where i got board member man i certainly appreciate your comments um president savage along with my board colleagues like before we go further can we talk about next steps for this part of the discussion thanks that is a fabulous segue because we have i've spoken to the officers twice about like what are we going to do next how are we going to manage this process because this seems really tricky so what i have been doing is taking notes um about who said what and i will say tell you that um there are three scenarios that were mentioned by one person that was 76882a which tabitha mentioned 60348b which ellen mentioned and 25828a which i have just gave given
209an impassioned defense of um i think that those three and the three that we have nobody has spoken in favor of we need to remove from the conversation because i think it's highly unlikely that we would have four votes for any of those does that seem like a reasonable next step okay so that means on i can't see vicki now yes okay so we're going to take away everything except 2582ab and 67759c which should sound very familiar because these are the two that keep rising to the top for various various reasons um and so now i think um certainly ellen and i who both placed our first vote on one that has now been eliminated this is what we call ranked choice voting like they did in new york city this year for the first
210time should have the opportunity to look at our second choice and i think ellen if i recall correctly you had set 67759c as your second choice is that right and it still is but i'm i'm still not abort i'm still not a board of one and as much as i like some things about it when i look at the individual composite score of each of those schools it leaves north albany slightly weaker than the other two schools and that's contrary to that's contrary to our goals 25828b gives gives north albany a composite score that's in the middle of three and they're also more closely distributed such that they might be within the margin of error so 25828b it seems like everyone's really happy with that one and i'm not adverse to voting for it okay
211and i've already stated that my that is my second choice um it was first choice for vicki damaris and tabitha as long as i'm tracking i'm looking for eye contact to make sure i didn't screw anybody's votes up and mr one and a half over here has a half a vote on both two five eight two eight b and six five five nine c and i didn't know if you wanted to make any further comment on what your thinking is now after having listened to other folks again transportation of ash versus montessori where we have it pretty much it's a question of 47 versus 70 some student it doesn't change for montessori that was one consideration on the other hand you got the dispatch distribution of the low uh or highly challenged goals in that
212scenario so you know having the in the other scenario so having the distribution versus transportation it's very difficult it's difficult but at the same time what is it that we're trying to do what is the end goal the end goal is to minimize the highly and the need to do to maximize the resources that we can provide in every school so we don't have the high needs situation where there just aren't enough resources that we can provide to a building and more people need it will be something that i've heard a favor started like asking which child do you love more right but i would go for to it did you want to have another chance to speak okay so i'm just gonna be completely honest 25828b is not my first choice it's not but
213i also want to recognize that we all need to come together right now every single person whether i like it or not whether you like it or not we have to embrace it and i don't want to be at odds with anybody on this because i want to be a team and i want to work towards a solution for our problem if i am not going to kick and scream regarding my number one choice my number two choice is just as good i want to reiterate that north albany is going to be a fantastic school and uh also just touch on what the tcce students said about changing the perception like i i don't even i can't come up with a better line than that so like i'm a little upset but at the same
214time i know we're going to be okay so long as everybody works together so there's that thank you for those very exceptionally excellent remarks i appreciate you ms wilson did you want to say something just that um i don't think you i don't want it i wanted to circle back where i don't want you to feel that you feel at odds with anyone you have your reasons you know and your rationale and we're listening to each other so it's not definitely not a pitch works thing at all and um i want to highlight that you know again using mass data to make equity driven decision i understand some families aren't going uh wouldn't be going where they thought they would be going but there is the caveat we are entertaining as we make this transition
215because it's only sixth grade currently if you have a sibling at a certain school that is still something sibling preference is still something open enrollment is still something as we you know age out individuals and things and we normalize this process and again appreciate anyone who mentioned 60348b for the reasonings that they mentioned it because again trying to keep the proximity concept or even when you indicated anne about the proximity concept in 25828a i think we're all trying to and struggling with trying to accommodate that so i just want to appreciate that that we entertained it but again we are charged and our task in this process is feeder alignment or the design of the enrollment pattern that would be equitable so it's you know it's it's driven by that primarily and that's what we
216are trying to highlight i mean smith did you want to make a comment it's just a final thing i mean again i i want to say as i started that i do appreciate each one of my colleagues and uh your your thought process and um and what your recommendation is um and that doesn't change the fact that we're going to continue to work together uh if it if it impacts our ability to work together then we got another problem and a bigger problem okay so i just want to make that point very clear up front this is not about you know respecting uh the opinions of each person but i and i like your point that we do have to though come together um and i think i just wanted to add um and and
217i'm not picking on board member crazy but i um the other thing and you sort of solidified it for me that the 603 48b would not be my choice because i don't want to have north albany stronger and another you know in myers weaker they all have to be strong this because here's what has happened historically because we shift students around one year or four years it might be hackett that's horrible and nobody wants to go to hack it right the next year something's going on at myers nobody wants to go to my house and of course almost nobody wants to go to north albany well this we can't have that we can't have this sort of shift in the viewpoints and the dynamics everything we do for each of our schools has to be
218equitable and it has to be as dynamic and as exciting and as robust with high expectations um for all and so for that reason i really have to you know eliminate and i did eliminate 603 48b um and i found that the 25828b is gets to the equitable piece for me and i know even saying that that it may it's going to mean that some parents aren't going to be happy some families aren't going to be happy um but i feel like there's a level of distribution that um that is workable because we're getting to our primary goal of equity board member so what you know wiki said was absolutely true we want all schools to be better and more importantly fast forward three years from now where are these kind of kids going to
219go we have one high school right if you make all schools better the high school's going to be even better these kids today they're doing great in athletics they're getting good arts robotics you name it every every week we're hearing something new that these kids are achieving and think of the potential that would happen three years from now when we fix the middle schools and all these kids end up in the high schools board member man and let's not forget the graduation rate and how it's been you know increasing over time so so i appreciate you all so much and all that you have said and i think it is now time to entertain a motion to adopt 25828b as the new feeder pattern to begin in the 20 to 23 school year i'll make
220that motion i'll make it by board member smith second by board member man all in favor that is a unanimous decision thank you all very much we look forward to further updates on the implementation thereof and put that in the capable hands of superintendent adams and her staff thank you so much everybody can breathe now and now we are going to keep going on the agenda because as you all have seen we don't just do one thing here in the city schools of strip chipotle we are constantly jogging juggling many things we have one more action item today which is we have a couple of policies that we talked about at our last board meeting that are before us now for action doctor thank you madam president members of the board we actually have a
221few uh policies for discussion as well as few policies for action from last time so uh the policies for discussion the first one is one five zero one zero five which is the equity policy and this policy we was for when we first made it uh since there was no nezba policy and we called it zero zero five zero now it's number zero one zero five to be in line with the nest buzz numbering the policy went through an extensive review through various stakeholder forums and the new language includes the recommendations from the community the students and other stakeholders the policy also calls for establishment of district-wide and school-level equity companies and teams that will help develop and monitor and implement these initiatives did i miss anything superintendent eight three three two is use of
222district cell phones this policy is slightly updated to reflect the current operational expectations and practices nine two four zero recruiting and hiring this policy was revised to add text related to the recruiting practices that align it to the equity policy we just talked about o105 of note is the language the board and the district have determined that that has determined that it's important for staff to reflect the student body that we serve therefore the district will take active steps to hire individuals who live within the city of albany or individuals who have been educated by the city school district of albany when all other minimum qualifications are equal between two candidates and this is a significant step that we are making um 9710 is traveling conferences the last sentence of the policy was amended to
223change from monthly to yearly reports so those are the policies for discussion do any of you have any questions on these policies i want to just make one come oh i'm sorry go ahead i have a comment um and it's it's about timing so we just voted on a feeder pattern that was equitable and um back in uh october of 2020 we brought on board the equity and education policy we've been doing some revisions tonight and with intent the district has made equity at the front and center of everything that we do and i just i really wanted to point that out it's pretty profound this is very important to our district and so um so i just wanted to point that out thank you very much i also wanted to just make one quick
224comment and thanks to the superintendent staff and the policy committee for bringing forward the changes to 9240 recruiting and hiring which has been a real priority for me ever since i read the study regarding the real real impact of teachers of color on graduation rates especially for people children of color but especially for poor boys of color even one african-american teacher in their elementary grades can have a significant outcome on graduation rate and while it is not legal to hire or select staff on the basis of race i am opt i am optimistic that if we are focused on hiring folks who are graduates of the city school district of albany who live in the city school district of albany that will give us an increased opportunity to incentivize people who live here to want
225to work for our school district so i think this is a really exciting step that we're moving towards and it's really important one and i've been hoping for it and working for it for some time so i'm really excited about it thank you very much ms smith right and sorry to duplicate be duplicative but i i definitely agree with president savage's comments there um and wholeheartedly support this i also want to express my gratitude to the various uh folks involved in this the committee um i think having um a bit more of an explicit inclusion of an anti-racist position in this statement uh equity policy rather i think is very important and i also want to say to the board i am looking forward as part of our goals to the work that we will
226do together that really helps us to um to to better understand collectively uh what it means to be anti-racist what it means to be more equitable i think we've made some tremendous strides thanks to really a whole lot of effort not just on our part but our board and cabinet superintendent and cabinet and as well as teachers and others who've started doing a lot of the culturally responsive education work beforehand but we've got a ways to go and i just wanted to just just express my gratitude that that through this policy we will be able to move um our collective vision forward into action to make a real difference for every single one of our kids so um thank you anyone else okay so let's go under the the action items these are the policies
227we talked about last week um i'm gonna i would like to have make a motion to have all of them together is there any reason we can't take these together okay go for it motion to do them all board member wilson the second bible member creature all in favor that's unanimous fantastic i'm amazed to tell you that that is the end of our action agenda that is the longest action agenda i think we have had um in quite some time um we could take an action later in the meeting we do not intend to take an action later in the meeting but it could happen but now we move to the discussion portion of our agenda which is the capital project update and while that gets tied up board member wilson has something she would
228like to send just because i forgot to mention this in the transition but when we spoke about equity and you know in lieu of the decision that we just made i do want to just take a pause and highlight there are some individuals whom we haven't heard from and will hear about our decision in retrospect but i feel that we all made a decision that even if you were finding out tomorrow six months from now that there's some kind of change we made an equitable decision superintendent adams good evening again and i before we go into the capital project i do want to say that it is an honor to be able to sit here and to work alongside this board and i think that i echo that from cabinet with regard to the decisions
229that our board is making and seeing that you are true to what we say think feel and believe about equity because again you know we took the time to define equity we did that in 2018 and 19. and then we looked at how we actualize equity what's the evidence of it and as we entered into the phase of operationalizing equity we knew that it would be tough because this is the toughest part of the work how do we make it part of how we do business and make it the central focus of what we do we have started looking at our policies as we review them through the equity lens we look at our practices through an equity lens we have equity teams at our schools both at the adult and the student levels and
230some of the student levels are still in process and working together to build but it is when we say this is what we are about and we do those things that echo that that say here's what we're going to do in our practices and procedures and understanding that this is so much bigger than any one of us and for the generations of people that i know i have heard from with regard to some of the inequities and social justice issues that our city faces you know this is one of those steps that will help us break down those systemic barriers that create obstacles for our children and prevents them from being successful and what you've just done is you've opened the door for all of our students to be able to be successful and they're
231on the level playing field and so i say thank you regardless of the decision you you stood up and made the decision and for that we are very proud of that and we're ready to do the work to implement and make it a success so thank you very much thank you and i will also um i just want to commend the board for the exceptional quality of civic discourse um and perception particularly commend board member almi for whom this was a very difficult um situation and um your your grace and graciousness is exceptional and your commitment to the district will never be forgotten so thank you i really appreciate that um to put it simply i think that we all especially those with with privilege if that's the simplest way to put a need to
232sacrifice and it's sacrifice for the greater good it's not going to hurt us that much so i'm happy thank you so much i'm comfortable with my decision i appreciate you and now on to the capital project update miss roaring good evening once again we are going to do part two of our capital project update for this quarter um with me this evening we have representatives from turner construction cs art and tetra tech i will lead off with the high school update bill steele from turner is here to present that with mr peckham we will also hear from zach cole and miss bruns in the five-year plan very good let me share my screen overall schedule uh the high school project has been divided into four phases we are with phase one and phase two currently
233occupied phase three is the construction of the media center new main entry partial academic building gymnasium athletic renovations and auditorium partial occupancy is scheduled for fall of 2022 including the media center and the new cte spaces full occupancy is scheduled for fall of 2023. phase 4 which is the academic building renovation is scheduled for occupancy fall of 2025. construction update in the auditorium the furring and sheetrock is on the walls that's complete taping is in progress stage rigging and electrical roughings continue in the cosmetology and media labs the cosmetology millwork is installed ceilings are near completion door and hardware installation is underway and in the media labs drywall is complete and taping is underway the loft building update millwork is complete first floor taping is ongoing automotive and building trade work is uh is ongoing
234as well uh painting is uh ongoing in the second and third floors ceiling work and flooring work is ongoing as well for the courtyard update the steel erection is complete temporary enclosure for due to the winter is complete all the concrete slabs have been placed uh foundation leave out is uh is is underway the mechanical electrical plumbing uh rough ends or are well underway and framing drywall and taping is underway in a number of areas the concrete masonry or cmu is underway for the stairwells and interior partitions an elevator shaft is complete potential change orders winter weather we held 75 000 for potential change orders related to winter weather concrete additives change order requests submitted 17 dollars there's no additional exposure it's been closed out roof snow removal change order request anticipated for two thousand
235and fifty dollars uh no additional exposure the frost removal at the at the foundation leave out change order requests submitted for four thousand four hundred and seventy one dollars there's no additional exposure there uh temporary enclosure and heat this uh change order request submitted for sixty four thousand two 299 turner has uh returned uh this to the gc for revisions and um and we anticipate that it will be decreased after uh after review and uh of our comments total cost uh above was 88 thousand uh 506. and it's 13506 over above our hold but once again after our review of comments by aow the gc we anticipate this to be decreased this is the preparation for the next slide potential unforeseen conditions and future work and contingency status we're in the process of re reviewing
236the contingency burn rate and exposure for unforeseen conditions particularly as it relates to the existing boiler room and bridge demolition which is additional abatement possible deterioration of steel and some logistics adjustments we'll continue to review potential unforeseen conditions with the with the district in conjunction with potential design changes to the existing scope so right now the cons construction contingency review our current construction contingency balance as of march 4th was is thousand 511 hundred forty one dollars uh the burn rate exceeds expectations the balance is fifteen percent of the of the original three point four three percent of work left to put in place and it started at seven and a half percent looking to the column on the left open items costs that are included in the contingency balance above we have several categories uh
237first category is open items scope of work necessary must-haves girl locker room modifications hundred uh tower air handling unit controls this is for towers two five and six uh to get the air handling units uh functioning uh for for future phases this is a rough order of magnitude cost at the ten thousand dollars which would put the current uh work necessary at forty one thousand two hundred and seven dollars open items future work with high priority is the athletic department changes which is the expansion of the girls team room this is a estimated amount of 21 000 the next line gender neutral locker room relocation that is we're estimating estimating it to be a wash you're relocating the gender neutral from one side of the corridor uh to the other um and so it's should
238be no cost to change for just relocating it the exterior scope for the district modular home build program we have a rom rough order of magnitude 79 000 dollars that added in a retaining wall some pavement fencing and required additional earthwork to accommodate those features railings at top of stairs this would cover all three phases the first two phases that are complete and then the current phase raising the uh the guard rail on the top by six inches we've developed a budget for rom of 38 000 so work with high priority uh totaling approximately 138 thousand dollars the next category is uh open items which is future work lower priority phase two fabric sound panel replacements it's thirty thousand the phase two sound panel replacements is uh ten thousand doors at the at the gym
239for phase one edition and first floor uh a4 by uh by the stair is uh 36 000 that's basically adding in a couple of quarter partition with operable doors with mag hold uh devices for hardware fire alarm electrical that would be required for that and then a new led display sign a monument sign out by the street out by washington avenue uh is five thousand four forty five the auditorium first floor finish modifications uh scope of work uh is uh to be determined we have a hold or a rom of five thousand dollars for that work now what we have on the very bottom here is a potential uh claim there's for uh steel material hundred escalation thousand and fifty one dollars uh the uh district's uh council jeff honeywell uh recommended holding uh the
240full amount of the steel material escalation cost as a best practice the value can be adjusted once we review the validity which is in progress right now the column to the right is a potential risk for future work this was discussed on the earlier slide these items are not included in the contingency balance above asbestos at the bridge in boiler room or have an estimated rom of of 25 000 water line there's a tap provide a new line of fire hydrant removal for the uh for the construction site trailer in tower six uh this feeds the standpipe that would be in that is in tower six uh steel miscellaneous connections miscellaneous reinforcing to existing this goes back to the earlier comment about hidden deterioration uh through the years the facility was built in the 70s
241so it's seen a lot of moisture and and rust and uh we've had some incident or some issues in in earlier phases logistics is thirty thousand dollars this is for miscellaneous support uh for facility shutdowns crossovers protection delays this is intended to you know accommodate any unforeseens that may come up as we get into the next phase and also to to accommodate uh you know potential uh you know academic uh programs or needs and uh disposal removal miscellaneous school items uh five thousand dollars is is being held so overall potential uh risk uh if for future work where we have a estimated budget around ninety thousand dollars and uh none of this can really be fully calculated because it's just that it's unfor potential unforeseen conditions the contingency status with the risk included the current
242contingency balance is 511 541. you add in the potential risk up above or subtract the potential risk leaves a revised contingency balance of 421 which this is for the percent of work to put in place is at a 2.83 percent so general items for discussion is is the phase two construction contingency balance has transferred to phase three which was 196 thousand for 18. items shown as potential risk revisit after risk diminishes we can we can revisit the uh these items once we get past uh october november when we're well underway with our demolition and our earth work and in a lot of these risks have uh passed or or surfaced hopefully they're just in the past and we don't have any the led uh display sign for for the monument sign another option is to
243potentially replace the modules for the current sign for the pricing for a third option for a different sign model is in progress uh per the facilities committee meeting on 3 8 if the savings is you know in the thousands from the 25 sign we've been authorized to proceed with that option and the the other option is is does the district want to consider any other funding sources building budgets for future work items so there's a lot on that one slide kimberly i don't know if there's anything you wanted to add not at this time i think we're good to go to the next slide pretty good thank you [Applause] overall approved changes total items 281 uh it's been approved to date is one million fifty six thousand six hundred sixteen dollars uh total open changes
244there's 55 items for totaling six thirty six hundred thirty three thousand roughly three hundred dollars uh changes in with the client for approval nine around for roughly ninety one thousand dollars and changes in with the architect for review uh twenty items they're around uh two hundred seventy four thousand two hundred twenty one uh changes with turner for review none uh changes waiting on contractor pricing and this based on roms of 268 134 and then down below is the claim for uh steel esco steel escalation potential claim 470 thousand dollars so just to recap the starting contingency was three million three twenty four two seventy one remaining contingency is five hundred eleven thousand five forty one that's a percent remaining of fifteen percent but the percent remaining based on remaining volume or work to put in
245place is 3.43 percent so before we go on to phase four since there's a pause i'm assuming that the next step here is for the facilities committee to come together and discuss this at more detail and then recommendation will come out of facilities committee to the board at some point relatively soon as you as you work through these details is that what i should expect next yes that would be correct fantastic we will await further information from the facilities committee thank you okay then the next part is just a brief update on the status of the phase four design i think there's been a couple changes since the presentation of the full board three months ago so this is just the overall first floor plan of the building the phase four area is on the
246next slide that we'll we'll get into a little more detail on and you can see here that the phase four area largely includes the lower part of it's the two cafeterias the serving lines in the kitchen in the green area the pinkish color is special ed classrooms and we've been able to move a couple of the special ed classrooms down from the second floor of the first floor where the ideally be and then towards the left-hand area of this is going to be the student entrance you can see in the in the lighter yellow two vestibules a security check-in area and then we've been able to accommodate four metal detector lines coming in to increase the um the timing that they can get the students in the building here before we had two lines with
247uh kind of like a snake line but we've come up with the way to actually have four separate lines in this area go to the next slide um so this is the second floor overall plan and again the two-thirds of the old academic building is what's being renovated as part of of phase four and this is where uh one of the significant changes from the schematic design has occurred i'll get into the detail of that if we can just go to the next slide bill so as you can see this floor the dark blue areas are areas that are cte based or project be the way based to be able to accommodate some of our budget challenges with the current construction market we relocated the culinary and the maker and the project lead the way
248spaces from the first floor to the second floor those are the dark blue spaces towards the right hand side of the of the screen the culinary lab and the culinary classroom directly off the elevator area there's an elevator there in the stair tower towards the lower part of the slide that's probably the only concern with moving that function to the second floor is the delivery of the food supplies for the culinary lab and when they're doing catering projects taking the stuff out so we located it directly opposite the elevator access so they'll be able to bring that in relatively easily and then the dark blue areas on the next area up are the project lead the way maker space and then three technology classrooms associated with the makerspace by moving it to the second floor
249we have the option of getting all three of those spaces classroom spaces to have direct access to the maker space the other program that's been discussed before that's been added to the left-hand side of this is the barbering program with the growth of that program it needed a separate space and not being part of the cu of the cosmetology program so that created that function there and then the rest of this floor is a couple science classrooms in the upper right-hand area of it and then general classrooms the connection across we have a strong clear line of sight connection across from this area now right into the phase one corridor in that area also we go to the third floor plan the next floor again this is the overall plan you can see at that
250connection point in that clear axis across from the all the way across from the third floor of the phase one edition all the way through to this phase four area and then we've added those two classrooms in kind of at the um where we're creating the courtyard to pick up two classrooms in that area going to the next floor plan um this just shows the overall uh this is really the fourth uh complete small learning community with four science classrooms and then the rest of them being general classrooms some of which will be used for special ed classrooms and then the the full complement of the administrative office suite in the middle with teacher planning and some additional offices i believe that's the end of the high school presentation um just overall as far as
251the the update goes that um we'll be submitting the design development documents the last piece of being able to do that was kind of setting the the kitchen and servery plan which will largely establish the major parameters of that with a meeting this afternoon and then the estimate turner will be doing an estimate which is scheduled to be complete around april 22nd and then we'll review and make sure that's all accurate and share that with the administration the facilities committee and then after we have the phase four estimate we'll do any additional review necessary with um the high school instructional staff and and administrative staff and determine if there's any uh changes need to be done before we go and complete the construction documents um we anticipate submitting it to stated around the end of
252august with approval in february so we can go out to bid at that point time and the current schedules to be able to award the contracts in early april lord colleagues does anyone have any questions mr packham i apologize in advance if there aren't as many questions as usual we are a rather rather long week here in the city school district of albany anyone with a question for mr peckham dr good question can you remind me when the auditorium will be complete the the auditorium will be back online for them for the main floor of it at the start of the school year in september and then there's a little bit of additional work the full occupancy of with the um balcony and everything will be in october okay so by spring of year after
253it should be completely done oh yeah by next by next spring it'll be all all all complete and been in use for a while i'm missing my musicals board member smith yeah me too um i just wanted to hear uh well again thank the committee uh mr peckham and mr hunt and everyone involved uh and just to make note that we do have our next committee meeting on april 12th and i think at this time we're still remaining virtual but that may change we'll talk that over and post accordingly so thank you anyone else with a question if not then what's next next we'll provide an update on the five-year plan mr cole good evening everybody my name is zachary cole i'm the assistant superintendent on the district five year plan i'll be starting off
254today with a presentation at sheridan prep that's the first school on the list so over the last break we were able to begin installing some steel that's going to be supporting the new rooftop unit going over that gym we're 75 complete with the steel 50 complete with the mechanical piping uh upcoming work will be in the spring break we'll finish the remaining steel and we'll begin setting our getting our roof penetration set for the new units packet this photo is a little bit old i think you can see the dated uh stamp on the photos 114 but i think it's a great photo to highlight some of the work we were able to get completed during a virtual week that the school conducted back in january the stage four looks great we received a lot
255of compliments a flooring contractor did a really good job also over the winter break we were able to get the north or the south stair tower uh tread replacement uh installed um and we will be planning to do the north stair tower over the win or the spring break arbor hill uh schedule's progressing nicely um area a is is very well along its way uh you can see the new storefront installed on the left-hand side there the only thing missing are those the black panels that go in with the where you can see the plywood otherwise they look great we've been receiving some of our doors already which is good news considering the lead times and the concerns we had with those since this presentation was put together moisture mitigation system has been completed ceiling
256panels are in progress right now and mep rough-ins are 100 complete so overall this is progressing really nicely in this area uh same thing with this photo at giffen uh the group two bathrooms are well along the way we actually in the bathroom in this photo actually has floor tile has since been painted and lights are in so the next step is going to be the wall tile and again we are progressing nicely with these bathrooms as well they are planned for turnover on spring break toast this is the group one bathrooms i apologize for the older photo uh but since the group two bathrooms are well in progress we are uh just just behind the first uh the last photo i just showed you at the group two bathrooms at giffen giffin there is
257tile expected to go within the next week and paint going in tomorrow so overall they're progressing nicely we did have a constraint there with the electrical scope but as affiliates it was presented the facilities committing we have since been able to proceed with that work and there have been no delays some ads and credits that we've been uh that we've seen recently for the project so the first one is arbor hill the lighting in the storage room wasn't originally part of the scope of work it is totaling close to 9 500 we're considering other options at the moment pco 134 the toast group 2 bathroom requires the electrical scope that's what i just mentioned on the previous slide since we've been able to proceed with this work we actually get that price a little bit
258lower or something you know we worked with the contractor to get a fair and honest price credits for the project this it's good to see some money coming back into the budget so the myers tennis court we were able to achieve the same goal we originally intended for and also bring some money back into the picture so that was a big benefit um the tony clements window film that was removed from the scope of the project i know it has since been completed separately arbor hill storage room we did find some flooring that was in excellent condition so we were able to save some funds there as well so uh current potential changes that we're tracking is roughly 37 that has since changed but we're floating right around that same number and the value is
259still similar right around 69 000 i keep the value engineering in there just to highlight uh some of the work that was done at the beginning of the project to achieve the same goal but just to bring that 645 thousand dollars back into the budget uh changes approved to date we have 58 at totally 381 thousand changes currently with the client are one changes with the architect are 16 changes with turner 7 and changes waiting on contractors we're still waiting around 10. we've since been able to receive a couple of them and i do expect them by the end of this week changes paid to date are 313 000 and changes paid by allowance is just one at 732 so our starting contingency was 960 000 and we're currently sitting at 542 that's 57 remaining
260and based on that remaining volume that's 5.34 percent excellent does anybody have any questions or colleagues any questions i just want to echo what dr tour said earlier about getting back to being in schools i can't wait to have a board meeting in each school so that we can see many of these things as part of our normal course i know we could arrange a tour but it's just wonderful when we can just use the facilities and be in them um anything else superintendent at this time i just wanted to extend a lot of kudos and thank you to vice president smith and the facilities committee thank you for all of the work that you do miss roaring thank you for your leadership in this area and also as always mr peckham thank you so
261very much for all of your work with cs arch and everything that you do to assist as we get everything turned into the state department and sometimes we need those quick turnarounds and you know we have to make sure that we're facilitating that and uh mr hunt and mr cole thank you as well we appreciate the work that you bring to the table and i'm not sure how many of you have had the opportunity to meet uh mr steele who is our gm he's the new scott new uh zach knew john does he's the new new new of those three gentlemen and so mr steele i do want to take this opportunity to say welcome aboard thank you so very much we appreciate and value what you bring to the table um you have just
262jumped right in and held us together and and still maintaining those positive relationships that we have not only among each other but with our vendors and um by that i mean our subcontractors and thank you so very much your wealth of knowledge and skill that you bring um is very welcomed and so we just appreciate you and i know that we've not met you here in person at the board meeting you will definitely have your opportunity though looking forward to it but we just wanted to welcome you and say thank you very much for all that you're doing thank you very much all right and ellen i see you i'm i'm sorry i didn't mean to leave you out but i do see you and um and and thank you very much with tetra tech
263and all that you guys do as well we appreciate the opportunity is garrett on or garrett is enjoying time with his son in san diego okay so tell him we wish him well thank you thanks all right miss murray what's next i believe we might have one more item in that capital project presentation yes one a little something about summer crunch prime contractor training yes my apologies part of our uh turner's enhancement with the uh coming we call it the summer crunch is getting a a rebalance a refocus of all the primes with a drive towards uh safety and what we're going to be doing with the primes for the prime contractors uh for the group three project is uh is ensuring that we we have that focus for the for the summer and what
264we're going to do is have them all come in and do a brief uh review with them and we're going to incorporate using visuals uh pictures of of incidents trying to make things you know very relatable and then also to drive our our thought process of pre-planning let's look at what's going on to the room to the left to the right what we need to do as far as materials um you know logistics uh and then also to talk about communication make sure that we're all talking with each other in real time so that if something impacts another they automatically know they will quickly know about it and we can quickly uh advise uh you know staff if there's uh if there's any uh concerns or anything that needs to be addressed then also too
265is follow through is making sure that the areas are um in the way we found them more or better for for when people come back some of the items that we'll talk about is think about the accident prevention is we look at high risk the next slide will show some some of the standard high risk categories that we see during the summer you know we'll uh also talk uh have pre-installation meetings uh for uh for for key items for example like the window replacement that's going to be on go that's going to be taking place at new scotland that's going to have its own separate pre-installation meeting um and then driving the the need to have pre-task plans that is where the crew that's going to install the work is planning out their activity and
266ensuring that they're working safely and then they'll take that plan and execute the work this last slide shows uh six of the key areas that we routinely see where there's potential issues or where there's been issues in in the past on on our k through 12 work one being electric working in live panels making sure lockout tag out so there's there's no concerns we do have some very um you know heavy work in that in that department coming up excavations making sure that things are that the excavations are secured looking at fall protection uh you know whether working on ladders working out less working at the edge of buildings we have the roof work at arbor hill that's going to be very very critical um fire protection uh our hot work permits making sure that
267the that the uh all the the safety protocols are in place proper monitoring is in place and for steel erection uh is ensuring that uh you know all the proper rigging all the pre-planning is done with uh rigging plans and then for roofing is uh making sure that um you know roof openings are protected uh that the proper sequence of work uh end the day the the protection is in place uh so if we do have rainstorms et cetera that we're uh we're not exposing uh finished areas to uh to the elements so that's uh that's the the recap on our on our summer crunch uh you know training that we're going to do or refresher we're going to do with the primes and that will take care of that i'm not sure what's next
268on the agenda but that concludes i think next we have the aic playground discussion yes [Applause] it should have been in the same slideshow so if we can get back to that one so i can see it in the copy that's on board docs does everybody have it oh here comes terrific okay thank you um i wanted to bring forward tonight some work that's been done by our playground task force with aic last spring as we know the board approved the relocation of the an expansion of the dual language program over at edmond o'neill as well as co-locating the albany international center and extending that down to elementary grades at that time some parcels were identified with the albany land bank in proximity to the school that may serve as new playgrounds or other school
269activity locations the playground task force was established to provide input on what they felt would be most important in that space to meet our students needs we have brought in our architect mr packham has joined as well to bring in the ae requirements around any of the site work that would need to be done when we look at how a playground might be funded and the guidance around that it is sed does require district voters to expressly approve the use of taxpayer dollars to construct or install a playground construction may be funded through the district's operating budget or use of capital reserve funds uh to be on this maze ballot the board would need to make a decision by march 31st around the scope and how they wanted to proceed with funding the playground task
270force met four times with miss stead they have provided input for a new playground at 4143 north lark which are two of the lambic parcels that will go before the voters in may this would include age-appropriate playground equipment as well as perimeter fencing for security benches tables sun shades areas for quiet play they also put forward a proposal to repurpose the road behind the building and a small parcel located on 2nd street that's adjacent that is also parcel with the land bank that is up for voter approval in may so this is an orientation if you will of the area you'll see here the look the albany international center right behind it is the arbor hill community center um in the top left the arrow pointing down is looking at 4143 north lark street which
271is diagonally across from the school and then of course the arrows to the right point to the row behind the school and the small lot on 2nd street this is a rendering of playground for 4143 north lark this would include the new playground equipment installation of the equipment fencing around the perimeter with gate access to maintain the playground fiber and other things the sun shade there at the foreground as well as a table and bench for students who prefer more quiet play you do note here in the rendering that the parcels are slightly different depth so the playground design has been built for that having the input on what would be the high priority pieces we started to put together some costs associated with the components of the playground that includes the equipment which we
272can procure on cooperative contract at a discount also the installation of the equipment site preparation fall protection fencing is mentioned there is some security scope electrical scope and then the ae and serving pieces surveying pieces pardon me we have a range right now in looking at two different contractors of anywhere from just under 247 000 to about 297 000 the second proposal is for the area behind the school this blends the road behind the school and the parcel on 2nd street to be purchased from the albany land bank part of the asphalt is asked to remain that that would serve for some free play whether it be kickball or something else a request to include turf here which you see in the foreground with some goals for soccer and then a small play area here
273with some swings rock wall and playground fiber again looking at a couple of different contractor possibilities for the scope of work we again have the playground equipment and installation the fall protection the site preparation here is much more extensive and that's associated with the preparations for the turf field installation blending the two parcels then looking at the artificial turf itself asphalt additions and repairs fencing security lighting architectural engineering again surveying and the totals for this range from 383 thousand dollars to four hundred and three thousand dollars looking at some possible next steps for 4143 north lark street playground the voters would need to approve the purchase of the parcels from the albany land bank the board approved to the proposition language at the march 3rd meeting so that is slated to be on the ballot
274on may 17th the voters would also need to approve funding for playground construction on these parcels on may 17th whether that be part of our budget proposal or a summer proposition the play area behind the building at this time the district does not currently own this land so that makes it a little bit more complicated we would need to look and see if the land can be acquired from the city and what a timeline for that might be before we would be able to proceed with the second part of the proposal are there any questions on that so for colleagues i just want to draw your attention to the fact that because of the short timeline this level of detail would normally be discussed in facilities committee but we're doing it a little bit more
275in more depth on the board floor because of the shortness of the timeline so um i see board member creachee has a question and we'll start there sure i won't get into the specifics of the projects because i am not a facility security person just wanted to ask what what is the potential for aid from the state in building some of these playgrounds that is actually a little bit more complicated we have some very specific questions out to sed facilities planning right now to see if there's maximum cost incidental cost allowance available if this would be aidable with parcels that are diagonally across the street instead of on school property and there's a couple of other complex questions in there so we are reading some additional feedback from them we have provided everything that they've
276asked for at this time to give an answer we just haven't been able to close the loop on that quite yet so we look forward to being able to provide some additional information on that hopefully next week so so the the dollar amounts that are presented are the 100 cost thus the maximum the district would be paying for this and the true cost could be much much less if if there isn't vaccinated this would be the straight cost yes thanks so much other questions wilson when it says non-discounted that means it won't it won't be further discounted beyond what we see listed yes i think it i think this is clear but just to just to make sure there's no reason these have to be done in the same year at the same time we
277could do the playground where we have site control or we anticipate having site control if the voters approve the purchase of those small parcels um and then we could do the other piece later or not do it later depending on what happens with the land and all that right that is correct okay um i have another question if you ask us um i wanted to ask what if any conversations have happened yet with the city um not about the land which i know we still have got to work through those things but i have two two areas one is i know that that neighborhood is severely under play grounded that's what i just made up so have we had any conversations with them about whether there is a potential for shared municipal services to try
278and create uh that that little 4143 has a pocket park that would be useful for children all the time instead of just during the school day and then a second um and also critical question is have we started do they even know this is happening if we started talking with them about traffic safety and the fact that we're going to have kids crossing that intersection diagonally or you know properly two streets uh multiple times a day so we probably need better crosswalks maybe stop signs i don't know what kind of traffic control is there but it seems like a conversation would be should be happening very soon yes we have not had those express conversations yet i think the state a question is one of the first ones we need answered before we have that
279first part of your question conversation um because that will dictate some of that conversation but certainly the second piece is a critical piece i understand if i could just add we have had some conversations with the city already regarding crossing guards crosswalks traffic patterns both around the building in general but also in anticipation of the playground that uh that's coming the city like we are talking about a lot these days is having trouble hiring enough staffing so they would they would need a crossing guard as a top priority for the principal of the building but they have not been able to find the staffing for that yet i understand but there's not currently traffic control at that intersection right it's it's no stop signs there is a stop sign at if you're looking at the
280building which is on the right hand side second i believe there's a stop sign in the crosswalk i believe there's a crosswalk at both i thought there is a stop sign only at one side okay but the area where the playground is going to be does not have a stop sign that's correct we've talked to them so stop signs are relatively inexpensive so hopefully that's something that could be happen um and then i had one more question which is the place where we're talking about maybe putting the turf if we get side control and all that stuff plus it was a wow that's a lot of money kind of expense the students are using that currently right that's a primary play space for them they use that during the day is my understanding is that
281right yeah do what do we do to make sure that cars don't drive through that space while the students are there last fall we did purchase some barricades some portable barricades for them to utilize to block that off during school hours so the traffic would not move through that space we weren't able to do anything permanent because we don't have control of the space i see so hopefully those barricades are heavy and protective they also though need to be somewhat portable for emergency emergency vehicle access okay i'll look forward to hearing more about that as part of the conversations with traffic safety um anything else on this otherwise i think we're ready to shift to budget everybody's like we are so ready to shift let's go on to the budget super deputy superintendent roaring whenever
282you're ready to shift we're ready to shift with you i am ready to shift okay we always start our budget development process and continue to refer back to our vision mission and goals to make sure that everything we're reviewing and recommending ultimately to the board aligns with those we have a kind of a full agenda this evening but i will move as quickly as i can we will have a budget process update we're going to share out the draft budget with our cost drivers look at staffing rolled into the general fund as well as planned for arp year two our ratios provide an hvac update revenue update tax scenarios tax levy history and our multi-year projections next thursday we have our first virtual community budget presentation where the public will be allowed to provide very
283focused and specific feedback to the board on our budget we will have the proposed budget on april 6th and we anticipate the board's adoption on april 14th our public hearing is may 5th and the vote is may 17th some of the key terms that we've been using throughout the budget process this year include our rollover budget which is all current staffing and programs from the general fund carried forward for the next fiscal year along with our known contractual obligations and this year we've added the modified rollover budget which is the rollover budget plus items that will be transferred from our one-time federal dollars to the general fund for the next fiscal year the rollover budget includes the continuation of existing programs and services contractual obligations district operations staffing and benefits under our labor contracts the
284modified rollover budget includes all of that plus absorption of identified programs and staffing funded with one-time dollars in 21.22 it does not include new staffing requests addressing mandates that require more resources or other items considered to be essential for programming health and safety modified rollover budget adjustments included the renewal of our hvac preventive maintenance contract funding a pool maintenance contract restoring the extended day night school program at a broken to the 2019-20 funding level additional behavior specialist in social worker positions as well as mandated nursing positions that were added during 2122. additional modified rollover budget adjustments to maintain current programs and operations also included increasing funding for software licenses to build those in that were previously funded by grants increasing technology hardware to support chromebook replacement now that we're one-to-one and increasing funding for hall
285monitor and maintenance overtime to support our after-school programming and facilities used more typical prior to the pandemic in terms of different identified programs to roll in from service and arp included our albany international center and dual language program expansion as well as the tony clement center for education and identified faculty support and administrative positions adjustments as of march 17th include an adjustment to the employer's contribution rate for the employees retirement system reduction in our anticipated health insurance increase adjustments and positions including those absorbed from one-time federal dollars an increase in our postus expense based on updated cost information and additional services that we have requested most of summer school has been moved to the grants for 2022 and we have acknowledged the charter school tuition rate increase but brought down our assumption of additional students
286next year our draft budget includes additional security personnel and equipment additional maintenance equipment funds for snow removal and school deliveries additional enl teachers based on 2223 enrollment projections to provide mandated services another speech therapist for the same reason additional custodial workers to support additional square footage following construction in several schools and our square foot to worker industry standard ratio in our buildings looking at an increase in transportation to fund additional trooper buses increase in sports supervision as we return to regular competition levels and grow the program and then last meeting we introduced the uh feedback that we were hearing about increase in energy expenses and we are uh adding a number for that here of about 875 thousand dollars for gas and electric this is a pro-rated number it reflects the cost for eight months
287next year based on everything we're getting now in terms of estimates for our new contract this slide is new to you this evening this is the staffing rolled into the general fund either from one-time funds added to meeting requirements or positions that were added to the general fund during the 21-22 fiscal year that were not part of our adopted budget there are a number of titles here and it tells in the far right hand column what the funding source was in 2122 so you know where that comes from at the bottom we get to a total of 116 positions this slide represents the staffing that's planned to remain in arp at this time for 22.23 some of these positions were in arp in 2122 some may not have been uh the total for next year
288planned is 82 positions to remain in arp so when we look at the staffing ads to the general fund we had 84.8 or just by 85 positions from federal funds roll in and then general fund ads during 22 23 and 4 22 21 22 and 23 24 are 31.3 for a total of 116.1 this is our first view of the staffing ratio slide this information will be updated when we provide our next budget update we will have another column on the far right that will be the proposed 2223 staffing this is an all funds staffing report so it is not strictly the general fund though the budget conversation is but you'll see here where we are with our ratios at the bottom in terms of staff to students looking at our cost drivers in the
289budget we started out with a benefits assumption of 3.5 million dollars year over year and we are down to 1.88 million this is attributable to the reduction in the employer's contribution rate for ers as well as a reduction in what we are anticipating for our health insurance increase next year unlike last year we were at 10 this year we're at three which is fantastic we have an increase in salary expense year over year of just under 9.6 million dollars and again a large portion of that is attributable to the 116 positions going into the general fund for next year our boces adjustments are hardware and software adjustments for technology maintenance which includes additional funds for the contract services supplies and equipment security equipment is 62 000 our utilities at just under 875 000 and then
290the charter school tuition we started out with an assumption of 110 additional students and we're down to 30. so that has pulled back as well 1.36 million overall we have a 17.97 million year-over-year increase or just about 478 000 less than when we started so when we look at the adopted budget for 2122 and the draft budget for 2223 that is a year-over-year difference of 17.974 million that is a 6.65 increase but it is really important to understand where that comes from the district is continuing to build back what was prior to the pandemic which is including funding for facilities used sports supervision night school it also includes rolling in some of those positions that we had in the general fund prior to the pandemic that were brought back with one-time federal dollars this increase
291also includes funding for 31 new positions in the general fund to meet program requirements additional maintenance contracts for preventive maintenance and pools additional equipment funds for maintenance and security those details again were captured on slides 7 through 12 and on 16. shifting gears for a minute and providing an hvac update bpi mechanical does provide our service repairs and preventive maintenance on all of our hvac equipment in october of 21 the board approved an annual preventive maintenance contract on our hvac equipment and were commenced immediately after some of the challenges that we faced include components in the equipment failing deferred maintenance and our building management system communication and aged components bpi has received 175 work orders between july 1st and march 11th across the district including temperature issues leaking valves and boilers bearings chillers pumps complete
292system replacements and two of our data closets they have als they've responded to the 175 hvac service repair work orders on a 24 hour basis whether it's been holidays weekends evenings they've been out as we've called them below is financial information for each of the two contracts that we have with bpi for the 2122 school year the first is our repair and service contract that is a contract that the district is hit annually with them for some time that current contract value not to exceed is 865 thousand dollars that contract started on july 1st at this time we have spent just under 650 000 the preventive maintenance contract started on october 8th and that had a not to exceed of 808 686 000 pardon me and right now we're just under 174 000 of expense
293billed to date so that had a total contract value across the two of 1.5 million and we are around 821 822 000 right now in 2021 we learned that the current building management system was in need of an upgrade some of the system components would need to be replaced technology would need to be upgraded to allow for more consistent management and control the district reviewed building management system options from multiple contractors and selected a partner with day automation we learned that the upgrading conversion would cost the district about six million dollars district-wide uh when funding became available through the american rescue plan we this was a permissible component for hvac and we prioritized this upgrading conversion of our building management system in all of our buildings with the exception of albany high school who's getting
294a new building management system under the construction project ongoing there we allocated 6.2 million dollars in our arp plan to cover this expense the board of education approved contracts back in july of 21 in august of 21 with day automation for this comprehensive work we asked day automation to commit to completing this work in a very aggressive timeline of 18 months and currently they are on target to do that the total project cost again is 6.25 million and i believe that we have a supplementary document that outlines the buildings and the anticipated date of completion that's been shared out with you as well so you have that timeline shifting to revenue the governor's proposed budget had 2.1 billion increase in education funding and 1.6 billion of that was to fund foundation aid increases we are
295in year two of a three-year path to fully funding foundation aid and we anticipate the final allocation for 23.24 it continues our community school set-aside as well as fully funding expense based aids and continuation of all categorical aids it did include a charter school tuition rate increase of 4.7 percent which is typically what we have seen over the last few years and it did propose a new program of 100 million over two years matching funds for social emotional and academic supports for students we're waiting to see if this becomes part of the adopted budget we have four different categories of revenue we have our local which is primarily property taxes but also tax on consumer utilities and payments in lieu of taxes state is includes our star reimbursement our foundation aid categorical funding and our
296boces special service aid federal aid includes medicaid assistance and e-rate and then our other category includes our interest earnings any district billings appropriated fund balance and reserves as well as rebates and refunds largely associated with our health insurance program our state aid adjustments since february 10 or the initial projection we gave you in february 10th which is based on the governor's runs the updated database showed a decrease in our foundation aid of just about 953 000 it also showed a significant increase in our building age of 1.5 million with a net gain of just over 402 thousand dollars so when we take our estimate revenue estimate by source we will see the significant increase in state aid of 15.7 million dollars attributable to the increase in foundation aid and building aid we also have an
297increase in our federal aid anticipated next year due to medicaid reimbursements and we have modified our um appropriate fund balance from the last meeting and added the 275 thousand dollars to that to offset the increase uh expense side for transportation so that now shows a net positive rather than a negative or decrease from the last one which takes us to a difference of 16.3 million dollars adopted 2122 to current projection for 22.23 so when we look at the year over year-over-year increase again that's 16.3 million dollars we're continuing to review and update we are optimistic that the state budget will be on time this year so we will know what our state date is by beginning of april it's important to note that this does include the february state aid adjustment increase of just under
298403 000 it does increase the use of appropriated fund balance by 275 000 continues use of restricted reserves by 600 000 and continues to assume a flat property tax levy so when we look at the revised revenue projections and the draft budget the difference between those two is a gap of 1.6 million dollars some different tax levy scenarios our allowable levy limit is two point four percent uh two percent tax levy would be two point four million one percent would be one point two million and half a percent would be six hundred and six thousand dollars again the current revenue estimate includes zero increase in the tax levy and our budget gap remains at 1.6 million when we look at the history of the tax levy our six-year average is one point zero four percent
299the district's tax levy increase has been less than two percent for the last six years so this is our first look at a multi-year projection as part of our budget development process this year this first slide assumes a zero percent tax levy for fiscal year 2223 as well as 23 24 and 24 25 so this is a three year look it also continues to assume a consistent use of appropriate fund balance in restricted reserves and 24.25 at 3 million dollars but acknowledges the increase of 275 000 now for 22.23 it does include the assumption of an increase in foundation aid for next year to fully fund as well as an adjustment for our building aid in 24 and then in fiscal year 25 it assumes a 5 foundation aid increase as well as an adjustment
300for our building aid so you'll see right now we have the 1.6 million dollar gap but as the projection sticks and for expenses and revenues next year we would have a gap of 2.2 and then in the third year where the foundation a would be considered fully funded based on the three year phase in we would have a gap of 8.3 this slide has the same assumptions for every category except local in this slide we assume a one percent tax levy increase each year for three years you'll note at the bottom that we have a gap of four hundred and forty three thousand dollars at that juncture for 22.23 we would actually be in the black for 23.24 and then for 2425 that reduces the gap to 4.67 million our remaining budget variables are state
301aid and our tax levy our next steps include finalizing district priorities incorporating new information as it becomes available responding to any questions incorporating feedback and continuing our lobby efforts until the budget is enacted i know that you're looking at a board who's been through a very very long week and has just experienced a rather detailed numerical presentation so i do not know how many coherent questions can be asked at this time luckily we are not expected to adopt the budget this week or that would be really ugly we have a couple more weeks i do want to see if anyone has questions i know people have been asking questions one-on-one with the deputy superintendent as we've needed to over the last week as we've reviewed these slides but meanwhile for uh the good of the
302order board number crate i had a question about staffing ratios and it was uh the staffing ratios on slide i think it's slide 15. are those staffing ratios for just general fund positions or for or for everybody and do we have anticipated staff ratios for 22.23 this isn't all fun so it would include our school lunch as well as any grants and general fund and we are anticipating our next budget update would include the proposed 2223 staffing ratios thanks so much one thing i wanted to just draw attention to as we look at these multi-year slides is that if i understand correctly they anticipate us um continuing the staffing at the level at the level that it is now um basically every position that's currently funded by arp or cyrissa maintained but i know that
303when we established the plan when that happened that we had anticipated allowing positions to drop off the budget by attrition as people retired or as people left um so while i know that that's not booked in the budget i'm just wondering if operationally that those thoughts are happening about how like do we have to replace every single retiring and all of those things as they're going on that those decisions will be made madam president members of the board those decisions would be made you know based on the needs of the district and seeing where we are we're in the process of looking at what are some of those vacancies that we've had to still deliver services and how we've done some of those work arounds because it's more so in the vacancies where we may
304be able to absorb some of those positions the retirees it depends on that position and then what our next steps are so short answer is yes that's in the process looking at that attrition looking looking at what we're going to continue to move forward but also looking at you know where those are where areas exist where those positions may not be filled i understand and you know i know that the need is almost infinite we could always use more staff but we are you know when you look at the month of year projections it's very clear what that how dependent we are on these large large increases of foundation aid which will not continue indefinitely so and and i would add that um we're that is not infinite we know that that ends and so
305um this is why we're trying to make sure that people can see clearly what the impact of a tax levy would be and then looking at decisions that we have to make with regard to programming moving forward where are those true one-time funds which we're showing those things that you can see are the must-haves to roll over because it does make a big difference and that's why we have to really be very strategic because it's not an infinite pot of money it is it is finite anyone else i think we have hit a wall at this time and we'll look forward to further budgetary conversations um the next board meeting is not until april march 31st march 31st okay so we have one more before we'll have any real clue about the state budget okay
306so and if there's nothing else then i think we have committee reports on the agenda so i have to say the word committee reports but i tell you your board colleagues will kill you if your committee report is more than one minute long so anyone with a very efficient committee report is welcome board member creature thank you uh there was a wellness committee meeting yesterday unfortunately due to another commitment i had to leave before the meeting finished but the discussion was about uh the survey that they do originally this in the past the survey has been only of principals and and school staff about how implementation of the wellness policy is going but they're looking to get a little more holistic and also uh survey parents and students both on how the wellness policy is
307going and what do they think could be helpful to add for their physical and emotional wellness that's it thank you very much that was very interesting and very efficient update board member wilson i attended a portion of afe's board meeting as the liaison and they of course are encouraging people to apply for their grants and they have a fundraiser on april 1st thank you very much excellent efficiency anyone else with a committee report seeing none any other business saying none may i entertain emotion to adjourn board member wilson second by board member elvin yawi all in favor have a good night everyone i will see you into