BCSD Board of Education meeting 3/16/2022

001is testing testing one two one two [Music] yes yeah uh [Music] okay we'll be there wellness today oh yep is it was also [Music] up okay yes [Music] so [Music] fur thursday and friday she's really nice all right [Music] oh i told [Music] don't you [Music] oh [Music] throwing by hands back [Music] i think testing testing testing testing [Music] testing testing testing okay testing okay [Music] it goes hi i'm miles yeah okay should we turn this off i i don't either [Music] um television hello yes [Music] oh right a good question [Music] okay [Music] next [Music] uh um [Music] yes [Music] oh [Music] oh is oh [Music] protection [Music] we did um yes they say they mix it up but i feel like i'm always in the same spots [Music] [Laughter] it's warmer outside they

002said they would expedite it but it was just the person who needed this wait a second the live stream um [Music] the life okay good if we can reconvene our meeting to open session the board has been in executive session since six o'clock to discuss a confidential legal matter two personnel matters and two student matters if we could stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] i have introductions dave hearst meredith moriarty willow bear jonathan fishbein jody monroe holly dallinbaugh christine beck wendy sampson catherine natto and judy kehoe first step is our approval of minutes it is recommended that the board of education approve the

003minutes from the march 2nd 2022 regular board meeting so moved any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes uh next are our meeting reports and first up is our superintendent's report uh thank you uh so i wanted to provide the board an update on our uh upk uh rfp uh universal pre-k so we did put that out there we sent it out to all of the providers who are on the list that we have and also posted on our websites we only had one business submit an rfp it did not meet the state ed criteria in several areas so we did provide them with feedback and let them know that if they were to consider applying in the future they would need to meet that criteria so unfortunately we don't have any

004providers in the community who are we had one other reach out to us but ultimately sent judy an email and said they were not interested in considering it so can you remind me our did the rfp are we trying to find one provider that can meet all the capacity no our goal so in the rfp we put we would we have i believe 89 slots still and we said that we would want our goal is to get 45 at least half which would then benefit a decent number of people in the community but we didn't think we could get them from one provider yeah what were some of what was some of the qualifications that disqualified them certification issues there's certain criteria for certification uh they were not able to provide a budget uh and

005uh there was a couple other things that didn't i don't remember but there were two three or four things that didn't meet the criteria that stated requires thank you and then some others just aren't interested because of the dollar amount so um also i wanted just to provide i think a meredith you had asked about absenteeism and we have seen an increase in absenteeism uh since after the break uh but they're mostly due to cold and flu uh since the mass have come off more people are getting the traditional cold and flu so we're up to about three percent which is i spoke to joanne menrath really not atypical for this time of year we tend to this is when our we tend to peak uh there are a number of families who are following

006up with testing their symptoms and reporting those test results to us so we appreciate their cooperation and we do have plenty of test kits available if people need them finally i want to recognize some students at our last meeting we had some students come and recite their poetry from poetry out loud and uh pamela white who was here was named winner of the new york state poetry out loud recitation contest um and they were two of 16 finalists uh pamela will now move on to represent new york state at the 2022 poetry out loud national finals where winners from all 50 states will compete for more than 50 thousand dollars so good luck to pamela uh and then also the spanish honor society the work of three students has been published in the most recent

007edition of albreceus a national magazine featuring the work of spanish honor society students the students are jack newell who contributed a poem megan dellemba who wrote an essay and madeleine brand who shared a painting all entries explored the theme of human rights in bethlehem did have the most entries published of any school and is only one of two public schools in new york state that was featured so congratulations to all of our students and that is my report anybody have any questions for jody next up is our board report um i had uh just a couple things first i think do we have some pig students with us tonight just so that you guys know your obligation is to stay either until the meeting is over until or nine o'clock whichever comes first i had

008the opportunity to attend a couple of the high school concerts that took place last week in the auditorium which was super fun and everybody sounded great and it was great to once again see the auditorium put to good use and to see people performing without masks on and i also wanted to thank the community for their support of the lab school barbecue fundraiser and it's always great to see how many people come out for that anybody have anything else they would like to add i just had a question i got the email regarding les mis in a few weeks and i wanted to see when the tickets so the public knows when they are on sale general public i'm i believe they go on sale to the cast and crew tomorrow so i would think

009that for the general public it will be in the next few days okay looking forward to that and the barbecue was great um i enjoyed the chicken barbecue i did want to add that i had the opportunity to see the art exhibit at the empire state plaza of our k through eight students and we had a lot of them and every entry was better than the next it was really wonderful to see the talent that we have in the school anybody else did you hear something yeah um i just wanted to thank i i got a chance i'm an elsmere parent and um mrs claus and the ellsmere uh team offered an open house for parents just to come in and see the building and how you know what's what's some of the upgrades that

010have been happening and it was just really wonderful to be back in the elementary school it was really nice uh to be there and i know that there are um kind of welcome back again events happening all over the district and just a huge shout out to the all the administrators and the teachers who are making that happen it's fantastic thanks katherine anybody else next up are our student reports do we have anybody from the student senate hi hi i'm sophia soka um just a few updates uh the social studies department has been working relentlessly to collect medical supplies for ukraine and the support from the high school specifically has been overwhelming every day we fill multiple boxes which is super exciting that's going to for two weeks and they're being shipped to water valley

011i believe and then going out to new york city and i believe that's happening across the district but especially at the high school it's been great to see we answered questions from the survey that we sent out before february break and the response was great on that uh we had one question that we couldn't answer and i'm hoping maybe someone here could answer which is if the start time for next year is going to stay the same and if we don't know that then when students might be able to figure that out it's going to stay the same for next year okay thank you so much um that is all i have any questions okay thank you for your time thank you thank you do anybody here tonight from the middle school student council you

012guys can adjust the microphone down a little bit if you need to there you go hi i'm regan and i'm ellie and we're from the bcms student council um student council updates our ukraine is doing a supplies fundraiser is underway and the bcms student council is conducting a fundraiser for this cerebral palsy pulse policy fundraiser on st patrick's day march 17th selling shamrocks for a dollar as a whole the school is pretty close to split leaning toward not wearing masks we would like to thank no place for hate for leading the my face my choice campaign all in our school community have remained respectful of our personal choices on our march character hero of a month hero of the month in honor of march being women's history month is sally ride she is the first

013american woman in space our 7th grade facts class career day is tomorrow we have dozens of presenters coming to talk to seventh graders about career choices thank you to our teachers miss coogler and miss hayes for leading this opportunity tomorrow we have a half day and the middle school students will go home at 11 10. spring sports at the middle school level will begin next week and our spring athletes are excited thank you very much and i think we have some friends from glenmont to give us a little update about what's going on at glenmont hi my name is miles hi my name is fiona and we are fifth graders from glenna elementary school one of our school-wide values is kindness teachers are always on the lookout for students that are being responsible respectful and

014kind to others which is acknowledged for the glenmont gold at the end of each week students can submit glenmock gold to be entered into a raffle one student from each grade is selected to be the glenmont gold winner of that week at glenmott for women's history month many classes are reading books and completing research projects to honor women in history one fifth grade class has been interviewing women in their lives that they look up to and will share their interviews with their class this week we begin collecting donations for the bcuea have a heart for homeless animals collection we'll be collecting donations to help homeless animals we're also collecting medical supplies to help ukraine on friday we will be participating in a district-wide wellness day students will be talking about the importance of sleep nutrition

015and exercise and completing wellness themed activities like yoga taking a walk outside and making kindness cards for our bus drivers military members and senior citizens thank you and have a good night thank you very much miles and fiona if you guys want to come up here for a second just watch the chords great job nice job thanks for coming next on the agenda tonight is our presentation and tonight's presentation is another budget presentation on our educational programs but we're going to start off with judy good evening everybody back again for uh week three of budget presentations but who's counting tonight i want to give you the quick overview of what we had covered at our earlier sessions when we had rolled out the budget our baseline for revenues is at 102.7 million dollars and we

016have no tax increase provided for in the baseline and the big story of course is our state aid that we had the significant increase in foundation aid this year which helped boost that number and provide some ample resources on our expenditures these are each of the program areas that we look at over the course of our budget meetings and tonight is the big presentation because we will be covering um where the bulk of our dollars are devoted to and that is to our instructional services and to special ed and student services so if anybody wants to have additional information about any of these other areas that we've covered all of that information is available on our website and the detailed slides and other handouts are available there as well so with these baseline totals for

017our revenues and our expenditures and based on the requested additions to the budget in our prior sessions we are currently at a positive surplus or gap of about 239 thousand dollars and tonight you will hear some program requests from dave hearst and kathy johnston well i guess just dave hurst that will um bring us to a balanced budget um this evening following up from our last meeting there are two transportation areas that we want to answer your questions and follow up on and the first one relates to the bus purchase proposition so the first recommendation that we had was for eight buses to be purchased and that included one new electric bus and three midsize buses and four large diesel buses coupled with the reduction in the overall bus fleet that we had talked about

018the question from the board was essentially why are we buying new diesel buses the reason why was because we wanted to level out those purchases with the reduced size of the fleet that would be about eight buses per year that would be purchased and then replaced which is why that request was in there but since the last meeting we um took a look at the feedback that the board had given us at that meeting and um given the changes that are pending relative to governor hocle's proposal and what we're hearing coming from the federal government relative to electrification of bus fleets we understand the desire not to buy additional diesel buses at this point and we came up with a second recommendation which is on this slide this is the same dollar amount as what

019we had talked about the last time which would be to purchase half of that original recommendation the one electric bus and three mid-size buses so we had shared with you the detailed fleet replacement plan on that and this is really a model of what we think we will be able to do with our future bus purchases we do update that fleet replacement plan every single year we're updating it based on the composition of the buses within the fleet we're looking at the current mileage numbers on the fleet and we adjust the recommendations from there as we had talked about previously we are trying to make sure that we are relatively level with the purchase requests that we have from one year to the next that does align with the typical fleet management tools where we're

020looking at the ages of the buses because we buy a certain number each year it would stand to reason that you'd be replacing a certain number each year as well but based on the work that karim johnson had done with that detail plan we basically hold off on this model with buying any large diesel buses over the next seven years and what that does is it allows us to focus those resources on additional electric buses the revised plan would call for a single bus purchase next year which would be one electric bus and you say well you did five buses last year why are you slow walking it the reason is is because we're waiting for the charging infrastructure to be installed as part of the next capital project and we need two years to

021get that done so right now we have the ability to charge up the five buses that are coming hopefully in may depending on production schedules and then over the course of the next two years we can add similar temporary charging units that will cover those other two buses so that's why there's only two we of course are also hoping that what we're hearing from the federal and the state level is that with this desire for large fleets to be converting to fully electric buses that there will also be funding we were so fortunate last year that we received the million dollars from nyserda through their truck voucher incentive program and because these buses are so much more expensive it is ideal if we can get that funding coming to us from these federal and state

022programs so word on the streets is it's coming and again i think the only way that um schools and other public transportation authorities will have the ability to get to a fully electric fleet will be if there are grants coming to the districts so this restructured plan helps us we can shift it in the coming years if we get more funding we could actually buy additional electric buses if the funding isn't coming through we might need to purchase some diesel buses but this model is fairly flexible and it allows us to adapt to whatever the current environment is relative to those buses so the only decision that has to be made tonight is which of these two recommendations are you comfortable with if you are comfortable with the revised plan that we have proposed you

023would select this alternative too remember we do need to make a decision tonight because tonight is the deadline for adopting the legal notice which forms the basis for notifying the public of the budget vote and it specifies what the propositions will be so um do you have any questions relative to these recommendations and the direction that we're heading in and karim johnson is here tonight too so if there are any really tough questions that i can't answer he'll help out so i just wanted to confirm with the alternative number two um does that still keep us in a position to be fairly level with our with our bus purchases going forward yes it keeps it fairly level going forward it's a little bit higher based on this modeling because we will be buying fewer buses

024over the next few years but the model is showing 10 or 11 buses starting around that seventh year and beyond which is in keeping with what we've been accustomed to doing for the propositions so we're comfortable with those levels it'll be at or below those amounts going forward okay what about the amount of buses we have though and i don't know how to ask the question but i'm wondering if something goes wrong with one of the diesel buses what level of backup we have particularly if there's an even longer delay in this new electric bus that we'd be adding so the reduction that we're recommending with 30 buses to be auctioned off this year that is a change i'm glad you asked that we had originally proposed spreading the auctioning of those buses over a

025two-year period and in this model it's taking care of the surplus in year one of those 30 buses we are very comfortable with the numbers of buses remember right now we have 59 maybe 60 hopefully that gives us some buffer right there with those buses we of course have provisions in the fleet to take care of the plan maintenance on the buses and the inspections that occur we're very comfortable with that number of 100 buses so so what was alternative one alternative one included four diesel buses and we leaned towards recommendation 2 after hearing your feedback only because of that uncertainty with the the timing of when schools would be required to have a fully electric fleet okay was this changed from what we received where it said and i can't remember what year that

026we would get like 20 buses there was one yes this this is still going to stay out so when karim and i looked at that we just said all right knowing that we don't want to purchase diesel buses based on the board's feedback in these initial years how can we kind of level out those amounts and get more of the electric buses there are some higher amounts in the years when we're buying just the electric buses but we weren't incredibly concerned with that on the model only because we're anticipating funding coming to us so even if it was a hundred or a hundred fifty thousand dollars a bus that would cause that proposition amount to be lower if the funding didn't come in that's when you could switch it out and buy some diesel buses

027too after we know what the final requirements will be so did this this is plan because i don't have the spreadsheet in front of me does that include the 20 buses still in like year 7 or no it's evened out so in the later years it was either 11 or 10 buses so this looked forward for 12 years from now so so i'm gonna i take ownership i've been on the board for eight years and um i don't know how we got to 30 additional buses like it just kind of disappoints me that somehow we didn't see the need for less buses when we were purchasing them my question is some of the diesel buses from what i hear so i've done a little research the older buses some of the drivers they actually prefer

028it they're six cylinders they heat up quicker is there any way to we are only going to see on tent let's say i'm using 10 buses 70 000 for these buses that have 75 000 miles on it or less and in the south and i know the weather conditions are different they're seeing up to 250 000 miles on buses averill park i pulled up their bus replacement schedule they're 90 to 130 000 miles i think our replacement schedule is too low our buses are not rusting we have no data that shows that the maintenance costs i mean for the last 10 years i don't think any bus driver has probably driven a bus that's reached 100 000 miles not so we have had a number of buses that have been at 100 000 miles and

029the reason why we were recommending we have a bus surplus issue again we were maintaining those levels um for many years and with declining student enrollment we didn't need that many buses so again we talked about um karim has some fresh eyes and some great experience managing fleets and has identified that we can auction off those buses if we don't remove the surplus buses you're going to see lower mileage on those other remaining buses because there's just not enough routes for them to cover so by selling the 30 buses now what you do is you fix that issue you have the right size number of buses you will have higher mileage on the buses so for these particular buses because they have been operating in that surplus environment they are going to have lower mileage

030lower mileage is going to mean higher replacement value at the last meeting i had shown the slide that had the actual maintenance costs for those buses and you were starting to get up to 6 500 7 000 a year some larger repairs on those buses they are maintained very well but 12 years in the northeast is the standard for large buses can i just also add to um your point about how do we end up with so many extra buses and you know obviously the pandemic has created a whole host of issues but prior to that when we had our bell time study and we had our committee at that time our consultant that we were using and jonathan you were part of that group the outcome of that was to change the high school

031start time but keep the middle school the same so we had a two-tier system planned and in that plan with the current routing which they hadn't looked at for efficiencies there were 89 routes or essentially that we would need in order to make that two-tier system work clearly with the loss of drivers that every school district has experienced that was why we went back to the three-tier but in that model with 89 routes for a two-tier system we would in fact need more buses but now with our declining enrollment with our routing efficiency and the loss of drivers that that's just been a huge shift that we didn't we anticipated a decline in drivers but we certainly didn't expect this kind of kind of extreme decline that districts have seen so that is i just

032want to clarify that the plan wasn't to go to a three-tier model yeah and i recognize that it's just that i mean our enrollment has been declining since what like 2009 2010. so we're 12 years past that and hopefully there's a potential maybe we could get up to the three-tiered system again be a little two-tiered sorry optimistic we're on three but i i still struggle with we have the surplus of buses and buying the mid-size buses when we have large buses that could still be utilized and get more life out of it and we would save more money now using them than by buying mid-sized buses it to me it doesn't make sense if you can have a 70 passenger bus you could have 45 and we have all these small buses we could use

033if it has to do with special ed requirements because i don't think we have that many students that would require special transportation i just i guess i'm hung up on buying more mid-sized buses when we have this tremendous surplus um but this proposal is to address that surplus now and remember as karim had covered in his presentation those mid-sized buses give us flexibility so we had used the example of right now on the small bus if you have a student going to the cp center you have one wheelchair if you had these mid-size buses you could have up to three wheelchairs and you basically could use a single bus to transport those students as opposed to two or three separate routes how much helped you how many students do we have that have wheelchairs that

034need to be transported do we know i don't have that because from what i understand it's like not could also change from it could change from your year but i don't think we've had more than half a dozen if that with transportation needs with wheelchairs so i don't know if that would be you know when we have small buses that have like low mileage why would we you know need three mid-size buses for that purpose um we're still retaining a good number of those small buses as well so what this will do is give us a pretty varied fleet so with this plan what we would have next year would be 66 large diesel buses six electric buses you'd only have three of the medium buses based on this recommendation and you'd still have 22

035small buses so the point that karim had made relative to buying that medium-sized bus is to give us the flexibility in better meeting our student needs and having buses that could accommodate both general ed and accommodations that are required for the students so there's greater flexibility in addressing whatever student needs are presented when you have a variety of bus models to work with and so we can't be planning just for what we have now we have to be forward-looking on this so that if the situation changes we can adapt and have the flexibility and that's why you're presenting it this way is that correct thank you and and i do like the flexibility of alternative number two because i feel like it does allow us to pivot in the future depending on either what's what

036requirements come down um from the federal or state government and grants or lack thereof [Music] i agree two two is the better option um i guess for next year though if we could present like average like how many students with disabilities that require like the mid-size buses just to kind of get a gauge because to me i still am stuck on why are we buying mid-sized buses when we have a tremendous surplus i think we're we're also you know maybe to our fault saying we're buying them just for special needs students there are a lot of routes that we have where we don't actually need a 70 passenger bus right you have a route that only has this many students by demographics and where you need to go in a 45 passenger bus would make

037far more sense than a 70 passenger bus so i think yes it gives us more flexibility for special education students but it also provides more flexibility just in general routing when you have more some of those options but we can provide that and i'd have to imagine that the the mid-sized bus are more efficient than the older larger diesel buses that we have in the fleet would be i would assume in general the newer buses have higher emissions standards so they do tend to be more efficient a little more expensive every year because of that as well but don't they seem to don't the newer buses seem to have more mechanical issues than the older buses not that i'm aware of newer buses are under warranty for most of their major parts for the first

038i think three years so no no and based on the you know the maintenance records that i had looked at no that was not the case all right okay so is everybody good with alternative number two or does anyone disagree and think that we should go with the first one i want to make sure that we're giving judy the feedback that she needs for the legal notice i'm good with uh alternate two same me too yeah two two okay so we're gonna go with alternative two two it is and we'll get the legal notice updated accordingly thank you for doing that extra work for us we appreciate it you're mr johnson thank you very much as well had uh done the lion's share of that so i am but a student of transportation so um

039the next um element relating to transportation was to tonight's the night we need to make a decision relative to on the proposal to change the transportation eligibility thresholds so recall that we had our three-tier plan boost the driver salaries which we had already done to try to help us recruit and retain existing drivers and then we have continued to struggle notwithstanding the open houses where we've had the drive a bus event we've done advertising in many different places historically we need about 10 drivers in the pipeline in order to yield one new driver and we do have a few who are in training right now but they're not all going to end up joining our staff either we do have older drivers within our demographic for the drivers as well 75 percent are over the

040age of 50. we have eight drivers who are older than age 66 so we will be having some retirements at some point in the future again here you can see we have eight drivers 66 or older so if you look at our our recruitment pipeline of essentially 10 in the pipeline in order to get a single driver if all eight of those drivers retired next year in order to fill those spots we would need close to 80 drivers coming in to apply to bethlehem and to go through that training program and i know those are absolutely staggering numbers every time i i talk about that um but it's it's not like any position that you hire where somebody comes in they're a great person they've got great background you know they have to go they're

041driving a large 72 passenger bus and there's all sorts of um skills that are required for that and also the licensing associated with that as part of holding your commercial driver's license so um it is difficult to replace all of the drivers um again we're hoping to make a difference with that with the pay scales that we put in place but you know that was a years of work trying to get to those higher salaries for our drivers as well so on the recruitment this is an updated version of the slide that we had shown back in november at the transportation update and this just lists the various sources where we've kind of gone to the well trying to find where the drivers are and of the 243 contacts or prospects that we had 31

042were interviewed not all of them were found to be qualified you only had eight who started the training some of them dropped out when they saw what was involved with it four completed it and of those four we've only hired three so it's a bit of a a process and a lead time in order to get these drivers so that was why even though nobody really wanted to change the eligibility thresholds by doing that we had estimated that we would save four to five routes based on that reduced eligibility which would help us with the driver shortage we had talked about ways to mitigate traffic at the schools as well by basically extending out those hours for drop off of students and providing some supervision at the building level to try to mitigate that again

043because it was easier to hire aids to supervise the kids in the school as opposed to hiring drivers given this history of finding those drivers so we also talked about well do we have to do this now and what are the consequences if we don't make this change now we've talked about how fortunate we've been i think transportation has made it look easy relative to getting kids to and from school relatively on time but if you ever sat down in the dispatch office at transportation and you saw what they were going through trying to cover routes as people were out for illness jury duty or whatever sometimes they feel like they're hanging on by a thread in terms of covering those routes and there have been many days when we're sending out other transportation staff

044to drive a bus just to get the kids there on time so if we were not to do this we could reasonably expect that we're going to have fuller buses longer ride times probably some more late arrivals again there's a cascading effect if a driver calls out without notice due to illness and then you have to try to cover that so these are indeed inconveniences it certainly impacts the the quality of the transportation services for the students who are riding on those longer rides or the more packed bus routes but we talked about at the last meeting you know are we willing to try it try that for another year and see how we do with the hiring and essentially buy some more more time with it so we we know it's a hard decision

045tonight is the decision point and it's basically do we agree to make the change so that it goes before the voters to consider or do we hold off on the decision at this point give it another year to see what pans out relative to our supply of drivers and then we can always go back and look at it the following year or a subsequent year if need be so um i'll jump in here uh this was something that we were considering we did offer a three-tier approach with getting the drivers additional funding for their salaries which we're hoping will help i think the numbers are staggering when you look at how hard it is to get a driver we did get feedback from the community although i wouldn't say we got a ton of feedback

046from the community and partly i think that's because we do have a lot of families who don't use transportation so they were really not impacted by this i think the families we did hear from was probably about two-thirds were not in favor of the change and probably a third were okay with it or offered some suggestions um i personally don't believe we should move forward with this at this time for a few reasons um in looking at bell times and that was our third tier in all of this i'm concerned that if we change the bell times next year where we're trying to get the high school start time back closer to eight o'clock that requires the elementary or the middle school to go earlier or later depending on what the outcome of that is

047and by changing the belt the eligibility now i'm not sure given those changes that the eligibility thresholds that we've proposed right now will work with those belt times and that would require us to revisit eligibility again and i think it makes sense to look at that together i also think because we didn't hear from a lot of community members when we put together the numbers based on three quarters of a mile a mile and one half one and a half miles i'm not certain that it's going to warrant the reduction in routes because i'm not sure all of those families are even using transportation so i think we would be wise to look at take a closer look within those maps that have been established or some variation of that if we need to change

048eligibility that we're more certain about how many families within those areas are currently using transportation which would give us a better idea of how many routes we might be changing or reducing because that's really the goal the the benefit of the eligibility is in the reduction of routes because of the driver shortage and if we can't guarantee that we could be revisiting this again next year and the other issue i think is has been brought up is some of the safety concerns i think uh there's some legitimacy to that i also think that for elementary families because elementary starts so late with working families it does become a real challenge in how to get their children to school uh at that time so i think all of for all of those reasons i i would

049recommend that the board consider holding off on the eligibility um i i just i first wanted to say thank you to judy to you and to karim for putting all of this information together about the eligibility changes because i know it was a lot of work and a lot of work has gone into it and i recognize that that we may still need to look at it next year but i do agree with jodi that i think that moving ahead now when we don't have the bell time piece of it it doesn't feel doesn't feel like i feel like we're jumping the gun a little bit and that we need a chance to to figure out what the bell times are going to be and think about what those impacts are based on when the

050different building levels are starting i would also i just would add that you know i've been i've been thinking about this a lot and over the past couple weeks i actually drove around our elementary schools around pickup and a drop-off and pickup just to see for myself what the you know what was going on at the different buildings and you know i do think there are some areas that you know could stand some improvement and i would hope that if we are holding off on changes that we continue to pursue discussions with the town about how we can make some of those improvements because even if we never have any eligibility changes we always will have students walking to school and biking to school and we want them to be in the best position that

051we can so those are my thoughts and i would agree with holding off on any changes at this point if anyone else has something that they would like to add or catherine i was um jody could you just to wind it back just a minute can you talk a little bit more about the interplay between eligibility and start times and how if we change the eligibility now that could influence the start fight and vice versa that's something that i think there's a lot of confusion about sure in looking at changing the bell times the goal is to provide more time between the transportation runs so ideally transportation would like 45 minutes turn around time between high school middle school and elementary and same at the end of the day in fact the end of the

052day is a little more of a challenge so in looking at what our bell time structure is we are trying to build in that 45 minute block of time so that transportation can realistically get to and from those schools into students homes in a time that's appropriate one of the challenges is that all of the school days are a little bit different elementary school the student day is shorter than middle school and high school so they're not even you know even though the teacher day is the same the student day varies and uh so that's a challenge so trying to build that in um it doesn't directly impact eligibility but for example if we moved elementary to the first start which generally the first start has to be around 7 30 in order to start

053at reasonable times and end at reasonable times are we comfortable or is the community comfortable with having elementary children coming to school at 7 30 with a three-quarter mile eligibility or figuring out are they walking biking to school or if middle school were to start at 7 30 is are people comfortable with that mile eligibility so that's where i think the eligibility piece does play a factor in the bell time structure thank you i appreciate that and i know that there were just to echo something that holly just said i know that there have been conversations on going between the district and the town and just to raise up again especially i mean i'm fine with i'm absolutely fine with pulling pulling this proposal tonight and for this year um but especially if we have

054if we think we have to revisit it and again even if we don't getting some of these challenges addressed is critically important so thank you for your efforts so far and please keep them up coming next year sure meredith one thing we talked about throughout this process was because of the issues the traffic issues within the parking lot and everything we talked about extending the hours for drop off um about the hours extending the time for the drop off and perhaps providing supervision in you know a gym or something like that um i think we definitely should still pursue that because even at the levels that we're at right now [Music] traffic within the parking lots at certain schools is difficult as as holly was saying and extending those that drop off time would help

055reduce the amount of traffic at any one time one concern i do have however is to ensure that any extension of time that we're asking for people to drop off at does not come at the expense of learning time because one thing that i've i've seen when we're trying to stagger drop off time or pick up time is that sometimes schools are letting out students who are being picked up in cars earlier than the actual end of the school day the official end of the school day and even if that's just 10 minutes um you know throughout the week that's 50 lost minutes and so um and then that that adds up so i would ask that if we do extend that amount of time on which someone can be picked up or dropped off

056that we make sure we are still ensuring all students have the entire day for learning so we can certainly look at that one of the challenges we've had the last couple of years is we didn't have space for for kids to go at the middle and high school students can be dropped off early and stay later on mike klugman shared with me that uh this year he told parents they could drop off beginning at 7 30 we had supervision and initially parents did take advantage of that but at this point most people are still coming closer to eight o'clock so there's still all that congestion the other thing it that's more of a challenge at the end of the day is that the student day generally goes till about 3 10 before we wrap up

057kids pack up and the buses have to come at 3 20. and that because they have to be out of there by 3 30 that's the end of the teacher day so there's not as much there's more flexibility in the morning than there is in the afternoon just by the nature of the uh teacher schedule and the transportation schedule so there's not a lot of flexibility with that but we can certainly look at that and see what we can do i think yeah i think it is important because it does add up throughout the year um and additionally along with you know having more supervision at drop off time or pick up time um also just i understand that we can't have our employees out in the streets because that's the crosswalk that's the crossing

058guards job but i know you know right now we see our principles directing traffic in the parking lot and it seems as though their time could be used in in a better way and so i was wondering if we could look into budgeting you know some of our aides or you know or new nades or something like that to be coming in the morning to directing traffic or in the afternoon to direct traffic because i don't know why our principals are directing traffic and that's in the middle school too because yeah i don't know we could ask it for additional staff to help out with that um i'm not sure how feasible that is but it's certainly something we can consider we say all hands on deck we mean all hands absolutely and i appreciate

059the fact that everyone is so willing to help um it's an amazing thing to see and it warms my heart to see everybody you know out there getting getting this done um but you know we've been doing covid traffic for two years and we're looking forward to next year hopefully not being crisis mode anymore so let's look at the positive ways we can make changes there and and also if we are able to extend or get parents to extend the drop-off pickup time that would help alleviate so not so so many people don't have to be in the parking lot i do though no i see so many of the principals here they really like wearing those bright vests they've really and become accustomed to it so safety first yeah i don't know if they

060can really give that up they can keep the vest it's just the job we want to raise so they might just wear them around the school building during the day yeah um one question on the just piggybacking on you know hopefully we're not quite in crisis mode you'd mentioned getting more data and information uh based on ridership going into coming out of this year and going into next year and just one thing i'm sure this has not escaped your attention but just a flag is that we i know that there are a number of families who actually chose not to use the bus for a number of reasons first because everybody was asked to do their part and and scale back if they could and then also because there were parents who didn't want to

061risk exposure by being on the buses and so um if we are basing any numbers off of this year i think we've got to take that into account somehow whether it's through surveys modeling some other some other way to recognize that um ridership this year is is not representative right so hopefully if we look at that in the fall next year and into the winter that might be more reflective of the ridership we had prior to covid and i just wanted to add first thank you to judy and karim for the bus the changing this the second alternative i appreciate that i know it was like last minute work so i appreciate it may we do better under deadlines um with this i'm glad to see it off the table i was in favor of

062it for a multitude of reasons one safety is the primary concern i don't think that we had enough safety plans in place second we're doing the start school later for the high schoolers and so to increase the walking time when we haven't even changed the bell time didn't make sense because it was contradicting everything we're trying to do for the high school students and just during this time hopefully we can ourselves even if we don't get a traffic study done if we can do our own assessment at each building of where we really think the problems are and if we do ever increase walkers and change the walking distance that we have a really good understanding of where that may cause congestion not only at the buildings but also with our buses if now all

063of a sudden near the middle school or hammer rail where there's more walkers in their driving um is it going to cause any type of congestion where you're going to have more of our high school drivers on the road and then younger kids i think we just need to have a better grasp on that before we present it to the community so thank you any other thoughts given the discussion i'm in favor of withdrawing but with the understanding that it's something that we will likely have to consider um in the future given bell times and other considerations yeah i would i would agree with that because it did seem that even though i was you know i had a student who did walk to the middle school and it was more than the allowed distance

064but she walked because she wanted to not because she had to and you know hearing a lot of the concerns from the community about safety and realizing that crossing guards are very difficult to get it definitely makes sense to to hold off okay well thank you all i know we gave a lot of information uh thrown at you this year so thank you for considering it i think we're good going forward and i think now it's time for dave hurst to come up so thank you judy um and before i start i do want to just recognize i thank the elementary principals for being here tonight to support this presentation um it means a lot when they give up their time to come and sit through a budget presentation when they obviously could be doing

065much better things um so the k-12 instructional program um you know for the most part just contractual changes from year to year which causes the increases we've got about a 1.3 million dollar increase um from last year to next year from this year to next year which is about three and a half percent um again most of that due to contractual changes the one thing you will notice though is the in-service number did jump up about thirty thousand dollars i know professional development something we've been talking a lot about in the last couple of years we reduced that line um last year because of the majority of conferences this past year were all virtual right so that completely decreased the cost of the conferences themselves no need to travel so now conferences are coming back

066we have teachers that are beginning to travel again for conferences so we put that money back in the budget for next year so that's why you had that a little bit of a bump there just another way to look at it expenditures by type and again you can see there is your 1.3 million dollar increase from budget year to budget year to break down the salary line a little bit further we've got just over a million dollar increase here which is three percent and again that is due to contractual obligations so every year i do talk about enrollment because this does drive some of our decision-making processes and you'll see this year it does have an impact on our elementary staffing we have decreased enrollment in our primary grades 50 students pretty much overall across

067our buildings and you can see from last year to this year for instance eagle first grade this year has 85 students next year we'll only have 61. so we're going to be reducing a section there on the flip side glenmont had 55 it's jumping up to 64. so we would increase the section there and then hammer grills going from 62 all the way down to 33 so decreasing a section there so you know a net of minus one on the primary side of things notice our um overall ratio teach teachers to students we've got about you know this year we have just under 18 and a half students per teacher whereas next year will be right around 18 students per teacher so you know not much of a change there and this is something that

068we've really tried to do the last couple of years and we found huge benefit in having the smaller class sizes um and it's something we really look forward to continuing with at the intermediate level similar situation um again we're down about 24 students and only one shift here at slanderlands grade three down a section but grade four up a section so basically a net um wash there so all told you can see that we have um with with the changes combined between primary and intermediate we're going to be reducing one elementary section based on enrollment as i'll propose in a minute middle school and high school both again still continuing with the theme of decreased enrollment um so you can see you know k-12 were over 100 students um fewer from this year to next

069maintaining those ratios at the middle school just over 21 students per class this year next year will be about same 21 students um the high school as i presented during my academic update is it's harder to do because of just the variation but on average for our core classes sort of by grade level we're sitting just slightly higher than the middle school somewhere between 21 and 22 students per class so i do have some additions that i would like to propose um two of these are quite substantial um when they couple them together one a director of diversity equity and inclusion this is something that was recommended through our discussions with our district-wide diversity and inclusion committee and this is again the purpose of that committee was to sort of look larger scale at things

070that the district can do to advance our efforts in dei um and one of the recommendations there was to hire a director and i'll speak a little bit more about that in a second and then the next two items sort of go together and i'll expand on this as well but we've talked quite a bit about mtss and social and um mental health in general over the last couple of years and we do have as you're well aware um an increase in need for counseling not just for students but for students and their families so hence the sort of two-prong approach there we are looking to increase a high school social studies teacher by 0.3 and you'll see on the next slide that we're looking to reduce a business teacher by that same amount 0.3

071and that's because we're unable to hire a 0.3 business teacher they just 1.0 business teachers don't exist so right now though that 0.3 in business is being covered by the social studies department anyways so it only makes sense to actually allocate that fte to the social studies department and that does two things one it that's the way it's been covered anyways but secondarily right now we have a .7 in social studies so by adding this in it becomes a probationary position which becomes more attractive we're able to recruit higher quality candidates and then the next three items are just some stipends for extracurriculars at both the middle and high school which we've been again each year the number of clubs that our students are interested in and involved in continues to grow and this is

072just something that just enhances our student experience um and likewise we're looking to enhance our experience at the elementary level by offering art enrichment so all told about 350 000 worth of additions so i just i do want to talk a little bit more about the director of dei um so really this would be a district level position um and some sort of key highlights would be you know they'd be a thought leader trusted advisor and effective communicator so you know more of a advisor role as opposed to a decision-making role not that they wouldn't be making decisions but you can't have this position being sort of an author authoritarian position in that you need students you need faculty you need staff you need parents to feel comfortable talking and sharing with this person and

073if it becomes purely a compliance or an authoritarian position that trust level sort of diminishes so um in talking with you know this is a relatively new position at the k-12 level but it's very very prominent at the higher ed level so we've spent some time investigating what some districts have done and what colleges have done in this and that is one of the first things that they said was that it definitely needs to be a cabinet level position but more of a advisory role um collaborative role than than an authoritative role but that being said they would still take new york state ed's culturally responsive sustaining framework and implement a framework here that is aligned to that and again you can see co-create implement and assess dei programming initiatives again they would be sort

074of the guiding force behind all of this but not sort of the ultimate decision maker and then obviously build partnerships and coalitions across the district and beyond and the on and beyond part really a lot of that has to do with um recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce right um we need to build partnerships beyond bethlehem if we intend to do that so that's kind of the framework around this position secondarily we're looking at student and family support services as you're well aware we've talked and presented on the coordinated care team which is a model that's found to be very very successful we started that about four years ago now um and currently we have 18 counselors nine social workers eight psychologists and one social worker um from the saratoga center for the family and

075that person has a wait list right now um we just can't service all the students and families that desire um support and this past october as you are well aware numerous organizations declared a national state of emergency in child's mental health right so this is not something that we take lightly um we are well aware of our students needs and our you know we need to support our students as best we can so we found that really right now we could definitely use an additional social work at the middle school and then an additional social worker through saratoga center which will support right now it's supporting mostly high school and middle school families but this will allow us to really reach down and support our elementary families as well and then as i said for

076reductions both of these i've sort of discussed already one being the elementary teacher due to enrollment and then the second one is the high school business teacher which really it's reduction but it's going right back to social studies so it's a net net zero so in terms of an overall budget impact i'm looking at 354 000 worth of additions 115 000 worth of reductions which amazingly comes out to be 239 if you're paying close attention to judy's beginning part of the presentation that's exactly what our surplus was so it fits into that puzzle very nicely not that i was looking at that ahead of time and i think before i turn over to kathy maybe questions yeah not not a question but i am excited about the um the idea of the the dei position

077um i think it will be it will serve us well yeah it's i mean it's become abundantly clear that i mean jody and i have been trying to do this work over the past five years now um and we just we do not have the expertise obviously and just the time it's necessary to really involve yourself in this work is just beyond what either one of us could do with all of our other responsibilities for sure have we considered including a budget for that so it is so um let me back up a little bit so obviously the budget for the salary and benefits and all that's included here but i referenced um adding back into our in-service professional development line um that's the salary line here it is professional development and service training um

078i put the 30 000 back in here not only for travel but this will also help us cover some of our dei initiatives um and then you can also see under curriculum development there's an increase there nominal increase of ten thousand dollars which will also help in those areas we're also very fortunate when i get to the federal funding piece um after years of decline in federal funding um that's actually been going back up again so i can speak a little bit more to how that money is also used in this realm perfect the um sorry good question the the one elementary school reduction yes is that from any specific building or grade level for anyone so right so next year eagle and hammer girl will both be down a first grade but glenmoth picks

079one up so you know regardless of which one we end up sort of dropping from the budget both eagle and hammer girl are losing a first grade section and glenmont is picking one up and can you stand and then oops sorry and then it's a wash here so it's no no impact it's just teachers sliding within the same building so this is where we need to have our discussions on this is something that from time to time we have to do right we're going to have um we have a retirement which we will not be replacing so that takes care of one of the red circles but then we are going to have a teacher currently either at eagle or hammer grill sliding to glenmont so there's gonna be a teacher shift because of that

080um and do we know this might be impossible to answer but as a result of the reductions and increases in the sections how many students will have to move to a different building so we've already so all these projections are based on taking all of our students from this year and returning them to their home schools next year so if you recall we have the march 1st deadline for enrollment so last year because of kovid restrictions any family that registered after march we i kept a spreadsheet and every time a new student enrolled in a grade level i balanced it off so we tried to keep all of our numbers across the buildings balanced at each grade level this year and we were able to do that pretty successfully and then next year as those

081students transition back to their buildings their this all accounts for that which is why in some areas you might see some kind of odd fluctuations and that's because of students returning to their home schools to be fair some families especially students are like say currently in fourth grade that have elected to stay at their um non-home school next year rather than have to move back and forth again okay so that i know i'm a bit of a broken record and kathy's listened to me i don't know how many times on this topic um but i just as a district would encourage a not to have to move kids when we don't have to right i know we try not to do that and then b being cognizant of how hard it is for students to

082then have to transition again the following year because we change sections and allowing some of that choice to the extent so for in general for general education students this is really the first year uh actually last year we did it a little bit too this was really because of covid we were forced to do that because our rooms had capacity right we couldn't have 30 students in a room not that we'd want to but we you know some rooms only had 17 seats so i had a place students in other buildings to make that work so next year students are returning back to their home buildings but this these past two years in terms of student placement for general education is an anomaly right they were those decisions were solely based because of coveted reasons

083yeah understand yeah with the decrease in high school students is there any effect on uh classes being offered or electives yeah um i mean we have a few courses that any given year are tricky whether or not they run those are starting to trend towards the not running now but our even though our enrollment decreases our requests numbers have remained stable like it's our students want full schedules so i mean we're running more electives now than we did 10 years ago for sure um i mean just as a real easy example that i know off the top of my head is computer science we didn't even exist five years ago and we're going to be running eight sections of it next year um so some electives are starting to become more popular some are sort

084of dropping off but the interest in electives in general is still very very high what classes are we seeing drop off i'm curious um so i think that one of the biggest hits actually is in our world language department um and and part of that again it's just you know 400 students if if as seniors traditionally say 60 of students were taking a foreign language or world language through four years right 60 percent of 400 big difference 60 of 300 right so part of it has to just do with our enrollment there has definitely hurt um you know we're down a couple sections in some of our higher um world language courses just because of that um but it has not seemed to impact other electives quite as much and i wouldn't say world language

085as an elective but so our english and our social studies numbers remain very very high across the board because you're required to take four years right some of our sciences again just because the number of students aren't there class sizes have dipped a little bit but we're still able to run the courses same with math um but for whatever reason world language um has is definitely seeing a hit because of the decreased enrollment and some of the some of the supervisors for the half-year electives have scheduled it so it might only be offered every other year or instead of in the past where it was offered both semesters only offered one so it gives students still the opportunity but it might be a little more limited so that's been helpful i think in keeping some

086of those electives able to run because when we were running say two electives within social studies simultaneously eight kids sign up for one e kid sign up for the other neither one run but when we tell everyone ahead of time this one's always gonna run in the fall this one's always gonna run in the spring or this one's always gonna run on odd years and this one's always gonna run on even years students can plan for that and then now you know 16 to 20 students sign up for that elective and it's able to run so that has definitely helped in being more purposeful in how we plan our electives not offering so much simultaneously that everything is kind of all over the place and then you can't run anything because there's not enough interest

087so are we we're definitely updating the handbook or the course curriculum to show that we're running it every other year yeah and our supervisors do a great job working with counselors to sort of long-range plan with students to make sure that they understand when courses run and when they don't and my last question was on um the business program so you indicated like social states was picking up the 0.3 what are they picking up the point three so we're very fortunate one of our social studies teachers is also business certified okay um so they're able to pick up anything but other courses that tend to so we do have some um like semester um business law courses which some of our social studies teachers either that have economics backgrounds or legal backgrounds can handle some

088of the as long as they're not tied to college coursework um where you have to get approval through say like a hudson valley or schenectady to get credit for that um they're able to offer those but we're very fortunate one of our social studies teachers is also business certified i was wondering how that was working yeah thank you but again i mean this is sort of a um you know for years we were only offering 1.0 in business because we didn't have the flexibility and the the interest just wasn't there um the program has grown quite a bit over the last three years so we're able to offer 1.3 and it's possible you know the more that if we can extend that out then we would look to increase that position as well yeah okay

089catherine so a couple of questions um one thing i noticed on the salary uh an increase slide was that there's a discrepancy between the two different social workers and the salaries that we're offering i was just wondering if you could provide some information so saratoga said i know what you're saying yeah i'm sorry on this slide here oh i'm sorry yes thank you okay so um the middle school counselor social worker is a district employee so that includes basically we come up with an average sort of start for all of our new positions that include salary and fringe so that's where so any new position would have come under 89.2 regardless of what it was um that's a bcta position saratoga center for this family are actually not our employees we contract them through saratoga

090center for the family which is why it's a much lower rate okay so it's still a full-time social worker but saratoga center for the family picks up they essentially pay the salary essentially pay benefits we're just purchasing the service okay um and then following up on the um dei director i think that's absolutely fantastic one of the things that caught my ear when you were speaking though is saying that this person or maybe this individual or this office would be responsible for um collaboratively working and creating and then implementing various programs and curricula and and you made a big point to say that this would not be a decision-making role and i just want to point out i i think that's a recipe for um conflict and burnout if somebody is if if we're looking

091to these folks to implement without giving them the tools to create requirements so again you gave a three second overview and i know you've put a lot more thought into this than that however i just want to say i think there is a lot of value in just revisiting and and identifying where would it be beneficial to have a role like this be setting requirements and benchmarks in addition to providing that advisory capacity yeah i mean i just purposely sort of oversimplified the way i phrased that but essentially we just the we don't want the person to become a compliance slash authority figure and that's the way they're viewed right they need to be viewed as somebody that's here to consult like in working with our supervisors um they can certainly nudge them in the

092correct direction but i don't want to say that like they have authority over the supervisors if it's just a kind of nuance to it i totally understand it's i i work at you know i don't work in education i work in different fields i just my experience has been if you if you set up expectations without giving folks the tools to follow through then you it's it's trouble in a different way yeah so i mean i guess the easy way to put it is like ultimately like for curriculum decisions the authority actually comes through me but i'm sort of the conduit from them so they don't necessarily look like the decision maker they're they're basically informing me of how to make the decision and then i make the decision but it's with their guidance if

093that makes sense i was glad to hear you say that as an auditor if you don't have authority from the top down right you're not going to have any change right right that was a really good point that you brought so that's why it's new you're going to give her kind of the authority to do so okay yeah thank you i think and once we get to um this position we post it soon and when it does you'll be able to see a much more detailed um we put together a um invitation to apply and within that is a much more detailed description of what this position would be so each of these bullets will have a full paragraph kind of explaining a little bit more in detail awesome thank you so much for for

094taking this on um because it's it's critically important that person would report to you i guess i report to you perfect thank you any other questions for dave before we turn it over to kathy okay i'll be back in a minute so thanks dave um i too wanted to thank the elementary principals for being here um as i talk about special education our students are in all of the buildings so we partner together and the sess leadership team is here so thank you guys for all being here as well okay so similar to the other slides you've seen um this is um first slide looks at our department by departments actually so our special education portion our health services and then psychological services the second part of this is our expenditures by type so first

095line item there is our salaries our boces services all of us in the district use boce services um we also often contract with boces where where needed tuition paid to other schools um there are times that we need to look at more specialized schools and we will do that and then our other operating costs supplies and that sort of thing between the two of them were up about 1.7 so the these next two slides are really looking at ses as a whole the folks that fall under our department so we currently have 32 special education teachers within our department k-12 we have slotted 85 aids to students with disabilities um we don't quite have 85 at this point we have 81. this has been certainly a challenge for us we have four positions that we're

096working on filling last few years this has been a little bit more challenging for us we have our five leadership positions the three csc chairs the elementary middle school and high school and then the assistant director sarah and myself we have 11 speech pathologists throughout the district otp we have seven employees two physical therapists and five occupational therapists and then we have four supports for the entire department the other part of our department nursing falls under our department and as you all know they've been invaluable the last few years that also has our coordinator position in there in this count this year the district was really terrific with us and we were able to have a um that's not factored in here but we had a .6 nurse that came in and supported other people

097so we could get a lot of the extra work done given covid that we needed so that was really very helpful so then we have eight psychologists and the other parts of the normal overtime and extra help so this dave had shown some of these and he's going to go back to these in a little bit i believe but our federal and state aid reimbursements that comes back to the general fund so um we have funding that comes back to us through um students that are placed out of district um and um we currently have a a couple of students that are in that category we have our medicaid eligible services i know i've said this in the past but medicaid work is really time consuming our therapists will do medicaid notes and then we

098bill medicaid and we have one staff person dedicated to helping us recoup those funds so we're always thrilled when we see that number and then our preschool funding as well so extended school year i had a few questions that had come in so i threw a couple of slides in so that we could i could bring some people up to understanding what this program is and and where it is at this point so extended school year we refer to it as esy is for students who qualify in order to prevent substantial regression that is the state ed regulation on how students are chosen so of all of the students in special education we have approximately 100 students that qualify to be part of this program so um it's a a big program with a relatively

099small number compared to what we have throughout the school year um so um length of day has been a question that came up it was part of the survey that we did part of the parent meetings that we've been doing so i thought i would explain a little bit of the history on this so as everyone knows well maybe i shouldn't say that i apologize um so i'll explain this in in the summer of 2020 we begin planning extended school year um as early as december january for the for the summer to come so during that time frame in december of 19 going into the 20 school year we get we began planning that esy program um and then as everyone knows we went into the lockdown for three months we had no idea if

100esy would exist that year three weeks before summer was to begin we got word that we were able to do that program and we literally put the program together obviously had done some pre-work but we put it together in three weeks hired staff we were thrilled that we were able to do that and we ran a three-hour program the following year in the summer of 21 we went with the same model because it had really been quite successful for us and we were able to staff it the staffing piece just like transportation continues to be a challenge so in the summer of 21 we looked really closely at how our students were doing and we did that by looking at their progress monitoring which is our way of knowing if they are achieving their goals

101and what that showed us was that the the three-hour program the structure of the program the activities that were going on were really helping those students achieve their goals the way we wanted to so part of that was how we based thinking about what we would do we had numerous parent meetings about that and we also spoke at the board meeting a couple of board members had asked us more questions about this so at the end of last year we said that we would do the esy program and we would do a survey at the end we did that survey we got about a 30 um rate of responses which was fairly typical for what we see in um surveys and then we brought that information to a board meeting in september and shared out

102the information we had so that is how we've been able to um come to some of the decisions that we have for the program that we'll be running this year this this summer um just a little bit about what what extended school years is what is incorporated in it excuse me we have academics we're doing ela we're doing math read aloud and really trying to incorporate a lot of fun stuff writer's workshop we have centers that go part of that but we also part of the students iep is their services so we have all the related services that would be on an iep speech otpt social work we also added some other components so that students were really enjoying the day when they were there we have morning yoga we have therapy dogs that are

103visiting on a regular basis and we have a lot of creative playground and game activities set up outside and then for the social part of it we are doing a lot of games to reinforce the skills that the students are there for we've brought in some stem activities we've got some school to work kind of opportunities in our cafeteria and then last year at the end of the year we brought in the uh kona ice truck and we have some more of those kind of activities planned for this summer so questions so the esy program right now you're planning on just doing a three-hour program again this summer that's correct is there you know it does concern me still when i hear about the and i know we the 30 response rate on the survey

104um because if you think about that there are you know say you said about 100 kids so about 100 correct right so there were 135 people 135 students recommended that attended so if we go with 100 to make the math easy if that means that we only heard from you know 30 families thereabouts and there were 70 families that we didn't hear from um i just have some concern about you know how many uh how many people wish that we were still offering the five hour program and one and i know the staffing is an issue and i know that the three-hour program also works for a lot of families yeah and they a lot of preferences um is there any opportunity to offer both so to do you know for maybe if there's a

105select number of families that would prefer a five-hour program to offer that alongside a three-hour program so the answer for this summer is i i don't see that there's a possibility of doing that but i want i want to go back a little bit to look at the bigger picture um and i'll give you a little history we chose the five and a half hour program originally 14 years ago i believe it was because we modeled it off of the boces program that was the only summer program that existed we had not been running one prior to that and that was the program that was that was running and we did it obviously for all of those years with a struggle to take the concept of what esy is which is to maintain their skills

106and have the number of activities in that five and a half hour program so what we did was we did have more social events but with that we had higher staffing which we cannot get any longer and we had the other piece that judy's been talking about for the last three board meetings which was we utilized field trips leaving the campus so we had buses that were doing transportation runs for a three-hour program and a five-hour program so they were coming in at separate times of the day and then we had buses coming to take students like to the bowling alley or to field trips those things just are are not going to be realistic or doable for us nor you know the other piece i should say is um for the last well not

107the first summer last summer and our anticipation for this summer is far more of the staff that we have are not bethlehem staff because we can't get them to come back in and work so it was a balance of again looking at the purpose of esy which is to maintain skills when we have a longer program day we're not trying to maintain skills we're trying to teach new things and increase skills so taking the sed regulation of what we're supposed to be doing the staffing the transportation putting that all together were some of the ways that we came up with the three-hour program and are the students that are that are getting related services are they able to get all of the services that they need in that three-hour time period and and again uh

108holly um i don't know how much background for special ed if you take a student that maybe is in a what we would have called a co-taught program especially during the school year okay and they're recommended for summer let's say they might have been getting speech three times a week during the school year and ot once they don't get that same level of service that's not usually what's recommended it's not always it's not cut and dry it's individually based on the student but they might be getting two speech and one ot and that service is happening within that three-hour day i haven't had any trouble with that i want to say it like i know you work really hard at what you do and so i don't want it to be taken as a criticism

109so i want to be really careful in how i present this i just feel like the board was really concerned with the amount of time last year and we all kind of chalked it up to covet and people were burnt out and staff was difficult but i don't think a lot of us were really happy with the time and so now the whole program and i know like it's in your purview to do that which just went ahead with the three-hour program again and i don't think we had a discussion on it and i don't know if that was intentional or not i don't know but we're offering like the amount of time is like a preschool program and we're trying to move that the needle further with these students and i think it's really

110limited in that three-hour block i mean i know you're presenting it that way but i know when i took my children to preschool it was just enough because they didn't have the attention span but to really get into the detail and the work and the services you can say it i just don't see anything that would make me believe that and i think it's a disservice to our students who really need it and i'm that's just me my personal opinion and if there's and how do we know that we can't do it if we haven't tried like do you already have the staff for this summer no no so why do why we already decided that we can't do it and we can't get personnel to do it if we haven't even put it out

111there so maybe if we're not certain we can get it for five hours maybe we bump into four and see if we can get the number of personnel that we need but we're saying no before we're even attempting to do it and i just i don't think that that's fair to the students who need the consistency and a lot of these students they lack that social connection with students and this is really an outlet for them to have like friends and partnerships and i've had kids who have been sick and when they've been isolated but i've never had a kid with special needs and i i've seen my friends that have and it's really a hardship so for us to limit that over the summer for this program when it was working really well before

112i i'd like to see us do a little more that's just my opinion and it's not a criticism it's just i don't think we're doing enough can can i just add something about the time is that i don't i think we're getting stuck a little bit on the time three hours five hours five and a half every district has different times for their esy program so like i think albany has four hours i think guilderland has a couple staggered so i think that the the i guess a better discussion is what does a quality program mean and then what's the time required for it because having whether it's three hours four hour five hours if you don't have a quality program those kids are not benefiting from it regardless so you could put as many

113hours on as you want if we don't have good quality staff in a good quality program that's what's most impactful for kids so i guess just because we had a five and a half hour program doesn't mean that was the best program either so i just want to be careful about getting stuck on time and i'm not saying five and a half hours i just know three hours is very limited they have to be rushing from one activity to the next with not a lot of either downtime to just interact versus having a skill or something and that's important skill to have too and christine what i would would say to that i'm i mean in your your statement and i'm not taking it personally there were a lot of questions in there i didn't

114write them all down so i'm going to try to recall i don't know if somebody did and can read some of them back to me but one of the things you asked is how do we know it's working we know it was working by looking at the data in special ed that's that's what we do so we have something called progress monitoring and the therapists and the teachers go in they look at the goal that was set up for the student and remember by regulation these these goals are that they need to maintain skills that that's what we are charged with doing whether it's a five and a half hour program or three hour program we're charged with making sure that when they come in and we are trying to maintain a skill in math

115that we are doing math centers and they're they're working on those activities and they are at least maintaining their skills or gaining and we can tell that by regular charting and then looking at the progress that's what we did to know we didn't just say it looked like it worked pretty well so so we had a dad tell us about that i was talking about the 35 people who didn't sign up to do the program because maybe the time didn't wasn't conducive to their work schedules and only 30 responded to the survey that's what i was referring to not necessarily the achievement of the school the skills is not just about the skills there there's another component to it that's all that i'm saying to it so again there were a couple of questions in

116there some of the responses on the survey that we presented on request of the board in september or responses like i'm really happy that there's a three-hour program because i'm doing things in the afternoon i i am not speaking for everyone i'm just telling you what some of those responses were there were people who gave us very positive feedback that the that the program was shorter um we did not set this up so that people are flying or missing one thing and going into another it is it is clearly set up on what a day looks like and while i don't have that with me tonight that was part of what we tried to show in in the survey results and showed pictures um and slides of what a day looked like that three-hour day

117looked like at esy but it was only 30 people who responded out of the 100 and then we still had 35 that didn't show up you can't extrapolate that to mean that that's how everybody feels about the program i think that's a far reach in the past i think it wanted the presentations just there were in with a three hour in the five-hour program um how many i can't remember what the number was because the majority of kids went to the three-hour program correct so what was the do you know the numbers are percentage of the number of kids who did the three hour versus the five and a half like prior four years ago yeah um i primarily the students i i don't know i'm i'd be happy to get that and and present

118that it was higher if i had a venture guest i think more people probably did the five and a half no yeah and christine it's really important to know it's not like it was a choice you could have this or that the the five and a half hour program was a more intense program and it was recommended for certain students it was not recommended for everyone okay um we ran more of the three-hour program than the five and a half but what what was the number i don't know because not everybody not everyone even in more involved classes goes to esy and that's where i'm sorry that's where i struggle a little bit kathy is not what parents want to see because frankly that's not what drives an educational program is what the parent prefers

119in terms of timing but if we previously had a distinction in a child's iep that they either needed three or five hours and some students needed the longer program to meet that need i'm struggling with why suddenly we feel they can meet that same iep goal in a shorter model when we didn't think they could two years ago and and and the answer to that maybe i'm not articulating it clearly enough is that a number of years ago three or four years ago when we were running a longer program we wrote down we looked at what the student what goals the student was working on and we would keep tally marks and we would say they achieved the goal this time we kept careful data about it so the progress monitoring and if i had

120a picture of it i could show you point by point whether there was you know a bell curve whether we were seeing what we were trying to achieve with them was happening that's what we used particularly in the last two years to know are we doing what we're supposed to be doing so we didn't just sit back as a cess team and say this feels good to us it isn't what we did we looked at the student's data to see did this do what the objective was and there isn't an objective in there that says i mean if they're working on math for example in the in the longer program we didn't do math with younger students for an hour and a half because they were there for five and a half there were other

121activities i know some of the feedback that i received and i mean i i've been part of the the summer program since its existence there was a lot of down time that's why we were able to do those activities taking a group of students to the bowling alley for example took two and a half to three hours by the time you got them ready got them on the bus went and did the activity brought them back transitioned so the reason that they were there was certainly for the academic part and we were fitting that into the two hours before we went and did some of the other activities so we didn't feel like we were taking from some of the purpose um but you don't think those activities are important anymore i guess that's where

122i was going with it because i do think there's a lot of benefit from being able to do those type of field trips so i i think it's important um christine if you can to listen to everything that i'm saying i didn't pull one thing out and say i don't think this is important anymore that goes over there i was trying as a department to look at the whole picture the whole picture is that we looked more carefully at our students and the data we were getting from our students we didn't have that in the past to the degree we have now so now we had data in front of us that told me how things were going and what we needed to do that was one factor other factors involved in this were the

123fact that 10 years ago i knew every single staff member that was walking in the door because they were our staff i don't have that anymore so one two years ago we had some staff people this year we had different staff members we've been fortunate that we're able to get them but it wasn't easy and there weren't great numbers but so many people said they were doing it because it was a shorter day that if it was a five and a half hour day i mean we didn't tell them that that was a possibility but um it was it was doable for them because they're all teachers or therapists that worked in other places that had worked the whole year and then they were needed to to come and do some work but they they

124didn't want a full day of work so that that was another part of it and all of those field trips required transportation i mean that was such a huge part we every day the buses came back so a driver would drive the kids in the morning and then they would leave and i mean crim and judy know what this looks like and then we would say i i i don't know where they went but can you come back three hours later and then drive this group and then another two hours later we don't have those things we needed to look at all of those pieces um in putting a program together and that's that's what we did yeah a question on the budget that's being presented this evening based on what you're saying and what

125i think i'm hearing is that the the the budget for 22 23 includes the three includes the the three-hour program is that accurate yes and is it possible to get additional for consideration assuming for board consideration what the cost of running a longer program and the transportation you know and what the transportation possibilities are i i feel badly that i am not articulating this clearly it is it's not the financial piece of it i didn't ask for any additions in my program if i thought that was part of it i would have done that i i have students that who are making progress and then to make a longer program i need more people and more transportation and if we've been listening over the last few weeks i can say i don't have more special

126ed people and crib i i do you have more do you think you could get the summer school program for our drivers is optional employment they are not contractually obligated to do that last year we had issues staffing the three-hour program with enough drivers in attendance to support the sess department so it would be my determination based upon what kathy said that transportation would not be able to support a longer program as we had problems in the past supporting the shorter program is that possible because of covid and the mask wearing and everybody was fatigued i mean the thing that i'm struggling with is we haven't asked no it's been an ongoing problem with having enough employees to staff the summer school program because it's optional employment it's not that was a problem before coven

127it was become it was a problem before covent and it was a problem not just for transportation it was a problem for teachers and i know this personally because my wife substitu did some of the sub uh summer program um and i also know that the teachers um you know they're finding that teaching today and this involves covid yes but also you know as covet is supposedly winding down um regardless of what you hear what's going on in china uh that that the the difficulty still exists getting teachers obviously you know kathy said we don't have staff our own staff coming in we're hiring from outside we used to run this program completely with staff from within the district absolutely and and now we can't we can't do it so it's not it's it's getting

128teachers it's getting transportation and if i remember right um there was and and excuse me for using this word but you know i look at the bowling alley and thinking that's that's nowhere on the iep it's it's what i want to call fluff it's not but it is it's something that's an extra bonus it's something that that keeps the kids engaged it it you know helps them look forward to something but it's not necessary to the goal of the ieps and if kathy is saying that we those we have better data and the students are meeting their goals we're getting them to their goals then you know as she's saying i think the length i have to agree with her the length of the program is not the issue the question is are the students

129achieving the goals that are set for them and are they maintaining their skills and if they are uh i don't think the length of the program is is really the issue it may be an issue for parents who are trying to rely on the school as a babysitter for part of that time um and you know maybe i'm speaking out of turn but you know it's i don't see the argument here well one if no teacher in our district could do the esy program we would have to hire teachers from outside the district and while it might not be our first choice to do that we would be required to do that so i feel like sometimes let me just find this i feel like sometimes we're just doing it to accommodate the teachers that

130want to do it here for three hours versus a longer program but then also with the transportation they're picking up these students they're bringing them home i'm assuming many of them could drive if there was some sort of field trip per se because they're already dropping them off and picking them up from the program they might have availability i just think we're saying no and we're not necessarily looking at you say the fluff of the bowling alley there is something to be said from that and some parents aren't looking at it as babysitting maybe they want their kid to do the program but because of their work schedule they can't allow them to do it that's not the same thing as babysitting and looking for free child care they want their kid to participate in

131the program in which they need these services and this additional support and they can't do it if they don't so one of the things i i do think it's important to know you know we've talked a lot about bus driver shortages obviously um and that's out there pretty widely but the substitute teacher shortage or teacher shortage in general is real and we've been able in fact there's a larger number of teacher shortages than there are bus driver shortages so i i don't think we want to diminish the fact that not saying we're accommodating teachers because some of our teachers choose not they don't want to work in the summer you know they're stressed they're tired it's been a long two years let's be honest but when we're just randomly hiring people who we don't really

132know or have a relationship the benefit to what jonathan and kathy i think we're saying is that when we had our own staff running the esy program they often were the same staff who work with those children during the year right so they knew the kids they knew what their goals were they knew it was you know just take off right from ground right from the get-go and that is not the case when we're hiring [Music] college kids or people who have inexperienced teaching for a six-week summer program who are doing it just to get experience which isn't a bad thing but don't know our kids and so i think that i and i go back to my point the quality of what we offer right now has to be more important than duration and

133i think we do need to look at what makes the most sense for esy program i don't disagree with you that some of those field trips or extra opportunities are great for kids and i know that is a struggle for parents to find those opportunities for children in the community particular children who have special needs so is that something we need to consider and look toward in our future planning i agree with you but i don't think just i don't think we can diminish the stress of trying to get staff to run and operate these programs well can be understated and christie one one thing that that's important for you to try to like web into your head is that when when students are part of a team a classroom team they have a special

134education teacher speech pathologist an ot aides that work together we have some teams last year that have never even met each other none of them know they by the time maybe they're gelling they're done i don't want to cut into the conversation but i know we need to let our pig friends go home um so if you guys need a signature um let's take two minutes if you guys want to come up and get a signature from any board member and you can still stay if you want to hear they're welcome i did i had yogurt with nuts and a cheese stick just letting my family know what's happening um are we good okay all right why don't we uh get started again we've got everybody back so my last thought on it is and

135this is my own personal thought i think a four-hour day makes sense and if somehow we can make a four-hour day work um to build in some of those activities that i think are very important to students so that they have time to when they get there to wind down from the bus go slower into some of the programs and have some opportunities to socially integrate and do some of those field trips at some point i think it would be great and i i just don't like us to say we can't do it if we don't know if we can do it nuts anybody else have any meredith i have some thoughts um first i wanted to say you know jody was just talking about the um issue with getting the number of staff that

136we would need for a five hour program i'm very concerned because you know we've talked about transportation every meeting for this entire year um and this is the first time that we're hearing about the three-hour program and we're hearing that that is a done deal and that's the decision that was made and at the end of 2021 i know we all expressed concerns about the three-hour program and i'm i'm a little troubled that this decision has been made we're being told that the decision was made without our discussion about it because it is something that we said we were all troubled by at the end of 2021 we understood why it was done the way it was during you know coveted crisis we're coming out of crisis mode right now i think we need to

137have a discussion i think the board does have the the right to say we want a longer program and we can have that discussion but this is the first time we're having that discussion and we're being told that the decision has already been made my second point is you know jonathan i know you said the word fluff wasn't the word you wanted to use but you did use the word and i want to say that you know these activities are not fluff they're skill building and you know i'm not in education but even parents of gen ed students know that social activities and activities going out into the town practicing skills cafeteria work those are all skill building activities whether or not you're in special ed or gen ed and we wouldn't be doing them

138if they weren't important and they're even more important for kids who for whom certain social environments aren't available if this is the only opportunity that certain kids in the special ed program have to socialize with their peers or have to go into environments such as a bowling alley where maybe they don't feel comfortable unless they're with their peers it's even more important for those kids to give them those and i understand that we've been talking about you know you've been talking about emphasizing maintaining skills because that's the legal requirement um and of course it's important that we fulfill the legal requirement but i think as a school district we can hold ourselves up to a higher standard than that i understand there are staffing concerns i understand there's concerns whether or not we can do

139the five-hour program but like christine said we haven't tried and i think we can do more if we can help these kids do more than maintain skills if we can grow their skills we if we can grow their social [Music] the um the amount of time that they can spend socializing with their friends or grow the social skills that come with um going out on these field trips i think we've got to at least try to do that and say that this as a district we stand up for these kids we stand up for providing them everything that we possibly can and if it turns out we can't hire the teachers um for the five hour program well at least we've tried okay that's that this time i wrote down some of the questions for

140the pen see i i said one two three so you'd know when i was well it was more like eight so just um jonathan i appreciate you responding to some of the things and i i know you use the word fluff and i don't think you meant the word fluff but i i want to go on record i i didn't say fluff i know you'd say i didn't say that field trips were fluff what what um what i don't think folks understand and just put this down for a second um and even even listening to what you're saying like let's give it a try and if it doesn't work we won't do it every single thing we do in special ed is done for legal well i'm making it it's done because we we got

141into this because we care about kids and families and what we're doing i mean i feel like it's making it seem like you decided three you don't care you don't want to do any of that that's that's not the way the special education success office works it's not the way those three women sitting in the back work or any of these teachers but once the process to get to what we're doing is a really long journey so we have a third of our kids who have already had their annual review and their iep which is a legal document says they're going to go to a three-hour program people ask like where did how did we come up with this i will say for myself and i and i stood next to sarah and and i

142i think she felt the same way we presented information and the information that we gained from that survey said to us this is where we're going we never stood up here and said we're doing this for the rest of esy forever at bethlehem we said this is what we're we're doing this survey so we can look at what to do for this year because by december we were starting the planning process i have not ever been approved i say i meaning that i'm representing bethlehem i've never been approved for a four hour summer program i had a five and a half i had a three so i can't just arbitrarily say i've got all these ieps we said three hours look we got two extra teachers let's throw in a four hour i i that

143that takes planning we can certainly put another survey together or whatever the board thinks is more appropriate to look at what we would do for 23. maybe we don't do a three-hour program maybe we don't do it five and a half but it really seems impossible to me that you would believe i'm standing up here making this stuff up if we do those two programs please recognize we don't have enough drivers to do they're different runs it's kind of like the the the bell schedule you can't have the 10 drivers driving to the middle school and to this program those programs ran didn't run at the exact same time i mean that the logistics of this we've been doing it for 16 years we've got a fairly good sense of some of this so um

144meredith i i couldn't right now say hey a third of the bethlehem students that went through annual review that their iep says three hours do you mind if i change it to four that would require every single person coming back to committee i i don't know if i'd be approved for four and i don't have the the confidence right now to know that i have the staff you know we've started reaching out to staff like hey sue you worked first last year you know you normally work at albany city would you consider coming back but but we will do that um that's how we've done it in the past but i i don't have those numbers either what i was always able to do before was base it on the confidence of being able to

145get staff because our staff would say that was great i want to come back to esy again i i don't have that i am not trying to shortchange the students that we work with or the families that we're working with but i i would like to see what a board meeting would look like if i said you can have a five and a half or if we can't do that we'll do a four and and not pull it off um this i think we can pull off based on what's in front of us i i'm sorry but i i'm trying to be realistic again we were trying to to criticize i think the biggest issue is we didn't feel comfortable with the three hour program and i think we all kind of made that pretty

146clear and then the three-hour program was planned without a discussion ahead of time so now i understand we can't go back because iep's now say three hours versus a different it just would have been nice to have this conversation in december to really get our thoughts to talk about whether we wanted like a four-hour program or a five-hour program when we all discussed like the concerns and we also mentioned at the time that we didn't feel that the survey provided enough responses so what about the progress monitoring christine can i just to one thing i went back to and i looked at the presentation and i recall at the at the meeting we talked about the percentage of people responding was low and we thought survey responses generally didn't get a very high number and

147i thought the um follow-up was also kathy would follow up with some of her parent groups to get to try and gather additional feedback but and maybe this is my fault there was i don't believe at that meeting a direction from the board that you wanted any kind of follow-up from special ed to clear i i left that meeting and i think i'm guessing kathy did thinking that we would look to gather additional infor we would follow up with staff to look at options but there was no we want you to come back to the board with a proposal for another option for esy so meredith to your point i don't think that was clear thank you and that's and and and perhaps i i jumped to that conclusion rather uh rather swiftly when i

148was when i was asking about the budget and kathy i just want to um i just want to say your intentions your passion your love your dedication and your staffs is incredibly incredibly clear and it's incredibly clear that you're putting everything you can into providing not just a space for our students to be but for them to thrive and i think what i'm hearing from the board is also clear in that we we have different perhaps goals for for what that might look like but the intention of where we're going sounds sounds very similar and so when i asked what would budget numbers look like if we were to consider a longer program what i was referring to is for next year not for this year recognizing that things are already in motion and recognizing

149that right now we're working on the budget for next year and so if the board wanted to provide the direction and the flexibility for the department to go back to having a longer program and provide you the authority to go forward and have the understanding that there was the budget there to back you up if we had the teachers if these different pieces fall into place which i know there are no guarantees of that i i fully hear that and i understand that from both you and mr johnson but i think one of the best things that i mean there's two good things that we can do as a board one is provide some some direction and it seems some direction and some um and it seems like we weren't very clear on that previously

150and we can't we can't go back and make up for that but forward-facing looking for some direction and then also providing the budget so that you've got tools to implement what it what it is the department can do and so that's where i'm thinking about is it possible to look at budget numbers hearing the direction that the board wants to go for next year so this might be a question for judy because much of esy is reimbursed i don't know what the actual now the cost is to the district because it's generally high yeah costs so i don't know if you know that judy officially it's 80 percent that comes back on the program but big caveat with the state it's 80 percent of their allowable costs so the effective percentage that you get back

151and aid is lower i i really would like people to understand this had nothing to do with the budget and i am grateful that that you're saying that catherine but i i didn't ask for any additional staff in a heartbeat if i thought that that we were in different circumstances i i would absolutely come to you i think we can work that out within it this is not a financial decision um this is this is a i can't recommend something that i do not believe we can produce um is is this in part in any way and i and i don't know the answer to this was this um going to three hours in any way uh a direct or in direct result of the survey and i'm asking i have that for a reason

152and i have a follow-up we ran the three-hour program the first year without a survey basically we had run when we started this i'm saying 14 years ago i should know the i think it was oh seven i don't i don't remember exactly but um we had a two and a half and a longer program we had two um and then we moved it to a three we felt two and a half wasn't long enough so we moved it to a three when we got the okay with three weeks to go in 2020 three hours seemed like you know an average between them and and we we set it at three and then we looked at what we could fit in we felt like we were meeting kids goals so we put it together for

15321 21 was the year that we really did the progress monitoring and all those other pieces so that you knew that the three hour was working to get the students to meet the goals that were set forth by the the bethlehem staff that had put those ieps together okay then if there if there is another survey and the the response is just as low i mean look on a targeted survey generally you're going to get 20 percent on an untargeted survey you're lucky to get 2 percent but here we got 30 percent so statistically it's a good survey the next step would be to say look you know if we're going to do some of this based on a survey if that's going to be what part of this is obviously you have to have

154all the pieces falling in place you have to have karim have the drivers you have to have the staff etc but the parents have to step up and they have to answer the survey and you know here we had 30 percent answer the survey now i know there are there are families that have multiple students in so i don't know how many families it really represents but 30 percent is statistically valid and there's no reason not to go with it so quite frankly i think you did everything you could and knowing the teacher shortage and i i know that because quite frankly every night for the last two years my wife's phone has rung for substitute teaching every night often past 11 o'clock at night and as early as six in the morning so i

155know how desperate we are for poor staff so you know i think you've done a phenomenal job with what you have and i also think that if you know the parents that are complaining about the time i don't know if they answered the survey but if they didn't answer the survey i don't think they really can be complaining and i think we as a board can say you know at this point we can certainly look for next year but i don't see any way that realistically you can change what you have now i don't see that you're going to have drivers and i certainly don't think you're going to have staff i i would um just make a no i mean i would continue to do this summer the progress monitoring um obviously and um

156and i would take that um i mean i would be interested in and apparently i'm overly optimistic and how many people should respond to surveys maybe it's because i always do but um and to do another survey and gather some additional feedback just so that going forward we know you know that we're we're headed in the right direction the thing that i would like to see and i would you know personally call is to find out from the people who are eligible for the program if there makes a difference between a three-hour program and a four-hour program whether or not that would make 40 you know eligible students able to attend and i don't think we got that information and i think with only 135 people being eligible it doesn't need to be a survey

157it could be an email personal email to the family it could be a phone call chris generally just um when they do when the csc chairs do annual reviews um if a student is eligible for esy often times a parent will just decline then say no i'm not interested because they might have so we could just gather that i'm sure through annual review process i just just to offer a little bit of a counter thought to that i i'm one of those parents whose child qualifies for esy who declines right out of the gate because my child tried it the first year and had non-bethlehem staff nobody communicated with me he got nothing out of the program so to kathy's point about you can put together a program that's whatever length as long as you

158can hire people to do it but it doesn't make it a quality program i'm i'm on the other end of that what that survey might look like right i i would rather send my child to a two-hour program where he maintains some skills as a result because it's a really quality program with staff that he's comfortable with um just to sort of offer that that counter to kathy's point about making sure it's a quality not a quantity right that's a good perspective and then may i just um just a a process question not i mean we're clearly having this conversation about the esy program but this is a question across oops sorry across uh i'm not making your job you're easy tonight across the spectrum how much when when the board approves the budget the

159budget goes out to voters how much latitude does a program have to then adjust spending amounts so if we are approving this amount of the budget for you know for this year whatever you know whatever program we're talking about is there a margin of error within there that the the program can go over or under or just what i'm just interested in better understanding what latitude exists in general when the public approves the budget at the maximum amount that is a hard ceiling that you cannot go over so then at that point if we wanted to make a substantial change and bring it back to this conversation if we approve this budget this year things shift there's a decision there's direction to to lengthen the day then at that point we are rearranging the budget

160internally to make that happen we're not providing additional allocations there's no there's no additional funding coming in that's all from within the program it's what you saw you do transfers so when i i joke about reality happens during the course of a school year when you need more money for an essential cost that has to occur that was unplanned you make a choice you cut back in another area and you transfer from one line of the budget to another to enable that to be funded so for instance we have 57 000 applied to the board of education should we not use that money let's say 30 000 of it it could go to esy should they need it as an example but but finances isn't part of why i i said this i had to

161just i hear you let i hear you completely loud and clear i'm just hopeful hope springs eternal over here that we find ourselves in a different position a year from now putting a pile of money here isn't going to help me find teachers that that are not willing to work and we don't want somebody just strolling in that doesn't want to be here to work with our neediest students this has got to be what makes a great opportunity for the kids and and the team that they're working with and one of the things i think uh looking toward the future because you know i've said this the driver shortage is probably not going to be corrected soon the teacher shortage is not going to be corrected soon one of the things we can work with

162is potentially boces to help us or also even other local districts who i know are struggling in the same way we are with all of these issues and maybe there's a way to partner with another district to help with some of this obviously that takes planning and coordination but it might be a way to address how do we make sure we have quality staff serving the students who need to be serviced how do we provide a quality program regardless of what the time ends up being i think that's something we need to consider for the future and and i actually jody i i last year when we had um the three-hour program there were a couple of families who said this just isn't going to work for our student i entered into an agreement with

163those families and we sent a number of students to a boces program the parents were happy with that we've talked to a number of families that have approached us that had done that last year i called capital region boces and said is this a possibility i mean we contract with them to send students to certain programs that we don't have here in district and they their answer was not a surprise to me they said we'd be happy to do that with you if we can staff it but we're struggling right now to staff our summer program for our current students so this isn't just a bethlehem problem this is a it's it's pretty widespread um i know that you and your team work tirelessly i know how hard you work and i i'm not trying

164to question like your knowledge and specialized clearly i don't have that background in any way um i think everybody who is able to do that is uh an angel here on earth but um i just want to make sure that we aren't just doing it because of what just because our teachers aren't able to do more than a three-hour program that's that's really what i want to make sure of and i know we don't want it like what willow said go to outsourcing outside of the district if we don't have to but like jody said maybe it's time that we might have to look for partnerships and i think that was a really great suggestion that maybe we look into something like that to make sure and and agree agreed um but i i will

165say um the cse chairs and myself on a monthly basis participate um i think jody and dave do the same thing with their counterparts with the capital region once a month we have a meeting with all of the directors assistant directors csc chairs this is a struggle that everybody's having um and each piece that we talk about like okay if gilderlin for example said you know what we've got a five hour program and we don't have enough kids in it okay we'd have to make sure that the program that they had matched the needs of our students because they might run different programs but then we go back to this other challenge we have to get them there and we have to get them back and those are all pieces that we've been trying to

166consider when we put this together [Music] i mean non-esy and we don't have to talk about it tonight because it's a billion o'clock already but the we've talked a lot about broadening the sort of spectrum of special ed models across the buildings and trying to drive down the numbers of students who have to move from one building to another throughout k5 so i don't know if you have obviously not part of the presentation but maybe if you could share with us later what the plan is for where those types of classrooms will be next year and i'm the the question is the 32 special ed teachers in 85 or 81 aids in this year's budget that you've not asked for an increase does that support that overall goal of broadening absolutely yeah we've got our

167integrated classes increasing with our students skills classes decreasing looking at those models that people really asked us to look at that absolutely is happening okay i just i always want to make sure that if you felt like another special ed another special educator in your budget would would assist that you would feel comfortable enough asking us for that you know i will say um i think jody knows when i feel like our department is in need of something i don't think i've been shy to come to her and ask for it um and i don't think this district has been one to tell us absolutely not we you know when when you understand that as long as i've been here this district is down well over a thousand students and that isn't just regular ed

168students a lot of those students were students with special needs that were getting supports whether it was resource room or speech i mean our numbers are down as well and not because we're not identifying students that we should we are evaluating them and identifying them and looking at 504 plans we're doing all of it and quite honestly we've we've got a really phenomenal team and i think we're we continue to do a better job of figuring out creative ways we've got a brand new reading program that we're absolutely thrilled with that we took a long time to do research and you know you've hit me over the head a thousand times about the reading program my kid learned to read this year we've got solid stuff we're doing some good things but unfortunately it doesn't

169sound that way tonight we were trying to put a program together that was doable i don't want to come back here and say sorry about that five hour program that we put together we got um 14 kids that were part of it no teacher no speech pathologist no aids and crim says he can't transport i i kathy there's no question that we have the best special ed department anywhere so i hope tonight does not take away from that because i absolutely 100 percent know that we provide the best services in any school can i just clarify willow yeah on the projections do you want a presentation on that or just want to know where the programs are for next year like in an update we know that we need a whole presentation on it i

170know that not every board member is as interested in that topic as i am but i i personally like to sort of track where we're building code versus skills and sort of how that sure evolves yep we can provide that i love that um i did have actually one other non-esy question for you um i noticed it looked like you decreased the amount of money that you're asking for for tuition paid to other schools and i was just wondering why because we're programming for them here okay great with with the non-increase of staff because we've our numbers are are good our class sizes are exactly where they need to be or lower sometimes okay so is that also tied in some respects to the lower enrollment in the across the board yes honestly it's tied

171to a lot of things i think that we've got some really outstanding staff and we are doing different programming and um we're able to keep some students in district that otherwise we might have sent out before okay great thanks kathy i think you're off the hook thank you for your presentation hi again i'm back so every year i do present on our federal grant programs and a few meetings ago meredith asked if we could provide an update as well on some of the um covid funding that's been special the last two years so i i'm happy to report that out tonight as well so every year we do get ida grants and preschool grants they you can see those are fairly flat and there's always a lag on these because of the way the reporting

172happens so that's why we don't have 21 22 numbers but you can see for a very long time our title grants were actually declining and now they're back on the rise again which goes back to the professional development piece i was talking about before so just to give you some background title one is essentially for funding our mtss programs is what that money is essentially used for title two is professional development title three is enl and title four is um social emotional and technology for some reason they lump those two things together but um and that's a very small one the title four is only about ten thousand dollars a year um title ones in the hundreds title twos usually like eighty-ish and then three is about ten and four is about ten so you

173can see that's overall slight decrease but that's again because of the ida grants in preschool you can see that food service it went way up and that was because of the reimbursement for the the lunches at the federal government level no nsf nsf grants in 2021 so overall you know a decent increase and just out of the specialized grants seven fte are paid out of that grant um and out of the title grants title one really won fte we used to fund more than that we used to find almost up to three and a few years ago i started scaling that back because the amount of the title grants were going down and i didn't want to be placed in a position where all of a sudden they got to a point where all of

174a sudden i'm trying to bring three fte back into the general budget so i've slowly been decreasing that so that's down to about one which is um manageable should the funding start to decrease again we can easily incorporate that back into the budget so one of our reading it's not a full position i do sort of split it up a bunch of our reading teachers some of their salary comes out of the funding that's what that means so in terms of the covet funding i mean we're very very fortunate we got just over 6 million dollars in covert emergency funding it came through three different grants which was fun because each one had his own application process that's quite laborious so the original one which we had to share with some of the private schools

175um similar to the title grants and then the other two just over six million dollars um so i tried to break it down just to kind of give you an idea of what we're spending this on so supplies some of the money had to go towards hepa filters ppe those types of items so we can use that for that perch other supplies too we could also use it for any any continuation of academic services so we could also use it for classroom supplies and things of that nature on purchase services this line so some of it had to be earmarked for certain things so this purchase services line um pretty much this bulk of the funding you have to spend it on um what they deem as learning loss and the way to do that

176is through either high dosage tutoring or some other services so if we call the last board meeting you approved a contract with a company called paper and this actually aligns with our equity goals as well so paper is a 24 7 tutoring service that students will have access to um six through twelve we're starting it with as that's what they recommend most districts do so essentially the way it works is we had our first meeting today with the company as the supervisors for some initial training the faculty will receive information on april 4th and then immediately after that we'll be able to roll it out to students and families to see what it's like but essentially the way it works is a student logs in so their schedule shows up they can click on whatever

177class they're having issues with and then a tutor comes on within five minutes and can help them it's a chat based tutoring platform um there are two different platforms that you can have access to one some companies offer video platforms two drawbacks to that number one i'm not real comfortable with middle school students interacting on camera with somebody they have no idea who they are two you can't use it during the school day right because you need audio and you need video so we went with a chat based platform which works really really well with our chromebooks it leverages the ability to use the stylus so for like math and science a whiteboard comes up the student can write on it the tutor can write on it and then you can chat back and forth

178you can also take pictures upload them you can upload documents it's it's a really really neat service and again in terms of equity right when you take a look at the students that are accessing you know the our teachers do a marvelous job obviously of helping our students right but it's on all of that extra help is essentially on a teacher's schedule right if a student's not available say to high school from two to three for extra help or happens to have a free period that lines up with the teacher then what other avenues do they have for extra help well if they have the resources they can pay for a tutor so this will allow students on demand on their time to access a tutor so if they have study hall at 10 o'clock

179in the morning and they're struggling with a math problem they can hop on because it's chat based there's no interruption to other students they can work with a tutor and this tutoring platform is 100 socratic based so like i can't just say to the tutor what's the answer to this problem they're going to say well what do you think you should do what do you think you should try what do you know um and they'll just keep questioning the student until they find their way through the problem the other huge benefit is the teachers will all have a dashboard where they can see the entire chat so if a teacher kind of has an inkling when this kid seems to be getting way too much help they can actually see what the chat looks like

180it also has an essay revision portion of it so you could write an essay upload it the tutor same thing they will highlight sections of your essay and leave comments like um you know a transition might work well here what do you think it won't say what to do it'll just say it'll prompt them to consider like what might you do under these circumstances um so that's what um part of this money is going to go for and then another part is for on the tang math series that we've been using just shifting funds i had been using title 1 funds now we're going to shift it to this instructional salaries similar this will right now this is funding um all of the covid supplemental help so our students are on quarantine that we're getting

181tutored by teachers this is paying for that it also paid for our summer programming last summer and any summer programming we're going to do this summer capital projects and classroom furniture so if you recall in a bond we were able to offset the amount that we needed to borrow by um you know almost five million dollars right because we're using these funds so in terms of the capital projects the huge projects that are being funded through this are um outdoor pavilions at each of the buildings um a canopy structure out here off the cafeteria so students can actually sit outside without baking in the sun ventilation systems at hammer grill slingerlands and glenmont so in the cafeteria and in the gymnasiums all new ventilation systems um also the pit areas in glenmont and hammond grail

182and i think that's about it for the capital projects um so these are all things that otherwise would have had been funded through borrowing right so this was able to offset um how much we needed to borrow and then classroom furniture this is something as you know we we're putting away 75 000 a year for classroom furniture you can see that if we're going to be able to chunk off 2.5 million that 75 000 would have taken an awful long time to get us there right so um this is very very fortunate that we're able to use these funds towards our upcoming capital project so i hope that answers the questions you had meredith in terms of yeah thank you um one question i do have about the classroom furniture sure 2.5 million dollars worth

183of classroom furniture seems like a lot and to me that seems like you know we would refit every single classroom in the whole district but then that means that 10 or 15 years from now we're gonna have to refit everything at the same time again so it'd be nice to think that we replaced furniture every 10 to 15 years um since i think if you walk into some of the classrooms you'll find the desks that you sat in senior year so um i mean that's part of the replacement cycle that was absent for many years right so now we do have a furniture line within the budget so hopefully over time as we're able to replace classrooms at a more similar to the buses right we're able to have a replacement cycle in place um

184so the one highlight i will say we've already purchased some of this classroom furniture at the high school in middle school and at the elementary levels we went through a very long sort of vetting process with teachers we did some pilots to try out different types of furniture but the goal was to get flexible furniture sturdy flexible furniture in that regardless of how teachers wanted to set their classroom up or how it changed over from year to year it would be useful so at the elementary level they could be put together as tables or they could be pulled apart same similar to high school middle school right everything is very very movable that if you see the ones at the high school they actually you can lift and lower them the seats themselves are you

185can either sit in it as a chair or if you turn it around the other way there's kind of like a perch to sit on so then you could raise your desk up so you're not quite standing but you're not really sitting either it's it's just kind of holds your balance so we're looking very much more into flexible furniture so the teachers can maximize room arrangements so it's kind of like one size fits all to the best we can and teachers were very very much involved in that process and we piloted a lot of different furniture before settling upon what was ultimately chosen yeah how will how will we deal with that question of leveling out our replacements yeah that's a great question yeah i think and i've spoken to greg a few times um

186before actually we received this funding that was a huge benefit for us but um the o m does have a um a system where they're tracking the furniture age in each classroom and and so what we would do is moving forward we would come up with some kind of uh percentage replacement plan maybe for each building or look at maybe at one building one year and another because the high school um in middle school um some of that furniture is i would agree with dave like if you want a you know a chair to sit in your house is a fond memory we probably can get you one but coming up with a plan that we can realistically um have in place so moving forward we do have a more systematic plan than because we

187didn't before and that may mean you know uh more than 75 thousand dollars i don't know what that looks like but that he does have all of the inventory in what's in classrooms now so it should be easy when we outfit them with new furniture to just update that and then come up with a reasonable plan and time frame and we do have a model for how this might work um so the chromebooks are a good example right the very first year we went one to one we bought chromebooks for the entire grades three through 12 and then came up with a schedule to slowly replace certain grade levels at a time i would imagine the same thing would happen here right we're outfitting every single classroom in the district of new furniture and then

188whether it's 20 a year 15 a year or whatever you start replacing on a certain predictable cycle um based on i don't know what the life like the life center of a chromebook is only three years i would hope that the lifespan of a desk and chair is longer than that so that would give us ample time to plan that replacement cycle too this this might be a question for judy but um we have uh dedicated um but we have like the the money that we set aside for the capital projects um is it possible to while since we have all of this money we're going to do a large replacement now is it possible to take that 75 000 or whatever the board decides year to year put it set it aside as a

189dedicated fund so that when it comes time to replace say a large portion that we might be able to do that having prophylactically scheduled or put aside that money there is a reserve that exists by law that you can set up that's similar to the reserve that i'm going to talk about in a minute where you need to get your board approvals i don't know whether that type of a reserve requires a community vote as well but yes legally it exists and you could put money into that so it's something we should seriously consider as part of this we can look at that and again we have stability is the key word in terms of our budget and these impacts and that's why we built that number in there the other reason why we haven't

190put the furniture replacements within the capital project so much and why we're so thrilled to have this federal funding is because once you buy your initial set of classroom furniture that's aidable under the building aid formulas but your replacement furnishings are not so that's why we thought this was the ideal use for these federal monies because we could get the replacements that we needed for the vintage you know 40 and 50 year old classroom furniture that we had without having to worry about putting it in a capital project and then having it be a deduct from the aid formulas okay thank you i had one more quick question before you scoot away dave um i assume for the tutoring program that we'll be getting periodic updates and by i mean that you'll get periodic updates

191on usage yes i would be interested if you could um come back to us at the end of the school year and just let us know what the usage rate was right so yeah so the initial rollout will be like i said april 4th with teachers april 11th they're actually going to meet in department meetings and do some more department specific stuff i imagine this year will be a little bit of a sort of a quiet roll out and then next year is when we're really kind of push the product but we'll definitely have preliminary numbers we're meeting with the company set up meetings with us monthly after the initial rollout to discuss progress compared to other implementations and things of that nature so um definitely can report that a related question is whether it's

192available over the summer if there are it will be available so the only caveat is our student it's a little bit tricky so it's tied to your schedule right so even though june comes your schedule in aspen stays as is until we roll over for the new year right and that doesn't usually happen until august so they'll be able to use it through um like the first week of august say then we do have a like a two week black up period where we roll our systems over and then the new part will be available so even though it's tied to your i want to be a little bit careful even though it's tied to your schedule there's still like a generic i need help with and you type it in and then the appropriate

193tutor will hop on based on that i'm just thinking hypothetically like maybe there's a kid who you know there's a math concept or something so another so another really good usage for this too is um college essay writing right or scholarship essay writing maybe you're working on that over the summer you can submit that through the um revision part a tutor will read it over provide feedback you can make changes and you can keep resubmitting as many times as you want so it could for summer it could be used for even non-academic purposes if you're writing for whatever reason yeah great thank you a lot of grant proposals will they be available to me as well or how do i get that well you can have yeah if you have your student just kind of

194slide it up there right the deliverables thanks steve judy before you get started i just i wanted to ask a question kathy's not in the room but it's on special ed and the medicaid getting the hundred thousand have we ever really done like a analysis on how much time teachers have to put in to get that recouped because from what i understand it can be time consuming and cumbersome and they're doing it on breaks and um so that's the vacation and have we ever looked at maybe that's just the cost of doing business to relieve them of um that burden so you're i believe referring to the session notes requirements which is part of your documentation in order to qualify for that funding so in terms of how that impacts the staff that's a kathy

195question so would you like her to answer that now have you ever thought about talking to judy about waiving the medicaid requirement for staff because it's so burdensome to do all the notes and they do it on vacations and breaks and after hours and just the medicaid part yeah they do they do um i mean the idea right so they have to do progress notes regardless because you they have to keep track of that for how kids are progressing so i don't think but to your point are are they is there additional requirements there's not additional requirements for the medicaid piece for besides the progress notes correct they they do have to enter something from the medicaid yes right but is it it's i've it's a lot of work for every special educator to do

196this work i i haven't had any of them say this piece is a whole lot more i mean it's it's pretty systematic but in special ed for every goal you keep daily progress i mean that is part of no yeah so i didn't know if that piece was extra because i've heard from the various special ed teachers i know how it's time consuming and they're doing it at different periods that's not the medicaid piece because the medicaid piece is tied to therapy services okay thank you you just don't want me to wrap this up right so um with planning and anticipating what these requests were going to be it's it's not a bizarre coincidence this was planned that with the budget requests if all are approved we would have a budget going out at 102

197million 698 which would be offset with our revenues there would be no need to increase the tax levy amount remember that our mattel was .15 which was about a hundred thousand dollars so we've balanced the budget without that we had talked about at the initial meeting that with the typically the increase in the assessment values that we have within the community if we go out with the flat tax levy amount so the district doesn't collect any more than the prior year that typically will result in a lower tax rate for the community so it's way too early for me to get those numbers but it is certainly a very um encouraging piece of the overall budget that i think would be well received by the community okay the last piece of this relates to the

198funding of our next capital reserve so we have used these with great success to jonathan's point when you can set aside a little bit of money every year it does build up to become a nice tool to help you avoid the issuance of debt so we have created two reserves in the past we had set them with a 10 million dollar maximum funding amount and based on the last two projects we've pretty much exhausted the one and we will leave only 1.7 million in the second fund so that means it's time to have another reserve and we are recommending because we funded up to the 10 million threshold fairly quickly we're recommending that we go to a 20 million dollar maximum amount still over that same 10-year life this would go through 2032 and we

199would use this money for the next project remember these how we operate these funds are highly prescribed by the law so the board has to approve it via a resolution which we have on the agenda tonight then it has to go as a proposition before the community to vote to establish this reserve annually the board can authorize the transfers into the reserve based on how we end up with our actual results for that year but before we can spend the money from the reserve it once again requires a board vote and a community vote so the money goes in only for that dedicated purpose and then it is approved by the board and the community before we can tap into it but remember the use of these reserves is why we have essentially seed money

200for this next 40 million dollar project where we do not have to go out and borrow those funds initially because we planned over the years and have set these funds aside so i'm highly recommended that we establish this next reserve just to give us that tool going ahead and also on the proposition besides the various elements that will be in the legal ad to approve the budget we also will have two seats that are expiring jonathan's and wendy's seats so the petition period is open now and they would need to come back in if anybody's interested in running by april 18th at five o'clock and then the candidates will be getting their place on the ballot through a lottery that the district clerk will take care of and our next meeting april 6th will be

201where we formally adopt the budget we'll have our property tax report card that we're required to submit to the state and then we move forward preparing for the budget that will include the public hearing on may 4th meet the candidates on may 9th and then the actual vote 7 am to 9 pm on the 17th judy is the may 9th date correct and i'm i'm asking because i don't remember it ever being on a monday night before and we also scheduled the policy committee meeting that night i have meet the candidates on may 11th oh okay typo may 11th and i know britney usually confirms that with league of women voters so we'll update that on the next presentation good catch and that concludes the budget presentation for this evening so thank you all and

202we'll be back and be prepared to adopt uh next meeting does anybody have any last questions thank you judy the next item on our agenda is our recognition of public comment on an agenda item if we have any visitors who would like to speak on an agenda item now is the time to come up to the microphone you may want to adjust the height because i think it was the elementary school yeah hopefully that works my name is emily field i am a parent of three kids in the district i have two kids at hammer grill and one daughter at ellesmere i'm here tonight to express my frustration with the decision that was made by the cess department to cut the esy program from five and a half hours to three hours for my daughter

203addison field addie attends the intensive skills program at ellsmill ellsmere elementary school her disability has brought along many challenges for us as a family but school is a constant for her she loves her teachers she loves her aides and we're so grateful for each and every person who has worked with addie for the last two summers we were told esy would only be held for three hours due to the coveted pandemic we understood the uncertainty in the world at the time and as parents we were so grateful that she got the chance to participate in the shortened program however we assumed in the post-pandemic world that it would return to the five and a half hours that was planned for summer 2020 as parents it is expected that there be direct communication of a major

204program change like this that impacts our children and their critical services at the at the conclusion of esy last summer parents were surveyed to provide feedback regarding the program the results of this were never shared directly with parents it was brought to my attention last week that these results were shared with the board of education in a presentation in september it certainly painted a great picture of esy but only 30 percent of parents responded to the survey this leaves over half of the survey population without a voice and if this was used to justify programming changes those parents should have been contacted directly i believe open communication is crucial for a successful partnership between parents and schools i'm extremely disappointed that the assessed department would make this change without communicating to parents to us it

205seems dishonest and it puts a predetermined district agenda ahead of our children which i do not believe is what bcsc prides themselves on i wish we had the opportunity to voice our concerns back in september i wish parents were considered in this process because we certainly know our kids best addie and her peers at ellesmere need a longer day they thrive on structure and routine i understand that some families were happy with the three-hour program that was provided over the last two years i also know that not all children who qualify for esy attend however addie is certainly not one of those kids there's a very small percentage of students in the intensive skills program and we should not be taking away services from our most vulnerable population in the district to know addie is

206to love her she is sweet and kind and she'll make you laugh when you least expect it she's in school with some of your kids who are also buddies in her classroom she's a neighbor to some of you as well our purpose here is for you to imagine services being taken away from your child and being poorly communicated and driven by a pandemic reduced program addie is a little girl with a disability who needs each and every service and support system that we put in place for her to succeed addie and her peers deserve more and the district can do better for this special population of students i'm here tonight for for addie but i'm also here for kaka and morgan and tyler and all the other kids in her class who might not have

207spoken up and who might not have filled out the survey i understand you know the budget and i understand the cost but you know if we're short on teachers and staff maybe we need to pay them more maybe we need to make that more attractive to those teachers you know just in doing a quick search and talking to other district other districts are able to offer a five-hour program why is bethlehem falling short you know i think we can do better and i'm going to do better for addie and i appreciate you listening to my concerns thank you thank you if anyone else would like to speak tonight next on our agenda item six action items a finance action items um and before i proceed with this one judy can i just can we clarify

208that item four the resolution for the bus replacement purchase it has been updated yes okay it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following finance action items one through five any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes b professional personnel action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following professional personnel action items one and two so moved second any discussion yeah i'd like to object to item number one oh uh we're not there yet that's next you can object on the next one that's the next one but we're on c nope we're on b we're still on b never mind all in favor [Laughter] and he opposed now i want to object any extensions that passes c support personnel action

209items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following support staff action items one through six i still want to objectively i'm so moved sorry um i'll just state that judy you are going to be missed definitely thank you thank you for all the work you've done over the years it's really been helpful i love what i do i love working for this district and retirement certainly isn't an easy decision but it is my time but don't worry i have a good seven and a half months left and i intend to work very diligently to make sure that we get done what needs to get done and well position the district going forward so thank you thank you and feel free to reconsider within that seven months or get a

210cdl license yeah no they will not have me drive and irreplaceable that's for sure all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes other action items it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following action items one through six can i'd like to move that we isolate four five and six it's been updated oh has it oh has it been updated to remove them correct uh-huh can thank you no problem that week that works then one through four it is recommended by the superintendent that the board of education approved the following action items one through four so um any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes and just for anyone still following along at home items five and six that were that were removed were the resolutions

211about the mileage eligibility for transportation um e notice of 2022 annual election um and again before i proceed with this one has the language and that been updated along with yes decisions made tonight okay it is recommended that the board of education approve the following action item one regarding the 2022 notice of annual election so moved second any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions that passes seven recognition of public comment on a non-agenda item if we have any visitors who would like to address the board on a non-agenda item now is the time item eight future meetings and events our next regular board meeting is on wednesday april 6th anticipating executive session at six and reconvening at seven and the meeting after that is on april 27th again anticipating executive session at six

212and then reconvening at seven um seeing no need to go back into executive session can i have a motion to adjourn the meeting second second all in favor aye aye meeting adjourned for anybody