Canastota Central School Regular Board Of Education Meeting and BOCES Vote - April 16th 2025

001of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Welcome everybody. Just want to recognize trustee Kitchen and trustee Bazan Culvin are absent this evening due to unforeseen work circumstances. So they will not be here. Uh moving on to routine matters. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby approve the following routine matters. The board of education minutes for March 11th as well as a cse recommendations list in your p packet and the treasurer's report dated February 2025. Do I have a motion? Some move. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Tonight we're um an update tonight. We had a conversation regarding where we were with the bidding process and where

002we are as far as as far as the budget and planning purposes or purposes. So Tracy, I will turn it over to you just give us some talking points about the overall outcome of that meeting, please. Thank you. in the facilities meeting. I want to introduce we've got um Frank from King and King from our architect who's here with us. We have Robert and Vince that are both with Turner Construction, our construction management firm. Um, so they're here with us as we um have on tonight's agenda the approval of the uh awards the the bids that we opened uh this past um April 8th and April 10th. So um we did open base bids. I'm just going to I'm going to stick to my talking points. So forgive me for reading here, but I want

003to make sure that I hit some specific um comments. We opened base bids and alternates on April 8th and April 10th. These two plumbing contractors, two HVAC, and five electrical bids were received um from those those domains. Unfortunately, several things contributed to um what I'm going to say as our project coming in over over budget. Um, we had an SED delay that caused us uh some concern with time that um we will be looking at reducing some scope related to some gymnasium work and potentially some cafeteria work as we move forward. In on tonight's agenda, uh there is a resolution to accept the base bid awards as they are with the deduct alternates. Um, we doing so tonight will allow us to continue to maintain our timeline, stay on task with schedule. Work will start

004right out the gate. Um, as we return from April break, you'll see things starting to happen. We've been talking about the um the the program changes that will happen when we come back from break. uh maintain the current integrity of the budget by making some scope reductions and additionally reducing additional cost escalation. With that said, um couple meetings ago, the board did approve a resol resolution to put on the April, I'm sorry, the May 20th budget vote a resolution that will allow the district with voter approval to increase the authorization. Uh so the district currently has funds sitting in the debt reserve and uh there are two options for that that money to be used based on the controller. Um we can utilize debt service money to pay down debt or we can utilize debt

005service money for an infrastructure project as we have on the table right now. Um $1,227,000 is the proposition. that is the money that we currently have in our account. Um, and we will be asking the voters to increase the authorization. With the increased authorization, we would expect that we would then have um potentially no reduction in scope, but at this point, we are intending that we will have some reduction in scope in order to come in in budget. Um again those funds are held in the debt service fund allowable from the state controllers's office to move to a capital project. Uh it will result if we had approval to increase the authorization and move that money and no additional borrowing and or no additional increase on the tax base. Um so again we um in

006I speaking on behalf of the finance uh finance committee um would be recommending the resolution that is further on down in the budget to approve the base bids less the deduct alternates. Um and then we again will be looking at some scope reductions coming forward uh to bring us in line. Again, just just to recap this, that additional resolution is money that's already in the possession of the district. It's just looking for authorization to basically shift it from account A to account B with the voter's approval and increase the authorization of the project. Right. But there's no additional tax burden or anything that this is just money that's already in district's hands that just we just need voter approval in order to shift basically accounts for. That is correct. That is correct. Does the board

007have see any of the questions from those that were on the facilities committee? Mr. Blanchard. Okay. Thank you, Tracy. Appreciate it. And you're still on the hook for the budget presentation. Okay. Thanks for coming in, guys. Appreciate it. Have a good night. [Music] All right. Clicker appears to be working. All right. Um, good evening everyone. Um we uh the the opening comments will sound very eerily familiar uh to people who've heard this version of the presentation in years past and that we'll talk about a couple of recurring themes. Some things always um are key priorities as we look to develop our uh our budget every year. And we'll always talk about the balance, right? How do you find the right balance between uh doing the best we can for our students, having great opportunities and

008resources available to our students and our staff so that kids can can uh thrive and how do we also maintain responsibility to uh enact as as good stewards of the taxpayers dollars. So everything that we say is going to be sort of framed through that lens. We will give examples of how some of those decisions are made throughout the presentation. It's really uh the budget process. It really never ends. It's an ongoing process. Certain things happen at certain times of the year. Certain things legally have to happen at certain times of the year, but we're always in reality probably every day. Uh Tracy and I are talking about budget for the most part throughout the year. um the beginning part of of the first year, we're sort of still in that review process and looking

009at what was and and and looking into the into the future. Um now we start to get more precise and we're at that tail end of that second bullet in April where we're really needing to refine our plan and look um for more specific details. We don't have some of the details that are always important to a budget that we'll talk about. We still don't have uh we're uh what we're April 16th. We don't have a state uh budget yet. Um we'll see when that comes, but we don't have it now. So, that's one example of an unknown that we're um we're still needing to fill the blanks in with that. Um and then finally heading into the home stretch is that now as we finalize or move to finalize our budget um and then

010we're really going to spend a lot of time talking about the key elements of that budget and why something is um reflected in the budget or why something isn't what types of uh things framed our decision-making process. So again, there's there's many layers to it. Um because we can't construct a good budget without again starting with students in mind. What do we want to accomplish? This is about students. We're here for uh to provide students opportunities. So how do we um what do we need to do? We need to input in feedback and information really from multiple layers including uh grade level leaders, department chairs. Uh in recent years we've uh we've added some uh K12 committees that sort of tie the buildings in the district together so that um the goal is really to

011reduce gaps and and to try to find efficiency and eliminate duplication and and those sorts of things. Um so as you can see I won't read through all them but there are a lot of people who are involved in this process at every layer um of the school's organization. This is important. I will mention that one bullet um strategic planning initiative. Uh many of you have already uh participated in in our in the two sessions we've had. That's something that frames can on a large scale everything we do and for years to come. Um so these things aren't incompatible. These things are in lock step with one another. A good budget plan is certainly a part of a big component of our strategic planning process. And those ideas that come from the process that we're

012going through are going to certainly again they're framing this budget and and are going to frame budgets to come. And then we just heard the report from our our finance committee um where everything is really tied together. Um again some common themes so I won't belabor it but we have been on a a journey uh in recent years to say how can we become the best school in terms of having students be the best that they can be uh in the classroom. And so that meant we needed consistency. We need coordination. We need to use researchbased strategies and and curriculum that is going to be the best vehicle for students to thrive. And so we've invested and continue to invest in being able to have that consistent curriculum um K12 appropriate to grade level with

013a clean handoff from grade to grade. Um so that's been a key element of our plan. also um and really this ramped up when CO came around, but it's we've had to really be strategic in how we um and how we've been able to maintain some of the things. So, some of the things out here are things that were maybe introduced during the co era, but they emerged and became a priority for us of how do we maintain some of those things because they make sense for kids. So just you know this uh budget plan is going to uh continue to to support community schools um in the and and remember that's just not student that's the student and the entire family are are supported by that. um we'll continue to our PAC group continues

014to grow and evolve and a lot of the resources um and and presentations and um are that are flowing through pack are also tied to community schools. So a lot of these things are are really intertwined at this point several years into introducing some of these things. The satellite mental health office is an interesting one because that was introduced. This is the first year that it was introduced in last year's uh budget plan. It's a priority moving forward to maintain that. Um, and Tracy uh can can chime in as well, but the benefit when when we're talking about strategy and long-term thinking and planning is at some point uh in the near future here because of the investment we started to make this uh last year and what we're proposing in this year's budget, that's

015going to start becoming much more sustainable and costeffective into the future because of the way that um the funding can flow back um to the to the school district. So, it makes sense when we had um more resources and most schools if you backtrack a couple years had more resources. Uh now things are getting much more uncertain. The state budget is uncertain. The way schools are receiving aid is probably the biggest wild card that we've had in recent years. And then you throw on the federal uncertainty and that that creates sort of a lot of things that um make you a little a little more nervous. Fortunately, we started this funding process last year and are uh hoping to continue to do that this year so that when we do get into subsequent years, it's

016going to be sustainable. That's a big deal uh because we had great benefit from that um that program. Um and then that final bullet under that big one again I think an example of efficiency in in getting a big impact for dollars spent, right? So, um priority was was having uh adequate counseling services for our students. Uh just in the last couple of years, we have a couple we have two more additional uh counselors than we had. Well, how do we sustain that? Well, we've said that's a priority. Is there a cost? Yes, there's a cost. Do kids need support? kids aren't going to learn if they're not in a in a situation where they're they're put in a position to learn and absorb what's going on. So, um it's an investment again in in

017positioning kids to succeed. Um enhanced security measures again an example of I think good service in an efficient rate and that we're able to leverage the partnership um with Madison County Sheriff's Office. Um we now have uh two for the first time had two uh resource officers in our building and u you know at a very uh because of the of the shared cost arrangement with the county that became a a good investment a cost-effective investment. So we certainly want to continue that moving into next year. Okay. Um, so this is always a conversation every year when we talk about, you know, staffing and programs. And so I I can't emphasize this enough or be want to be as clear as possible. We are in a position that we're recommending a budget that sustains and

018supports a couple of things. uh reasonable and consistent in class sizes that are consistent with what our our practice has has been and sustaining programs in which there is a need or an interest for students. So for example, there are not cuts to programs where there were there's a substantial uh level of interest. Now, would we look at a program that has dwindling interest or there's just simply not aren't students who are who are wanting to um classes or uh programs that or or activities that they're not interested in? Well, no. We're not going to it doesn't make financial sense. Have we shifted our um we'll come to some examples of of some of the ways that we've tried to shift in a logical way to support things that are newer, you know. So, we

019want to continue to evolve. And so, that's a constant evaluation of our programs every year. Um, what do we need to support? How do we what's an adequate level of staffing to maintain consistent numbers? And so, again, in this budget, to summarize, there's no big swing. There's no any really uh swing um to anticipate relative to class size. there's no program um or classes that are being cut from our programming because we don't have the funds to support it. Okay, so that's good news. Um and we're continuing to uh try to work to expand some in partnership with Boseies, but we've had uh continued expansion of our CT programs and opportunities for students. Um the final bullet on that side of the screen is a is an important one. When we're looking at where we've

020invested in in recent years, we've invested uh heavily in increased levels of support staffing in terms of counseling and infrastructure. Uh we've reinvested in some of the uh teaching positions that had gone away a number of years ago. Um many of those positions have have come back over the last several years um to get to what we think are are good staffing uh support levels where we feel based on feedback that we're getting from working with teachers and families, kids, the whole uh the whole uh everything in totality. We need to be able to support the students, support the staff, be responsive to parents concerns. Um, and so we are recommending an investment in our building level administrative staffing in the form of an assistant principal that can be solely dedicated um to Robert Street

021in this case. So, uh, to be clear, Robert Street would have a dedicated assistant principal. High school would have an assistant principal. Um, that's the change because, as we know, um, Mr. Congden serves as athletic director and assistant principal. Athletic director for chunks of time sometimes takes him away from being able to to be in the buildings. It's it's his job. Not his fault. It's it's part of the job, but we recognize that we want to be able to provide um you know, with the the number of challenges that I think we see now in in schools and society, we want to be as responsive as possible to support teachers, support students, and and be responsive and communicative with families and parents. So, we think that that's a key investment and that it aligns well

022with the adjustments that we've made in recent years. Um we again to to summarize we've increased our counseling capacity and infrastructure. U we've increased our teaching capabilities and range of programs that we've offered um from advanced programming to intervention programs to CT programs. And finally um we feel like this is an essential piece of the puzzle as well. Um and I've already I'm not going to belver the plant. I've sort of already in my rambling talked about a lot of the the items that are on this this page. I will say um we will continue to u emphasize flexible learning uh pathways for kids because it's it is what education should be. It's a wave of the future. It's a way of connecting um to our local and regional community and it's a way of

023creating relevance for students. So um we will continue um along those lines. And just again summary for a school of our size um we have tremendous level of opportunities for kids to get involved um in both um co-curricular activities, athletic um activities. We know that that's those those types of activities are what make a lot of kids excited about coming to school. That's the connection to relevance that they really respond to. And so we're fortunate we have a lot of kids we have very high levels of participation um in in those areas. And so we want to continue to support that. And we als I mentioned earlier we want to be able to evolve. One of the ways that we evolve is we try to listen to jets, listen to families, listen to people who

024say this is coming down the pike. You need to be aware of it. One of those examples was the esports program which really didn't, you know, it wasn't even it wasn't anything. You're not even really on the radar a couple of years ago. We now have, I believe, over 40 students already u that are participating in that program. We have state ranked teams. We have in I believe what two weeks week and a half we're going to have students who are going to be participating in the state competition who actually have any aspirations to and the ability to potentially win a state championship. Um so those are things that make sense. Okay. When we say we want to fund things where where there's an interest, where there's a need, where there's enthusiasm for, we want

025to be able to continue to support that. Um, on the uh other side of the of the screen, every year, this is something that is not new to us. We want to continue to support um on the infrastructure side our capital outlay process which allows us to every year. Currently, it's a $100,000 that you can uh allocate uh without having to go out to referendum. You can build in your budget and you can do um in a building. You can't mix it around between buildings, but you can fund projects. Um so for example when we've been doing a lot of work over the years with the the floors if you think of you know um that was uh a lot of that work was a result of the opportunity to use the capital outlay we

026want to keep doing that because if you stop funding that the restart is is difficult right so um so we want to continue to do that there's talk that at some point that might increase with the with the high cost of of just doing getting things done. $100,000 sounds like a lot for a capital project. It's not a lot. There's talk that at some point that number might go up, but it hasn't at this point. So, we'll see. Um and then again, and I'll Tracy's going to talk a little bit more about how uh the capital project impacts our funding u when we look at our um the different components of our budget. And then again, this is crucial to have basic stuff uh that needs to be replaced, right? We we have tons of

027cameras. They need to be up and running. We use them um constantly. And um so there's a regular replacement schedule. Uh everybody knows I am not the tech guru, so we'll defer to Mr. Sales back there on the the timeline for the tech replacement, but that's crucial. we cannot have our um if you notice a lot of the themes we're talking about are keeping a plan and a process rolling. When there's a break, it becomes difficult to restart some of these things. If you cut corners and don't, you know, you take a year or two off of reinvesting in technology, cameras, those sorts of things, then all of a sudden everything's crumbling at once. And you can use that same example for school buses or um just about every other part of the physical operation

028of the district. That the other important thing when we talk about um infrastructure and those schedules there the model that has been put in place in this district which is a which is an appropriate model is each one of those items draws uh drives aid in some capacity. So we run our IT replacements through Boseies. We draw Bosey's aid on it. Our buses run through transportation aid. We drive transportation aid on it. Cameras. There's a specific $35,000 camera replacement aid um that that is available to school districts. If you're not running that through there, you're not driving the aid the following year. So, each one of those infrastructures very important to maintain. We drive the aid the following year and in the year that you're that that you're placing them in the budget, they're really

029pennies on the dollar. 90% transportation aid on our buses. We pay 10 cents on the dollar for our buses. Um the camera, we spend $35,000 so that we're aided back $35,000 and that's how we maintain the schedule. Um so each of those while they are certainly investments in infrastructure using the philosophy to maximize aid and revenue wherever we can and we always like a broken record we always talk about every dollar spent as Tracy alluded to is not the same. So we will always try to uh access grants and you know last year we were able to to receive some additional funding and it's always great to get additional funding that doesn't come um directly from the tax uh from our tax base. Um but if we can't get grant funding then we want money

030that is aidable that again that comes back. We don't want spend a dollar and the dollar's gone. We want to spend it in a way that's a little smarter and strategic and if at all possible if we can get a return on that that's what we do. So everything really any part of this budget where we're able to look at either grants or making it aidable that's what we're going to always do. Okay. So walking through what the program looks like next year. um what the supports are going to be for next year, what the program plan is for next year. Certainly, the question is um and my job is to put the dollars to what does it cost us to support that um 2526 appropriation budget, all of the things that we've jumped out.

031Um plus more of course 39,632,455. First, um I just want to take a minute to say this, um budget, this plan, these conversations have been taking place for quite a period of time. This is uh tonight is the board report for the full board. Those of you that have been on the uh finance committee, we have been talking about these things in much more detail and in a different level than we're going to talk tonight. Um, the next time that I present, I'll be presenting it as the public hearing for the school district. And we'll be looking at this information in the three-part component that we're required for the budget hearing to present in. Tonight, we're going to look at the data a little bit differently than what we'll see at the budget hearing. So

032again, uh, increase year-over-year of 1,499713 or 3.93%. So we'll dive into some of the um the categories of where our expenses where are our expenses um and what do they look like from year to year. So, so we are a service industry, right? Our our um program, our mission is driven by people and with that um certainly is our largest cost is salary and benefits. We currently and continue to expect to have 240 permanent staff on um on the payroll. Our salary and benefits are reflective of that. 50 58% of our uh staff is in the instructional realm. 36% of our staff is in the support realm. 6% of our staff is in admin and or administration. Um so salary and benefits just about $25 million of our total budget. uh which equates to about

03363% 63% of our budget is um in the lines in cost of salary and benefits have uh cumulative equipment as we see that's across all disciplines and all departments. One of the focuses as we move into next year um will be replace starting to replace some some furniture. So, one of the things that we have not had on a good consistent schedule is furniture within the district. Um, so we will look look at that as one of our targets for next year and starting in the middle school, replacing some of those classrooms um as we go go through the year. Um really we would make those purchases over the summer and to land those for the start of the year. Contractual. So, another large portion of our budget is um contractual. When I talk about

034contractual and the way that we record contractual, this isn't contracts. So, this isn't um personnel contracts. These are contractual expenses. These are expenses that we that we contract with outside organizations for. So, out of that $9.2 million, a large portion of that contractual expense is contract that we utilize BOSIES for. Uh so our our Boseies portion um makes up about 75% of that contract number. Why is it important? Um why do we do that? Again, part of maximizing revenue on the flip side, right? Because we've got to balance our revenue and our expenses. Not that every single thing um through OC's is is aidable. Large portion of things that are not are special education costs. there's a different process for that. Um but again uh other things that are in there BOSIES are our uh

035our utilities are recorded in contractual HVAC our security system outside student tuition um insurance property insurance vehicle insurance not benefit insurance not health insurance dental insurance that's up above in benefits um but these are our contract costs. So, we've got um about a $211,000 increase in contract costs. Bosey's cost on average um on an annual basis go up about 2.3% uh overall. So, a good portion of that uh is in our MOSI's expenditures and the items that we purchase through there, but certainly utility costs um and in our insurance cost. We um we had quite an increase in our our property insurance cost this year. Materials and supplies got about $900,000 that tally up in totality for the district in materials and supplies. Somebody says, "Oh, whoa, hold on a second. You're making a reduction

036of $65,000. What aren't you purchasing?" This is one of those areas where um e materials and supplies and the reporting mechanism what else is in there as our textbooks and our curriculum. So we had the opportunity uh to maximize some of those by moving a cost that now has an approval process through most. So we get textbook aid once we hit that threshold. Any dollar over that amount we don't get aided on. So we have the opportunity to take some of our curriculum costs and drive bose aid on it. So it's now recorded in this um for next year we'll be recording it in this contractual line item so that we can again maximize as much as possible obtain all of our textbook um aid and some additional aid on some other types of curriculum

037that we need that we would generally be spending um dollar for dollar on debt service. Um this is our all of our debt for our dis for our entire district. This includes our our bus bonds. This includes capital infrastructure bonds. Our increase there is starting to bring the short-term financing on for our capital project. Capital projects are a little bit complex and they are financed um and layered over a number of years. So we will ban as we start this project. We need cash um to make payments. We will ban we have the authority already for financing. First we ban it's called short-term financing and then the second year around we will bond. So this is including our debt now will include that first set of short-term financing. Ban being a bond anticipation. Bond anticipation

038note. Um another another uh cumulative area of our budget is transfers to other funds. We talk about this be u for several reasons. One this money gets moved out. So general fund supports these projects but it gets moved out and it gets recorded in another fund. For example, one of the things that we support here and it get move gets moved to um the the the special aid fund. Uh we do have a local share for prek. We support the prek program. We get grant funding for it, but there's also a local share to that. That is all recorded in our special aid fund. you have a local share of $200,000. The capital outlay project as Sean was talking about, those are those single focus um one-year 12 month building identifiable projects, $100,000. We receive

039our uh our building aid on that. The following year, we sit between it changes um each year. you sit between 83 and 86% reimbursement that gets recorded. It needs to be spent out of the capital fund. So, it's a transfer. General fund supports it, but it's transferred out. Um what is new this year and does have an increase to the g general fund budget is um there will need to be a general fund support for our food service program. We talked um quite a bit about this at the facil at our um finance meeting. Um food costs are just escalating uh faster than than we can adjust. Um we we adjust program, we adjust menu, we adjust staffing. We need the staffing that we need to put the food out um for our 1,200 students.

040Um we anticipate that we're going to have a shortfall next year and the general fund will need to uh subsidize some of that food service program. So again broken down by category in totality 2526 39 million excuse me 39 million632455 or an increase of just under $1.5 million. These are the expenses. This is to pay for the program and the plan that we have have talked about and laid out. Again just a pictorial of where do our expenses go? What does it look like when we're talking about a $39 million budget? Um 63% of our budget is salary and benefits. 23% of our budget is contractual. 10% of our budget is debt. 2% of our budget is materials and supplies. 1% of our budget will be transfers to other funds supporting those programs I just

041talked about. and less than a percent um supports equipment within the in the building. So, how do we pay for this? Uh we have to have the revenue to cover the expenses. One of the things that we struggled with this year and we're going to continue to struggle with is the unknown. Um no state budget. So last year, looking back, the state budget was approved the day that we presented the board budget last year. It's kind of funny. Um, so the rule of thumb, this is I'm going into my 25th year doing this. The rule of thumb always has been, um, if there's not a state budget, you adopt, you approve, you incorporate into your revenue budget, the governor's budget, because it's the most conservative. If you got more money, great. um it would reduce

042some of the other pieces of your revenue budget, but that's not the case this year. Um we don't know if that's the most conservative budget, right? And some people that have been around and and understand when we talk about these budgets, um if if we didn't have a budget, that first run in January usually is the least amount of money that you would get. Then the House and the Senate come together. They they build their budget. The governor and the legislators, they negotiate, and then the the state budget is approved and and uh schools get their package as Oh goodness, we were clicking. Click. Historically, um the state and the house budget have always been much higher, and that's where that negotiation comes in. Um to date the Senate and the House, they're pretty much

043aligned as to what they had requested um and what they wanted to sit down and negotiate. We're we're building a state aid package, a state aid revenue line in our budget kind of in between. Um, we don't want to be real real conservative because then we have to backfill it someplace else in our budget. But we don't want to uh be really hopeful that uh the number that the governor has put out is going to be the number because if that comes in less after we adopt this budget, we don't have a mechanism to come back and adjust it. So again, we have to make an adjustment somewhere else here. Um, state aid is inclusive of multiple pieces of funding streams and they're funded in different ways. Foundation aid is our largest portion of uh

044of this our state package, but there's also reimburseable aids that are included in there. So, um, based on all of the information that we have to date, we are, uh, utilizing 22,232. It is an increase of 2.76 overall. It's our foundation aid and our expense driven age which are indicative of actual expenses spent. Um we were sitting on foundation aid just over 3%. So you know there may be a little tweak there may not be. Um we have to use the information that we have. we have to use um you know uh basically you know it's the crystal ball it's our best goss with well the concern is that if if you found what this has gotten a lot of attention in the last lot 6 months 8 months with the Rockefeller study and looking

045at foundation aid almost what it's been 17 years 18 years since the foundation aid formulas in the state have been changed and they're they're needing to be reformed. What we don't know is, you know, what are the changes? For example, and Tracy talked about our there's a floor in the foundation aid um in the in the governor's proposal of two%. Uh in the one house budget, so the assembly and I'm sorry, the senate and assembly in their plan. Uh they were talking about, you know, well, maybe that should be three. Well, is that an inflation across the board? Is that some kind of is that represent some kind of change in how the the formulas are being applied or um um or are we taking it from the districts who might have been over as

046is our case with the prelim preliminary run? Is that money coming back to fund some of those districts who were at that 2% to get them higher? We don't know. We don't know how it's going to play out because one, okay, that's the factor that Rockefeller study that finding and recommendations and we don't know how that's going to be applied and we have a late budget with that level of uncertainty. So, it's it's a unusual convergence of those factors in in this budget year. Yeah, we'll find out hopefully soon. Hopefully soon. Um, state aid accounts for 56% of our revenue budget. So, it's a real important number um to balance and to provide the resources needed to um to cover our our our academic program and our uh expenditure program. Taxes are certainly the next

047biggest piece of of our budget and it is the way that school districts um are funded in New York is with a tax uh a tax levy. A couple important pieces when we're talking about taxes. This is the levy. This is the total amount of money needed uh to support a budget. There is the tax cap levy limit uh that we we approved earlier. We talk about it is a factor when we get to this point and actually set the levy. Our tax cap levy limit is 4.8%. This budget is looking to raise the levy by 3.25. We will be under um the tax levy limit and uh looking at Doug uh one of the things that really kind of is is not a place that you want to be um is you don't want

048to leave money on the table. So when you don't go to that cap, what happens? That impacts the district's ability for years to come because it decreases our ability in the future. Uh again, many conversations at the finance committee table and how are we going to meet uh the resources that we need to cover our expense budget and it was determined at this point we were going to move with 3.25 25 in light of um all economic factors. Uh there's a series of items in our revenue lines that that are considered the term other revenue. Um biggest portion of this fortunately uh last year, this year, and hopefully still expected for next year is interest. um that has kind of been off the table for the for years previous to last year when interest really

049wasn't even a factor. But we are um investing our funds and generating interest. We've got other miscellaneous types of of uh revenue that go in there. There's some rebates, there's refunds, there's insurance claims. Um it's about uh again a small portion of a revenue budget. The other two items we are utilizing to balance our budget. Reserve usage and appropriated fund balance. So reserves is district money that is legally put into allowable reserves by the state controllers's office and we can use this money to offset certain annual expenses. Now there's a number of reserves. We have approximately um at the end of last year um because you you really count you count for the balance of reserves at the end of the year about $7.5 million in reserves. Not all of those reserves can be utilized

050as part of your budgeting process. But what can be used is we can use our TRS reserve, our ERS reserve, and our EVAR. those reserves, we can offset a portion of our budget up to um your annual expense. Now, as you see here, we're increasing from what we what we budgeted in 2425. We're increasing it by about $350,000. We want to have this money available um for more than one budget, two, three, four, five budgets. Um when we use it, it goes away. we don't have the ability to put money back in those reserves. It's not available to us in the future. Um, so we are using this as a budgeting tool. We are increasing the amount that we are going to take out of the reserve TRS CRS and EVAR for the 2526 budget.

051With that, there is still a shortfall and we're going to fill that shortfall with our appropriated fund balance. So this is um conversation that I say all the time. When we use appropriated fund balance in essence, what are you doing? We are building a negative budget. We are using our appropriated fund balance to cover the remaining expenses. Okay. Um so 1.75% increase in our appropriated fund balance. We total up our revenue. We have all of the revenue to support the expenditure budget. Again totaling now at the 39,632455. This is just summary of that information. Our budgettobudget change on the expense end 3.9% increase. Our levy change on the revenue end 3.25. That is the levy change. That is not the tax rate. Just wanted to take a minute to make sure that our our board

052members um have the information talking points and are are aware of the propositions that will be on the May 20th vote. The first proposition will be to approve the appropriated budget that's in the packet tonight for approval. The second proposition is the authorization to purchase buses. Again, when we purchase buses, we receive 90% transportation aid on our bus purchase funded over five years. The third one, not electric buses. We want to be clear because that's something that people ask a lot. Not electric buses. We are not emissions. Moving to zero emission electric buses. um proposition that will be on the ballot this year uh is the approval to approve the authorization to increase the capital project of $30 million to 31227. We talked a little bit about that in the finance uh the facilities update.

053This resolution the board had approved already has been identified in our legal notice to increase the authorization that will allow us to continue to do uh gym renovations and or cafeteria renovations that may otherwise have to come off the plate. Not increasing the tax does not. So the money we have sitting in debt service sitting there right now had conversations with the controllers's office that money is allowable to be moved um has to have voter approval to increase the authorization then the board can move the money from debt service um to capital. some important dates that we have. Uh reminders, 4:21, board petitions are due by 5:00 pm to the district clerk. 5:25 um is the last date for boards to approve appropriation budgets. We're doing that tonight. Um and then it will kick off

054a series of regulatory things that need to happen uh shortly after the um the the budget approval. We must submit the property tax card between May 1st and May 14th. Folks in the community will get their newsletters, their budget notices, all of the information about uh the current year vote and budget. And then 5:13 will be the budget hearing at 6:00 p.m. prior to the board meeting. Um, we will run that budget hearing through um um in in the three-part budget requirement that we need to uh that we need to present in. And the vote is on May 20th. So again, um something important and uh worth worth noting this year as we start kicking off some some work in this campus with the capital project. The vote um will take place down at the

055high school tunnel. There'll be signage up. We'll make sure that that's in all of the communications going forward. Uh but it will they will take place in the tunnel. The vote will also be by county voting machines because they're available to us this year. Uh we have them we already have them scheduled. They'll land here from the county and voting is 1 to 8. Okay. So, if there are any questions from board members, I will. All right, you're off the hook now. Moving on. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the schools, the board does hereby approve the 2025 20226 appropriation budget in the amount of 39,632,455. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Excuse me. Resolved. Upon the recommendation of the Superintendent of

056Schools, the board does hereby adopt the 2025 2026 real property tax report card to be submitted to the SED. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Moving on to our building updates. You're fast, Jenny. I was I was I was going to I was going to give you a break. You're always first to go. I was going to call Miss Fox and mix it up, but no. Go ahead. All right. However you want to go. We have a plan. All right. Um so our Peter Street update. We loved welcoming our parents and caregivers to school this week for um two uh afternoon/ings for conferences. We had a really good turnout. Our PTA hosted our Scholastic Bookf Fair and students enjoyed our spirit days all

057week as well. So it's been a fun one. Um tomorrow is beach day and our friends from the Great Swamp Conservancy are coming. We're going to plant another tree out back and talk about the importance of Arbor Day and Earth Day. Um we do have a joint event prek and connected and our PTA um are hosting an egg extravaganza tomorrow evening uh for K4 students over at Robert Street. So that's going to be everything um egg related. That will be great fun, I'm sure. And I did just want to let you know that um our badge books for each grade level, we have kindness for kindergarten, respect for first graders, and fairness for our second graders. So, Miss Citro and I have spent the week visiting with all of our classes. I'm sure you remember

058our digital citizenship badge books. We have one for every grade level. Um, and so then we have these, these were our initial badge books, but so they know all about the certificates that they can earn and their little buttons that they can get for those and then they just keep a picture up on the flat screen. So they're very excited about that. We thought this was perfect timing in the spring. There are some writing activities, there are some projects in here and spring break will be a perfect time for families to tackle those. So kids are very excited about it. And the other thing that I was going to highlight, I was going to pass around a couple um a couple of books so that you can see some of the um wonderful writing that

059is happening in kindergarten at this time. So our kindergarten teachers take a wonderful and um unique approach to win and um any of our students who are on grade level or above grade level, we kind of group them homogeneously. So they may visit another classroom and they are just taking off like you cannot believe with their writing skills. So I wanted you to see that they are authors and illustrators. And I have a couple passages um that I do want to share because there really blossoming. Their skills are coming together. And if you think about littles coming into kindergarten who might not even know all of the letters in their own name quite yet, you know, um, but they've got their letters, they've got their sounds, and they are putting them together. They've got ideas

060in their heads and they are putting them down on paper with finger spaces, with capital letters, with punctuation marks, and they're really writing with voice even at this young age. So, I just wanted you to see what's happening because um it really is amazing. Their illustrations match their words and a couple really um stood out to me. This little guy wrote, "I like to sled. I go fast. I like to go with my cousin. Would you join with me and my cousin?" Like ending with a question mark. Right. So, um, Tammy Moran shared these with me, uh, with from one of her groups, and I just thought that you you had to see them and you had to hear these things because the progress is really amazing. Um, another cute one, a puppy needs sleep.

061Puppy is P U P E right now, but they're, you know, they're getting all of the sounds. They're tapping them out. Um, he dreams about chasing a cat. I don't think he is going to catch her. and his picture matches all of those words. So, it's really amazing how the skills all come together. And I just think it's neat when you can see that in front of you um in black and white. And then of course you have their colored illustrations there. Um but their their voices and personalities are really coming out and um it's pretty exciting. So, thank you for that. Very exciting. Thank you. Yeah, I congratulate it. Thank you everyone. I just wanted to give some updates for Southside tonight. Um our ELA fourth grade CBT test went really well. Um it

062was the first day we started a little bit later and that was really to our advantage. All students got on um tested successfully on day one. I wanted to thank Karen Henner for her um test administration and Wendy Satchel was in our building. So that was really great to have that support. And for session two, we started right on time, completed the test. We have one makeup tomorrow. So, um, overall very successful. And so then we're on to April 29th and 30th is the ELA, um, paperbased test for third grade. And both grade levels will test um, for math on the 7th and 8th of May. So just getting prepared for that. Um, this week is such a great opportunity to welcome the parents into our building. Um, and um, I wanted to I joined

063in on the conferences. Our teachers reached out to parents and requested conferences. Really made that effort to meet with um, the the parents. It's so important. And our as AIS teachers also joined um to share that additional information as far as student progress. So, it was really a team effort. Um, and just really excited to have them in our in our building. Um, we will be sending out our Southside fourth quarter newsletter. Thank you to Brenda. She's been helping and supporting with that communication. Um, to our parents and caregivers. This newsletter is just really that detailed information of what their children are learning in ELA, math, science, and social studies. So, just to keep parents informed. Um tomorrow too we welcome Great Swamp. So they're on a roll from Peter Peter. They come over to

064Southside. So we're really looking forward to that. Um it when they host something like this, an assembly like this, it really um is designed to teach the children about the importance of the wetlands and the wildlife and just to have them in this environment just so close by. It's just such a great opportunity. we are not going to due to the capital project we are not going to be planting a tree given um Nick's advice I did get assault with him and he said um so they are going to plant a tree on our behalf um at their con at their um great swamp Nick's not here now though so he could where did he go um so great way to end the week before we dismiss for our go home drill tomorrow afternoon um

065May 2nd Again, another spring dance is coming up. So, this was a huge success. It was our first one that we launched in the beginning of the year. Um, but students absolutely enjoy this event and it's just so much fun to be with them to to it's a just a great time for the community to get together. Um, we have some really outstanding parents and caregivers that that come out to this. They they get on the dance floor, too. Um, so welldeserved fun upcoming. And so, um, as, uh, Tracy indicated, May 20th is a pretty active day in the in our, um, buildings. The half day for students, it is our budget vote from 12 to 8, but we do encourage you to join us as well. Um, if you're coming out to the LLA

066gym for our um, Southside Elementary course concert, chorus and band concert that starts at 6 o'clock. Um, other than that, I think we're all looking forward to spring. Thanks. Thank you. So, at the middle school, we also just got done with our round of ELA exam um exams. Again, shout out to Karen Henner who helped us get those organized. Um, always in education you can reflect on how can we improve. So, one thing that we're going to improve next year is we are given a window for the ELA exams and we're going to make sure that they don't correspond with the same time that the FBLA students are on their trip. So, we have had two days of makeups um on the 11th and the 14th and we have to do some more makeups tomorrow

067morning um to catch the students that were on that trip. So um that is forefront next year when we start um planning the days for the exam because we are given a window. Um so again like um like Ellen said um math exams will be after spring break. Um we also had parent teacher conferences this week. So sent out a parent square March 26th talking about how we were going to have a team approach for conferences. um and really tried to get parents in where the students had some academic concerns. So um again we're trying it's a village to support our kids. Um we still we'll need to figure another way of improvement of how to um make some more connections with the parents for fifth through 8. Um 87 invitations were sent out for

068parents to come in um to talk about some academic concerns. 48 parents responded, but only 35 showed up in person. So, the teachers spent the rest of the time um the last two days when they didn't have conferences reaching out to the parents that they had invited in or the parents who weren't able to make it for their scheduled time. So, um a lot of phone calls were made just um you know encouraging um students who are struggling to come in for that after school help or um you know, things that we can do to support them and stay strong. the last quarter of of the year. Um some positives um connected to communities um hosted um a karaoke night last Friday. Um you can ask one of your board members whose spouses got up

069there and sang a song with us as well. So hint hint, she's not here tonight, but came up and sang. So about 45 students attended. So that was a lot of fun. Um we were supposed to end at um 7 and I had the students chanting to my fiance who ran it all. We have the um all the karaoke stuff more songs. So we were there till probably about 7:30. So we had a lot of fun. Um we also had spirit week this week and um we end tomorrow. Um each grade level is dressing in a a different color. Fifth is orange, sixth is um green, seventh is red, eighth is blue. teachers hopefully will wear tie-dye and um we'll end the day with a pep rally. They have some fun games planned for the

070students. Um we also will have a dance coming up in May. Um a tradition when we were a junior senior high is that they had a spring fling. So we're going to try something new and we're going to have a Friday night dance for fifth and sixth and a spring fling for seventh and eth on Saturday. So that's coming up in May as well. So, um, some things to reflect on to improve and some positives going on as well. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. So, just a couple updates from the high school. Um, this past week, Christ received Parker um alum spoke to our 11th graders. Uh, she had some outstanding words of wisdom to students as they go forward in school, college, and life. uh shared a lot of uh memories including her

071growth uh she experienced while playing blame for coach law. Um this past Thursday we had a mock car crash hosted by our sad club. Uh very well done. Um special thanks to our local EMT and fire departments. They even had a helicopter here which the kids were really excited about. Um it was very powerful as well. Um this past Friday we celebrated with our battle battle of the uh book students on uh in the library. Mrs. Liberty provided them with lunch for the great efforts. Um they didn't place, but they're uh really excited about, you know, making improvements for next year. Um just this past Saturday, we had a memorable junior prom. Um special thanks to our junior class adviserss, Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Whitman. It went really well. The kids had a great time.

072Lots of dancing. Um, and then also just this past Monday, there was a recognition dinner for our middle and high school students for their service in the community, uh, put on by our local Lions Club at Theodors. I forget the number. There's over two over 2,000 hours of community service or I don't know, nobody corrected my math. It ended with it ended with 45 minutes. I It was a lot of um a lot of hours and a lot of dedication to community service for sure by the student. So, it was a great event. And then also earlier in the week, we were visited by Latavius Murray, a former honor running back. He came to the high school, talked to a couple classes and just, you know, great for the kids to, you know, get to

073hear what it's like, you know, being an NFL running back and, you know, um, so that's all. Thanks. Thank you. All right, moving on to new business. Resolved. The Minnesota Central School District approves the 2025 2026 tenative administrative budget of the Madison Board of Cooperative Educational Services in the amount of 7,495,365 which is funded by $1,287,36 in expense by components plus $6,28,00059 in earned interest in other miscellaneous revenue and shall so allocate as contingent expense it shared of set administrative budget. budget as a portioned in accordance with section 1 1950 of the New York State Education Law. Do I have a motion? So moved. A second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Resolve that the Canada Central School District Board of Education authorizes the clerk to submit and certify its

074ballot in the name of Sally Sherwood of the Camden Central School District to serve as a member of the Madison Onida Boseies of the sole supervisory district of Madison on counties for the term of July 1st 2025 through June 30th 2028 for the seat currently held by Mrs. Sally Sherwood Camden New York. The ballot will be submitted to the clerk of the Madison on April 17 2025. Do I have a motion? So move second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Resolve that the Minnesota School District Board of Education authorizes the clerk to submit and certify its ballot in the name of Dr. John Castello senior of the United City School District to serve as a member of the Madison and Nabosis of the sole supervisory district of Madison and counties for

075the term of July 1st 2025 through June 30th 2028 for the seat currently held by Dr. John Castello senior on New York. The ballot will be submitted to the clerk of the Madisones on April 17th 2025. Do I have a motion? So move. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? opposed. Motion carried. Resolve of the Minnesota Central School District Board of Education authorizes the clerk to submit and certify its bail in the name of Susan Cvelli of the Rome City School District to serve as a member of the Madison and of the sole supervisory district of Madison Onida counties for the term of July 1st 2025 through June 30th 2028 for the seat currently held by Mrs. Susan Crelli Roy New York. The ballot will be submitted to the clerk of the Madison Boseis

076on April 17th, 2025. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Mhm. You're welcome. Appreciate you. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the Super Center of Schools, the board does hereby approve the substitute LPN rate at $25 an hour effective April 17th, 2025. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Resolved that upon recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby approve the following budget transfers as per the attachment in your packet. Do I have a motion? So move. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby approve the early voting ballot application. Do I

077have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Opposed? Motion carried. Resolve that upon the recommendation of schools, the board does hereby accept the following deno I'm excuse me, following donation in the amount of $1,000 from Chick-fil-A. The donation is to support the district's boxing hall of fame ambassadors program and is intended to be used for the purchase of uniform golf shirts. Do I have a motion? A vote. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Resolved. Upon recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby approve the following policy updates. Policy 80072.1. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby

078approve the following election inspectors or assistant poll clerks for the high school tunnel polling place for the budget trustee vote to be held on May 20th, 2025 from 1 to 8:00 p.m. When Shaw, the chair, Doris Jones, Miller Berto, and Heather Vincent, alternate pole workers will be Susan Merrill and Tamara Patney. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Resolved and upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby approve the attached resolution awarding contracts for the capital construction project in conjunction with the 2020 with its 2023 capital improvement project. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. Any additional discussion? All those in favor? I. Opposed? Motion carried. Uh skip over our student board member to update. She is

079not in attendance this evening. Uh moving on to committee reports, facilities, I already kind of gave her update at the beginning of the meeting. Uh policy, any updates on policy? No, we haven't met. Okay. Academic. We're going to we're going to get a big resolve. we had to make some adjustments because of uh calendar conflicts. So, okay, we'll schedule one shortly. Uh, anything additional from the finance committee? Tracy said most. Can you recap that one time? Okay. And uh last safety safety met on April 10th. Um they we discussed several of the trainings that are required. Uh our Bosey's rep is reviewing and modifying some of the templates for consistency and to be more reader friendly. Um and we're looking in to try to break up some of the uh trainings over a couple of

080days uh but with also having to keep aware of deadlines for completion of those. Um, our emergency response training for the year continues on schedule with a planned off-site evacuation for students in May or June. The newly mandated updated mandated reporter training was successfully completed by all staff by the April 1 deadline. Uh, Nick provided us with an update about fire drills and lockdowns. We had a recent fire inspection with only some minor housekeeping issues uh, identified that were immediately addressed. Uh workplace accident and accidents and injuries were down over the winter. So kudos to Nick and his staff for keeping our grounds clear of snow and ice for students and staff. Um we are going to be having someone from the Madison County Sheriff's uh department present at all of our meetings going forward.

081there's been some scheduling issues uh with them because they're busy with the um dismissal and arrival of kids during the times of our meetings. Um nurses report COVID and flu cases are decreasing. Um and as for the capital project, we talked about a lot of that here. Um but really the the safety committee takeaway from that is that um we're going to be having uh representatives from the construction management team at our present at our safety meetings going forward. Okay. Did I miss a moving to board comment period? I just had one quick thing that I wanted to address. Um talking about same situation, two different groups. Um first is our team that represented us at FBLA and the second is our junior class um for the prom. Um I think it's one thing that's

082important. Anytime our students are outside of this building, it's super impressive to see the other people recognized. They're our students and they're we're well represented. Um, so to kudos to our FBA team for representing us in Rochester and then those at the prom, um, lots of people were at the casino. A lot of people saw you um, and nobody had any problems or anything bad to say. So, um, either you were good at hiding it, but, uh, either way, you represented our district well. Um, so it's always encouraging when we're approached and we hear positive things about our our students out in the community. So, I just want to recognize those two groups in particular, as you know, New York State competition for FBA was last week as well as a prom over the weekend.

083lots of visibility and our students uh continue to shine out in the community and that's always uh well recognized and appreciated. So, I just wanted to call those groups out. Anybody else have anything for board comment? Okay. Uh turn over to Sean for a superintendent report. All right. Well, it uh definitely a busy time of the year. We state test. We're in the middle of state testing with ELA and um underway and and math on the horizon. So, uh just uh good job by our students and our staff to to sort of uh pull that off and and give their best effort and and show what they've been learning in school. U so we'll continue to work through that that process. Um I want to piggy back a little bit on what Mr. Kray had

084alluded to. Since our last board meeting, we've actually had a couple of of of events sponsored by um sponsored in collaboration with our our uh local Lions Club, both the uh academic achievement awards and the uh community service awards. And again, just uh we appreciate the uh support and partnership with the Lions um and really want to applaud the accomplishments of our students. It's nice to gather in that setting. Um, both of those events were uh held at Theodor's, but to see a, you know, room full of students who really have invested uh in both their schoolwork and their scholarship, but uh really investing back in their community and doing good things, making themselves better and their the community around them. So, just a, you know, a nice positive event. So thanks to everybody who

085was involved with with those um those events. Um again a million events going on a couple of weeks ago since our last meeting. Also had the opportunity to attend National Technical Honor Society um uh at not at Moses at VVS auditorium. Um again packed absolutely packed auditorium. I don't know if we were able to confirm yet. I think it was the one of the if not the largest number of canes student maybe Mr. Augustine has was it our largest group? 203 National Technical Honor Society inductees was represented very well. Um unbelievable. We've gone from 158 to 203 students in the last two years making National Technical Honor Society Marine's daughter my daughter Greg's daughter um have been inducted. It's quite young and so is very well. Yeah. So, again, another another terrific um ter terrific

086event. So, congratulations to the students who received that um that honor. Uh just some things on the horizon. Want to make people uh aware of our deck strategic planning uh meeting. We've had two under our belt already. They're in pretty close proximity, a couple of weeks apart. Um, there's going to shortly be a uh a uh survey that's going to be going out uh to get some broader input from the Canada school community. Um we're going to get together again in this room on Thursday, May 22nd. Um and so we'll we'll continue that work. Really would invite people to attend that. Just uh we get people are busy. Um it's we we get that some people might not have been able to attend the events that we've had so far. Some have able to attend

087one or the other. Some were able to come to both. But even if you haven't been to one yet, it's still not too late to get involved with the process. Very good discussions. Um I talked probably more than anybody. So it was sort of funny when I kept going around asking the the groups, "How are we doing?" And everybody wanted more time because they were talking a lot. Everybody, everybody, not just me. Everybody was was talking a lot at those meetings, but very good discussions, positive discussions about how can we work together um to uh make the school the best it could be. So, if you want to are interested in joining us, please join us. Uh there'll be more reminders leading up to that and um to that date. And also important to remember

088this is just again the beginning of the process because we're going to be talking about this for years to come. This is going to be very practical work and it's going to frame what we talk about, what we prioritize in budgets and in planning and and when we talk um to as a staff um of of um what we're really investing in and prioritizing. Um also, uh another group that's been doing good work, our PAC group. Um we're encouraged to see that we had several uh new families at our last meeting uh alone who were who were uh joining us. We had a um Will from community schools um is worked hard on bringing some topical uh presentations uh and uh that top the last meeting happened to be uh healthy sleeping habits which probably

089we all could benefit from maybe brushing up on and maybe listening to some of the advice that came out of that. Um, and there's going to be uh I just encourage people to continue to look at the district calendar because we do have another uh some more presentations and meetings on the horizon through PAC. May 8th is your next Thank you. I didn't have the date in front of me. May 8th is the next back I believe at five. Thank you. Um, we are going to be I I'm reluctant. We we've sort of we we've called it a podcast. Um video update, audio update. Sometimes it could be one or the other or both. Um but just let you know that on the horizon there's going to be a series of uh and continue series

090offormational pieces that will highlight people and programs in the district. We realize that u it's important to get information out in as many ways as possible in a way that people will consume that information and and hopefully be engaged with um with our school. So along with the the things that we have and through newsletters and that sort of thing, we're going to make a conscious effort to to have more where you can it's something you can, you know, potentially as you're driving uh listen to and and give you more opportunities just hear the good things that our kids and and staff are engaged in. So be on the lookout for that. I look at Brenda, she's helping, she's shaking her head, but she's helpful in that process. Apparent I don't think saying she does

091not want to talk about it now, but my and we will as we get into this we will be interested in hearing about topics that people want to hear. We can certainly frame some of these these um these sessions around things that people are most interested and we want to we want to talk about things that are meaningful. So more to come on that. um want to really um congratulate our esports um group because we have a large number of kids. They got a taste um in the fall championships at the state round. They got a taste of of uh what the competition was like. State level competition did very well. We have teams that are actually state ranked at this point and um I think interested in returning now that they have that experience

092under their belt. Um so that is um coming up I believe next weekend and uh in Syracuse and so congratulations to those students. I believe we still have the capacity. I know I think Mr. Owens you you saw it on the uh on TV. So, there are creative ways to actually see it, even if you can't be at the at the facility, which is really an interesting place to be in person to see, but you can even catch it remotely if you're um interested. It's quite a spectacle. It's see why kids kids enjoy it. Um and um Mr. Krowy referenced all pro running back Latavius Murray, who's a Murray who's a Syracuse native. The nice thing about it, not only was um he a top level athlete, real quality person. I just want to emphasize

093a lot people think of somebody like that who played for the Buffalo Bills and the Raiders and achieved the highest level in his profession. A lot of people don't know how he values education and continuous learning. Right? So he had graduated I believe as was from Central Florida but a couple of years ago he actually finished his MBA at Syracuse University. He continued to to want to learn because he knew even though he was a top level athlete he had you know he he wanted to think about what was beyond um his his playing days. And so we're fortunate he still um is going to be in this area occasionally. He lives in Florida, but he's up here a lot because of family, and he's going to be coming back to the school. So, there'll

094be more opportunities for for our students to to be able to um talk to and and learn from him. So, looking forward to that. And hope everybody has a great uh break coming up next week. I know we we're getting some grief. Some kids were um being teased by some friends in neighboring districts that this was their vacation week. So, next week will be their chance to say, "Well, now it's our turn to have the the week off." So, hope everybody has a good week. Uh, moving on. Personal recommendations. All appointments are pending. Clearance upon fingerprinting. Uh, retirements and resignations resolved. Upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby accept Amy Schmidt's letter of resignation as a long-term substitute school counselor back to April 27th, 2025. Do I have a motion?

095So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby accept Lori Shreka's letter of resignation as a school nurse effective at the end of the day, Friday, May 2nd, 2025. Do I have a motion? Some moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Resolved that upon a recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby accept Peter Schultz's letter of resignation as a high school principal effective June 30th, 2025. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Resolved that upon the recommendation of senator schools, the board does hereby accept Elizabeth Cummings ear vocal letter of retirement as a speech language pathologist effective June 30th, 2025. Do

096I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Oh, Miss Carneahan, you tell Mr. Moran I regret reading this last one. I do regret reading this last one. This one's personally close to me. Anyway, I suppose I have to and I wish her all the best. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby accept Tamar Moran's letter of retirement as an elementary teacher effective June 30th, 2025. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Carried. Permanent appointments resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby appoint Peter Ryan on a probationary basis as an elementary teacher in the tenure area of elementary with the understanding that the named individual does

097hold New York State certification appropriate to or required for that position. That the probationary appointment shall commence on 912025. That the probationary appointment shall expire on 912029. And that for the named individual to be eligible for an appointment on tenure upon expiration of the probationary period, it shall be necessary but not sufficient that the individual has received an APR rating of either effective or highly effective in three of the four years of probationary service and has not received an annual professional performance rating of ineffective in the final year of the probationary appointment is based on ratings derived in compliance with education law section 312-D at step six bachelor's plus masters plus 48 hours at 63,000 874. Do I have a motion? Some moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? Opposed? Carried. Resolve that upon the

098recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby appoint Rebecca West Vig as a probationary basis as a school psychologist in the tenure area of a school psychologist with the understanding that the named individual does hold New York State certification appropriate to or required for that position. that the probationary appointment shall commence on 9125 and the probationary appointment shall expire on 912029. And then for the named individual to be eligible for an appointment on tenure upon expiration of the probationary period, it shall be necessary but not in but not sufficient that the individual has received an APR rating of either effective or highly effective in three of the four years of probationary service and has not received an annual professional performance rating of ineffective in the final year of employment as based on ratings

099derived in compliance with education law section 3012-D at step one bachelor's plus masters plus 66 6 hours. We need to correct that. That's not the correct um hours. Okay. Okay. That in both um that and the next Okay. How many do we know how many hours it is? I don't have the I don't have it in front of me, but those are not correct. Correct. Okay. So, can I How do I read that? Well, we can't make a motion on that with the I think you can do just the salary and I can correct the hours. Is the salary correct? The salary is correct. The hours are correct. The hour is not I I know that the both for B and C the hours are incorrect. So it's just uh so the salary is salary

100not correct. the hours through a contingent at that point contingent upon the correction of the hours. I think that's probably the best way to do it. We need to get it. We want to get the appointment done, but I would say yes. I just want to be on the record that that would is incorrect and needs to be known. The salary is correct. The hours are incorrect. Okay. Okay. So, I would just read this as education law 30-12 with a salary of $64,212 pending certification. Perfect. So, I just remove I'll make a motion to approve that contingent upon the addition of the correct hours. Okay. Okay. Second. All right. All those in favor? Opposed? Carried. So, the same thing for the next one. Yes. All right. So I will not read I will just read

101it as celery. Thank you. And not that way we can just accept it as read. Okay. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the Sutener schools, the board does hereby appoint Courtney Ciccilia on a probationary basis as a speech language pathologist in the tenure area of speech language pathologist with the understanding that the named individual does hold New York State certification appropriate to or required to for that position that the probationary appointment shall commence on 9125. that the probationary appointment shall expire on 912029 and for the named individual to be eligible for an appointment on tenure upon expiration of probationary period. It shall be necessary but not sufficient that the individual has received an APR rating of either effective or highly effective in three of the four years of the probationary service and has not received

102an annual professional performance rating of ineffective in the final year of the probationary appointment as based on readings derived in compliance with education law section 312-d salary of $71,39. Do I have a motion? Make a motion to approve it contingent upon the addition of the correct hours. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Carried. Resolved that upon recommendation of the super schools, the board does hereby appoint. I'm going to butcher your name, Amy. I apologize. To Kelly, is that it? Tali as a permanent registered nurse at $3249 an hour effective May 3rd, 2025 with a 26 week probationary period. Do I have a motion? Some move. Second. That second mark. Yeah. All those in favor? Opposed? Carried. Moving on to substitute appointments. Resolved that upon the recommendation of the 200 schools, the board does hereby

103approve the following substitutes. A total is a substitute teacher aid school monitor at $16.75 an hour effective April 4th, 2025 through May 2nd, 2025. Eileen McGrath as a substitute plus driver at $25 an hour effective April 7th, 2025. Kylie Hutchinson as a non-certified substitute teacher at $115 a day effective April 17th, 2025. Lori Shreka as a substitute RN school nurse at $32.25 an hour effective May 3rd, 2025. And Susan Mason as a retired substitute teacher at $145 a day effective July 1st, 2025. Do I have a motion? So move. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Other resolved. On the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby approve Stacy Snaggnetti as a mentor for the remainder of the 2024 2025 school year. Do I have a motion? So moved.

104Second. Second. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Excuse me. Resolved. Upon recommendation, the superintendent of schools, the board does hereby appoint the following co-curricular marching band adviserss for the remainder of the 2024 2025 school year. Janelle Patchin is the instructor and Brent Buno assistant A. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Moving on to coaching. Resolved that upon the recommendation of superintendent of schools, the board does hereby rescend Alexandria Jones and Christopher Nighhhouse JV appointments for the 2025 spring season. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Carried. Resolved. So, upon the recommendation of the two, excuse me, superintendent of schools, the board does hereby approve the following paid modified coaches for the 2025 spring season as

105listed in your packet. Do I have a motion? So, moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Public comment period. Mr. President. Yes. On behalf of school board institute, I'd like to inform the school board that um one of our students from Minnesota is receiving the student achievement award on May 8th. at Twin Ponds. Um, Colleen has all the information. Colleen and Sean have all the information. Uh, but this is the first time in 25 years I've been involved in SBI that they cancel those student news. So, it's 5:00 dinner at Twin Ponds on May. Sure. Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. Can we say who it is? Um, maybe. Do you want to do you mind sharing? What's that? Do you mind sharing the name? Baleni. Very good. Congratulations. That's a

106huge recognition. Anybody else? Okay. Uh moving on. Last thing is future dates. Uh mentioned previous earlier tomorrow is the annual emergency go home drill. Can we will conduct our annual emergency go home drill with a 15-minute early dismissal release middle school at 2:14 p.m. High School at 2:19 p.m. Southside and Peter Streets will be at 2:50 p.m. April 18th through April 25th is our spring break. So hopefully this weather changes around or if not get out of town and go somewhere where it's warm. Enjoy that. April 21st, 5:00 p.m. will be a board petitions are due. I'm sorry, April 21st, rather. April 24th, the pantry restock with connecting community schools at 4:30 to 5:50, the high school lottery. April 29th through May 1st will be the New York State ELA testing. May 6th through the

1078th will be the math state testing. Uh the PATH meeting is scheduled for May 8th from 5:00 to 6:00 here in the high school media center. May 9th, the fifth and sixth grade dance from 6:00 to 9:00 in the high school cafeteria. May 10th, seventh and eighth grade spring fling dance. 6:00 to 9, the high school cafeteria. May 13th, the science testing for fifth and eighth. May 13th, the budget hearing and the regular meeting scheduled for 6:00. And May 20th, the budget and trustee vote from 1 to 8 and the high school tunnel. Did I miss any dates on there? That was a bunch of them. It's quickly going through. Hard to believe we're already talking about plans for May. to read the um strategic planning committee May 22nd. Strategic planning is Yes. May 22nd,

108correct? Thursday, May 22nd. Y and that's at 6:30. Yeah, correct. I don't know. Do we have a time? Yes. 6:30, I believe. The strategic planning. So 6:30 strategic planning at 6:30. Um I ask the board for a motion to entertain executive session to discuss employment history and matters leading to the employment of a personnel. Do I have a motion for executive session? Second. Second. All those in favor. Opposed. All right. We're in exit session. We will have nothing additional to act on for this evening. Thank you everyone for coming out. position at