001i think so i don't know i don't know i think so i think software okay call the meeting to order at 6 32 pm and we will open with the pledge to the united states of flag and to the republic from which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay there were agenda updates you guys all saw that this afternoon all right we will open with privilege of the floor i'm going to do a quick read of policy 1510 regular board meetings and rules public expression the board encourages public participation at board meetings during a specific portion of the agenda entitled privilege of the four public comment the public comment section is not the time or place to register complaints about individuals or items that have not first been
002addressed through the proper channels with those closest to the issue such as the teacher a building principal the superintendent or other appropriate party individuals making statements during privilege of the floor are expected to be courteous and respectful modeling for our students how one can participate and have their voice heard in situations where there is an agreement or disagreement with others views if members of the public have gone through the proper channels and still wish to discuss a matter with the board they can submit their comments in writing to the board clerk at its discretion the board may invite visitors into meetings to participate in the board discussion of matters on the agenda the public comments section is an opportunity for residents and residents only to address the board of education public comment should take place
003only in the portion of the agenda designated this is usually at the beginning of each meeting persons wishing to address the board must indicate their desire to speak in advance on the sign-in sheet because the board typically has many business items on its agenda speakers must confine their comments to three minutes the board will not address specific questions or comments but may ask for your name and contact information in the event follow-up is necessary the board will not permit in public session discussion involving individual personnel or students pers excuse me persons wishing to discuss matters involving individual personnel or students should present their comments or concerns to the superintendent who will share them with the board at the next executive session that includes any uh comments or gestures alluding to anything as well about we
004appreciate keeping information about individuals out of this meeting okay i think cliff you are the cliff bradshaw is the first indicated solution to speak all right looking back on their last nine months august 17th of last year the school board chose to ignore vast public outcry from concerned waynesburg residents against the force masking of our children and voted unanimously to require mass for the all unvaccinated dcs students under a moderate transmission rate the result was children who didn't mask up were isolated and pressured to mask up and covet still covadomicron's variants still spread throughout the school on december 14 2021 the board school uh school board meeting after hearing many complaints public outcry from dwinnesburg residents superintendent nina meyer declared that parents can opt out op their children out of future equity related events my
005wife and i made two attempts to formally opt our children our child out of any all equity school activities on one on january 22nd the other on january 23 of this year in both instances our opt-out request was denied by superintendent nina meyer and principal marvin on january 18 2022 board of education meeting numerous pleas from hundreds of concerned waynesburg residents asking this board to work together to find a better solution that than that of indoctrinating dcs students in equity social emotional learning crt were again ignored instead our school board voted unanimously 7-0 and passed a dei policy which is a subtle approach to indoctrinating students in marxist socialist ways march 8 2022 board of education meeting it was brought to the school for its attention that superintendent nedermeyer allowed all allowed our dcs students
006eighth grade enough to be exposed to a radical activist with anti-police views via may 25 2021 student equity summit an invest investigation into this allegation was requested in this school board found nothing wrong with super superintendent needlemeyer's behavior in a letter dated april 13 2022 our superintendent informed me that the pedophilophilia grooming theme book lawn boy boys removal request i submitted was denied no dwaynesburg school leader and certainly no one sitting around this table lifted a single finger in an attempt to get this harmful adult book out of our school library i have many more examples where i have asked this school board to work with me in the community to create a safer environment for all dcs students all my requests were denied not a single school board member showed any sign of willingness
007to work with me it's time for a positive change into waynesburg starting with the school board superintendent needlemeyer the waynesburgh board of education you have been served thank you very much uh ava sanchez if you could respond to me in an email that would be appreciated um i wanted to discuss policy number 3430 regarding dei um there are a couple of words that are concerning within this policy and it's the words intentional and unintentional so to read from that it says discrimination and marginalization of any people or groups of people whether intentional or not have no place in our schools or district or community so regarding our children if a child let's say who's in kindergarten unintentionally says a remark that may be inappropriate will that child be punished for or disciplined for those words
008so what is the disciplinary action if a child or student goes against this policy because that is not stated in this policy and i also wanted to know i do go to quaker street bible church and they have been trying to restart the early release program and i was wondering if that will be restarting either towards for the rest of this year beginning of next year and that's all i have thank you thank you good evening in a june 1967 interview with nbc news dr martin luther king said it's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps but it's a cruel jest to say a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps that so much energy has been spent on unconscionable drivel related to the
009opposition of dei policy is a true sin in this community while countless hours are spent responding to complaints of based in falsehoods slander against teachers attempts to remove individuals from their posts simply for doing their job immediate issues like the lack of appropriate functional tables in our elementary school art room go unattended in conversations tonight about the forthcoming school year budget i hope that the entire dwaynesburg community can come together to recognize the true injustices happening in our school individual teachers should not be paying out of pocket for supplies and infrastructure money should not be diverted to battling vicious attacks against our teachers and our school administrators i would appreciate receipt of information regarding how much of dr nader myers and mr rievenberg's salaries are spent responding to community vitriol and individual foil requests that
010are made without meaning or merit those funds should instead be put towards ensuring that every teacher staff member and student can walk into our school building and know they are safe free of prejudicial judgment and able to receive the resources they need to thrive and become thoughtful compassionate and productive members of society once they graduate from our district as dr king also said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and i hope in attending our attendance tonight can pause and reflect on the over and implicit ways that they continue to breed injustice in our school and community thank you dr nedermeier and the board of education members for your time hard work and opportunity to speak tonight thank you there is no additional individuals who indicated they'd wish to speak public comments so we
011will close public comment and move on to the superintendent status report and update so there are very few things that i'm sentimental about um but ten year appointments is one of them and so it's my pleasure tonight to recommend four you might want to get closer to the mic sorry thank you so i'm going to recommend four people for tenure tonight but before i do that i want to talk a little bit about what it means to be tenured it's a really important step milestone in an educator's life and i think that it deserves some recognition in time so before we go on to talk about what tenure means i just want to say that that making recommendations for what's essentially a career-length appointment for teachers is very important these people have uh a great
012deal of impact on the students that are gonna come in front of them and we know that and we don't take that for granted and we don't take it lightly so it requires an awful lot of trust from the community and from the rest of the staff to work with these folks this is a beautiful community when you look around this community it's sometimes i guess overwhelming how beautiful it truly is this is a picture from chrisman sanctuary which i think is really pretty but really you can drive anywhere in our community and see the pride that people have in the town and also just the natural wonder that we have around us so this is a great place to work it's a great place to go to school and so i think that those
013are important things to remember when you're thinking about appointing somebody you know for the rest of their career so when we look at tenure appointments um it's important to know that teachers are first not automatically appointed to tenure they have generally probationary periods of four years three if you've had 10 years someplace before and so you have to work four years and at our school that means you have been evaluated formally multiple times so in four years you've been evaluated formally at least 12 times and not only that but also you have a lot of opportunity for people to come in and out of your classroom so at a small district like this it's it's definitely enough time to really get to know folks and tenure should it be an automatic so it shouldn't be
014something that people just get because they've managed to hang around for four years it should be something that people have earned so um like i said we have a pretty rigorous uh annual professional performance review plan and uh pretty rigorous evaluations that include observations and when we're looking at observations when we go into teachers classrooms we look at lots of different things so we're looking at how they can plan and prepare for their classes we look at how they respond to different professional responsibilities like communicating with parents and also doing their grades on time giving feedback to kids we look at their instruction in the classroom and whether or not they have all the goods when it comes to standing in front of a group full of kids and making them pay attention to you
015we also look at their ability to have a productive classroom environment so can they manage a class in is the classroom a place where learning is definitely the central focus they're also evaluated on student performance so how do their students do on standardized tests how do their students do in their classes so tenured teachers so it's a it's a new york state law that teachers who are tenured earn the right to keep their jobs free from discipline and dismissal except for just cause proven in a due process hearing so it's a serious deal to remove a teacher who's tenured it involves basically a trial and so they get a lot of due process in order to keep their jobs and it's very expensive for a school district to go through this kind of process and
016so for that reason the probationary period is something that is really formal and is really rigorous tenured teachers have to demonstrate to their principals that they have mastered all of the different aspects of being a teacher they can't just be a good teacher in front of a classroom but a lousy planner somebody who's not very responsible they can't just be somebody who can manage a class but just doesn't have the the teaching skills they have to be mastery prove mastery at all levels and so tonight the folks that i am i'm going to read some statements about each of them and hopefully embarrass the ones that are here and i think all of them are here and that's fun for me i don't know if it's fun for them but i think it's important to
017recognize just what they have to do in order to be recommended for this kind of responsibility so the first person that i'm going to talk about is daniel schneible who is here with us today ms schneible is an exemplary special education practitioner she has extensive knowledge of special education instruction and its relationship to other disciplines ms schneible organizes her classroom so that all students can learn she maximizes instructional time and fosters respectful interactions with and among students ensuring that students find the classroom a safe place to take intellectual risks students themselves make a substantive contribution to the effective functioning of the class by assisting with classroom procedures ensuring effective use of physical space and supporting the learning of classmates ms schneible students are highly engaged in learning they make significant contributions to the success of
018the class through participation in high-level discussions in active involvement in their learning and learning of others ms schneible's expectations are clear and invite student intellectual engagement her feedback is specific to learning goals and rubrics and offers concrete suggestions for improvement as a result students understand their progress in learning the content and can explain what they need to do in order to improve mishnibal has high ethical standards and a deep sense of professionalism she assumes leadership roles in both school and district projects and engages in a wide range of professional development activities to strengthen her practice she is focused on improving her own teaching and supporting the ongoing learning of her colleagues she has developed professional developments for both faculty and staff ms schneible is also pursuing certification in education leadership to improve her practice during
019her tenure here ms schneible has served as the coordinator of the pbis and rti programs next year she will serve the district in the key role of csc chairperson ms schneible has been a strong addition to the special education department and the school district as a whole danielle would you stand so that we could recognize you the next person is kendra shadina mishadina has extensive knowledge of her content area and her students she maximizes instructional time and fosters respectful interactions with and among students ensuring that students find the classroom a safe place to take intellectual risks students themselves make substantive contributions to the class by assisting with classroom procedures and supporting each other students in michigan work in ways that demonstrate their belief that hard work will result in higher levels of learning student behavior
020is consistently appropriate and michigan's handling of infractions is subtle preventative and respectful of students dignity mischadina's students make significant contributions to the success of the class through participation in high-level discussions and active involvement in their learning students understand their progress in learning the content and can explain the learning goals and what they need to do in order to improve ms shadina demonstrates high ethical standards and a deep sense of professionalism focused on improving her own teaching and supporting the ongoing learning of her colleagues her record-keeping systems are efficient and effective and she communicates with families clearly and frequently mishadena has taken on multiple leadership roles here within the district she has served as the student council advisor for two years she's been a pbis committee member and an rti coordinator in addition to these leadership
021roles miss shadina has served on the building leadership team social committee and has assisted with training staff she is innovative and enthusiastic and her instruction is engaging and student-centered in short miss shadina is a role model for teachers in our district could you stand kendra so that we can recognize you the next person i'd like to recognize is katie wilson who's just come from a softball game miss wilson has extensive knowledge of the physical education content area and measures her students learning to align with the curriculum she enables students to demonstrate their understanding in more than one way something essential in physical education the tone set by miss wilson in her classroom results in an environment where all students feel valued and are comfortable taking risks she's able to manage relationships with students and ensures
022that relationships among students are positive and supportive during observations it appears as though students are encouraged to contribute to the success of the class through participation miss wilson's feedback is specific to learning goals and she offers concrete suggestions for improvement as a result students understand their progress in learning the content and can explain the learning goals and what they need to do in order to improve miss wilson has a high level of ethical standards and a deep sense of professionalism she's focused on improving her own teaching and supporting the ongoing learning of her colleagues miss wilson has taken a leadership role within the athletic department by serving as our athletic director this year and she's engaged in pursuing her leadership certification to strengthen her practice in addition she has participated in the wellness committee for
023four years the middle school summer enrichment program and has coached modified boys soccer modified softball modified girls basketball jv softball and varsity softball which she's just coming from uh because she looks mortified and that's fun for me katie can you please stand up so we can all recognize you and last but not least isabel kalyn kaelin mrs kalin's plans plans and prepares for lessons using her extensive knowledge of the spanish content her instructional design includes learning activities that are well sequenced and require all students to think problem solve and inquire mrs kalin manages relationships with students and ensures that relationships among students are positive and supportive mrs kalin creates an environment of respect and rapport in her classroom by the numerous ways she interacts with students and by the interactions she encourages and cultivates among
024students classroom interactions between mrs kalin and her students are highly respectful reflecting genuine warmth caring and sensitivity to students as individuals the tone set by mrs kalin in her classroom results in an environment where all students feel valued and are comfortable taking intellectual risks during observations it appears that students are highly engaged in learning students often make significant contributions to the success of the class through participation in high-level discussions and active involvement in their own learning in the learning of others mrs kalin's explanations are clear and invite students to engage intellectually in the content as a result of mrs kailyn delivering her instructions students understand their progress and can explain the learning goals and what they need to do in order to improve i hope you're sensing a theme in what we're looking for mrs
025kaelin demonstrates her passion for teaching in various ways during mrs kaitlyn's time at dcs she has enhanced the college-level spanish classes she's incorporated cultural crafts music and dance into her lessons in addition mrs kalin integrated spanish culture into our school with school-wide activities for example dia de los muertos and hispanic heritage month student interest has grown resulting in an enhanced number of students who enroll in these classes mrs kalin has also offered her spanish expertise to her colleagues and students and to her superintendent uh she has been key to the enhancement of our load program mrs kalin has been willing to help out wherever she is needed and supports our students she has served on the wellness committee and is pursuing a spanish club mrs kalin is a team player and a positive role model
026for students and teachers alike isabel would you stand so we can recognize you these folks are great teachers and they're great people and it was an extraordinarily easy decision this year to grant them all tenure so i hope that the board will join me in appointing them to tenu i just wanted to talk about a couple of other things i did want to recognize the fact that we've announced our valedictorian and salutatorian so jessica archambault and bailey grineer have been recognized for that and so we'll be recognizing them and hopefully they'll be speaking at graduation yes and we'll also be recognizing them in our newsletter at the end of the year but those ladies are to be congratulated for their exemplary achievements i also wanted to announce another thing that we started doing last year
027with the end of the year newsletter that you all received at your houses so we recognize that there's lots of different ways that students can be successful in school and we want to make sure that our graduates don't just strive for the highest grades but also strive to gain some of the skills that we teach them throughout our curriculum and so last year i asked the teachers to identify the outcomes that they would expect to see in a highly successful dwaynesburg graduate and so we spend some time looking through all the different soft skill things that we teach kids and what we landed on after a process was four things the first one is critical thinking which is defined up there the second one is resilience the third one is compassion and the fourth one
028is self-direction so all of these things rose to the top because they're all things that we would expect all of our graduates to have by the time that they graduate and so we decided to do last year and what we'll continue to do is to recognize outstanding seniors who possess these traits and who serve as examples of each one of these things so we had a nomination process where faculty could suggest the seniors who best fit these traits and then we voted on those nominees and it's my pleasure to also recognize those folks so we have daniel van buren for critical thinking and mia myers for compassion and diana issa for self-direction and for resilience cora schultz and so these are students who are exemplary in different ways other than the ways that the valedictorian
029and salutatorian are exemplary although those two folks are also awesome people who possess these qualities as well so we'll also be including little profiles about them in our end of the year newsletter so that we can learn more about them but those folks are to be congratulated too and the last thing that i wanted to say before i turn things back over is just that i had an exceptional day today in a cave with a bunch of sixth graders um so i just wanted to thank polly benjamin and the and also karen hildebrand and the rest of the folks who participated in the planning of a trip to house caverns today it was a very successful trip and a lot of fun i was glad to be involved in that it's always fun to see
030kids out of their element and in echoey caves with a bunch of sixth graders is a good time too so uh thank you very much we will move on to the budget presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions after the completion of the presentation okay uh all right you'll come here so uh tonight's uh presentation can be found also on board docs it's under public documents if anybody's interested in looking at it uh so this is the uh public budget hearing the budget vote is may 17th oh sorry about that all right so so partially working hello hello okay so um uh just wanted to to reiterate something that we've been talking about throughout this entire process which is that um the budget really starts with our strategic plan so the board has
031identified these goals as things that we're working toward so not just academic achievement but also personal development and that's personal development for our students and our staff also making sure that we have safe and inviting facilities and grounds and that we are being fiscally responsible and we're sustainable for the long term we've talked a lot about the kind of planning that goes into these budgets so it's not really just about this year but it's about five years and even 10 years down the road culture is also an important goal that we're seeking to work on and working with partners is another part of what we look to do in our daily activities and then finally improving our communication with the public and internally with staff those are all things that we're trying to do and
032those goals are all in support of our mission which is down at the bottom which is making sure that we're giving kids everything they need to fulfill their dreams and aspirations so i think that's really important that we're doing this for all kids and we're making sure that we're fulfilling their dreams and aspirations and not necessarily our dreams and aspirations for them so i think it's an important distinction okay so uh some of the biggest considerations in building the 22-23 school year budget uh you've seen this slide a few times on our work sessions is that insurance rates are much higher than original uh assumptions they're just that much higher this year they're we're looking at health insurance rates that increased 15 um we're also uh addressing a class sizes concern we're adding that k
033through six uh teacher back in to to address some of the class size concerns uh we've seen some rising fuel costs the cost this year so not only you know heating costs but we also have uh fuel that is uh is getting our buses down the road so propane and unleaded fuel as well as heated fuel all right heating fuel inflation costs have been much higher than desirable on the supply and contractual items so anytime we buy something for uh for educational you know for the classroom or consumables for the schools uh we are seeing those costs rise on a regular basis a lot of times uh many of our quotes will come back and it'll say you know sometimes 30 days or even less that they will be honored so um the the the
034price the prices just keep changing so we don't know where the where the buck stops on that so the board adopted a budget the last time we met or two times ago uh and we uh the the decision was made to uh to add the k-6 teacher to address cohort size needs to continue all academic and extracurricular activities for students so no opportunities will be cut in this budget to refinish the gymnasium floor which uh is in dire need of being of being addressed uh it also increases increases uh to address those 15 percent increases for uh for health insurance and it continues to support instructional technology which continues to grow in our classrooms to continue to provide staff development opportunities so we've seen a lot of growth in that and it's it's very much
035needed and then also to address that 20 plus increase in some of the budget lines for heating and vehicle fuel fuel costs so next we'll talk about the revenue side of the budget so first a little breakdown of the state aid i'm just going to throw a couple highlights out at you so um one of the biggest uh good things about the state aid numbers that we're coming back for next year is the foundation and we're seeing that three percent increase like just like we did last year for 21.22 and then moving on down the line we also have uh bow season special services and this is because the district has continued to utilize boces as a uh as a service because we do get aid back on using those services from the state so
036it it benefits us the following year we'll receive we'll receive aid for some of those services that we subscribe to for both season that includes anything from uh sending even from sending kids to uh cte communications things anything that's instructional in the classroom professional development opportunities so those things are all coming back as aid in the following year and then the other thing is uh transportation aid so as our as our costs continue to rise also in uh purchasing buses well we do recognize that we also do get some transportation aid on that as well so when you borrow a bus uh and you uh you pull the debt service out on that it when you pay back i was create a payment plan for a school bus it's five years well the state also
037calculates that five year payback in their state aid plan so overall without the state aid or without the upk considered it's eight million eight hundred and twelve thousand three sixty three and then we also have that upk program which is uh not a part of the general budget which is uh reflected there on the bottom at the eight point nine or 8.9 million so just to look at our tax levy history you've seen this slide when we talked about tax levy in february uh over the past uh five years there six years actually when it going into the sixth year this district has consistently stayed below the cap of uh going out to the public so i'd just like to show to you i i just showed in green what the actual difference would be
038between the cap and the tax levy oh it's okay uh so the past couple years we've had a cap that's pretty high actually 5.11 in 2021 and then uh uh in 2122 we had 4.5 percent both of those years we went out with a 1.9 or 1.95 and we've again reduced it down a little bit by going down to 1.8 percent while our tax is 2.62 our tax cap our tax levy amount would would only amount to 1.8 percent this represents 150 0945 on the on the overall revenue this is just a general look uh just kind of an estimated amount for what folks can see on their uh their household amount for increases so if you have a three hundred thousand dollar house car assessment you're going to see about an annual increase of
039about 97 bucks give or take now these numbers are just an estimate because of course uh these numbers will be determined entirely by or a lot by your uh your assessment values by the town so it all depends on what town you live in as well um so but this is just to kind of give folks a ballpark estimate for what it what it might look like for your taxes for that 1.8 percent increase so uh through this slide in here just to kind of summarize where we are with our tax lobby so why is our tax loving not zero so we are a safe harmless district because we've we've also had some decline enrollment so uh the state has graciously kept our calculation um to still give us state aid and foundation aid so
040if the carpet gets taken out from underneath us there becomes a fiscal cliff and at some point you have to make up for that fiscal cliff if you want to continue providing opportunities for kids so also not not providing not increasing the tax up to the tax cap permanently is lost revenue uh so we've done a very good job at not you know getting up to that tax or to that tax cap and definitely not exceeding that tax cap so um when you go out with zero if i if we uh if we ask the folks to go out with a zero percent increase that's 150 000 that you don't get next year so if you want to continue and also uh so next year it's estimated just looking at trends we may see a
041lower much lower tax cap for next year for 23.24 so if you start to lose that revenue the chart on the bottom kind of reflects where you would be so if you have a zero percent increase on your revenue side you begin to see your expenditures go above your revenues well our district has done a pretty good job at staying at the far left of that lane going out with zero and then zero and then zero could be damaging to uh to providing additional opportunities so jeff so if you're not able to raise revenue so what we're looking at is a future where we may see a decrease in foundation aid so a decrease in state aid if we were to put on top of that a tax cap that is smaller what would that
042mean for our revenue going in the future uh basically a uh as this picture shows is that if you continue to go out with zero there's no way to make up for that for that amount so uh 150 000 for 22.23 you don't get that for 23.24 if the tax cap is say 30 000 or 50 000 you don't get to add that 150 000. without without asking the the public for a super majority vote which means 60 so or the other possibility is to do what with programming to start cutting the on the non-mandated programming so things like athletics things like after school activities programs that are extracurricular those things are all things that you have to consider when it comes to cuts because there's a lot of we have a lot more mandates
043than we do enough mandates last question so uh our bills keep rising right they do so that's pretty common so why do our bills keep getting higher and higher every year why are our expenses higher and higher every year inflation okay and then on top of inflation we also have a good portion of our budget is uh based on contracts right yes that's correct so we are tied to the contracts for um for health insurance for staffing uh for services that we subscribe to so those things are all going to continue to rise so no matter what whether whether we uh whether we increase the budget or not we're still required to make those payments so if we make those payments we start to go under that's all i have for now okay thanks pop
044quiz uh overall look at the uh the revenue summary so the real property taxes uh represents eight million five hundred and thirty six thousand eight hundred and eleven dollars while the state aid uh right there near it is eight eight million eight hundred and twelve thousand three hundred sixty three the the gap in uh and what's what's remaining to make up that 18 million 600 is made up by fund balance and as you can see so we've we've done very well with this district and saving our money um and we'll continue to uh to balance the budget with fund balance so we're looking at 4. 4.98 in use of fund balance from prior year uh to balance that budget and then also a reserve appropriation from ers so that would be the last amount that
045would be uh that would be met if we get up to that eighteen million six hundred thousand what we don't wanna do is overspend that budget so an overall look at the revenue summary so our two largest sources of revenue are between state aid and property taxes so the property taxes and uh state aid has has been for years it's been neck and necks about 45 to 47 or 48 percent between the two of them and they kind of balance each other out and then the other two uh other sources of revenue would be that fund balance and reserves and then other funds such as other collections and medicaid and things like that some of the biggest things again major increases from state aid come from the foundation aid increases of that three percent the
046transportation aid and the boces aid tax levy increasing only the 1.8 percent or 150 while that tax cap was at 219 967. summary of the revenue budget so the state aid is based on the new budget as of april uh april 7th it did come out a little late so we were we were really waiting for that it came out just a couple days before the budget before our board meeting was adopted the state budget presents an accept an acceptable outlook for 2223 and they they it does sound like it could be okay for 23 24. after that uh found or after the federal funds run out for the state uh it's it's very gray as to where that could go where that could lead to us after that foundation aid increases at that 3
047percent total tax levy increase of 1.8 is less than the prior two years and the appropriated fund balance is 4.98 of that budget expenditure side of the budget so this is a summary of all the budget the the budget increases and as you can see in this graph the largest increases come from that medical and benefits side of the budget so the budget would not have increased as much as it did without that that need to to increase it to pay for medical and benefits and fuel costs so the pupil transportation and the operations and maintenance those are those areas where we had to adjust budget lines to uh to increase for fuel costs so between those three categories in the budget they represent more than half of the budgetary increases for 22-23 the instructional
048side of the budget and you'll see in a in a later graph too is that the instructional cited that 31 of the the overall increases is about where it would be normally uh because of contractual obligations that need to be met with staffing and and services that we subscribe to the budget expenses this is an overall look at the uh budget expenses so the instructional uh the instructional portion of the budget is uh 49 of the the overall budget so we're almost you know half of the budget is just instructional and then we have operations and maintenance transfer transportation making up uh not even a quarter of it but and then medical and benefits uh is another is the actual second largest portion of the uh of the budget well debt service and transfers debt
049service uh didn't really change that much this year just because we've it's been a flat year with our borrowing general support has only increased our is only about six six percent of the budget this is also a look at the component side of the budget the three-part budget that we're also required to share this is also in the board docs as well so the uh the program portion of the budget represents almost three-quarters of the actual overall budget well then the capital and administrative uh represent the uh the last quarter and you can see the breakdown there's a description there if you'd like to read it of some of the uh or of the three parts of the actual budget so this is another breakdown on the functions the functions portion of the budget it's
050kind of a a larger portion of what you've seen this that i've shown this slide before this is kind of a breakdown of the different functions so as you can see in some of the the larger portions of the budget here are again the uh medical or the health insurance budget line and then some of those a couple of the other increases that you see are large there would be the contractual for instructional teachers staffing and computer instruction and then fuel costs for uh transportation and then operations and maintenance so those are those things just to kind of break it down and show you exactly what kind of categories we have here in the budget again showing that those are the largest increases that we're seeing for next year so so this is uh that
051previous slide compounded showing medical and benefits 325 000 increase on the health insurance line instructional 223 000 uh falling close behind on the second and second place there uh but the change on that is only 2.52 percent and then the operations and maintenance and pupil transportation again are those those amount to the fuel costs that have increased the budget includes adding that k2 k6 teacher so even though we're we've got that 2.52 on the uh the instructional side we're still able to add staffing and still stay uh even below that three percent line so the overall budget uh just at a glance here is 18 million six hundred thousand dollars spending this this is a spending increase from budget to budget of seven to seven hundred and fifteen thousand dollars or a four percent increase
052overall the tax levy increase will be 150 945 or 1.8 percent staying below the cap so just to answer question what if the budget does not pass some considerations that would have to be made is to go out with a second budget vote so the second budget vote would either be a same a similar or a new budget may be proposed staff will still have to be paid including contractual increase obligations health insurance increases will still have to be paid fuel costs will still have to be paid contractual obligations for services that we subscribe to for kids will still need to be paid cuts would include basically non-mandated items so that includes athletics extracurricular after school bus runs furniture replacements preventative maintenances things like maybe mowing the lawn only once you know once every couple
053weeks uh field trips and potentially uh non-required courses and opportunities for kids contingent budget would would even have higher restrictions if the board is forced to adopt a contingent budget we would be restricted to a zero percent tax levy increase and would have to consider the possibility of cutting those things that are on mandated items proposition 2 on the school budget vote will be to uh replace two 65 passenger buses and one 30 passenger bus so this continues our uh our 10-year bus replacement plan so we we borrow we pay for a bus for five years and then for five years after that typically we just we don't owe anything on it um so typically they will uh they'll reach a certain certain milestone after about 10 years and they will be traded in and
054then we replace them with new ones and this also this has something to do with passing dot inspections so after a while they start to either rust out or they've exceeded a certain amount of mileage there's a lot of things that start to repair costs start to get get much higher on some of the buses and as i've noticed some of the buses that are nearing that end uh they typically things things that are expensive start to go bad so it's time to start trading them in so that'll be proposition two on the school budget this uh this proposition will be to purchase those three buses not to exceed 315 000 so this takes you through the entire journey of the budget so we really start working on this in january and then we went
055through the budget piece by piece so we started out looking at general support athletics technology extracurricular and the tax cap and we continued to talk about the tax cap and discuss that at the next meeting where we talked about transportation maintenance operational stuff but then we had a meeting where we talked about instruction and then finally we talked about both season debt service and had a community budget presentation then finally you adopted the budget so i think that you've seen bits and pieces of this budget several times you've seen the entire budget several times and so at this point it's pretty much it is it is in its final form and um we're at the public hearing and so there's really two different pieces left to this there is a meet the candidates night because
056the board of education election is also held on the same night as the budget vote so that meet the candidates night is on may 12th and the budget vote is on may 17th in the i think advance the slide and you will see it's on may 17th in the elementary school lobby from 1pm to 9pm and we hope that you all vote so um i with that i'll turn it over first to the board to ask any questions that you might have you don't need thank you jeff and jim for explaining the budget in that way um i just wanted to ask i've been approached by several of my neighbors over the last few days um they have all reported um being approached by candidates for the board of education and being told that our
057budget includes specifically a hundred and twenty thousand dollars to be paid excuse me to be paid to a firm in new york city um that has reportedly been uh secured by our district to indoctrinate our children through teacher trainings this is the the words of my neighbor um asking me this question so i'm hoping jim that you could speak specifically to the portion of the budget that does address staff development and and state for the record that these claims that our neighbors are hearing are our faults um because i'd like the community to understand that um because i was very confused and i understand why they would be as well so we do have several different so the question is about 120 000 to indoctrinate children uh by using a company from new york city
058or something like that okay so there is uh several portions of the budget that have to do with professional development so we get our professional development both from outside consultants and from boces and also many of our teachers also do professional development so um there is sections of the budget that have to do with professional development i think that what your neighbor is referring to is what's become kind of a hot button issue which is the use of a company called generation ready which actually presented to the board earlier this year so generation ready provides staff development for all kinds of different things including dei which i know is the most controversial element i'm not sure why but it is and also the uh they also do training for special education and um so we're
059using them for both of those two things we are not paying for generation ready out of our school budget we didn't pay for them out of the school budget this year and we don't have any plans to pay for them out of the school budget next year we have federal stimulus money that we did use to hire trainers from generation ready this year i think we have spent about 40 000 um in special education and dei training for our teachers um this year and that was federal stimulus money and next year so far we don't have any um we don't have any any contract with them yet although we are talking to them about providing a couple of different things for our teachers um so that question is is interesting for two parts one is
060that the point is to indoctrinate our kids by using a company and that's that's not the case um it's it's offensive every time i hear somebody say that first that we are trying to indoctrinate people and second that it it's possible to indoctrinate kids which i don't know that it is i can't even indoctrinate my kids to do their chores but so that's that's part of it and the other part of it is kind of a misunderstanding of how federal grants work so i will say that where the 120 000 comes from is because there is an amount in the federal stimulus grant the first draft of it that included that amount for professional development with generation ready we never had really any intention of using that the federal grant goes over several years we
061never had any intention of using them that long but we had a very quick turnaround to put together this grant and it was also very challenging to put together the grant because not everything qualifies for that federal stimulus money so um but no that is not true and it is not in the budget that the taxpayers will vote on does anybody else have any questions i actually have one for jeff i mean okay um so we're taking it's roughly 900 thousand dollars correct so you're referring specifically to these budget lines right here so yes these are the last resort at the end of the budget and then if those don't get spent then they either go into savings or we also have we have a reserve fund that they could go into or if there's
062ex you know if there's uh increased uh budget budget numbers for the following year again that we would roll that in for the following year sure just want you to check my work here jeff um so the medical and benefits that were we're talking about that 15 increase or for our teachers and employees correct for our employees so without that increase um we would that would leave us unable to pay for our employees health insurance or which we can because we can't do that but start starting to cut programming but if i if i wrote this down correctly our increase in expenditure is over 300 000 but our tax levy increase is just over 150 000. so the tax levy increase isn't even 50 of that increase any other questions from the board i have
063a question just a statement that it's important to note that financing a school budget is not a game of risk we aren't here taking our best guess we have to look at the future and plan for the future i've got children in this district at least six more years and there are many people sitting in this audience who have many more years in front of them and i don't believe anyone here wants programs cut for their children wants any less of an educational experience than maybe children before them have gone so we have to do what's most responsible what's most responsible isn't always our favorite thing out there but it's important to look at the big picture this is not a one and done one month and i'm just going to acknowledge that if i
064was doing the math on the assessed value at the highest level the 300 000 i think that's less than 10 a month again i recognize that we have a lot of inflation going on now but if i can contribute an extra 10 a month to ensure the education of the children in duanesburg at the central school district i will gladly do so just just to piggyback on your comment so it is important for us so i know that some folks had questions about um inflation and how hard inflation hits the community i think that that is an important recognition and it's something that we wrestle with when we're looking at the budget is you know we understand that people in the community are also suffering our staff is also suffering however our school continues to
065have bills that are contract we're contractually obligated to increase annually and so that revenue has to come from some place and so what we try to do is in times like this dig a little bit more into things like fund balance reserves and to look at those things to balance the budget where we wouldn't normally want to want to do that so that's really important the other important thing too is is to know that as you heard jeff when jeff was talking he was talking about the projections for the tax cap for next year and the following year so this is a long-term marathon so the goal here is to make sure that the school is sustainable with all of its programs well beyond when any of us in this room still have anything to
066do with this school so it's to help pass that baton on with the school district still in in really good shape jeff did you want to add anything to that any other questions from the board before i turn it over okay does anybody from the public have any questions i actually have a couple um so previously back in january it was around january february it was stated that biden was coming out with a new initiative for electric buses do you happen to know when that will be happening okay so it wasn't bidens was actually the governor so the governor did have a proposal for electric buses and there is a phase-in process i think that the phase-in starts in 2035 is maybe the deadline it's several years it's several years before that and then after
067that there's also a period where schools can also ask for a waiver to to do that so we know that that's coming but for a district like ours we have a lot of obstacles for electric busing one is the infrastructure so the infrastructure is incredibly expensive the second thing is that our district covers such a large geographic area that the technology is not really there for small rural schools that cover a large area and if you think about our school and schools like cobleskill that's a ways off so that was something that was hotly contested during the budget time and it was kind of kicked back a little bit so it's there still is a deadline out there but it's it's a ways off that would be an awesome thing if so usually with schools
068what schools are faced with is unfunded mandates which are hey we want you to do this now however we're not going to give you any money to do it and you got to figure out how to make it work um but there might be i don't know if you know anything about there was something about the electric busting stuff do you are you familiar with that at all no i'm not actually yeah we could i could look that up and send it to you though yeah so as it's been previously stated by the board and other superintendent even there is a concern about underprivileged children in this area so when there's a budget increase that also increases rental property you know home for homes so the 180 1.8 i believe is based on the value
069of your home correct right right so we have not necessarily not the market value okay so right right but so it actually can be more than ten dollars you know during the school year the 1.8 percent depending on how much your house is worth correct well the 300 000 was the assessed value so your market value would be higher than that in general so there might be some homes that are higher than that in waynesburg i'm sure there are that's some but i don't believe that that's the majority and at the 300 000 that's the tax assessed value and then the the estimates that jeff gave showed 97 over the course of one year okay that assessed value very rarely changes it's only when you sell it or when there's a full reassessment well like
070like we've like all of you guys say before everything is going up including gas i know some families are struggling just to get to work because of the gas increases so another increase for the budget that's going to hurt some children under privileged children in the area i believe because everything is going up including food it's going to be difficult for children for their families to buy food alone i i'm just going to speak quickly i don't believe anybody here thinks that it's not causing hardships for folks in our community i think hardships in our community also exist when we can't offer education that supports their growth and development into the future so it's a balancing act as we mentioned and that's why we didn't go at the maximum amount we could and we had
071to look at the big picture and do what we could i understand and i i'm sorry for people going through those situations certainly i'm not insulated from that but that's why we have to look at the big picture and do the best for everything because as you've heard the school is also affected by inflation all of our costs increase as well our ability to pay our educators we have to consider the entire picture thank you does anybody else have any questions okay like a talk show um i just wanted to ask what everyone thinks about not just the kids in the community and their families and their tax increases but what about all the senior citizens that are living on fixed incomes their social security doesn't get higher their pensions don't get higher even with
072inflation so some of them are going to have to choose between can i pay for my heart medications this month or you know do i have to set money aside for extra taxes thank you so i i know that we think about senior citizens a lot we know that there's a lot of seniors in our community that are directly impacted by the things that we do in this school and so that is one of the reasons why we tried to use other funding sources rather than just tax levy and not going up to that max cap so jeff did you want to add anything to that no you pretty much said what i was going to say any other questions there's also the enhanced star program that everyone should make sure they're taking advantage of
073if they can which is additional money from the state if you're over 65 to pay your school taxes he said that there's also the enhanced star program any other questions my steps in um in in addressing the federal stimulus money what exactly was that money did it have allocations or were you pretty free to decide what you wanted to do with that federal someone else's money and over how many years and what dollar amount comes in per year so the question was about federal stimulus and what the different categories were for that and whether we were free to spend it however we wanted or whether there were restrictions that i get all those parts so we do have if you look at our website if you click on the bottom of that first page there's
074a little link that says transparency center and it shows the breakdown of the categories that we have chosen to spend federal stimulus dollars on those categories are directly linked to the categories that were attached to those funding streams so there were limits for how you could spend it so one of the limits was on equity programming for example or wellness was another one and so there was a small portion of it that was like covid's specific reasons we actually were able to use that first tranche of federal stimulus dollars to pay for a lot of our coveted related expenses and then we have this situation where we have this money that is for a limited number of things and we have to make sure that in spending that money it's kind of a blessing and
075a curse right because you don't want to create a whole um when that money goes away so i just read this letter i won't say who it was but it was secretary of education and secretary of education suggested that what we should do with that money is hire more staff um and so that's hard for a bunch of different reasons one there's no staff to hire right now two if we hire staff what happens is uh we hire a person they become exceptional educators in our system and then when that money runs out in three years we don't have any money to pay them anymore and so we either have to let them go or let somebody else go or in certain situations we can forecast out like what our retirements might be and sort
076of deal with it that way but it's very hard to hire a person so when you're spending stimulus money a good a good thing to keep in your mind is that one-time money should be spent on one-time things so good things to buy with uh stimulus money like that are things like technology equipment so if you want to buy a tractor tractor is a good thing to buy with federal stimulus money because we've got to buy it one time we don't have reoccurring expenses except for maintenance and stuff like that those normal things stuff like professional development is another thing that's good to spend that one-time money on because it doesn't have ongoing costs it doesn't create a hole when it's gone so what we have seen other districts fall into is that when they
077spend money on something that has reoccurring costs they're in a lot of trouble and so the stimulus that was intended to help people actually ends up really hurting a district and i think that a lot of districts saw that you know back when the last round of federal stimulus stuff was happening um during the last recession jeff do you want to add anything to that jim i would like to just say one thing on that one is that it's kind of like using your tax refund to buy a put a down payment on a car it's great for the down payment but it didn't create extra income for you for the next five years to pay that that car payment so you find yourself at a deficit yeah i always think of those folks who
078go on i don't think it's on anymore but those like extreme home makeover shows where it's like somebody comes in and gives them this really fancy house and then almost all those people end up bankrupt and those houses are on the market then because they can't afford to keep up with that one-time influx of cash did i answer your question kinda okay so is the federal stimulus was it a one-time payment you just got this last year or two or is it fees over a number of years so three years right jeff three years and we receive it as we spend it yeah so we get we pay for something first and then we we ask for reimbursement for that thing um and those things are like they'll be uh there are these forms that
079we sign off they're called fs10 forms they're pretty exciting forms you have to sign them in blue ink which i still don't know why you have to do that but you do and um there'll be tons and tons of amendments as we go because circumstances change and needs change and the state knows that and that's why there's this system for adjusting how you spend stimulus money they do the same thing for other grants that they have we have a lot of other title grants that work in a very similar way there's limited things that you can spend it for you can adjust it as you go anything else that's it so what you'll see is when you have a room full of administrators and they they're told that they have a bunch of stimulus money
080that's coming to them you'll hear primarily groans because they want to make sure it's very difficult to spend money on things that don't end up costing you down the road go ahead you want to talk about can we use that money to pay for loans and debt service no because there were stipulations in that federal funding that uh were targeted and weren't for debt service or for any kind of loans so it's not really uh that's not what the federal stimulus that's not why they put it out it was to pay for these uh one time for for one-time expenses that that we would see and it all started with uh march 20th so the the uh the start date actually for most of them was march 2020 so we did i will say that
081we did try to spend them on a lot of things and were rejected i don't know how many times we had to redo um suggestions based on so they give us a list of things that you can spend it on and then we put forward budgets and then they say no not really and so that happened a bunch of times until we got to a point where they actually did accept everything to be in the categories that they wanted them to be in okay one of them was like to do uh building building construction and they they recommended even though it said that you could do building construction and then said well it's not really a good idea because you're not going to get your building aid on your on your purchase right so because
082you also want to seek building it because when we when we do building construction projects like for instance the uh the bus loop that we're uh constructing this summer we are going to see some some aid come back on that project because we're also upgrading some of the windows in the elementary school so things like that when you spend federal money you can't double dip and get that state aid back so you either you either spend the federal money or you spend your own money and get aid back with uh when it comes to like building construction things any other questions okay thank you you got it okay tricky mike we are going to move on to new business board of education standing committees are there any committees that met since the last board meeting
083okay we'll move on to our first board item approve reorganizational meeting resolution be it resolved that the board of education of the duanesburg central school district hereby votes to hold its annual reorganizational meeting on tuesday july 12 2022 instead of tuesday july 5th 2022. do i have a motion thank you francis a second second thank you melissa any comments or questions from the board all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions financial accept technology bid recommendation that the duanesburg board of education award the classroom interactive audio and video capabilities interactive flat panel installation and pro procurement with installation of external audio and visual excuse me audio and video capabilities for the junior senior high school to presentation concepts corp at a cost of 132 472 as recommended by the assistant superintendent
084of management services you have a motion thank you theresa a second second thank you shane any questions or comments from the board i have a comment francis oh you said your job i will say that this is actually a prime example of federal funds so we're actually using our federal funds to uh to award this bid and we're doing that because equipment is a good thing to buy with uh one-time use funds are these going to be spread over both buildings are they primarily for the high school i think that this time a lot of them are going down in the elementary school actually and so um right now we've been we've been putting them in rooms where the teachers are kind of want to be early adopters and so now that they've seen these
085things in some rooms i think that they're gaining some popularity they're really nice setups for classrooms thank you any other comments or questions all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions accept health services contracts recommendation that the board of education accept the health services contracts between east greenbush csd and rensselaer city school district and waynesburg central school district for the 2021-2022 school year as recommended by the superintendent and assistant superintendent of management services do i have a motion thank you tony a second thank you diane any comments or questions from the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions accept claims auditor's report recommendation that the board of education accept the claims auditor's comments on general warrant a38 in the amount of 230 and 11 230 000 11 and
08661 cents dated april 29 2022. to have a motion thank you do you have a second thank you shane any comments or questions all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions award sight work bid for elementary school bus loop project recommendation that the duanesburg board of education award the site work construction bid for the elementary school bus loop project cunningham excavation inc at a cost of 1 million 108 000 as recommended recommended by the superintendent and assistant superintendent of management services do you have a motion thank you francis ii thank you tony any comments or questions from the board yeah just to say that um initially we were um i guess a little disappointed and the the high cost of the work for the capital project is due in large part to
087the rising cost of fuel and inflation and all these other things that we've been talking about and so the bids came in a little higher than we expected but after working after the the bids with the lowest bidder they were able to uh take a look at some quotes and remove some things from the original scope like some trees and some other things like a maintenance area and we're actually now under budget by a couple thousand dollars so we thought we were going to be over um which is never where we want to be so um thank you to our cm for doing that work for us jim are the things that were dropped are they going to be are they things that you can do ourselves yeah they're either things that we can do
088ourselves or things that we will uh take a look at in the next capital project okay any other comments or questions all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions okay did you get that select under other accept cse minute with amendment recommendation that the board of education accept the recommendation of the cse meetings and their minutes from april 12th 27th 28th 29th and may 3rd 2022 meetings do i have a motion thank you shane a second all right we'll give that one to theresa any comments or questions from the board only that that was a lot of csc meetings so thank you ms schneible just a just a preview for mr nivel about the fun that is to come it was a lot of meetings i know it's a busy time
089so thank you for that any other comments or questions all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions moving on to appointments accept resignation for retirement l cool recommendation that the board of education accept the resignation for retirement of laurie cool high school maine office secretary effective august 31st 2022 to have a motion thank you diane a second thank you melissa questions or comments tony's shaking her head she's not voting on this one a long time she loves this place any other comments or questions all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions accept resignation of k hoteling recommendation at the board of education accept the resignation of kelly hoteling school counselor effective may 30th 2022. do i have a motion thank you melissa in a second thank you francis any
090comments or questions um any other questions are coming all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed any abstention accept resignation d halbaum recommendation that the board of education accept the resignation of dorothy halbaum food services employee effective do you june 24 motion thank you shane damn second thank you any comments or questions all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions approved 10-year appointments be it resolved that the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools hereby appoints the following instructional employees to tenure in the following tenure areas effective on the day noted isabelle kaelin foreign language effective september 1st 2022 catherine wilson physical education effective september 1st 2022 danielle schneible special education effective september 1st 2022 kendra shadina english effective october 7th 2022. do i have a motion
091thank you theresa do i have a second tony any comments or questions from the board i emphatically support these ten-year positions agreed i think after the past two and a half years that they even had to do their ten year time during this mess yeah i applaud you absolutely congratulations lady all those in favor aye aye any opposed any abstentions approve election inspectors recommendation that the board of education approved the following election inspectors for the may 17 2022 budget board of education election vote at a rate of 15 per hour names as listed do i have a motion thank you diane tony will you second thank you any comments or questions all those in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions approve appointment m nepal be it resolved that the board of education hereby accepts
092the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint melissa nepal to a four-year probationary appointment as an elementary teacher in elementary tenure area masters step five commencing july 1st 2022 and ending august 31st 2026 contingent upon compliance with the requirements of the education law do i have a motion thank you melissa a second thank you francis we'll give that any comments or questions all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions approve appointment p nicolaus recommendation that the board of education approved the following substitute appointment as recommended by the assistant superintendent of management services all appointments are employees at will an appointment at this time does not guarantee employment for the entire school term or year pete uh phil nikola nicholas substitute bus driver effective may 3rd 2022 do i have a motion thank you
093diane a second thank you any questions or comments all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstention okay if i have the agenda right that concludes the regular session this evening we will make a motion to move into executive session at 7 59 p.m the board will not be returning and the executive session is to discuss negotiation issues can i can i add to that also negotiation issues and real estate a potential real estate transaction okay thank you for that and we will not be returning to conduct any further business in the regular meeting do you have a motion to move in thank you shane a second diane all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions thank you thank you for joining us you