001is [Music] america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice [Music] designation of our fire exits the same door that we walked in walk downstairs and we would meet out front in case of an emergency um can we get a roll call please sure mrs carey here mr pascal here mr jackson here this is dionne here mr emily yeah this is schneider here and this is killer here and i just wanted to take a moment to give a reminder that we are uh our meeting is open to the public should anyone choose to attend um we do have it live streamed for your convenience at home to watch um but if anybody were um wishing to come in to attend the meeting we are allowing that
002and with limited capacity um we would have an overflow room but again just a reminder to folks out there that this is a public meeting and people are able to attend and this time i'll turn it over to superintendent okay thank you so as always uh submissions for public comment can be emailed to boe comment at thehose.org so first i want to give a brief update we had our first diversity equity and inclusion committee meeting and thank you to mrs giller mr analy and mrs snyder for attending the meeting just a broad overview we did a review of demographics and and data and i will share that with all of you in in the update we then talked about the new york state culturally responsive sustaining education framework that's a framework presented by a new
003york state education department and the board of regents and it contains four major areas that you know we want our schools to be welcoming and affirming to have high expectations and rigorous instruction to have inclusive curriculum and assessment and ongoing professional development we had some sharing among members about some uh different opportunities and some um some plans for the future and um our next steps this was our first committee meeting so um we are reaching out for our next meeting to parent members we will be making sure that the parent members are informed first of uh some of those we discussed during this meeting and then later this week emails are going out to members of the committee to form subcommittees curriculum and instruction and professional development and these subcommittees will help inform our action
004plan our next meeting is january 27th but we'll be having the subcommittee meetings uh prior to that so that's just a broad overview any anything anyone would like to add i just thought it was a really good discussion i think that it's important to hear from different groups i think there are a lot of really good ideas and i hope that we take those ideas and move forward one of the things that you know i felt like potential for this committee would be to reach out to our community and so i hope that's something that we do in the future as well so that these conversations are only just happening in school but that are happening in our community have a similar language and expectation of how you know we create equity within our not
005just our students but within our community so yeah look forward to the next meeting okay um during the meeting when we broke down where what our student demographic actually was it was actually a little bit higher i don't realize the word minority but not white than i thought i think that if there was there was a lot of positive aspects of the meeting but we're really going to need community input into this because we're just running a school district for people it's their school district you know that we're elected to or appointed to and um that's a huge chunk of the uh the student body that may feel like they're unrepresented and you know we need everybody to come forward and do something because we're talking about equity and diversity and with all the best
006intent in the world no matter what my intentions are this probably is the best person to be putting forward you know to getting this across and we need a lot of community input to this and so one thing is and i know this was mentioned at a different uh a different meeting looking at our our district-wide survey so so making sure that we're starting to research and it might have to be a home homegrown survey you know making sure that we're asking questions that get to these different areas and then also perhaps a meeting with meeting with different groups of students parents but all part of the school climate survey too like the new and improved and one that works on the phone's school climate so that so um so we can include that as
007part of this as well but i agree so one other group that may be beneficial to reach out to is also those that are currently utilizing charter schools and to understand some of the reasons that they are utilizing charter schools and what we're able to so thank you so just a few other updates before i turn this over to stacy so mr martinelli is working on a survey that will be sent to parents over the next couple of days to determine interest in a school-based vaccination clinic for students ages 5 2 11 and then once we get an idea through that survey of numbers that will then help us help us plan and we'll send out the pertinent information um tonight you're going to have on the agenda you'll see um a contract with jen
008leshant building better futures and so we have worked with um mrs basham before in the past about five years ago at harmony hill she provided training for our teachers in the behavioral support room rooms for kids with intensive management needs so uh and she trains in the area of collaborative problem solving which believes in philosophy that kids do well if they can so kids don't lack the will to behave well they lack the skill to behave well so the focus on her training is helping determine reasons why students are misbehaving identifying the skills that they're struggling with whether it's that skills they need like flexibility or frustration tolerance or problem solving and then [Music] working with teachers throughout the process from assessment to emotional planning process um to to interventions so we've successfully worked with
009uh with jennifer basham before i can tell you that um so so the reason why this is specific because it's working with students with intense management needs but pre-coven we did start um this training on a on a larger scale uh our school social workers we had planned to have them take part of this training we did have some some teachers and then kobe hit and some of the things that are involved are really working with individual students going through this problem-solving method so aaron hill have been working closely to uh to help organize this um and the assistant superintendent at the time so it's something that we will be um you know continuing to look at how to run especially uh it will be especially beneficial now so any questions do we have the
010ability to share this out with parents at all and feel like probably the best attended parent workshops i've seen in my entire time in this district where when we had the counselor come into the middle school a couple years ago early on the amount of parents that showed up just like drastically dwarfed anything else that we did so if we have the ability to piggyback or try to do a little bit more with you know trying to meet parents halfway it could be helpful in just using common language common understanding and meet some of those issues from both sides so we were having a discussion the other day about our parent engagement funds through title 1 and part of those funds have been set aside for um just that type of thing for parents to
011um to participate in some workshops or or professional development sessions would run a seminar for parents she's done lots of them if you loved her anything else any other questions on that and i appreciate you explaining that you know i think that especially now that we're having this this committee about you know equity and i think that as board we've been very careful and cautious about making sure that um you know if we're having a training at one building you know how can we support the rest of the buildings to get the same or similar training um so that you know not only is our money spent well but everybody's getting the same exposure to the need whether they know they need it or not and and so i think that you know having these
012conversations about what we can offer parents and also how we can transition this training to other buildings that could support them i understand that this one's very uh specific to um that classroom and the one-on-one uh needs that these folks are going to have in dealing with these students on a day-to-day so i appreciate the conversation about making sure that all of our buildings are equally being supported in in the trainings and professional development offerings that we're giving so and and so we're also looking at our trainings about building capacity right capacity building and so in the past we have sent teachers who become key trainers in different areas who then can come back and continue to train to train others so that's just so you know that's another focus as well and then finally
013tomorrow um we'll be sending out the posting for the career education coordinator and we shared the um job description at a previous board meeting so that will be going out tomorrow i remember i said to all of you uh before the start of the new year stuff is that announced will that grow um so so right now the plan is because it's a teacher on special assignment to do that in-house um any other questions so it's dc matt here school business official so reserves and fund balance we discussed this a month ago you won't recall our reserves and our fund balance and the report remains in draft format and tonight we need to talk about the priorities as far as replenishing reserves and then i do have one recommended change actually for the ers recommended
014balance and i recommend that we reduce that and that's based off of the trs reserve balance i'll get into it a little bit later but those are the two things we're going to talk about so just to recap the reserve fund balance plan it's prudent fiscal management we've had this for several years we use it to protect us from both knowns and unknowns during the budget process and whenever it's appropriate our goal of course is to replenish reserves so they're fully funded whenever possible unassigned fund balance we've already talked about this as well but the district has appropriated no dollars whatsoever for the current year budget so 21-22 and that's going to be the goal moving forward in the financial statements for june 30 2021 we are at 10.6 percent you'll recall we had a
015little bit of a financial crisis with the state of the state in the commodity pandemic so we had mid-year adjustments that we had to make and that's where we ended up with the 10.6 so i'll make recommendations for that tonight as well so reserve funds strategy and priorities these remain the same short-term strategy is always to preserve cash position to maintain our educational programs and capitalize on any savings and efficiencies whenever possible the long-term aligns with our long-range financial plan and that's to strengthen our cash position again replenish our reserves whenever feasible improve our bond breeding maintain a stable tax climbing for taxpayers and to continue to capitalize on the new savings and efficiencies and to align the reserves as well as the long-range financial plan with our long-range facilities plan so they all need
016to align so talking point for tonight is the priorities so this is a change over last year so the recommendation is to move the capital reserve as our top priority as far as funding uh replenishment for funding and that's because we have debt that's expiring we're talking about a referendum in may 2022 so we wouldn't need to borrow these monies if we funded the capital reserve and you will recall that we already went to the public in 2018 uh it's up to five million dollars thus far we have funded one million so we can fund up to four million more and it was over a ten year period so those those are the the requirements as far as the capital reserve so we have the authority already to fund it if the board chooses to
017do so anytime we would expand we would need a public referendum so that's something we would want to do to align with the may referendum vote we'd want to have a scope for that and we'd want the public to say okay if you're fun to say for example 1.5 million this is what you're authorized to spend it on and we would spell that out in a referendum so it would be a capital referendum and it would be a referendum to borrow so there would be two separate items if we chose to do that if you have any questions about that so the we have an expectation to spend money from the capital reserve in the next school year yes okay do we need approval we would need voter report approval to expend it yes but
018not to not to move the monies there that's the fund that we already have over there yeah anytime we use it we would yes and we know potentially what we're talking about within that cap that would be expended through the capital reserve that we would be doing so you'll recall the last time we met the cs arch was here they're talking about the building conditions survey so there's plenty of work in the building condition survey that we could use that money for it's just it would need to go to a referendum for the public to say yes you have the authority to spend those money it's kind of those items okay um so the question i have is with them giving us a plan uh from csrg right what means to happen is there any
019reason why we would need to do it in this next school year that we would as opposed to waiting do you know what i'm saying because they said there wasn't really anything that was like a severe priority but also so i'm just questioning you know not the fact that we wanted to fund the capital reserve because that makes sense we have this 22 million dollar you know bill hanging over our heads of things that need absolutely need to get done to support the infrastructure of our buildings totally get that i'm just wondering as far as going out to the public to expend that money if there's a reason that we are doing that in this next school year there are priorities that we see that are need to be or we could wait we don't
020have the final um the final numbers as far as borrowing and what the total project will be as far as what we're allowed to borrow if we aligned the capital reserve expenses with the borrowing referendum the it would increase the overall financial scope of the project so that's the benefit of that also all the bidding would happen because it would all happen simultaneously so that's the benefit did that answer the question yes okay did we give any consideration to funding it um up to the point where it would offset the unaided portion so offset the local share of the project so where do we get like 87 on building projects so 2.2 million or something would offset we think about doing that so there's no tax impact to taxpayers yeah so the goal we're we're
021still in the early parts of working with a financial advisor but the goal is to have limited or no impact to the taxpayers that's that was the discussion yeah funding that reserve would help toward that yes yes thanks sure are you guys ready to move out all right so the items in red are not to be scary they are just to remind me to talk to you guys about them so workers comp unemployment there's nothing new to talk about there's no recommended changes there the capital reserve fund that was just the discussion that we had so again the recommendation is going to be for us to use fund balance to fund the capital reserve that is not any action that needs to happen on the actual plan itself that'll actually be a forward agenda item
022action when we want to do that it's just to have this conversation tonight so that we're all comfortable with what the plan is and what the expectations are moving forward so it's just a discussion again it's not going to change the balance here it's not going to change any notations in the plan itself it's just the expectation and it also is reflected in the long range finance financial plan as well so just so we're all on the same page now you'll recall so it says the balance in the capital reserve is the 971 414 so you'll recall in the financial statements we have a negative balance on the capital fund and that's because this reserve sits in the general funds we need to do basically a book transfer to move the reserve on the general
023fund over to the capital fund to offset that so that will require a board action item and that'll be the next time that we need we'll do that but that's really just a book transfer does that typically happen annual year so that's the last part of the process so uh initially the taxpayers gave authority to create the reserve funded up to the 5 million we moved the monies over into the reserve so from unappropriated fund balance to the reserve and then we had the two projects so it was the harmony held boiler and it was the middle school roof sed approved we went out to bid for all the work um i've actually completed the final cost report so this is the last piece to move the reserve from the general fund over to the
024capitol that's the last piece of the puzzle all right are we okay with capital reserve tax tertiary reserve so we had two tax tertiary cases that were settled this fall so it's actually lionheart and koho's fall is limited so we have a balance of the 535-986 so we are going to need to reflect on that before the end of the year to make sure that that balance is still appropriate and if we find that it's not then the board would take action to use those monies to pay for those two settlements that we already paid for basically out of the general fund right now so really just the the talking point is we're going to want to reevaluate that which we do every year at the end of the year and you may see action
025to expend those monies for those two settlements if it's appropriate we don't know we may have new pilots we don't know that right now so if that's the case we might be looking to actually fund that reserve instead so it's just something that i want in your radar that we may have action on at the at the may june time frame at the end of the year okay so no change to the plan but just so that we're all on the same page uh right last item retirement contribution reserve so we had the retirement contribution reserve for a number of years and there's no nothing set in law as far as what you're allowed for funding so we had three years as our as our recommended balance trs is a fairly new reserve it just
026started to allow for that two years ago and they actually have a limitation on how much you can fund a trs preserve and it's basically it's ten percent of payroll but what the calculation turns out to be is basically one year of expense uh one year trs expense so um i took a look at this we're underfunded in most of our reserves i'd like to recommend that we change the recommended balance from three years to one year for the irs reserve and that's to basically align with the trs so just does anybody have a huge do you have any concerns about keeping those low given that they're more market driven and we've had a great situation for the last five years but it isn't necessarily going to continue that way it could be volatile yes
027that could happen um what i would say is because trs is defined and it's a clear definition i just wouldn't want to be in the position that where you have to substantiate that we're funding ers for three years out and we're only allowed to fund trs one year really is why i'm bringing this to the table so that's that's my thought process on it but i'm open to conversation of course did they raise eras tiara's contribution rates beyond what we expect them to the small shifts annually this money would then have to promote a general fund we don't fund the reserve well enough to cover the increase and so forth so in the long range plan we don't have any plan to use these reserves in the next four years so in the next four
028years we're planning to spend this money out of the general fund regardless okay we've lived with that more recently we have um you will recall we've gotten a really bad um habit of balancing the books using or balancing the budget using reserves so we're we've corrected that bad habit and we're moving forward and hope to i hope to be in a position to not have to use these reserves in the next four years particularly because we have the benefit of this federal stimulus monies for the next three so it could be a volatile market yes that could happen do you remember last time we had a relatively sharp downturn how bad the jump was so there is a little bit of a saving grace because in the tax cap calculation if there's a certain percentage
029change you can recoup that through the tax levy process so you do have some protection there for those situations it's been a number of years since that happened i think maybe seven or eight years ago and we weren't able to recruit some of the difference through the tax levy calculation so there is there is that little bit of protection if you will i think the tax cap has been around for 11 years it's only happened once in 11 years would you be comfortable with changing that to one year so it would change it from um 1.3 million to 510 000. and realistically even then we're just changing the recommended we're still well short of it yes we could change it anytime yeah so for the for the reserves and fund balance plan it's a word
030document i'm just going to make that one change for the balance for the ers reserve i'm going to remove the draft watermark and it'll be on the next board agenda it's under the report section so it'll be added under the reports section it'll list the plan it'll also go on the website and when we act on it i'll have copies for the audience as well so you know okay so that's it for that so we're gonna move on to the long range so the long range plan is a lot of fun the first the first year is uh our year that we just passed so the 2021 fiscal year basically we do these plans the reserve plan and the long-range financial plan right after the financial audit and the st3 so everything aligns and the
031purpose of the long-range financial plan it's it's really it's prudent financial management but we also use this to establish our goals as we go into the budget process so we talked about do we expect to exceed the tax cap do we want to remain within the tax cap what do we think state aid is going to look like what budget approach are we going to take so there's all these assumptions and it's really it's a forecasting tool so for year one which i'm going to call it 2021 that's the actuals it's actual data it's based off the financial statements and the st3s the next year year 2022 that's basically our budget the budget that we just passed was the current year that we're living in we take a look at quarter one to see how
032we're trending this year it's especially challenging because we have all the federal stimulus all the grants they're not all approved yet so quarter one is really all i included were the tax certs that we didn't plan for that we paid out as a change so that's really the only thing that i that i've modified for year three and four we have the benefit of the federal stimulus money so there's minimal growth there and then year five i i i assumed a three percent increase and inexpensive overall there's some other um assumptions that i'll talk to you guys about but that's basically the five year plan so it's it's our year that just that just past the actuals it's the current year that we're in and three years past that so if you look at fiscal
033year 2021 i just want to talk about the revenues federal aid so federal aid is increased and that is based off of the cares act monies that we received so that's why that's looks a little different and then there's a category with others so that's basically anything that's not property taxes stated federally and it was high in 2021 and we had a couple of things that happened we had an e-rate reimbursement through boces which was a prior year reimbursement we had the cohost community center settlement so that was in there we had our liability insurance was down and they basically gave us a dividend that was because of the covid pandemic so that was a nice surprise for us and just other prior year expenses excuse me prior year reimbursements were higher than normal because
034of the copic lag so it was higher than normal and higher than we'll likely see again expenses were down considerably we know why we had the threat of the state aid reductions we had all those adjustments so that was a kind of a uh from a financial perspective that that kind of year doesn't happen yeah so fund balance again is the 10.6 so in year 2022 you'll see the reduction in fund balance and that's assuming that we fund our capital reserve 1.5 million and that we can talk about that we can do that at any time during the year but that's an assumption that's in this plan for year 2022 you take a look at real property taxes and pilot and you'll see that there's a large delta between the two and that's because in
035year 2022 as the first year brookfield went on to the tax roll so that's why that delta exists state aid is the budgeted number federal aid is lower because we don't have the cares act the federal stimulus monies are in the federal funds so it's a separate fund also medicaid is is lagging they're behind um so we've seen the medicaid revenue decline and that's why you'll see in the in the years three four and five you'll see a steady increase back to where i expect will be back to normal by year four and five does the state aid um assume that we receive full funding or foundation yeah so in year 23 and 24 yes and then i assumed flat for the because i don't know what will happen by 2025 but yes um so
036i assumed no use of reserves no use and fund balance with the exception of the capital reserve funding the capital reserve in this current year um so it's a break-even analysis for every year i also assumed minimal growth in fiscal year 23 and 24 and that is because we have the benefit of the federal stimulus monies in those years so year 2025 i bumped it to a three percent increase in expenses i also assumed that we would move to the model uh the kashic model plan by year 2025 across the board and i assumed we'd have new debt payments for 2025. so the reason we are discussing a referendum for may is because we have debt that is expiring we see a drop up in in year 24 25 so you always want to plan
037so that you have new debt so that you don't see a sudden shift and it will impact the taxpayer so it's very important that we plan so that it's stable so this shows that first debt payment which is unknown but it's assuming it in year 2025 and we've talked about that with our financial these preliminary discussions but we'll continue to talk about that as we go through the referendum process the capital planning process so are there any questions about any of the assumptions that are included i mean i know that we during the audit process we had talked about how we were over the four percent allowable and it appears that we will continue to be over the next four years and what's the plan for that um you know are we are we planning
038to [Music] find anything to get back to where we should or need to be what are the implications if we're not at the allowable so so if if we fund the 1.5 to the capital reserve i'm estimating that we would still be at about six and a half percent so we most of our reserves are underfunded so there's plenty of choices for us um but i would say we need to monitor this year where we are we have certain expenses that we know are over over budget not able to fully grasp breakage just yet we've got to get the rest of these grants approved to see where we're going to end up and then reevaluate so once we get a better handle on this year maybe we could fund the capital reserve a little bit
039more than the 1.5 the next priority is ers and trs um followed by eblar which is our retirement we use that for our retirement incentive so those are the top four priorities so we have plenty plenty of needs for sure yeah so um i i didn't want to make the recommendation to be at four percent and one felt swoop because i think that would be irresponsible honestly at this point so we would take a look at how we progress this year and how we continue to progress and then make some recommendations um at the end of next year or even over the summer early fall so really the likelihood of getting to 2025 and still being over the fourth or at six percent i know are we hoping to that the legislators continue the discussion
040about increasing the four percent four percent is ridiculous it's not even amongst regulations but totally agree right so you know i feel like the question needs to be yeah yeah i'm sure yeah so i mean they were talking about it a year ago i haven't heard any buzz but so it's going to be easier to move the money into a reserve than to fund up to whatever they if they let us you know increase thank you sorry so for now for now i'm leaving it at six and a half do i think we'll end up there no and it's our responsibility to show that we are taking steps to get towards right where right so the first step is capital reserve yes and then we'll monitor this year see how we're progressing and then make
041an important decision a little bit later in the year that's the recommendation okay is there anything that you want me to change any assumptions that you think that are unrealistic or not in line now for budget goals we have to talk about this i need to know this now before we get into the budget process i'm assuming that we want to stay within the tax cap we don't we're not looking to exceed the tax cap so that's the first thing yes all right foundation aided covered i hope they fully fund that that would be a beautiful thing we want to continue on the zero-based budget approach and the roi process yes it was a great time sure well i mean i feel like you might be a little bit you know might feel easier there's
042well i think it's important for us to reflect on the process to see i mean last year was the first year that we even attempted to do something this drastic and i think you know i i think that it's a good idea for us to move forward i don't know how many of that else feels but i like the idea of the return on investment and to you know it keeps us in check so yeah it makes great business sense and you know you have to work for it you're not just entitled to it okay no and it's the fair discussion that just because something's good it's not whether it's good or not it's whether it's better than something else obviously can't afford everything um so we're going to operate at a break even so
043try not to use any fund balance or reserves yes yes okay all right perfect okay and just a reminder we do have contracts ending so we have csca ending this year and cpa ending this year as well so what i'll do with the long range plan is i will remove the word draft it will be included uh under the report section for you to approve it i'll have a handout for the audience and then it'll be posted to the website so those are the next steps so since uh facilities uh were mentioned i do just want to let you know that between the last board meeting and this one we have met with all five uh building committees along with csr and representatives from turner and we did have para members on all of all
044of the all of the committees cs arch now needs to do a few revisiting walkthroughs based on the discussion and that and then we start to take this information and pull it together into a five-year plan um having representatives from the different um building committees uh from on a committee as a whole a facilities committee but i did want to let you know those five meetings did happen is it safe to assume that each of those committees were provided the same similar information that we were given each of those committees who provided this same level and then outside of the voting condition survey there were conversations that were revisited about some of the others that had been mentioned both pre and now uh you know with some lessons learned through uh comic and so those
045were discussed too i mean i think there was a real emphasis and discussion on health and safety knowing those priorities the amounts were there but also knowing that in some areas some of the others are things that could potentially be needed to move the education program forward so after the the revisits by cs arch and getting back to the building principles that's when we will pull everyone together we'll share all the information along the way thank you um and then talking about budget stacy wow i know we um we uh mr martinelli shared the needs assessment with middle school teacher leaders yesterday we'll be sharing them with the high school teacher leaders and the other departments for them to look at at their december 9th staff development day with the due date to us for
046december 15th and then beginning in january um we'll have our meetings with the departments and the building leadership teams and and starting our our process and then the building leadership teams are scheduled to come and uh present to you um in january the wishlist meeting well they're gonna actually they're gonna thank you okay um do we have any board discussion of any of the agenda items the only thing i wanted to point out was succeed and that is the following committees for the board of education um we have mr jackson who has thankfully volunteered to participate in the facilities um i wanted to just give an opportunity for the rest of the board you know as some folks were not here last time um if you are interested in the facilities committee there's obviously still
047room to be able to attend parts of state so if there's any interest um you know we can always have that at a later meeting if you should decide or if you decide right now that you'd like to be on it um we can certainly add that to the agenda as well so just wanted to point that that one piece out i already know you're doing good we appreciate it you've got a wonderful i just wanted to thank uh we're reporting some coaches and there's several unpaid assistants that uh expressed our appreciation for volunteers and i guess they actually need the same credentials as the cultures right training um so we appreciate our volunteers okay and i also just wanted to point out i had this on a different part of the agenda but we
048are approving the first reading of the 9206 uh personnel uh policy and so uh that again was just an adjustment in boarding um removed occupational and physical therapists just because you don't employ them as district employees anymore and then adjusted recorded to uh include some of the language that was left out of the last time that we approved that policy so just wanted to mention that during uh this portion because we will be accepting the first read within within the consent agenda otpg are covered under cta not 9206. okay is there any community discussion of agenda items okay saying the motion at the board of education about the following resolutions of the november 17 2021 agenda 6 8 through d 7 a through j and 9am [Music] yes okay i also just wanted to um
049thank uh hannaford for their uh donation from hanford health schools um it'll be used for the pbis committee so thank you to hannaford for that um we also had um some discussed discussion about foreign policy review we had our first policy committee meeting which was fantastic as you could probably imagine we reviewed some of the agenda within the workshop the discussions that we had about the board policies when we have the workshop and some of those updates so we will be uh putting uh some of that information out on the next meeting just minor updates adding um you know instead of saying that the responsibility of the first president says we're president orthogonal mr jackson for that um because i couldn't come up with the thought in my brain at the time uh but then
050also we had discussed uh approving a change to our minutes um policy 2360. in discussion at the policy committee we decided that maybe necessarily isn't a policy and maybe we just instead say within the policy to refer to the to the procedure and so um within that discussion we have asked that we develop a procedure for our minutes and what what those actually look like as far as the breakdown of information conversations that we've had during the meeting just to identify um to on paper uh when we approve our meeting minutes um that discussions were had and you know potential resolutions and or follow-up on certain dates um to be reflected within our meeting minutes so we didn't actually um amend the policy itself other than to say to refer to the procedure so just
051wanted to clarify that and follow follow up on those conversations as well any questions okay um any other comments from court members and any other items not really did you agenda yeah so um i was uh at a um the drama club booster club meeting uh the other day um i did send a peggy an email asking about some of the restrictions that they placed on us that don't seem to be in line with what some of the schools are doing and there's a couple of things that i didn't quite say so i was just gonna ask stacey uh so obtaining money from the uh from the drama club funds and this is this money belongs to the drama but it doesn't belong to the school at all the process that was described to me
052seems shockingly inefficient and doesn't seem to it doesn't seem like it's going to work for the way that the drama club has to do business in respect to things like buying clothing building sets that kind of thing can you just explain the process so if we needed 300 to go to home depot what would we have to do exactly and how fast could we get that check right now basically as it was described to me it had to be exactly itemized exactly what you're buying how much it was going to be no leeway for anything and the process could take up to three weeks so now for money that isn't doesn't belong to the district it belongs to the drama club itself so why does it take so long so unfortunately one quick clarification this
053is the drama club money not a separate booster club no this is this is drama club yes just want to make sure so extra classroom funds you remember that there was a gatsby change and we had to change how we do extra classroom activities right and our treasurer now the district treasurer of the treasury clubs um so this is our first year um with the business office being they about which the business office obviously there's a scrutiny right so this is the first year of our involvement so i'll tell you what's required so what is required per sed for the extra classroom pamphlet number two that hasn't been changed in probably 15 years is if you're going to purchase something you can do it on a reimbursement basis but that's not the preferred method because
054that puts the it puts everybody at risk especially if you're talking about high volumes of money so that's the least preferred method you can do that but it's not preferred we've done it a few times already so the preferred method is that you have an authorized vendor we use the same financial software that the district uses it's in a separate fund but we use the same financial software we we follow the same schedule as accounts payable so one week it's a payroll schedule the next week it's an accounts payable schedule so that's provided in advance so that we're expected to follow those schedules because there's separation at duties without me getting into a lot of scrutiny it also is subject to the claims audit process so it has to follow the business office protocol and
055then it has to go through the audit process and then once it goes to the audit process then we can give them a lovely check um so actually the advisor asked me send me an email today to see if he could meet with me so right and i said i'd meet with him tomorrow on friday but so if they need to go to home depot we have an account at home default so they could go online and go into a cart and put the monies in the cart electronically they'd give that to accounts payable they'd actually give it to the auditor the the building auditor first and then they put it in a file that's shared with the business office it goes to accounts payable she can process a check so it's scheduled so it's
056usually a two-week turnaround can we do it quicker than that yes okay but shouldn't be all the time should things should be planned out things should be so so this is what i'm asking though but so we go on to home depot we get lumber i don't know if you've seen the prices of lumber right now yeah it's bonkers and it changes daily also when you're doing things like building a set you know you get eight two by fours and everyone knows it's you know measure twice cut once but if somebody measures you know measures once and cuts twice we need some you know think things change like that yeah and i'm worried that this is going to mean that it just becomes so time consuming to do something like this that we're not going
057to really want to do it anymore the people that are running this i mean the amount of time that we're asking to put into this is is phenomenal for what could be a massive turnaround for something that we can't even get because then the numbers have changed at the end and then thing you know a lot of stuff can make it sounds like impulse buys but we see a bunch of you know satin shirts that you know somebody might want to wear you know at a consignment store that we like to go and get but you know you know we can't do a two-week turnaround time so they'll be gone in 20 minutes or something like that so i was wondering is there is there a way that we can talk and streamline because the
058the current like blanket that we're using for all these extra particular activities isn't really working certainly for drama but is there a way to look at this and maybe streamline it so that this can happen faster and that the kids and can get to their own money faster because this is their money this is this isn't disrespectful we're having to follow all these district protocols i'm not so sure that the process is the only step that was added is so the treasurer used to be at the school level so i assume there was still a schedule that was followed i'm not sure how maybe maybe they could get a check in the same day but it was a person that was teaching full-time so i'm not i'm not sure how the turnaround time um the
059audit is the new step in the process um really they're using the same vendors um but it seems like we didn't have these problems when we haven't obviously we did the frozen show but then the seniors didn't get their show there was nothing done last year we're coming back into it it seems like a lot of extra steps in there a lot of things have changed that are making it because it's the same people that are involved and it seems like it's all now taking to the point where it's almost impossible the these shows are going to be able to continue on this on this schedule you haven't had the meeting yet correct i haven't and this is this is the only club that seems to have experienced an issue so well i was going
060to say too i think it's important to you know note too that there's there's a lot of different clubs right and so this is what i'm saying so when you do things like you sign so we we know that the football team is going to need helmets pads shirts when they follow the accounts payable process the same exact process right but when you sign for a show first of all you you know you have to you have to buy the rights to it and then there are certain things that they say have to be in it if it's a if it's a prop in the show you can't say oh this is just the middle school so we're not going to have this palm tree you have to have it so the clubs they can
061purchase off of amazon that's that process hasn't changed so there's a district account that it follows so they have the flexibility to purchase uh through amazon which is convenient so i i think i need to sit down with the advisor and talk about what exactly the issues are this we have the fun training in the fall every year with our internal auditor there's certain forms that are required to be filled out so there's a budget there's a budget there's a plan for fundraising there's a plan for expenses there's a plan to have certain activities and whether they're going to be a profit or at a loss none of that has changed none of that is new um really the only thing that is new is instead of the check being cut from the central treasure
062at the school level it's now being cut at the business office level um and there's there is there's a schedule and there's an audit process so right historically they weren't audited and we've had issues where procedures aren't being followed so if the business office if our name if my treasurer's name is going out of check it's going to follow all the protocols right so is more that's involved and that's why we added um two audit positions to basically to feed the liaison at the building level to the business office so that's a new position so there's going to be growing pains because of the gasby changes the business office didn't want to take this on i just want to make that crystal clear you're running around just trying to get because everything has been consolidated
063and going through the district the district funds you know process now right where you know as a booster club you have if you have a checkbook you just write the check right you know that's not necessarily you know that you're tax exempt or all these things so the good thing i'm hearing is you've brought up a concern and you've agreed to already have a meeting and hopefully we can address it and it sounds to me like this one um club may be an anomaly within you know the greater umbrella of clubs the unfortunate pieces are we are health of certain regulations and laws that we have to follow and you know with growing pains at least we have flexibility and people willing to to talk about these things and try to do good things for
064kids and so when we sat down with the with the auditors the two new audit physicians we specifically said all right we're going to have growing pants we'll meet again later on in the year and talk about lessons learned and how we can improve things so um this is the first club but i'm sure it won't be the last club that has a problem we talked about uh prom will likely have some because of the way that they do business basically they may have like an emergency purchase something that's unscheduled so historically they haven't had to deal with segregation and duties but we do in the business office so that's that's part of the the growing pain certainly is not just one person can kind of check in the business office there's all these separate
065pieces it's three basically so three people need to be involved and then it's the it's the new audit process and if we could also discuss so i know that some of your other questions uh revolved around some of the coveted limitations that were put on the drama club because they are following the three feet social distancing and limiting sharing of materials um so i did have a conversation and we are also reaching out to see what other other districts are doing and i spoke with the advisor he is ordering flare masks not shields right okay um and i know that in terms of the sharing of materials he felt that um it was solved by having the oompa loompas distributed materials i'm not i'm not um but so um but we're we're going to actually
066continue talking later later this week i did look into into some of that and we're going to talk about how you know that you know there are uh very brief periods that you can you know be closer than three feet we have to be mindful of all the quarantine protocols but we did start that discussion and uh we're going to we're going to continue it so i think the great thing is that we can have one that we can have a drummer production this year so that right now yeah yeah that's really a good thing so but i do i do respect with pete sagar writes an enormous amount of work so it's it's astounding to me that we're able to get that level of volunteer service to actually make those sense and it's a
067it's a ton of work it's a ton of time so we want to show our write a few appreciation and make it as easy as we can i understand stacy's position because the rules have changed yeah unfortunately yeah i was just trying to work out what what the process was and if there's a way around yourself i'm sure there's always a way to figure it out and follow the rules no worries anything else from any other board member um just one quick question how do we feel heading into winter with basically the equipment and current staffing levels um is for a snow removal removal okay oh yeah so i'm scared there's no snow [Music] um we're um we're actually meeting i'd love to always say we're meeting but really these are plans we're meeting on
068um tuesday to talk about how to um you know make sure that we're um recruiting and not just in the in the cleaner department but substitutes and floaters etc um you know for other for other areas as well in terms of so if everyone is in and in place that's the big question these these days too you know in terms of knowing if new facilities was interviewing several they actually received several applications that are good news so hopefully we'll have some substitutes uh that we can uh appoint the next time we meet and try to try some of these folks out and some runs and let's see if they have some um some great candidates maybe so we're hopeful yeah so he's scared mr martinelli just said he knows he's trained i'm trained on the
069district snowblower [Laughter] we've been using some other uh tools and uh that we haven't in the past and we're at work we're also um that's part of tuesday's discussion um talking about how can we have uh like a local like uh alcohol type job fair you know for the district um so we we understand we need to um look at uh and reach out in some different ways than we might have in the past so that's part of our discussion too i always like the community connection so i think that's you know a great way to start um you know proposing some sort of job fair whatever what do these positions look like when they come out or you know what what type of roles would you would you call them and now that uh
070um mary beth galerno has joined us as our um you know communication specialist um you know we post on our employment page but um what you had just said what does the job entail that's perfect i mean we put job descriptions for um new types of positions but it would be a good time to you know want to sit down for all yes so maybe you want to think about having somebody available to talk to parents during card conferences kind of an in-house hey what are you doing for eight hours and we found you when the principals put the physicians on the disc on their pta facebook pages that also that's very helpful too so as far as equipment and follow-up would you like us to report back maybe you know as far as i
071was i'm not sure where you were going with the equipment piece i just wanted to make sure that we were comfortable that we had everything we needed things were running well everything's prepped and ready we didn't run into any supply chain issues if it's just an email update right now i meet with him on fridays he hasn't brought anything to my attention i know we receive our salt from the city but i know he was ordering a little bit of a reserve for us to have in-house so i know the salt he was preparing for but i'll ask him about if there's any equipment failures um i'll ask him about that we can include it we meet every friday so thank you well as we talk about cold weather i just want to give a
072huge shout out to the teachers and staff at harmony hill along with some of our high school kids who jumped in the freezing cold water but lake church last saturday just raised money for special olympics they were one of the top school-based teams and i had a lot of fun a lot of support so i'm gonna give a huge shout-out great work any comments from the public yes ma'am um i just wanted to share some of what's going on with the holiday hope program and the social workers are working with those bridges in a partnership to provide some support to families around the holiday season um so i just wanted to let you know we currently have about 120 families sign up for holiday health and 55 that we are helping out with thanksgiving baskets
073specifically to be distributed next week i'm guessing monday or tuesday i would like to do a couple extra thank yous to the united church of cohos the co-host fire department and the coast police department for really supporting especially our thanksgiving program um the need was greater i think than it has been in the past so that's it's been a huge help and we really appreciate that i also want to thank the sons of american legion post 1450 and bob keith who's one of our teachers who always has secured a very generous donation from them to support all of our holiday projects so the right now we're focusing on thanksgiving and the further holidays we'll be focusing on you know after thanksgiving so i just wanted to let you know that that's going on and if
074anybody has questions about that to check in with your local social worker or data students and we're all here to help you can i just have a question about that sure yes so i think this is a wonderful program you know something that we talk about every year and i know that there's increasing need it seems you know each year that it gets more and more so and i'm just curious if there is a way um that folks out there if they if they wanted to participate or contribute towards is there an avenue that you know maybe they're not a family member or somebody that has a child in school that would like to contribute um is there an avenue that that they would be able to contact someone yeah i think either reaching out
075to a building principal or the school social worker if you're not sure who the building principle is um by email and then any of the building principles or certainly district administration can point you in the right direction um but do we have a fund established or what is it helpful like not a district um that has that they take monetary donations as well as um toys and things like that um actual holiday toys you know christmas toys things like that can can be brought to any of the buildings but it's always nice to check in with the building social workers too because we do have a lot of items for little kids little kids and we're looking for more things for the bigger kids um you know which is sometimes they're like gift cards and
076things like that so i'd be happy to field any questions from from any okay so we can on a personal level make donations you can make donations okay yes all right because i haven't had that question yes also um back um a couple of months ago i believe this person's on the idea i don't know but um somebody had put on facebook they were looking for um thanksgiving dinners to be donated to a family so i signed up to donate a whole dinner like the turkey they have a list of things and i never i can't remember who posted that i know it was somebody from my common council or somebody involved in the community i mean it wasn't somebody it wasn't somebody just trying to scam people it was a reputable person and which
077is why i respond because i i knew of that person but i don't know whatever happened to that and i was wondering if anybody contacted collaboration was there a contact uh through you or social worker or principal do you know anything about ipa is what what's the idea well it's it's a industrial development association in cohost you know there's the common council there's the ida um and i believe this person was on the ida but um i don't know what happened to that and i haven't seen anything since and i mean it was very easy i feel to get 20 turkey dinners donated i will be happy to take your donated turkey dinner because i could still use some more well it was going to it was going to you know one of our family
078yeah exactly so i just wondered if i would not see this question is also our liaison with the city as well so you know yeah we can ask laura because she's also on the idea i and i'm not i mean don't quote me this person is involved i'm not saying this person is on the idea but is involved somehow in our city um to have put that up and then it kind of disappeared i'm like well i know i was the first one to respond to that you know and i had asked and it was public it was on facebook i had asked it wouldn't you rather the money or the dinner and they wanted the dinner you know which i get and then they don't have to do the shopping but you want the
079dinner so people know is that we've always said our holiday hope store at the library which is currently obviously under reconstruction renovation repair um so it's going to be at the coho senior center this year um and again more to follow once we get past thanksgiving and do you have a list of things you want for that democrat i mean i think honestly i think it would be i can figure out a dinner maybe us to distribute some information whether that you know through the community or through facebook or just details on you know how to contact and even you know maybe establishing an email that's called you know helpful or something you know whatever you know that there's somewhere to filter information from facebook page okay yeah but people i i didn't know that
080right you know people don't know it's called that um somehow through the district facebook page because i could get 20 people right now to donate dinners i mean you know what i'm saying but nobody knows how to go about doing that and there's christmas coming too they need dinner then too you know besides the gifts i mean i i'm you know with the fire and i know what they're doing yeah um that you know that's unclear but i just i don't think people know i mean i feel like you could you guys do some great work and you know we'd love to support your great work and i know that there's a lot of members in the community that we talk to on a daily basis that like to hear the good things that are
081happening in the school district and want to know ways to participate so absolutely yeah i think that um thank you very much for the information and i hope that we hear more from you soon any other uh comments or questions from the community okay so um with that uh dates for future meetings december 1st and december 15th right here in the lgi room again a reminder this is a public meeting and also a live stream at 6 00 pm and okay i just like to get a motion to end the meeting at 7 22 pm sure one second hey this is gary yeah mr pascal yes mr jackson yes this is dionne yeah mr emily yes mrs snyder yes mrs gillard yes thank you all for attending have a great night you