BCSD Board of Education 3/6/2024

001e I'd like to reconvene the meeting to open session uh we've been in executive session since the clock to discuss a Personnel issue and some legal issues uh can you all stand for the pledge allegiance Al to the for it stands one nation and justice for all introductions Dave Hurst Robert T Catherine Nat John walon Jody vro Meredith morard vs o about you and MC Willow bear John MC Phillips and yes Holly delal is absent today um moving on to item two approval of minutes um it is recommended by the superintendent Oh and before I go on to uh Pig students too I'd like to um ask if there are any Pig students here tonight um if so you are obligated to stay until 9:00 or whenever the meeting ends and before you leave um

002there are sign out sheets that you need to come down and sign out on so we can make sure that you get credit for that um moving on to item two approval of minutes it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the minutes from the February 28th regular board meeting so second any discussion there is sorry this is I know unusual um other action items was the um discussion of lab school this is what we do and so the minutes say it was motion to revise the resolution which is true it doesn't mention the fact we you know made the commitment to discuss the vote further and so on which I know we're going to do but I think it should be in the minutes what are you proposing as in

003minutes um that the motion by me to isolate to modify the motion was then separated into two pieces one of which was voted on and the second piece was um committed to be brought to a vote at a future board meeting I'm I don't know how you would that okay I'm not sure if that was actually done at the last meeting did we commit to say that we will vote on this yeah because we had the whole discussion about we're committing to this in public it's going to be on YouTube it's going to be in the minutes all that chat I thought so okay my I can't I don't know if anyone has a recollection of EX of exactly what we committed to I think you I think you in correct we said we said

004like let's bring this back that was my proposal right given the hour yes let's hold off let's bring this back for another conversation I wonder if the distinction though as I've read the minutes recently and this does seem to be a shift from historic times I don't know when don't know when but um the minutes seem to capture more of the um official actions on the agenda items rather than a running um discussion of content precisely and so I I I would be fine exploring that I don't know if we want to amend the motion or just bring this back next time or or or explore if this should be or what the like what the procedure part of this is I don't know that part I don't honestly know what the procedure is to

005modify the minute so yeah but I think it's important to have that that action recorded in there in whatever way is the best way to do it the action that we were going to discuss something further we committed to bring this resolution to a vote but there there wasn't really no resolution the word because we often times in a meeting we'll say we're going to discuss something again later and that's not an official action a v that's right noote and I believe we I mean I don't want to create more work for the person who's creating the the minutes that they have to get every Nuance of our discussion I agree with that absolutely okay it sounds as though the sense is carry on as is okay so um this was we did move to

006we had this discussion okay all in favor I'll oppose any exensions okay the motion carries um we're on to item three superintendent's report uh sure thank you uh just one thing to report I wanted to recognize our Odyssey of the Mind teams uh they performed in the regional tournament is shenendoa and March 2nd all of our teams there's five of them are moving on to the state t tournament which will be held in Syracuse in April uh if you're not familiar Odyssey of the minds an international problem solving competition uh that stresses creative thinking perseverance and teamwork they have to solve one of five problems if you've ever seen it it's uh quite interesting uh they have an 8 minute skit that includes student created props sets costumes songs and dances uh the teams are

007coached by uh Middle School teacher Rebecca berer and also with a high school student Sierra oesser and I'd like to congrat ulate all of our students and their advisers and wish them good luck at the state competition coming up so we'll hope they could be moving on to Nationals we've had that every several years uh and that's my report for this evening um next we have um item 3B board reports and discussions does anyone have anything they'd like to discuss from the board yes um so I just wanted to go going back to the conversation that we were just having about um about moving forward with the lab school conversation I'd like to call a special meeting for Monday the 11th after the facilities committee which is already scheduled to meet that evening um I

008mean basically I'd like to propose that the agenda be the uh discussing the future of the lab school it's a conversation that has continued um amongst the school Community Administration teachers union has in we've heard from parents families alumni um and there's you know there's still an active conversation there so my hope would be that uh we would agree to a special meeting on the 11th that we if there are any resolutions that we would consider those um at that time um yeah that is the proposal seconded if that's what we do well if we're going to have uh a motion can I have a motion for the designation of a special meeting on March 11th um with the topic being the future of the lab school second all in favor I I I all

009opposed any obss the motion carries um I just wanted to have a few comments on this um first of all it was announced this week um for all of you who do not know um that the ninth graders it's been established at the nth grader the current nth graders will be continuing with the lab school program which is a change from what the original proposal was um I wanted to say um thank you to the administration and um faculty and staff I appreciate uh the willingness of everyone to um listen to different ideas about how this can move forward I know this is is um a difficult discussion to have and a lot of difficult decisions are made so I do appreciate um everyone's willingness to come at this topic uh with good intent and

010to truly listen um to the various um concerns that people have um I also just wanted to note um for everyone in um the room tonight um that it is my understanding that we're not going to be discussing the lab school um substantively Beyond this conversation is that correct okay um so I obviously want to uh invite members of the public to speak um we always welcome your comments but um the centerpiece of Monday's meeting will be the lab school um so that we can really truly dedicate time to that and also give give time to the budget presentations today that really deserve time as well um so because um the lab school discussion will be centered on Monday night uh I don't want if anyone to feel obligated to stay through presentations um if

011if they don't feel um they need to yes Katherine so just on next steps and looking into this um in order to have a special meeting it has to go out for public notice uh at least 20 4 hours in advance with the agenda so any resolutions um if those can come in from from board members just to be clear if those can come in um today's Wednesday so that would be Thursday night so that folks can um have the agenda meeting set that agenda and and then get that out for public notice and for consideration uh among the board that would be great yes so board members could email um Holly by Thursday evening um we'll have an agenda meeting Friday morning to set the agenda and make that public um so that we

012have complied with policy um and have the meeting on Monday March 11th at 7 p.m yeah right because we've got we' got facilities from 5: to 6:30 so that'll give us a breath before coming in to yeah to this um let me just does anyone else have any other comments on on the lab school issue okay um does anyone have any other board reports yes I'd like to uh congratulate the Bethlehem Varsity uh basketball team Women's Basketball team for a great season they lost a heartbreaker on Monday night but they did a great job and uh just wanted to recognize them for that I was going to add my voice to Jody's Commendation for the Odyssey of the Mind program um Rebecca B in particular has been doing this for at least probably 10 years

013now I know my kids have been through this it's really a really cool program for those kids right um on to item C student reports do we have any members here from the student Senate hello I'm Zach dunan a member of student Senate um before break we were given a presentation by the superintendent of Bose's Michael dowy and we were talking about uh automated intelligence and its role developing in like the classroom and um as today we had a meeting and we further discussed sending a student over to uh give like a short like Ted Talk Like speech uh up in Lake Placid um this would be like later in the month month and they would discuss like their perspective about like AI in the classroom in front of like a board of members and

014uh listeners and then also we discussed out planning uh spring uh dodgeball tournament later and that's all thank you have a good night thank you thank you if I can just add Mr dowy said that he was so impressed with all the students who participated in that discussion so um he said I hope you don't mind if I ask if one of your kids can come up to Lake blid yeah and do we have any students here from the Middle School okay at this point we'll move forward to item four the budget presentations uh we'll start with uh John mcfli the chief business and finance officer good evening all we have a ambitious presentation for the board and the audience uh this evening that includes Athletics instructional programs uh student Support Services uh but before

015we uh get there when I briefly go over where we started at the last presentation uh and where we ended quick summary of budgeted revenues on school taxes presid recently we're holding the line for for presentation purposes at $7.8 million that's a 0% tax levy increase at present wanted to highlight that the tax cap calculation formula actually allows for roughly a 5.3% tax increase to be in compliance with the uh tax cap law slight decrease in Pilot payments from by roughly about $30,000 want to highlight again that this time last year we were anticipating roughly $3.5 million in the pscg pilot uh going away as that pscg pilot had ended its term in November and December of 2023 the district was made aware that PSG was looking to extend its pilot program uh for an

016additional time period for which the district will benefit one additional year uh for our 20 425 budget year for $3.5 million that $3.5 million will uh decrease and be eliminated for our 2526 budget process our state aid is roughly $31 million at $ 33.4 million in total for 2425 representing increases in both Foundation Aid and building Aid a um $2 million increase in our other Revenue which are tied to some ancillary revenue streams as well as where the district currently is in maximizing its interest earnings and Investments on its available cash balances and reserves and presently the district is not planning on using any fund balance or reserves which brings the total revenue budget to just under $11.8 million which is roughly a $5 million increase or 44.7% on the budget development area uh this

017is the how the program area shake out between 2324 and 2425 many of these areas were covered at our February 28th presentation uh we have several scheduled tonight uh before the board is presenting with a full package at our next meeting on March 20th overall we're looking at a $114.6 million operational Budget on the expenditure side compared to roughly $16.7 million the the prior year that represents roughly just under an $8 million increase or roughly 7.4% this chart is a summary of more or less where we started at our presentation uh between the expenditures and the revenue which left a gap of just under $2.9 million over the course of the last board presentation we saw a request from the administrative administrative side of the budget for an increase of $50,000 associated with the digitalization

018of employee records which will be an initiative that we contract out with bosis transportation is a net decrease of just over $62,000 that decrease is associated with the elimination of a telematic specialist that the department feels is not presently needed technology is a decrease of roughly $115,000 associated with the retirement of a senior Network and systems administrator operations and maintenance is a net increase of $555,000 um associated with the addition of a high school sign at roughly $70,000 and a decrease in um pandemic supplies of $115,000 when we last met uh with operation and maintenance there was a question in terms of what the actual cost may be for the installation and implementation of some additional HC HVAC controls our director of facilities Nick and Sonia is working on that presently he has those data

019points he'll be able to present sort of an update on March 20th he wanted to incorporate some additional information from the data points he had that took into consideration the solar film that has been installed on classrooms to date where additional rooms may have additional solar film so he just wanted a a a complete and comprehensive opportunity to to present that so at the end of our February 28th meeting the Gap had decreased from roughly $2.9 million to just under $2.8 million which would represent a tax levy increase of just over 3.9% before we move on to the Athletics uh component of the presentation this evening any at least preliminary questions on the budget overview from where we left off last meeting okay uh now we we'll hear from Len Keys director of Athletics and

020wellness and I would also just like to remind everyone um to hold our question until the end of each presentation good evening everyone um from as Mr Tan said my voice is gone from Monday night so please bear with me so just before uh we get into our budget proposal for for the 2425 school year just to kind of show you the breath and depth of our Athletic program um 85 total athletic teams te at Scholastic broken down into our Varsity junior varsity our freshman modified and unified now just a note technically speaking I I we always like to show you know all of our different um variations so that's why we have a unified box but the UniFi teams which are currently basketball and bowling those are actually Varsity level program so technically we

021do have 35 varsity teams uh good snapshot of our budget uh from the 23 24 to next year our first item our coach is chaperon athletic trainer that just reflects contractual obligations uh just in increases stiens and salary we always have our $5,000 default equipment stien line sorry not stien our expense line um officials fees security and other just to kind of give you an idea of what other looks like these are the main components of other um our official ual fees are rising about 2% which is Again part of a contract our YMCA fees with our ice hockey program the entry fees are everything you could imagine from wrestling cross country track and field um girls wrestling all all of our programs any of the invitationals any tournaments that's everything that's outside of the

022Suburban Council in section two regular schedule our lifeguard fees that is what we use for our um girls program in the fall and our boys program in the winter uh by state mandate Nisa mandate and SED mandates we have to have lifeguards on pool deck at all times our police coverage uh which we utilize for all night games or games that we're expecting a large crowd and our equipment reconditioning which is a mandate uh for for football helmets um as well as certain other pieces of equipment this breaks down our program even further uh just shows you the size and the scope again we have 18 girls programs 14 boys plus we have the three coed the three coeds are our two unified programs which I mentioned earlier as well as our modified swimming program

023that is coed and the 111 coaches those are budget supported coach es those are our modified our freshman assistant varsity and varsity coaches that are within our budget we have seven program assistant coaches those are Booster funded positions and then we have nine pure volunteer coaches obviously totaling the 85 that I indicated earlier and then you can see the fall is our busiest season uh followed by winter and and spring that are pretty much equal our additions and and these are additions to be permanently put into the budget but as you know and I thank you for your support on allowing us to run girls wrestling this winter it was a great success we had three young ladies uh actually participate in States um there's a lot of enthusiasm we have a wonderful uh IND

024District teacher coach uh Sarah trador did a wonderful job our girls flag football program we are super excited about we're launching that on Monday we had 46 girls come to our interest meeting and we are approaching 40 that have actually signed up through family ID and are ready to to get going on Monday um I am asking uh to add the third unified program it's the third one that the partnership between Special Olympics New York as well as New York State Public High School Athletic Association are offering that's unified Bachi so that would be a fall program and what's nice about that is it allows our unified athletes our helper athletes to have a unified athletic experience in the fall now with Bachi in the winter with bowling and in the springtime with basketball and

025then finally um our gymnastics program continues to to maintain its stability and actually grow a little bit um we have always done a good job of trying to remedy any issues as they come along the way with equipment but we are at the point now where some of our major pieces of equipment are now becoming safety issues um our vault and our and our and even bars are both in need they're both 20 plus years old and they're starting to rust and break and uh obviously we wouldn't want a a young lady on an element and fall out of it so those are our our proposed additions reductions as you know we had uh typically charged admission for our varsity football games our Varsity Boys Basketball as well as our ice hockey and then as

026we moved from fall to winter we we ceased charging uh for that it's typically around the $177,000 uh total what we would take in Revenue wise so obviously no longer doing that that would count as a as a reduction and would be part of our our total budget impact so when you look at our additions less the reductions in the ticket sales you see a net increase total of $ 58,60 believe that's my last L yep questions Catherine um two two questions first of all I um I'm wondering if you could just walk us through how does Bethlehem choose which Port Sports we offer and and at which level and if somebody wanted to approach the athletics department about like hey can we talk about I've heard rowing for example we talk about this um

027what's the best way to do that so it all starts with the New York State Public High School Athletic Association the sport has to be recognized by the state if the state does not recognize it as a sport then we cannot add it as a sport Ultimate Frisbee as an example we have a very popular Club here it's at a club status because New York state does not offer it as an athletic offering same for crew rowing the state does not offer that as a other otherwise I'm sure we would we would delve into it we with the exception of Nordic and Alpine skiing and rifley we offer every sport that the state allows us to offer um we are investigating through Partnerships with other Albany County districts uh trying to find a way to

028have girls ice hockey that would be a combined Venture and in generally in something special like that where we would be relying on other districts to combine resources as well as athletes that tends to take in anywhere between a three and fiveyear project um the ader rondak team that just won the state state championship is combined of nine school districts and that took about 4 years for it to to manifest itself to an actual schedule um the other question you had asked is you know how do we know what level we would put it at so what we did last year you may recall last May um I had sent out a uh a survey to all our young ladies going into grades 7 through 12 that fall and it was through that that I

029was able to get a a handle on what interest we would have for girls wrestling flag football ice hockey um and through that we were able to you know um show show Jody and show you folks that we actually have the interest that could run it we have a schedule because the state has accepted it as a sport and the next piece is the Suburban Council our league once the Suburban Council has seven Members Plus us so a total of eight schools they will supply a schedule anything less than that does doesn't mean that we can't play it just means that I would hand schedule I would look for opponents and we would schedule it kind of like what we're doing right now with um obviously our boys and our and our girls tennis programs

030are elad there's their state powers and for several years I've been trying to have a modified tennis program added to our junior varsity and our varsities uh it we have a strong segment of our community that plays tennis I have no doubt that we would have full teams in the fall as well as in the spring for the girls and the boys it's us Shaker and Saratoga right now that are interested in that they also have strong programs so it makes sense so right now what we doing as we kind of try to ramp up and gain attention with that uh you might recall last year we added the Friendship Tennis League which was a which was a small budget Edition and a huge success we had almost 70 sixth seventh and eighth graders participate

031um the kids that were in the seventh and eighth grade were not able to also be um selectively classified tennis players you know for our varsity and our junior varsity so these are truly developmental tennis players and uh we're we will be running that again this uh end of May to the middle of June and that will be our next piece that we're going to try to add but we have to convince several more ma uh members of our league to join us so that way in probably the fall of 26 we would or yeah no sorry fall 25 would be our our goal to add modif but that's a little ways off okay well um first I wanted to thank you for adding the unified Bachi um I anytime you add a unified team

032I'm always going to support it we've heard really great feedback from the UniFi PE classes um any opportunity to build that in um I'm wondering I think I know our policy around transgendered students who want to play on our Athletics teams and I'm wondering about a non-binary student who wants to play sports and what we would tell that students we have uh transgender athletes currently in our program um and they've had a positive experience so far to my knowledge it's been at the modified level uh New York state has a very loose vague regulation uh basically the way that it's been explained to us by Robert Zas who's the executive director of the State athletic association when it comes to our attention hopefully the student reaches out you know or or their parent reaches out

033to me and I would um basically just record that information uh the regulation states that I need to inform the superintendent which in our three previous instances I've informed jod and it's more of uh just to just for an informational piece that information is not shared you know with other districts like we would have to do say for uh a selective classifi P student you know where we have to send that list out um but that's pretty much how it works we have not had issues with locker rooms uh again though the way the regulation reads it would be up to the student thems if they chose to dress in a in a separate locker room or whatever gender they represent themselves as they would be able to choose the locker room if they want

034to um so and so far we've we've had no no issue so that's great and that sounds like you're teching about a transgender student so for a non-binary student who identifies with neither gender but wants to play competitive Athletics would they be encouraged to of course they join whichever team AB whatever one they want correct yeah it's the same rule for transgender and non-binary have the same regulations so I'll just provide some unofficial feedback um you know I was reading an article about the increasing rate of students um coming out as non-binary and I know um especially at the middle school students feeling like they don't know uh how to approach that with particularly with Athletics so something to think about um my last question was about I know we heard last year about the

035amount of money that we spent renting Turf um is there a savings represented there is $5,000 actually sorry I missed no and I I apologize I didn't do I go back just with the back arrow thank you for bringing that up I totally meant to mention it uh there you see it's represented officials fees security and other you could see that's 214,000 and that's gone down to 209 that was the $5,000 uh field rental savings great thank you thank you any other questions think Bob has one I have one good I think um you know there's been increasing awareness of and discussion of the potential risk of long-term brain damage from contact Sports particularly football I'm curious what discussion has been had in the department and in the school and also from a budget point

036of view are we carrying liability insurance that would cover you know any impact from someone having long-term brain damage from having played High School football well I can speak on to the concussion component um firstly it's a it's a mandate of New York State uh education department have concussion plan protocol uh I'm a member of the concussion team and we are constantly revisiting um our policies and procedures along with our health offices um short of that though as far as specifically Athletics our students and contact Sports all participate in the impact concussion testing impact testing supplies a baseline of of brain function um after a diagnosed concussion we have a a very strict return to playay policy at which time not only is the return to play program instit Ed to make sure the athlete

037is safely returning progressively at their uh at their own speed but also they would be given a post injury test a post impact test and that impact test would also Supply Dr gairy our school physician along with pediatrician or neurologist updated brain function information that's why it's so important to have that Baseline to be able to compare post injury with pre-injury um as far as budget impact um we buy the safest equipment really that we can um obviously the sport of football but not only limited to football some of the most significant concussions I've ever seen in my career have been in sports such as volleyball um cheerleading but but football the reason why I bring up football is from an equipment budgetary standpoint helmets that we would provide for our upper levels our varsity

038and our junior varsity obviously the size and the speed of the athletes the impact is going to be greater than at the modified level where athletes are smaller younger but in both cases we buy the the safest um our coaches are trained on have to size our athletes because sizing helmets is a super important part of making it the safest it can be and those are always changed up you know by different vendors and companies but they come in and we always make sure that our coaches go through a tutorial on how to properly safely size as far as insurance I the the insurance question hasn't been raised by our third part administrator specifically as it relates to contact Sports um the we are fully insured to the extent recommended um by policy and by

039rtpa the discussion itself just has not come up in terms of what may be covered or what policy May apply if any in that particular instance I really appreciate you know the monitoring and such at the concussion level uh the data are really clear that's not the only risk right that you can have lots of very major damage from some concussion impacts do we have any metrics on number of impacts how often you know an individual is getting a head blow just one of the contexts is helmets are good at preventing concussion they're really poor at creating that sense of I am vulnerable or not vulnerable to head impact right and so people actually hit harder wearing a helmet which can increase the long-term risk well I think it all starts with education um our

040coaching staff has to make sure particularly at younger levels when when student athletes are learning the sport uh modified football a significant amount of time is spent with modified football from the standpoint of we have athletes that will come in some with some level of experience playing youth some not as much it might be the very first time they're wearing pads and actually like you said hitting and yes it gives you a false sense of security uh not only not only football but lacrosse as well the girls don't wear helmets the boys do wear helmets and there's a lot of dat a lot of studies that in certain sections of the State helmets are worn Section 8 nasville County many of the schools wear it and there is a higher incidence of sticks to the

041head because of you you have that but going back to the football and the modified component our athletes are Tau to tackle properly which is head up not head down so if you're tackling with your face up you're not going to have that impact so obviously you know a lot of it also starts with the educational component um I I'm very confident saying we do everything that we can do to make it as safe as possible from the instruction to the equipment um we're always being asked to supply data uh for nfhs the national Federation of High School athletics of which all the state associations are under their primary function is to gather safety data and and anytime we're asked we we are happy to provide whatever information we can I don't want to BL

042the point but if you can get as much data as you can an individual's contact you know impact numbers I think that'd be really well advised given what we're increasingly learning about how dangerous this is thanks thank you m one last question um and it's a it's a statement as much as a question when we had the technology presentation I had asked Aon about the use of parent Square for athletics and she had reported at that time that it's growing you know folks are are starting to get the word and using it more which I think is great I just want to encourage the athletics department the coaches specifically um to do everything they can to to take that up um as somebody who's just starting to kind of see the my my children are

043just getting of the age to participate in athletics in the district and starting to see the way the communications happens there's I mean the coaches are fantastic and also it can be kind of halfhazard and I'm interested in in better streamlining making sure that from um from just kind of a a record keeping perspective and making sure that we've got great communication with parents and families that it's going as streamlined as possible so that's just my two cents it's it's been you know the athletics department has been it's been a fantastic experience and I would just love to see more and more shift to parents Square I appreciate that yeah Erin uh joins us for our preseason meetings with our coaching staff she did that in the winter um I just had our spring preseason

044meeting yesterday we once again reviewed parent Square uh the other option that coaches were given were Google Classroom all right Google Sheets which coaches are generally doing pretty much 100% uh so we are getting them consistent we will try to get them more into the parent square but they are doing using the Google uh quite a bit awesome thank you thank you any other questions for L excent and next we have uh Dr David Hurst Deputy superintendent okay thank you so this is really sort of part two of um my academic update in that all the good news that I'm able to share um back in December and the academic update all happens because of the money that we have behind our programs um so a quick sort of snapshot by Department um you see

045a modest increase from 35.5 million to 36.1 part of that is we did have some it's only about a 2% increase we did have some shifting in position in terms of what department they're in as you recall we restructured the student Support Services team so counselors um and social workers used to fall under the um instructional budget they are now under student support services so there's a a decent chunk of money that moved over there so you'll see a larger increase on their side than here and that's really why there's some position shifting going on um so you can see that again here that this the salaries um not a huge jump um most of our other lines remain fairly constant one of the things we've been trying to do um over time again is

046anytime bosis offers new services that we're currently paying for directly to vendors we do shift over and that is a little bit why you see the decrease in the other line and the increase in the bosis um so a recent example is um Lexi which is a translation program that um we're able to on the Fly um call this company Lexi key and they will interpret live as we're having Communications with enl Ames um that is now a Bose server so that's a pretty substantial line that moved off of one and into the other but a pretty nominal increase of under 2% again same information just presented in a different way you still see the 32.6 and the 33.2 million um along with the number of employees within each um budget line so enrollment does

047play a key part in our staffing decisions um and you know as I discussed during my academic update if you go back and look the numbers have again they've shifted even since then we have um I would say not a day goes by where we don't have somebody sort of coming or going um which it tends to balance out our projections from the capital region Planning Commission have been spoton um and you'll see that sort of at the end but with these enrollment shifts usually what ends up happening is sometimes most of our buildings either are at the elementary level have either three sections or four sections at any given grade level sometimes two elmir is two across the board um but most of the buildings it's threes and fours so when as your fours

048move up obviously that kind of needs to continue to carry and then when threes go up you know the four if there was a four there it kind of moves down so so the red circle sort of demonstrate where the shifts happened so you can see like at Glenmont there's 80 students presently in second grade that bubble's going to move up to third but the incoming second grade is only 58 students so we don't need as many sections so some shifting at um the different buildings so k at Hamil 2 at Glenmont one at Slingerlands those are sort of Shifting um and you can see that we're picking up um Eagles kindergarten numbers are actually higher than we anticipated so we're picking up a section there you can see like the 73 in first grade

049is now moving up to Second and so on so overall we are adding a section K2 as I said due to the rising kindergarten numbers at Eagle but overall our elementary numbers at the primary level is down 15 students across the district at the intermediate level pretty flat um a rise in one student um but you can see one of the numbers really stands out in terms of a decline is um Slingerlands and that's because there's a huge bubble there right now in fifth grade with 99 students um so actually there were two red rings around that I don't know why one disappeared but we're actually there's five sections at sling right now next year there will only be three um still very healthy class sizes again I'll go back to the primary next year

050we projected just under 19 students per classroom excuse me and just just over 20 at the intermediate level I have to J so at the middle school um an increase of 24 students which again keeps our class sizes at a at a really healthy um just over 20 students per class um and at the high school again losing 60 students and that trend is expected to continue for the next four to five years and that's really we've seen a huge impact at the high school in terms of um declining enrollment and that I'll speak to when looking at um additions and reductions so you can see from the capital region planning report that the um Elementary level actually is expected to increase slightly over the next few years Middle School the same but the high

051school is going to continually um sort of Decline and for the next next Board of 5 years so in terms of proposed additions um we do have some clubs that have been running um as part of our programs and um they are being recommended to be stien eligible now so connect and stride is a running club at the middle school um Computer Club pretty self-explanatory um and having um look looking at our um fizzed Baseline Supply account it really hasn't been touched in a number of years and we're just not able to keep up with sort of routine maintenance and routine um replenishment of supplies so we're recommending a increase there and then a low rope scort to the middle school does need some substantial work so that's a one-time hit so all told about

05230 $38,000 in terms of reductions and these are all due to attrition um and again going back to the enrollment um we are now pretty pretty much done with our student selection process and we're going through the scheduling and we are able to make all of these reductions at the high school um Without Really impacting class sizes class sizes are going to still be very similar to what they at the middle school averaging about 20 across the board for our core courses which um for a high school is still a really really healthy number um most districts in this area are north of 25 students per classroom so three Math teachers 1.7 science um one social studies and one World Language and then as I showed with the elementary enrollment um right now we're proposing

0532.0 um but we had some more registrations come in today so that's still we're still keeping an eye on that that could go to potentially 1.0 so all told about 830,000 in reductions so the budgetary impact um is just south of $800,000 so I'll pause there for questions so you noted the increase in the elementary numbers and then the decrease in the high school numbers would you expect eventually that that increase to then flow through to the high school or is there attrition along the way or how's that there is a little bit of attrition but um when you look at the capital reging planning report that goes out even further you will see that it starts to kind of gradually climbing again but that climb isn't for another s to eight years um but

054yeah thank you um a couple questions so if you want to switch it up let me um you mentioned that we've got these clubs becoming stip and eligible could you please remind us how a club is become stip and eligible or how that decision is made sure so um clubs are started by student interest right typically students get together they say we want to have a club um for X um they find the faculty member that's willing to sort of sponsor their club and work with them um um they work for you know a couple years sort of on a volunteer basis where at that time that's where you're keeping track of attendance and things like that to show that the club is viable and then after a couple of years um at the middle

055school and high school the clubs sort of work with the the building principle to determine like which clubs are moving forward to the stien level and following up on that um we're funding both of these at $1,350 for their stien um could you just remind us is that the same across the board or do clubs apply for different funny it depends we have different levels and it it's based on how often they meet but that's all yeah it's all spelled out in the it's contractual okay thank you um on the PE Baseline Supply are we talking about pick balls and a little bit but we're also talking about um like gymnastics mats which are a little bit more on the expensive side um that are used for tumbling and things of that nature um some

056of are more substantial equipment um like some of our archery supplies at the high school are outdated or need or just beyond their life um so some of the more substantial things not like the balls and things that's easy it's some of the more yeah substantial stuff I was just trying to get a of like the stuff the kids are the other thing we're looking at is um using some of that money too to be able to maintain our um Fitness facilities on a turn things over on a more continual basis thank you I think that I think that's really um really important I know we invest a lot in our Athletics departments and it's great to see it um see that investment reflected throughout the district and throughout the PE classes as well so

057I appreciate that and then my last question um on the staff reductions and the full-time equivalent um I mean I just I guess one thing I'll say just kind of big picture is like those seem like big numbers seems like a lot of um instructors were letting go I'm wondering how um how is it determined who and which do we we have folks that we know are going to be retiring that are are setting down from these positions could you speak a little bit to the that um as I like as I showed during our my academic update our some of our core class enrollments um so math for example we're reducing three um we were down to an average class size of about 17 um which is below our elementary numbers we also have

058some shift and part of the reason is we have some shift we we used to have a lot of students doubling up and now there's so many other electives they don't necessarily double up in math like our AP stats class we used to run four sections now we're typically running three um we have one of our AP Computer Science courses that we just started two years ago um is actually taught in the technology department and that's running anywhere between three and four sections and that essentially replaced um sort of an intro level class that wasn't college credit bound um in the math department so it's sort of Shifting FTE there so there's a little bit of FTE shifting and there's a little bit of just with the numbers being down um like like I said

059we we're still looking at class sizes on average of 20 which is a very very healthy number so you're talking about FDA shifting will we have folks that were either letting go or that are retiring out of this this is all due to attrition okay yes thank you sorry um and then last thing um we're talking about causing the lab school if we went down that path would we be shifting those teachers into this rules I mean sure so all of our lab school teachers except for I think Dave lum who's the coordinator teach other courses outside of lab school um so they would just because um the capacity exists they will just pick up additional sections in the the general school yeah thank you those were my questions appreciate your time anyone else have

060any questions it was actually the flip side of that question which was let's assume that we continue with lab school do we need to keep any of those people or is this basically so right now the plan is with all of the lab School courses in play we still have enough FTE yeah um I was also going to ask about the FTE reduction it is a big number was like more than $800,000 but we're talking about less than nine I think FTE who are people attrick get ATT trting out right districtwide wait say that again it's a big number of dollars but it's less than nine FTE that I think I heard you say tring out correct anyway and not being replaced and I it's not a budget action no this is not a realign

061it's just a I mean yes it has a budget impact but that wasn't the reasoning behind it exactly okay and then the only other question and I might have missed it um the $100,000 reduction in curriculum development I I think it was so fast top the first line first line so some some of that is due to shifting um so a good portion of our curriculum development um we use our title 2 money for so any given year it's it kind of slides back and forth between general fund and um the title 2 Funds so this particular year next particular year I was able to shift much of the impact to the title 2 funding as opposed to in here but what you'll see is some of the other areas like um professional development and

062service training has gone up because I pulled a little bit of that out of um title 2 and the same thing with some of our supplies um instead of purchasing like the books through title 2 I'm now purchasing it through the general fund so it's the same overall the dollars are still all there they're it's just in different places yeah could you just remind us what title two what your so we get yeah so we get Title One title two title three title four funding every year from the federal government title one is um really to Target um students that are um economically disadvantaged like schools that are in our district that have a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students than other buildings so we try to Target um our professional development and some of

063our programming needs that when we buy supplies or curriculum materials we can use those f that's what title one is for title two is for professional development um and curriculum type work title three is for um English language learn Learners and title four is relatively new but it's sort of a catch-all it does technology social emotional learning which don't really go together but it's interesting and then there's there's one other bucket that I can't take off the top of my head it's just sort of like the new catch all beautiful thank you foring yeah I think you and you had another question yeah one other thing which you know doesn't affect this year's budget at all but one of the things that's on the board's radar potentially is trying to improve Foreign Language by taking

064it down to maybe fifth grade what would roughly be the FTE need or the total budget need for that kind of thing I couldn't speak to that right now I mean it would depend what the program looks like are we talk you know one day a week two days a it would really depend on program design any other questions thanks thank you and next we have uh director of student services good evening can you hear me okay okay so I wanted to start by describing some of the goals of my department and what we've been working on all year and how that impacts the entire District so one of our first most important goals was to increase mainstreaming opportunities at all levels for our students and what I mean by that is when appropriate students

065should have an opportunity to participate alongside typical peers with support as needed um we wanted to align our aids for students with disabilities um with programming okay and I can talk more about that in a bit um that means to create less restrictive and more flexible opportunities with how we utilize AIDS and how they're included within our programs um we wanted to expand our Continuum to better meet the needs of all students and ensuring that students have um are placed in the least restrictive environment um we wanted to analyze current programming and determine what shifts were needed and by that I mean to make sure that we're looking at our current student needs and programming accordingly rather than saying these are the programs that we run and you know this is what we're working with

066so we really wanted to take a hard look at what programs are we running are they appropriate for our students and how do we need to change that um we want to return outplaced students to District when appropriate and that means we are um reviewing placements and making visits um to our out um to see our students in their outplaced environments and and see how things are going and making sure that it continues to be appropriate and to plan for inclusive professional um development opportunities for all staff um we have a special education cabinet and we work collaboratively with representatives from you know all our different related Service uh providers and our special educator general education um teachers to really connect with staff and say what areas do you feel like you are most in

067need of professional development and be able to to use that to inform our decision making okay so some of the outcomes um in light of the budget today is at elementary we're able to expand our Continuum adding in resource room and direct consultant teacher Services um we're able to increase mainstreaming opportunities and that especially in some of our self-contained programs it's important that we off opportunities for students to be able to mainstream but that also requires having the appropriate staff to be able to do that and increase flexibility in delivery of services um in middle school we felt it was really important to restore the reading program there because reading instruction is really different from English class so we wanted to put some expertise back to middle school so that we had a specialist there

068to be able to be able to provide um intervention services for students who needed that reading support and um we were able to return some students to districts after visiting programs we found that our programs more um would be a really um a nice way for students to integrate back into the district and it was appropriate so that was great um at high school we found we needed to take our Rise program and it needed to be split into two sections rather than one that is so that we can plan appropriately for the ages of our students so our Rise program one section will be grades 910 and the other section will be 11 postgrad um we also looking at our College transition programming you'll see when we get a little further into the presentation

069our second Rise section for our older students we wanted to embed our College transition programming into that program for our students it made for a better uh it helps that our coordinator is working in tandem with our programs so that they know when students go to college transition they work with them and ensure that the placement is appropriate rather than having another person doing that job in addition to it um we added an expansion to our Continuum and that includes a self-contain program for grade n um we felt that that it was needed with our incoming grade n students looking at their programming in middle school and how that would transition up to grade n so we were able to do that okay so looking at expend expenditure by Department um uh the student services

070department has many things um special education diversity equity and inclusion counseling Social Work nurses and Psychological Services you can see as Dave mentioned earlier was some of the shifts in Staffing into a different department you'll see a bit of fluctuation there pretty modest the change um this is expenditure by type so salaries you can see that is contractual um bosei services and tuition paid to other schools those are really set by the other schools we don't have much control over that they tell us you're going to be looking at this percent of an increase for next year's programming so you can see there's an increase there of um 2.65% here's more salary and position information um under the positions this is slide one two um special education teachers AIDS um for students with disabilities my

071department which is the um director assistant director of special education assistant director of instructional supports K12 counseling and social soci work supervisor coordinator of inclusive practices in school climate and CSC chairs we have very long titles in my department see um and speech therapists we also have occupational and physical therapists clerical School psychologists and then there are other um expenditures there for substitutes and small items okay so this is federal and state aid reimbursements to the general fund we are provided reimbursements state aid for out of District placements Medicaid eligible services and Albany County CPS funding okay so some additions okay addition of three full-time special education teachers and this addition will really allow us to run our programs more successfully it also allows us to have some nice space for any shifts that would

072happen if students move in if our current students need either more or less um restrictive programming um this really puts us we are set up to be able to provide better services for our students aligned to what they need um adding a line for mtss professional development supplies this is mostly for professional development and resources for instance we are working on um looking really closely at some of our reading programs and that requires materials and training um to we want to make sure that we're really staying current with all of our science of reading research and how that aligns to our assessments so that's what that lines for and with the closing of St Rose we do have um risk some money built in there for risk risk exposure as we explore other programming to

073meet that need okay reductions so we are looking at reducing um five aids to students with disabilities these five positions currently have not been filled at this time so it wouldn't be a you know a reduction of actual people um Saratoga for the family that's one position that's going to be reduced and the transition Services school to work that's what I talked about earlier where we're going to move that position now to become part of the Rise program it'll be embedded in the program there okay so budget impact total additions less reductions gives us a net increase of $173,000 any questions will uh yes I have a bunch so with um you talked about expanding the Continuum of programs at the elementary school School big gratitude for that um I'm a little bit of a

074broken record if you've heard me another year so I know that we traditionally have had to move a lot of students during their Elementary School career from one Elementary School to the other which causes a major disruption for them and their families um and I've been assured previously that we have reduced that and we'll mostly stop doing that can you talk to me about how many less students had to move this year as a result of expanding the Continuum of services I can for what I know right now um we that was something that is really difficult for families so when we started to look at we we began at the very beginning of the year really early and said first Let's do an inventory where are all of our students what is their disability

075classification what services do they get what related services do they get where are they physically throughout the district then we started to think about how might that shift within each building so that students have opportunities to move for instance if we have students that are placed in a more restrictive program in one building and then they have an opportunity to mainstream but we don't have a program there for them that was where we really wanted to build in flexibility because our students should have an opportunity to move and grow and also if they're in the opposite situation say they're in a program it's not providing enough we wanted to be able to build in additional Services as well so currently I believe my whole team is in um we're looking at maybe seven kids districtwide

076that need to move but we really tried to prioritize knowing that we can't run every program in every building but really minimize that and you know the only way to really do that is through attrition so as our kindergarten students come in we'll look at really PR programming with them and keeping them in their home building as much as we can thank you and seven kids sounds like a big reduction so we hope so um you said that you were able to return some out of District students to the middle school which is another thing that we've been a little bit of a broken record on can you I don't need you to tell me how many came back but what was successful that enabled us to do that so that we can think about

077how to support that you on a bigger scale so as we've it's my understanding that over time we wanted to really look at how our programs function and say do we need to to move students out of District placements so we've been looking at what Criterion would actually have us make that recommendation and then how can we look at our current programming and make that more tailored to diverse student groups okay so what are our self-contained programs looking like how are they staffed how are we determining the impact of that program on student growth over time and then let's look at how those compare to our out placements that might be needed for that student and you know to be honest you really our um special education chairs and our team they really go and

078visit programs meet with the teams see the students in action and really try to think about in conjunction with the family because that's a really big move going out and then also being pulled back in so there's a lot of pieces that go into that for it to be an ideal environment but um it's important that we keep looking because we want to really offer as many opportunities as we can to keep kids in program when possible in districting um it looked like there was a$ 267,000 line um for the St Rose program so I had was going to ask questions about the age 22 guidance from CD is that where that potential expenditure comes so my question was going to be whether or not we had increased cost built-in for the guidance that says

079that the district should pay up until age 22 now instead of age 21 um and I don't know if that's the same as that line item or if that's something different within that item we built in some flexibility so we have been talking to different colleges around the area to say now with St Rose CL in what options do we have so our team has been meeting with different colleges in the area trying to determine if it's it would be appropriate if they'll take us um we're still continuing to meet quite honestly to try to make sure that what they offer is what's best for our students some of the colleges are much smaller than St Rose that we have been working with some are much larger and the other piece is what if we

080don't get one we're going to have to look at get building a brand new program and opportunities for our students so we wanted to leave flexibility in there to be able to do that so yes I don't know if I answered all of your questions no it's related and it sounds like it's it's a little bit of a it's on because it's on the radar I don't know Jody if the Suburban Council superintendents are talking about how collectively to address it or whether there's something bosis can do to to support that group of students yeah there we actually did look at there was kind of a bosis program that we looked at and um I know the chair has did with Jen um it's not really exactly what we were looking for but the the

081dollar amount is an estimate is regards to the age issue and the St Rose um option so we'll kind of see where that goes it is a discussion regularly that we have at at our Bose's meetings about different opportunities yeah and then to put on the radar we don't have to talk about it tonight um but I know that the state Ed guidance also recommends that school district support those students not just until their 22nd birthday but till the end of that school year so it could be an additional several months and I know that we have not developed a policy to address that so just something we can table but should probably talk about and it would create a budget implication so we can talk about it post this budget and then maybe address

082it next year's um does that make sense okay and my last question was the slides with all the different um provider types looks like seven OT PT for the district so those are distinctly different professions is they are we have five occupational therapists and two physical therapists District wow okay um and the question I ask each year is whether those numbers on those two slides are enough of each of those professions to support all the students that require those Services District Drive So based on our projections right now yes and we still are able to provide intervention services for students without needing to be identified through our mtss process and Improvement Services we um started building into our kindergartens um increased time we had reading teachers push in occupational therapists speech therapists um I might

083be forgetting oh psychological counseling social workers to push in and work with our kids because we really believe in early intervention or we're able to continue and sustain that with our current FTE right now okay I know other people have questions um I forgot to ask about the AIDS with disability aids for students with disabilities part of that question the five FTE reduction there would come from I I understand that they're not currently filled but that doesn't mean they're not needed so where would those five come [Music] from we where are they unfilled I guess is the question throughout the district thect so aids for students with disabilities and and I know you may have more questions about this but I want to kind of talk about what I mean when I say tying them

084to programs so aids for students with disabil ities we have a large number in our district and we want to ensure that they're being used to support students they are and also staying within State regulation okay we have wonderful aids for students with disabilities but the reality is they are hired for non-instructional duties okay so what we have seen in our kind of inventory and review we have many situations where our aids to students with disabilities are assigned to individual students it could be one to one and that's most often for a behavioral need or medical need and then we had many other ratios one to 3: one 2: one so instead we look to shift Aid support in our programs as needed for instance in a kot talk classroom you would have an aid

085that is in that program if we knew that particular program that some students were coming out of a more restrictive environment into a kotak classroom we have the ability to add an additional person into that program what we want to avoid is having AIDS as a stop Gap to programming so for instance if you have psychological counseling services and you're assigned an aid but you don't have a program we wanted to really close the gap on that so do students need a program because an aid should not be a substitute for that so we want to look really closely at how are AIDS assigned how are we measuring and monitoring what the aid is doing for each student because the ultimate goal is to teach skills and build Independence because one to1 Aid support is

086really restrictive for students so in programs like our co-taught the idea is they're staffed with a special educator a general educator an aid for student with disabilities they work with all of the students in the program not just particular students within that program does that makes sense it does and all of that sounds right and at the end of the day like we trust you and your I your team is here they're incredible they work their butts off um and we appreciate them and defer your expertise I just would what a new sign outside the high school would be great but I'd rather take $70,000 and hire to aids for students with disabilities if that's what you thought was needed so I just wanted to make sure that we were clear that this was what

087we really felt was needed to support the students right now thank you questions oh sorry I have some questions on this topic so I don't know if you is that okay yeah thank you and then and then right back to you um so can you talk a little bit more because I guess I'm just not as well versed in this so when you say an aid is not a replacement or substit for a program and that a student needs a program what is what is the program we're talking about here can you give me examples to help me understand this yes when I say a program I'm really talking more specifically about access to a special educator okay okay so for instance if a student has academic needs and they require additional reading support per

088their IP we want to make sure that that student is supported by a specialist a special educator because the role of an aid is non-instructional duties they can do things like managing records collecting data we want to make sure that we're not asking them to do things that are beyond that because an aid position should be supervised very well by a specialist the case manager so that is a gap that we wanted to really look at building our programs so it's not you know um we needed to make it cleaner so there's more flexibility if you need Aid support it shouldn't have to be written on your IP in a ratio for you to be able to get it you should be in a program with a specialist to be able to provide that support

089but don't and again this is this is not my my field so I apologize if there's if I'm asking ignorant questions but don't students isn't the IEP the vehicle for being identified and assigned to Nate it might be it's very individualized per student okay so the goal of an aid is really to support the student but also build Independence so that level of support can be weaned eventually is there a way a student would have an aid other than an IEP not formally no okay okay I'm just trying to make sure again I understand can just to clarify so the what Jen is saying is that a student is they have an IEP on their IEP it would reflect what program they would be in for example a kop program then there will be an

090aid that might be attached to that program or potentially an additional Aid if that was needed but the the IEP is not necessarily the vehicle to get an aid the IEP is what's your academic needs what's the program that's most important and then what supports are part of that program I don't know if that clarifies that I think maybe and then just to keep going just if if you'll permit and if I'm sorry thank you um if so if somebody is so if we're providing more flexibility in the program and I'm a student who is in a to co-taught class and so I and and I've been identified for my IEP to have an age does this would this then mean that a a pool of AIDS who work within this program would be assisting

091me so John would be my Aid in the morning and Jody in the afternoon and like and and like that kind of thing is it still a there the the way it works is the same Aid would be assigned to the program but what we were trying to avoid is well here here we have this student and this student and this student has Aid support it should be the aid is in that program embedded to work with all of the students in the program not just individual students so if a student requires adult support they have access to that and it's more flexible for the aid to be able to work with all of the students because that's the point of of having a c talk classroom is that all students benefit definitely I'm missing

092a piece I won't continue to to belor this right now I'm still I'll follow I'm still not quite getting something I appreciate this though and going back to the number of AIDS so you were saying that we're that are we letting any AIDS go at this point are are there any AIDS currently working who will not be working under the number of reductions here no okay this is just these are unfill positions okay thank you I have other questions not on this topic and I really appreciate I'm going to quickly follow up on that okay I just want to make sure I also understand because I do think this is such an important role in our for our students um and I know our AIDS do such great work and they are really seen as

093value members of the team in a c talk classroom so just you know not coming from an education background it seems to me as though there's always more flexibility with more people right so I'm hearing you say that it's more flexible if we take away these five positions but just logically I'm trying to wrap my head around it because it seems to me if you have five extra people then you can put them in this classroom for this month and then move them for that to that classroom for another month depending on the needs of the kids can you talk to to me about flexibility flexibility and who the AIDS are working with okay the goal also is to provide a less restrictive environment for the student okay so what can happen is we want

094aids to be able to support all students appropriately without overs supporting them because if you think about what the purpose is we want students to become more independent so you do that by teaching a skill allowing the student to practice and then weaning back support as appropriate Okay so that if a student has a one:1 Aid or a 2:1 Aid essentially what happens is often you have an aid that is with that student all the time within a classroom that is really restrictive for that student so there's a careful balance between supporting the student but also not restricting the student okay so one thing just to keep in mind is you know these are based on our current projections and I think everyone's aware in the past if during the course of the annual review

095process or even next fall if there's increased needs then typically we would come back to the board and say we need to add back um one Aid or two AIDS based on needs or sometimes we've actually reduced AIDS during the course of the year as well so these are positions that are I'd say a little more flexible based on student needs so it does happen where we've added and reduced AIDS during the course of uh the year after the budget process thank you thank you I just wanted to reiterate that I want to make sure that our AIDS aren't feeling overworked and feeling like they're constantly um um being given too much so if we do feel as though yes [Music] um it would be appropriate to have more AIDS I I would be happy

096to include that in the budget okay okay back to you I'm actually follow up one thing with that which just occurred to me you know there's obviously a process for Teacher tenure and such do AIDS have that I mean is that a position that you can be tenured in that it can be a long-term stable contract or is it always a year-to-year thing it's always a year to year thing there's no 10 year for AIDS um the two other questions you use the word Continuum a couple of times and I suspect I'm simply ignorant here is that a formal there's a program called the continum is that what we're talking about tell me a little more the state has a Continuum of services that could start with it it goes from least restrictive to most

097restricted okay so that the Continuum should be so so you have a full Continuum so student students have access okay and then within that our different programs like our least restrictive would be a resource room where a student is pulled for one period they receive support in their academic goals on their IP and then those goals are progress monitored but the rest of the time the student is spent in a a general education class all the way up to our most restrictive programs which are completely self-contained and those students have um minimal opportunity to mainstream because of the nature of their disability so that's what I mean by the Continuum so the only budget question really was you know you got $1.7 million tuition to other schools I assume that's where students needs mean they

098need to be in a program that isn't offered here and we therefore pay that other District that does offer that program is that correct yes okay um do we receive any money or is this mostly a one-way thing where besttime students are going elsewhere it's a oneway thing mostly for so we would pay a a tuition to a Bose program is one we also have private placements um depending on the needs of the students they fluctuate and those are set by Bose's of course can you give me a rough Sense on how many students we are sending out of District I can give you an exact number as of right now um we have 18 students out of district and they go to Bose us and Questar programs we have 19 students in private schools

099and 21 nonpublic thanks and we service 528 students districtwide in special education that thanks John I thought that living resources was pivoting from to Sage is that something that we can be a part of or we reached out and inquired and were told that they cannot accommodate us at this time yeah it is I think them picking up living resources was quite a bit so I don't think they can take on another school this and we were we were never part of no that at all yeah okay um I wanted to just go back to the there was a slide where you um pointed out the shift in the there seems to be there it is oh no slide number maybe it's 36 um the diversity Equity inclusion line is decreasing by a solid SU

100and I was just wondering what was what was influencing that shi that entire position really was changed to be a different position oh right thank you thank you thank you so it's just not so it's still there it's just not reflected here thank you um the three special ed teachers so first of all I want to Meredith does such a wonderful job of sharing appreciation and I sometimes get caught up in remembering my questions and also forget to share appreciation but thank you and thanks to your team um and I'm also excited about um three additional special ed teachers where where do we anticipate they land so these are districtwide positions but for right now one of those is allotted to the high school program for the second section of rise the second is to

101restore the reading program at the middle school and the third is a new addition that's a districtwide position it would be a halftime special education and halftime behaviorist position to be able to provide advice for us within district and support within district with professional development and going to observe students and making recommendations for Behavioral interventions um and also provide guidance for us for future programming needs so we're really looking for someone who has expertise experience with behavior programs and also can in a dual capacity as a special educator as well that's the third wonderful thank you um and then I just want to underline that my my gratitude um for continuing to include and support um School psychologists the social workers all of that that aspect of what we're able to provide is so important

102I know that um I don't it may not even been last year but I know that in recent in the last couple of years there were times when it was really hard to find services and enough services for students struggling and students facing a mental health Challenge and I was wondering your assessment of the need and how we're able to fill the need or other ways that we're working to fill the need if we can't do it exclusively are you talking about tell me um will I'm looking to you for help and memory on this um maybe I can add my question to that which is the Saratoga the Saratoga center for the family I thought we built that up we had we yeah we added that last year because last year we couldn't serve

103all of the students this year we've actually have not filled one of those positions and have been able to serve all the students and families so the numbers actually have gone down which is a good so the numbers of the need has gone down okay so that's why that's on there okay thank you I appreciate that thank you and then the last thing and I know this wasn't part of this presentation so if we want to come back to this at another time or anything like that um and I I'll direct this towards Jody in the past we've had conversations around extended school year are there are we predicting any changes for this coming year this same as last year thank you thank you correct same as last year yeah okay thank you okay so

104I do have one more addition that's sort of outside the um instructional component but um if youall last year we added um some new vision um screening technology for our nurses um and this year we're looking to update our um hearing screening um so the addition of two um odometers so that's why that is there and then the other thing um we took a look at our our enrichment um monies our building allocation monies um and we really having adjusted the amount of per pupil expenditures for art music PE um the general um education program at the elementary levels in quite some time so we are um looking to increase that by $50,000 that will not just in instructional pieces but also some of the field trip enrichment pieces so um that's about $10,000 extra

105per building um that that is what that comes out to questions on that Katherine so that's so that 50,000 that's field trips and then what other types of So like um art equipment okay music equipment P supplies PE library library um some technology it's just the overall I don't remember what the exact numbers were but let's say it would used to be I don't know $55 per student for all of those things we're now bumping that to 69 to about just over 83 yeah so it's going from 69 to 83 okay so that's yeah across many different categories and so this is in addition to the library budget and and all this is more on the supply side of things pure supplies yeah wonderful and may I when the time is right I've got a

106question about the music but we don't I don't know if this is the right time or when sure I guess go ahead about the music I would like to talk about the music um so the one of the uh a piece of feedback that I had heard um was that our right now in our elementary schools we have fourth graders eligible to pick an orchestra U instrument fifth graders eligible to pick a band instrument and one thing that I've heard is that students so if a student decides to start Viola in fourth grade and then it's like but I really want trumpet and fifth grade and then coming to sixth grade they're like nope I really want Viola or cello or whatever um that shifting back and forth is is hard or I've also heard

107you know discouraged to some extent and so I'm wondering if you could speak to that what our practices or policies are around that to the extent that we have any um and what are the requirements if somebody wanted to pick up Theon in eth grade uh you know come into a program later than fourth or fifth grade yeah for sure so I I think some of this must be sort of a communication issue um we certainly don't discourage don't want to discourage students as you know um Performing Arts is a an elective component of our um educational programs and to discourage students from participating in something that is elective um doesn't really make a whole lot of sense um so that said we every year we have students that change instruments um it's not an

108issue the the challenge becomes sort of I guess when you decide to change and what level I guess band you're looking to perform in right so or Ensemble um there might be some work you have to do to sort of put yourself in a position to actually be able to do it um not unlike if you're taking um say region level coursework not honors and then the following year you're like you know what I really want to take an EP course you're probably going to have to do some work to sort of get yourself up to speed to be ready to do that so likewise if you're looking to go back to theola after skipping a year you're probably going to have to do some extra work to kind of get back up to speed

109to where you need to be now how that extra work happens same as with academics right some students can handle it all on their own they can certainly seek the advice of um the music department here some will choose to work with um a private teacher just like or a private tutor like in academics but it's it really comes out to working with the music department though on what the best Avenue is to get back into the fold if you will um but we certainly do not discourage it and if if that's the message that's going out we kind of need to hear specifics so that we can fix that CU that's not the message we want going out beautiful thank you I appreciate that thanks for okay one the field trip ENT ental money

110does that mean that you know it would now be easier for a teacher to try and put on a field trip or does that not make a difference in terms of what a teacher would be able to do is it like a designated pool of money I don't it is it's a designated pool of money per building I mean one of the things we've seen is just a a rising cost in Transportation has become so prohibitive um like to just to get Yankee Trails bus now or a vendor um you're talking over $2,000 um right before you do anything else right you're already paying 2,000 for a bus so if you've got 60 students going and you have to absorb 2,000 right off the rip that really limits what you can do so yeah it

111just provides more opportunities to be able to do things good and then the last component is um this is part of the federal requirements for all of the different covid money that have been allocated over the last um four years or so um and some of our other grants um we do have um outside of the title grants that I spoke of a little bit earlier the title one two 34 grants we also have some special education grants some food grants so all told we get about $3 million um in grant funding um and on the special ed side of things they do um allocate 7 FTE into those grants um in the title 1 2 3 4 we used to fund some positions in there but we moved away from that because those numbers

112they fluctuate from year to year it's it it's interesting they're going up a little bit um from 20 there it's always on a lag too but from 21 to 22 to 22 23 they did go up a little bit um but to rely on those for instructional funding I don't want to get into that because if we at one point that the monies were going down every year and I didn't want to position ourselves where we weren't going to be able to continue a program because grant funding went away so we were able to slowly move all of that back into the general fund so no positions outside of special ed are funded using grants the special ed funding is much more stable than the title grant funding so here here's the covid funding money

113we had just over $6 million and of that um five million of it we allocated to our building projects um we were really strategic in how we handled this money so this money is all sort of rolling off um this coming fall um and many districts are now struggling what they're going to do because they funded several several positions within their District using these monies and that money is now gone so like oh we hired 20 reading teachers with this money and now the money's gone so what do we do like so we didn't avoided that back to my earlier point right we knew this money was rolling off so we did if you recall all the presentations that were done with the capital project we used um 2 and a half million within the

114capital project itself and then we outfitted every single classroom in the district with new furniture um so that's what we decided to spend our money on because those are sort of one time longer hits that you don't need to revisit for quite some time um some of the things you had to spend so even it does say instructional salaries there we use that for our summer programs during covid we did some um academic recovery programs for students also recall during covid if a student was um tested positive they miss school for quite some time and you had to provide instruction um so a lot of the money was earmarked towards that um purchase Services was very speal um specific and what that had to be the bulk of that money was was for the paper

115tutoring service which um hasn't yielded the results that we had hoped if you recall when we the reason we sort of went that route was we were hoping that students that don't have the means to hire private tutors would take advantage of this um and actually what we found is the bulk of our students that are using the paper tutoring are the students that traditionally hire tutor so they're like doubling up now right they're hiring personal tutors and they're using this software our students that struggle the most are not necessarily using it um so that's actually something we are going to move off of Once the funding's gone it's just not being our utilization numbers are super super low there's to justify the cost moving forward it just wouldn't make sense um and then a

116little bit in Supply money I'll bring John back up for buses I want to pick up where we left off on our conversation from the 28th on the bus proposition and and options for for the board consideration and just sort of for additional context that the reason we're focusing on this so much now is really associated with the calendar in that we only have one additional regularly scheduled meeting before the Board needs to adopt both a operating budget ballot propositions including a bus proposition so that we can provide some time for the public notice which is no later than the first week of April I need some guidance from the board this evening is what direction if any it's looking for in terms of moving forward on the bus proposition our bond Council and legal

117council does need some some lead time to get the language of those resolutions drafted and put in place in time for the board's uh March 20th meeting so I know it's a lot of information I know it's compressed but it's compressed only because I'm compressed it's because the calendar is compressing me so I just want want to provide that a little bit of context in terms of if you feel like I'm rushing you into a decision it's not intentional it's just totally driven by uh the board meeting schedule and the calendar a quick overview of where the district's current vehicle Fleet stands and its customary replacement plan we have 62 large diesel buses seven large EV buses 3 45 passenger diesels that are wheelchair accessible um and 26 24 to 30 passenger small gasoline powered

118buses and 5 to8 passenger 4x4 Suburban uh type Vehicles those are all the eligible vehicles that can transport student at any given point in time in the district the replacement schedule for the diesel buses is customary around 12 years the gasoline uh propulsion vehicles are 10 years the ideal number to place on those um areas are anywhere between six and three depending on the type or a total of nine that's an average it's not necessarily a requirement but that is what the recommend recommendation is so you try to avoid these whip saws in your bond propositions from one year to the next where you're going from 500,000 to 3 million to two 2 million just it normalizes out the replacement uh schedule when the district leadership team was first presenting its and pulling together its

119budget back in late December early January we we did have active discussions in terms of what Fleet replacement vehicle should be presented for the board given our current inventory or replacement plan the the mandates what have you in terms of EV buses at that point in time we were not necessarily sold one way or the other in terms of actually adding a significant number of bus vehicles to a proposition for board consideration that was in early January fast forward to about the middle of January the district was made aware of several funding opportunities specifically associated with the EV bus initiative and mandate by the state of New York that additional grant funding sort of shifted the conversation somewhat conceptually somewhat academically but there's a financial impact to that as well and I wanted just to

120relay that information to the board and the public the Environmental Protection Agency under 2023 clean School Bus rebate program is offering $200,000 for nonprioritized school dist districts of which Bethlehem is a non-prioritized school district that grant program requires a sale donation scrappage of a 2,000 and 11 or newer bus it is a third-party application process meaning that the district if interested applies through a manufacturer for that grant funding the application uh that the district submitted for the EPA funding was submitted on February 13 2024 I do not anticipate that we'll have a response to that application until sometime at the earliest probably mid April which will be after the opportunity for the board to to consider a bus proposition so that's Federal funding um on the EPA side couple with the federal funding under the

121environmental Bond act the state of New York is offering 100 million under the New York State bus in initiative I'm sorry the New York bus incentive program under nerta there's a couple of components to that funding stream any District uh can replace up to 6% of its Fleet given that the our bus fleet is roughly 100 Vehicles we could replace up to uh six buses there's $147,000 in guaranteed funding as a base voucher and add-on a rough L $12,250 for a vehicle to grid enabled um it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be able to provide power from the bus to the grid just that the bus itself is enabled the buses that we presently have that are EVS RV tog ready there's also the option of roughly a $61,000 scrappage add-on that is

122a true scrappage require requirement meaning that you can't sell you can't donate you drill actual 3-in hole in the engine block and you actually have to split the bus in half um to make sure that you actually truly scrapped it there's also some additional funding associated with charging infrastructure anywhere between 25,000 and $55,000 um associated with with infrastructure coupled with both the federal and state funding uh streams the governor's executive budget uh proposes that Transportation Aid reimbursement that rati is applied to the grow the gross cost of the bus as opposed to the net cost of the bus presently law has written that any transportation Aid is applied to the net cost once you take into consideration any other federal state or third party funding streams so a quick back of the envelope presentation in

123terms of what that may look like rough estimated cost of an EV bus is approximately $450,000 under the EPA you have $200,000 in voucher fund fing which the district has applied for may be eligible for and receive gets you a net cost of $250,000 bethlehem's Transportation ratio is 66% which if you apply that to the gross cost of $450,000 get you $297,000 there's provision that you can't make money on this deal meaning that even if your uh state aid Transportation yields more money you can't have a net impact of anything greater than zero so under the EPA side if we get that that net impact of the district would be zero comparison calculation for the New York State incentive program base voucher of 147,000 the v2g enabled I did not include the scrappage because I

124think that's a decision that um transportation the business office and District leadership team along with the board need to consider by the each gets you a net cost of roughly 291,000 again net impact of 0 to the district you're able to stack this funding meaning that you're if you get both the federal and state funding kudos to you still the math works out that you have no impact to the district there was a question I think at the the last board meeting in terms of what would the um impact looked if if certain Provisions you know didn't apply so if the governor's proposal does not go through in terms of reimbursement on the gross cost but remains to be reimbursed on the net cost there is an impact to the district on the EPA side

125roughly 85,000 per bus on the nice bit program roughly just under $100,000 so I think that's an important distinction that you need to consider I can't guarantee what the legislature may or may not adopt uh as part of its um it's Ed budget similar um what if we don't get any funding streams for some whatever reason we forget to submit the application we get denied this is just a straight calculation of what an EV bus cost at 66% straight gets you roughly an impact of $153,000 impact to the district I want to remind folks that that $297,000 in reimbursement is spread over the course of 12 fiscal years as opposed to diesel buses where that reimbursement comes back to The District in a period of five years quick cost comparison based on type of bus

126um what the potential is on Federal and State funding state aid payback period just Ju Just A you know whip this out at you know cocktail parties you can tell everyone what your various bus costs are for the district and what the impact is and how much money you may or may not have saved District taxpayers so really just a resource for you if you had some some questions um in terms of the various types of bus John could I um are you finished or I have more but you want to Pig go uh I'd like to just take a brief pause because it is 9 o' um if we could all take a five minute break and pig students um who are here if you could come sign out to make sure you get

127credit for being here there's not much right can presentation I hope I didn't interrupt your flow okay so with the information presented thus far I wanted wanted to provide the board with a couple of bus proposition options these are just three options that in coordination with ell dado the director of transportation we put together we can push and pull and pick and apart these and and combine them in any way but it does provide a a visual option in terms of what do certain choices yield in terms of number and types of buses as well as costs so option one is to take advantage of the federal and state funding associated with the the large bus program six buses at roughly a proposition amount of $2.7 million as well as three small gas uh powered

128buses those are those Mini Minotaur ones that you see uh at a rough cost of $277,000 for a proposition amount just over $3 million with a net impact of $1 million these propositions by the way do not take into consideration the state and federal funding streams because otherwise we're talking Option 1 a 1 b 1 C so um and for the actual proposition It's usually the gross cost of the total acquisition and then we would include some language in offsetting revenue streams that's option one option two three large buses and the EV U design type three large diesel buses taking in consideration that if the Mandate remains as is at 27 should the district consider sort of adding to that Fleet uh on the on the diesel side taking in consideration the mandated date as

129well as three small buses total of nine buses again gross bu bus proposition cost of just over $2.2 million with a net impact to the district of 3/4 of a million bus option three take a pause on large bus Acquisitions whether they be EV or diesel and just stick with three small gas buses at 277,000 with a net impact to the district of $95,000 three options uh we can put together any information um for a bus proposition that the board desires know there was a lot of questions this is Meredith's favorite slide this works for me may not work for others so what I the goal of this slide is really to try to trans what a bus proposition for any given year coupled with the ban um Debt Service we issue associated with those

130bus propositions translates into the operational cost for any given year so keep in mind that any time that the district issues bans for buses it is issuing B bans for five years wor the bus Acquisitions every year one bus acquisition falls off we add another one on so presently for for the 2324 fiscal year our operational expense associated with the five previous bus purchases was just over $1.1 million we're forecasting for 2425 under a million dollar because each uh recently each year our annualized bus proposition has been less from a million 314 in June 2021 to $887,000 in 22 to so I added the six EV buses at $27 million and then for estimated of June 25 and 26 I know that number ticks up a lot but that gets back to the vehicle replacement

131plan according to the state Mandate of replacing everything by the 2035 date so that assumes 9 EV buses at $455,000 at a 1 to 2% per quarter increase which we have been experien experiencing on the manufacturer side so if you stick with that you can see the large swings in your annualize operational impact of the bus proposition when you get to 26 27 and 2728 have roughly $2.6 million so I this isn't a hard and fast graph it's it's really meant to to provide some context in terms of how any decision you make in one year whether it's less or more drivve several operating budgets after you make that bus proposition decision because of the way the financing mechanism Works before we get to the wrap up are there any questions that I can provide

132you with some information or that Ellen can provide you with some operational knowledge and experience that may help you in your decision I just procedurally before we go into substantive question question I understand we're on a timeline what do you need from us tonight do we need to decide on one of these options or can we still ask you for more information and decide on the option at our next regular board meeting it's going to be so this really my my preference is if you can give me direction not so much on the options I provided but any option that you're comfortable with it doesn't have to be an option provid I just need a number of buses and type of bus so I can work with bond counsil in terms of the drafting of

133the resolution that I'll present resol you do need an option tonight okay resolution would be on the next board agenda for adoption for the notification and John just to clarify if there's any EV buses as part of it there'd be language and there contingent upon receiving any of that grant money which is similar to what we did when we got the first five buses with the nerta grant it's basically said contingent upon whatever Bond Council actually helped us draft that thank you y Catherine so can we go back to the colorful slide for a minute can you I mean I'm this is this is I appreciate the slide but it's not we're going to get rid of it next budget cycle what's that we're going to get rid of the slide in the next budget

134cycle I I would love that um because it's it's a technical or dream but um what is the takeaway from on this it's really just to show on the right hand side yeah of where based on the decisions that this board makes at any given budget cycle what the impact is operationally in terms of The Debt Service payment that has to incorporate in the operating budget so in 2223 you had a Debt Service specifically for bus Acquisitions of $1.2 million you look at 2425 that fell by almost $300,000 because the individual bus propositions for the past few past few years were significantly less than bus propositions prior on the top part of of the graph where's the 2.3 does this have a sorry looking to see does this have a a laser on it no

135over here sorry doesn't have a little pointer and this one so depending what we spend here that's then have effect what actual Debt Service is actually it does else 27 28 26 27 so these are That's The Debt Service that's impacted by these purchases these purchases here okay but that that assumes so that assumes thank you I appreciate that um that assumes in the fiscal year column going from left to right the very top colorful column The Debt Service that's under total bus Debt Service down over there yep so all of those numbers on the right are assuming those future actions to that dollar amount cor that's correct okay but each so this like $2.7 million here right equates to the 100 I can't even see 546 yeah 546 for each of these three years

136and it it would go further except I didn't I didn't bring the graph down F further into to the years because I ran out of color yeah um all right yeah so okay so this is I really apologize that this is it wasn't meant to be a confusing okay I'm just trying to understand if there is a decision point that comes there there there clearly is and this was really to manifest or at least showcase hey based on the 27 and 2035 mandate whether or not those dates change those are the dates that we know today yeah with those dates in conjunction with the district's vehicle replacement plan of swapping out buses every 12 to 10 years would require nine buses be replaced each year to meet those mandates which is where you get to

137those large numbers in 25 and 26 taking into consideration all those factors if you take in consider it's going to have a significant impact on your operating budget speak same language so all right thank you yeah I think I'm missed that this chart was driven in the first instance by an assumption that we were meeting the state mandate by 2028 so it works backwards from there I missed that part personally which helps me now understand sorry that was it was probably an explanation part of mine I apologize if I created that confusion no no no no I me these are these are complicated things right we can joke about my understanding a particular slide or not but these are these are nuance and complicated you know discussions so thank you um unless they're not and

138I just really am not getting it but thank you one way or the other for bearing with me I appreciate that um I think the other question that I had specifically on the funding piece um and specifically on the um the bond act funding there is um an OP opportunity for $25,000 for charging infrastructure are we able to make a run at that regardless of what decision we make on the number of buses for this year like could we decide to pause on buses and still make run infrastructure yes and no the infrastructure that we've already purchased and installed those seven wall Chargers we bought those out of pocket I already reached out T I start and be like hey we were first in can you can can you accommodate us because we embraced the

139initiative at the you know arguably before the initiative came out I I got a negative from ner on that the part of the capital Bond project where we're installing those three fixed chargers at a rough cost of approximately $600,000 we will be eligible as I understand I really need to F read the fine print on this we will be eligible for that grant funding at $25,000 it's a $600,000 acquisition cost associated with with those Chargers that were built in the the project you can go up to $55,000 if you do a an electri electrification plan that says hey this is what your District needs are we're coordinating with Capital District region bosis to do this on behalf of all the districts I reached out to bosis and said like hey did you guys see this

140because it really should be incorporated into the RFP because it'll able to be maximized funding so they went back they confirmed that their RFP met those standards for an electrification plan that can be submitted to nerta on the district by District level which would make you available for that larger pot of $55,000 so we could get up to 50 so so we could get up to 55,000 for infrastructure yes and at least a portion of that could be used to address the capital project that we're already undertaking that's my understanding of I have to work that the mechanics of it because we're in the it's not like we're applying for a future Capital we've already we're in the frows of it now so I'm trying to back into this with the calendar and when we're

141when we started when we're going to end when the funding may be available so right and if and if for and and and let's say if that doesn't cut in our favor and we can't use that money for the existing project looking forward would we be able to um go after that money either the 25 or the 55 to invest in you know one more chart like I understand that I understand that these things cost more than what's being advertised here could we put that toward expanding in infrastructure um and maybe it's not just charges Chargers themselves but could we put that towards expanding infrastructure in the future if we could we can we splp that off my general reading of that those Provisions is yes and that's without buying any bus that has nothing

142to do whether we do the buses there was a provision if you buy a bus as of January 1st 2023 or later so the fact that we bought at least one EV bus since then so the the information's been out there somewhat Loosely from from the state the governor's office just did a large press release that Ellen and I are trying to break apart and unpack to see okay we know what the the gross numbers are right but like the devil's always in the details and I I don't want to overpromise and underd deliver here in terms of where we may or may fall out of Eligibility based on the the way the application is structured and our ability to potentially our potential ability to make a run at that money is separate from any

143of the bus prop positions or is that built into any of I don't believe it's built into the bus propositions because it's the the charging component is a separate part of the application as opposed to the the actual vehicle bus component wonderful thank you thank you so much that thank you yeah um putting aside the colorful chart which is let's move beyond the colorful chart let's let's do that the governor's demanding to maximize let's say that the money that's available now through the funding with six buses correct that's correct okay now how does that compare those six buses to the again not that one but the regular bus replacement um schedule is that more buses that ordinarily would be replaced or is it less or is that is that the number it we would be

144replacing some buses a little sooner than we otherwise would which is why I didn't build in the scrappage component on the nice uh the New York State Side we went this route we would be replacing buses a little bit sooner about two or three um the ones that we submitted as part of the application were 2014's for option one Ellen yeah for option one maybe I a little bit about sure please um you were you were on the right track when you said well don't we buy Six buses every year Well we don't necessarily buy Six large buses every year but to stay on track six big ones would be um you know average right CU it would be maybe I don't know to stay on track with our regular rep with the program with

145the regular yes and so so this this one is a little bit more on the EV side to take advantage of of the funding but option two seems you know option option two seems a little bit um uh more doable uh because we can still buy diesel buses and obviously we need diesel buses bues because we can't use electric buses to get through the day plus Athletics so if we we could still take advantage of the funding with purchasing three EV buses but then um staying kind of on track and then having three diesel buses for usage through the day Ellen in the current replacement plan thing is it N9 a year that was the plan yeah it was nine a year I mean small and large combin exactly right yes so that was the

146current plan on that note on the on the number of buses and making it through the day if um I'm curious because I thought that we had so many more diesels right now than routes that were running and so can you can you help me understand what like why um why continue buying diesels at this time if if we've got so much free money on the EV side and if we have um a deep bench of of diesels right now well it appears that we have a deep bench of diesels right now but so if we have 53 routes and say we have 10 athletic trips going out and then up to about 30 buses on our hold list each day meaning 30 buses are um off the road for you know regular services for

147instance uh preventative maintenance um or brake checks or Tire changes um DOT inspections times two a year which would be up to two weeks a year because they hold them and they prep them and then they present them to the Department of Transportation for inspection um so if you add all that in we really are almost to the wire with um with diesel buses thank you I appreciate that and then with electric buses um they can go out for their morning run but we need those midday hours to come back in charge and then they can go out for their afternoon hours but there there's not enough charge to get them through for athletic trips so people that are on a route for 6 hours a day they're charging their bus in between and going

148back out for their afternoon run they're also coming back parking that bus charging it and then prepping a diesel bus to take for their athletic trip thank you there's a maximization of price point here too because the diesel large buses have seen a significant uptake in inflationary pressure as well right driven in part because of the EV initiative because people are be like well wait a second 27 2035 those dates hold firm I'm G to I'm going to get as many as I can because of a number of factors part of which is even the the grid not being able to meet the the service needs so that's driving some of the the price pressure on the price point for large diesel buses and why some districts are sort of getting ahead of the inability

149to not buy them in the in the near future thank you I think you yeah so I'm missing something I think you spent a couple of nice slides pointing out we have Aid available right now that you know might make sense to grab in which case net cost of an EV bus to us is zero why then are we issuing a $2.7 million Bond it's the wording of the proposition meaning that you are seeking authorization to spend $2.7 million on buses which is gets the jod point in terms of why we include language in terms of what the net cost is so it's there's a lot of legal EAS built into the bus prop that the district is hereby authorized to buy X number of p uh buses at a cost to not exceed $2.7

150million that's what F folks see in terms of what the actual because I I need the um the authority to actually spend that amount of money even though you're getting even though I'm not necessarily going to get it and there's some third party transactions so it's the gross cost of of the proposition and then we try with our budget newsletter to really provide hey this is actually what the cost is to the district yes it looks like a big number but the actual out of-pocket cost is really being financed by the federal and state government and the district taxpayers are paying X Y or zero right so we look at prop one here right opposition one the hoped for actual bcsd impact should be zero that's correct I I I did only put that because

151I you get into these very various options so this would really be hey under the current scenario no uh no grant funding 66% on the net cost this would be the true out- of-pocket cost if every one of those Provisions didn't come to fruition but there would be I'm sorry you there would be initial outlay because that state funding takes 12 years to come back in right uh yes so longit I always look at this longitudinally right like in terms of what is the gross impact of to the district over the course of time so the IAL cost is actually you know 2.7 in some ways it's not even that because the money goes to Matthews because it's a third- party uh voucher program so the money goes to them we get build the net

152cost of that voucher but I still need the $2.7 Million number built into the proposition and would the proposition itself what a what a voter saw when they went to vote on this would it include the contingency language that we were discussing contingent upon receiving so b c and I are struggling in terms of how best to word that given the number of factors at play here right there's Federal funding there's State funding and know by the way there's this executive proposal that may or may not come so I leave it you know to to the council's office to to sort of craft that uh there are probably you know some options how best to phrase that and then there would be not to exceed District cost of of something based on how that language

153works thank you so given the option three exists right and that language would exist in the bond proposition am I right to think we can choose option one with language that says we're only spending this money if we actually get the state aid and if for some reason that state aid vanishes into the mist of whoever knows what and we buy No Buses we will still in fact be okay because that was an option to do in the first place it was I mean there's I know we're on this replacement plan of nine buses right if we take a pause the the fleet's not going to implode on itself you know at some point you know if you go too far you're going to see not nine buses on the proposition you're going to see

15414 or 13 which will drive the the the color chart that doesn't exist more times you stories about breakdowns by the side of the road right uh cool thank you I just want to be clear although I'm sure you understand you I appreciate that you put forward the three options we also could do any other combination of numbers that we thought was appropriate do you have a recommendation for us when we started the budget process I think the the straw poll was let's take take a break or a pause in terms of large bus Acquisitions because of some of the challenges we experienced on the operational side and the mechanical side new technology maybe give a pause let that technology catch up to you know more user experience other than Beth the real reason I

155presenting the large buses is because they they the game shifted in January because of the funding stream my concern from the business office perspective and from a decision perspective from the board is you take a pass and and I'm not trying to put my thumb on the scale here in any way you take a pass buses are not going to go down in terms of overall cost 2 years 3 years I can't speak to the amount of funding that is available and now you truly are paying out of District expense maybe the time you know the payback period shifts are somewhat but at least the information I have available today is between Federal and or state funding that cost could be minimum um decreased or be made minimal up to zero and just a note

156on the funding the B not to say that other funding couldn't come into play in the future right my my magic aall doesn't tell me this but the bond act funding that is cap that is a onetime capital investment that voters approved last year or the year before I count you remember at this point so that is that's that's a big one shot amount of money that exists now once that money is gone that line of funding will be gone again something else could come up to take its place but the bond Act is what the bond Act is there's a $100 million available now on a first come first serve basis now the number of ability of districts to be a first serve is somewhat limited because a lot of folks are not where

157they need to be to actually take advantage of it so there's that context as well but we are we are because we have the charging infrastructure in place we do have some operational expertise and Technical knowhow in terms of the EV buses now um I just have a question regarding um you were talking about the governor's proposal regarding the reimbursement being on the gross cost of the bus not the net so my understanding is this is just a proposal this hasn't been passed we have no idea whether or not this is going to be passed I want to make sure I understand if it's not passed you said there's an 85,000 to 100,000 impact per bus does that mean that if it doesn't pass for each EV bus that we buy it's going to cost

158us 85,000 or 100,000 yes so it's not going to be a net zero it well it will be a net zero only if those three things come into play right EPA and or nice Pip with the executive budget as it's proposed right but the the E the EPA and the New York Grant um those are things that exist it's whether or not we can get them that's correct the governor proposal we we have no idea whether that's going to exist if it doesn't it's going to cost us 85,000 to 100,000 per bus and are you suggesting that we could write the The Proposal such that we would only buy these buses if all three of those three all whatever the board provides the guidance I can do it in any way shape if you're comfortable

159spending up to $100,000 per bus we can word the proposition in that way if you want it to be you know a net impact of zero we can word the proposition that way as John just to clarify $100,000 let's say it's that yeah that's after the state aid that's correct 12 years so I'm not sure if the proposition would actually be that low right no it wouldn't it would still be the gross cost of the bus because of the state but the language at the bottom somewhere I would we're working with Council on this would be like you know some phrasing that it would impact the district by only $100,000 you still need to have whatever the the acquisition cost of the buses are right let understand that we can word it you know in

160any way we want do you have a sense of whether that that the governor's proposal about the Net versus gross would or could even come to fruition um one way or the other within the time frame that we're talking about here for the B not for yours not for your decision time point no no I'm right but I I just I'm sorry I misunderstood your your question well but by the time that would it would be material and impacting the actual whatever the resolution ends up so your your your decision at a bond prop would have to consider what is your your appetite for the you know almost the the worst case scenario yeah definitely but we're going to know Monday when the one house budgets come out whether or not the Senate and the

161assembly included and adopted her proposal in the one house if both the Senate and the assembly have those in their negotiating position and we have all three F come to play ball the chances of getting pulled out then are considerably less if we have two if we have you know one house and not the other and the governor again we still have we sell the ball game nobody it's it's it's hard to make decisions on a budget in process and I'm not trying to undermine that but for to to answer that question that's that would be my response there does anyone else have any substantive questions for John okay I do think it'd be good for us to give you know if we have to give him um a sense a sense of a b

162or c and how to do it I think we should probably all try to come to a consensus or or give their opinions so I don't know who wants to start I think um open to being swayed by whatever discussion I think that I um would recommend something that looks like option one with some contingency language I don't think it needs to be a net zero in my opinion um but contingent upon some amount of funding such that if it's the $100,000 Mark or something we agree on itd be comfortable with that understanding that maybe it means we get no more large buses for this year but that we would be okay in that position and potentially we get six EV buses with a very low net impact overall to the district right that'll make

163sense what will I say basically pick that slide if that's the max impact I'm good with that ideally have zero I'm I'm sorry when this right so prop one TV buses ideally the cost is zero if it's 85 or 96 pound I'm okay with that what will it said Bob um so originally last year what I you know when we talked about what we I was in favor generally of of of deferring for a while because of the the econom the um I just thought that the the problems that we've been having conceptually you know I'm very in favor of the EV I think it's a great thing I thought it would be um good to to take a pause to to let the technology catch up I have to say that the the money

164available obviously is is a material thing I'm loed to to give away free money but I am quite I guess troubled by the putting aside the the mechanical problems that that result in just you know more more work for the district and and and breaking down obviously that the safety factor is is something that I'm I'm very very very troubled with in terms of that how that relates to the you know the overall what I assume are going to be increases in technological advancements over the next couple years and I have to say that that is is a very very big thought in my in my mind right now I guess I I would even with the free money which I'm again loed to give up I guess I would I would still say we

165we should pause at this point for so three so pause I'm sorry pause period like okay um I would support uh option one with the um contingency that Willow and you and outlined uh I would support the pause I think Myriad of reasons one is what you just mentioned in terms of uh availability during the day the funding does require us to take six diesel buses out of operation so we add in six buses that have reliability considerations and we take six diesel buses out of uh our situation I think it's been great that we have kind of been the guinea pigs but I think at the same time why continue going down that path for everyone else's benefit when there's clearly lots of technology that needs to be managed and I think most importantly

166is the SA our drivers our students and our community and I think that they're until there's something where there's a reserve power for when power is cut out to safely get a vehicle off the road I think it's that's that to be that needs to be the greatest consideration of the safety of our students and our and our staff so I definitely think until the technology improves and they take that feedback and start to make those changes I don't think it makes sense for us to continue to buy buses that are only going to be the same technology as what we have now um okay I was coming down in the Middle with prop two um for for various reasons I do you know appreciate not leaving free money on the table um and I

167think that is you know obviously a very important consideration um I also want to be moving towards the governor's mandate um even though you know that may not those years may get extended that may not come to fruition I still think we need to be moving towards it if it is something that we're supposed to be doing um I do also hear your concerns about some of the mechanical issues that we've been having with EV buses you know and um taking a pause on get on on getting those and I understand the value that we have in some of the diesel buses as well and questioning are those prices going to go up if we do need to buy more um what is that going to be looking like like the buses prices on buses

168are going to be going up no matter what and so I'm concerned about pausing from buying any new buses because next year we're going to have to buy more or you know in the coming years we would have to buy more to make up for a paused year and prices will be going up um but I do see option two as kind of a middle of the road taking into consideration both of those um concerns so I was going with option two can John can you clarify because I heard something so if if you went with option one and we let's say we got all the grant money and there were six EV buses then we required to trade in the six diesel buses if you take if you rece receive the EPA funding so

169cuz one of the things Ellen pointed out was the concern about not having enough diesel buses which I think is what you were talking about so that's is that that's my question like it does that put us in a position where one second so the EPA side there is a there's a swap meaning that one in one out on the state program there is not which is why I didn't include the SC scrappage add-on in the calculator understanding that we're in a nonprioritized district we weren't sure it provides an option for the district if we were to stack those funding streams if we get it we don't necessarily have to accept it I'm just saying but if we had to get rid of six diesel buses currently based on what Ellen said with the number

170that are out of service for various reasons and the trips the athletic trips does that create an issue for buses to transport it wouldn't put us out of business sure it wouldn't put us out of but the buses that we're replacing are 2014 which only based on the replacement maybe have another 15 or 18 months left that we wouldn't consider yeah uh getting them and that's four you got to keep in mind we by the time we get it you're going to have uh buses won't be delivered until December of 2024 so that's going to shrink that for the ones that we would consider scrapping or selling your useful life is that much less so it's it's not like we're looking to get rid of a a 2020 bus with aot thinking about in terms

171of raw number yes but the ones that are available under the grant guidelines are the ones are the the oldest in the fleet anyway right it was more about the switch proposition two would we would only peel off three right which three of them would be eligible to go but otherwise the other side of it is getting rid of buses that still have good life and they're well maintained right um but if we got rid of three of them then we would still be on track for the replacement plan and are you saying that um say we that three of the buses are at that point where it's would be by the time beyond their their life cycle and three of them would still have had 18 months or something like that on cycle that

172we would have to take out in order to to get the um EPA funding yes okay so could a consideration be three EV buses contingent upon grant money and the three smaller buses is an option three smaller buses and all the propositions because there's a need for them the smaller buses yes yeah so you're saying so you're giving option four which is three large EV no Diesel and three small Bots right which then you would keep three diesel still that you wouldn't that aren't ready to trade in is that how I'm understanding that potentially right well I think proposition two was to buy three EV right I'm three and three diesels right right so she those would be the three that would be natur peeling off for the age of the bus and then three

173uh 30 passenger gas buses if so if we went with Jody's option four this is what I'm now I'm now labeling this right it's congratulations um so if we got three EV buses bought zero diesels and the small gas powered ones um would we then if there were three uses that were rotating out of cycle anyway would we want to apply for the scrappage funding well that's what we could certainly do that I I didn't want to complicate the bus proposition you know that so because to me that that was a decision point after we take the step back what's it look like right so okay um we would certainly work with Bond Council to somehow at least reference that um but I didn't want to necessarily commit the bo Bo or transportation for that

174matter in terms of $61,000 it's a great great number and if they're sort of ready for scrappage anyway we're probably not going to get $61,000 on the open market for them so maybe it it it's worth that I just didn't want to take away from the operational capacity from Transportation which is why I just didn't include it in the calculation no that's okay I just wanted to make sure I understood the the finan is lining up with the buses do we ever actually keep diesel buses to the point where they would be scrapped cuz I I thought that ours was a pretty aggressive circulation compared to a lot of District transportation you know takes very good care of the buses in its Fleet which is why when we do turn them over and those 10

175to 12 year periods we're able to maximize whatever uh District may be looking for you know to add to its and get some additional years outside of our 12 one more question sure so if the warranty on the electric batteries is eight years yes we've never had one to go eight years right past past eight years so I guess there's another consideration is we're making considerations about getting rid of losses that are worthy of 12 years or something that may only be eight it could it could be 10 or 12 but we we don't know what we don't know but it is that I guess I mean that your colorful your colorful chart would certainly change significantly if we went to if we were impacted by an 8year cycle versus a 12E cycle correct but

176the buses that we're considering in terms of scrappage are outside the 8year batter but looking forward Downstream you're now again the stress the the warranty is not that the battery will die it's just in terms of the amount of charge it will continue to hold after understood but it needs to be factored in because if you're let's assume after8 years it's holding holding 50% of the original charge that's going to change because you need additional buses because you can only do one route in the day as opposed to two so I can't speak to it yet but it's it's certainly going to be an operational consideration in future planning for sure so while I supported option one I would also be able to Support options two and four if we were there I don't support

177option three which was the not buying anything option the total pause option I don't like if we wanted to do three EVS three large Diesel and three small buses under option two I can understand the benefit to that if we wanted to do three EV or four EV no large Diesel and three small whatever the number is I could support a lower number than six as well contention on funding if it helps with the diesel turnover issue does anyone else have any updates updates um if I were you know somehow in charge I'd still pick option one I think option four would also get a vote from me if that's more where the V is I agree y sorry with option one or four one okay yeah I mean I'm generally in favor of splitting

178the baby and I have to say though that if you took out the just sort of the safety Factor about this you know the potential for you know just cocking out on the on the road I would have been you know know in favor of option one I mean with everything else being equal so given that I'd still I'd still I guess vote for for three and John yeah still again I think a lot of things come in hydrogen sodium a lot of technology I just think we're just buying more of the same headaches that we're already dealing with okay so um we don't have Holly input um but it seems as if you know I I could go with option four as well I prefer option to um because it does sound like you

179know we do have a need for diesel buses and I am concerned about the cost of them if we do need to replace them um but if we need to come to a consensus that would be um Willow you Catherine and I for option four which is not on the slide which jod suggested which would be three EV bu large EV buses no large diesel buses three small diesel buses gas yeah gas oh gas that's fine um dead animals yeah um but I I would also and then we have to talk about the contingency l language um you know if if part of the reason that we're doing this is because we want free money and we want you know like a zero impact um I personally would want the contingency language to be contingent

180on all three of those things happening so you're a zero I'm a zero impact I strongly disagree because at $100,000 it's still we're not getting a diesel at $100,000 we're not we're maybe we're getting a a Suburban I can't remember probably well the $100,000 is your net what's that the $100,000 is your net your net cost oh I'm so sorry I was like what are we talking about that's after the grand funding right so the grow I'm sorry I'm so sorry so yes so if the cont so yes understanding that the the net right like after so if we don't get the funding at the gross level we get the funding at the net Y and that is maxed out at 100,000 per bus if the governor's proposal isn't adopted by the legislature M I

181still think I mean that is that is still a $90,000 cost savings over a a diesel bus of the I I if I may K just to the Chart here the if you look at a diesel 70 passenger the the gross cost is 188,000 am I not I'm comparing apples to p no because you're you're comparing so the the actual net cost of a diesel bus Tak into consideration the state a is 64,000 so your your EV bus is at roughly a $30,000 premium I appreciate that thank you um well then I'm mildly less enthusiastic but still enthusiastic at a $30,000 premium for an EV bus but that's but thank you that is that is noted and I was more enthusiastic 45 seconds ago before you mentioned n does anyone else have an opinion on

182how many prongs are within the contingency I I agree with Katherine I think we can't make a contingency based on something that doesn't even exist yet um and even the lower cost savings is we still get a bus out of it and we still get any EV bus out of it so I'm okay making it contingent on the grant funding um without that third Governor's initiative piece what will I said okay yeah I agree um same thing if we're just looking at the numbers and the money then I hope that's it's a savings yes John uh how many you you're okay with the contingency just being on the the two grant funding but not the governor's proposal yeah whichever really okay I I don't agree but whatever you guys are with I you know we

183we're Bor it is it is it is what it is okay then I guess the majority um would like the contingency language written regarding the grant but not necessarily a net zero a n z okay so I will take that back to council not sure if we have the ballot space on the ballot to actually include all the Comm but we will do our best to get there um they're aware of it they were just really looking for some guidance they they'll be able to get something keep in mind we did something similar with the first outlay of 5 EV bus this is a little bit more complicated than nuanced um but um they're lawyers that's that's what they do so we'll get that I should be able as soon as I get sort of

184a draft language for uh for the bus prop um I will try to share that as quickly so you guys have a chance to look at it before you formally vote on it just a just a request for when we come back and at our next meeting will we be doing we'll be doing a budget wrap up as we put yep would you mind putting together a slide that just clearly lays out for anybody who is looking at the just at the slides what you're probably going to do this anyway right what we actually said tonight thank you John never mind appreciate that sorry thank you yep I know he's like what is this my thank you I appreciate that all right thank you for that discussion please don't ever bring that slide I like

185that slide it makes sense to me you know no you're just I really work hard in this slide too you know what it like to try to three dimensionalize the all right wrap up real quick so where we started at uh the 28th roughly .8 million gap between expenditures and revenues we went through um several departments over the course of the last two meetings brings our adjusted Baseline down from $114.6 million to just under 114 million which the Gap has decreased from $2.8 million to 2.3 as it stands today that translates to roughly a 3.25% tax levy increase year-over-year ballot propositions that will be on the district's May 21st ballot the district operating budget in terms of what the overall expenditure will be and the necessary tax levy bus proposition number four as it currently

186stands which I will get to you some language we discussed uh February 28th the change in walking distance from 0.1 miles to 0.2 miles between home and the bus stop we did talk briefly about the establishment of a bus capital reserve to possibly have as a an established savings account it's not necessarily funding it in this budget but we can use uh Surplus funding this year or in future years to put some money aside for future Acquisitions and infrastructure to minimize operational costs I just need to number my you know given buses we can consider anywhere between a 7 and a half million or $10 million um bus Reserve specifically for bus reserve some of the I will say some of the language onus reserves are worded in such a way that if the Mandate

187ends or gets extended those funds can also be reallocated for Building infrastructure needs so I'm working with Bond Council for that just way we're just not limited to if we put $5 million in then the the Mandate goes away we sort of put money um aside that we won't be able to access betham Public Library operating budget and necessary tax levy two District Board of Education seats and two Library Board of trustee seats so can you before you leave the slide yes the walking distance um I actually don't know that we voted on putting that on the ballot but you didn't yet okay great it's going to be an option that's presented for you on March 20th perfect can you just remind me I know that we talked about it's saving shaving off certain minutes

188from a lot of roots it doesn't actually reduce the amount of roots rate it just builds in time to make sure there's aens the door so if we have um limited number of bus drivers um this this would open up different roads to maybe group stops less time on the bus for students um less stops it's more efficient um and then if I streamline The Roots maybe even to get rid of a route or so place a driver somewhere else or double tripping I talked about double tripping okay so builds in a lot of potential flexibility with a very minimal additional walk for students right right like a point two would be from say eagle to the second entrance to the bus garage it's pretty short but we were originally talking about the walk out

189from the school and it didn't yield us a lot of um gain and Dr drivers or okay thank you for the Board of Education Election on May 21st voters will elect two members for three-year terms expiring June 30th 2027 nominating petitions were made available on February 21st from the district clerk and are due back to The District Clerk's Office no later than April 22nd at 5:00 the remaining schedule in terms of the budget development process March 20th we will talk about Food Service uh we'll go over again a brief recap of the um options that the V board will consider to include on the ballot there's a public hearing schedule for May 8th meet the candidates night on May 15th if there is interest by more than um two candidates and on May 21st the

190budget votes from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 pm. at the BAM Central High School that's all I got thank thank you John thank you that's some inperson meet cand right now back to doing this real cool okay um okay so that's it for our presentation uh next up is item five recognition of public comment on an on an agenda item um I have a list of people who have um said they would like to speak um please keep your comments to 3 minutes minutes um I'll call out your name and at the end if there's anyone else who additionally wants to speak just let me know um the first person who'd like to speak on an agenda item is Lisa lroy and the second person is Brian Rose good evening um well I'm really excited I

191got to hear the bus presentation and it's actually I think I'm understanding it now which is great um I I appreciate something that um Katherine said earlier about gratitude because this has been you know obviously I'm here on behalf of lab school and I really haven't said Thank you to I was just realizing as I was listening you know I want to thank the administration for the ninth graders that's huge it's wonderful um I want to thank all the board for the incredible questions you guys have been asking I think you've been you know asking some really thoughtful questions um and I'm really excited that we're going to have a a board meeting that looks at lab school that's wonderful um I just since you guys are putting your agenda tomorrow for what that's going

192to look like on Monday I wanted to talk a little bit about the eighth graders and I don't have an eth grader I have a 10th grader I have two sixth graders um one of my sixth graders was on the first on the winning team at Odyssey of the mind so thank you for the shout out for that um but I think we have to think about the about keeping the momentum of lab school going I'm very concerned about what will happen if we pause La lab school and I'm just trying to figure what that's going to look like even if in 2025 we get a great report um from this committee and there's a you know with a you know some changes that can be made we'll have lost so much if we don't

193continue the program um until then it'll you know I will lose some teachers they'll be reassigned we're going to lose a lot of the sort of heart and soul of lab school which is this incredible parent Community I don't know what's going to happen if there's a couple years of a gap and then we have a new class that's starting there was an exp expression um at one of the meetings that you know we shouldn't bring in eighth graders because what if you know in a in a year or two there is this major change in lab school and now it's a different program for them guess I would answer that students have always left lab school and there's always been students leaving lab school that go back to the General High School Community they

194leave for different reasons so that's happened before and it's not been disastrous for anybody um if there's kids that are the option if we don't have any lab school then those kids will be in the general education that's where they'll be um if there is a lab school that we continue at least till we figure out what the next process is they're going to get the benefit of however many years of lab school they get and if they don't like what the new iteration of lab school is and they go to the General High School that's what they'll do I I don't really see what the negative is there they'll get whatever benefit they get out of lab school um and maybe they'll love the the direction lab school goes in and they'll continue but

195I don't really see a downside um to um to recruiting in eighth grade class and other people are going to talk about what we've sort of done ad hoc as parents um I think there is interests among the eth grade class I think there was an actual recruitment process um it would yield very positive results but the thing is you know time is ticking and it's already March and if we're going to actually have a meaningful reproving process it's got to happen soon so that's why I commend you to to think about that as you are putting together your um your process for Monday it's just it I don't think it can wait and my last Point um perfect timing wow U my last point is with respect to the committee very excited that we're

196going to have some parent reps on the committee um I hope that you'll have a process as a board where the committee comes back and reports to you on an interm basis and we're not just waiting till 2025 I think there would be value in having the committee come back once they've identified what the issues are because we've got some issues that may be very important there may be some red herrings in there be great if that committee you know before they fix anything they have to figure out what the issues are and when they've identified what those issues are might be great for them to come back and report to you um on what they are I mean I know we the only think person I think who's spoken against last school is somebody

197from the teachers union the teachers union might have some really legitimate issues there were no reasons given I'd love to know what those are because I think if we can collaborate we can probably work through some of those issues so I think you guys might want to consider asking um you know some period reasonable period of time for the committee to figure out sort of Corral and identify what some of the primary issues are and come back and report to you about those and obviously we and the community would be thrilled to help work through any issues that come up thank you uh next we have Brian Rose and after uh Brian we have Annabelle Rose good evening I sent an email the the piece of paper in my hand is the same email I

198sent to board members yesterday I'm not going to read the whole thing I I'm going to Echo very briefly what was just said and then maybe add one more point and one of the things I want to Echo is the Gratitude quite honestly that we're able to have this conversation and that the meeting for next Monday has been scheduled I think that's a big step forward and um in this process of hearing feedback from the community so I I really do appreciate that um I'm here to Advocate particularly as you're putting the agenda together for Monday's meeting that that uh I'm here to advocate for the inclusion the recruitment of a new class into lab school that's something I feel very strongly about for a lot of the reasons that were just said I think

199that without that inclusion with the continued recruitment of new classes into the program the program is not going to be what it was supposed to be and it's going to be a hollow shell of what it was and I do have similar worries about what will be left behind after that the one point I wanted to add which was in the email that I sent to you was just my perspective from uh my role as a faculty member at the University at Albany uh program reviews are something we have lots of familiarity with I mean it's something that at the University we do all the time right it's routine it's necessary um what we're talking about here with the formation of this committee is a program if you probably honestly a long overdue process of

200carefully looking at the lab school program and identifying problems and trying to fix them we do these all the time while continuing to recruit students into programs we recruit students in to keep the programs going keep them healthy but also to uh be able to listen to the students who are in the program as a key constituency as part of the review process um I have not heard any convincing arguments that this can't be done effectively for lab school I also know from a lot of sources uh including my own daughter who's about to come up and speak to you that there's plenty of Interest among the eighth grade class in lab school and there are uh there have been some failures to get word out in effective ways and I think these are problems

201that are fairly easily dealt with if we choose to act so I do hope that at this meeting next week that this board chooses to uh act in the direction of allowing the recruitment the admission of a new class into lab school I think that's the right decision for our district for the program for the high school for the kids for our families I'll leave it at that thank you very much thank you uh next we have Annabelle Rose and after her Katy Quinn so I just want to take a minute to talk about the eighth graders perspective on lab school I'm currently in eighth in e8th grade at bcms and I think lab school is a great program that's giving students a stronger sense of community in high school and at the middle school

202we have our houses so we know all of the people that we go to class with and losing that and getting thrown into the huge High School full of people we've never met can feel pretty daunting so I think for a lot of us who are nervous about the transition to high school having a program like lab school that gives us that smaller group to travel with can make it seem a lot less intimidating and easier to make friends easier to get involved and the biggest issue that lab schools had that we've been told is not enough recruitment but as we've said the problem isn't lack of interest it's just lack of understanding I've spoken to several eighth graders and out of nine four of them had heard of lab school only one knew that

203they weren't going to be recruiting a new Freshman Class the other five didn't know what it was but thought it sounded like a good program after I explained it and all of them said that they might be interested in applying if we're given the opportunity so if what we're looking for is a class of about 20 more than half of those students might already be accounted for nine that I've spoken to plus myself and two eighth graders at the Parker School who we know were going to enroll in lab school when they came to Bethlehem High School because lab school just provides such an amazing environment to learn and to grow and it just doesn't feel fair to have those opportunities taken out from under us so suddenly cuz the eighth graders at bcms might

204not all know what lab school is but what they know is that they want options they want to be able to choose the path they take in high school and lab school does such a great job making everyone feel welcome no matter what their learning style is so I'm just asking don't take this option away from us because we don't know yet whether or not our current eighth graders would get excited about it if they fully understood what it was was thank you thank you so much uh next we have Katie Quinn and after her uh Joe orang um I also want to say thank you very very much for giving up your time next week to have a special session to listen to us talk more about lab school we really appreciate it a

205lot of us feel very deeply about this and so we are glad that you are giving us an opportunity to continue to advocate for this program um just a few points as you are considering the agenda and considering what you're going to put forth for Monday um at the last board meeting the question was R posed regarding whether there was any level of Interest among the current eighth graders that would prompt a reversal of this decision to exclude the freshman class for the coming year and the answer was that um the superintendent said she could reach out to guidance counselors to see but she had not heard that there was any interest um so my question is has this inquiry been made in the intervening period um as Annabelle has just told you she has

206asked around and she's identified a certain pool of people that she knows that would would be interested and more people that hadn't even heard about it um there are a couple of the parents that of uh eighth graders um who are siblings of current lab schoolers or are the siblings of former lab schoolers who have themselves expressed interest and asked around and we were able to identify 14 eth graders who are very or extremely interested in lab school with three more that were possible so that's 14 to 17 and with the number that Annabelle uh just gave us um that's a fairly decent class size if everybody were to to follow through on follow through on that but this is just a really obviously very narrow sample um had there been any promotion um had

207it not been publicly announced that lab school was going away I think those numbers would be higher and what we've heard is that and at least there was one family that we know of that was waiting for lab school information to come out and was wondering why it hadn't appeared um I've also been told and I I confirmed this that lab school actually was in the course selection book this year that was issued January 8th that was when I got the email um with the course selection book uh for my 11th grader for next year and I looked and lab school is still very much presented as an option so I think um again I'm going to stress like everybody else tonight there still needs to be continuity and there's really not a compelling reason

208to exclude incoming freshmen from the program while the committee does its work that that I've heard um scheduling at this late date might be cited as a a potential hindrance but I don't think that that is impossible if we all start working immediately um I think as adults we need to model for our children that we're R we're willing to rise to meet challenges um if it's important another concern is that if these changes that the committee proposes are not going to be implemented until the 26 27 school year as was noted by the most recent letter to parents so no new classes joining in the interim then when the current freshmen are seniors they would be the only class remaining in the program this doesn't seem viable or capable of providing anything even close

209to the typical lab school experience and it seems to be the exact plan we heard about in the beginning only delayed a year so it kind of seems like it's been designed to fail um we heard that it was unfair to have eighth grade students enroll in a program that could look vastly different and needs to look vastly different but if the goal of the committee is to improve and and enhance the program and if 8th grade students and their families are willing and eager to join the program as it currently is then wouldn't it be reasonable to argue that any improvements that are made by the committee would be embraced by this this class um they would go into this knowing where we stand they could make their own decision and so I feel

210like ultimately the eighth graders and their parents can decide what's fair and what risks they're willing to take and what what they're not um so again as you're you're thinking about that for Monday I do hope that we can consider and continue to consider the fact that eighth graders do want to join the program and would be a valuable part of this cohort thank you thank you I'd like to Echo uh a thanks for um the actions that have been taken so far um my daughter is a current sophomore in the lab school and my son is a current eighth grader in a private school and will be attending BCS this fall he was looking forward to being part of lab school and he would enroll for the 2024 25 school year if given the

211chance the lab school is a unique and Innovative model that is unparalleled by any school in this region we moved to Bethlehem in 2019 for the sole reason of giving our children the opportunity to be part of the Lamb school and benefit from this best practice model of Education as an assignment for her lab school Humanities honors class our daughter chose to read the school within us a book that details the founding of the lab school through this book we have learned of the tremendous time and effort that was required to bring lab school from an idea to a reality and the importance of not losing this momentum our ears hear the the words about a pause and a Review Committee but our hearts know the reality a body at rest will remain at rest

212and our concern is that in this committee lab school will die I appreciate the benefits of a school board that does not micromanage or encroach on the ability of the school administration to make day-to-day decisions however these decisions regarding lamb School profoundly affect the future of a significant number of BC HS students the reputation of the entire district and if my understanding of this board's original vote to create lab school is correct the authority of this board as well in light of the importance of not losing the momentum of the existing lab school program I am asking for the administration to choose or for this board to resolve that the lab school be allowed to recruit a new freshman class for the 2024 25 school year and continue in its current form with sufficient support

213and resources while the committee meets thank you thank you um Mr MCH was the last person who has signed up to speak if there's anyone else that' like to speak come to the microphone [Applause] now um okay on to item six action items um Finance action items is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following Finance Finance action items one and two second any discussion all in favor sorry yes did you have your hand up oh I just was going to say thank you we're we are in these by these by this motion we are accepting um significant amount of support both from um The Connect kids program for $10,000 and from um the slingland PTO for I mean this is for $4,500 this is wonderful and I just want to

214say um thanks to the folks behind this absolutely all in favor hi I'll oppose any extensions the motion carries um next we go to professional Personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the Board of Education approve the following professional P Personnel action items one through two so second any discussion all in favor all oppose any AB extensions the motion carries um item 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 4 second any discussion all in favor I'll oppose any extensions the motion carries um item D other action items is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approve the following action item one second any discussion all in favor I I'll oppose any extenstions

215the motion carries um we have item seven recognition of public comment on a non-agenda item if there's anyone in would like to speak on a non-agenda item now is the time okay item eight is future meetings and events for um The Board calendar I'm going to amend what's on the official agenda to say that um on March 11th uh 2024 at 5:00 there will be a facilities committee meeting uh we'll be cancelling the 6:30 p.m. policy committee meeting and instead um starting a special meeting of the board of education at 7:00 um with anticipated executive session at 6:30 if necessary um then on March 20th um we'll have our next regular board meeting um here at the high school at um 7 o' anticipated executive session at o'cl um seeing no need to adjourn to

216Executive session may I have a motion to adjourn the meeting second adjourned we're all see you all Monday