5/13/26 Board Meeting

001I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Well done, Brad. Woo, okay. Presentations started up. Student Board of Education member. She should be here. She said she's going to be late, but um we this week or it was sometime soon, we had the NHS and NJHS inductions. Big group. We have the high school field day coming up next week, Wednesday, I believe, the 20th. >> [snorts] >> And I believe the um varsity baseball and softball seasons are slowly coming to an end. So, I believe they're heading into their post season. So, but that's all I've got. Thank you. Okay. Miss Nash. So, I do I mainly have a lot of pictures for us

002tonight and just feedback because two years ago, I stood before you guys and asked for permission to run this trip to Costa Rica. Um and we went over spring break and we had a wonderful spring. So, we just want to share with you guys what that looked like for us. So, maybe you can turn and and look at the screen. Of course, you're showing this on a rainy day. I know, I'm sorry about Make it make us feel better. >> The hottest day was our first day. So, it took two planes to get there. So, we first went to Charlotte Airport and from Charlotte Airport, we landed in Liberia. And once we got there, it was like on the ground running. So, we explored Liberia. We went out for lunch. We walked around the city

003and saw a different market. We saw churches. We went to the grocery store. And we actually had to like change money or we got to use cards and I got to kind of experience an international grocery store. Uh we had a tour around a park where they showed us some famous different trees and gave us some cultural lessons. We also had time at the pool. They were so excited as soon as they got to that first hotel with the pool cuz it was like 95 that day and blistering. Um so they definitely enjoyed that. You got it. I do have a lot on. It's just very I'm just going to go like this. Really frustrating. All right, day two was jam-packed. So we went zip-lining, we had a cooking class. We had an eco tour

004and we went in some thermal springs. So that's just our first group picture that we had of all of us there. Is this by chance that they're color-coded? >> I was wondering. Uh you know, you'll see that a lot for some of them there. Um so on our top left was all the kids waiting to kind of just go down the zip line. They went over some ravines. I did zip line. I did ask Mr. Rodriguez to do it. He was not a fan. But he did love it. But I was like, "I'm holding all the stuff." >> [laughter] >> Um so I held all the stuff. We made empanadas and corn rings. Kaylee got to milk a cow. She was the only student who wanted to milk a cow. That's Juliana and Chloe at

005the thermal springs. They had like five different thermal springs with different temperatures. So you got to pick which temperature you wanted. And then we got to do some different like sustainability lessons and the one on the top right was a pottery workshop from a very small village. This guy traveled out and gave us like a workshop of how to make pottery and got a chance to buy some. Which was pretty cool. Is he making it out of anything? I think it's just the way that they go through the process. It's not like a factory. Got it. It's like a All right. The next day we enjoyed some hiking, snorkeling, and impromptu karaoke. Love that. So, the top left is our snorkeling. We saw some rays. We saw like I think it was four species of

006pufferfish. Um we looked for sharks but did not see any. We got to swim in a waterfall on the hike. So, that was just one of the smaller waterfalls that we saw. They had some time at the beach where um it was like the perfect like golden hour time of day where they could swim for a little bit. And then on the bottom left they begged for a karaoke night. So, we went up to they had like this outdoor little patio area. So, all the kids wanted to do karaoke. They had it on their phone and they literally took turns singing, dancing. Yeah. As Kaylee is very expressive in that photo. Uh then we had our national park and dancing lesson. This is our other group photo in front of the national park. Got to

007see a tapir at the park. Um which is pretty cool. Did you get to see a tapir, Kaylee? Yeah. Yeah, you were in the front of the group. And here's just some other pictures of students. They're looking at um the hot springs that were there or the mud pits. Um there was a lagoon and then of course our dancing lesson. Which were very, very fun. We learned salsa. We learned merengue. And do you remember what the last one was? >> Bachata. Bachata. Yeah. Nice. It was a lot of fun. All good parties y'all could have for a wedding. >> Yeah. And then we taught the cotton eye joe and Um probably a little from the group. >> Yeah. And then we had our boat tour and our night walk. So, on the boat tour we

008got to see I think it was three different species of monkeys and we just kind of went down for I think it was like an hour and a half on this river. And then we went on a night walk where we got to see some cool animals. We got sloths, we saw some tree frogs, um some student aged termites. Mhm, nice. >> So, what did they taste like? Um they were like minty. Minty? >> [laughter] >> I didn't expect that. Yeah, we had a very energetic and excited guide. Super cool. That's cool. Then we spent our last day chasing waterfalls and touring a coffee farm. So, it was some delicious iced coffee they gave us and then we got to try some hot coffees. Um we took a lovely lovely 650 step hike down and

009then back up from that last waterfall in the top left. Yeah, that was that was fun. And then um we got to try different chocolates and coffees and then we stopped at different waterfalls along the way They offer decaf coffee? They do but they they're very like oh you want decaf? Okay, so if I went to where we go and I got that same like feel. Okay, yeah. They're like you don't know why you want it or decaf. >> [laughter] >> Yep. They like look down on you. And then I just have some more photos. We have some our group photos on the left hand side. We have a photo at dinner on the top right. And then on the bottom right we have um the picture that's in the middle is a bird's nest.

010It was called Montezuma oriole oriole pendula, I believe. And they make those crazy nests. Oh wow. Yeah, it's pretty cool. They're very loud. They were at our first hotel. And then ox carts which are kind of um cultural symbol of Costa Rica. Then some more just kind of candid. There were a lot of dogs everywhere, every hotel and every um destination had a lot of friendly dogs. We saw different farms. Some of these were on hikes, the boat tour. Um the ox was using um a wheel to turn sugarcane and get sugarcane juice. And then here's some statistics from our trip. So we had 14 students, three adult chaperones, seven days of fun, five total planes, yeah, many hours in airports, what feels like a million meals of rice and beans, and countless memories. I'm

011glad >> we got a thank you. So thanks to the board for approving this. Thank you to Abby for your help with the logistics. To Roberta Rodriguez and Bill Schmidt for being great chaperones. Um thank you to Michael and Carlos, our tour director and bus driver, which you can see in the picture. I'm with uh Carlos right next to me and Michael is in the back. Fine. And then we got Bill and Mr. Rodriguez. And then thank you parents for helping make the trip possible for the students. And to the best group of students, we made some lifelong memories. That's wonderful. So nice. I love that. That's it. May I ask um so I remember when you presented it a couple years ago and I think I personally had a concern about people who wanted

012to go but could not afford to do so. So did you have I mean obviously I don't want names or anything like that, but did you did you find yourself in that situation and how did you guys work out your funding thing? Uh so it's definitely worth So yeah, Yeah. Do you know if anybody was interested that couldn't go because of financial reasons or they didn't express? Okay. Okay. And how was the Um honestly, they were really great. They did care about our staff. They did care about the They I did like Um I feel like our experience was overall positive. The strangest part was Yeah. Just want to get home. Um so, I'm glad it was all mostly positive. Perfect. Thank you. Okay, Tyler. Yes. >> Um, so I took over buildings and grounds

013at the end of January. And what I wanted to do once the weather got nice was now that you could actually see the grounds and see the grass and you can see all the damage and um improper care that has been taken of the grounds. I wanted to improve them and make them more appealing. It's what you see as soon as you get here. It's what you see if you don't even come here, you just drive past the building. So the first thing I want to do is this is unavoidable. It's just damage from plows and salt. Salt's corrosive. It's going to kill the grass. Um and then all that little rubble from plowing is inevitably going to end up in the lawn. So I just want to get all that out of there, plant

014some grass seed and get some grass growing in these areas. Uh next is we have like an affinity for putting mulch everywhere and I want to stop that because we have very limited manpower here. So I just want grounds that don't take as much manpower as many hours to maintain. So we're not going to be removing any beds entirely, but we will be reducing the size of them. Uh and this is one example. Uh basically just cutting off the left side of the bed right in front of the school. That's probably like 5 6 ft. And just cut off that. That's probably a yard of mulch right there. Maybe more. And replacing it with? Just grass. Uh this is another example. This is a bed right in front of the main entrance. Not getting rid

015of it, just cleaning it up and making it a little bit smaller. And again, that would just be grass. I made it green so you could visualize it. >> [laughter] >> I want it that color or it's a no-go. They make paint in every color. That's cheating. Uh another thing, uh there's I believe four lamp posts outside. I don't know how old they are. They are all framed and built with Trex decking, which is great. It's not rotted or anything, but it's falling apart. It's just years and years of being in the weather. So, I don't necessarily have a plan specifically of what I would want to replace that with, but I just know that they're not very appealing and just something more eye-catching, I guess. Is this something that we could like put out

016to people in the community to assist with? Like you don't have any plans to build it yourself, maybe you did, but either way, I mean, I'm sure there's somebody out there who's like, "Yeah, I love that. That's my job." >> say for sure what we can or can't do. I would imagine that if we take all of that framing off, it's just going to be a solid tube built concrete. >> Right. So, it's kind >> to build around it. The student essentially just said, "Why don't we build this?" I mean, yeah. Yeah, that's good. We can do something. Yeah. That's a route we can go. Yeah, why not? They do cool stuff around here. Uh next is the thing that I was really uh excited about was the tree trimming. Uh a lot of the

017trees on the ground are either dead or horribly overgrown. So, we've already started. Uh and actually in this picture here, we I don't know if we trimmed that tree yet, but we did remove that rhododendron bush. And we did that because now there's a much better line of sight on the playground instead of blocking it off from the entire rest of the building. Good point. Um and then just other little things like this hedge row here, just getting the hedge trimmer, trimming it up, giving it a nice shape. You notice Tyler on any of the dead trees? Is there any like fungus that you can see or just because in my yard like I feel like we have this fungus that kills whatever it touches, so. I I used to pay attention to stuff like

018that. I know a lot of the trees around here have moss on them. Yeah. I don't know if that's an indicator of anything. Yeah. I'm an arborist. Okay. We got a couple of those in town, too. That we did. Speaking of arborist, uh this was something that I wanted done since I started here like almost 10 years ago. Uh we had four dead trees that were all 60 ft tall and were broke. Um to me it just looked like a liability, looked like a hazard. I hated to see I would hate to see them fall on the building, on somebody's car, anything. So, I just wanted to get those removed. Uh Dave's Tree Service came out here during uh spring spring break, I believe, and they had them all down and looked like they weren't

019even here by the end of the day. Yeah, that was surprising. Coming through I was like, "Whoa, I can't believe they took all that out." It opened up the whole space. I love the shade, but also like yeah, they were they were going to come down at some point, probably. Uh this is just more on that front bed. There were four huge trees in there. The two in the middle were dead, so we took them out. And that is an old picture. We have since trimmed those trees, so they have a much better shape. And uh we actually took one of the rocks. I don't know if you were familiar, but there were these very large rocks behind the handful of parking spots next to the sidewalk. We removed those and one of the very

020large ones that the tractor could not pick up, we actually put in the middle of that bed. And I wish I had got a picture of it for this, but if you get a chance, go out and look at it. I think it looks very good. And then we also moved the white grass that was in that flower bed and we moved it in the front. I think it's it's much more accessible there now. >> white spots there. Look at that. And there's white spots there. Uh and then our baseball and softball fields, I know this is a hot topic. Um I was able to get to Connie Hills out here. They have a very specialized piece of grooming equipment. They came out here and spent the day grooming our fields. And I think it

021shows. Uh and and Howard is our newest maintenance department. He has been out there every day they can be. Obviously not out there today. And just taking care of them, getting rid of weeds, nail dragging them, and just making sure that they look as good as they can look. That was fabulous. I agree. Uh this is I think it's more of a consideration if we want to go this route. I think it would be beneficial. Um I want to try to rent an articulated lift and wash all the exteriors of the windows because I don't know when the last time it was done, if it was ever done. But if you look at the windows, you can tell that they're dirty. And then since this is a 100-year-old building, I want to try to pressure

022wash So, you see these things right here? They're kind of like I don't even know what color you call that. Um I want to try to pressure wash them and see if we can clean them up, make them look nice. And same with the over the doors and then there's also a trim piece that goes around the top. So, I just want to see if we can pressure wash those and make them look nice. Yeah. Some of these are old, like I said, we already removed those rocks behind the parking spots. So, no more dented bumpers or chipped plows or anything like that. Uh the other thing is we have traffic signs all over the property that look like they're older than me. And you can't even see them anymore. Some of them just are

023like white squares. So, I either want to remove them or replace them. Whatever, you know. They do I do I've discovered recently that they do have special signs that are meant for like high sun uh exposure. Just because we have AED signs at work that are on the outside of all the buildings that have them, and they're all faded. You can barely tell that it's Big Red Heart on it. So, they do have them. They're you know, common the call, but they do have them on there. >> UV protected. Yeah. Uh another thing that I thought of, just kind of trying to get some school spirit on the grounds, is you can get red and white dogwood trees, and they don't grow too tall. So, we wouldn't have any 60-ft trees in the front yard

024again. But, my thought was maybe plant red and a white in the front yard and uh show off school colors. I love that. Uh and then the other thing which is kind of like a pipe dream, I guess, is a retaining wall. As soon as you pull into the parking lot, right by the transformer. That's kind of where our buildings and grounds parks. And right now, it it's a wreck. Uh and I think it's just cuz it's a hill, everything just you know, water goes downhill, I think, and everything just erodes back towards the parking spot. So, I was thinking maybe some kind of a retaining wall there just to keep the dirt where the dirt is and keep the pavement clean off the dirt. But, that is Yeah, these are just considerations. That would

025be a costly thing, right? That would That's more work work for them, or would it be? Um probably it's more pouring concrete doing a retaining wall of that like a curve more. What about there anyway? That one what about that yeah? Yeah. Oh so they have to go from here to Yeah. Yeah, I mean we can yes you will can see who can help with that yeah. I mean we are having concrete poured over there for the generator here so that's something we'll look at it. Oh flat? Yeah, so I imagine a little like it would be something to just separate the lawn and the parking lot that wouldn't be expensive. Um we can also talk about people that are doing the parking lot if that's something that they we can we can bring that

026up in capital project we can talk about that. Yeah, well that's all. Great. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Staff. When do you uh not that I want you to put dates on all of this but when do you think you anticipate starting like the grass piece of it? Cuz you'd have to do that soon pretty soon I think. Is it rental or purchase or do you know? Purchase? Well it all depends on the cost. So we can get that start spring Okay. Um any other questions for Ashley or Tyler? No. Don't everybody speak at once. Okay. Miss Olsen. Come on now. Just put it down there. Stop. Welcome. Love your jacket. >> [laughter] >> So hi, my name is Nina Olsen I'm an alumni of Germantown. I graduated like 4 years ago class of 2022.

027But if you don't really remember me I went to Tech Valley High School, so I wasn't actually in the building for high school. Um but I'm currently pursuing my bachelor's in Japan and this is my research that um I'm conducting here that I just sort of finished conducting here at Germantown, which is animal-assisted pedagogy or animal-assisted teaching across different grade levels, subjects such as music and art, and interaction types. And I'll explain interaction types in a moment. Um but basically I was working with Miss Gretchen and Ziggy to work with to deliver some lessons for the students and kind of see what the effects of um having a therapy dog and using it in different ways has on the students and their learning. So for my study, we wanted to really I wanted like not

028disrupt the current learning plans and stuff. So basically I co-designed lessons with the teachers to be curriculum-relevant so that everything they had to teach was still on track to be taught. Um of course, when you're designing the same lesson plan for K-3, it had to be adjusted and some students were kind of familiar and some like the younger kids where it was all totally new to them, but we tried to adjust the best we could for age level. And so it was one 40-minute lesson per like class. Um but for digital literacy, music, and art, so each student saw me and Ziggy three times. And half the lessons half the classes had Ziggy actively participating, which you'll see examples in a moment. This is the interaction type. And half of them was just Ziggy passively

029present. So most of the research you might have heard news articles about this kind of stuff, usually the therapy dog gets read to, the therapy dog lies there, gets pet. And so mine was yeah, let's have that, but also let's have the dog actively participate and see is that more distracting? Is that more motivating? Does that make any difference at all? I had two main instruments. One is my questionnaire, so that's a five-point Likert scale for a bunch of different questions. How did you feel about Ziggy? And then I had a four or five question assessment that were really similar across subjects. And the same assessment was distributed 1 month later as a follow-up in order for us to see was there like retention of the of the content as well. Um so, the first

030class was digital literacy. So, we are teaching functions of programming. This is more of a review lesson for some of them but also kind of introducing new vocabulary and concepts such as local and global variables. So, teams role-played as functions which they were learning about in order to come up with this passcode. For each of passcode that unlocked the lock, which inside of it had a fun fact about Ziggy as a little bit of incentive to um keep going with the lesson. And because there were four teams and each one had a number they were writing down on this piece of paper, either the teacher or Ziggy acted as a messenger to bring the paper from group to group. Um and so, this was sort of a role-play of local and global scope of programming

031if you know those terms. And then we had our music class. For this one, we were talking about tempo and dynamics like speed and volume. And we're teaching this to the kids. So, little kids got slow, fast, soft, loud. And older kids got the actual Italian terms like largo, allegro, pianissimo, fortissimo. Harder words that were new to them. But we wanted them to kind of practice composing rhythms keeping these aspects in mind. And so, we had either the students or Ziggy in the center of the room doing movements. This could be walking and then students had to tap on percussion instruments with the the tempo of them walking. This could be Ziggy doing tricks like sitting and lying down where students had to interpret for themselves, "Oh, I have to play softer now." So, that

032was kind of getting them to practice composition as well as learning these vocabulary words. And then for art class, we taught them this technique where you have, as you can see in the middle picture, paper, paint, and then plastic wrap, and you would spread that out with your hands or walk on it. And so when the teacher demonstrated, um, like in the middle picture, we just demonstrated on the table, spread it out with our hands, said this is how you do it. Um, but when then when we had Ziggy demonstrate it, we don't have a picture of Ziggy actually walking over it, but we had this on the floor, and Ziggy actually walked across it, or Mrs. Scout used his paw to like spread it out to show the kids this is how you do

033it. Um, and I have with me here some of Ziggy's actual artworks that he made. Like, I think like seven or eight actually. So we have more as well. Um, and then on the right you can see the kids had it on the floor and they could choose to use their hands or their feet to mimic Ziggy and do the art technique themselves. And then we had vocab words like complementary analogous colors, um, because students could to some degree choose the colors of the paints that they were using. And when it comes to the actual uh, data, for participants for the first round we had, uh, consent forms on parent portals, so they were sent digitally. We got 55 participants for digital literacy. We thought we could get more, so we decided to put out

034uh, paper consent forms and send those home. So you see more in music and art. Music, fifth and sixth grade had one class, so we decided to just take that out and do K through four, and then art you can see we ended up having over 70 participants. Um, and you can also see we had like the least number of fifth graders, and we did have a lot of second and fourth graders. Um, so keep in mind that not every grade really had an equal number of students participating but we did get quite a lot by the end there. So I talked about assessments there were the in class assessments and follow-ups they were the same thing it's just the time period right after class versus one month later art is actually being done this

035week the art follow-up assessments that's not included in this data this is for digital literacy and music so far. And I've been looking again through the grades as well as by subject and by the active and passive groups. There wasn't really a lot of difference here. Though you can there was a bit of a trend with grades as grade increases they did better. Marginally better but that kind of makes sense as maybe the older students took this more seriously as well you'll see kindergarten was the fluke that did better in the follow-ups. I'm going to be honest I think this was random chance the kindergartners in the first place we read to them because they couldn't read and so some of them said things along the lines of B is in my name so I'm

036going to circle B for all of them. So not sure that's the most reliable results. But you do see a slight trend as grade increases they do better and for the 0.4 to 0.7 there that's your grade so it's like you got a 60 or 50 on your test that's that's what it means so they did you know in the middle but this was a lot of new vocabulary and it was just one lesson for teaching it. Then we get to the questionnaire and one of the questions was do you have pets at home my thought was maybe if you have a dog at home you feel more comfortable with Ziggy that was not the case everyone felt pretty comfortable with Ziggy and there wasn't a whole lot of difference between presence of dog presence

037of other pets other species or if you had no pet. So that was interesting it didn't really matter what pet you had and then we get to again by grade and all that, there wasn't a whole lot of difference. Everyone just felt pretty comfortable with Ziggy. Again, pretty much everyone scored between a four and a five, on average a four and a five, meaning they are comfortable to very comfortable with Ziggy. So, I thought that was good, at least that he's been here so long, they all felt good with him. Um, and then we have learning. So, do you feel like Ziggy helped you learn? Um, this one's a little more variable, but you see that still, for the most part, between a three and a four. So, students did sort of feel like Ziggy

038helped them learn. Um, the purple line is the active group. It seems slightly higher, which is probably means that most likely means that, um, Ziggy actively participating class, it the students felt like that helped them learn. Or, it could be random chance, because we it's pretty close still, and it's not really a clear trend. Um, did Ziggy motivate you, make you want to be here and learn? Uh, we found that, yes, again, between three and a four is, um, students mostly felt that he motivated them to some extent, but there wasn't a whole lot of difference between groups, grade levels, or anything like that. It was pretty variable. Then we have distractions. Um, I'll break it down in a couple slides, but of various behaviors, did you feel like it distracted you or not? Um,

039and we found that it was pretty in the middle. Um, the active group varied really widely, the purple one, but the passive group, for the most part, felt like neutral. Um, three was not really defined, so it was up to students' interpretation. So, it could be that students weren't sure, so they put a three. It could be that they felt uh, neutral about it, or like it was somewhat distracting, or we could have just had a lot of students saying they were distracted, and a lot of students saying they weren't distracted. So, it was a little um, not very distracting, but not We can't say that he wasn't distracting, either. And if you break it down by the subject, um students I thought this was interesting cuz the active group felt like Ziggy was most

040distracting to digital literacy. That was the one where Ziggy went around from group to group bringing the paper. That was our first class. There were a lot of take-ups. Uh Ziggy didn't really like this 3-ft walk every couple seconds. It was probably one of his least favorite classes. Um He lost the lost the paper in his collar a couple times. So, I can imagine that's why they thought that was more distracting. But, otherwise, it seemed like um the passive group found him more distracting. And so, the active group actually found it less distracting when Ziggy was actively participating in class. Um and to break it down, you'll see the three sort of orange-brown ones are the behaviors that I think are found in every single class, right? Ziggy can bark in every class. He visits

041the classroom for every class. The purple ones are behaviors primarily found when he's actively participating, like in art when he demonstrated the technique. And then, petting Ziggy at the end, I put a different color I singled out because I thought that that was the one behavior or interaction that students could control, right? Students go up to Ziggy and pet him. But, students don't really have a choice whether Ziggy barks or not. So, I thought a lot of students were pretty honest about petting Ziggy. Even though they initiated that, did distract them. But, it was still found to be only a little bit distracting, somewhat distracting. And I noticed that the purple ones, the ones that were where he's actively participating, are lower. So, they are less distracting than his other behaviors such as barking. And

042yes, barking was the most distracting behavior Ziggy did. Um and then lastly, there was one question on "Did you find this class less fun, the same, or more class more fun than your usual classes?" Um and for the most part, they said, "Yeah, this is a little more fun than usual." Um, the one thing be careful with here is we can't say for sure that this was because of Ziggy. It could have been because I was coming as new person. They could have just been excited there's new person. We tried to teach these classes um, in the style of the teacher's usual teaching style, but it could have been different and so it was just fun cuz it was different. Um, but I thought it was just interesting to see overall how the students felt

043about these lessons. Um, and that is it. Any questions? Mina, can you just, um, tell everybody what they have in front of you? Or is it Yeah, so you have, uh, the actual data tables in front of you. These graphs are really not the full look at the data. So, if anyone wants to take a look at the data in more detail, that's what the tables are for. Um, yeah, the tables show across the groups, across the grades, and across the subjects, so you can get a more in-depth look at the at the numbers. And you'll find that a lot of them are pretty similar, meaning there weren't really a lot of differences between these independent variables. I'm glad that you brought up that you could have been a part of variable in it, because

044that's what I was thinking through the whole thing is, well, they had fun, Mina, in their classroom. Like, yeah, of course it's going to be more fun for me. Um, so I'm glad you brought that up. Having done this, do you feel like would you change anything about the grading scheme or uh, maybe tending to the younger kids in more of like a, you know, similar something similar to the pain scale. I know that wouldn't work, but like a happy face versus a sad face versus the Would you have Would you have changed any of that, do you think, if you had to do it again? >> for the questionnaire, we did use like happy and sad faces, but it had to be read to them. So, of course, there is that bit of difference

045of being read to. They asked us questions, they might reword it for them, in ways the older kids didn't get. In terms of the assessment itself, um it was really weak. Um it was meant to be a five-question assessment cuz we didn't want to be too long for the students. Uh and some of the questions like had typos after the fact, so it ended up being four questions. Um would I change that? I mean, yes, it should be stronger ideally, but more so than changing if I were to do it again I were to do this I'm not redo this one like do this again. Instead of changing the assessment with more questions, I would do this over more lessons. Like have a five-question quiz at the end of like each month or something. So

046you get that kind of data. Otherwise, I think it just kind of stresses the kids out that you're doing like state testing with 100 questions. Um but yeah, I think it's pretty weak cuz it's only being done once. Yeah, got it. Understood. Still great though. Any question any other questions for Mina? No. Awesome. Thank you for doing that here. Um okay. Public comment on agenda items. I love talking about right your vision of the grounds. I've been wanting to start a day of service like maybe around like Martin Luther King Day, but I wonder if you want to have an official one every summer and if that would be fun to be like people who might be handy with like whatever the tools are. The excitement on his face is I'll say you Yeah. bigger

047projects. But just the grounds of the program, I think that probably covers that. >> More like a spring overhaul of just like like you would do with your house, right? Like Like the things and rake the things and That does sound really awesome though. Maybe it's just something that I think about. Like what would I do at my house if I had a group of people to overhaul Lori. She's like, "No, not another thing." I'm going to be painting the school. >> [laughter] >> Listen, if we can put a playground together with the community, we can do some overhauling of something. Think of some of the tiles or something. Any other um comment on non-agenda or on agenda items? I'm sorry. Okay. So, consent agenda items. I need a motion for the approval of the

048consent agenda items. I'll make it. Second. I'll second. Any discussion? Nothing? Nobody? Nobody knows? Okay, all in favor? I. >> I. Um Any Any opposition? >> [laughter] >> So moved. But did you see my eyes rattling to there? They're like, "Wait a minute." There's two words You're like, "There's something else supposed to be there." >> else there. Okay. Um so, that brings us down to Where's my reading begin? All right, so within that we have personnel. Right, there was nothing before that. Nope, I think that's the next. Okay. You ready, folks? Give me a minute. Okay, be it resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the Board of Education here by here by appoints Jean Nicole Johnson, who possesses an initial early childhood education birth through grade two certificate and an initial

049students with disabilities birth through grade two as a special education teacher in the general special education tenure area to serve a four-year probationary term effective September 2nd, 2025 through September 1st, 2029 at an annual salary of step one plus masters as set forth in the collective bargaining agreement between the district and Germantown Teachers Association as approved at the July 9th, 2025 Board of Education meeting. So, again, this is an amendment um to the tenure area. I need a motion. I'll make it. Second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I. >> I. Opposed? Abstain? So moved. Okay. Again, another amendment to the resolution or amendment resolution for Dana Somebody who knows her better than I. Bon Arigo, is that Bon Arigo? Here we go, got it. Thank you. Um so, again, amendment to the tenure area.

050Uh be it resolved that upon the recommendation of the interim superintendent of schools, the Board of Education here by approves Dana Bon Arigo That's a fabulous last name. special education teacher effective August 31st, 2026 with a four-year probationary term effective August 31st, 2026 through August 30th, 2030 at an annual step six plus masters with a salary of $65,509 as set forth in the collective bargaining agreement between the district and the Germantown Teachers Association in the general special education tenure area. As approved in the April 22nd, 2026 Board of Education meeting. Again, that is an amendment. I need a motion. I'll make it. Second. Second. All in favor? I. Opposition? Abstention? So moved. Okay, new one. All right, appoint Dylan Lane, special education teacher. Be it resolved that upon the recommendation of the interim superintendent of

051schools, the Board of Education hereby hereby appoints Dylan Lane, who possesses initial students with disabilities in all grades and initial students with disabilities grades 1 through 6 and initial childhood education grades 1 through 6 certificates as a special education teacher in the general special education tenure area to serve a 4-year probationary term effective May 18th, 2026 through May 17th, 2030 at an annual pro-rated salary of step one, 6733.25 for the remainder of the 2025 2026 school year and an annual salary of step one of the 2026-2027 school year wooh, as set forth in the collective bargaining agreement between the district and the Germantown Teachers Association. I need a motion. I'll make it. >> Second. Second. Any discussion? So this is a new fill here. So good news, great news. Uh all in favor? I. Abstention?

052Opposition? So moved. Okay. Okay, appoint Michael Mauer. Be it resolved that upon the recommendation of the interim superintendent of schools, the Board of Education hereby appoints Michael Mauer as a full-time night cleaner at the rate of $16 per hour with an $800 annual night shift differential pro-rated for the 2025-2026 school year to serve the maximum probationary term permitted by law of 52 weeks with said appointment effective commencing May 14th, 2026 and condition upon receipt of and said fingerprint clearance. I need a motion. I'll make it. >> Second. Second. Any discussion? Do we have any word on fingerprint process at this point? Okay, so we can we'll check on that tomorrow. >> Yeah, they're turnarounds pretty quick, I think, right? Usually. Usually well, yeah, I shouldn't say all the yeah, usually. >> We have his information.

053Okay. Um All in favor? I. I. Abstention? Opposition? So moved. Okay. Approve Michelle Keeler as school nurse. Be it resolved that upon the recommendation of the interim superintendent of schools, the Board of Education here by hereby appoints Michelle Keeler to the non-competitive class civil service position of registered nurse to serve the maximum probationary term permitted by law of 52 weeks effective commencing May 26th, 2026 at step seven of the registered nurse salary schedule with an annual compensation at the rate of $56,308 in addition to a healthcare coordinator stipend at the annual rate of $2,500 with said compensation to be prorated effective May 26th, 2026 through June 30th, 2026. In addition, Ms. Keeler is authorized to work up to 10 days during the summer with compensation at the rate of 1/200 of annual salary for each

054full day worked over the summer. I need a motion. I'll make it. Second. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I. I. Abstention? Opposition? So moved. Okay. Last one well, in this section. You guys really did too many this We really did. All right. for next week. You'll have more. All right, appoint Kristen Hoffman to the position of CAP Director, effective September 1st, 2026 with a salary of $23.97 an hour for up to 2.75 hours a day, 5 days a week. Overtime pay will be provided for work completed equaling over 40 hours a week in consideration of both TA and CAP Director positions. I need a motion. I'll make it. Second. Any discussion? Does she already works in the building? >> Yes. She's a TA currently. She actually works for CAP. She has for the past

0553 years. All in favor? I. Abstention? Opposition? So moved. Okay. Mr. Ron Smith, you are up. Absolutely me? So, we're going to go over our presentation we've done at town meeting. So, here we've gone to Claremont and Germantown before. So, I'm going to sit tomorrow night. >> [snorts] >> Yep. It's really quick. So, again, we just as we're talking about our proposed budget for the 2026-2027 school year, we want to remind all of the work that we did to bring it together. It was always aligned with the vision of the district. We brought that into account with every discussion we made and every decision that was made. So, when we talk about um finances, we use the word bands a lot. We felt uh it's very important for our community to understand what that means

056before we begin to use that word. Um and so, when we're talking about the bands for this budget specifically, it's that large loan that we take at a very high interest rate. So, similar to your homes, this would be your short-term like, I really have to have it, I need to buy it, got to throw it on a credit card just so I can figure out how to buy it type of thing at a very high interest rate and then we would convert that to something of a longer bearing lower interest rate which would be the bond. So, in our capital project we have this $9 million BAN. It is a short-term loan at a high interest rate which we would then convert to a bond. So, we want to go back to December in

057when we put our capital project out for our community vote. It was approved by our voters that they approved $13.9 million to be spent for this capital project where in we're currently in phase three. Phase one was that marvelous playground that we have that the community so well uses. It's busy through sundown. And it's really been a great addition to the community. Phase two consisted of the locker room completion and the restrooms through much of the building. And now we are entering into phase three which is a teardown of the maintenance garage and a building of the new maintenance garage on the high school gym side of it. Additionally, we will be putting in the parking lot and we doing that entire parking lot area as well. We'll also have asbestos abatement being done throughout

058the building this summer and new hallways and flooring put in those spaces. So, with this capital project vote that was done in 2023 the community understood and agreed that there would be 43% tax increase on a $1,000 of the assessed value of their home at that time. So, where did we source this funding from? In 2024-25 we allocated $2 million from one of our capital fund accounts. In this school year 2025-2026 we have secured a $9 million band which is what is being shown in that tax levy increase for this year. Next year in 2026-2027 we have a bit more of that secure another close to $3 million or $2.98 or $9.8 million next year. So this $9 million band does equal a 3.93% tax levy. This levy is already approved by the voters and

059I think I just want to stop there and explain once again through the community this increase is showing because Germantown has not had a consistent capital project going. So when we begin a new capital project we're starting from zero and building up which is showing that growth rate. Most districts always have a capital project continuing and so they're not seeing that increase. There is not that it's just a steady consistent amount of money that's always being expected. So if you think of your own home you might take out a loan to do windows and as that loan starts to fall off you might say, "Oh, let's do the roof now, right?" So it's not an increase in what you're being paying each month. It's just that consistent loan rate is always happening. Germantown hasn't had

060that. Our goal is to be able to have a consistent capital project going. Our next capital project that we anticipate doing because of the aging infrastructure would be to secure windows or to take a look at some of our heating and cooling systems and bring them up to speed date. After that we would be able to do some less expensive more consistent every 5 years longer projects to keep that consistent and lack of so that way we would not see these increases in tax levies. So, this 3.93% tax levy represents our new capital project. We also want to talk about the 2.63% tax levy, which excludes the capital project. This is our instructional and non-instructional program component that we have every year. Um and together they do equal that 6.56% tax levy. And I do

061want to point out we do have QR code on every slide. Uh and these QR codes will lead you to the financial statements for this. So, we wanted to take a look to see where our uh tax levies compare both in the Columbia County region as well as uh we have Red Hook in there and Pine Plains as well. Um so, that 2.63% component falls very well within other districts. Um you can see we're not sitting too high, we're not sitting too low. It's just a nice number. And I just want to say again, reiterate again, that's within our 2% um allowance that that rate is being offered. You'll see at the very bottom Germantown Central School District, we are at the highest with that 6.5% 6% because of that capital project. So, we were

062aware as we were going through this of key fiscal challenges that brought us to this moment. We worked very hard to get this budget in line uh so that we could present the lowest tax increase to our community. Our health insurance, we saw a 10% average increase overall in our plans and RX. Um our outside program placement for 2026-2027, we've saw a 27% increase in out-of-district placement needs. This drives the program costs as well as transportation. We are competing for staff in a very tight labor market and being so close right on the edge of Dutchess County where the salaries are very much higher. We are sometimes competing against those salaries and need to offer positions at a higher salary than we might want it to at 5 years ago. This is kind of the

063story of our enrollment and where we sit. So, you'll see the orange or red line up top shows our district enrollment and we are currently at 452 students right now. When you take a look back to 2016, we were at 586. So, we're seeing that decline. Some of the conversation out there in social media does ask if our enrollment is declining, why is our budget increasing? And it's for that reason exactly. Right? We get funding for students we have in our building. We get that reimbursement. Also, like our own homes, we have fixed costs. So, it doesn't matter if we have four children or three children or two children, our mortgage is still going to be the same, right? Things like that. So, same thing. We still have these fixed expenses that we need to

064be able to carry whether no matter what our So, our response to these challenges, one is that we are trying very hard to work with the attrition of retirement, right? So, we are using the attrition of a high school math teacher. We're bringing that department down to three teachers from four. We are attritioning the retirement of a teaching assistant due to an IEP need that is no longer required for 2026-2027. We heard the community very loud and clear when they had asked us to take a look at the administration and the number within that. We first considered taking a look at moving to one principal for the building with an assistant principal and we kept coming up with so many challenges across the board for that. So, we took a look at removing eliminating the

065position of director of special education and reconfiguring what that department would look like. Uh we will be naming a CSE chair committee chair and then using our principals two principals to support that position as well. So, that'll be a more of a team effort in the special education arena. We are taking the position of elementary computer teacher and we are taking that person and putting them returning them to the classroom and having the computer lab again using under the instruction of our digital literacy teacher and her uh teaching assistant that would be working with her to deliver that instruction. We have two teaching assistants and a teaching aid. We've eliminated those positions. Those are retirements that also happened, but we do not need those positions or resignations, I'm sorry. We don't need those positions due

066to IEP needs next year. And I do want to highlight the issue of transportation. Over the past 2 years, we've purchased and invested in six vans and drivers and the components that go with that to save on transportation costs. This has been a big cost savings for the district across the board. We have saved over 20% over the past 2 years. Um and especially as we see more out of district placements, we know that our transportation costs will only increase. So, these vans have been a big savings for us. Additionally, we've been trying to build our branding so that we can perhaps attract more students within the district. Um and we have been working very hard and big thanks to our PTSA for building more of a community school. Uh we will you can walk

067into classrooms and find parents in classrooms sharing some of the instruction and sharing their skills and careers and hobbies with our students. So, we are trying very much to create more of a community school spirit. In terms of staffing, as we make new hires, you just saw a special education teacher approved tonight by the board who has dual certifications or a K-12 special certification specialist certification so that we can be more flexible with our staffing and how we use our teachers. We also will be aligning fully elementary and high school schedules next year and to make sure that they're in line again to benefit the staffing flexibility. And finally, our goal is to work toward gaining community trust so that we're more transparent, our communication is stronger. We've been working very hard on that this

068year and putting as many things out there on Parent Square and Facebook that we possibly can. We have been showing a loss each year in our food service program and we are still budgeting a minor loss, but we expect that with these initiatives we'll actually break even or possibly show a profit through the implementation of vending machines which our student voices have requested and then also offering breakfast after the bell program which would allow students who come into school late to receive breakfast. To take a look at a summer food program that we'll be sharing with different camps and then an afterschool snack for our students in CAP. So, we're really proud of a lot of the things that we have accomplished. We've been working very hard in the past couple years to strengthen and

069make more rigorous our high school program. We've been trying to build a very strong reading program with a lot of focus on the instruction and the materials that we're using for our kids. And we're very proud that last year, and it's been pretty consistent over the past few years with our third grade cohort, they placed first in the region with the highest proficiency above all of the schools in our regions. Um and even more so over New York State uh and near it, which is close to 14,000 students. So, we're really proud of that accomplishment achieved that in both ELA and math. And so, that shows us that the work we're doing is paying off. It is working. And so, we just need to keep moving forward with this, and that's why we need the

070support of this budget to be able to continue that work that we're doing. That That's our math scores. There we go. And we are very percent of our proud of our 100% graduation rate, right? We worked very hard to make sure that our students are well attended to, and we had 0% local diplomas. So, there's a lot to be proud of that, but that's a big accomplishment for Germantown to be placed at number one. There are so many clubs and sports activities and extracurricular events that we are so proud to have our students partake in. We have a lot of parents leading these. We have a lot of teachers stepping up to lead these, right? And these are just the things that make going to school in Germantown so special. Um again, this requires funding,

071and we want to make sure that we are able to continue to provide our students everything that makes Germantown so unique. Here we go. All right. So, looking at next year's budget for 2026-2027 school year, where expected revenues are $18,064,000. We're expecting $24,000. We're expecting to project our expenses to be $18,488,848. That is a budget deficit of $488, $784. Um we do have currently $5.5 million in reserves, which we will use to cover that. We either use the TRS ERS reserves for those contributions to the pension system, tax contingency area if we have any tax write-offs uh from this year's tax what we're going to do, um and then we just have fund balance to cover the rest. So, we will be fine to cover that, um but we do want to work towards closing

072that gap, continue doing that work. So, looking at the tax levy, um so this is using first and foremost last year's data. This doesn't look at if anybody was to have enhanced star regular star fireman's tax credit. This is just looking at if your house was had a full value of $350,000 based on last year's data. Um each town, so we'll just start with Ancram, you know, it's $196.84 per year. That's $16.40 per month of an increase. Piermont, $184.54 per year, $15.38. I won't go through all of them, but we can kind of see the increase. What we have below is that 0.65 just representing that increase across the board on average. Uh tax increase this year. So, per $1,000 value, the increase 56 cents, 53, 82, 86, 108, 51. From the bands, what I

073did is I did a backwards calculation to take the bands out to figure out what is the increase on the bands alone. So, that's what that bottom column shows. So, they're not all 43 cents, but when you average that together, we do average out at the 43 cents that we talked to in community about. So, we are right on par with the capital project. Again, as Bev was saying, we don't have any projects falling off, so we have this cliff that we're hitting with capital projects. Again, projects are funded over 15 years. So, after you do four projects, that fourth project, your very first project's falling off. So, your funding for that is then covered by your next project. So, the taxpayers don't see a massive $500,000 increase in the tax levy due to exclusions,

074they see maybe a 50 or 100,000. Um I am an Ichabod resident. They are doing another capital project. We just voted on it last year. Um I think our increase is 10 cents. So, on average. So, that's that's when we get to that point, that is the benefit that we'll get to where taxpayers aren't seeing a massive increase, and we can continue to maintain the school. So, the bond's lifetime is about 15 years. Yes, once you go to bond, it's 15 years. So, you try to line it up that you're getting in the next bond every 5 years, and then they're falling off. Um I do anticipate our next project that we do heating and cooling and windows, you're going to be in the double digits in the millions, but after that, I think we

075can do smaller projects, single digits in the millions where we can then take some of that burden back off the tax rate, still maintain the building, stay up on top of the sports field, stay up on top of the, you know, the building, the elementary gym, and 20 years is going to get outdated, and it's going to need an update as well. So, things like that, as long as we stay on top of it, we keep this building going. How long does the bond last before it changes to the bond? So, uh you can keep recycling a bond, so you typically only want a bond for 18 to two year 18 months to two years. Uh the project that was done in 2000 approved in 2015, we actually kept bonds for 5 years. So, when

076I came, uh the want to say the June of 2023 is when we converted that bond finally to bonds. So, the goal would be to line this up to get as close to 5 years. We don't want to keep the bonds out too long, so it might be a little less than 5 years, but we got to just kind of work it in there. Got it. What would be the rationale to keep it a bond longer than that? Your project's not closed out. So, you can't turn it into the public authority yet. >> You Yeah, you don't want to convert it all to a bond until it's all done. Oh, that one. Cuz some They have consolidation rules within bonds on when you can re-consolidate that. So, it's sometimes it's every 5 years or 10

077years. You can't re-consolidate that. >> Got it. Okay. So, and that's also goes in 5 years we can re-consolidate that first bond with this bond and wrap them all together. >> Okay. Get a little better interest rate. So, this is this past year's county tax rates. So, what I did is I pulled our six towns on the left-hand side and every district that's within those towns. Um of course Germantown only has us. What if we get to Livingston, for example? Livingston has five districts within their town. Kind of crazy. Yeah. So, when we're talking about doing a 6.56% increase, you know, a dollar weight does seem a lot a really high. So, last year you were $16.04, you'll be $17 uh instead of 4 cents 40 42 cents, you'll be $17.50. You're still under what

078Hudson your your neighbor that goes to Hudson School District was paying. What they were. Still under your Pine Plains neighbor. I feel bad for your Red Hook neighbors. Um we will never surpass the Pine Plains average. Can't figure out how, but they as a spectrum are the lowest in the county, but we are the second lowest in the county even compared to uh New Lebanon. So, giving Ancram folks just a glimpse as well, your neighbor who goes to Oops, hit the wrong button there. Sorry. Who goes to Pine Plains is paying an extra $2 per $1,000 assessed value. Uh Claremont, their Red Hook residents pay double what we pay in Germantown. Just giving a glimpse of what their neighboring districts and your neighbors are paying at the other districts. So this year and I know

079there's a little bit confusion out there. We just were at Germantown yesterday and talked to them. So we are putting up two propositions. This is no tax increase. This is not the district spending money. This is basically establishment of bank account, a savings account. If you're going to establish a 529 for your child to go to college, you're putting away money as you have surplus funds. So that when your kid goes to college, you can afford it and or you can help support it. Same concept. These are accounts that we'd be putting money away for specific activities. So the first one we're proposing is a bus / van reserve. We're proposing $300,000 over 5 years. So we would not put in any more than $300,000 and anything that's left in there after 5 years will

080go back to general fund. So and we bought we have six vans now over the past 2 years. Within the next 2 to 3 years, we will need to start replacing some of those vans. They get about 30 to 40,000 miles a year. So in 4 years, we're at 160. Don't really want to have kids in vans that are 200 miles an hour that might break down cuz transmission or whatever might happen. So we're going to want to replace those. We do have aspirations of one day to own a bus. We want to help support the budget and have a bus for either field trips or going to Hudson for CTE programs, um sports trips, those types of things. Those costs are outrageous. Just I think our transportation budget to Hudson just for quest our

081students is $90,000 a year. Our field trips, it costs us $135 an hour for sports trips and field trips. Those costs are just outrageous and we can't escape it. We go to Alana State Park, we're forced to keep the driver there while the kids are out exploring the park for 3 hours. I'm still paying $125 an hour. And that's every vendor. We can't get away from it. So we do need to start looking in that direction eventually. It's going to be fun. It will be. It'll be fun. >> And we have we have to save up for our electric bus fleet, too. Well, that's a Stop it. That is going to stop. I can feel it. Um the other proposition is for capital project and facility improvements. So, this last capital project, not only did

082the term year end, we also used the funding in there. So, that capital project account is completely dissolved. If we want to put money away for the next capital project, we have to establish account to do that. So, this is again allow us to establish that account. Um and as we have surplus of funds, you would fund it. In a perfect world, we would budget in the budget to put money away for future expenses. Um we're not at that point right now just with our deficit, so we can't budget that way, but in a perfect world we would plan that way. And I already have that up there. We had a question at the town hall uh this week of how we would have surplus. And I think when we looked at that for the

083last couple years, right? And we right, and we pointed out the fact that for example, this year we had two special ed positions that were not filled. And that we had to fill in other ways, and have another teacher step in. That's the kind of money that gets us to a surplus. We do the best forecasting we can at the time. We project what we think fuel will cost, and we project higher because we expect the worst. Um and so, sometimes we come out on the good side of things. And that's how we did find a surplus at the end of the year that we could then use to be able to fund these initiatives. So, the last I'll just state, so these propositions do not authorize a new project or immediate spending. This allows

084the district to set aside money over time for future needs. So, this year we have four candidates who are seeking to fill three open seats. We have two seats that are for four-year terms, and one seat that is for a one-year term. Our candidates this year, which were pulled in a lottery order, are Paula Right, Andrea Foley, Cheryl Sonnati, and Brittany Behr. Um their bios are on the website. Their bios are also in the binders that I have that are are going to be at the town hall tomorrow in the library so we have And the QR code will get you to them if you want to read their bios. So, should I say final steps really at this point? Uh we have one more town hall visit. That's tomorrow at Livingston if anybody wants

085to join us. Hudson will actually be there with us. Hudson City School District presenting their budget at that same time. Um so it'll be interesting. We've been doing it for 3 years now. They're finally stepping up. Uh budget notice mailings have gone out so people have should have gotten received them. We left some at Germantown Town Hall. Um if anybody hasn't gotten them, let us know. We can, you know, maybe mail them directly to those individuals. Um tonight is our public hearing and budget vote is next Tuesday, 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. If anybody still has any questions, please reach out to the budget at germantowncentralschooldistrict or germantowncsd.org. Have you been getting many questions that you need My questions are, can I get an absentee ballot? >> [laughter] >> But that's I did have the newspaper

086reach out to me that I think one other person. But most of it has been, can I get an absentee ballot? How many people attended last night's talk? There was uh it was live streamed but there was three um community members at the meeting. Plus all the town hall Yes, plus the town hall. They had great questions, too. It was a productive meeting. And they complimented us compared to previous years. Or previous years. >> [laughter] >> Any questions? No, but I like this a lot. I think we've seen bits and pieces of this whole thing about a the several times now, but this one here, like I I'm a crier anyway, but I almost had tears in my eyes when we were looking at the grade because that is such a huge That's a good

087look. huge thing. Yes. slideshow budget Should be on the website. page. I just tried to find it and I couldn't. We just linked it. It's in a It'll be in two places after tonight. >> Okay. We made more changes today so we took it down to change it back. We'll put it back up again tonight. We keep changing it every time we deliver this. We're like, let's do this. Or we get feedback, right? So, for example, one of our faculty members yesterday we presented to our faculty and they gave us feedback that it would sure help if you could show that instead of a monthly expenditure, what would it look like? Or instead of an annual, what would it look like by month? So, we put that in there. And then the propositions, we had

088the reserves. People weren't seeming to understand that that wasn't money we were asking for. Right? So, we had to reframe and rewrite that today. So, all the feedback we get, we try to retool this so that it gets better. So, we pull it down every time we make changes and hopefully putting it back up. We thought we'd get feedback tonight that we would change it. So, what happens if the proposals don't pass? Good question. So, if the props don't pass or just don't happen, the budget stays. If the budget passes and one prop passes, then that prop goes through and the other one does. And so, if we have surplus money that we that didn't pass, we put it into the band, it just goes into So, it goes in general fund. The state wants

089us to keep our general fund fund balance below 4% so we would normally move them into other reserve accounts. Okay. So, propositions at say, what I don't even want to put this out there in the universe, but just say something on the ballot passes. Like like both of the propositions pass and say the budget The budget has to pass or the props depends. Okay. That's what I was Yeah, so [clears throat] the budget has to pass or the props don't pass. >> Understood. Okay. Which is one of the reasons why we do capital projects typically On their own budget run. So, you do there is always that concern with the public when they see props they immediately think more money and spending. So, a lot of times you do capital projects separately. We did in

090December. So, it's it's own vote. Cuz you'll get some people who just come in and automatically do no on additional props. I'm getting ready to cast my vote. My dad is like, "I'm voting no." I'm like, "You don't even know what it's for." You didn't read it. Some people you have that though. You do. You do. So. Okay. Our goal is we were going to today but we didn't get to it. But do a voiceover for this and put it on the website. >> use our voices and go over this and put that up. We're also going to have those display posters talking you know highly you know talking about the tax that we'll be talking about the reserves. Just giving like bulleted information on that. Yeah. Also too since we are being filmed, right?

091We have this flyer up in our stewards and post offices across all of our town that are within our district. As the QR code. It describes the different components of our tax increase. Again, I just want to reiterate that if it the budget is voted against that 3.93% still remains. Right? That is there. That's happening with a previously voted budget. In past years we have The last year was the first new capital project we voted on. Uh December of 2023. So, it's 2 years ago now. My question is and try to back into this. Is the the 6% number I wasn't expecting to see because I've been coming to these meetings and I knew they were going to raise taxes the two In other years that people have voted has there been that 6% number

092but a different number? Do you understand what I'm trying to say? >> So, last year we did exceed the tax cap and we needed the supermajority. I don't believe our percentage went all the way up to like five or six. I think it stayed in the fours. Um we What we did is that middle column is we exceeded that calculation within the formula that drove the supermajority vote. But our overall percentage increase did not exceed like six or seven. I want to say it was four and change. >> Are you asking though if capital project that capital project component was there in past years? I'm wondering if this if we are being more transparent this year in explaining how the capital project that we already voted on We are and it's because that fiscal cliff

093that we're hitting. Yeah. It's all because So, again, I'll go back when we do projects every five years. So, let's just say So, when we we fund a project, you have your principal and interest. We get state aid from the state. We get 58 cents on the dollar on aidable projects. So, we get that back. The difference from that because the taxpayers approved the project is what's called the exclusions in the calculation. That is the burden that the taxpayers approved and that they are going to continue to pay. So, with this project, it was approved two years ago, but I didn't need to secure any funding until this year. Oh. So, since this year I secured $9 million in bonds, I now have to start paying on that next year. I mean, I could have

094pushed it off for another year, but we're just pushing the the cart down the road. Um so, now because we don't have a project falling off, so if you have a project falling off, well, let's just say your difference between your principal and interest and your state aid is $500,000. That falls off. This next project, if it's $500,000, you don't Taxpayers don't see a difference. It's not highlighted as much. So, that's now that nothing is falling off and you have something coming on, you're seeing that. Right. And I'll just jump in, Gabe, and say that in my 10 years on the board, I don't remember seeing this scenario before where we had like like, you know, a big chunk that was going to a project that we had to explain to the public. I don't

095remember this happening in the last 10 years. So, what I can see Sorry about that. So, we're using it now. So, last spring we used our 2 million to do the roof over the high school and we used it for the playground. Once that was dissolved and we started work this past summer, we needed to secure a $4 million band for the summer work and now starting this work, I have to start paying the contractors for phase three. But, I just have a quick question. Push it back another year, but so you can't split it. No, you cannot split it. Once Once you secure the band, you have to either start paying on it. But, we also have more next year. We have that $2.9 million next year, right? So, it is kind of split

096in a way. Last what I did look into to your statement, you guys did not notice it before. The reason you did not notice it before is because it took us 5 years to switch to a band or bond, but we started our aid a year before. So, our aid flowed flowed in from from the state on the capital project the year ahead of our switching to the band Okay. So, we didn't see an impact. So, it all offset. Yeah, so what that does mean on the back end now, when this project reaches year 15, we're going to have the aid fall off and we're going to have that. So, we're going to have to figure that out in the next 10 years. Well, more like 11 years, 12 years, but yeah. But, you're also

097holding that band, is that that crazy interest rate as well? Yes, that's not good. Yeah, even if it wasn't a noticeable difference, but still But, I can continue projects we'll be able to deal with that, but yes, that's that's why you didn't see it because your aid started before your funding. Got it. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you very much. Not a problem. I love the push this year so much. Thank you. Um so, I have Whoop, I'm just I'm going to my computer so that the community can see what as I change here whole chart. But I know the talk has been creating a dashboard we talked about quarterly. This is actually a monthly dashboard that I can bring to the board. This isn't finalized. I'm still working on it. So just to run through

098it on the top. This gives us, you know, what month we're looking at, current fiscal year, last fiscal year. Has on the top what our total budget is. Percent through the school year that we're at. So as of the end of April we're 83% of the year. How much money have we spent so far in the year? 15 million 515,000. I do want to add in a percent of budget in between that and this next column. What we spent this past month in April? 1 million 774,000. Uh percent of budget that's 10.3% of the budget. So it's kind of on par. Um compared to last year, it's 20% more. So it's 1.2% more than we spent last year. So it's a little bit more, but that's not abnormal. And the spending time frame is spending

099and time variance. That gives us what we'll look on if that's at zero, we're spending what we should be or per year. Like we're on target. We're below and we're negative, we're spending slower than the year is going, which is good. We kind of want to be looking at that. If it's ever positive and above, we're spending more than too fast. You might see that in the beginning of the school year where we're paying out supplies and things like that. You probably might even see that in the last pay period in June when we're paying out that massive payout for teachers. You might see that increase there. Uh going down to the next in the gray, that's revenue. So that's the total revenue we earned for that month. Year-to-date revenue is 15 million. Uh change

100from last year to this year is saying it's 40.1%. Um still working on calculations and how we're going to predict estimated ending fund balance. Uh 4% is always where we want to be. So that's going to be a calculation of looking at what our cash is on hand, what our projected expenses will be throughout the year, and kind of give us that. Um do you want to add things that I've, you know, as I'm still building this, a tax levy analysis, where are we at with tax levy, how much did we collect it? Uh doing [clears throat] this, um I noticed that we still have $300,000 so whether that's star payment or whether it's back taxes, so I'm calling Mark at the town tomorrow or the county tomorrow to figure that out. Also, state aid.

101Uh we're a million short right this second for state aid, so when is that flowing in? Um so it allows me to look at that monthly. Um below we have a couple charts so far. So, your first one is year over year expenses. So, your blue line is last year, your red line is this year. So, we're pretty on par with how we've been spending, so I know Dave, you're always asking, is this good, bad, or indifferent compared to last year? I think that kind of gives you a not gives us an idea we on that same spending pattern. Revenue and then right next to it, so that gives us a view of where we're at with revenue. We're right on par with where we were last year, so that should always be the same

102and we always want to see it go up a little higher each year. It goes up a lot, that's always great. Down below, again, I'm still working on this one. Um this is a combination, so your green blurb is cash on hand. So, that's how much cash we have in the bank. So, it shows that we always have enough cash to cover our expenses and then the red line is the revenue. So, the blue line is the expenses, red is revenue. It is off. Oh, yes, you guys can't see that's why I'm not there. It's a secret. >> Sorry. It's a secret. >> [laughter] >> So, again, that green blurb, that is cash on hand, what we have in the bank. The red line is revenue coming in and the blue is expenses. So, it

103is a little off because our cash goes into our tax account first. So, we did recognize receiving the revenue, so I was like, all right, how do I want to do this in the future? But, that shows we got the revenue. [clears throat] Then we transfer it over to the general fund the next month. You see that increase. So, it always kind of gives us a glimpse we always have enough cash on hand to manage what we have going on. Any thoughts, concerns? You love it, like it? I like I like how you have the watch list down here because I was going to say like so if we get three out of district placements that came in this month, that's the kind of thing that the board really wants to see like oh, yeah,

104that's that's a driver right there. >> Yep. Why why is my percent 3% less? Well, like you say just that it's coming, right? They did they just moved into the district this month. Okay, we know next year that's going to be So will this So the total that we budgeted versus like that I guess could we see on this if we're like if we're having to use that gap closure? Yes, so that will come in on the estimated ending fund balance. So we budget the 4% and that is what we dive into first. So we'll be that will show there like are we dipping into that? Are we estimating that to be lower and more than what we have? Is that kind of Like are we exceeding the budget? Right, so we had a total

105budget. So we this is the this is what we were approved at 17 million. Yep. But likely our expenses were Well, it might be a little bit more this year with everything that's Right, right. I guess my question is that that gap in the use of the fund balance. Yep. >> I guess I just want to that number, you know what >> going to be between those two blank boxes, the projected surplus or deficit. Down to the right, the blue one. Oh, okay. Okay. >> Yep, so that's that's probably where you'd see that. Are we going to end the year going positive or negative? So but this so but the budget So this is if we're dipping into the gap closure that we agreed upon. >> to have a surplus or we are we projected

106to have a surplus or we projected to dip into fund balance? Right, but this would have been expected dip into fund balance. This is just the base without closing the gap you know know, what I'm saying? Uh no, this is your total budget. So, that is the base. Uh so, your revenue is where the gap comes in. So, this would have So, this would have the 18 484 in there. At the in the budget line. So, that already had would have a gap. Okay. So, we would already Yes, you would see a projected deficit down there. >> Okay. So, once we did dip into that. So, previous years it would have remained just like that, nothing. Okay. I love that. So, that projected surplus box projected surplus deficit it that's a um is that box

107going to change? It should cuz it's it's going to be a combination of projecting out expenses >> Yeah. encompassing what we have as um encumbered expenses. So, when I send out a PO, I'm encumbering that expense. I may not have paid for it yet. So, that's not going to show on cash. So, it's doing a combination of those two things with cash. Well, it's it's a move it it's kind of like real time changing. >> Yeah, so it's going to be, you know, we'll be able to play with the big items, medical, salaries, you know, some of the other smaller ones are going to be very hard to nail down, but those are your big two pieces. Salary 7 million, um benefits 5 million, so that's $11 million over budget right there in the 18.

108So, it's the big chunks. Okay. Yeah, we think that would be the neat kind of again the easy play at least in my mind going so we can say we see it coming. But then as you trying to look and trying to find some just dashboard things to go we see there's an issue and then I can figure it out and then along the same lines, I want to make sure I understand on the spend versus time variance one. And that's kind of what you're trying to get to there, I think. Is And is is this a per is that number you've got there a cumulative number for the year or is that a >> month. >> For the month. So, yeah. So, if you were to basically take our budget and divide it a

109month cuz you're in 365 days, did we and let's just say each month equals out to $10,000. I'm just going to use simple numbers. If we spent 9,000, we're negative cuz we're behind. If we spend 11,000, we're positive. So, it's saying like you're spending a little bit more per day than estimated. Or is >> So, it's kind of gives us an idea. So, again, your beginning of the year you might see that when you're buying all your supplies. Yeah. It might be offset cuz your staff's not in yet, but >> It It could be a That could at least in my mind you tell me if I'm wrong here, but I mean, that could be just purely a timing thing. That's not a necessarily accumulative going for the for the year. >> depending >> For

110for the year, every month we're showing This thing is accumulative look, and if it was a positive number, we know we're behind. Correct. So, you know, we're spending more than we thought. That's kind of what I want to make sure we're Yep. So, every month looking at that as long as we're seeing it close to zero or, you know, in the red, that's that's where we want to be. And you don't really want to see twos and threes and fours. We want to see >> Yeah, no. I I hear I get in my mind I'm just I'm thinking that it it I would think it would somewhere here. I think maybe the project The projected surplus one's kind of doing the same thing. I'm going cumulatively, you know, if we see this thing and it's

111hey, the first 3 months, 4 months, and we're it's accumulative and we're ahead, right? That number's positive. Well, we know we we know we're missing the boat here. We're kind of over budget. You know what I mean? That's what I want to make sure I kind of point >> And I definitely we can tweak this as we go and revamp it or edit it or >> Yeah, I mean, like I said, I mean, I think you said that, but I would encourage everybody to take a little time and, you know, look at this and jot down some things what makes sense, what doesn't, what else would you want to see, and and what not. So, Yeah. For sure. So, will this be >> start. I mean, great. I mean, that's great. Yeah, no, I I

112love it, too. Um will this be So, when we have it in Diligent, these documents, is this going to live somewhere where we can also look at like last month or Yeah, so I can I can share out view rights to everybody cuz that top where it's yellow and you have the number 10, if you change that to one, it's going to pull up the month of July. If you change it to nine, it's going to go back to March. Yeah. >> So, you guys will can have that ability, yeah. Yeah, would that be helpful, do you think, to like look at the graph? >> Yeah, I think cuz I think part of it, too, was the conversation along the way that to have an easy place to go. For For example, like, you know,

113July's cash I'm looking at the graph in the bottom. July's cash, we're at 2 and 1/2 million bucks. Where was I July last year, right? Just to get an idea going. Are we You know, we sucking this thing dry or not, you know what I mean? Or just some of that kind of comparison. >> So, with that, Dave, uh just to speak to that a little bit. So, our cash flow ends typically at the end of this month we should get all of our revenue in. And then we have a massive payout at the end of June for teachers with their five payouts. And then we start purchasing everything for next year in July, so that will drop down our revenue or cash on hand. And then our Luckily, we are taxpayer-heavy, so we get

114that boost of cash right in September. Sure. But, I would think year over year it's it's the timing's consistent. >> Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So, you You can kind of see that between the two upper ones, you know, our expenses in July are around the same each year. And our revenue, you know, we don't get no revenue in July. It's pretty stagnant. Yeah, this is a big step forward. I was just for the board to be able to The goal is I'm you know, the goal is eventually have between myself and Meg produces and have this with the treasurer's report. Right now, I am cuz I'm still building it, I'm putting the data in after we get our treasurer's report, so that's why it wasn't uploaded. The goal is next next month to have this uploaded.

115Nice. Nice. Great. Thank you very much. Not a problem. Please abuse Clark. Thank you. What is she talking about? >> [laughter] >> What? You've never seen Christmas Vacation? I don't even know what >> Not in this context, you know. >> [laughter] >> Madam Superintendent? Right. So, we have two things we're very proud to present tonight. We have received from the National Federation of State High School Associations an award of excellent. I'll hold it up like like thank you. Very proud for exemplary display of sportsmanship, ethics, and integrity. So, presented to the Germantown Center School. So, this is a great award for us to get. We're very happy with this. Very proud for all of our athletes who have been great scholar athletes all along. So, congratulations to you guys. Nice job on that. And additionally,

116um Mrs. Hilton received a letter from the Firefighters Association of the State of New York. And I'll read it to you. It's dated May 8th. Dear Miss Hilton, on behalf of the leadership and members of FASNY, I would like to congratulate your nominee, Aurora Cole, on being being selected as our 2026 Teacher of the Year Award winner. While many individuals actively work to improve the ranks of the volunteer fire service, the dedication of this individual clearly exceeds that threshold. The selection of FASNY award winners is the result of a process that reviews many worthy candidates. As the recipient of this award, this individual individual can be proud that their dedication has not gone unrecognized and serves as an inspiration to others. A member of the appropriate awards committee will be contacting you to finalize the

117award presentation logistics. In the meantime, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me. Congratulations, Eugene Perry, President. So, congratulations to Miss Cole for this award. She does so much for us, for our safety here, and keeping the school safe, and making sure that we're always practicing the most up-to-date and getting trained in the most up-to-date methods. So, so well deserved. Very happy to see that. Um, so again back to the budget, right? This is the topic that we're also focused on right now. Um, I will be at a German New York Town yard sale this weekend on Saturday at our table and we'll be selling the fabulous pins made by the art club, right? Along with some art display, but also there to be able to answer any questions about the budget

118that the community may have. So, you'll find me in front of Otto's. I'll be your neighbor. >> that right? Very good. Um, so yes, please visit us there. And on budget vote day we are open at 7:30 a.m. Uh, to 9:00 p.m. in the elementary gym. We have a kindergarten through three elementary concert for students and their families at 12:00. Uh, at 12:40 we have our annual community appreciation drive-through in the bus loop. We We love that. Uh, at 1:00 our grades five and six are having a cultural meal with families. Um, we'll also be having many art and student work displays displayed throughout all of those areas. And then in the evening we do have grades uh, four through eight. Now I'm getting the top the top end uh, with a a music um,

119concert. So, in the evening. So, we have that happening at night time. So, we have a lot going on that day. Uh, we're here to support uh, and answer any questions that any members of our community have regarding the budget. So, we have had a strong week of candidates in for the elementary principal interviews. We have had some really strong candidates to consider. Yesterday was round two um, and I want to explain that on round one we started with six candidates. Uh, we had 11 participants from our school who wished to participate to include members of the community, members of our school certainly. As we had a student on the committee as well. And then they trimmed that down to three final candidates which that happened in round two yesterday. And we did extend an

120offer to a candidate today and we are waiting for that response and more information to come. But we had some really great candidates to consider so we're very confident in our selections. Excited to see what turns out here. We have extended an offer for our secretary one position. We'll be presenting that to the board at the May 20th board. We held a series of interviews for treasurer. And more information to come on that. Tomorrow we have scheduled interviews for special education teacher. We have four candidates going into those interviews tomorrow. And then interviews next week for elementary and PE teachers are next week scheduled for that time. Our policy manual has been fully audited as of today all the way back to 2022. Once this budget piece is behind us Lisa and I will be

121working to make sure that is fully updated and uploaded to diligent and then remains in good shape moving forward. Um We have completed all state testing as of this Friday. We'll have all of our makeups done and we are done with three eight state testing. Our as these guys mentioned our honor society inductions were held this week. They were beautiful as always and prom is this Friday night. So cool. A lot going on. It's busy. This room here is in constant use so it's nice to see. That's all I have. Thank you. The state testing on our way to school yesterday, my son said, "Every time we do state testing, I'm sick." And I said, "Well, buddy, it's allergy season, so >> right. >> maybe New York State needs to rethink when they're doing the

122testing. Technically, yes. Um Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we're fine. No, I like you guys. Yep. Okay. So, be it resolved that the Board of Education of the Germantown Central School District hereby authorizes the Superintendent to declare 11 very old student desks, a very old sewing table, a pile of split rail fence, PVC pipe, and a Kohler engine as presented to the board at this meeting as a surplus property or as surplus property and permits the sale or disposal of said books, which aren't there. Oh, they're so of said items, and that a record of the sale will be maintained and available for public inspection. I need a motion. I'll make it. Second. Second. Any discussion? Do you actually need to bring these things to us? Yes. >> Is that like a legal thing? >> It is.

123Is it? Really? >> I've asked this question several times before. >> yeah, the question's been asked before. Like we don't care. I guess if anybody does want those old student desks, like they're the beautiful old one-piecers, right? They You see a few of them displayed in the hallway. We hate to throw those out in the trash. What? Are they not? Okay. $5. $5 and they're yours. Bring them to the art sale. Yeah, I'd say sell them at the art sale. Somebody will. Without a doubt, yeah. Okay, sorry. I cannot give them away. She was I was kidding. Please. >> [laughter] >> They would just leave them by the road. Leave them by the road. All that PVC. Yeah, actually Where were we? All in favor? I. Opposition? Abstention? So moved. Okay. Public comment on non-agenda

124items. Yes, ma'am. >> Sorry. Um Sorry. I am Here. Um I can I am Um I am over there. I am I am I am I am So, I I am Um I am I am I am Um I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am >> Right. Yeah. So, I think that for that second one, thank you for bringing that up. I appreciate it. And you said there was no public comment yet. Okay. Okay. And then so, for for the second piece of it, I think that we typically would never just immediately answer really any questions for in in this forum, but just to take it and think about and consider and um, you know, if we were

125to come up with something for outreach other than the town really is the the big proponent in this one to be pushing that out, but I can I understand what you're saying for sure. And I'm I'm sure all parents can, you know, sympathize and empathize with that fact that it I don't put no flyers, informational flyers. Like there's like words like comments. Driving But yeah. >> Yeah, thank you. They have to have a public comment. You do? But I can't have a public They have to present it to the public first. And once they have a public comment day, because they do have to do that, we were just talking about that. Once there's a day, that's a more solid commitment that people can make to go and voice their their opinion. Yeah, well, if

126they do, I mean, that would be that would be the information that I would you know, push as a parent. But thank you very much for bringing that up. I appreciate you. Thank you. Um any other public comment on non-agenda item? Oh, yes, Gabe, I'm sorry. I just looked right over you. The class of 2020 Um is having their annual car wash at the school sale day, so Beth, please Bring my car through. >> Bring your car and send them all down Um my husband will be volunteering at this first school event. Um I want to shout out a few PTSA things we've done recently. Uh we recently, in order to like help build community, have started a RSVP form where people can the community can join events that the PTSA is hosting at the

127school. Uh we screened a movie of The Keeper, which is a local filmmaker. Um and we had a combined attendance. It was very last minute, but people in the community came. It was about the Hudson River. Um, we got donations for science programming at the school and the filmmaker was very happy with the space and our tech person who ran tech. On Friday, June 12th from 6:00 to 9:00, the Friends of the Arts is holding a karaoke fundraiser at the activity building. Um, fun. And the school art book fair is next week at the school. Thank you. Okay, anybody else? No? Well, that's it. I need a motion to adjourn the meeting. I'll make it. Second? You second? Uh, any discussion?