001Can I have a motion to resume public session? Mr. Reinhardt, uh, Mr. Bowski. All in favor? The vote is unanimous. We're now back in public session. Please stand for the pledge. Do we have any agenda changes? >> We did take the uh foundation off since it we did not meet at the beginning of the month. >> Thank you. That moves us on to board president's comments. And I just I don't know about your families, but I feel like for ours, we're starting to settle in a little bit. We're approaching about five weeks already, which I personally found crazy. It's hard to believe that much time has happened already. Um, and really looking forward to how my personal children and how all the children of our community continue to evolve and explore the world around them
002this year. Uh this is our first year not having anyone in elementary school in our family. So that's a big shift. Not as many of the, you know, apple dumpling festivals, but new opportunities all the same. And it's great to see our kids evolve as they grow. Um one realizing he enjoys the class outside of his norm, electricity. Who knew you could have fun doing things outside what you do every other day? and another exploring new activities such as Elf Jr. the musical now that she's a big sixth grader. So, it's just exciting to see our kids evolve and explore the world around them. Um, and I wanted to just again take a moment to welcome everybody to this upcoming homecoming week and all the events to support our kids, our staff, and our community
003as we all come together to really celebrate Gates Shillay. And I'm excited to see how this goes for everybody. Do we have any points of interest this week? Okay, we're going to have a lot after homecoming next week to share. Can I ask if there have been any meetings in the past few weeks that we have any reports of throw my pen at myself? Do we have any visitor comments? Nope. That moves us on to our report section of the evening. Our first one is from the finance department. Good evening, Superintendent Daily, President Copy, Vice President Richard, and members of the board of education. Thank you for having us tonight for the business and finance report. Um, I'm Sally Sanford, director of finance, and Miss Jessica, our district treasurer under the reorganization and restructuring here
004at H. Thail. I am now overseeing u the business and finance department. Um, we have some new team members. the newly created position of budget analyst and now shared administrative support between Dr. B and myself. I'm very proud to introduce the finance team. Um I am privileged to lead these individuals every day. Um they have varying levels of experience with Daryl Wood our budget analyst with 37 days to Cheryl Alonzo with 37 years of experience as our purchasing agent here at Gau Highlight. Buckets of responsibilities under the business and finance team include accounting. We use an accounting system comparable um with the other 800 public school districts in New York State. We have uh accounts receivable and payable under the business and finance department. Um we operate just like a company. We have bills to
005collect and bills to pay. Last year the business office issued more than 6,411 payments to vendors through our accounts payable. This is a huge undertaking and takes significant uh work on behalf of the business and finance staff. Um we have auditing New York State public school districts go through all kinds of different audits um which I'll describe in the next slide. Try works with an investment um data team 3 plus one to help with our banking and investment and uh zerobased budgeting as you're all familiar with is the method we use here at HIV meaning that we start from scratch each year and and versus some districts just add a percentage or just roll their budget forward year to year. Contractual agreements um are handled in the business and finance department and we take a
006close look at the cost as well as reviewing those contracts for any potential duplicity. Um forecast and reserve planning here. We do careful forecast and reserve planning to get ahead of any sudden budget shortfalls or emergency expenditures. giving us a proactive approach versus a reactive approach in the revenue and expenditure side of the budget. Under grants management, the business office manages 10 grants totaling $3.3 million during CO 19. The business office also had fiscal oversight of the ARP, Carissa, and FEMA funding totaling more than $12 million. purchasing. The purchasing department issued over 4,000 purchase orders in 2425 school year. This type of work requires a significant amount of contact with vendors, ensuring the district is maximizing every dollar and tracking the purchases for quantities, quality, and timeliness of the shipments. We have reporting um under
007business and finance. This includes final cost reports for capital projects, grants as well as reporting which we work with um enrollment, student enrollment, uh building numbers and also transportation to maximize the state aid that the district can receive. School taxes. The district works with towns of gates and child to collect tax bills on properties within the gates boundaries. We also handle any assessment challenge refunds as well as taxary proceedings. Members of the business office are part of the ASBO or Association of School Business Officials across New York State. We work with other business offices to be on the cutting edge of performance. Members of our business office are also executive members of our local chapter. Business and finance highlights. Here we have u three types of audits um that I'm going to talk about. The
008internal claims audit process. This is a process where an individual um not in independent of the business office handles the approval of each claim submitted for payment. This process is now automated to streamline the process in the current accounting software that we already have. The internal audit this year focused on the technology department. The technology department um had a fully compliant review and the report showed that they were also forward thinking and their approach to technology integration. The independent audit is on the agenda for approval tonight. Uh this type of audit gives an overview of our cash receipts, our cash dispersements and any testing of journal entries and the backup for those. Um consistent with the four last previous We have received another unqualified audit opinion for the 2425 year. This means that our financial
009statements are accurate and in accordance with accounting standards. No material issues or exceptions were found. And now Jessica will talk about banking. Hello everyone. Um, in terms of banking and investments, our three things we focus on are efficiency, savings, and earnings. For efficiency, our interest earnings meet or exceed the US Treasury benchmark. The district uses this benchmark as the baseline to compare and evaluate how well the investments are doing. This helps us make the best decision on where cash should be invested. Every dollar of available cash is working for us and being invested at all times. We have moved to a new credit card program that gives us cash back on every possible purchase. We have earned a 100 cash vest score. Again, cash vest is a metric for assessing your assessment performance. How we
010achieve a 100 cash vest score is by leaving no cash uninvested at any given time. and um having a diverse portfolio meaning we use many different investment tools with board of education approved banks. Gates China is one of two municipalities in the nation that has achieved 100 cash vest score making this accomplishment very rare and something to be celebrated. We have invested $17.2 million in a long-term investment protecting the district's cash from sinking to interest rates. Um, for savings, we continue to work with 3+1, who is our investment data partner. They work to assist and provide the banking opportunities for the district, which in turn will maximize our interest earnings. For earnings, we continue to take advantage of long-term investment opportunities to preserve higher interest rates to increase our earnings. And over the past two
011fiscal years, we've earned more than 6.3 billion million dollars in interest earnings. This is something the business and finance department is very proud of and why we continue making banking and investing such a large focus. Okay. Accounts payable and purchasing. Uh one of the reasons that we have that 100 cash vest score is because we have reduced our paper checks to a payments in 8 to one meaning for every payment we have eight a payments and one paper check. Paper checks are um very admin take time administratively um to print them to mail them to clear on your bank reconciliation. These checks are often lost or left on cash. Paper checks also carry a high risk of fraud. Um, and with cutting over $6,400 or 64 checks a year, we're always looking for ways to
012increase our efficiencies. So, this year we're going to start paying our officials through a Boseis Aable service called Arbiter to take some of that uh pressure off our business office. Um, the system already has the officials in there and other districts use them. So it's easier to just go in approve their time and the arbiter system pays them through direct deposit. Um other ways that the business office looks to reduce expenditures is by a process called a request for proposal. This is where we solicit professional service providers for certain services such as waste management, auditors, legal services, architects, and construction managers. The results of the proposals are gathered and reviewed. This allows current vendors to enhance their competitiveness resulting in a greater value for the district. On to budgeting. Again, we use the zerobased budgeting.
013Every dollar is assigned a purpose and justified as essential. For 2526, we're able to provide purchasing supplies for students at the elementary and middle school levels. These types of supplies include highlighters, crayons, folders, notebooks. In the upcoming year, we will be addressing needs again for each student and continuing to create greater consistency across buildings in terms of supplies, materials, program, and staffing to list a few. And I know you're all happy that I'm finally done, but do you have any questions? No, >> you guys did a great job. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. Uh we really appreciate your continued support here in the business and finance and um if there's no questions then everyone have a great evening. You too. >> Thank you. >> All right, that moves us on
014to our long range planning report. Good evening, Superintendent Dailyaly, Board President Coffee, Board President, Vice President Dr. Richards, and the Board of Education. Thank you for having me. I'm Deputy Superintendent Mitch Ball, and I'm here to talk about planning for the future engaged Chilai. So, as you are well aware, I guess I got to do this right. Um, there we go. As you're well aware, there is a lot going on here in Gau Chilai. We are deep into the building brighter futures capital project, which has been a huge success for our school community. When Mr. Daly and I met with building administrators a couple of years ago to begin planning for the future ready project, every single principal we met with shared concerns about space. Those conversations have only increased in the last few years
015as we have added community schools, additional intervention staffing, special education classrooms and staff and increased mental health related staffing as well. On top of this, Boseies due to their own staffing challenges which we all know are existent in today's environment has been unable to support our needs relating to special education requiring us to create more self-contained classrooms and associated staffing positions which undoubtedly strains our limited space. In addition to that, recent regulatory changes have us thinking more about things like air conditioning spaces when and if possible and getting rid of antiquated classroom design. Think of our open classrooms at Neil Armstrong and Walt Disney Elementary Schools. Simultaneously, the research on science on things like sleep for teens has created conversations across the county relating to start times. The recent um research on sleep suggests that
016students who are older should start later. Yet, our high school students start at 7:20 a.m. while our elementary students start at 9:00 a.m. over an hour and a half later. The reverse of what science suggests. But flip-flopping start times is no easy task for many, many, many reasons. And not necessarily something we would ever consider as a school community, but something worth exploring. And this is just one of the many examples of the things that this type of exploration can lead to. And additionally, we have um other concerns on the horizon. Housing development. Back in 2022, Mr. Daly and I attended a learning session at the Italian-American Community Center about a potential project that would bring up to 450 doiciles of various types to the district via a developer named Whit Stone. Since that time,
017there has been little activity other than the fact that Whiteststone Development has come back and requested modifications to the original plan, which would decrease the number of housing units to around 350, still a substantial number. They tenatively anticipate breaking ground in the spring of 2026. Knowing this and not knowing how many young families may be moving into the district, we will want to be thoughtful about preparing for potential new student enrollment. So based on what has been shared on this slide and the last side slide, it's honestly wild all the things that are happening all at once. Having been a part of numerous complex and nuanced projects, I have learned cautious discretion as we begin planning can go a long way. A lot of times we see all this information, all these things happen on
018paper, on the screen and in our minds and you are left wondering. We are left wondering are you are we ready for it? Ready for the next ready for what the next 5 to 10 years will look like. Could we be doing more to prepare? Come on, that's a good slide. with these questions and given all that is happening and with the goal of ensuring longl lasting financial, programmatic and organizational sta stability, we decided to push pause on continued planning. We know we could come up with a plan on our own, but we don't want to be just be good. We want to be better at it. Better at assessing needs, better at planning for the future. In order to thoughtfully explore all avenues and options for the future, at the beginning of the year,
019we put out a request for proposal for a comprehensive long range planning study. We conducted interviews. From those interviews, we selected a highly regarded team of prior superintendent that has a vast portfolio of experience in doing these types of studies and explorations. Their collective group is called Leadership Solutions Advisors LLC. And as you'll see in the coming slides, we are giving them the proverbial keys to the city so that they can fully explore our district and help us with long-term sustainable planning using an independent lens. So what is the overarching purpose? to explore all options to ensure that long-term we are aligning facilities, staffing and operations with projected student and community needs given all considerations and to make sure we are using data to inform decisions given all the complexity involved. So what are some
020of the things that will be explored? Demographics. These can include things like community growth and housing trends, birth rate patterns and migration data. student population shifts across neighborhoods, enrollment, including historical enrollment trends, current projections of enrollment by grade level, and anticipated changes potentially short and long-term grade configuration, which um is evaluating our current structures, K5, 68, 912, alternative models and their instructional, social, and financial impacts. benchmarking and regional state practices in terms of bell schedules looking at current start and end times across schools. The impact on instructional time, transportation and extracurricular activities alignment with research on adolescent learning as and sleep as we discussed earlier in terms of physical space needs. looking at classroom utilization and capacity, special education and program space requirements, flexibility for future instructional models in terms of school zones attendance boundary
021efficiency and equity impact on neighborhood school walk zones and community cohesion and potential adjustments to balance enrollment and optimize facilities. In terms of transportation schedules and requirements, looking at bus routes and ride times, fleet size staffing and cost implications and coordination with bell schedules and school zones. In terms of other areas that may be explored, it could include things like technology, infrastructure, safety and security needs and extracurricular and community use of facilities to name a few. So really looking broadly at all the work that we do here in the district to provide great programming and services. So in terms of the process, so what's the plan? The nuts and bolts of the plan include the following crucial components. The project leadership team is the cabinet team. That team has already begun looking at logistics and
022strategy around the approach acknowledging that there's a lot of moving parts. Um the community engagement exchange, this is where uh surveys will go out. It's a type of a survey instrument called thought exchange to gauge um community and and gauge what the community is thinking about in terms of what the district might look like in five and 10 years. The advisory group is a cross functional steering committee that would include a number of um different individuals across the district. Generally speaking, the um advisory committee is one committee and they meet throughout the whole process five times. I'll talk about that again in a few minutes. Stakeholder work groups. These are individuals. So for instance, there'll be an educational experience stakeholder work group. That group would include people who are directly connected to instruction in the
023district and and educating our students. There'll be an organizational group that looks at things like school nutrition, uh, transportation, facilities, security, technology. Um there'll be different groups that have expertise in those areas. Individuals within the district, generally speaking, that have expertise will sit on stakeholder work groups. Then there'll be focus groups as well. These would be groups that other individuals may be able to sign up for, community members, parents, guardians, etc. that really want to provide qualitative input on the process. Student voice groups, it's really important to ensure that students voices are heard in this process. We all know that when you include students um they don't have the same filter that adults have and the same beliefs and perceptions about things sometimes through that process you can um get a lot of creative ideas
024and hear a lot of things that you wouldn't hear in the other forums. And then regular updates you would expect to see the team update the board on a regular and ongoing um basis. So in the fall aka right now we are in the kickoff phase. The project leadership team the cabinet has been meeting with leadership solutions adviserss to plan for all the things we just discussed. In addition the project leadership team has been feeding leadership solutions adviserss all sorts of documents that will help them know the district deeply. On October 21st and 22nd, leadership solutions advisors will be walking buildings with principles and/or assistant principles to put eyes on buildings and hear about the highlights of their programs and services and also the challenges they are facing. In the coming months, there will be
025community engagement exchanges through thought exchange and group meetings to explore the financial, programmatic, and organizational sustainability. Knock on wood, by March of 2026, we will have a solid first pass on both quantitative options as well as our school community's desires relating to how we move forward, either in exactly the same way or planning for potential new directions. So, what's your role as a board member? So via the project leadership team, it's to supply support transparent communication with staff, families, and the community. Um we're hoping that we'll get three to four board members to participate in the advisory committee, which is five evenings, and then to eventually weigh in on any final recommendations that come through the process. At the end of the day, ideally, we would want to wave a magic wand and have all
026the information right in hand. This process ensures that we avoid foolish decisions led by misguided visions and allow us to come closer to being able to say now I can see it all. As a district, we have been moving very quickly to meet the complex and everchanging needs of our students, staff, and community. This endeavor is a temporary speed bump on the road to ensuring we are abundantly prepared for what lies ahead. In summary, we are doing our best here at GC to always keep it 100. This exploration ensures that we do just that. Any any questions? No. No questions. Okay. Thank you. Have a great evening. >> You as well. All right. That moves us on to our consensus agenda. Can I have a motion to approve the consensus agenda? I have a motion.
027Mr. Reinhardt Long, I saw you over there. Any discussion? All in favor? Not calling on Mr. Long anymore. The vote is unanimous. Thank you. And I have a motion to approve consensus items C through H. Dr. Richards, Miss Littlewood. Any discussion? All in favor? The vote is unanimous. That moves us to action items. Can I have a motion to approve the independent audit for fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025 as presented by EFPR group CPA's PLLC? Have a motion. Littlewood Davis. Any discussion? All in favor? The vote is unanimous. That moves us now to our superintendent comments. >> We're very excited to welcome internationally renowned expert Brian Mendler to the GC PAC on Friday, October 10th to lead our entire staff in a behavior workshop. Brian is a highly soughtafter presenter known for his expertise
028in school discipline, classroom management, and student engagement. His message is grounded in real experience and deep empathy for students who struggle most to meet expectations. This morning, along with many members of our cabinet, uh I had the chance to be a part of mock interviews for our students in our career and financial management classes. As part of this class, students are learning about landing a job. So today, I and several of our leaders throughout the district helped them practice their interviewing skills. As a person who's conducted a couple interviews in their career, I can confidently say our students were very impressive and are ready to take on the world. Uh, one of them if was just a little older and graduating, I would have hired on the spot today. Just one of the best interviews
029I've had, regardless of how old. Uh, one of the kids just knocked it out of the park. It was really impressive. And all the kids have improved. So, the work our our teachers are doing with preparing them for this is really paying off. Uh, I did not have one kid that really just struggled with it. as nervous as they were, a lot of sweaty palms, but uh they did phenomenal today. It was really, really impressive. Uh next week is homecoming. We're excited for the parade and all the festivities. Reminder that our parade starts at 5:30 at Neil Armstrong and ends at our Spartan Stadium. We'll have concessions and food trucks on campus between the parade and game, so come hungry. Then at halftime of our game, we will be inducting six members to the Gates
030Charlie Hall of Fame. Congratulations especially to board member Chief Robert Long. Hasn't changed much. So last week we had a very successful clue uh flu clinic last Thursday. Uh we had many staff members participate. If you missed it, don't worry. You'll all have another chance to get a flu shot at our fall family fest which is now less than a month away. The event is on Thursday, November 6th from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in our Spartan Fieldhouse. As in years past, it will feature fun games and activities and an opportunity to connect with local resources in our community. Coats from the coat drive will also be distributed that evening. If you're interested in donating a new or gently used coat, donations will be accepted from October 27th to 31st at our six schools, district office,
031transportation center, and operation southern as well as some community locations. And a reminder, uh, the district office parking lot will be closed this weekend to black top and strike. This work is weather permitting, so we'll keep you posted. And lastly, on behalf of the students, staff, administrations, and families of the Gates Charlie learning community, I'd like to thank each of our board members for their time, dedication, and passion for education they give to us each day. Please accept this warm hat at your tables as a token of our thanks. Be strong enough to not let your family members take it. This is meant for each of you. So, thank you for all you do. Be strong. Keep the hats for yourself. That is my report. Mrs. >> Thank you so much. On that note, I
032would like to ask for a motion to adjourn our meeting. Mr. Long, Mr. Rinowski. Any discussion? All in favor? The vote is unanimous. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you.