001So I'm here for the grant now. >> Got it. At this time I open the public hearing regarding the grant which stands for succeeds actuc. The purpose of this hearing is to provide the public with an opportunity to review and comment on the district's application which supports programs and services to meet the needs of the educational culturally related academic needs of eligible American Indian and Alaskan native students. The proposed grant funds will be used to support education programs and activities that enhance student achievement and cultural enrichment. At this time in members of the public to provide comments or ask any question so sorry I have a loud voice. So if there are no comments I now close the public hearing for the easy grant application for the Santa Riches Union Free School District. Thank you.
0023 p.m. >> Superintendent report. >> Uh good good evening everyone. Tonight we're going to myself and Mr. Oserio, assistant superintendent for business. We'll present the uh budget workshop number four which is actually the budget uh the board's opportunity to adopt the budget that we are presenting this evening. Sorry, I should have given you. Thank you. >> All right. Good uh good evening again, everyone. As I said a moment ago, >> tonight is budget workshop number four, which is the opportunity for the board of education to consider the budget that the administration and with the board's assistance of course have put together for the community's consideration for the 2627 school year. Tonight we're going to discuss the 2006 2007 revenue and expenditure proposal. The evolution of balancing the budget. One of the things that we looked
003at is that the budget process is literally almost as soon as you be begin the school year, you begin planning for the next year. Uh you plan for the budget, you plan for future hirees that you're going to make. So we actually started this process back in I would say November uh when Mr. Oserio came to join us in Senator Merches as the business official. So tonight we're going to look at how did we get to what we are going to present tonight which is a balanced budget. Okay. Um at this time I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Osario to look at some of the numbers that uh are associated with the 2627 budget. Good afternoon everyone. So tonight we are going to review the revenues and expenditures proposal. Um the evolution of
004the balance in the budget that was a team effort from all the administration and and the board. Uh we work really hard this last three months. Um and we are going to present our balance budget to you guys. Um for the revenues it was as we were presenting in like the other presentations. Right now we have a total revenue of 56 millions 19369. Um as we were explaining the main sources for this is our tax levy and or state aid. um with the condition that our tax levy will remain under the limit or our levy increase is going to be uh 2.93%. Um the important thing to mention here is like our budget to budget is just 1.69%. Um we will go to our expenses. Um basically like you know the expenses as you guys
005can see in the chart almost 50% of our expenses are salaries. The other 26% are benefits. Um we have been explaining in the last three workshops you know how the benefits are affecting every single district is not just center maices we are basically having almost a million dollar increase in our health insurance uh that's what is been affecting us and what make this process a little bit more complicated than other years especially since last year we have like a se increase and now we are projecting 10%. Um the other one is as always transportation bosses. Um that's another big number that we work um in conjunction with Dr. Bacher reviewing one by one the codes. So we make sure that every service that we are um that we are renting from bosses are the services
006that we need. And that leads us to our three-part budget. As you guys may know, in previous years, we divide in three components. The administrative component, the instructional budget, and the capital budget. In the administr administrative budget, we have a 10% of the total budget. um that is like you know administrative salaries um clerical salaries any supplies any contracts that we have with um outside vendors for or services like legal auditors these matters in the in the instructional budget is all the faculty related items you know it's all the teacher salaries it's all uh special education it's all the services that it they are instructional basically um that's 79% % of our budget. Um, and the capital budget is basically our facilities. Anything that is related to our facilities is 11% including salaries of the
007custo. I'm going to pass to Dr. Sodo. So, as we did this work together, he's going to explain how we actually balance our budget. >> Thank you. So, as I mentioned earlier in um our conversation, this is by far one of the hardest processes that we have to follow because it takes uh it it forces us to really look at our programs and make some very hard decisions, decisions that are not sometimes comfortable to make because at the end of the day, we have to present what we describe as a balanced budget. Meaning we have to look at what we accumulate in terms of our revenue and it cannot exceed our expenditures. So our expenditures cannot exceed our revenue. We it has to balance. We have to make sure that we have enough uh revenue
008to cover all of our expenditures. So we began the process in February. We I remember Fernando came into my office said, "Ricardo, we have a $810,000 deficit." I said, I started scratching my head. I'm like, "Oh, I don't I don't think so. Let's really take a look at the codes. Let's see what we can uh cut out. Let's see what we can reduce to ensure that we present as, you know, comfortable a budget to the community and to the board as we can. So, we began looking at that back in February. We made some initial reductions to some of the wish lists that our administrators presented. So back in February, March, we did do two presentations and the administrators did present some things that they wanted to add to their programs, add to their schools
009to enhance the experience of our students and our staff. That was the first thing that we looked at in terms of eliminating those because it wasn't part of our budget this year. So to carry it over to next year would have increased our budget by another 200 $450,000. So, initially we looked at insurance. We were originally projecting insurance rates to uh be increased by 11%. We were going down to uh conservative 10% which accounts for about $50,000 savings. We also looked at when we did our facilities presentation, one of the acts of our facilities crew was to add a new lawn mower. And this was a a lawn mower that I think we really need as a facility, but it is a n it comes with a $96,000 price tag. So that was I apologize
010to Chris Her and the entire crew, but that's something that we can't continue to add to next year's budget. So that came out. We were um expected to allocate more money into our seven reserve accounts. So we took some money from that. We have secondary clubs, middle school and high school clubs. We reduced that number slightly to make up some money there as well. We also looked at some software requests that our teachers had to uh make a determination as to whether or not it was really necessary for the instructional program and did we have current software that we're using that might be redundant in nature. We found that there was some redundancy. So, we did eliminate those items as well. And then we looked at some supply codes as well. So that uh dropped
011our deficit by about $450,000. We still went out to the community in March at the March 25th agenda uh meeting and we did present a $460,000 shortfall. So that's when we really had to critically sharpen our pencils. And we had numerous meetings with our administrative team. We had meetings with the board of education to look at how would we reduce that. So there are predominantly four ways that we reduced it to come to what we are going to present tonight as a balanced budget. The first one was that at at this time we have 17 monitors at the elementary school. Uh based on our conversations with Dr. Fernandez and Miss Jackson and others at the elementary school. We believe that we can still get the same amount of support and supervision by reducing that to
01214. So that's a savings of almost I believe it was $25,000. We also have what is called the flesh program. It's a foreign language in elementary schools. Great program. I think it's a great asset for students to begin an acquisition of a second language. uh but it is a non-mandated program. It is a non-essential program. So those are the first things that you look at as a superintendent, as a board of education, as an administrative team is looking at your holistic program and what areas are really non-essential programs. What I mean by non-essential, non-mandated programs, it's programs that New York State Education Department do not require us to have. Flesh was one of them. Uh the second the third thing that we looked at is that in years for years we have had secondary overages
013at the secondary complex. When I say secondary complex I mean middle and high school. An overage is when a teacher contractually a teacher teaches up to five classes. Whenever they teach a sixth class contractually they get a certain amount of money from the district to go above and beyond and teach that sixth period class. Some of the classes were dedicated to low and road sections to electives. So J um Dr. Bacher and I met with the building principles and the team. We critically looked at their schedule planning that they have for next year at the middle school and high school and we were able to reduce the overage amount by $107,000. We it was it was a very difficult conversation because some of um the programs were used to departments were used used to these
014overages but we feel that they're not necessary and it's really not going to impact our program or what we offer to students. The last thing which was really probably the most difficult conversation we had was sports. We looked at if you recall at the February meeting Mr. Though presented quite a few acts that he had to enhance the athletic program. Most of those acts were transportation in nature. Some was equipment. There was a $35,000 act for weight room equipment that we wanted to enhance or really remodel the weight room at the secondary complex. Unfortunately, we can't do that next year. So, we cut that out. Uh we did cut um some low-end road teams as well. none of the major sports that uh Sutter Merch is known for. We cut secondary teams in terms of
015running two teams and one of the teams are really low in road. We're going to combine them, but we do save money on stipens for coaches. We save money on transportation. There's a lot of other ways that we save money. So, we were able to reduce sports by about $140,000. Like I said, 70,000 was attributed to all new acts that were not part of this year's budget. It was new carryover requests that were made by Mr. Thod and his team. So that leads us to tonight. We are going to present and I'm happy to say this a balanced budget for the community's consideration board's consideration to adopt tonight. So after all this work, we actually have a balanced budget now. Um as you guys can see in my graphic so revenues and expenditures are balanced
016now and the amount that we are proposing is $56 million 193689. Um basically our main goal as a school district is to maintain our programs and like the excellent education that is happening here at center micas. Um and also we want to include a yearby-year um infrastructure updates. That's the main goal that we are doing. You know, last year we have an enormous success with the auditorium with two bedrooms in the elementary. We want to keep rolling the ball. These these buildings need um help. We need actually to keep making improvements because um they haven't been maintained in so long and with the help of the facilities department, we are moving forward to the right direction. Um so piggy backing from that success we also are going to have for next year a capital load
017of $350,000 that mainly is going to continue um helping with the projects in the facilities department uh trying to improve bedrooms in the elementary. We are going to do some accommodations in the high school um to keep moving the good um time that we are having right now with the facilities department. Um by the way these projects are like aid by the New York State Department. Um a portion of them is like a aidable in a full reimbursement of 100,000 for the next year. The other remand amount is going to be sped in five years 250,000. Um and so for the board as a recommendation from the superintendent um to adopt the expenditure budget in the amount of $56 million 1936 689 uh or proposed levy it's 293 that is within the district allowance um
018or both is going to be in May 19 location is the high school library. >> Um and like the next big thing that we have is the budget hearing on May 6. We will have like some other slides about and we will be explained what is our contingency budget in case that things don't happen as we are expecting and like I mentioned before the vote is on May 19. >> Any questions? No. >> Um, committee reports. Thank you guys for your work. Committee reports. I have the community connections. John, do you want to hop in? Uh so community connections met last week uh at the high school library to discuss or or actually to present and have any questions about the upcoming budget and uh that was it. >> Curriculum and technology I know was
019updated last time. The upcoming meet upcoming meeting is 428. Did you want to add anything? >> Good. Um, I will say today was a successful college and career fair. So, I'll add that in there as a little plug for that because that is a great thing that was going on. Uh, facilities, health, and safety was last meeting was the update. Um, just double checking to make sure I'm not missing anything there. >> Oh, I guess I just wanted to say congratulations to the music um department and they just won um some award of first place. They could just got back from their trip. So, I just wanted to say that >> health and wellness last meeting uh final meeting of the year is April 14th. Is there anything there, Sean? >> Uh yes, we um
020got a CPR AED update. Uh the high school's done, the middle school is scheduled. Um, new mannequins were donated to the middle school from the Lewis Aapora Foundation and um, they're working on a grant um, to get an AED for the fields like a designated locked away, you know, instead of relying on a trainer to get there in time like there will be. Um, so hopefully we'll get approved for that. And, um, they're looking to update the fitness room. So, And that's about it. >> Uh policy, just to give uh an update towards policy. We are almost getting near the 5,000 series, which is pretty exciting. Uh this year has been a pretty productive year in terms of policy. Uh so hopefully we'll get back to it once we get through this budget cycle to
021try to finish off some more. Does anybody have any questions for any committees or anything here? I'm saying to us. Everybody's good. All right. So, we're at the questions and comments regarding tonight's agenda only. This is the public comment if guidelines for public comment. This is an opportunity for persons who wish to speak or who have written letters to the board regarding topics that are included on this agenda. Speakers are asked to sign in with the district clerk. The book is in the back of the room. Indicate your topic of comment. Keep your comments brief and speak for no longer than 3 minutes. Refrain from discussing matters involving specific district personnel or individual students. Please stand and speak into the microphone so that everyone here and those joining us at on the live stream can
022hear you clearly. Members of the public will have the opportunity to speak at to speak about any topic at the end of the meeting. Does anybody have anything on this agenda? Do you want to come up? >> Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for your time and your energy today. Um, I wanted to speak on the charter resolution that you have towards the end of the presentation here tonight. Um, and I just hope that the that the board of ed strongly considers passing that resolution for the board of the um, excuse me, board of education association to support the passage. We do have particular bills in the Senate and the Assembly right now in order to prevent charter schools to be rubber stamped by the state in order to go through. Um especially since
023we're talking about budgeting tonight. It's very concerning that we have to continue to cut our budget um in order to stay fiscally responsible for the community and we have schools such as charter schools that do not have to be as fiscally responsible. they do not have the type of checks and balances that public schools have yet. They have an a blank check essentially that's written for them. And so that's a really huge concern. There is a a charter school um epidemic that's unfortunately starting to unfold on Long Island and we're seeing that encroach further and further east and they will be on our doorstep before we know it. Uh so I really hope that the board of ed takes that concern seriously and votes yes to uh make that push for advocacy on behalf of
024the board from the board of educations on Long Island as well as the rest of the state. >> Thank you, Miss Ho Hogerson. Uh I just wanted the community know I the board of education is fully aware. I've uh worked with firm Stephanie outside of the district in terms of trying to push this forward. It is something that we need to be mindful of. Uh the charter schools, they are not subject to the same regulations that school districts are. They are not elected officials to their board. The communities do not have an option to vote for their budget. And whatever funding a charter school receives, if there are students from Senate Merches, it gets subtracted from our state aid. So it is uh very impactful. There are the superintendent association of of Suffach County and
025Naza County. We are fully behind this um endeavor, this resolution. Uh this is why we brought it forward for the board's consideration. I'm hoping as well that the board will unanimously support this because it is going to be a strain on public education as we know it. Thank you, Stephanie, for coming forward. turn it over. >> Sure. >> Um this evening we'll be um on item eight, we'll be voting for the Eastern SuffK Boseies administrative budget and the board of election. Um the Boseies puts out all of this for each board in the community in the Suffach County to vote for. So the recommended action the board of education authorizes the district clerk to record the outcome of the vote and notify eastern suffices of the results of the vote for the adoption of the
026Bosey's administrative budget. Um be it resolved to approve or not to approve the 20 26 2027 ESB Bosey's administrative budget. So I need to hear approve or not approve. >> You have my mic. >> I will share Um, so any questions before So, um, so all four or approval? >> Yes. Approve. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, I just need a motion and then we'll Okay. >> So, a motion to approve. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Yes. >> Thank you. Okay. The second portion of this, I'm going to uh I'll read out the resolution and do Now I have two. Um I'll I'll read out the resolution and I'll do a roll call of the names and then we'll we'll go forward like that. Um whereas five vacant seats are available and the Eastern
027SuffK Bosey's board of education for the 2026 2027 school year and therefore be it resolved the board of education of the center unifree school district hereby cast one vote. So all all of you together will cast one vote for each of the following candidates to fill a vacant seat on the Eastern Suffach Boseies Board of Education and authorizes the district clerk to record the outcome of the election and notify Eastern Sephic Boseies. The five candidates are Susan Lipman of West Icelip Union Free School District, Joseph Lee Giovano, Patrick Medford School District, Anne Massie, Sag Harbor School District, Victoria Malloy, Longwood School District, Katherine Romano, Icelip uh school district. So, do we have a motion to elect all five candidates? >> Yes. >> Thank you so much. So I I want to take a moment to
028welcome Karen Aunting. She's a new ELA teacher that I had the pleasure of meeting last week. I had a very extensive conversation with her. I think I had you in my office about 90 minutes. And and outside of the initial conversation about education, about pedagogy, lessons and units and and student management, we got into a really interesting conversation which I really try to when I when I sit with a candidate, I try to really get to know to know the person to see if the person is a good fit for set of merches. Uh because not only am I the superintendent, I do reside in the community as well. and I think I have a pretty good idea of like the pulse of the community. Uh so some of the things that she revealed to
029me were really really interesting. One is that Karen actually recently graduated law school. So she uh pursued law. She practiced for she's currently still practicing law but she didn't like it. She did not like law at all, which was not a good thing because my son is approaching his final semester as a law student. He's going to be taking the bar in July and I'm hoping that he's going to find success as an attorney. And my younger one wants to be an attorney, too. So, I didn't tell him about your story, by the way. Karen, but uh outside of that um she loves Neil Young, which is an interesting thing. And um she loves baking. Uh, I think she bakes all the time with her mother. So, and she has a really very eclectic personality
030which I really love and I think the kids are going to really gravitate to you too, Karen. So, welcome to Santa Rich School District. I think that you're going to be a great um part of the family and I'm really happy to see what the work you're going to do with our staff and as well as our students and our community as a whole. So, welcome. >> Dr. And I and I told her that was completely unnecessary. But >> our famous apple crumb recipe that goes back generations. So >> thank you. Thank you. >> Warmed up. A little bit of vanilla ice cream is recommended and we will chef. >> Thank you so much. I'm so >> thank you. Thank you for joining us. >> So welcome to the team. Um, I'm sure everybody, you
031know, is in the same sentiment. You know, when we hire people, we rely on our administration to really vet and go through the process. Um, we are just here to do the consent agenda items. So, really, they they give us the who's. So, welcome to Senator Mitches. >> And that does look actually really good. >> More than welcome to share. >> Does the oven does the oven work here? Um, >> yeah. >> Karen, I'm just curious. What do you study in law? What is your My area is employment immigration. So really I work mostly with doctors. I work for a small firm replacement at ESM as well. But um I didn't know what next year so I didn't feel comfortable giving up my health insurance. So I've been working part time in the legal field.
032Luckily it's pretty remote. My boss is awesome. He's been willing to work with me. But yeah doctors with EV1 visas H1. >> Oh wow. That's interesting. Well we're happy to have you. I feel like I have to go back to school now. But that was awesome. That was that's just pretty awesome. Um >> luckiest person because she's actually my son's current English teacher right now as a senior in high school >> and then she's coming here to work with me. >> Very cool. >> All right. So we are moving on to our >> votes the consent agenda. I know that's where I was going. >> It looked like you were moving forward. Sorry. Sorry. >> The consent agenda consent agenda ital approval. Now she's got me stumbling here. So approval approval of all consent agenda
033items are pres as presented. Um be it resolved. A motion to approve the consent agenda items 10A through 16 C. Consent agenda items are approved by via single vote unless they are removed from being a consent agenda item prior to the vote. Do I have a motion? Do I have a second? >> All in favor? >> Yes. >> Welcome. >> So now I have to go. Yes. Welcome. >> Welcome. >> I had to wait for that vote. >> Here it is. I left it here. >> I know. I didn't see it. >> All right. So, we are at the next general public comment. Uh members of the public who desire to address or question the board on any topics related to the board work are welcome to do so at this time. Speakers are asked
034to follow the protocols that were put in place earlier. Um is there anybody in the public that would like to address us that are non-aggenda items? anything from any board members that they would like non-aggenda. All right, >> we are at the point offormational meetings um items. So the next board of education meeting is our budget hearing. It's not a business meeting Wednesday, May 6th, 2026 at 7 p.m. The location would be the district office, 5 which is 529 Main Street, Center Mitches, New York. Our school budget vote and election Tuesday, May 19th, 2026, 7:00 am to 900 pm. Our next regular board of education meeting is Tuesday, May 27th, 2026. Upcoming district and community events. Wednesday is April 22nd, PTO meeting. Sorry, I started thinking about like why I never did broadcasting club when
035I was in high school, but now I'm doing it. All right. So, PTO meeting 6:30 p.m. is that Wednesday in the cafeteria of Clayton Huey. Sorry, I was just thoughts, right? April 27th is the Clayton Clayton Huey School Musical Frozen. 6:30, Clayton Huey allpurpose room. Tuesday, April 28th, curriculum and technology committee is 6 p.m. Friday, May 1st. Saturday, May 2nd, middle school musical Matilda Jr. 7:00 p.m. Both nights. Tickets are $10 on my school books or at the door. May 4th through May to through May 8th is teacher appreciation week. Did I get them all? Am I missing anything? >> I'm missing something. I feel right. >> Tomorrow, Thursday night, >> right? I thought I was missing something. So, Thursday night foreign language foreign was it foreign language honor society >> at 7 p.m. Um,
036what's really good is even though I'm saying this, we have this really good website that you can always go to and on there it puts everything on the calendar. So, you can always back check us too if something changes because this is presented today, could change tomorrow. You never know. But just make sure you take a look at our website so I don't feel like I said some wrong information. Um, motion to adjurnn. Second. >> All in favor? >> Yes. Thank you guys.