001I'd like to call the meeting to order. This is the April 22nd, 2026 regular business meeting and budget meeting of the Horseheads Central School District Board of Education. I'd like to start with the Pledge of Allegiance if you'll please join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, thank you. First item on the board's agenda this evening is to adjourn to executive session the purpose of discussing individual personnel matters. No action to be taken. Is there a motion? Any comments or questions? Now, I'll call for a vote. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed, nay. Abstentions? Okay, so the board will adjourn to executive session and we expect
002to reconvene the public section session at approximately 6:00 p.m. Thank you. Okay, the board is returning from executive session. So, we'll come back to order here for public session. We did not take any action in executive session. It was discussing individual personnel matters. The next item on the agenda for this evening are the approval of minutes. There are four 2.01 through 2.04 for approval this evening. Is there a motion? Any comments or questions on the motion? Katrina? I will be abstaining from 2.02 and 2.04 because I was not at those meetings and then I will be voting no to 2.01 and 2.03. Any other comments or questions? I see none. I'll call for a vote. All those in favor of 2.01 through 2.04 say I. I. Any opposed, nay. Other than we have Katrina's noted
003no and any other abstentions? Okay, motion carries. Item three, we first have the association section for comments. So, I'd leave Dr. Tembes, the president of HAPS, like to speak. So, Good evening. Hi. April is Occupational Therapy Month. So, I just wanted to touch base on what our occupational therapists do. Occupational therapy is considered a related service under the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2004. District occupational therapists focus on the students' educational performance and their ability to adapt to and function in an educational program through active participation and goal-directed activities. Occupational therapists work on fine motor skills, visual motor skills, visual perceptual skills, strengthening, sensory processing, and adaptive equipment use. Occupational therapists promote function, independence, and achievement of educational goals. There are three full-time occupational therapists working in the district and 1.8 therapists contracted through BOCES.
004They work with all students that qualify for occupational therapy services in the academic setting from pre-K through 12th grade. Thank you very much for sharing that information. We appreciate it. Item 3.02, community questions and comments. Do we have anyone from the community that would like to speak to the board this evening? Okay, we'll then move on in the agenda. Our student board representative is not able to be here this evening, so we will skip over item 4.01 and go to item five, superintendent report and presentation. So, Dr. Douglas, your report. Thank you, President Christmas. I'm going to keep mine relatively short because the board has had extensive meetings over the past two and a half months, but as we announced the other evening, we lost a member of our staff recently. For the board, calling
005hours will be this Friday from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. at Lynch's Funeral Home on West Broad Street in Horseheads. Please contact Terry if you're able to gather. I am hoping to gather my staff as well as any board members at roughly 3:00, 2:50, 3:00 at that point. If you're unable to make that, please feel free to come out on behalf of the district for one of our employees. We will also have Terry send that out as well as a reminder. Thank you. Other than that, ladies and gentlemen, just because of the interest of time, we've been working steadfastly on the budget. Let's transition to the budget presentation. It should just be up momentarily. Test. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Board of Education, our viewing audience that's out there, community members that came for
006this evening's presentation. Before you is the 2026-2027 proposed budget. This is roughly our sixth meeting as we've been working on this diligently and it has not been like past years. I will go through this if I can turn this thingy on. There we go. A little quicker because a lot of it is redundancies. There has been no additional state aid put into our budget from the state government just because of the fact they have not settled a budget at this point. So, we have to go with our best-laid plan. My business office, between Mrs. Bezetti, Mrs. Perazzolo, my staff, Tony, all of our administrators, directors, and all of our principals and staff have tried to make sure that we develop the best possible budget for the district. When we look at this projected state aid,
007we are seeing that the numbers are the same that we've apportioned beforehand with not finalized at this point. In addition to tax cap calculation we've talked about, it really hasn't changed much at this point going through. And we have our calculations that we've already shown numerous times for the board. I'm sure you're all thrilled, but it is only based on 2% and 2% is just a part of the calculation allowable levy growth factor, just a little bit below midway down. That's how it's calculated. That doesn't mean that this keeps up with the rate of inflation, which right now stands at 3.3%. So, in the future we have to be mindful of that. With the tax cap calculation, the difference is as we've applied some debt service to this. And now, last time you saw it
008was 4.91. We've applied roughly about $750,000 in debt service to bring it down on behalf of our tax base and taxpayers to roughly a 3.41% levy, which still only requires a 50% plus one vote for approval by the community. Just so that you know, here's our document that shows the previous tax levy and tax rates with the bottom highlighted for 26-27, we are estimating that the actual tax for full value, or what I call it tax on true, 100% full value, is going to decrease by 1.99%. The actual tax rate won't be determined until August because there will be still changes between now and then, but these individuals have always been very conservative and have a wonderful record that it usually goes down. Last year was the first year it went up just a little
009from what we estimated, but not much. I think it was an extra two cents. But this year, if our estimates hold, we are looking at roughly a negative 32 cents per thousand or $32 decrease in taxes for a $100,000 home. So, if your house was valued at $100,000 this year, you pay you can see you paid $1,609 for that $100,000 home. If the assessment didn't change, the rate of assessment was at a 100% next year, if this budget were to be approved, that $1,609 would drop down to $1,577. That is the fact. There is no controversy there. Where the issue comes is we have to deal with municipalities and tax assessors and the state that may devalue property less than full value and show a higher rate, but it all equalizes out to the full
010value. That's what we must utilize. So, on full value, we are showing a $32 decrease per $100,000. Summary of budget revenues. We have our budget revenues there and 422 tax items decreased by 750, debt service increased by 750. That's really the difference. That's what brought that tax levy down. So, we're showing it. Our expense budget, just what we are expending upon. We've talked about it numerous times. The 2026-2027 budget remains staffed and programmatically strong. It maintains all current educational programs in the academics, arts, and athletics based on our current needs and enrollment. We have already adjusted for enrollment and we've made sure that this did not impact livelihoods of our staff except through attrition or open positions. Or opening of positions. We are adding two floating bus monitors to provide additional supports for students and
011staff and families on our transportation routes. We are also including three assistant principals to support students, staff, and families at the three elementary buildings that we've heard so much request for from our staff. We are also increasing the district's health care budget to support the increases in health care and prescription costs that everyone is seeing. We're not immune to being the only one. Ours is actually less than everyone else's at this point where we took the major hit 2 years ago. We still have to keep up with the trends and analysis for health care cost and spending. This budget also maintains technology replacement cycles, although we've altered them a little, but it maintains them. And it replaces vehicles that are needed for the operations of the district. The summary of the budget expenditures indicate that
012this in decrease from year over year is about 6.95% across the areas, but remember that is uh pretty much where a lot of other districts are. That's generally a pretty decent size uh change that keeps up with the needs of the current employment opportunities and operations. Final budget summary. The board gave us sort of the direction and the thumbs up that as long as we brought it back somewhere around four or below, we are pretty well set. We said that the budget is balanced. We have done that by the tax levy of 1.7 million and change and we utilized $750,000 in debt service to make up the full needed requirements of this budget. We are using the ERS reserve tentatively at 750,000, the EBLR reserve at 200,000, which is the employee benefit liability reserve, the
013inner fund transfer for 166,000, and fund balance in around a million. Over time, we are strengthening, but we also want to try to strengthen in out years by trying to handle some of that. If you notice to the right, we have used the gap closing measures of additional reserve use, very limited, what we are comfortable with. We've also done budget reductions where appropriate to get it down to the zero. And we do not know what's happening with state aid. The good part is if the budget is finalized and finished and there's additional funds coming in, that will offset what we're using in our reserves, and if it's more than that, we would probably target it to help out with our health care cost down the road. We are not trying to spend additional if we
014got additional. We are trying to strengthen our budget in the long run. Ultimately, ladies and gentlemen, the budget is done. It would have a proposal number one of adoption of the 2026-2027 budget. And I won't read this, but I'll let everybody else. And that's the language that would be on the ballot. And proposition number two, purchase of budget buses not to exceed 1.9 million. We did very good and did not exceed what we asked for last year. I do want to make sure people understand there are no electric vehicles being purchased throughout this process. We have received a waiver from the state now that will allow us to move forward at a much slower pace, so I do not see that becoming a reality for probably at least two to four more years if it's
015not extended beyond that. So, we tried to take care of that as well. Both of those propositions must pass with a 50 plus one majority to be accepted by the community. At this point, later tonight, you'll be asked to approve this budget. Once you approve it, you are just saying we've approved the budget for the community now to weigh in. We are the only agency in New York state that the community has the final say. Uh we can't take a position one way or another as a board or a superintendent sitting at this unless we step away from the mic uh and identify ourselves as either a resident or our own personal position. So, please, in your future, the board has to go out and do the advocacy for this budget as well as my
016staff will. Ladies and gentlemen, we have three positions up on the board each year. This year, there is three positions uh and those positions have three candidates running. The candidates are in order their names will appear on the ballot. In the first slot is Aaron Chevon, in the second slot is Angie Finlayson, and third slot is Katrina Anvarski. Unless there is a major write-in campaign that could subvert an election, uh these candidates would advance to a board seat the next year. That is normally how it works, but we have to go through the process. So, uh it is important still. We will not have a meet the candidates night at this point. Future board meetings, we will have a public hearing on May 7th, 6:00 p.m., high school auditorium here. And Tuesday, May 19th, the
017high school north gym will be utilized for our annual meeting, Board of Education elections, and budget vote. Just so that you know, we are having a plan that will be put into place to communicate out as well. Transportation on that one day will be altered significantly. We will need help from our Ridge Road Elementary parents not to show up I think before 3:00 on that day, and we will have running bus times and we will dismiss just a couple minutes early at the intermediate middle school and the high school so that we can make sure we smoothly get in and out of here so that we can also make it back for our elementary times appropriately. There won't be much change in it, but that will be communicated out by the schools as well. So,
018we're trying to think so that people, no matter what, are not stopped out on Fletcher Street, Center Street, or Sayre because people are waiting in line to pick up their child an hour early. So, we're trying to make it as uneventful as possible. Not in the elementary, only at the intermediate middle school just to help in the transition from there to the high school. That is our budget presentation. We have concluded. I'm hoping there's no questions cuz you said there wouldn't be because we're all set from the last meeting. I'll turn it over to Mr. Christmas. >> Yeah. Notwithstanding that statement, are there any questions for Dr. Dr. Douglas uh about the budget? Okay. Well, that it's a formal agenda item later in the evening that we actually vote on, but thank you for the
019presentation and to you and your team for all the work on it. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Dr. Douglas. Move to item six, finance items for action. We have a lengthy list of uh items for action. 6.02 through 6.28. Is there a motion? Okay, comments or questions from the board on any of the items pending in the motion? Warren? 0.10, 6.11, and 6.12. Okay, noted. Thank you. Other comments or questions? Okay, seeing none. I will call for a vote. All those in favor of items 6.0 2 through 6. 28, say I. I. Any opposed, nay. Any abstentions other than Warren's on 6.10, 6.11, and 6.12? Okay, the motion carries. Move to item seven, personnel items for action. We have an action vote on 7.02, HR recommendations. Is there a motion? Okay, comments or
020questions from the board on the motion? Warren? Um, I'll abstain on letter H, number seven. Well, I'm sure it comports with the policy. I just don't like a teacher being non-degree. Okay, noted. Thank you. Any other board members wish to be heard on the motion? Okay, we'll call for a vote. All those in favor of 7.02, say I. I. Any opposed, nay. Any abstentions other than Mr. Conklin's on H7? Okay, motion carries. Move to item eight, miscellaneous items for action. We have a variety of items under this section, 8.02 through 8.07. Is there a motion? Second. Okay, comments or questions on the motion? Warren? I'll abstain on 8.02. Contract is already in place. Okay, noted. Thank you. Other board members wish to be heard on the motion? Okay, seeing none, I'll call for a vote.
021All those in favor of 8.02 through 8.07, say I. I. Any opposed, nay. Any abstentions other than Mr. Conklin's on 8.02? Okay, the motion carries. Move to item nine, board policies. So, we have we'll start with the board uh, I'm sorry, policy committee report from their March 31st meeting. Warren? All right, so I'll run through the different uh policies uh, for the first reading. So, you understand what happened. Um, on policy 6721, construction con- uh, contracts, the committee recommended the uh, the policy be deleted. It's not required by law. It reiterates municipal law 103, which we have to follow law. And the details that are currently in have been incorporated into policy 6700, which the board is voting on tonight on its second reading. And as I proceed along, I'm just going to say 6700
022because a bunch of the ones uh that were proposing to be deleted have been incorporated into 6077. So, um, policy 6730, cooperative purchasing, not required by law and policy 6700. Policy 6731, we propose deletion uh the committee. It's not required by law and 6700. Uh, 6700, just to reiterate, was completely rewritten, so it wasn't as detailed in its prior format as it is in its new uh, format. Um copy of uh, purchasing procedure 6740, not required by law and policy 6700. Policy 6751, [snorts] sales calls and demonstrations, we propose deletion, not required by law. Um, policy 6800 payroll procedures, there are some proposed changes in the vocabulary and grammar in that policy. And then policy 68 20, the committee proposed to delete it on salary deductions. It's not required by law and it is covered
023in educational law 1709. Thank you. My mic's not on. Sorry about that. So, we have four policies that are up for second reading this evening, 9.03 through 9.06. Those would be subject to a vote by the board for formal adoption in their revised state. So, is there a motion for action 9.03 through 9.06? Any Any comments or questions from board members on the items 9.03 through 9.06? Okay, seeing none, I'll call for a vote. All those in favor of 9.03 through 9.06, say I. I. Any opposed, nay. Any abstentions? I voted I was raising my hand. I vote no on 9.03. Okay. So, noted 9.03. Uh, that's a no vote. Any abstentions 9.03 through 9.06? Okay, the motion carries. We will move now to the policies that Warren mentioned. These are not for approval this
024evening, but if any board members wish to speak to the proposed changes of the policy committee on 10.01 through 10.07, yeah, you can be recognized and heard at this point. Okay, looks like there are no comments from the board at this time. So, those would come back for a second reading at the next board meeting. Moving right along to the item 11, president's report. So, uh just a few things for me this evening. Uh, I want to thank Vice President Anvarski for managing the meeting last week. I was unable to attend. I was on a college visit with my daughter, but thank you very much for your assistance there. I want to also thank the uh, individuals who have returned petitions to seek election to the board or re-election, as the case may be. Thank
025you for um, opting for that service and uh, we appreciate your interest. Um, the details of that were covered by Dr. Douglas earlier, so I won't repeat those, but we do we do look forward to that process and and uh inviting those folks to rejoin or join the board. The last thing I wanted to update folks on is the ad hoc committee. And um there is a a lot of work that has been underway by the ad hoc committee. And some of this there have been some public updates on our district webpage, so there is information there. I won't go through it all. But I we have gone through a couple of rounds of soliciting input from the community. We had a thought exchange both for community stakeholders and internal stakeholders of the district back
026in March. And then we are still in the the we're in the final stages of the community stakeholder and internal stakeholder survey. And I think an a reminder email went out today. So, for anyone in the community, uh it check your email and there's a link there that will take you to the survey, which you can fill out if you haven't already. It does end tomorrow, so there's only one more day. And um but we encourage that feedback. We also and if I turn to I can give thus far, and this is, you know, all subject to change because it's not closed yet, but the survey as of the 20th, we had a total of over 700 responses to the community stakeholder survey. And I will make the point, that's just raw data. We have
027to go through a process of ensuring there aren't duplicates or responses that can't be tied to an individual who actually has a connection as a stakeholder of the district, but raw data, we had 750 or so responses and then on the internal stakeholder survey again, raw data, over 200 responses. So we very much appreciate the the interest and the input there. There have also been focus groups that were conducted, both a community stakeholder focus group earlier this week where there were 17 participants that came and and offered their input to the facilitators. There was an internal stakeholder focus group and then also two different what we call elevating student voices sessions, one with intermediate middle school students and one with high school students. That what those took place earlier this week. So a lot of
028activity to try to gather as much input as possible from the community and from the district stakeholders. All of that is going to now be synthesized and brought back to the ad hoc committee and we have our next meeting on April 27th, so this coming Monday where we will start the process of reviewing that data and thinking about how we coalesce that into the report of the committee and we'll work through that on subsequent meetings on May 14th and May 28th and at this point we are planning a special meeting of the board on June 3rd, which is a Wednesday, for the presentation of the ad hoc committee report to the board. So we will include that in the update, but for your planning June 3rd special meeting and I I just like to thank
029everyone who's participated in the ad hoc committee process and in the steps, the thought exchange, the survey, the focus groups. It's really been a valuable exercise to receive the input from the community. So that is all I was planning to cover this evening in terms of my report. We then can move to item 1102 board member comments. So any board members wish to speak? Oh, I'm sorry. There was one other um Sorry. I'm uh We also anticipate the need for a special meeting for uh an updated presentation on the potential third capital project. And that we will the date is to be determined, so that will have subsequent communications about that. But that would be to hear the next iteration of the potential proposal. So we gave feedback to uh Hunt and Welliver when they
030were here before and then they've worked through that and they'll come back to us with revised options and we can provide additional feedback. To be crystal clear that we would not be formally approving or authorizing a capital project at that meeting. That's meant to just merely continue the planning process. Right, to to further narrow the options and the scope as part of the planning process. Can it just be part of the June 18th board meeting? It will be a significantly longer Well, maybe we can talk about think about that. See what else we have on the agenda for that meeting, but Okay, board member comments. Uh anyone wish to speak? Sue? I'm sure the community is probably aware that um Miss Artimo passed away in April um of this year. She just retired in spring
031of 2025, but she did give 56 years of service to our district. I know she taught some of our children and uh I know she had a big impact on um our district and the children in our district and I just wanted to recognize her again as she's passed away. Um and and I know it's sad when you lose that kind of history. Um and I think she should be recognized. So I think yeah, good lady and uh you know, our children enjoyed her when they had her and um even the kids who had her in the spring of 2025, they would say, "Well, you got to have this certain pencil, you got to do it this way and that way." And you know, so she still was doing that at 78 years old. So
032um you know, it a life well lived. Thank you, Miss Artimo. Thank you, Sue. Others? Warren? Um so at the Division 1 wrestling championships um Jacx Forest won the uh 133 lb class in the um big school division. I don't know the proper words that but from Oklahoma pardon me uh in the NCAA's Division 1, he won the 133 lb um classification. So he's a national championship from Oklahoma State. His father is Howard Forrest a Horseheads graduate a wrestler who won the New York State championship in his weight class. And Jacx's grandfather is Hal Forrest an employee of the Horseheads Central School District and I don't know if this is the proper vocabulary. This might in fact date me but um I knew him as the mailman because back before there was email and instantaneous
033communication to get um something from let's say Big Flats to Garden Road, you put it in an inner office mailbox, you just put the person's name and those of us that are way older remember that. And Mr. Forrest delivered around the district. Now before he was the mailman, he may have been something else, but I only ever knew him as the mailman. So that's three generations of Forrest coming through Horseheads. That's very interesting and informative and history lesson. Thank you very much. Yes. Yes, there won't be a quiz though. Just all right. Thank you. Thank you. Other board members wish to speak? Julie? I just want to add on to what um Mr. Conklin had stated uh and Jacx's mom is also Horseheads grad, a '94 grad, Kim Gibson, who was a swimmer here. Um
034and I think she has her plaque still on the wall in the pool because you know, we have all those great plaques up. So she set some records of herself. So yeah, pretty cool. Very cool. Anyone up? Matt? I'll go quick, I promise. All right. Well, I'm timing you. So Uh I just wanted to I've been teaching since 2002. Um I've been in education for this long and this is my very first experience sitting on this side of the table as a board member and bringing all of the teaching experience and uh being a band director at the high school and teaching all sorts of classes and doing my own budgets I know how uh well, it it you stay up late working the numbers over and over again and hopefully you get it right.
035And I just wanted to show my appreciation to Dr. Douglas and his team for getting it right in my opinion, professional opinion as a teacher uh and just as a board member. I know how hard it is to put numbers and crunch numbers over and over again and keep getting different answers every time you keep running the same numbers. And sitting here, I thought before I was well informed and I didn't realize just how well informed I am now on this process, even more than I was before. And I took administrative classes, taking budget classes and things like that and I thought I knew it all and I don't. And I'm glad that I know a lot more now. So I just wanted to thank you for all the work that you have done over
036these months and you have to do it every single year. And I just wanted to show my appreciation for it. So thank you. Thank you on behalf of my team and oh by the way, if you took administrative courses, if this budget passes, we will have administrative positions. Going to be hard finding staff. Okay, anyone else wish to be heard? Or if not, I would call for a motion to adjourn. Okay, any comments or questions on the motion? All right, then all those in favor say I. I. Any opposed nay. Abstention? And abstentions? All right, meeting is adjourned. Thank you.