BCSD Board of Education meeting 9/3/2025

001Everybody all good? If we could reconvene to open session. The board has been in executive session since six o'clock to discuss three tenure recommendations, a contractual issue, and two personnel matters. If we could stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Um, I'm going to start on this side. If we could do introductions. John McFillips, Dave Hurst, >> Katherine Nats, Meredith Miri, Holly Denbomb, Jody Monroe, >> Yuan Mcnite, >> Lauren Graham, Rose Pastori, Claayu, um, and John Walston and Bob Teen are not able to be here this evening. Um, first on our agenda this evening is our approval of minutes. Uh, it is recommended by

002the superintendent that the board of education approve the minutes from the August 13th, 2025 regular board meeting. >> So move. Second. Um any discussion? All in favor? I. >> Uh any opposed? Any abstensions? That carries. Um next is our um our meeting reports and first is our superintendent report. >> Sure. Thank you. Um just um welcome back for everyone. Tomorrow is our first day of school with all of our students here. The last two days we've had our staff present for opening day. Uh today people were getting classrooms ready. I know supply, drop off, all of the exciting things and kids will be back tomorrow. Uh so I'd like to welcome everyone back. Have a great start to the school year. I do also want to remind everyone that we did send something out in

003late August about collecting uh items for the backpack program. Uh we'll send something out again um around open houses with a list of items. Uh we used to get a lot of supplies from Hannerford and they're no longer able to donate to us. So, we really are relying on our families to help contribute to the program this year. So, hopefully everyone will be supportive. Um, but we will send reminders out. Also, next week is our first uh committee meeting for the elementary zones of attendance. We sent the agenda out today. It's scheduled for Wednesday. And then we'll be reviewing the proposed approach in structures with the consultants with Tyler Technologies, the update on the work that'll be completed, um information, needs, and feedback from the committee, and then just the general timeline for review. Uh

004so our meeting will take place next week on Wednesday the 10th, and then we'll do a presentation to the board at the meeting on the 17th with kind of a summary of that meeting. Um the proposal working with the consultants is to have uh proposals to the board of education in December or January at the latest. The goal is really December. So uh in working with the consultants this summer, they believe that that time fl time frame is fine and we'll be able to meet those deadlines. So So we'll be doing monthly updates to the board following the committee meetings this fall. So and that's my report. Um, with the uh the back to pack donations, if somebody if somebody doesn't have somebody at the high school, where is the best place for them to

005bring big donation? >> They could bring it to any of the schools and whatever is school is closest to where they live and drop it off in the main office or some of the schools I think have boxes uh for dropboxes so they can just bring them there. >> Um, any questions for Jody on the report? Well, Jarlin, can you just remind me um which board member is on the uh resoning committee? >> Um we don't have a board member on that because it's an internal committee. Um and then Jody will just report out to the board on what happens. >> Actually, the consultants will be here for something. >> Yeah. So, >> any other questions? Uh, next up is our board report. And first thing I wanted to do is just to welcome um

006all of our new staff that we have in the district. Um, and I also wanted to um say thank you for a fun opening day um ceremony, presentation, assembly, whatever we're calling it these days. Um there were some uh fun stickers that were handed out at the end. So, um, sure. Actually, I was going to bring them this with me. So, if other board members who couldn't be there would like want a sticker, I'm sure somebody could get you guys one. >> Um, we'll bring them to the next meeting. >> Uh, and um, I just wanted to um say that I'm looking forward to the first day of school tomorrow and I hope everything goes well in all of our buildings. a reminder that uh next Wednesday is our retreat. Um and Britney sent out

007an email um about that for everybody to take a look at. Um and the last thing that I wanted to do was just to um introduce our again our two uh student board members who are joining us this evening for the first time, Rose and Claire. Um and uh and just say welcome. And if you have questions during the meeting um or afterwards, please feel free to ask. Um any other board members have anything that they wanted to add? Catherine, >> I just wanted to um say a particular thank you to um everybody at the middle school and at the high school who supports allowing the buildings to be ex open for students to come and walk their schedules before the school starts. This isn't some This is something that I didn't realize. um while

008not unique to Bethlehem, we we do this and I think it makes a fantastic and much easier transition for the students coming into the buildings to be able to go in and really kind of get their bearings. Um so I heard a lot of positive feedback from families who are in those moving up years this year. So I just wanted to say thank you. I think that's a great thing that we're able to do. >> Thanks Mary. You stop there. Uh yeah, I just wanted to reiterate um what Jod said at the um opening day ceremony, thanking especially the um O andM department for all the work that has been done over the summer, not only on our big projects, but also on the day-to-day cleaning and maintenance. The schools look wonderful and are ready

009um for school for our kids tomorrow. And I just also wanted to welcome all of our new families. We have a lot of obviously new kindergarten families that are coming into the school district for the first time and also a lot of people who have moved to the district. So I wanted to just extend our welcome to our new families as well. Thanks Mary. Anybody else? Um so next on our agenda is um our we have a time for a student report. Um and if you guys don't have anything to report out on since you know school hasn't even started yet, that's totally fine. But I just wanted to give you the opportunity um if you had anything you wanted to say. >> No, not today. >> Um next on our agenda um our is

010our presentation actually both presentations. Um the first one is uh followup on the bond project, future bond project. >> Good evening. Um, okay. So, um, following up from our August 13th board of education meeting, I had, uh, a couple of questions that were asked of the to of me from the board members. Uh, here is a list. I'll go through each one of them one at a time. The first one was a de detailed cost breakdown uh, per element. Okay. So, we added an additional column on our scope list and this was this of the proposed work and this was uh provided to the board in their u board packets. So, if there's any questions on that, um I don't know if everybody's had an opportunity to review it and see if it's satisfactory, but

011um this was put together and I highlighted the the column that we added and it has uh I also sent a key that goes with it because there are, you know, there's only so much space. It gives you definitions and um uh the abbreviations. The next task that I had was uh looking throughout the district to see if there was any additional large spaces uh that would the board may want to consider for air conditioning. Um I did find two and also confirmed um one of the board members asked me about the middle school the music area. I'm sorry I don't think this has a pointer. Um, but as you can see, the uh the LMC in blue is what is currently airond conditioned at the middle school. Okay. And the uh three music classrooms

012are in fact air conditioned currently. Um the the one in red is what we're proposing as an additional space to be considered. Uh those are the new fax rooms that we just completed in a 2021 capital bomb project. If you note across the hall is the other fax room and these are very large spaces and speaking with folks we could accommodate classes while the space is dark if you will. So if we were to air condition the fax rooms that would probably uh that would give us two more air conditioned large spaces. So we're recommending that we we add those. So that's rooms 148 and 150 at the middle school. The other space that uh is under consideration would be G100 which is in red. That's here at the high school. Um that is uh

013typically used for music but it's a large space. Um in addition to cooling uh we also have some climate control that we need to do and we would like to do uh because there's instruments in that space u particularly a piano that does not like uh huge shifts in humidity. So that was these are the two that we recommend. Um last week uh two days of last week we walked with the uh new engineer looking at every single space that we talked about air conditioning to determine uh what opportunities we have. Can we do it with a uh refrigeration? Do we do it with chilled water etc? you know heat pump. So, um, we looked at these spaces and they're, uh, I'll I'll say it's simple to, uh, add air conditioning to these recommended spaces.

014Additionally, the cost uh, there was some revisions. Um, I I believe uh, you and you made light of one of the errors and I just wanted to give you an update to the current cost estim estimate. If you recall, we were at $57.4 million. Um and these are the items that once we scrubbed it again we had found that um were either a reduction or an addition. So the top one is hammer hammerrell element A12 which was the art room case work. Uh that scope was only required if we didn't do all the classroom work. Since we're doing the classroom work, it is included because the art room is considered a classroom. So that's a reduction of uh $83,000. Next one is middle school M16. Um, we did include in our current pricing fax rooms

015148 and 150 that I just discussed, which would be an addition of 152,000 at the high school. Um, this is the the one that I'm referring to. Uh, AP3, which is uh it was only supposed to be rooms uh in the F-wing, which is uh F102, 104, and 106. Uh, but it inadvertently included B12 and B114. Once we went through that, it ended up being a reduction of $882,000. Uh the next one is uh high school M4, that's music room 100 that I just discussed. That would be an addition of $182,400. Um high school E10 is a reduction. That was for the art room lighting. Um the scope was only needed if the second floor classroom air conditioning was not approved. And since we're doing the second floor classrooms, we would be doing ceilings and

016lighting anyway. So, the scope was redundant and it's a uh $60,000 reduction. And lastly, was Ellir a site uh S2. Um the the principal had requested a fence and a gate at the entrance to the playground off of uh Heric Avenue or Heric Street. Um due to the traffic there and the potential for uh students to run out into the road, um we had to make a change to uh instead of a swing gate, we changed it to a rolling gate for ease of operation and we had a hard time fitting it because it's an angled driveway. So um the placeholder value of 31,937 is present in the latest cost estimate. So currently the overall project cost estimate is is 56,175490. So we dropped uh nearly a million dollars. Actually more than a million dollars,

017excuse me. Are there any questions so far on that? Okay, thank you. Um, next we we we're asked to uh project our increase of our annual operating cost when we do add air conditioning. And it's it's very difficult right now to provide an accurate cost estimate because we haven't gone into the design stage yet. As I just spoke about, we don't know if we're going to use chilled water, direct expansion, we're going to use heat pumps, etc. So without knowing the actual energy efficiency ratios of the equipment the future equipment it's very difficult for us to project that number. Um so again we don't have the quantity and type of equipment. Um we haven't designed our envelope improvements which will have an effect on our energy efficiency and we have not completed energy audit which

018I'll speak about here in the near future uh to support our energy efforts. So once we get a little further along in design, we should be able to project our estimated uh cost increase as far as electricity. The the bulk of it will be electricity. There will be some maintenance, you know, air filters, things like that, but those are negligible. I think our big biggest hit will be on our electrical. The the next uh item was we had discussed the uh middle school lower level design for the four large bays that was uh in support of PE and athletics. Um I'm going to refer to it as the pit um because that's what everybody calls it and it's a lot quicker. So if you look at the uh the screen you can see that the

019existing uh we have two wrestling rooms. One is called the wrestling annex that we we put together. And then we have two basically uh vacant recreational rooms. Uh they play pingpong. There used to be pool tables, but they fell in disrepair. And sometimes they hold sections of uh physical education down there when the weather is inclement. So if you look at the right, that's u what the space looks like today. This is a design that um a a revised design as I spoke of last uh at August 13th. There was some errors in it because I grabbed the wrong drawing. But this is what is proposed. Um again, the scope was always included. However, we want to enhance the scope and make it a little better than what we were going to do in the

020first place. Um, so again, it would include three wrestling bays and then a wrest or excuse me, a weight room essentially. Uh, to to summarize it, if you notice, there's two bathrooms, uh, girls and boys on the right hand side of the screen. Those are included in a separate line item. So, they are not included in the enhancements that we want to make. Those bathrooms has to have to be renovated whether we do the pit or not. Um, they're they're u they're in disrepair. are acoustically challenged. And um in this design, we chose instead of going to single use to kind of a a multi-fixure bathroom that has like a changing area like a na like a pool or a niatorum. And in addition, um it was asked of us if if it included uh

021accessibility. Um, and if you look at the top right corner, you'll see that X, and that would be a single floor elevator to allow access. Um, there is a way, but it's not uh acceptable. You can get down there using ramps and everything, but it it would take longer than a uh a practice would would last. So, um, we chose we do have the space and have verified that doing some destructive testing that we could use that area to put in a single floor lift. It would actually be a car. It wouldn't be just a wheelchair lift. So, it would be just like getting in any other elevator. It's just one stop basement and first floor. So, that is a 2D version. And here's a 3D rendering. I apologize that it's sideways or or kind

022of candid, but um it gives us our best perspective of what it could look like. Um, of course, the architect, um, you know, puts their thumbrint on this and and some of it we've already determined that, um, probably won't be required or desired, uh, due to cost and that being along the hallway there. There's a glass wall. Um, I think we are recommending we do away with that, which will drive the cost down further. Um, but essentially what we're trying to do is get three wrestling areas and a weight room um with ADA accessibility with access from the front of the building which already exists and uh from the hallway in the lower level and um you know to to utilize that 6,000 ft of space. So, I just wanted to review the original scope

023element AP1 was essentially uh you know the basics uh ceilings, lighting, some paint on the walls, the new wrestling mats for the area that uh we need to be uh wrestling room, the wall pads in the same room, and then the rubber flooring for the weight room. And at that time we've been carrying or at that time and to the present we were carrying $253,000 for those improvements. Um as we worked with the stakeholders, our P department and our athletics department and our architect, um we kind of felt that we need to enhance the scope elements and that would include improved adjacent corridor that main corridor um along uh the top of the screen there. As I mentioned previously, there's probably four or six sets of doors that the doors have been removed so that

024there's clear sight lines and the way that the space is currently used. We really need to open that space up and make it code compliant. Additionally, um we would improve the hallway access um so that uh we we have weigh in because it is wrestling and other functions if we have other uh events down there. Uh improved exterior access. Same thing when you come down the stairs into the space. We're proposing, you know, like airport lockers so you can lock your stuff up, do whatever you're going to do down there, and then you have a place to put your stuff. Um, we are limited with proximal space to put in, you know, a locker room. We don't have that ability. Um, and and this is co-ed. It it doesn't matter. Um, with the exception of

025the bathrooms, you know, it it doesn't matter who uses it, including the public. uh the addition of the ADA A lift that I mentioned. And then um because it's specifically going to be a weight room, uh we want to enhance the rubber flooring so that we don't cut through it if you drop the weights. Um they make several different thicknesses. Um our fitness center upstairs here is a weight room and it does have failure points from dropping plates, etc. So we we want to go from the quarter inch to a little thicker so that the weights don't go through it. Um, so that's an enhancement of the rubber flooring and then we're switching out the enhanced rubber flooring. We don't need that high-end rubber flooring for like the coach's office and things like that. And

026then the new casework, storage, and lockers as I mentioned. So to do the enhancements, the total would be $863 $863,000, which as you can see is about five and a half $550,000 additional to what we had originally proposed. Um, if you were include those enhanced costs for AP1, our current overall project cost estimate is 57,038490. Um, and it's still down from the 57.4 that we had discussed in August. >> Do you would you like a question? >> I think I think this would be a good spot. Sure. Um I had one quick question which was on your um I think it's on slide nine with the the picture. >> Yes. >> What the little grade sort of the grade out areas. >> Those are our entrances. >> One is from the hall. The the grade

027out is a different floor style and um and that's what I was just referring to. So instead of putting the enhanced rubber flooring, the lower left grade out area is a multi-purpose room coach's office if you will. >> Okay. And that's going to have um you know first aid kit, a sink so you can you know if somebody cuts themselves, hurts themselves, etc. The scales for weighing additionally if they want to do it there or on your entrance um and and kind of a supervisory aspect. So you can see all four spaces from that area. >> Okay. >> Then then the one to the right of it is the entrance if you will. So it won't be uh wrestling mats. It will be a different flooring either uh marmolium or something along that line. So

028that if you come in from the with wet boots etc. you take your shoes off, you switch out and you have your lockers there to store your items. And then the one at the top right is the one that I had mentioned off of the hallway to make a a better entrance off the hallway. Currently, it's just a >> a single door. Uh a very poor functioning door. But um and I think we need to pair that down just a hair because it a glass wall is extremely expensive. Don't really need a glass wall because um it's not like we're at a college where we're entering from within the building and we're having um parents and etc. Everybody else is going to be um or the public is going to be coming in from the

029uh front of the building. So, I think we can lessen that um that entrance there. >> Katherine, you looked like you had a question on this topic. >> Yeah, a couple. I mean, just to make sure I'm following along here. The supervisory right now, I see I kind of see a cutout for for one window or two. You're saying though that when this is if if finalized, this will have sight lines into all the spaces. >> Yes. Um there is again on on this uh drawing the from the office there is already a door and an opening there. It's not shown on this drawing. >> Okay. >> Um there's an opening there. There's an opening straight ahead, plan north, and there's an opening plan right. >> Great. >> All the way through. >> And then

030currently, if um not mistaken, we've got a lot of our or at least some of our adaptive and unified PE classes using the existing wrestling rooms during PE. Is that correct? >> That is correct. And so as we're looking at this um and as as somebody who has been down in that space while it was being used, I'm wondering um maybe it's somewhere else. Are we thinking about air circulation in that area as well? Are we thinking about is that on the board anywhere? >> Well, we have air circulation currently. >> Okay. >> And and that is being considered. We have to change some things with our current ventilation. >> Okay. Uh the ventilation there's unit ventilators in in the bays and they're fully functional. We would just have to uh if we change the

031space we have to just change the configuration of the existing. >> Okay. >> And they are on our building automation system currently functional. >> Got it. >> Um we did not plan on air conditioning these spaces. >> Right. No, that that wasn't what I was driving at. It was >> No, no. I just I wanted to share that because that would be a large challenge. Um, but to your point, each one of the the uh where the wrestling mats are or where the circles are are considered multi-purpose spaces. Um, because there's wrestling mats on the floor, um, they're not permanent. They can be picked up and removed. However, we choose to leave them laying down because it is more effective. They go in, they can disinfect and clean them before and after each one. We

032don't have to roll them up. We don't have to move them. Um, I know that the spaces are used for a lot of things. um you know dodgeball I saw down there there was bowling uh you know plastic bowling all these PE things the only thing that we ask is you don't wear golf shoes or cleats right >> you know so most of the kids uh are down there in socks running around having a blast so doing their thing >> um I guess the one I've only been down there a couple times but I would encourage us to just take a look at the air exchangers and make sure that's all working Okay. Well, >> yeah. >> Okay. Are there any other questions? >> Any other questions on this topic in particular? >> Okay. I

033just skipped one. Um, so the other thing was the energy audit and I just wanted to share some information. Um, Ashray is the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers, and that is uh one of the guides that we use when it comes to the age of equipment, the style of equipment, and they provide, uh, bulletins and white papers all about, um, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Um, so the energy audits, uh, there's typically three levels. Uh, they're defined as, you know, level one, two, and three. A level one is a basic walkthrough, um, type audit. Usually it's just lighting and building automation system. You know, add this, add that, turn your lights off. Um, uh, occupancy sensors, things like that. And I call that the lowhanging fruit. That's why it's in quotation

034marks. That's a quick hit. We can go through, convert your lights from fluorescent to LED or something along that line. A level two is a more mid-level audit offering detailed recommendations, and that's what we're looking for. Uh, cost estimates and energy savings projections. Um and that usually involves uh a NAERTA and approved vendors from NAERTA because NAERTA does provide grants or rebates if we do an energy um performance contract or an EPC which this essentially is. Um we would let me rephrase that. We did a in 2016 to 18 we did an energy performance contract. That's when our lighting and some minor modifications were made throughout the district. Um, and that was with a sole contractor. When I say an EPC, we would incorporate this into the bond. So, the electrical prime contractor would be

035would making be making any of the changes that affect energy efficiency. Does that clarify? I made a little mistake there. And then level three is an investment grade audit with modeling and vendor quotes. and it's like a one-stop shop. And typically that's where you're going to do measurement and verification post um work to where they project that you're going to save 25% and if you do you pay them uh um a higher percentage than what we uh expect and uh they do the whole project for us. Um so in speaking with our architect and our consultant, we're recommending um it's it's the top of level one and just below level two. Okay. So I know everybody's interested in knowing how much it costs. So a commercial energy audit typically runs between 10 cents and 30

036cents per square foot depending on the audit level and system complexity. All right. There's many many variables that we could get into with the energy audit from thermography to roof scans to um looking at every single motor and so on. Um, so at at our seven school buildings, uh, we total 898,667 square ft, which gives us a price range of the 10 to 30 cents of $89,800 to $269,600 to perform an energy audit. Based on our pre preliminary discussions with our consultants, a level two energy audit for um, Bethlehem would cost between $100,000 and $200,000. All right. And I just want to mention that um the consultant that we're talking with currently actually did our 2016 to 18 energy uh performance contract. So we reached back out to him to have them assist with us

037making uh or getting a decent cost estimate. So the energy audit uh these are the considerations that I wanted to bring forward. It doesn't have to be included in the capital bond project costs and could be completing using other funding sources. Um I I know John, you just gave me the uh side eye there. Um you know, if we had money laying around um or in in in operating um it could be funded other ways. Additionally, um NAERTA does pay for a portion of the cost of the energy audit if we were to go that route. Um, of course, it would be a guide to moving forward uh in this bond and future bonds for any energy efficiencies associated with uh further air conditioning if we chose to go to the first floors and do

038the entire district. Um, it's most likely going to trigger the recommissioning of our existing building automation system, which has not been done to my knowledge in my tenure here. um which will also m uh optimize our building automation system, put it back to where it was originally designed if it's not in that condition. Um and that would reduce energy costs and again nerta grants are available to offset the costs of actually doing the audit. Um there's several programs out there and that's what we're working on now. Which one works best for Bethlehem schools? Um I just to give you an order of magnitude um they will pay up to $200,000 of the cost of the energy audit if it goes that high. However, there's some parameters in there that we would have to use this

039specific vendor and so on. So we're we're going through those trying to figure out which is best and we're going to make a recommendation. So our our next steps um we are currently in the process as I said working with a consultant. We believe that we can get um some good data for the uh September 17th board of education meeting. Um you know because we need to sit with them and define the audit the the scope of the audit. In other words, what portions do we want to look at? If we look at the entire district, it would be extremely expensive. And some of the things we already have answers to. We don't need to tell have them look at for example uh the roof at the middle school that we just replaced. we don't

040need to do that. So, we're going to define the scope of what we expect the uh energy auditors to do. Uh establish our performance expectations and make sure that it aligns with uh industry standards and our priorities. And then if we decide to move forward with this, we'll de we work with a consultant to develop the u documentation for the request for proposal so that we can sol solicit energy service um companies or escos. Um you know and again the goal is to obtain compet competitive proposals that will allow us to determine the actual cost of a level two um in accordance with ashray. So in a nutshell, all that I just said is I don't have an exact number to present to the board at this moment. I have a range because until we

041get estab we we needed a little more time um August 13th to to now just couldn't give us enough time to get there. Um but we have established the contacts. We have meetings being set up. Um I'm not going to say as we speak, but currently um determining which dates and I'm hoping to have a better number. Um, again, from what I did at my desk, and please don't hold it to hold me to it, but it looked what I came up with is $170,000 to do a full district audit with the exception of O andM, which really doesn't have anything and transportation because transportation needs a lot more than um just the energy audit. Um, everything over at transportation's really been addressed with the exception of the envelope and the bay doors and things

042like that. So, our recommendation is to focus on the the the school buildings. Um, and that is what I have for this evening. Um, and here's just a reminder of our schedule that um, we're expecting to go to vote on December 2nd here at the high school from 7 to 9. >> Um, I'm sure there are some questions for you. >> Okay. Um, and I just wanted to say first, thank you for uh looking into whether we had some of those bigger spaces in some of our buildings that we were um sort of forgetting about. Um, and um, I do think it would be a good idea to include the fax rooms and G100 at the high school. Um, and so thank you for looking into that. Um, and I was just curious with the

043energy audit. I mean, to me, it seems like it would make more sense to do it before we're going out going into all the bond work so we know what we're looking at. But as a practical matter, and I'm going to turn this question your direction, is that something that might be feasible >> in terms of a financing perspective? >> Yes. It may have to come at the expense of something else as as we move forward over the course of the year. But if that's a direction that the board wants to move in, we can either put funds aside over the course of 2526 or >> budget specifically for that for 26 27 depending on when the energy >> because depending on timing we could just add the double amounts to the budget >> as

044we go through the budget process for the 26 2017 school year. >> I did I I've already added that to >> maybe between now and the next meeting while you're looking at sort of >> and that will give me an opportunity to find out what the potential rebates are as well because you know some of them are substantial but it depends on the variables. >> Yeah. >> Um additionally I did check to see if it wasable. There's not >> unfortunately. >> I mean, rebates that are available today may not necessarily be available next year. Or >> sure, >> conversely, rebates may appear next year, but I' I'd recommend doing it sooner rather than >> Sounds like that's something you guys want to work together on. >> We can certainly do that. >> Other questions? Katherine,

045I could tell you. >> Yeah. And the well this is just um something to if we don't know the answer to anything to keep in mind. I know sometimes at least in the private sector I don't know if this applies to nera's commercial programs as well. Not only can you get support for the um audit itself, but at times completing the audit frees up um availability or at excuse me opens access for other rebates if you've got the you know if if you're showing that this is something that your audit is recommending. So again, I don't know if that is part of the commercial projects, uh, but just to keep in mind, um, as we look for for dollars under the rug here. Um, and then my I guess my other question is about not

046what's in here right now, but one of the things that we had discussed a couple meetings back was as we move toward um, you know, putting the option out to the community to put air conditioning in our facilities to also make sure that we're exploring opportunities for, you know, um, the types of either practices or um additional building things that might help to bring down temperatures. Um because again my my concern remains and I understand why it's hard to price this out but my concern remains that you know putting the putting these uh systems in the buildings is just a fraction of the cost that we're going to bear and it's it it's necessary but I want to know everything else we can possibly be doing to bring this down. The energy audit is a

047big part of that. I'm thrilled that we're moving forward with that. But I want to continue asking that question and I hope that you will with Ashley Mcgra and others as we're doing this like where else either can we find savings or where else can we be adjusting our our I use practices but um what's the word I'm looking for maybe protocols maybe the way we do things um or you know are there other technologies or are there other types of uh whether it's landscaping or architectural things that we could be doing that would provide for better air flow, would support the cooling things that we are investing in all of that. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Um I just wanted to add two things. Um, one is, uh, addition in addition to if

048we do make energy upgrades, um, I'm not sure if you're aware, but, uh, we did two boiler plants in the last bond project. And we did, um, we were able to get, I think the first one we got a check back for $30,000 in rebates for the four boilers boilers we put in at um, Hammergirl. And then again when we did phase two and did Glenmonts, they were 100,000 BTUs short of uh what we needed to get another 30,000 but we were able to get 15,200. So you know we we're anytime we replace a motor or a piece of equipment. There may or may not be a rebate and we take advantage of all those. Um the second thing I want to talk about um you know we're envelope was the big thing that we

049can I'm going to use the term control. >> Y >> um you know there was mention of green roofs and things like that. Um which looking um currently we we touch base on that and our buildings weren't built for that with the snow load in the northeast. Um so you know is that really something that we could do? We don't think so. However, the vegetation outside and looking at what we're going to use when we do put the air conditioning in. Um, for folks that don't know, the new refrigerant is flammable and it has all kinds of requirements associated with it now. Um, which adds to the cost of putting in air conditioning anywhere, including a house. It costs more now. Um, because our units hold more than a few ounces of refrigerant and it's

050flammable. Um the devices have to be built into the air handling unit or rooftop unit from the factory that is a refrigerant monitor that automatically shuts it off so that it doesn't blow the flammable and esphixxient of refrigerant into the spaces. So it made it about five times more difficult to simply throw a coil into a unit. So we're working with um our vendors. We, as I said, we walked the roofs and atticss and crawl spaces, looked at each piece of equipment, and we're looking at our options as to instead of putting in variable refrigerant refrigerant, which is a huge challenge. Um, because again, if you put a split in here, it's only a few ounces, but because it's variable, you could dump 100 pounds into this space. So, now we have to kind of

051shift gears here and see what other options we have. Um, so everything costs more associated with this refrigerant. It's better for the environment. However, it's more challenging for us. >> Did you have any questions? >> Rose and Claire, did you guys have any questions? >> I don't have any. >> One really. Thank you for the increased detail. Sorry I haven't had a chance to go through it in detail yet. One overall question. You've got a raw construction cost and a project cost. Yes. >> Is that simply a multiplier? It is. And and what that multiplier is is it's our what we call we got hard cost and soft cost. Hard cost is the actual cost of construction. That's putting nails in the wood or in the concrete. The soft cost is everything else which would

052includes our furniture, fixtures and equipment. It includes our architect fees, our consultant fees, um all associated um fees from our uh construction manager. um uh council fees, uh financial fees, anything associated with that. Um and when I say it is a simple multiplier, it's it's a built-in. It also has our um design contingency, construction contingency, and and um I'm missing one off the top of my head, but those are the soft costs. Sure. The hard the soft costs are everything but the actual cost of construction. You're just trying to scan. It looks like it's basically a 1.6 multiplier applied uniformly. Am I getting that right? >> 1.52. >> Thanks. >> Um because I had to make sure that they were all correct after you so nicely pointed out one of our failures. So yeah, it's

053about 1.52. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you, Nick. >> Okay, thanks. Thank you. You And our second presentation this evening, um Jody is going to present us our annual goals update. Actually, Dave and I are gonna tag team a little bit here, but >> uh so I wanted to provide an update on our annual goals and metrics and really uh those of you recall we did our new data dashboard last year. So, we've added a lot of information to that uh that we thought was important to highlight tonight. So, as you know, our goals are based on our strategic plan. Our core values, our mission statement is to educate and prepare all students to reach their full potential, discover purpose, and be engaged community members. And our core values fall under academics, character, community,

054and wellness. Uh this is just a highlight of the strategic plan. We broke them up. If you recall, we had a review of our strategic plan last year with a group of stakeholders to update our plan in academics. We have our objectives and then our major strategies that fall under each of those. And we have the same outline for character, community, and wellness. So to highlight our annual goals, our overall goals uh remain the same. Our first goal is to cultivate culturally responsive faculty, staff and administrator administration. So from that, our action steps have um either continued or are updated based on um our review of how we did the last year or even prior years. So, professional learning experiences. Some of the changes we've made um particularly is TCIS, which is stands for therapeutic

055crisis interventions uh training that all of our support staff now are required to participate in. Uh that was something we did as part of the contract. This year, we actually have um offered a training in the summer. We're offering our training again in the fall. And we have a number of BCTA members who have also been trained or are being trained in TCIS as well. Our student led equity work, if you remember last year, we have been doing NCBI at the high school, National Coalition Building Institute. Are you guys both part of that? >> Yeah. Um and so some of our high school students have gone to the middle school to do uh micro assemblies and lead that work at the middle school. This year our plan is to shift that uh to also include

056elementary schools. So the plan is to have high school and middle school students actually lead those assemblies at some of our elementary schools. I believe the plan is to start at Hamigril uh this fall. So that's the goal is to kind of spread that across the district where we're giving students the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in this particular area. our accountability dashboard. Um we're actually highlighting some new things which we'll show you tonight on school climate, restorative practices and professional development. uh restorative practices. We did a largecale training a couple of years ago and one of the things uh that came up this year as part of our summer retreat was that uh we need to identify some of those key people who can now train some of our other staff and we also have

057a lot of new staff in the last couple of years who haven't been trained. So to expand that training uh K12, we do have uh lead trainers in each of our buildings that can lead that during the course of the year. And then uh finally under this um goal is our special education inclusivity. Looking at how we can include scheduling that's more inclusive of all of our um classrooms, particularly this year looking at the additional support we've provided at both Hamigril and Ellir. Just to remind the board, you approved an additional reading teacher uh this spring and that reading teacher is providing additional support at both Hamigril um and Ellir to support reading instruction. So, we want to track the data and how that's working. In addition, we have our special ed cabinet which will

058be working this year in developing um updated continuum for all our programs and also looking at students that we have placed out of district and are there students that potentially we can bring back into district to support uh their education. on to the next goal. Uh increasing academic rigor and accountability while maximizing student social, emotional growth, mental and physical health. Uh so we have had a district MTSS committee for a a couple of years now. Uh the goal this year is to expand that group. Uh we did some professional development um some of our uh district leadership team and instructional leadership team last spring uh and are looking to expand that model and really focusing on what are we defining as uh gaps that we want to address through that district MTSS committee. For example,

059we know there's a gap in our special education performance. So that would be a goal that that group would then set for the building MTSS teams to really track how we're doing. Another area for MTSS to look at is um absenteeism, which I'll I'll talk as part of this um is how can we work to improve some of our attendance rates for students who are chronically absent or um at risk being chronically absent. um which is a significant concern uh for all of our teaching staff and our administrative staff looking to expand our instructional coaching model. Uh as you know we have uh coaches at the elementary schools now for um we're really focusing on bookworms this year and also the we added the behavior coach who will provide some support is in regard to

060MTSS. We do still have our instructional coaches for technology at the other levels as well to provide that support. Wellness integration, looking at ways we can incorporate more movement to enhance our social emotional practices into daily classroom routines. We have a lot of um elementary teachers who do this all the time and do a great job with it. So really working with the wellness committee to provide opportunities for them to reach out to uh teachers and h give them ideas and suggestions to how we can do more of that. And our attendance, you'll see this on the dashboard in that really since the uh pandemic, our attendance, our chronic absenteeism rates has remained significantly high. For example, in our elementary school, when you look at the dashboard, you'll see that it has doubled since the

061our chronic absenteeism, which are students who've missed 10% or more of the school year, um has doubled since the pandemic. It has not come back. Our high school absenteeism rate is um about 14% chronic absenteeism rate. And when you combine our the chronic absenteeism percentages with the students who are at risk, meaning they're just under that level, uh for example, in the high school, you're looking at probably 20% of the student population. Um at the elementary level, we're probably close to 8 to 10% of the student, probably closer to 10% now. And so that is a concern because when students aren't here, obviously they're missing instruction. They're missing a lot of the social engagement and opportunities which contributes to some of the social emotional wellness that we're trying to foster. Um and it's it's a

062challenge for teachers to try and get students caught up on their work. So even though we're you'll see that on the dashboard we're still um doing well compared to the state average when you look at how our attendance is pre and postcoid you'll see significant increases since since then. So that is something we want to work on and then continuing to look at our enrichment opportunities for all of our students in the high schools uh specifically. And the last goal is increasing community engagement. And I think that we, you know, I've talked about this and I know that some of you who are involved with parent organizations know that getting uh involvement from parents has become more of a challenge. Unfortunately, some of our local community groups no longer exist because they were unable to

063continue to get volunteers to support those programs. Those were programs that actually supported the school and our teachers. So trying to find ways where we can um engage the community more. So a couple of the things that uh we came up with is we're referring to as community connector program where we have designated liaons for families who are under reppresented and may struggle and feel disconnected to the school. Uh working through um our building teams for that. Enhancing our translation and accessibility. We've done a lot in that regard when we adopted parent square. That gives us a lot more access to be able to translate and provide translated material for our families and translating report cards in um m multiple languages. Environmental stewardship. We do a great job. If you haven't seen the high school

064garden and how uh wonderful that looks, it's awesome. We had our salads and things from there. They have great lettuce and tomatoes. In fact, if you need some, you can probably go pick some and Mark Warford won't won't yell at you for that. Um, and also looking at how we can showcase Bethlehem uh more with um we've had some really good responses from some of the video series and video clips that we've used um the last year. So, we want to add to that this coming year. And another area that we're looking at is partnering with the work local workforce development. You'll hear more about this actually in a couple presentations to the board uh this fall where we're working with the local businesses, chambers, CTE providers to expand opportunities for our high school students

065um locally and looking at different industries that they might find interest. So um we do think it's important to show you the strategic dashboard and we've added to that and you there's a lot more data. We are trying to this is still a work in progress. So I'll say this it's uh something that we are asking we asked our staff yesterday if they're looking at this using this to provide us with feedback. We're trying to balance out what's helpful data in information that that our staff and community members want to know while not making it too busy uh where it becomes uh not that helpful for community members. So, I really want to thank Dave. He's updated the dashboard over the course of the summer. Uh we added to that after our retreat in August.

066So, I asked him if he could do the little demo for all of you so you could see some of the new pieces to that. um also highlight how you can uh look at different pieces of data in different ways. So I'm going to turn it over to Okay, thank you Jody. So this is the dashboard that we sort of rolled out um in the spring of last year. Um we built this from ground up. So, please if you find mistakes, let me know. Um I found some more the other day. It's this was literally this entire thing was built from nothing, right? So, there's going to be mistakes in there. Um but just to kind of recap the way it works, um on the main dashboard, there's a home tab which goes through the

067four core values, which this is the four slides that Jod had referenced in her presentation essentially. And then when you go to indicators, this is where all of the data lives. Um, and our consultants um, that helped us build the dashboard um, suggest limiting the number of tiles under each category to eight or nine. Otherwise, it just becomes way too overwhelming. Um, so we've done a pretty good job with that, I think. Um, but basically there's a few different things that you can see within each one. Sometimes you see this view data, sometimes you'll see an eye. Um, so I just want to kind of review what that looks like. Um, and kind of show you how you can adjust things once you're in there as well because some of them do become overwhelming. So,

068the one I want to use actually is achievement gaps because we were able to include more information in here um that the staff thought was helpful. Um we included the comparison to New York State. But when I do that, I've now got, you know, four columns for Bethlehem and four columns for New York State and all of this crammed on one graph and it's like what am I even looking at? Right? So, the one thing that's really nice about this platform is you can click on the key and you can turn things on and off. So, if I only want to look at, say, general education versus students with disabilities, I can just click on the economically disadvantaged labels and shut those off. So, now I'm looking at four items instead of eight. Right? So,

069if if graphs become too busy because there's so many bars, you can start to kind of click around the key and turn certain indicators on and off. It's really the ones that have the mix of the bars and the line graph that that happens with. Um, but that's something that our staff felt it was really helpful to have that comparison there. Um, but when you look at it, you're like, well, that's an awful lot of information. So, the ability to turn things on and off is super helpful. So, that's sort of one thing that you're able to do. And another thing, if you're not quite sure what some of these measures necessarily mean, because for for some of them, we don't even list a number because a number in and of itself doesn't really mean

070a whole lot. like character recognition. We could say 72 students received character awards in the month of October, but what does that number really mean? But we feel like these are um really important in terms of supporting our strategic plan. So that's why we included them on the dashboard, but without a number and just a quick little information button that kind of tells you what the types of things that we're doing. And as things change over time, we'll add them to the list. Um because the number in of itself, I don't know that it really the staff didn't feel like it added any value to the the tile. Um, and like I said, some have the the data, some have both. Like, so under chronic absenteeism, not only can you view the data, but there's

071an information tab that explains exactly to what Jody said, 10% or more um is what that number represents. Um, so those are all the different tiles um supporting our different areas. Um and the one thing I do want to point out because this came up during our um there was some questioning around it under academics the the advanced coursework you can see when you combine AP dual credit so that's through um like U Albany or um Sienna College we have courses through or Hudson Valley we have 94% of our students or or an industry credential through CTE programs 94% of our students take at least one sort of college level course by the time they graduate and our goal is 100% right um so That's what the one action step we had was about removing

072barriers because it's great to say we're going to require all students to take say like a lot of schools are moving towards um all 10th graders take AP seminar which is a sort of a critical analysis of um authentic works and you learn to write and critically analyze these well if you're going to say all all of our sophomores have to take a course like that you have to build supports in for students that don't have the preparation meeting up. So that's what that action step is really geared towards. We're all familiar with like AIS, right? Academic intervention supports for students that are struggling um based on state metrics. This is sort of the reverse of that. It's if we want to encourage more students to access higher level work, we have to put the

073supports in place to allow them to do that, right? It's easy to say, hey, everybody take AP Calc, but if you don't have supports in place for them to do that, then so that's what that whole action step was about. Uh but we're really pleased that we're up to 94%. AP alone is at about 65% which is by far the highest in the area. Um then the third tab is strategy and I talked a little bit about this last year. Um this gets a little challenging. This helps us sort of monitor our progress, but they don't have just sort of a sliding scale. You have to use percentages. Um I did change the way we color code it this year. Before I had them all colorcoded by goal number. Instead I now have it kind

074of colorcoded by how far along the continuum we are. So hopefully you kind of just ignore the the percent the percentile the percentages because the percentages in of themselves don't mean anything, right? like 75% doesn't mean you're 75% of the way there. It just means nearly complete, but I have to use percentages in order to make the these bubbles down here change color, right? So 0% doesn't mean you've done it. It means you haven't started yet, right? 25% means in progress. Doesn't mean how far in progress. It just means you're sort of in progress. Moderately complete, nearly complete, and completed. So it's more the color that people will be looking at rather than the actual number. The number itself is sort of meaningless. Um so that's how we're going to track. So these are all

075of the action steps that Jod had on her slides. So essentially this is the dashboard that we enrolled that we rolled out in the spring. Um again I just updated all the information so that all the 2025 data that's available is now on there. Um I updated the action steps and changed the color coding the way that works. The other thing we did is if you recall in the spring um Doug presented on our idea determination from the state. Um, so I felt that it was important that we stay transparent with our progress towards that because if you remember that's always sort of on a lag. Some of the indicators are on a two-year lag, some are on a one-year lag, but we actually have new data in those areas. So I did create a

076new dashboard. Um, so under select dashboard, we now have the strategic plan, but we also have the IDEA accountability dashboard. So this is um taken directly from Doug's presentation. There's a quick little um description of what the IDEIDA from the state um is measuring and then here's four of the slides from his presentation showing where we fell within the different um performance c and compliance categories how our final score was calculated and where we stand right but again that's a static measure from either one or two years data um so I did add now indicators here where all of that data is going to be here live and when I say live I mean as as up to date as I can have it. So if I click in the graduation date, graduation rate, even

077though the one that was used on that report was from 2022 or 2023, I now have the 2024 data here to see and the 2025 data so that we can track along where we are. And I put the sort of criteria marks on here so we can see where we are in relation to that criteria. So if you notice based like in 2022 we were below the onepoint criteria, 23 we hit it, 24 we almost hit the twopoint criteria and in 25 we're back to a solid level one again. But it allows to track sort of live where we are in relation to these original indicators. And I use the same color coding here as we did here because we don't they could change the thresholds. So I don't want to assume where we're going

078to land. So I kept all the color coding to match this just so that you can see okay yeah we were here right we had red which meant we were zero points but if I went into the data I would see that our actually we increased we were zero three years in a row and we're at to 33 last year. So just trying to be as transparent as possible with um some other indicators and as we start to develop new data sets that aren't necessarily directly tied to the strategic plan, we could build more dashboards in here if they seem appropriate. Um one of the dashboards that was mentioned in the in Jod's presentation dealt with sort of PD tracking on restorative practices. Maybe that has a place here if there's a good way to

079sort of quantify that that's easily sort of viewable and understandable by the public. So that's kind of where we are with our dashboard though. >> That's it. >> Yeah. So >> that's the wrong one. >> Well, I guess that one was done anyway. So >> yeah. All good. >> Yes. So I don't have questions about either the goals or the dashboard or feedback. I'll just start I just want to thank you for walking us through that. I do appreciate the transparency in particular with all of the data. >> Um it I haven't looked for it recently on our website. Is it front and center and easy to find? >> It is. So if you go to the strategic plan >> it's under site. >> It's about it's under about us. There's a strategic plan dedicated

080page and the link is right there. Okay. And I did for all faculty and staff and students. I do students have BCDSD bookmarks or just faculty, staff, >> they do, but this is not there yet. >> Okay. So, we'll put it on the student one as well. Um, but it lives for up in the lefth hand corner where it says BCSD bookmarks. That's pushed to all Chromebooks >> for faculty, staff, and we'll also push it to students. So, it'll always live there for those that have district devices. >> Okay. Um, and I'm wondering whether I think there's a because I think I saw it on the calendar that there's a SEPTA meeting coming up at the and sometime in September. >> Um, I think they're meeting on Mondays once a month >> and I'm thinking

081that um might want to reach out to Doug about like making >> Yeah, I think he's planning >> he was planning on sharing that. Yeah, >> but I'll remind you. >> Great, Katherine. >> Yeah. Um, thank you. This is as always really really cool. Is it May I make a couple of like requests for consideration? >> For sure. >> Okay, cool. Um, on the dashboard for advanced coursework, it would be really cool to break that out and to look at like to be able to see like, oh, we have so many students doing AP, so many doing dual credit because you have a couple different things in there and it allows you to turn those on or off. That would be awesome. And I'm also curious if it would be worth adding in um the

082diploma certificates as well indicating how many students we have who are getting that. Um >> you're talking about the seals under graduation. >> So for the seals literacy. >> Yeah, that's easy enough to add on the graduation one. >> That would be really cool. Um and then um under I the idea dashboard and echoing Holly's thanks for all that transparency um the um one question that I had there was just um in the explain or not the indicators but on the homepage two things can two things first can we get a better name then idea accountability because I don't know if that is very meaningful I originally had the whole thing spelled out and I ran out of character. I >> can only imagine. >> So it it ended up the the banner got um

083>> it the way it fitted up there, you couldn't really read any of it because it didn't fit. >> Sure. I I totally I totally >> So I can put it in the description. >> I was going to say maybe we put in the because I think it it technically is that is the term, but we could put a descriptor in there. >> That's what I'm That's what I'm wondering if there's if there's another descript just to make it real clear what it is. you're looking at right up top >> and and this is not please don't interpret any of this as a criticism because this is cool and these and and taking any kind of long acronym or any kind of um niche you know language and making it accessible is a challenge. Um

084the other thing there is um it goes you know there is the little calculation of final score um slide down at the bottom that just refers to points but it might be really good to to to like spell out like just somewhere here like okay so the way the state evaluates us is by assigning points and those points are assigned so that when you're looking at the indicators and it's like uh you get to the to the you know to the points, the twos and the three. It's like this is what this is what that is. Um like when you get into the two point score criteria under graduation rate for example, >> I think if isn't what that included in one of the links above >> is it am I just not surfing around?

085Yeah. So if you go to that that main link it that's >> it breaks >> it explains all the takes you out to state ed but that brings you to the explanation for it. >> Perfect. So maybe I mean just a little descriptor so that somebody who's who's going from one thing to the next is just like there's so I mean this this is like in the weed stuff but I love this and I love all of the work the district is putting into making this available for folks and so my only interest is like how do we make this as >> even more user friendly that it already is >> so much better than how we were presenting the data. >> Yeah, if you recall this used to be with the red and green

086dots all over it. >> Yes, this is a lot better. >> Yes, the scattered chart. Yes, this thank you. Um, so those are just a couple like in the weeds >> things for consideration and please don't let that >> distract from my main point which is this is really great. >> No, and as I said, I mean, we're kind of looking for that feedback. What's useful, what's not useful. So, if as we go through the year, if there's things that you see, let us bring it up and we'll look into it. >> Great. Thank you. You >> Yep. Um, I'm going to pile on and say thanks. I like data. These are cool. Couple of questions on the individual things. Um, you were talking about barriers to enrollment in AP classes. >> What can you

087give an example of a barrier to enrollment? >> We don't we don't necessarily have bar like any student can technically sign up for an AP class. There are some districts that have certain criteria and you can't enroll in that. What Dave was talking about was that if we're going to encourage students to take, let's say, an AP exam, a AP course or a college course, and it's going to be a stretch for them because they've never done that. Like basically, we don't want that to be a barrier. We want to find ways that we can encourage that and provide them with the support so they feel confident in doing that. And are we finding that economic disadvantage is a significant barrier that kind of >> Yeah. That that the the fee structure, we can address

088that. But if there's students who haven't taken it because of that, let's say, >> right? >> And now they're feeling like this is going to be way more writing than I've ever done. What can we do as a district? Some districts have um writing labs. Like we've had teachers who if they have a period free, there are support where students can go in and get help with their writing. So what things do we need to consider if we're going to really kind of push that other say 6% who have not taken that opportunity and why is it that they're not taking it? Is it just financial or is it really more concerned about performance >> self-esteem or whatever? >> Exactly. So that was really >> because to your point you and one of the challenges

089now is even having teachers encourage students to stretch themselves. It it's it's hard to do when you don't have supports in place because then like, you know, I'm going to encourage somebody that's they took um English nine, English 10, and now I'm gonna say, well, as an 11th grader, why don't you take AP um >> lang, you know, knowing that they probably didn't have the same rigor of preparation as someone took English 9H, English 10H, right? So to encourage a student to do that, you want to make sure that you have supports in place so they're successful because >> I wouldn't want to recommend a student do something where it puts them in a situation where now all of a sudden they're crushed because supports aren't in place. They don't do well and it's like

090whoa, maybe I'm not college material type thing, right? So yeah, that's what the supports are more meant for. >> They're going to feel worse about themselves getting a an 80 in AP land as opposed to a 95 in English 11. Right. >> So I don't know what we can do to incentivize this. Right. What's the what's the plus of that? Right. >> Yeah. I have a bunch of questions. So feel free. >> Sure. Let me just Rose, do you have a question? >> Yeah, I have a question. Um actually very similar to yours, but what is the actual like level of support for students with College Board related costs? Because I've heard like as people are registering for uh AP classes like the fee is like $100. It's pretty expensive. And same with the SAT.

091um like what supports do we have for that? >> So we we can help families who need that support. Unfortunately, we have to rely a lot on families asking for that assistance. Uh especially now when what we used to have is we had the ability for families who were approved to get free and reduced lunches or um we had kind of a a gauge I guess on who might need that support. now that there's going to be universal free meals. Technically, yes, we are still asking families to um submit those applications because we're required to do that and it would give us something. But there's no real incentive for families to submit those applications if they know that everyone's getting free meals anyhow. So unfortunately, if some of our counselors and teachers obviously know families

092or, you know, especially if they've been in the district a while, which families perhaps are getting um backpacks or things like that, but we don't often know if there's a life-changing event where maybe someone lost a job or families don't want to reach out. And so a lot of it is letting families know that we can help support them, but they do a lot of times need to reach out and let us know that they need that support. >> So for instance, right, we all just got the email, please go pay your AP costs. >> Be really nice if in that email it was just a paragraph saying if this poses any difficulty for you, here's what you do to get support because that wasn't >> Right. Right. That's a good point. >> Question. >>

093Yeah, I agree with that. Or no, I was just agreeing with you. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> Do you guys have any other questions? >> No, not so far. >> Not yet. You know, >> couple individual data questions, right? So, we've got an increase in high school absenteeism of like 50% in the past two years. It's gone from less than 10 to over 14%. >> Why? >> I do think one reason we saw during the pandemic was students sort of got used to being able to access work from home >> and complete work from home. And I think one of the downsides to technology is the upside is materials are accessible to kids all the time. That's also the downside, right? Because materials are accessible to me all the time. So for me to take a

094day off, I can go on Google Classroom, I can get all my assignments, I can get them done, I can come back the next day and turn them in. So it's it's not as much of a burden anymore to take a day off. Um I think that is a piece of it. Um, so for instance, you know, let's take a a four day weekend for a family to go away, right? It used to be you kind of had to tell your teacher in advance, hey, we're kind of going away. Can you provide me with some work to do while I'm gone, which never went over real well. Um, but now it's like I don't even have to do that, right? I can just take off for the Friday, Monday. I can get all my science

095on Google Classroom. I can get things done while I'm away. I can come back and turn them in. So, I think that's that's a piece of the increase. I think it's more that underlying like if the number the true number was 10% prior, it's still I think that's the number. It's not the extra 4% because I don't know that those are kids that are necessarily being negatively impacted by it. I think these are kids that are just sort of figuring out that >> the system works for them to be able to stay home now and then. >> It's that that 10% that I guess is the same. What are we doing to address that? Because those are when we look at who those kids are, they're often our economically disadvantaged kids. They're often our English

096language learners. they're often our special education students and many of our students fall into multiple categories like that. So now it's like you know you're adding more and more risk factors to their ability to access education. I >> I also think that you know if you look at the elementary or the K8 sorry district it was in 2018 3.6 and now it's 7.7. That's that's double. So, I think the more kids and families get used to, especially at a young age, like it's okay to just not come to school, that those numbers are just going to perpetuate, right? Because they're going to continue to think it's no big deal. So, I think that we did make some changes with the attendance policy this year. Uh it might be something where we need to go back

097and revisit the attendance policy about the number of classes people kids miss before they don't get credit or looking at doing that even at a younger um age. Right now that only applies to high school. Um I think that the goal that we have or the action plan I should say coming up with a real uh s systematic plan as to how we address the chronic absenteeism like more and more where our staff are going to houses to find out why aren't kids in school. Um 10 years ago that never happened. That's pretty regular to do that now. But looking at trying to find do we have mentors um in buildings who um can do some outreach with the kids and the families to try and get them encourage them to be or can we

098connect a child to something maybe outside of the classroom that interests them to try to get them motivated to come to school. Um, so that those are some of the things that we started the district attendance committee last year. Um, and we're continuing that this year to really come up with some real specific plans as to how we address this. >> Couple other things. So, we've had a 25% drop in community service this past year from any again. >> Yeah, that that's a metric I that's one of those ones where I hesitate to even put the numbers on there. So at I don't we use passport for good to track community service but some organ some of the kids once they reach their >> pig hours whatever >> their pig hours they stop putting them

099on there um some of our other clubs we used to have all of our clubs and athletics kind of put their stuff in there too so the number I think was I don't I don't want to say artificially higher but there's more stuff in there now a lot more are just relying on their Google classroom to kind of make sure kids are checking in checking out and going to events so the number I I don't think the community services dropped by any means. I think it's just the reporting mechanism. Yeah. >> If you were going to tell us what the top two or three things you're hoping to change, make big changes this coming year would be, what would that be? >> I think to put some real systems in place um to for attendance

100and to improve those attendance rates uh specifically at the elementary level. Um I think would be important. And then how do we how do we start seeing some progress in closing the achievement gaps for our special ed kids and our economically disadvantaged kids? I I think that that's you're not going to see huge changes in that in one year, but I think putting some of the plans in place through our district MTSS work can can help. And some of those same kids are also the kids who are absent. >> Right. So now you've got you're not here and the gap just gets bigger and bigger. So those are I would say those would be my two big areas. >> Holly, put those two things on the agenda for September 2026, please. >> Any other questions

101for doing? >> Thank you very much. Thanks. Next on the agenda is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item. If we have any visitors who would like to address the board on an agenda item, now would be the time to come to the microphone. Uh, next item six, action items. A, finance action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following finance action items one through three. >> So moved. >> Second. Any discussion? >> Yes, a question. >> Yes. >> Um, I'm just wondering, um, I think this this question is for John. Could you speak a little bit to the increase for food service and where where we expect that to be coming from? >> Sure, absolutely. Back in February when the um budget was being presented,

102we were basing that budget specifically for food service as food service had functioned in the past. Universal free meals was proposed by the governor. We weren't quite sure if it was going to be adopted by the legislature. Ultimately, it was, but our budget was put to bed earlier and sooner than that official action took place. So Claire has been working over the course of the summer looking at what the reimbursement rates are going to be, what she anticipates the preparation of additional meals will be based on estimated volume back when meals were free back in 2021 and realizing that we will need some additional appropriation authority to make that happen. Uh that $250,000 increase is really associated with food product, food supplies, paper goods, and the like. Anticipating the increased volume. We do anticipate that

103that additional appropriation authority will be offset with either federal and or state dollars. Uh, but I do want to highlight that because just because meals are free to students and families, the preparation and provision of those meals may not necessarily be free for the district. So, we took a very conservative approach in terms of I think the $250,000 and additional appropriation authority will be sufficient to meet our needs. If it's not, I will certainly keep the board apprised and come back for additional amendments if so necessary. But we did leave the general fund subsidy at that $250,000 because we're not still quite sure. We haven't even served our first meal yet in terms of what any general fund contribution may be needed for uh the food service fund. But again, we're watching that very very

104closely. If I can just if that answers your question. >> It does. I have one followup. Please go. Uh, I just wanted to take a moment to thank both Claire Greing, our food service director, and Nick and Sonia, our uh, facil director of facilities. Over the course of the summer, there was a lot of work done. Uh, we put in a new high school freezer, uh, about,300 cubic feet at a cost of roughly $52,000, as well as some additional storage for dry goods and uh, non-p perishables. also on the high school doing some coordination with O andM staff in terms of how do we get meals to the various elementary schools anticipating that higher volume working with the kitchen staff. Okay, where can we do some additional prep? Where can we keep some food uh

105warm while kids are working through those additional costs that we incurred over the course of the summer? There's not a reimbursement mechanism for that. Um hopefully at the end of the day when we look at our federal and state reimbursement mechanisms for the provision of universal free meals that'll take a little bit of the bite out of out of those costs. But presently that was roughly almost $70,000 out of pocket the district needed to invest for purposes of rolling out universal free meals. >> Got it. Thank you. Uh and yeah, thank you. That's I know I know this is a lot of work and that's kind of my my follow on. And I'll just take the opportunity to say that it seems as though there would there's the potential for the additional staffing costs as

106well as this gets rolled out if we need more actual people to support with with bringing this to students and just to another invitation to keep in touch. >> Yep. Our goal presently is to work within the existing staffing con uh construct as it is. Um that being said, we may have to do more of a rotational basis depending on where volume is. We're not quite sure. one elementary school may be more or less compared to another. So that staffing assignment um may need to be somewhat flexible both for the department as well as staffing in terms of meeting that anticipated or um actual volume in need as it as it presents itself. >> Great. Thank you. Thank you. >> One thing sure >> this is there's an odd line in the revenue for the

107month which is this unexpected revenue from a a premium on band. Yep. >> What are we banning? >> So premium uh bans stand for your bond anticipation notes. >> Ah thank you. >> At times those individuals that are willing to lend the district debt service they give sort of a premium on that opportunity to >> um give you money your interest rate. So >> uh all in favor >> I any opposed? >> Any abstensions? That carries. Um B, professional personnel action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following professional personnel action items one through 19. So move >> second. Any discussion? All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? That carries. And C, support personnel action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of

108education approve the following support staff action items 1 through 19. So move >> second. >> Any discussion? >> Just do we need fewer bus attendants? That seems to be the conclusion here just because few less ridership. >> No. Um bus attendants are designated by students IEPs. >> And so there were less. >> Thank y. >> Uh all in favor? >> I. Um any opposed? Any abstensions? That carries. D. Other action items. It is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following action items one and two. >> So moved. >> Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? That carries. Item seven, recognition of public comment on a non-aggenda item. Um, if we have any visitors who would like to address the board on a non-aggenda item, now would

109be the time to come to the microphone. Item eight, future meetings and events. Um, tomorrow, as mentioned, is our first day of school. Um, then Wednesday of next week, September 10th at 6 o'clock is our board retreat. Um, our next regularly scheduled board meeting is on Wednesday, September 17th, here at the high school. I'm anticipating executive session at 6 and reconvening to open session at 7. And then the meeting after that on Wednesday, October 8th, um is scheduled to be at Slingerlands Elementary School um and again anticipating executive session at 6:00 and reconvening to open session at 7. >> Um I think the 17th meeting is in a different not at the high school >> Wednesday the 17th. >> Yeah, Britney is that sorry I was having that same thought as that was said. I

110don't have the spreadsheet right now, but I will confirm. >> Okay. >> Yeah, if you could check on that and send us multiple reminders so we don't go to the wrong place. Um, which sometimes we do even when we send them. So, seeing no need to go back into executive session, could I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? >> So, moved. >> Second. >> Uh, all in favor? I. Meeting adjourned.