BCSD Board of Education meting 3/5/2025

001e e e um if we could reconvene our meeting to open session the board has been in executive session since 6 o' to discuss a legal matter two student matters and a contractual matter we could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of flag of the United States of America stand indivisible Justice for All introductions da first Bob laen John Walston Jody Monroe Holly D MCN Catherine Nat John mcflips um do we have any pig or Supa students visiting tonight welcome thanks for coming guys um you guys need to stay until 9 o' or the meeting is over whichever one comes first and don't leave without signing out on one of the sheets that are up here um so that way you get credit for being here first up is our approval of minutes

002it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the minutes from the February 26th 2025 regular board meeting so moved second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that passes item three meeting reports uh a our superintendent report sure uh thank you uh so the first thing I'd like to share is that uh Dave and I intended the New York State Council of school superintendence winter Institute um over the weekend and then Monday and Tuesday there were sessions that focus on funding curriculum uh the Blue Ribbon commission and the forit of a graduate it various other topics over the 3 days uh during the closing session yesterday Darnell Douglas who's one of our high school counselors was recognized and was awarded one of their scholarships uh he was awarded

003the Mary barter scholarships and she was an uh educational leader during a time when few women held the title of superintendent uh the scholarship was initiated to inspire and promote more diversity for those interested in the field of educational leadership so uh congrats to to Darnell uh and next I'd like to let uh some of our students so you guys won't be here next year but maybe you can pass it on to other students that we are holding an interest meeting for any students who are interested in becoming a student rep on the board of education um we're seeking high school students who may be interested in serving on the board as a representative of the student body in the 2025 26 school years uh Mr doml and I and Holly is going to be

004attending um an interest meeting for students entering grades 11 or 12 um about being on the board and that will be held on Tuesday March 11th at 2:15 in this room we'll be providing information such as what the requirements are for serving as a student member an overview of the responsibilities and the application and selection process so hopefully all the students and families should have received information about that interest meeting and there there will be a student member and an alternate uh they must have attended the high school in the district for at least one year prior to selection so uh that is my report for tonight thanks um anybody have questions for just okay uh next up is our um board report and the one thing I just wanted to mention I wanted to

005congratulate um our Odyssey of the Mind teams that all participated in the the regional comp competition um I believe um four of them placed first and two placed second and so there are six teams going on to the state competition um so congratulations to and all her Odyssey people anybody have anything else um next are student reports do we have anyone here from student Senate um and do we have anybody here from The Middle school I don't think so but just checking okay so we'll move on to our presentation this evening um and we're going to continue with our budget presentation and this evening we are talking about um our Athletics and our instructional programs and special education good evening this is the second presentation for the 2526 uh Bethlehem Central School District budget what

006I'll start with is a quick overview in recap from where we started and ended from our February 26 meeting the presentation tonight is a little bit more structured than um our last presentation only because some of the information we talked about uh last Wednesday has been finalized and um ironed out a little bit more a summary of the budget of revenues for 2526 presently for 26 the budget assumes a flat tax levy of roughly $ 73.1 million the tax cap allows for a 1.12% increase given some of the recent changes associated with the pscg pilot I left the $163,000 in this slide only because I'm I'm showing where we are where we were and where we're going you'll see an increase in state aid of roughly 759 ,000 that a large bulk of that is

007associated with Foundation Aid under the governor's executive proposal Foundation Aid increases by at least a minimum of 2% which for Bethlehem translates to roughly $385,000 for 2526 uh much of the other revenue streams there there were some UPS there were some downs but more or less outside of foundation Aid those revenue streams were relatively flat other Revenue Ed roughly $3.7 million I do want to highlight uh under that other Revenue Source our interest in earnings on investment is associated with that Revenue stream that's roughly $1.7 million that is based on our forecast of our cash balances and interest rates as they are now if there are changes in the FED funds rate uh moving forward uh those interest earnings May fluctuate and will accommodate accordingly over the course of the over the fiscal year overall

008the uh revenue is $11.2 million roughly a decrease of $29 million or 25% that's where we ended our presentation last Wednesday a summary of the Appropriations by category uh last week we spoke about the administrative category the transportation category and operations and maintenance as well as technology fringe benefits and Debt Service all in all over the course of the budget development process the business office worked with various department heads and divisions to try to bring into line Appropriations from one year to the next based on past expenditure Trends and forecasting given some of the revenue challenges we were anticipating at the time the two areas I want to highlight in terms of cost uh increase or decrease particularly is fringe benefits you'll see a um a significant increase in that category that's really tied to

009the anticipated increase in the district's Hospital medical cost which is expected to grow by approximately 115% as well as the district's pharmaceutical spend which given current forecasting will be somewhere between 17 and 20% given sum of utilization of high cost drugs one positive decrease is in The Debt Service category rough a million and a half decrease in there based on some strategic decisions on uh short and long-term financing for various capital projects overall the total expense uh increased from roughly $114 million to roughly $17.5 million when we ended last Wednesday uh the initial gap between expenditures and revenue was roughly $6.3 million over the course of the presentations there were some additions there were some deletions I'll go over those very very quickly on the administrative category there was an increase of approximately $41,000 associated

010with the human resources um digitization of employee records that's a phase two of a two-phase process uh for scanning and making sure that all employee records are no longer in paper format and that there will actually be an electronic digital record for all uh existing employees on the transportation side roughly a $489,000 decrease there was a uh $23,000 proposed addition associated with charge management software for the district's EV bus fleet that will ensure that charges are maintained at the appropriate level um that we can maximize charging capacity as well as ensuring that we're charging buses at the off peak uh not and not on On Demand Time over the course of the year as well as the reduction of five full-time drivers and three bus attendants those positions are currently vacant uh they have been

011vacant for for several years given the supply shortage and the overall demand for drivers and attendance uh in the transportation market and speaking with Ellen Dorado our director of Transportation she was comfortable in reducing those uh drivers given the current routes and Staffing she has on the technology department roughly a $295,000 decrease associated with um the retirement of a data web architect uh roughly $175,000 for the end of a purchasing agreement through Capital Region bosis and a library service at approximately $10,000 operations and maintenance there was an addition of $5,000 for the district's Green Team initiative as well as a net salary change associated with a retirement that will be replaced with a different title position at a lower starting salary when we ended uh last Fe um on February 26 that gap of initial

012gap of 6.3 was uh reduced to $5.5 million but that's still translated into a tax levy increase of roughly 7.6% the PS pilot now known as the gb2 uh pilot was approved by the Ida on Wednesday February 26 which was good news for the district it provided uh an an additional three and A5 Million worth of pilot Revenue which was not anticipated this time last year we anticipated that the pilot was going to come to to an end there was a a an additional one-year extension providing for the same terms and conditions it's anticipated that there's ongoing negotiations between both the Ida and the pilot for consideration of perhaps a future pilot moving forward th this slide provides a brief timeline of the PSG pilot and its relation to tax roll and um pilot payments

013before 2002 it was on the tax roll and provided roughly 5.2 million in tax revenue in 2002 a pilot agreement was entered into between PS in the various taxing jurisdictions within both the county and uh the town of Bethlehem which translated to roughly $65 Million worth of pilot payment and um tax um how do want say this tax relief for for taxpayers 2024 the pilot was extended for one additional year at roughly $3.7 million that $3.7 million is actually the combination of both the districts and the Bethlehem Public Library share Bethlehem Public Library gets roughly $200,000 of that $3.7 million in 2025 the pilot was extended for an additional one-year term same terms and conditions three .7 million of which the district will see roughly three and a half the relation of the pilot and

014taxes sort of work hand in hand this slide presents a a quick summary of what the tax levy increase could be under the tax cap law compared to what the actual adopted tax levy increase was based on what the board adopted in the voters within the school district ultimately adopted so in 2324 the tax levy increase could have been uh almost 3.1% board approved a 2.3% tax increase which um left roughly $35,000 in untaxed Authority um resulting in uh taxpayer savings 2425 the the budget that we're in roughly a 4.2% allowable tax increase the adopted tax levy increase was 3.25% leaving $634,000 in untaxed Authority when we started the uh budget process last week because the pilot payment was an unknown at that point in time the allowable tax levy increase was anticipated to be

015roughly 5.8% however because a new Revenue stream that's associated with tax revenue uh came onto uh the the district's budget for 2526 the allowable tax increase now is 1.12% that translates to an additional tax levy dollar value of roughly $820,000 as we move forward through the other prog uh the other presentations and the other budget discussions and meetings we'll have additional conversations in terms of what tax levy the board is comfortable presenting towards the voters and these next three you know below three columns what will uh take shape my esteemed colleague Len keys will now present Athletics thank you sir good evening everyone um it's a pleasure to uh talk about the 2526 school year before that though I just wanted to kind of go over a few things uh since the last time we

016spoke and and I had the opportunity to present a budget to you uh we've had two state championships in the last couple Seasons uh we've had additional final four appearances um thanks to your support and the community support we hosted the class AAA and Class C boy soccer finals and sub regionals to incredible accolades from the community both locally as well as as Statewide um we held inaugural seasons for our girls flag football programs as well as our unified Bachi this past fall and last June we were we earned the uh School of academic distinction uh awards from the New York State Public High School Athletic Association which me 90% of our teams were scholar athlete teams for the year so a really wonderful wonderful year never use this I think it's just the middle

017okay so just uh before we start just to kind of show you uh the bread and depth of our Athletic program we have a total of 79 in Scholastic athletic teams 36 our varsity teams and that does include our three unified programs bachchi in the fall bowling in the winter and basketball in the spring 16 junior varsity teams Four Freshman teams and 23 three modified level teams the modified levels some are simply sth and eighth grade some are 7th 8th and 9th grade here you see a a side by-side comparison between the 24 25 school year and of course next year uh we have an increase which our collective bargaining contracts in our coaching stiens chaperon our trainer our equipment you see is is $5,000 that reason you see a large decrease was we did

018have to move during the course of the school year money from other accounts into equipment to purchase items that were needed our officials fees security which is our police uh Presence at evening contests as well as uh varsity football boys and girls basketball things of that nature um and other so I want to kind of show you what some of the others are in a moment I'll get to that on the next slide and then we have a decrease in our Bose's Bose would be programs such as family ID where we do all our registration uh each season by our by our families as well as schedule Galaxy which is the scheduling system used by section 2 and the Suburban Council our supplies are really consumables kind of the basics balls and Nets and all

019the typical stuff that we go through our uniforms as well so overall you see a total of 865425 so when referred in that previous slide to other some of the the key other program expenditures would be our officials fees we are invoiced three times a year by section two our ice rental fees for our ice hockey program over at the Bethlehem YMCA our entry fees would be all of our invitationals cheer competitions boys and girls wrestling boys and girls cross country boys and girls track and Fields gymnastics things of that nature our lifeguarding fees obviously we're obligated to have a lifeguard on Deck our police coverage and then equipment reconditioning we are mandated to recondition football helmets at all levels each year again just kind of just further breaks down uh the size and scope

020of our inter Scholastic Athletic program we have 18 girls programs 15 boys programs and four co-educational goed programs are the three Unified sports along with our modified swim and dive that's boys and girls total of 133 coaches that are Board of Education uh they're all Board of Education appointed but I should say contracted through our teachers contract 13 program assistant coaches which are funded by our booster clubs and 14 coaches that are purely volunteer uh and then you can see our breakdown fall is our busiest season with 33 of the 79 teams followed by winter is 22 and then spring which starts up March 17th hopefully we won't have too much snow ice out there our our only additions that we're hoping to to get this year would be improvements to our athletic training room

021uh we were able to with Mr dol's uh assistance move our athletic trainer Kate rville who does an incredible job for all our programs out of a very tiny room where she was servicing anywhere between 15 and 25 athletes prior to practices and competitions to a classroom where we have training tables we have electric stem that was donated um and these are our two asks uh an ergometer which helps with post injury Rehabilitation for upper body injuries as well as a uh taping table uh so she can tape athletes ankles and whatnot so those are our two our two asks questions B yeah thanks Len I you guys had a great year this year so congratulations to you and to the athletes obviously um I saw a pretty big jump in that officials and other

022thing it looked like almost $50,000 can you just sort of touch on sure absolutely so officials fees are collectively bargained they received a pretty big increase that's across the board uh you have to remember we also have added extra teams now uh we have of girls varsity wrestling now uh flag football uh girls golf those also add fees also section two has changed the structure of their pricing it used to be a fixed amount of money per team whether you were a larger School such as us or a small school like neighboring voreville so now it's we're build per varsity team per junior varsity team per modified team and that's responsible for about a $6,000 increase Alone um um our huddle programs which I know you're famili familiar with huddle has jumped probably about $55,000

023by adding uh the second camera outside at the turf Stadium uh along with more memory so more and more coaches are using huddle which is obviously a great thing I I know your kids are familiar with it um for those who don't know huddle programming is our uh our video program so we have our camera systems in Jim B for boys and girls basketball boys and girls volleball as well as the football stadium and our turf stadium so those we have the ability to live stream but even uh equally important is our student athletes are being uh given cups so we're able to do scouting we're able to better prepare them for competition um more and more coaches are using it which means we need more and more memory and they kind of tack on

024different things like that um and then we actually have a meeting coming up tomorrow to try to kind of reel in a little bit of the Invitational fees and dues that have been you know competitions that used to be in the neighborhood of$ 250 $275 are now jumping up to 4450 uh so we're going to kind of try to reel that back to a a a consistent flat price thank you you're welcome you you had a question yeah a couple um you got $9,000 increase in salaries that's without any additional positions correct yeah that's just cont that's we also use if you saw there was also uh chaperon how do I go backwards oh maybe it's the button that says left yeah yeah that is coaches chaperon and the athletic trainer so coaches athletic trainer

025those are obviously contracted positions we have a contracted rate for our chaperon and we did indeed have an increase in in the amount of chaperon that we used obviously we had a a very U interesting fall here what what occurred so we had always had chapon on at bigger attended events but we felt the need to have school official Presence at at all our competitions and contests certainly uh especially at that time where there was a lot of sensitivity to having um a school Personnel around to know where exits were and things of that nature you'll break down the you know other official speed security other total you get is 260 but the breakdown only totals for 158 that's not because it doesn't include all of the others uh it could be items let's see

026what else ah that would be League section NIS foru Greens fees bowling alley fees um tournament fees as I mentioned those would be those would be those items probably useful have detail break sure I can we can do that for you in the future um you know you've seen that pretty much every other area is trying to have a decrease and find some savings you're asking for increase if you had to cut where would you cut probably uniforms if I absolutely had to uh that would probably be some Cuts uh potentially we could reduce the amount of invitationals and tournaments that our athletes attend um I mean certainly I wouldn't be comfortable in reducing police presence and things of that nature equipment reconditioning is a mandate so probably maybe maybe some supplies um of course

027as of course you know everything is increasing in cost so the cost of doing business is just naturally increasing just simple things like you know a soccer ball is is going up 20% do you have any this year uh from a coaching standpoint not really not really none that that are are coaching at high level high cost positions thank you thanks oh hold on Catherine just thought of something just while you're here sorry um flag football girls flag football I saw that um that is we've got that at Varsity level is there just what this is not directly a budgetary question but ties in I'm sure somehow um is there any conversation of having um JV or modified within the um within Suburban Council or does it seem like Varsity is where we are both

028no I mean for for right now we're still growing it yeah uh we are you know we're always monitoring the family ID registrations and we see a nice increase this year I was going to say it just went out right it's a spring we started yeah a couple weeks ago we had signups have started and uh we see a nice increase we were a little apprehensive because we were worried that it might take away from softball registration or girls lacrosse or girls track and field registrations and it actually hasn't in fact the participation amounts are are still increasing even though our enrollment is overall has been on the decrease and to decline and we might be falling from a double A to a class A in certain Sports um our numbers have never been higher

029in fact softball I've been worried about many of you have heard me talking about softball over the years with the decline our softball signups and interest meetings are up almost 50% so we're expecting good numbers again we haven't been able to field regularly both a modified 78 and a modified N9 we we're going to comfortably be able to do both of those this fall um and then we're hoping that will also translate next fall because we've been struggling to get both modified girl soccer programs but we have a couple of good uh really strong youth groups that are are starting to gain some momentum uh and our new coaching staff is is is new Young enthusiastic and and they're also kind of drawing more interest so our participation numbers do you see that as like

030students who are already um maybe they're doing a Spring sport are they now picking up a fall sport as well or do you see or does it seem as though we have more students gravitating toward what it is more students are playing so last year we only lost two students that had previously been on a varsity team in flag football and these were kids that were much happier playing you know uh at the new in the new sport because it allowed them to kind of assert themselves and Leadership roles we didn't have a ton of Veteran Varsity athletes yeah uh so we're actually getting new kids now that's really cool thank you all right thank you sorry and thanks for the last minute question okay I'm up next with the instructional program um so just

031a couple different ways to break down the same sets of numbers the first is just um overall expenditures by departments um you can see about a $2.4 million increase here couple items to note um the supervisor number dropped quite a bit um that's because of a reclassification of a supervisor that is now um title the director so that appears in the administrative line so that's where the shift is there the other areas um actually remain uh fairly flat um but that was a sort of a noticeable difference and then again the main instructional program line those are salar so that's um contractually obligations which you'll see on um this slide here that you know salaries increased by just over $2 million um equipment remained flat Bose Services um obviously their fees go up every year

032but we're also trying to leverage more and more of their services each year because we do get reimbursement on those Services um so for instance um the software program that we use um for our mtss program um called EDG climber this year um we purchased that through Federal grant funding next year we're shifting that over to bosei services for two reasons one there's sort of uncertainty surrounding some of our title funding um but more importantly by using Bosey service um we're able to get approximately 60% reimbursement um after year 1 um and then other operating cost supplies you see a slight decrease there so again overall $2.4 million um the bulk of that being salaries here's another breakdown of those same salary numbers sort of where they fall and again supervisors and support staff that

033number has a decrease of year but the principals and support staff has an increase which is why you see a little bit of an adjustment there but all of these are contractually obligated numbers our enrollment plays a large part in our staffing decisions as you know um so we monitor that very very closely at this time of the year um similar to last year we're experiencing sort of challenges with our kindergarten registration um our numbers are about 40 to 60 students below what we anticipated so we're still sort of in the the waiting game in terms of the number of teachers we're going to need at each section so tonight I'm really only going to be able to propose Things based on what we know grades 1 through five cuz those are stable um but

034we are going to be reducing a section of second grade um at Slingerlands next year um bringing their total number of teachers in the k 2 space down to nine um and you can see that our their enrollment in slingerland at that K2 levels dropped 44 students at this point um and overall on the primary grades we have a 70 student decrease um but you can also see that you know maintaining very very healthy class size numbers which is extremely important at the primary level the intermediate level um Glenmont we have a shift basically um we had a large grade three cohort this year that's moving to fourth grade so we're reducing a section of third grade and moving it up to fourth grade with that cohort and next year you'll see that fourth grade

035will get reduced and it'll move up to fifth right that's just following that cohort along um Hamil has a um a decrease need in fourth grade so we have another reduction there um again overall three through five 11 student decrease um again maintaining really really healthy class sizes at about 20 students per Classroom middle school and high school middle school slight uptick 24 students overall um but you can see sixth grade slight decrease seventh grade that's again just that sixth grade cohort sort of moving up and growing slightly um eighth grade's pretty stable High School same sort of picture um pretty stable enroll um grade 11 is sort of that bubble that'll eventually phase out and we'll have more class sizes you know in that 310 range um and then until that seventh grade comes

036up and then we'll have another like sort of bubble class um so healthy enrollment at the middle school and high school um middle school or High School the class um request and um scheduling process is really just getting um finalized at this point so it's hard to know where um we're going to have be able to have some um teacher movement there so in two weeks I anticipate being able to come back and offer more information in terms of Staffing at the the high school level based on course enrollment as you know we have a number of retirements um but it's still too early to tell which of those retirements we're going to need to replace in whole um or not just until we get a better look at the scheduling so I'll be back

037with an update in two weeks on that piece of things um so in terms of additions um as you know with the science of reading um we had several presentations on this um we had one a couple months ago on bookworms um the ELA cabinet did meet and adopt that um we've been able to we have our pilot groups that are already sort of fully implemented but we have the rest of our grades um in classrooms that need to be um fully implemented we are using some of this year's funds to kind of get that kick started especially on the teacher material end of things so that we have teacher materials in students hands now so they have between now and the beginning of school year next year to be trained so we are um

038front purchasing some of those items we're also trying to front purchase some of the the books themselves so that next year the lift isn't quite as heavy um so we will be able to fully complete all the implementation of bookworms next year um through this the rest of the items um arts and education this is a service through Bose's similar idea it allows us to purchase guest speakers to come in here or if some field trips external um but by purchasing them through bosis we get a reimbursement the following year so there's a savings there um Bose Library services this is one of if you recall from ain's presentation this was one of her reductions was on the library service side so this is just sort of a shift on sort of who's paying for

039it so it's it it was a deletion on her side and ad on my side so it's sort of a wash um and you'll see one more um piece on the Del letion side which is now embedded within this number which is the reason we then have a bunch of clubs at the middle and high school um that have finally gone through the sort of trial process um with a volunteer they have solid enrollment um they meet re on a regular basis so the principles have recommended that these be added to the paid stiens so overall about $100,000 worth of additions and in terms of reductions right now again I can only offer the two classroom teachers that I showed at the elementary level but I do anticipate at the next meeting I will have

040more um at the secondary level um it's just we don't have firm enough numbers yet from the registration process to know but also I want to emphasize that all of these reductions are being done through retirements we're not um laying off staff so and then the Bose Library coordinat like I said this $10,000 is wrapped into the addition back here it's just a new way of sort of um structuring that service the way bosis is doing it it used to be sort of two separate things one was techn on the technology side even though it was Library the coordinator piece was on the academic side they've now just bundled it into one service um on the academic side so all told um $100,000 of additions with 217,000 of reductions yields a net decrease of 116

041um and I anticipate that net decrease to be um you know even more next meeting but it's hard to know at this point how much more so before I turn over to Doug questions uh thank you I just want wanted to thank you for clarifying about the um the reductions I know that's a question that comes up uh from the community every year is there's concern that that means that somebody is um is losing their position but that they're coming from out of retirements or right I mean we're fortunate not fortunate depending on which side of you look at but it in terms of with our enrollment decline we have each year teachers retiring which helps us um you know not have to fill those positions without impacting people right but on the flip side

042we're losing really really great people right so yeah sure cther on the library side of the budget on your uh additions never mind please I just answered my own question there the other um sorry the other question I had was um field trips where do where do those live in the budget you so we have they're considered enrichment funds um so if you look at the oh here we go um other operating costs and supplies a large chunk of that is supplies but that's also where our enrichment funds lives that's where our funds for um some of our extracurricular enrichment activities lives um like so supplies some of the big ticket items are art supplies Elementary classroom supplies music supplies um but those are kind of the big ticket items are this that's where the

043field chips live those and those other costs got it and those are done on a per pupation by building so every building based on the number of students they have has a per pupil allocation for enrichment funds and we if you recall last year we increased that amount for each of the buildings right and then just on a question um excuse me for um for field trips and the like what's the and and we don't have to answer this right now because it's there's a budget tie in but it's not direct if I know we talked about fi trips at a specific um presentation earlier this year but if it's quick remind me tonight and if not another time um how teachers apply for and how those determinations um to approve and all that yeah

044I mean at the elementary level they're done through the principal secondary level are typically through a combination of supervisor principle um yeah but it's sort of yeah there's just an approval process you sure um I enjoyed the bookr presentation earlier in the year was glad to see the funding for that one thing that wasn't I didn't see we talked about adding Elementary level foreign language instruction is that included in this budget no we didn't talk we talked about it as as one of the options that has been explored but no formal proposal from any of our staff has come forth in terms of adding that so the presentation we had from the foreign language folks seemed enthusiastic about that they haven't followed it up no were there any other programs or suggestions that weren't included

045for funding reasons um no so we actually had a um and this kind of goes back to PL positions um that we're placing or not um based on enrollment SLC course selection um we actually at the elementary level Jody and I met with all of the building reps from the different buildings knowing that it was a tight um budget year and ask them where their priorities lie um so in order in other words if we were to add positions obviously we're gonna have to make adjustments elsewhere and their top priority was to maintain small class sizes they felt that adding other adding in other areas be it for pullout Services be it for coaching additional coaching opportunities they felt that having the small class sizes where they can work with fewer students and better differentiate

046what they're doing far outweigh any other notion of a um an addition so at this point they they did not feel like it was worth advocating for an addition and that's all levels elementary middle and high well middle and high is all enrollment base essentially um so um in terms of course selection the middle school is the we're 15 sections across each grade level so the Staffing levels there remain flat from year to year um we reduced that the sizes of the houses probably I don't know 8 10 years ago now um and since then we've maintained 15 sections across I don't anticipate that changing at the high school it's all elective based that's typically where you run it like cuz students are mandated to take certain courses 912 it's the electives that really Drive

047what happens with some of the other Staffing decisions no new elective programs well we added four new math classes in data science and um um there some changes there was some new um art electives there was some new English electives that replace some old ones that's all budget neutral all bug neutral right I well I say that now until course selection comes through if you know if typically we have 90 students in art electives and next year we have 200 sign up we're obviously going to have to Art an art right we're going to have to an art teacher yeah sorry I figured out my library question um before if the slide K12 instructural program expenditure Overture overview by Department the it looks like um darn it that's still the wrong one sorry give me

048one second sure thank you I'm scrolling through slides too fast salary and position information that's where I'm looking sorry about that that one look looks like a decrease in library staff from last year to the coming year and I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit or Library staff allocation at least that yeah that's we had a we paid somebody on site which now that's being rolled into bosies right and we also had last year um we had a librarian it was with us last year um resign last year and the person we brought on this year which would continue to next year is at a lower salary so that also plays an impact there thank you for thank you yep we did not reduce Library staff is that's where you're

049going yeah I I figured you would have highlighted it if that was the case wanted to make sure I understood thank you John you a question just question on uh home instruction yes what is that what is that in so that's when students are have um medical reasons why they cannot be in school um so some examples from this year we have students that are out say um they have to to leave the area for a surgery and then when they come back there's a recovery period while they're out we have to provide for the secondary level 15 hours of tutoring a week and at the elementary level 10 hours of tutoring a week and there two different lines one one's just related to like all the overall expenses and the one's just more salary

050or uh there's one that's 40,500 there's one that's uh 15,000 on the same salary positions is 15 and W up by department so it's 40,500 that I would have to check when we look here by Department oh yeah I will have to check with the business office on that discrepancy but that's what it's for yeah not sure why those numbers differ thank but John and I can look into that for sure you and did you have another question thank you okay thank you I'll be back when Doug is finished we've only looked at those good evening from the world of student Support Services before I talk about our budget needs I wanted to take just one moment on a on a personal note to thank you all again you might remember I've only been here

051since October and uh it's been a great transition you have a wonderful team here in the school district who have been nothing but supportive and and welcoming and even the members of the community the general Community met uh have been it's been a great experience so thank you for the opportunity student Support Services covers a number of areas uh you won't be surprised to know that special education financially is the largest of those it also includes our inclusive uh Services programs our counseling Social Work nursing and our Psychological Services so we're going to talk about each of those on some level right now this is the 50,000 foot view of our budget uh both current year and proposed for next year uh as I mentioned special education is the largest uh portion of that our

052increased request there is current year $12.5 million requesting uh just under $13.5 million next year in the inclusive practices area a slight increase of about $4,000 in in our need there counseling social work and nurses you'll see a dip there uh later in in the reduction area you'll notice uh that we're proposing not replacing and retiring social worker that explains that reduction uh Psychological Services are our eight school psychology we have working around the district and the increase there is largely salary based um with an increase from 586 th000 to 594 th000 and you can see the commensurate totals there uh total requests for next year 18,300 I'm sorry 18 million I wish it was 18,000 $18,300 th000 breaking that down a little bit farther again no surprise salary drives so much of what we

053do um increase in salaries uh from current year 12.9 million to next year 13.2 million I'm going to jump down on the chart uh to talk about operating uh costs and supplies because salaries and operating costs and supplies cover all those areas I mentioned before the two areas in the middle or specific to special EDS so I'll I'll break those out separately uh here we we're asking uh for a little bit less money next year trying to tighten our belts these are things like uh basic pencils papers Staples you know in our offices to uh some curricular supplies that teachers may need things in that nature and so we're going to try and do a little more with a little less next year bosei Services uh in this context speak to tuition and fees for

054students to attend bosis programs we work with three different bosis right now capital region bosis Questar bosis which is across a river in renier in Columbia counties and to the north we have two students attending uh war in Washington Saratoga I think there's about 15 counties attached to this bosis uh but it's house right in Saratoga uh and so we're anticipating a significant increase there uh we uh sometimes don't even find out about their fee increases till after the budget process so we're we're anticipating an increase there tuition paid to other schools in this context is specifically special education schools uh you may be familiar with some of these locally uh the Wildwood programs in Rotterdam the Langan school affiliated with the center for disability services in Aly and we work with several others as

055well uh so the total increase overall $869,500 increase year-over-year salaries being the largest part we'll break that out a little bit and talk about that we have 37 special education teachers working uh with everyone from kindergarteners right through uh students who are almost 22 years old uh we keeping that number stable next year but due to as you probably know better than me contractual obligations that increase goes from just over 3 million to 3 million and about 150,000 next year we employ a variety of AIDS to students at disabilities in all our schools uh we are PL current year uh have budgeted for 75 of those in fact we're employing about I think the number is 63 right now we're still in our annual review process where we plan on what students with disabilities need

056for next year and that's where a lot of that gets sorted out so we're not changing that uh request for next year um but again due to the increase in salar that uh need would go up to about $2.5 million next year on the leadership side of the house there's a number of folks involved there myself um some folks who are with us here tonight my assistant director of special education Laura Rosa two of our csse chairs Laura Bronson Dena Sanders both here tonight and we do have a third position that's remained unfilled throughout this whole year and we hope to fill that for the fall we have our director of M TSS Jen Spa director of counseling Kristen Connor and coordinator of inclusive practices Allan godson uh all those are included there uh with

057an increase from 745,000 to 787 th000 dou can I interject just for one moment for the board on the AIDS uh to uh students with disabilities as Doug mentioned they in 2425 there are 80 positions budgeted when we did and the business office migrated positions over into the 2526 budget there were five AIDs that were filled earlier in the year but had done some transitioning we had three AIDs that had retired over midyear which was someone out of the ordinary we had one Aid that actually transferred to a teaching position and we had another Aid that transferred to a long-term sub position on the business office side we inactivate those positions when those transfers occur when we when the data was migrated those inactives did not become active so the budget total that we're presenting

058today incorporate that reduction from 80 to 75 usually those reductions are presented as a standalone reduction to for the board to consider so I just wanted to highlight that because of the data migration issue that reduction is already incorporated into the budget so I that was just sort of a full disclosure um item for for your consideration and also the board has to authorize the abolishment of those five positions so we'll put that on a future agenda item just so it's official that they're actually officially abolished since because otherwise technically they should have been abolished before but this was caught now so it'll be on a future agenda for you I'm sorry I'm just I'm just confused could you just run that back one more time sorry so 2 there were 80 budgeted Aid positions

059yeah in 2425 there was a transition of five aids for various reasons um retirements a a transfers to a teaching position and a transfer to a long-term sub they when that happens we inactivate that position on our sort of financial system that Financial system is used to roll over into the budget process need to be they didn't need to be rep be replaced I see but usually we would show the 80 for the board to consider that reduction from 80 to 75 but because of that issue that reduction is already baked in to the numbers that we're presenting I I just wanted to to put that out there because I don't want you to think that the business office was you know working outside its own mandate and authorization on that so apologize for for

060that issue it was fortunately it was caught when we were working on the presentation between business office and Doug and his team we didn't necessarily see it from the dollar value because you can see even year-to-year increase there's roughly a half million dollar increase in salaries associated with the tcis training um Initiative for AIDS so usually you do that sanity check in terms of year-to-year numbers and it just didn't pop out because of the increase in general to begin with wonderful I appreciate thanks for taking the time currently we employ 11 speech therapists and you'll see a decrease here uh we will propose a reduction of one positioned on a future slide due to a retirement our occupational and physical therapist staff we have seven folks doing that work again an increase in their salaries

061from 556 to 579,000 our clerical team in our office uh is currently budgeted for four people and there is an increase there as well just based on salaries you're going to see the request to abolish one of those positions in a slide in just a moment our psychologist that's eight people on that team and again just basic salary increases from 583 to $591,000 we also set aside money every year for substitutes extra help overtime things of that nature we're going to cut back there a little bit as well try and tighten our belts a little bit and and uh as I mentioned before do a little more with a little less if we're uh able to do so and then health insurance buyouts right so the the total increase in salaries year-over-year 8.6 million this

062year $9.1 million next year the department also uh helps bring in a little bit of Revenue or reimbursement uh the largest amount there is from state aid uh high cost students who are typically out of District students but could be uh in District students as well we anticipate a little over a million dollars in state aid there if the cost to educate a student crosses a certain threshold we receive Aid on the difference between that threshold and what their total cost was so that's how that works uh Medicaid eligible Services we anticipate about $200,000 in Revenue there next year we receive this money for a select group of students the student has to be Medicaid eligible the parent has to give us permission to request the payment from the federal government and then only certain

063services are eligible for the reimbursement uh so we hope that'll be about $200,000 next year and then our our last area of reimbursement is from Albany County uh cpsc means the committee on preschool special education in New York state counties are responsible for funding that school districts are responsible for the management and Leadership of it so the county pays us for a portion of the the work that our team does there uh so that's a total of about $1.3 million in uh reimbursements or Revenue in the coming year several reductions we'd like to propose um we have one social worker Kim Panera retiring uh and one speech therapist Kathy cassado uh retiring both I think have had long have had long tenures in the school district as far as I know and in both cases

064we believe we can spread that Work Out Among the rest of those teams uh get a little creative with some of the scheduling on that and and folks pick up some a little bit of extra work and and we'll be able to handle that with uh one fewer person in each department or in each area and as I mentioned earlier we have four clerical positions in my office for about a year one of them has remained unfilled the person transferred out of it to a different position somewhere in the school district it's remain unfilled and we're doing pretty well without it I mean we keep our head above water so we we'd like to reduce that as well so that's a total in of just about $272,000 reductions for next year any questions yeah I

065want to talk um about the the the AIDS positions um I'm not I'm less interested in in the in where they appear and I'm sure John's doing a good job I'm just more concerned about the overall so it went dropped from 80 to 75 and I guess my question is is is that enough is is that enough to fulfill the new the needs of the student I think it's more than enough we only employ 63 people right now in that role so that's just the line is is is 75 and 63 is what you have okay thank you yes um I was curious if the um on the expenditure overview by type slide tuition paid to other schools um last year 1.7 this year 1.9 million is that linked and you might have said this

066I apologize if I didn't understand is that linked to the state aid for out of District placements yes it can it can be um typically those students are what you would consider high cost students uh if we're placing them out and so the more we pay the more we get back from the state and it's not a dollar for dooll uh reimbursement but yeah yes it is directly linked to to that amount of reimbursement and those are students whose needs were just unable to meet correct they either have very specific needs or uh they could be students who have uh you know s such a high level of need that we just can't do it in the public school setting uh schools like Wildwood I mentioned before you know they they're they exist to serve

067students with autism so a student with a high level of need will often refer to a place like that and that's one of those uh paid to other schools programs thank you just to Pig back on that topic um you know I just wanted to to make sure that um to say that you know kids who are um attending other schools you know we would like to be able to bring them back to our school if we can provide them the services that we need not only for budgetary reasons but also just because I think kids in our community you know should be able to be educated in our community if if we can provide that service for them so in the future if you feel that um there are things that you would want

068to request in order to be able to educate some of these students in our district I would just want to say you know please ask us for those let us know if you need things in order to be able to bring some of these kids back like we want to hear that well I appreciate that uh that would be a staffing issue right that's what it comes down to of course is is people um and and we are exploring those options really doing an in-depth study right now on what are we doing inhouse what might we be able to bring back um and hopefully a year from now we're having a conversation about that great I thank you and related to that it sounds like right now that you feel comfortable with not replacing the

069retiring social worker and speech position but obviously if you know we move forward if there's additional needs that are coming up we don't want the people that we currently have to be um overloaded with too much so if you need to come back thank you uh the greatest fear of any special ed director is a a family with 20 children all of whom have special needs moves to the district and and that's a type of thing that keeps me up at night so it's nice to know that uh that support would be there thank you you I was going to you I really appreciate what pretty clear effort to you put it tight in your belt a little right um I've seen that from several of the other areas we've had presentations on too I

070know Len has left it given that Athletics isn't doing that and is asking for an increase that kind of feels like the wrong set of priorities perhaps maybe sit down with Len again and see if you can also share some of the cuts we're going to make cuts um coule just a couple of notes or questions and notes um I I really you know I occupy one small corner of the community in the small corner of the community I I occupy though I hear about folks wanting and needing the support of social workers for their kids and wanting that extra support from their families as kids navigate um challenges that frankly didn't exist 20 years ago and as we work to serve a broad range of students that we are identifying with additional needs um

071I too appreciate the belt Ting and and I too am concerned about the students who are often asked to Bear disproportionate burdens being continued to ask to bear that either income or additional needs or anything else that they're you know those mountains are already climbing making it any harder by not having the support they need um in the staff is in my opinion the wrong way to go so that one person on a board I one corner of the community but I really wanted to lift that up that I'm concerned about that the same same thing on the subs line um what do you have a sense whoever the right person what the actual cost of Subs was last year Katherine why John's looking at that this both the speech and the social workers are

072both at the high school currently and with the enrollment Decline and we have added with that retirement we feel pretty confident that there's no issues with student coverage and getting resources we also have Saratoga center for the family so so your point on some of the more family issues we would would typically refer students for that service that's not really the role generally of just the school social workers they're more for day-to-day things at school uh but we do have the Saratoga Center for some of those things so I just wanted to make sure you were that those are high school positions and the the the smaller number of kids and looking at what the case loads have been the last couple of years it makes sense to not replace that position at this point

073I I I guess the question then is like if again being that my concern is based in kind of like disproportionate burdens right in another year when we weren't looking at belt tightening as much would we then say okay we've got a retirement we fill that we're able to support needs in other buildings we've got special teachers and we've got we've got social workers that go building to building so I mean this year I mean we were even regardless of the budget based on case load we would be not recommending to fill that position back okay sorry about yep thank you very much um so yeah we'll come back when we've got some numbers there um thank you any other questions thank you well thank you thanks Dr HSE get you to the right spot

074there um just one more sort of quick slide um that I present each year and I know John touched on this um at our last meeting um just to recap sort of where we are where our Federal grant funding and this is always on a a lag just because of the way it's reported um but we do have you know close to $2 million in federal expenditures um or federal reimbursements each year coming in um so reductions in this Aid obviously could have an impact um and within this sort of um bundle of money um we do have seven FTE tied up in there um we've done a lot over the last few years to move some FTE out of the title grants so for instance we used to fund some of our reading positions

075out of the title one grants I removed that probably five or six years ago um knowing that you can see that every year I mean our title funding overall on the 1234 is not that high to begin with we're at $250 million or $250,000 um you know so if we're it you know if that continues to go down to try to use that to fund salaries doesn't make a whole lot of sense which is why years ago I moved it out of the reading areas you can see the special education line is much larger it's a million dollars um and that seems to that's typically a little bit more stable if not increasing each year um as opposed to the title one through four which has been decreasing over the years um so this is

076just I know something John mentioned um last time I mean $2 million is $2 million right that'd be a large hole to fill should it just disappear um but that's a little bit more of a breakdown of the funding that John um talked about last time question than I appreciate you providing that just as a as a practical matter this might be a question for John but um just what the grants are do we get no but do we get the money is it on a periodic basis does it come all at once at some one point of the year like it comes typically we have it in the beginning of the year um the the grant writing cycle I can speak to the title one through four grants um that's done over the summer

077um and then the the funding shows up in September but just to sort of recap so Title One is um sort of your mtss programs that's largely with that funds um title two is professional development title three is enl and title four is it's kind of a weird one um it's it's social emotional but it's also technology I'm not sure why they bundle those two things together but they do um so that's those title one is the largest of those title one is typically in the $100,000 range a little bit north of that title two is about the $80,000 range title three we finally broke the $10,000 threshold this year and title four is only like6 to $8,000 so it's not it's not a ton a ton of money on the Department of Agriculture side

078that is more of a reimbursement based on the number of meals served for breakfast and lunch by month by number of kids mon yeah so so there's a there's a vouchering process for that in certain instances okay yeah this slide in the presentation the department of AG is $2 million yeah I just noted it's different that was that was my last minute change I apologize um because the original slide reported final costs reported because both the F fund which is your federal fund and your school lunch fund which is a c fund there's a total budget there so the 1.7 actually represented the full budget and because we were talking specifically about the federal reimbursement I did that last minute that's the federal portion of the 1.7 so and is that money tied to I'm

079guessing not low income is it tied to local food providers what's is it just so the federal the federal reimbursement rate is tied to it's sort of like a slide rule calculation based on uh a number of things um food costs obviously get built into that your your your salary cost there are certain components of where you stand in terms of economic um economic um indicators indicators thank you and and the like um but we still even get reimbursed a portion of our um kids that pay full price it's just a lower amount so uh Claire grin our director of food service is scheduled to be at the next meeting uh to present her budget she'll be able to articulate how that works that there is still the outstanding question um I don't want to

080put cart before horse here in terms of the state proposal on how the state is leveraging universal free meals against the federal funding um but breakfast is a certain dollar amount between free and reduced we even get some uh Federal reimbursement for those uh lunches that are not free or reduced it's just a sense on the dollar but but there's a calculation and and formula for that let's imagine that you know bad things happen and we passed the budget vote and then the Department of Education is now only wrestling nothing else um how would the district how would you deal with this sudden SO2 million I I appreciate that for I appreciate the question F first I wouldn't go so far as that the education department is fully disbanded I I I think the more

081likely um plan here is that the funding allocation or methodology will be different rather than title BRS for a set dollar amount um maybe they're structured as a block grant or maybe more competitive in nature or maybe just a lower dollar value but I appreciate the question um because those F funds and C funds your your federal funding and your your lunch fund are supposed to be self-sufficient any shortfall on funding needs to be subsidized by the general fund which is the larger budget projection we're talking so if any portion of this $2 million either decreases or is eliminated it would be incumbent upon the business office with discussions with the board and and District leadership team okay we have this hole how do we address it maybe it's okay well we're going to have

082to reopen up the budget process really evaluate what additional Services maybe it's increased uh classroom sizes to to decrease the um any uh vacancies that develop over the course of of the budget year to pull that funding and reallocate to the uh the fnc fund to to balance them out um um it's a relatively small portion of funding compared to the overall budget but it is still a sizable Gap to fill especially when the other parts of the budget have been aggressive in terms of Revenue estimates and conservative in terms of what we're requesting for expenditures moving forward the other thing I was thinking right when we think about Federal budgets right you have a bunch of money that you can't play with because it's all fixed and you have to spend this by law

083so your discretionary funding is actually pretty small that's corre I'm guessing that's true for the school budget too that a $2 million whole you know you can't just find somebody we'd have to probably go into our reserves our fund balance our and well if the year let's say at some point in the year there was uh funding that was withheld or we we knew we weren't going to get it or even if it's just y withheld for a period of time uh we could go into fund balance which would require a budget transfer obviously uh that you would have to be comfortable with or you really restrict spending and try but I think the immediate would be you probably need to consider use of fund balance to cover those costs so that was my last

084bit of this question was what's our current Reserve fund balance that we could use for addressing some of L of those so by law school districts are um allowed to maintain no more than 4% of their operating budget which for Bethlehem presenc around 4.2 4. $3 million um other we do have other reserves or other savings accounts but those are more specific in nature in accordance with State law can be used for those purposes if and Only If For Those purposes our capital reserve uh for example we couldn't pull that those dollars out to offset a a shortfall in funding here but we currently have a 4.2 4.2 million now that's emergency break last because it's a relatively small dollar amount given the size of 117 milon do uh budget when you get into using

085fund balance for that purpose the cautionary note I always provide to uh decision makers is you're using one time once money to fund ongoing expenses so in terms of a gap whether all right we're going to we're going to use fund balance as we get our Collective heads together to make some strategic plans and decisions or if there is a it may not necessarily be an outright cut sometimes the delay in funding like okay we you usually get paid monthly but you know for whatever reason it comes every six months we still need the money to operate those funds so the fund balance will be you know a a temporary funding source until the money comes in um but that's the cautionary note here is if funding is decreased or eliminated we do have some

086safety valves to to bridge but those you know those bridges are are a little little wobbly right um get us to the next budget right that's correct or or or some breathing room so you can make decisions midy year later on in the budget and we would be permitted to refill the the emergency fund to the extent that the funding was delayed but then came in you'd be able to use that funds that's correct at the end of the year depending on how other aspects of the budget work right so you know if you're um if state aid elsewhere gets you know decreased or cut or you know way laid there's that component to consider on the general fund side and that's that's the larger concern we sort of articulated um last Wednesday was not

087so much although this is a you know $2 million is a is a sizeable a portion if New York State as an entity has its own fiscal pain points because of whatever federal aid it gets outside of the education realm it could be Medicaid funding or uh HHS funding anything like that that may cause New York state to re re evaluate its financial plan including but not limited to state aid allocations yeah thank you any questions on Katherine subo I will get that information to the board it's broken up by sub by Title by building so uh for st3 purposes so it's a lot of why don't we talk about what the best way to do that is I can get I just right yep oh yeah not yeah last Wednesday we uh initiated a

088conversation on the uh Department of transportation's current Fleet and options for the board and the public to consider in terms of acquisition of new buses quick overview of where the complete currently stands um we have 104 vehicles in total there's 62 Diesel power buses seven uh electric buses I do want to highlight that the district has or is in the process of acquiring three additional EV buses associated with the May 2024 ballot initiative those just are not have not arrived on site yet I want to talk a little bit about that in a moment 345 passenger diesels with wheelchair access um and 26 small uh gasoline buses which uh can transport 24 to 30 uh passengers and six 4x4 Tahoe Suburbans that um we use as well the Department of Transportation Prov tries to pull

089together a uh replacement life cycle for those uh vehicles to ensure that the replacement schedule of the fleet is somewhat normalize from one year to the next that the district and voters and the actual payment of new vehicles is not sort of whipsaw from one year to the next so the large buses have roughly a 12year life expectancy turnaround and um the smaller bus is 10 which sort of equates on average to roughly a replacement of nine Vehicles each year we spent a lot of time um over the past budget uh Cycles discussing EV buses their benefits both operationally and environmentally um we do have of the seven EV buses that we have had over the past several years I was curious and wanted to to do a comparable analysis of their operational efficiency compared

090to the most recent seven diesel buses that we we acquired now we've spoken at length that some of the operational Challen is associated with the EV buses particularly as it relates to new technology new operations familiarity what um maintenance our in-house mechanics can do versus what is required to be done both under warranty and because of safety reasons because their electric um propulsion by um by Matthews our provider this excludes your regular maintenance your your oil changes your tire rotations uh your air filter you know car uh cabin filter Replacements um but it was somewhat telling to me that several of the EV buses were down uh for a significant proportion of time over 180 day session day period of time you'll see some high numbers particularly ev4 EV ev2 compared to their to their

091diesel counterparts I raised this only be for for several reasons the buses are expensive the EV buses that we have purchased um particularly as we move towards the grant side of of funding for new buses require usually a sale donation or scrappage depending on what Grant you you receive so we have we purchase the EV bus we wind up um getting rid of an existing diesel bus and when they're out of commission or or under maintenance for a significant period of time it requires us to backfill with another diesel bus so in certain instances for a prolonged period of time that one EV bus is actually translating to a use of three buses in some way shape or form so while the EV buses are we're getting more familiar Matthews has been a great partner

092um they they have been helping us and addressing uh the issues there are a couple of issues that you can see consistent your air compressor your ancillary plugs your battery packs um all those are under warranty um but it does translate to a significant compartible downtime compared to their diesel counterparts wanted to provide the board with a quick cost comparison in terms of the gross cost and the available funding streams for both EVs and diesels uh side by side a large EV bus is presently at roughly $456,000 there is potential funding at the both the federal and state level which would decrease that cost by 360,000 our state aid would balance out the funding at roughly 100,000 for a zero net impact to local taxpayers now I say local in terms of local property taxpayers

093the federal and state funding is coming from State taxpayers just from a different Source their diesel bus is roughly $180,000 there is no uh federal or state funding tied to that other than our traditional state aid uh at 118,000 uh results in the $61,000 net cost to to the taxpayers and side by side again for the small buses 326,000 for an EV bus that is a 28 passenger compared to $92,000 for its diesel counterpart we um presented what three buses in each of those categories would uh translate to um depending on what the we did talk a little bit about both diesels and EVS if we were to do three large EVS three small EVS three diesels uh large buses and three small buses that total translates to a almost $3.2 million gross cost of

094of buses as I mentioned earlier there are some funding uh streams available the EPA clean School Bus rebate provides roughly $200,000 in voucher funding uh for the uh to offset the cost of the of an EV bus under the EPA the district would need to do one of three things it would need to either sell scrap or donate at diesel comparable in order to tap into that funding under the environmental Bond act that was passed in 2022 the New York State bus incentive program also provides funding a $147,000 base voucher and if your vehicle is vehicle to grid enabled which our Matthews buses are that's an additional $122,000 in both instances as far as we know now I'm researching this a little bit further state aid reimburses on the gross cost of the bus Which

095would translate to an impact of 0 to Local District uh taxpayers in certain instances you can stack both the federal and state funding which again provides some opportunities I will highlight that on the New York State bus incentive program there is an optional cash value if the district scraps the bus at $61,200 we did do some research on this um 61,2 compared to what the market value of the buses on the market if I were to try to sell it uh we we put three out to bid um I think we got roughly $10,000 or so uh on the marketplace we did it once could have been a timing issue in terms of when we put them out um but the the scrappage bonus is pretty rich compared to what the actual uh market value

096of of the bus is I want to talk a little bit about the EPA funding last year before the budget process started understanding that to provide the board with options not only for EVS or Diesels or whatever their bus proposition they would want to put in front of the public I wanted to try to maximize as many Grand opportun unities and sources as possible so very very early in 2024 the district and uh business office in conjunction with Ellen dado and her team we' submitted an application to the EPA for six large EV buses that Grant was approved the board and the public voted for three large EVS in May 2024 I had reached out to the EPA and wanted to get confirmation on whether because we had an application for six hey can I

097move over the next three EV buses for the following Year's prop name namely the May 2025 prop EPA said fine we were happy to do that I was like okay how are we going to do that are we going to split three and three and they're like no unfortunately the application has to stay intact so what they allowed us to do is hey we'll let you put the three buses on layaway will let you do an extension which will carry over the application and its Associated funding into uh our 25 calendar year we did a first and extension and because the timing of our internal budget process and the epa's budget process and its fiscal year we had to do a second extension we anticipated that no issues no problems because we were just mirroring

098the first extension we were just looking for some time uh to get to this budget cycle we were expecting that the uh EPA wouldn't have an issue in the same way that it didn't have an issue with the first extension but given some of the uh actions at the federal level particularly the uh the freeze and pause on federal funding in general we received a response back that our EPA grant for the six buses inclusive of the three buses that were approved in May of 2024 has been paused I'm not sure what that means just yet I don't know if it's they're they're taking stock of funding in general I don't know if the funding that was awarded it wasn't necessarily applied for it was applied for and awarded I want to make that distinction

099I don't know if that funding is still available we're continuing to work with Matthews who's trying to reach out to their EPA representative to get some additional detail and context in terms of the status of that funding on the state funding side associated with the 22 environmental Bond act through nerta and the New York State U bus initiative we also submitted an application for six large buses we had to do it in two applications there those were approved that funding is secure I have confidence in that funding that it will be available for the small EV buses at the same time that we were doing the extension for the large buses I also submitted an application for three small buses under the EPA funding that was submitted but it's still in the same holding pattern

100I do not have an award letter for that it's was just an application was submitted I did not given the timing of our process coupled with the notification of the pause I did not coordinate an application for the small buses under the nerta grant because I it takes some time and effort and energy from various parties to to get that submitted and pulled together and until I had some clarification on the EPA funding I didn't want to go too far a field until I had some some better information so that's that's the tale of where the Grant status is currently uh we do have an award for federal funding for six buses however I'm not sure that it will actually come to fruition as soon as I find out more information I will but the

101ier of funding for at least the three buses that were part of the May 2024 proposition and should the board desire to put a three large buses on a May 2025 proposition that funding is [Music] available yeah I I fig we'll do we'll do first prop and then we'll do wrap up questions or comments Catherine so I just want to just really underline some key points and repeat back some of what I'm hearing to make sure I'm understanding correctly we have purchased three EV buses already three of six that we applied to the federal government to provide support for I would say we committed to three buses we are committed to three buses they're currently in the area and they're in the lot at Matthews they they're in the area so we've committed to three

102buses Act of six acting under the impression that the federal award letter that we received was going to be honored that's corre and we now have just out of curiosity how much per bus breakdown going back to your your per bus that the feds were providing how many dollars is this of the three buses that are currently from the May 24 that was $600,000 in federal funding so $600 in federal funding that is just pending pending for an award That was supposed to be honored in time to start paying for these buses is that right yeah okay um and in the simplest terms what do we now about those three buses if the EPA funding does not materialize the nice sort of funding is still available the way the arithmetic works the buses still would

103have a z impact operationally it would require the district to lay out more money in advance to be repaid but it would just take you know we we would be paying out more money initially for that repayment side so we go back roughly just in terms of of meth if we were able to stack we would be UPF fronting $997,000 worth of cost but that full $97,000 would be reimbursed by state aid over the course of eight years same process applies except that now you're um outlaying roughly $296,000 in cost UPF front which the district would have to our local taxpayers are going to absorb in the near term 200 $1,000 worth of outlay that the federal government had committed to supporting us with and now because reasons perhaps it's unclear if or when that

104funding is coming through that's correct um my other the other question I had on this front could you please go back to the bus proposition find financing where EPA and Yep this one side by the Noe keep coming next one where it's the EPA and the bond act side by side yep just for folks following along the way that just because it's laid out side by side it almost looks as though these are either or are these either or scenarios they may be either or depending upon the EPA funding right so when we I I I want to sort of like I presented this way because we weren't sure at the time we were applying for or received the status of the funding so I wanted to sort of show what the net cost is

105um between both of the individual grants and what the the actual impact is um when you add on the state aid uh calculation again the impact over the course of eight years is still $0 but you know to to our earlier discussion Katherine it's we are laying out a a higher proportion initially that will be paid over 8 years so if the so for future buses that we have not already committed to that are not already sitting on a lot if the board and if voters move forward with approving an additional purchase this 2025 sorry um on the of of EVS that will still result in no additional cost to the district however we will be laying out more dollars than we would have M up front that's correct if the EPA dollars came through

106okay I a more legal language side because of the manner in which a bus proposition is drafted if the grant funding had been is secure the EPA Grant EPA or nerta either one just just from a technical concept term you have your gross cost of your bus right and if Grand funding is secured you can back that off and sort of relay what that net cost is on the bus prop so it because the buses are so so um expensive you can get a sticker shock right and it it sort of dilutes the the messaging like oh hey there's this grant funding that may be coming that you won't be paying this we have to put this on on the proposition anyway right that's if we didn't weren't secure in the funding if we had

107a PL but we haven't heard and that's what we did in the last proposition my expect or my anticipation and only relatively recently that whatever number we put on the bus prop would be a little bit lower because I had a federal award letter and I had a a state award letter now given despite the award letter if that funding is in Jeopardy I can good in good conscience put as if the federal funding will come because I have not right because we haven't we haven't secured an extension on on the gr and one thing sorry Jody and then I'll stop for just one moment one thing I wanted to point out too we get we get you know we get deep in the in the sauce here when we're talking there's a lot of

108acronyms and there's a lot of um there's a lot of jargon right and one of the things we talked about last week somebody pointed out to me that you know I think I was using the word free money right none of this is free money it didn't fall from the sky these are all taxpayer dollars they're coming from when we're talking about grants though those are dollars from either the feds or the state that come with certain programmatic responsibilities but we don't have to pay those back that's correct so these so it is it is not free money it is still our money but it is coming to the district when it otherwise would not and it's coming without an obligation to give that back yeah that's correct okay cool thank you yeah and I

109was just going to say to if the district does have to pay that we pay it in a a year right and bond it so it's an it is an initial cost and the fact that we're only we're getting the reimbursement over X period of time the reimbursement yes ultimately right can be zero but right you keep you have to plan but we front load that we would we would front load it and pay over five years and get reimbursed over over eight right right right right right um right no this is this is Bonkers thank you so where we are I'm sorry Mar did you have to I just had a quick question go ahead um you just going back to the three buses that we talked about from last year yes you said

110um we're committed to those buses that are in the parking lot have we put out any money have we paid for those buses are we obligated to pay for those buses we issued a provisional purchase order to Matthews based on the adoption of the bus proposition there were conversations in terms of what the district was committing to in terms of out-of pocket cost we had a lot of conversation last budget cycle in terms of what that meant we actually Incorporated language in last year's P bus proposition that the Local District impact will not exceed and forgive me I don't remember that the dollar value because that nice sh of funding is still with is awarded and is still available the the that not to exceed amount is still met it's just met longer in terms

111and not a pocket cost um initially more up front than than it would have been okay thank you so where we are right now yes you need need guidance from us as to what best proposition should look like so last last budget meeting you charg the business office start working with Council in terms of language we've started those conversations um immediately after the budget presentation last week I had a conversation with Bond Council today I do have some draft language I need to know some parameters not necessarily tonight but soon in terms of the number of buses and the type of buses but both in terms of diesel and um EVs and type large or small um that way I can coordinate with Bond council do the arithmetic in terms of what needs to be

112incorporated into uh the propositions um and just to recap my understanding from our last meeting is that the recommendation from transportation is given sort of where we are right now with the EV buses we already have in the garage plus the three that are sitting uh yep at Matthews that we go ahead with three of the larger diesel buses and the three smaller gas buses for for a number of reasons one because of the operational challenges yes that we articulated we are just rolling out the charge manage the actual charging stations associated with the 2021 Capital plan there's charge management if the so the board so adopts in terms of the addition to help us manage the 10v buses that we have or will be getting represent approximately 10% of the district's Fleet that is

113significant proportion compared to to our um sister school districts in the area um I think um and I don't want to speak for Ellen but I think think she's comfortable with the the current status if the board wanted additional EVS we would certainly do that and and and accommodate but um we're at a comfort level uh here the not not necessarily knowing the future supply chain issues or availability of diesel buses moving forward as we get closer to the 27 2035 dates understanding that those may or may not change there's some larger factors imp imp acting the uh the state and its emissions uh initiatives that may make diesel buses or gasoline buses more challenging to acquire just from a supply chain issue especially as other districts are looking to either get ahead of those

114dates as well um so that was a consideration of um Ellen and myself as well um Miss speak for you didn't I cther a question on the buses themselves so we got the seven here at Bethlehem we've got the three on the lot um at Matthews are those ones at Matthews are those the same model year as the ones we have here would it be literally more of the same or are we getting the next that is a gen two correct so they would be um a different version of um the current seven that we have although one of the seven may be a gen two as well um but keep in mind we've been acquiring buses over the past four budget Cycles so um the the the original five were the initial um the

115initial runs yeah um but even ev7 you I I just do this for context right ev6 and seven were the newest ones that we acquired are they the same type that are up at Matthews now uh I think we have a newer version at Matthews now I think 91 the same yeah so so it would be they may be a newer version I can't speak to any efficiencies that may may have come um or if it's just hey we've added new accessories to it or if they you know has you know heated seats this time he SE no I'm just kidding I'm not promis that um okay so much like the federal dollars it is uncertain okay thank you appreciate that um I think we need to to hear from board members what your thoughts

116are with respect to the proposition so that we can give John some guidance one last question on the timeline what's talk to me about deadlines timelin sure um so we have meeting tonight uh the district and the board is tentatively scheduled to have another meeting on March 19th which will have some additional programmatic areas as well as um a resolution to adopt the budget any bus proposition and any Capital repair Reserve U resolution and um public notice language however because the way the calendar Falls there is a meeting uh on the calendar for the board a regular scheduled meeting on April 2nd the 45 day clock for the public notice actually is April 5th so you have a you have an additional meeting to iron some things out so if you have some initial thoughts

117or things you would like to see in uh proposition language I can take those back to council I can incorporate them I you know and share them in terms of board updates or or or the next meeting and you know we can adjust uh accordingly um I don't like to toy too much with the proposition language because it's you know especially at a late hour because that's ultimately what gets incorporated into uh the public notice but if you're changing from two buses at three buses I I can do that arithmetic and and make those changes but if you're something more substantive or an additional Clause uh I'd recommend or um that we try to square that away on the 19th John sorry so I guess the question is do should are we going to take

118a straw pull or I mean or just do people have I think we need to give John some some guidance so sure I'll start us off then um you know I I appreciate all the effort that's got into this you know sincerely for you and the and the department um you know it's obviously things are uncertain um I tend not to try to substitute my uh you know expertise that I don't have for the folks who are on the ground I'm comfortable you know going with the recommendation that's been made by the department by you for the you know the three big and through small diesel I mean that's my that's my take right now is you know I think the folks who live with us every day are in the best position to you

119make the recommendation and you know right now I certainly would support that I'm inclined to agree with Bob uh to go with the recommendation for 3 and3 diesel um I think given the uncertainty and the federal government grant program and the issues that Len team have experienced with the reliability of the E buses I think if we take a little pause um give it a year maybe two years it will give the technology a little time to improve maybe become more reliable some of the Kinks to get worked out and maybe the the federal landscape would be a little clearer yeah I would follow your recommendation as well I think the reliability issues is definitely concern the fact that they lose diesel buses is a concern as well as budget wise operationally the fact that

120we've got this line out now that we know we're spending 350,000 a year to send El electric buses out to be worked on we add more that number increases in the time where we're trying to not increase and we're losing buses I just think i' follow your recommendation mid um I would support that recommendation to three large uh diesels three smaller diesels um it kind of pains me to say that I've always supported our electric buses I appreciate the fact that we've always been in the Forefront of this and um um but I also am cognizant of the fact that we do have these operational changes uh challenges we do need to um take a pause as you said and maybe um work through some of this concentrate on our charging stations and concentrate on

121what we have right now would also just like to say I'm incredibly frustrated by the fact fact that um I don't feel like I can trust anything that our federal government is doing right now in terms of deciding our budget based on grants that we don't know whether or not are actually going to be fulfilled whether it's something that we were promised last year is actually going to be fulfilled it's incredibly frustrating to be able to try to budget and make decisions for the next year and the next year in the next year when we are um when we simply just can't trust anything that's being being said or done by our federal government you any thoughts yeah um you know I see those reliability numbers and they suck so I hear the the consensus

122building um I'm cognizant of the fact that at least right now we still have a mandate coming down the bike you know all of your buses must be EVS by so and so date do I think that's going to be reality if we're the leading the charge which we are and we're not close to it yet you know is the Practical answer to hope that doesn't happen maybe and stick with diesel for a bit so yeah I I dislike buying more diesel buses but a 40% average downtime is kind of silly so yeah I'm okay with it um I I have a couple of different concerns I I I would like to restate my sincere appreciation for the business office and all of your work to secure funding um for the transportation department for all

123of your work in getting a new technology and an entirely new system off the ground in such a critical part of our school district and our school infrastructure right large um and the work that's gone into this and the time and the frustrations are not lost on me the fact that there are state available to move forward that we are learning as we go that Matthews is learning as they go that we are getting newer buses that we are presumably I suppose maybe I shouldn't assume but that as the buses get fixed they will in fact be fixed right I mean that seems to be generally where these things uh try to go especially when they're under warranty for all of those reasons it would be my preference to continue to move forward with electric

124fing the fleet I hear the concerns of everybody around the table and I appreciate them I just feel like given given the given the dollars on the table um the benefits to um our students in our community that these can provide and the fact that it's new and we are working this out I would like to see us move forward you I second s the concern that you even at the state level which you know you describe as reliable funding or trustworthy funding right um there's money available to help us move to a a bus system we'd like to have that we may be giving up if we don't take it this year yeah I don't have anything else useful just it's annoying yeah um I mean I'm I think with um with the uh

125majority of folks here that I think I would be also comfortable with the the three and three the diesel and the gas for this year um and again I would Echo um Meri of's comment about how frustrating it is I mean for us and I'm sure for you also um planning not with uncertainty uh from our um on the federal level knowing where we're going to be um this year next year who knows um I would just I would like to make sure that um that this you know is in fact a pause um and that you know obviously I think everybody recognizes the importance of um continuing to move um in the in that direction uh Katherine um I think you know I'm just say for this year to me it makes sense especially

126given the recommendation from um from transportation to go with the three and three do we have any sense at all of what we expect downtime to be this coming year I mean do we think it's going to go down to 20% do we have any way of assessing this I think that things will improve because we're all learning as we go yeah it's tough to put a percentage on that some of the issues are EV specific right so from a safety perspective you need to certain level of qualification to test before you can find out whether you can fix the the manner yourself so there is some downtime because it's a specialized component that is going straight to the dealer if we had if it was a diesel bus for a similar style issue our

127our folks in house are training so they come in and get out right but because Matthews has multiple um Partners that's working with multiple buses either rolling buses out or or maintaining usual or addressing problems that come up there is some you know there's some lost time between when they can get to it right so it's not necessarily the time that they're actually working on the issue it's the scheduling of the work maybe it's a part maybe if it's a battery issue for example that was one of the larger ones um because I think it took them you know with regard to battery issues specifically Matthews doesn't even touch that they drop the battery packs down and they send them to protera because only proa can work on the battery packs right we wind up

128getting a new battery pack because the battery pack was under warranty there's time there still takes time so you know I don't want to necessarily leave the the illusion that hey for ev4 they were working on the problem for 65% of 180 days I don't know how long they were actually physically working on it but there's downtime time in terms of scheduling ordering parts getting the bus out there getting our bus back but to to us or more particularly Ellen that's a bus that's not on the run it's not running around so um and it sound that we can't go and hire a mechanic to work on this stuff even it's just not a thing that's doable well part because it voids warranty right so the warranty is helpful in many regards because we're not

129necessarily incurring a lot of the cost in terms of operational or mechanical stuff eventually those warranties will wear out which means that any future issues we're still probably not going to have the expertise or should we have the expertise in house so we're going to move that up we're just going to be paying for those costs out of pocket because the warranty is expired I was wondering whether if we do you know continue to increase the size of our EV Fleet whether that helps us commit to having you know a specialized EV technician who can therefore reduce that transport downtime I'm also where it's 9:00 these yeah I was do you mind holding your question absolutely um if we could take a TW minute um break so that our Pig and Supa friends can leave

130you're welcome to stay but if you would like to come sign out and leave you can also do that mer said she didn't want to stay e e e all right anybody any Catherine you like you had another question about the buses I was just it was tacking on to you and question about training if um at one point we were discussing the potential for more training and I thought I heard the phrase level three or and that was a couple meetings ago so I was wondering if you could refresh us or if I had heard correctly or so level treat training does exist and in speaking with uh Ellen uh whether or not it'll be rolled out to our level um remains to be seen right now they were talking more on additional on

131the manufacturer side okay um now there's training for mechanics in general because any Automotive that has a either a hybrid or a an electric vehicle under their make service those I think a bus is a little bit different for a number of reasons I mean conceptually it's the same in terms of how things flow right but the battery packs are significantly a more expensive and more powerful uh in terms of uh health and safety issues thank you in terms of working on them not understood right understood thank you any other comments comments on this okay so in the in the interim I will work with council's office I will get you a draa proposition for um the next U meeting if there is a change in funding associated with the three EVS that we currently

132have in the lot I will communicate that to you as as soon as practicable uh to the extent that it comes our way we are trying to at least open up a dialogue with EPA to get some additional information um but that has been unsuccessful thus far um for for a variety of reasons but as information becomes available I will share and if there's anything that we can do as board members to help Advocate please let us know I will thank you all right we're at the budget wrapup uh for the presentation this evening taking into consideration the information presented over the February 26 in tonight's meeting so just as a refresher we started uh a baseline Gap after our um well we started a b sorry started a baseline gap of roughly $6.3 million

133between expenditures and revenue uh we heard from the administrative component transportation technology operations and maintenance Athletics instructional programs and student support services that reduced our uh expenditures from by just under a million just over a million just under a million dollars excuse me I did add the um the pilot revenue of roughly $3.5 million since that is secure for for 2526 that was a significant positive in terms of the revenue column that brings us to roughly 1146 million so the Gap closed from 6.3 to roughly $1.7 million that still translates to today a 2.3% tax levy increase we have some um additional presentations over the course of at least the next meeting on March 19th we'll go through some additional um presentation that will come you know which will impact that um tax levy uh

134percentage so one thing I want to note though is that last year's budget was $114 m3700 we're at that same Revenue this year for a number of reasons right so the the expenditure side of the budget is growing at a faster Pace than the revenue side so that's why you see the only plug that we have available is the tax levy given the um other limited income streams we have between state aid which is somewhat set um we do have the pilot Revenue which was fortunate I do not anticipate any additional pilot revenues in terms of actual new entities coming on board um there is the The Hope and anticipation that a new uh PS pilot will be in place um later this year for consideration in future uh budgets but in terms of new

135entities coming on I have not heard anything there's a couple slate to come on several years down the road if they come to fruition a couple of solar farms and um they the champagne uh Hudson pipeline but that is still several years out and the dollar amounts are comparatively nominal to the pilot Revenue that we had we have now so a proposed tax levy increase of uh 2.3% you may recall that under the tax cap law given um our ins and outs uh we can absent an override we can only increase taxes by roughly 1.1% it's roughly twice that um presently as it's presented I can increase taxes under the under the law by only 820,000 and right now we're looking at a at a gap of roughly a, 689 so I just want to

136provide some context as we move into the next meeting on March 19th uh the Board of Education Election there are two seats open uh for a term uh expire three-year term expiring June 30th 2028 nominating petitions were first made available on February 20th at The District Clerk's Office all petitions must be uh signed completed and delivered to Britney Barrett our district clerk no later than April 20th at 5:00 p.m. all petitions must have a minimum of at least 61 signatures current seats that are open are currently AC occupied by Robert tent and John Walston I always like this slide because as we get through there's more tabs that come off um March 19th is our next meeting at which we will disc discuss the Food Service uh budget which is a c fund as well

137as any updates to the other presentations that we had um over the course of the past two budget cycles and if the board uh would like we can review and adopt the various proposals which would include the operating budget a capital repair Reserve adoption and any bus proposition um based on the information that um you asked me to to pull together I do want to highlight again that April 2nd provides a cushion meeting date if there's some additional discussion or conversation information facts that you want the business office of the district to pull together we can postpone the actual adoption until April 2nd because the public notice does not have to be published until April 5th so that gives you at least another meeting should you so desire it May 7th is uh the proposed

138public hearing date on the budget May 14th is the meet the candidates night and ultimately on May 20th from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. uh voters within the district can consider uh the operating budget as well as the various proposals uh moveed forward by the board any questions on the wrap thank you I just wanted to um when we were talking about student services I I wanted to just make sure to thank you and your whole department and your whole team um I also lifting up some of what Yan was saying earlier I'm concerned about some of where the cuts are coming from so keeping that in mind I want to make sure that our our students who receive additional services are supported fully so um look forward to that conversation about the subs and

139continuing dialogue but it's such a critically important part of what our district provides um so thank you and I just wanted to clarify just for anyone following along at home that when you're talking about and the override needed to go with any increase above that 1.12% it it means means as a practical matter that it could be on the um on the on the uh proposal on the ballot but it would need um 60% that's correct in order to pass any other questions for John thank you thanks John next 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 the time to come up to the microphone item six action items a finance action items

140it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following Finance action item number one so second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries B Professional Personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of educ approve the following professional Personnel action items 1 through 11 so move second any discussion yeah um the first one Tom malardo why is his probationary appointment changing when someone is out on leave their probationary gets shifted yeah uh all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries C support Personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following support staff action items 1 through 5 Second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries uh D

141other action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following action item number one so second any discussion all in favor I any opposed any extensions that carries uh item seven recognition of public comment on a non-agenda item if anyone is with us who would like to address the board on a non-agenda item now would be the time to come to the microphone item eight future meetings and events um Monday March 10th um here in the at the high school at 6 o'cl we have our policy committee meeting on when Wednesday March 19th that's our next uh regularly scheduled board meeting anticipating executive session at 6 and reconvening to open session at 7 and our meeting for that is on Wednesday April 2nd um again anticipating executive session at

1426 and reconvening to open session at 7 o' uh seeing no need to go back into executive session could I have a motion to adjourn the meeting so mve second all in favor I meeting adjourned