2026-03-26: HPCSD Board Of Education Meeting

001It and ready. Okay. Good evening everyone. I'd like to call tonight's meeting to order. Today is March 26, 2026. Um, welcome to the Hide Park Central School District Board of Education meeting. And at this time, can I get a motion to uh enter executive session for the purpose of discussing promotion, discipline, and employment topics of a particular person, persons, or corporations? >> So, Christine. >> Second. Martin. >> All those in favor? Opposed? >> Motion carried. We're now in executive session. Thank That's awesome. from weather. >> Good evening everyone. At this time, I'd like to return to open session and if you could please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible,

002with liberty and justice for all. We have any agenda modifications. 4.3. Can I get a motion to adopt tonight's agenda? >> So move to >> second. >> Any discussion? All those in favor >> I oppose. Motion. 5.1. Upcoming events. Monday, March 30th through April 6, spring recess. All schools are closed. No classes. UPK through grade 12. Friday, April 3rd, spring recess. District office closed on uh April 3rd only. Yeah, Thursday, April 9th is the next uh board of education meeting with our top 20 recognition and that'll be at FDR. Open session begins at 7 p.m. like to congratulate Lauren for uh making top 20. Thank you. >> Yeah, he's the he's the top dog. Congratulations. Hope I didn't interrupt interfering pride this time. >> Any other upcoming events? >> All right, moving on to Pride.

003>> FDR would like to celebrate their guidance department for organizing their college information night. They had just over 50 families participate in this event. Havlin wants to congratulate the drama's drama club's cast and crew for their wonderful production of Matilda Jr. The musical. The performances were outstanding and the hard work and dedication of their students truly shined on stage. A special thank you to director Mrs. Bozek and Mr. Gorgona for along with all of the volunteers whose time and effort helped make this production such a success. They also extend their sincere appreciation to their parents and families for their continued support of their students and their success. Ralph R. second graders went to the Discovery Museum in Pikipsy on Wednesday, March 25th and had a great time. Last week, fourth graders visited Albany for a

004trip to the New York State Museum. Their fourth graders also hosted a wax museum project where students researched and acted as if they were a historical figure. They also completed their annual March Madness book bracket where students vote on different readalouds throughout the month to find the best one. The winner this year was Fluffy Mc Whiskers Cuteness Explosion by Steven Martin. Netherwood participated in recognizing World Down Syndrome Day by Rocking of Socks last week. Staff and students wore crazy socks to raise awareness for Down syndrome. This week was their book fair and park week. They would like to thank all of the Ontarios who came and to read to their students and thank the Netherwood PTA for hosting books and bingo. Violet Avenue's fourth grade students learned about coral reefs and their importance where they

005wrote formal letters to the coral reef restoration team asking questions about their work and met virtually with a team in Florida. During the virtual meeting, students heard directly from experts about how coral reefs grow, why they are important, and challenges they face, and the work being done to restore them. This experience brought an authentic approach to student learning while strengthening their reading, writing, and inquiry skills. For ReadAcross America, 44 students have read for at least 30 minutes for 25 nights and filled in their reading labs. This totals to 33,000 minutes of reading. They were so excited to choose a prize from the box or to receive two tickets to a Renegades baseball game this spring. Thank you. You have pride? >> I do have pride. I have tremendous pride. Good evening everyone. We have several

006uh points of pride that we want to share. Uh first and foremost, uh we had uh Pete the Cat, the author of Pete the Cat over at North Park Elementary School. Uh it was a great event and uh just want to thank uh Principal Delesandro and all the teachers and staff that helped to put that event together. We also want to shout out um our students. Uh Lauren, you stole my thunder. But I want to just highlight the fact that it was an amazing production. I had a chance to go on Saturday uh afternoon and I I got to tell you, I still am blown away by the talent that our students have. You don't have to go down to New York City for a Broadway show. You just come here to Hide Park and

007you'll you'll be pleasant. you'll be you'll be very excited to see the productions that we've put together. Uh the next point of pride um one of the things that makes our community special is the fact that we do celebrate diversity and we foster inclusivity. And so uh to uh Lauren's point, we did have crazy sock day. I want to thank Jackie Kyle from uh Netherwood Elementary School who really gave us the idea to to to to celebrate uh Down Syndrome Awareness Day. And so we had uh as you can see all of us with our crazy socks on the left hand side. And so it was just a great event uh to to bring awareness um to to to to the day and then also just to continue to celebrate uh inclusivity in our district.

008In the middle you see our unity day. Uh I want to thank our community schools uh team for putting that event together as well as all the volunteers, many volunteers that were present. Uh and all the community partners that made that a reality. Uh it was a wonderful event, great music, great food, great company and um we had amazing performances there uh as well. So just want to kudo give kudos to everyone who participated. And that concludes my points of pride. >> Any other uh pride may All right, moving right on to superintendent report. >> So, we have a couple of things just to follow up on from the last meeting. I'm going to actually have um Tanya share a little bit about a question that um was brought up at the last meeting regarding

009a budget transfer uh in excess of a million dollars as it related to both some Bosey's um expenditures. So I just want to give it to Tanya so that she can share uh with with the board uh regarding that transfer. Sure. >> The question surrounded why we were transferring that money from the health insurance line. So we budget health insurance at full employment and that doesn't always um come to fruition. And the Boseies, we moved that into Bosey's bill. There were a few lines that were over in the Boseies. Some of it was attributable to additional special education enrollments and classified student placements. >> And then we we just have one um other uh item and uh Ryan's going to help me out with that. Sure. Um so we just wanted to follow up on

010some of the public questions around the proposed new New Deal apprenticeship program. Um first I did uh misspeak in the presentation when when I said that when f when TAs retire that they would be replaced with with an apprentice. What what I should have said is that they would be replaced with someone who went through the apprenticeship program that has graduated and been certified. Um, additionally I wanted to uh provide some clarity around the funding. So by year three of the um program uh it should be self sustaining financially based on the projections but we would need funding for the first two years of the pilot. Um and that funding we have been exploring multiple grant opportunities through um a school violence grant, an extended school day grant, um as well as a partnership um

011with their workforce development institute out of Albany who is eager to support us with that program. Um and so I I know that those were just a few um public questions that I wanted to provide clarity. >> Thank you. Thanks. Moving to 7.2 or Duchess County Bosey's budget presentation. >> Yeah, wait a minute. >> Everybody need this evening. Do we have our presentation already? >> Oh, you just click ahead. >> Okay, I'm there. Gotcha. >> Um, good evening everybody. Thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening to talk a little bit about our Bosey's administration budget. Um, we'll touch on our capital budget and we'll talk a little bit about where we are in our journey of innovation, partnership, and growth and then be able to answer any questions that any of you

012might have. Um, for those of you who I haven't met, I'm uh Dr. Jod Deluchia. I'm the district superintendent at Duchess Boseies. Um, and this is Derek Sherine, who is our school business administrator. Um, we thank you for the time that you're giving us this evening. Yes, that's what I meant to say. So, I just want to talk to you a little bit um about our board of education this this evening. And I do not see anybody here, but you all are very um likely familiar with your Hyde Park representative who sits on our board, Mr. Billy Sanford. And um we do have two open seats this year. The open seats can be filled by any component district, but each component district, any individual component district can only have one representative on the Bosey's board.

013So, um Hide Park is currently represented and that seat is not open. Um nominations were due on the 20th and we did have two nominations. The um annual meeting is April 8th. I did see that we did have um our RSVPs start coming in, but if you are all invited to join us at our annual meeting on April 8th where we'll officially go over our and adopt our adopted budget and our kiddos will prepare, our culinary students will prepare a fabulous dinner um that you're welcome to stay and join us for. So, please RSVP to that and join us in our conference center at 4:30. Um, and you would RSVP right through your clerk. So, the vote would then be held where you'll vote on our administration budget and on our candidates April 28th. Okay.

014Is that everybody good with that? Yep. 28. Um, okay. Great. So, we hope to see some of you there and we look forward to those dates. I am happy to turn this over at this time because it is money talk to our school business administrator Derek Shouline. Um but I promise I will be back later for the fun stuff. >> Thank you Dr. Ducha and uh I tell you how excited I am to headline the math portion of the presentation. But thank you all again so much for having us here tonight and giving us a little bit of time to talk about the vote and specifically about the budget. I want to try to go through and give you a sense of not just the numbers but what they represent and really how we kind

015of got there and I'll get that done before your eyes glaze over. So here we go. Um just in terms of a timeline give you some context. Um you know we start our process really in the late fall months with a lot of internal analysis and discussions with the departments about the current state of the programs what we're seeing what early indications we're hearing from the districts about potential needs from next year. um we take a look at that what we have and start to put together and think about the rates the initial rates we're going to need to sort of support that we get those sheets together and those did go out to the business offices here in the other districts uh back in January and we do ask uh for those to get

016back to us by early April and the reason is if we can get them back by that first week in April that's really going to give us a good five maybe six weeks to get our budget together right to take a look at what all the districts uh have a better sense of what they want what they need and for us to kind of put that together uh in good time to have it before our board for their vote and approval hopefully on June 10th. Just to give you a sense of the budget overall, we're going to talk tonight about the administrative budget which is at 5.6% there on the top and that is the portion that we're going to ask for your support uh in approving on April 28th. Um but broadly it makes

017up actually very small portion of the overall boat Bosey's budget and revenue. for the other 94 or so percent of the budget is really comes from fee for service um programs. So anything that you got component districts non-component districts sign up for um it is entirely driven revenue driven. There's a program there's a need and there's a money and we have it and if not you know we don't. Um but that portion up there the smallest or second smallest portion uh would be the admin. And in terms of putting that portion together, we made some assumptions as we head into the next year. Uh one being we do have an open contract with our teachers union. And so we are hoping and anticipating uh for successful conclusion that process with an agreement that's fair um

018and fiscally, you know, responsible and sustainable in the years ahead. Uh like you and the other districts, we're contending with a 9.9% average increase to the health insurance premiums. Um I do want to note that Duchess Boseies even though we do house some of the functions for DHICK we we are just a member uh the same as every other district we're one of the 24 and so what that body sets as a rate 9.9 is the same thing we have to kind of struggle with um within our budget we are looking to maintain our investment making sure that our students have access to the latest tools and technology as they learn their trades and their craft. Um we are trying to grow and meet what are everinccreasing specialed needs. We do anticipate a little bit

019of growth in our early college access into enrollment programs and we're looking to continue to support the roll out of the district safety and security services that had a successful launch earlier this year. I would also just make a note on discretionary spending. Um recognizing the constraints that that everyone is struggling with. Um really we took a very hard look at at every dollar being spent that was not revenue generating that was not going to be self- sustaining. Um we really went through to make sure that we're controlling those costs and really cutting it down to what is absolutely necessary to support the agency. And so with that we come to a proposed budget administrative budget for next year of 7,142,000 and that represents a 4.14% increase. uh that number might jump out at you,

020not just because it's circled in red there, but because I just got done talking about how we were going to be responsible with costs, and that's a modest increase. Um, and the reason for that really are the two lines right below that. So, if you take a look at the bottom of that table, there's a retirey health insurance and Medicare reimbursement, um, which makes up at $5.3 million, twothirds of the admin budget fully, um, and the vast majority of the increase. So by law, whenever any employee retires from the agency, regardless of what program they happen to have been employed in while they were with us, their health insurance cost and retirement get moved into the administrative budget, which obviously represents a lot of growth in cost. The line right above that, the non-retirey administrative

021expenses, that's really our discretionary budget where we've got a little more room to get our hands around and control costs. And I think you'll see there with an increase of just under 1.1%, we feel like we've done a good job on that. Then you down to revenue. If we're going to spend 7.142 million, we have to raise that much. Um the two sources of revenue we have are other revenue and component district charges. You'll notice the component the average where the component district charge is an increase of 4.94% which is larger than the budget-to-budget increase of 4.14. And the reason for that is that red arrow in the middle there under other revenue. So that represents largely interest income on deposits. And with rates having come down as they have over the course of the

022past year, we're forecasting a little bit of a lower return there which does unfortunately shift a bit more of the burden onto the districts. So that number that 4.94% as I mentioned that's an average overall increase. Each district's portion of that might be slightly larger or smaller than the average. And that amount is actually allocated out to the districts by Arwada. And that's down in that middle column there, which stands for resident weighted average daily attendance, which is just a lot of words to say enrollment, uh, with a little bit of waiting. And so, High Park in the middle at 3,47, you actually have a slight decrease in Marwada for anticipated for next year. So, your share of the administrative budget comes in at 605,000 and change. uh $23,000 increase uh which is just under

0234% so below the average increase across the districts. while not um voted upon by the districts um we do want to talk for a moment about the capital and rental budget um out of an interest in being completely transparent because although you don't vote on it um it is allocated out to the districts in much the same lines that the administrative budget is and that is according to our WADA. So, within next year's budget, we have included a million dollars uh to fund some minor capital improvements. Could be things like, you know, the roof leaks. Uh we've got to repair a section. HBAC needs to be replaced. Some windows are leaking, need to be replaced. Um those kind of things are going to be maybe a little more than our FNL crew can handle the

024course of their regular maintenance and repair. And then 61,200 for classroom rentals of some of our special ed programs within the districts. And so Hide Park's share of that capital and rental budget that's allocated out is 96,388. Uh which again we mentioned that decrease narwatada actually is a reduction uh of $779. So there's a savings there. Do not spend it all at once um of minus.8%. And lastly I want to just pull it together by talking for a moment about the return financially you get on your investment with the Boseies here. in addition to access of course to the programs and services. So if you look at last year 2425 school year all in hide park spent 11 million just over 11 million on Bosey's services and programs to Duchess Boseies and on that 11

025million uh over the course of this year we are in the process of returning to you uh almost $4 million and that $4 million comes from two places primarily uh the first being surplus from the previous year. So at the end of the year when we run into a situation where we have a bit more revenue than we've had expenses by state law every penny of that has to be returned back out to the districts not allowed. We have to zero out the books every year. We don't carry anything forward. So that gets sent back and allocated out by parks portion of that uh was 775,000. We actually mailed out those uh I'm going to say those surplus checks went out about three weeks ago. Um I know districts got them as they were cashed

026I think the second they went out the door. Uh and then the the aid payment aid on services that have been paid is going to be 3.2 million across the year and all in that represents a little better than a third of the total cost you invest in the Boseies. And I would just note the number the return is actually a higher percentage of that because we're not including um high cost aid which you get aided directly from the state for your special ed students. Um so with that I'm going to turn things back over to Dr. Deluchia to bring us home talk a little about where we are and a vision for the future. eyes most of my eyes glaze over. >> I think that Mr. Sheline was probably a fabulous teacher once upon

027a time. >> Um, I do get to talk about the fun stuff though. I'm really lucky because I always get to talk about the kiddos and the programs and the services. And so I like to start by showing you what your students are doing when they're with us. Um, so you have 37 students enrolled in our special and alternative education programs. 22 of them are at our Salt Point Center. Our Salt Point Center is our K8 special education building. And 15 of them are in our resilience academy, which is our alternative high school. You have 142 amazing kiddos joining us at CTI doing fabulous and exciting things every day. 19 of them are culinary arts students. So you'll get to taste their wares when you come and join us for our annual meeting. 16 of

028them are in security and law, 14 welding and fabrication, 13 cosmetology, 13 nursing assistant students, and uh what Mr. Scarret, who put this presentation together for us, likes to call um 67 assorted others. Those are students enrolled in programs um in much smaller numbers, but would take up an entire slide. So, um that might be our uh digital um video productions course. It could be our esthetician course. Um whatever it might be. You also have six students in our PEC program. I'm really excited to um continue to keep my eye on those kiddos as they're really pioneers in the state. Uh the first in the state that will graduate in four years with their associates degree. and we're really excited for them because the first cohort will be living on the dcc campus next year.

029Um, and we were able to add a pathway for next year in cyber security. So now we'll have our electrical technicians program and we'll have a cyber security program which is really super exciting. So on March 5th, I technically was in this new position for one full year. Uh which has been an excited and jam-packed year for us. Um shortly following that, we really undertook a very um wide widely participated in strategic planning process. Um we did do a blueprint for excellence. We invited stakeholders really from all over. So, it was our administrative team and our board as you would suspect, all of our um associ associations, our component district representation, all of our industry partners, our local government, our sheriff's department. Um really very wide feedback into what the future of innovation partnership and

030growth looks like at Duchess Boseies. We were able to define four main priority areas when we did that. So the first is Boseies as a leadership and central service hub. So for those of you who are just still kind of learning about Bosey's programs and services and you hear you know there's this administrative budget and it covers people that are outside of kids and outside of school. What does that mean? It really has a lot to do with the work that we do in central office and through our educational resources division where we really serve as the intersection between our school districts and our own programs and schools and the state education department. So we really like to be that central hub of service be everybody's first call try to find an answer whenever we

031can. I have been known to take a phone call while standing in the ocean on a windy day and make sure I get an answer. Um, our job really is to help all of our districts and all of our students in the county succeed. And it's really a big focus for us to make sure that all of the administrators and the teachers and the educators and the support staff out in the districts are able to have the support they need to be successful. Talent management and development, I think, is a focus for everybody. Um, so that's an internal and an external goal for us. So certainly uh developing our own internal staff is really important to us at Duchess Boseies as is helping our component districts when it comes to really building, growing, defining programs

032and services to um really create our workforce, right? We know there's a teacher shortage. We know there's a teaching assistant shortage. We know there's an aid shortage. So, we are um working with our local universities to develop pathways and in fact have our first Duchess County job fair um educators job fair coming up in April um that we're doing in partnership with civil service. So, it will be for support staff and for certificated uh personal. We're really excited about that. Um, our third is really the hub of my heart, which is where all of our student programs and experiences live. Um, I'm known on any day to be found sitting on the floor with children climbing on me. Um, and unfazed and I try to make sure I see kiddos anytime I'm in program in

033our buildings when I'm not in Albany. Um, we really have a couple of things that are going to fuse together between student engagement and experiences and operations. So I am going to connect those two priorities for you um because it's hard to separate them. We really have been working hard to create innovative programming. Um an example is that we brought in the EMT program. So we had EMT1 this year because we had that approved. We're able to bring in EMT2 next year. I will tell you that I believe last Thursday they finished installing the ambulance simulator in that room and nobody will let me push any buttons. So I have tried Um, it's really very cool. It's like there's a whole ambulance in the middle of the classroom. Now, we're also trying to expand services

034and take a really close look at the services that though well attended by students really need some modernization. Right. In our electric trades courses, we've been able to bring in a lot of new technology so that the students can be better prepared. Um, we are redefining some of our programs for next year. Our um video production course will now include um social media as a new production thread which is really important and we are redefining our small engine repair program. We have a fabulous teacher in that room. He was able to bring in marine biology and sports technology into the program so that our kiddos understand that you don't need to graduate and fix lawnmowers just because that's what you associated with small engines. There are really wonderful career paths for students out there. We

035also are creating new programs for our students with disabilities in our career and technical um institute including a culinary hospitality program. This would potentially be for students who might not have the skills necessary to be successful in a full culinary program. Perhaps they're not going to be able to handle a knife um and handle the knife skills associated with that or could not work with the hot stove top, but certainly could handle a lot of front of the house tasks. And it will give us a pathway for those students with disabilities who might be struggling and need some career pathways. Um, we're hoping to grow those as we expand and you'll hear a little bit more about that. We're doing the same thing for special education. We've been able to bring in a psychological nurse

036practitioner which has been wonderful. But I do want to give you some numbers about our special education referrals in the county. So, um, I did ask our principal and our special ed director to do an analysis of kindergarten referrals from 2022, right after COVID, when everybody came back, um, to now. So, I'm just going to share those numbers. And we're only talking in this specific instance about kindergarters, right? Our babies. So, in 2022, we had 85 referrals. A referral means that a district was looking for a placement um hoping to be able to place the student and then they'll send us the referral where we'll do an intake and take a look at what services they need and see if we can meet that need. So we had 85. Last year we had 180 kindergarten

037referrals. This year we've already surpassed that number of referrals just for kindergarteners. We were able to accept approximately four new babies. Our buildings are full. We have a beautiful new high school. That high school is full. We have no bays in our career and technical um program to expand programs and services on site. We are working with some of our component districts for those students who have an appropriate profile to be able to be safe in an IND district program, but not all students can do that, right? So um we are undergoing a space utilization study right now. We really want that space to reflect the needs of our community. So um that is available on our website. It's one question through thought exchange about where you would hope that we would focus our utilization

038study in terms of services. We're also expanding amazing partnerships. Our partnership with Duchess Community College through PEK has led to um us being able to start the process for developing dual enrollment programs. Um our hope would be that students who graduate in those will have their first full year of their associates when they leave us from our career technical institute which would be really exciting for all of the kiddos. Um so for example um we have an HVA HVAC program as does Hudson uh Hudson I'm going over to Olster Duchess Community College and so our goal will be to align those programs in such a way that as seniors right our HVAC students will have their first year of their HVAC program at Duchess Community College but not as just an articulation agreement um as

039actual credit in hand right So we have a lot of opportunities for that. We're also working with IBM's quantum computing. When you think about quantum computing and the lab that they've put into Viky, you think about computers, right? But the truth is the number of trades necessary to be successful in quantum computing far exceeds the number of people with technical computing skills that will be necessary for quantum computing. Right? You need HBAC, you need electricians, you need plumbers, you need a lot of plumbers because you have to cool the machines and that's not an easy thing to do. So, we have a lot of really exciting things going on. Um, but we do need everybody's help as we look at operations and that's what that priority is as we look at space. I could go

040on forever and ever, but I know you have the rest of a board meeting. So, I do want to thank you for your time and turn it back over to Dr. Roman to the board president to see if anybody has any questions. >> Thank you. Any uh questions? >> Just a comment. I think it's great, you know, to have this presentation to have Boseis coming out and talk about all these programs and you know, very dynamic, but there are so many things I was thinking weren't even included in this teacher trainings and, you know, meeting for tech directors and things like that. So, uh thank you for all your deal. All of our children, our family have gone through OBS program. So, thank you again for what you do. >> Thank you. >> I hope

041you all have a fabulous evening. >> Thank you. >> All right, moving on to 7.3, our 2627 budget update. Good evening board members, community. Uh first of all, I want to start off by just saying thank you to the board for the feedback that we had during the last uh presentation as well as some of the community members that came up and also provided some feedback. We we definitely took that feedback into consideration and this evening you'll see some of those adjustments in our presentation this evening. As you can see, we adjusted the title of the presentation to include recap and recommendations. One of the pieces of feedback was we wanted to the community wants to hear the board wants to hear a little bit about what was presented early on in the school year

042because it was so far removed. And so one of the things that we're doing this evening is capturing that in our presentation. So, as you know, we ground and anchor everything around our mission and vision. And uh this evening, um we are still in the uh stage of re-evaluating our positions, programs, and other data to prioritize additional budget changes. So, we're still working through that uh this evening. Um as as promised, we will be providing some of the strategic reductions um that we had uh previously put on a table under each of the collective bargaining uh units. But t this evening, we'll be sharing th those specific titles uh with you. And as we move forward, uh we're going to continue to um look at those items during the next uh presentation. If there's any

043additional changes, we will share that with the board. Uh but that will be our final uh budget recommendation at that point. Uh as we move forward, we'll be adopting uh the board will be adopting the proposed budget on April 28th. And then lastly um asking our voters to come out and and vote on May 19th for all district residents. So with regards to our budget drivers this evening, our goal is to really align all the information that were presented to these four budget drivers. I won't go through them again because this is something that has been consistently shared. Uh but these these are the four drivers that have really anchored our decisions. The one thing I want to start with which I'm very um proud of our team. Uh and when I say our team,

044I'm talking about all of our administrators um that have really helped in this budget process. Uh this budget accomplishes one of the major things and one of the reasons why we do what we do is to preserve all the programs and services that we know are working, are proven to be effective, are proving to have positive outcomes for students and we're able to preserve those under this budget. And I think that's really key because we always talk about keeping students first and this is one way that we're showing that. And so when I talk about um the uh budget or excuse me the programs, I'm talking about all of the wonderful opportunities that High Park offers. I talk I'm talking about AP courses. We have over 19 of them. We're talking about honors courses, PBIS,

045um specialized programs for our exceptional learners, extended learning opportunities in the afternoons on the weekends, our music and fine and performing arts courses, our athletic teams, AVID, uh project lead the way, our winter circle project, um bright the bright program. We have care teams in every school in terms of um social emotional support. So we have psychologists, we have social workers, we have counselors, we have our facilities team who helped keep our facilities in tip-top shape. We have students taking part in AP courses, college courses, attendance campaigns. We have a robust of course offerings in social studies, math, science, all the cores. Uh and we have our literacy and and math initiatives that we're really uh doubling down on. So there's many programs and services that we have for our students and and you see

046them thriving. You see our students thriving and those are the things that we want to continue with regards to recapping some of the investments for our students. So one of the things that we have been able to do is really communicate the reason why we are in this situation. So, I want to highlight the fact that this all started with the increase that we had anticipated for uh the health benefits, we were looking at a 16% increase, which amounted to a $3.75 million increase. So just if you were to look at last year's budget and consider all the contractual salary obligations, all the compensations, and we just rolled everything over, we were looking at a 7.68 increase, which amounted to a $9.6 million budget-to-budget increase. So that's just rolling everything over. That's how much we

047were looking at. So with our strategy about looking at a zerobased budget, it forced us to look at every single line item, start unpacking that, determining what is working, what's not working, what is it that we need to continue to invest in, where are ways that we can reallocate funds. So in tonight's presentation, you'll see that we're not coming out with a $9.6 million increase budget to budget. We're not looking at a 7.68% increase. We're looking at a 4.1 increase. And that has a lot to do with all the work that our team has been doing. And this is not this is not easy, folks. This is really difficult work. We've had to have some really difficult discussions with folks because the majority of the budget has to do with salaries and benefits. All the

048things that we can control, we have done an amazing job to reduce strategically reduce those costs. We had we have we had to reduce some positions as well as you will see later on in this presentation. But as as as I indicated, these are the budget drivers that have helped us to continue to move forward. So in addition to preserving the programs, we also are keeping in mind our taxpayers, which is making sure that we balance the needs of the district as well as remaining mindful of the impact on the tax the taxpayers. So in this slide, what I wanted to do was just highlight the fact that there weren't many new budget requests. Uh and in fact um the on the left side those budget requests um are the ones that are being um

049approved. Uh there were only two additional requests which we showed earlier. uh one was um a clerical position and we also had the request of uh unified uh sports boti and it was a second sport and basketball. Um and one of the things that we did we determined was we want to continue to grow our unified um uh bowling program to increase participation and we would re-evaluate that for for the following year. This year we evaluated the the need for extra clerical and at this time we determined that we were unable to fulfill that request. Uh so the two new budget requests um that we are moving forward um was the literacy uh HMH um uh literacy instructional materials as well as a new curriculum that we have a group of instructors that are teachers

050that are working uh with Jen Kryser Amy to make a determination as to what those needs are, what programs are out there, which ones are going to best meet the needs needs of our students given the data that we have. And then we also had a request for supervision at FDR for part-time lunch monitors. And so those are also uh being approved and move forward. in terms of the grant investments. Um what's being moved to the general uh fund budget that includes so these these items are moving from the stronger connections grant to the general budget. So that's our um LPNs, our community schools facilitator, one community school lays on uh our PBIS MTSS stipens and our counselors. In terms of investments supported by the grant, we were able to um utilize the grants because

051it goes through September 2026. Uh we're going to be utilizing some of those funds to support our school supplies, our summer bridge, our 6 through8 uh ELA curriculum and training. That was a new request this year. Um our aim high program at FDR Camp Invention and also HMH Amir. So those are not being funded through the general fund. Those are going to be funded through the strong connections grant because we still have the funds to be able to do that. >> So what happens in um September of 26? These >> go away or >> which items? >> So the one on the right the it says funded through September 26. So what happens October 26th? >> So so many of those things are a one-time expenditure, right? So, when we purchase the curriculum materials, that's

052a a one-time expenditure. So, we're able to pay for those. Um the the AIMH High, that's a contract, that's a one-time expenditure. So, all of these things will have to be re-evaluate. So, we won't need the additional curriculum because that's that's going to be purchased for the year. Aim high, we will have to re-evaluate next year whether or not we want to continue with that program. Do we see the return on investment that we hope to see with the students that are participating in that program? The HMHRA that's a that's a one-time expenditure. If we if we see the returns that we want, there might be an additional fee that will be reoccurring, but we would evaluate that on an individual basis once once once the next school year ends. But for the 26 27

053school year, >> we would be covered. >> So a camp invention is going to be covered through the 2627 school year. >> So >> even though the funding is ending in September. >> So the the camp invention would would take place this summer. That's for this summer. >> Right. So for the next summer >> that that would be re-evaluated for next budget. Okay, >> it was similar. So, so just to clarify, because we have the the tail end of this grant, we're able to fund these things, but it's a whole new ball game. A year from now, we're going to have to look more cuts, >> we would have to we would have to evaluate whether or not the return on investment are in these programs. We have to make some some difficult decisions. And

054I'll talk a little bit more about the reserves because that that is one of our challenges as we move forward. >> Makes sense to get as much as we can out of >> Yes. Yes. >> And school supplies didn't move into general fund yet. >> It has not. >> Oh, okay. >> It has not. >> And I I'll I'll I'll talk a little bit about how we are trying to sustain that over time with some of the basic basic needs. >> Any other questions before we move on? Okay. So in terms of strategic efficiencies, in addition to looking at um ways that we can reduce um or reallocate positions, one of the things that our administrative team uh did was think outside the box. And we asked them to really put their best thinking forward

055and that that's the only way that we're going to work through this challenge. And they c they came up with some really good ideas. Um so I'll go through these. um there was um the reduction of office supplies. So you'll see in later slides that we will be um you know kind of tighten up the belts in terms of uh what we're purchasing uh how we're purchasing it um what are things that we typically purchase on an annual basis that we might be able to do without. Um so we have a reduction of office supplies by 25%. uh the use of Infinite Campus for delivery of progress reports. What I learned through some of my uh Snapchats with staff was that they're actually helping to send out progress reports in mailings. So if you think

056about the mailings, you have four quarters, you have four reports that are sent out, then you also have four progress reports that are also sent out. So that's envelopes, that's printing, that's ma uh postage, right? So you think about the fact that we have this um program that is supposed to be digital, um it it's going to be an opportunity for us to really push that and leverage that resource to the fullest extent. If families want and need a copy, that's not an issue for us to make those copies for for those families. But we would be pushing to have families start looking at the the the portal, the family portal. That's how it is in in my son's school district. We don't get anything mailed anymore. It's it's all through the portal. Uh reduction

057of of newsletter mailings except for budget newsletter. So again, we're looking at um utilizing our parent square um platform to have our newsletters shared that way instead of printing them out throughout the year. The only one that we would continue to do um districtwide is the budget newsletter. Uh energy efficiencies, I don't know how many of you notice, but we have new lighting in this room, right? It's very it's much brighter in in this space. This is all part of the energy performance contract that we are engaged with Honeywell and Eneria. About 95 97% of the lighting is done uh districtwide. And I want to thank uh Gregory and his team for the work that they do to make this happen. Uh in a short amount of time, you know, they've been able to go

058through uh each of our schools, uh each of our um uh spaces to to upgrade the lighting. That's an energy efficiency that we're going to realize uh in due time. Uh software utiliz utilization reduction based on usage. So instead of just purchasing the same um software that we typically do on an annual basis, uh Mr. Wart was looking at the utilization. Uh we were able to cut a substantial amount of of software that received minimal usage. So again, just improving efficiencies, uh reduction in travel for professional development. We're not persuading folks not to um attend professional development, but let's think about what's local instead of, you know, um things that you have to fly to. Um so unless it's something that's mandatory, we're going to be putting out some guidance around that. Um and then

059and then of course the restructuring of our HR department and community schools. So recapping some of the building requests. Um as you can see all of our schools are listed on the lefth hand side. We put a asterric next to FDR because they are scheduled to present on the 9th but we did uh extrapolate what they had uh in terms of of new investments um from their from their presentations. So, as you can see, the general the general trend is student supplies, um, PBIS initiatives, lunch monitors. These are things that will continue to be funded. >> So, but if I read this, this doesn't mean it's part of the general fund. No supplies you said were no >> were grand. So, some of this is going to be general fund, some of this is going

060to be >> That's correct. That's correct. Yep. And we have another slide that does show show that information. Um this is just a uh at a glance of what has been requested. Excuse me. In terms of our departments here you see some of the requests that that have come in new investments uh for guidance contractual and again just because it's listed here. These are some of the requests that came in. We did not approve some of these. And in the next slide you'll see that um student supports um request the community schools uh facilitator and leaison uh 6 through8 curriculum transportation uh bus purchase lift and sanders human resources the reorganization facilities had operational and utilities um and then our athletic um department had the girls flag football unifi basketball and botchi So on this

061slide, you'll see which items were funded uh and which items were not. Uh whether it's through the strong connections grant or general fund. The way you read this as you go across um if there's a subtotal under a specific area, it's because the school requested more than one item. And so this highlights um the the amount that they requested. That's not the amount that they're going to receive, but the amount that they requested and whether or not it's moving to the Stronger Connections uh grant or it's going to general fund. So in this previous slide, you see that there are student supplies that are at different amounts. Um, Ralph R had 17,000, Violet had 6,000, Netherwood had 7,000. So, um, this was their attempt to really help with the reduction, um, of the amount of

062school supplies needed. They were doing everything that they could to help us close the gap. a a fair way to do it um which our team uh agreed and came up with um is a per pupil allocation. So So based on the number of students enrolled, students would get $46.67 for the school supplies. This is a significant reduction in overall student supplies. If you recall, the original amount was 365,000 that was allocated for student supplies. So, the teams um believe that they can actually do that and give the students what they need based on these amounts. And so as a result um we're going to be providing this allocation so that they can buy the basic resources that students need. Um they may not need the high-end you know um you know markers or high-end

063you know squiggly things that they they purchase. These are going to be the basic needs that they that they will um use as their tools for learning. So, I got a question here, but then I want you to go back to the other slides. Not yet. Let me ask this. So, um, is this just an average $46 per like I I would imagine that somebody maybe in middle school that we buy the calculators for has a different cost than somebody in kindergarten who we're not buying calculators for, but is it $46 across the board? >> Yes. So, we talked about the calculators and the calculators are typically for for the high school students which are over $100. All right? So, they have calculators already in the classrooms. Um, and so one of the things that

064was was asked how how do they do the work perhaps at home? Um, and so one of the things that we learned is we are a onetoone device. Um, so there are some tools that they can use on their Chromebooks when they go into the classroom, they'll be able to utilize the calculators. Um, so so yes, so there there there were in the past, you know, if if we had the unlimited resources, we can purchase those for every every student. But there were some tough decisions that we had to make >> and and I may not remember when my kids went through, but can you use the calculator when you're taking Yes. Are are they going to let you use the Chromebook when you're taking the >> No, that's why they have they have the

065calculators in the classroom. >> Oh, so that but if so I mean so it would emulate the calculator on the Chromebook so that you know they're not going to get to the regents and say what the hell is this thing? >> Right. It's just the same symbols and the same Okay. Okay. So, can I just clarify these uh school supplies? Parents are still not going to need to buy school supplies for their parent their student for the next school year. Okay. Want to make that clear. >> Yep. Correct. >> So, the principles will be working with teachers to come up with the necessity the only the necessities that they want that that's not going to preclude parents from purch if they want to purchase additional things. You know, families can do whatever they wish, but

066students will have the basic tools to be able to do the work that they need to do in their classes. >> Go back to the previous one. >> So, I'm trying to digest this. So, the amount requested is 378. 340 is covered by grants, right? >> And then the G. So what's coming out of the general fund is a negative 78. So or 48, sorry. So So that means out of all these requests, nothing's really hitting the general fund. >> That's correct. >> At least for the next school year, but then we have to >> what's represented here. That that is correct. It's actually an overall reduction to the general fund. >> Okay. That >> that rollover grant money has been really valuable in the planning this year. I just wanted to make sure I

067was reading that correctly. That was easy. The button. >> Yeah. Right. >> All right. Transitioning to you. >> Great. >> So, I think that's a great recap on on where we've come from and where we're headed and a lot of good detail on the process and how it's all played out. Um, I'm going to try to put some context to that from the um perspective of the big picture. >> I missed a slide. Can you go back one? Oops. It's in different order. >> Oh, okay. >> We can we can jump in. Okay. So, here I'm just going to highlight some of the major challenges we had to consider when preparing the 2627 budget that were factors, large factors in the new uh estimates for 2627. So, one of those things which we've highlighted many

068times here and had multiple conversations about is the discontinuation of the community resource grant. So, that represented $1.90 million of of staff and benefits moving into the general fund. So, that was a total of 11 full-time equivalents and 24 PBIS and MTSS stipens came from the grant to the general fund. So, we moved one-time expenditures to the grant and we moved people to the general fund so we can continue to plan for the support and programs with those people into the future and sustain those programs. Um, the health insurance premium increases, we we heard a lot of information about how that increase was projected to start at a 16% year-to-year increase in the premiums. Boseies gave some context to the blended rate tonight. What I'm presenting here is the the rate that's for active employees.

069So, that's an increase of $10.98%. That has a monetary impact on the budget of roughly $2.1 million. That drives an individual um health insurance plan up to $21,977 and a family plan to $49,4. That's a significant factor in the cost driver of the budget. Also, another >> Can you mention active employees? So retire retirees come out of a difference or or it's different. >> So retiring rates are different because we have a lot of Medicare primary people, Medicare single, Medicare families. So each different rate category has a different percentage increase. And so when Boseie says a 9.9% blended rate, they're taking all of those different levels of rates and they're blending it together. >> Okay. But so we did see an increase in the retiree benefits as well. >> Yes. Yes. anywhere from 3 to

0706%. Um, here in Hyde Park, we have roughly a 5050 um, count of active employees and retirees. Um, this one's just significant, right? Significant increase, double digits on an already large number in the budget. Um, so another challenge in the budget is the um, employees retirement system increased their rate by 1% and so the district pays 17.6% 6% into the retirement system for every employee who's a member of the employees retirement system. So all of those salaries are are multiplied by that 17.6% because that's a contribution um to the to the to the retirement system on their behalf. Um one of the other challenges is that we've all heard about the health insurance holiday that we've experienced from the DHICK plan. So the consortium had driven up their reserves and the way they chose to

071reduce those reserves is give us a a break on the health insurance premium. So instead of 12 payments in 2324 and 2425 we had 11 payments. So that allowed us to underspend our budget and create fund balance with those reductions. So in the current year 2526 we will no longer have that reduction in health insurance costs and we so we we have been looking at it for this year to project forward and also next year we we we cannot budget for that reduction in health insurance costs. Um >> did we budget for the reduction or we didn't budget for >> budget for the reduction that money to use somewhere else >> which is why we were able to this year transfer that money to cover the Bosey's bill overages. So that was that was a

072fortunate um situation where we didn't have full employment and we could move that money to cover the Boseies overages. So a budget is a plan and and we do our best estimates that we can based on historical and factual information and sometimes we deviate from that plan. So if we skip over to the revenue side, we have some downward pressures on state aid. State aid increases are only 1 to 2%. Um and that only represents 300 to $600,000 for the district. So you can see that that's very little increase on the revenue side from the state. >> So so in this slide um this just captures the uh positions that we have strategically uh reduced. Um so one of the things I do want to highlight is um for the cabinet um this the deputy

073superintendent position was part of our reorganization which took place after last year's budget. It was actually July in July during the reorg meeting that um we eliminated the position. Um with regards to the restructuring um the restructuring um the total the total amount for the position was 270 77 uh,000 and with some of the um new responsibilities that were added to uh addition to some of our cabinet members and retitling of positions. that um decrease or that reduction uh was down to 227,000. So it was it was from 277 down to 227. Um but that that is a savings that we actualize um in this upcoming uh budget um this budget process. Uh with regards to the managerial uh confidential um the the reorganization uh for HR which was which was shared um essentially we're

074going down uh one position but retitling uh the remaining positions to be a benefits coordinator and a staff development specialists. uh the assistant supervisor of transportation is a position that has not been filled. We actually created uh two uh transportation heads um in the department uh and that structure uh seems to be effective and we will be continuing with that structure as we move forward. Uh we did reduce um a network specialist. Um and and if you continue going down to the next section under um our administrative unit, uh we reduced uh the coordinator of multilingual learners. Um if you go down to the teachers um association, uh we eliminated uh or reduced uh strategically reduced the ENL position. Uh the positions with asterisks, those are due to retirements, a vacancy or some sort of

075reassignment. Um so the float nurse uh the AIS which is two uh and the elementary and technology integrator. those individuals either were reassigned to a position that they're certified for or we have looked at um through attrition perhaps redesigning and rethinking how we distribute AIS um supports and so um that is that is for the teachers the teachers unit uh HPCSUA uh we have uh the security supervisor position. So that position uh we are going to eliminate that particular title but there's a a position that um that individual could move into which is just a security monitor position. Uh the family lison we're going down from uh from from four to uh one um one individual resigned. Uh you see the breakdown on the right hand side. One is retained, one resigned and there are

076two reductions. And then lastly, uh, CSEA, uh, we have two the the, um, we had two vacancies, um, in in the bus drivers, um, under the bus drivers and we're able to this upcoming year kind of remove them so that they don't have a position control, meaning that they're actually we're funding those two positions because over the past couple of years, we haven't filled those positions. So, we've we've had those positions on the books. So, we're basically going to remove those um and remove their position control so that they don't carry any any any um any salaries. So, here we're going to recap the tax cap calculation. And so, um, what we've done is we've adjusted the current capital exclusion calculation. We've taken out the one-time capital, um, outlay project of $100,000. We've taken out

077the inner fund transfer from the debt service fund, and we've adjusted the state aid appropriately, the capital aid associated with those things, and that brings our capital tax levy down to 3.34% from 3.41%. But what we thought we would do here is because we anticipate an additional 1% of foundation aid from the legislature approving the their budget, their response to the governor's budget is we would apply that to the tax cap and we would there thereby reduce the tax cap by an additional $34,000 bringing the percentage increase down to 2.92%. So here we did go back to the drawing board and we put tremendous effort into evaluating what our state aid projections were, what the actual aid was that we earned over multiple years. And we we went back to the drawing board to revise

078these projections. And so you can see the foundation aid has been increased um based on the govern the legislaturator's budget that we project. Um Bosey's aid has gone up significantly from the career access um sorry college access program that they recently had approved by the state. So we are now running our college access program through Boseies and that's generating a significant amount of aid. So we were able to adjust that projection. All of the blue arrows on the left side are are aids that are associated with spending. So as we spend more we earn more aid. And so, um, we went back to those historical spending patterns and we looked at those a little bit to refine them. Um, and in addition, we we projected more capital aid for our capital project, which we we

079anticipate is round wrapping up and will be um fully completed and we'll file final cost reports with the state, which will then help us generate some more capital aid. So overall that increase now in state aid projections is going to be $1.3 million increase on the revenue side which represents a 2.84% increase. So this slide is very valuable in looking at the historical trend in our state aid that the districts receive. So what this represents is how much of an increase from year to year in our budgets that we received in state aid. Um so you can see the spike there in 22 23 and 23 24. So those are the years directly after the pandemic and as we all know the pandemic caused the federal government to give a lot of pandemic relief monies

080to districts and when we were losing that money what the state did is they enacted the full foundation aid formula. So for years they had been underfunding the foundation aid formula and what they decided to do at that point also because of the needs of children from the pandemic right there was a whole lot more requirements for us to to layer in you know seal and all kinds of different supports for kids. So the state knew that that cost money. They knew that the pandemic relief money was going away. So they they fully implemented the foundation aid formula that was years in the right of of underfunding schools. So what that does to the trend is it shows that overall now they're tightening up their belts on how they're allocating state aid and what the

081foundation aid formula doesn't necessarily calculate for each district um as large of increases year-toear because it's impacted by local factors. So you can see that our challenges with the increases in state aid will affect our budgets now and going forward into the future. >> If I remember correctly, when they had that big adjustment for for that foundation aid, I thought it was never it's not they're not taking that back now, right? It was level and then that's staying >> right. That's staying at that level. >> It is staying at that level. >> At least that level, right? >> Yes, it is. It's staying at that level. Um but what it does mean is that from year to year because the foundation aid formula is fully enacted it doesn't it doesn't represent a large increase to

082foundation aid. >> But why do then why are we like when was that year? Was that 2324? >> 22 23 and 23 24 were the years they gave the full foundation a phase in. >> Right. So then why do we see so much of a decrease if foundation aid it should be at least the same from that that 23 24. For 2425, the 5% represents an increase in the prior year's value of found of foundation aid, right, from year to year. So it wouldn't be a reduction in the aid we got. It would be a reduction in the increase from year to year that we received. >> Oh, okay. So that's not actual dollars. That's >> correct. Okay. >> So you would be at the same funding level for the most part considering other local

083factors, but your increase from year to year would be >> I I thought it was dollars. because I didn't real I didn't see the percentage. >> No, I think they're it's a good um perspective to bring right because but it does show a trend of how we're going to have like downward pressure on our increases in revenue in the future. And so we have costs that are beyond our control. So the expenditure side, right, things are beyond our control. They're benefits and and those things keep going up, but our aid doesn't. So we have to balance the budget and that's going to have a future impact on our budgets. and and the aid does not necessarily reflect CPI or cost to us but 2.84 may actually be a little bit of a reduction when you

084take inflation into account as well. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Um so this is just a recap of the budgettobudget revenues that we're projecting at this point in time. Um this totals 4.1% that's our budget tobudget increase and a dollar change of 5.1 million. And the main takeaway from this slide you can see is that we've increased our other revenues and our state aid so that we could reduce the use of reserves here. We've maintained consistency with the fund balance that we will appropriate to the budget. So um in 2425 that was an increase in the appropriation of fund balance. It went from roughly 2.8 2.9 up to 3.2. So what that number means is in 2526 we have to earn fund balance of 3.2 two to appropriate it to a future year's budget. So reserves and

085fund balance work a little differently, right? Reserves are in the bank and can be pulled and used to balance the budget and fund balance has to be earned in order to use to balance the budget in the future. >> After this 3.2, what what percentage is our fund balance at? >> We're planning for 4%. We always plan for an unappropriated 4%. And any deviations from that are right, we would definitely >> So after the 3.2, We're still looking 4%. >> Correct. >> But we won't really know until >> 4% >> this the end of this f this fiscal year of >> does does that include >> in in July when I come to u make recommendations on our fund balance and our appropriations to reserve and that'll help us see where we ended the year

086at or where we rejected. It's not over until we have audited figures in September. But in July, we'll have a better understanding of what we where we are up against this bookmark to see where we're headed. >> Okay. >> We may I mean we will obviously be able to give the board updates before then as we continue to look at current year operations. That's what we do every day. I do that every day with the treasur. We pull up our incumbrances and we look at where we're at. So is that is the just the 4% is that taking into account a projection of where we'll be at the end of the fiscal year or is that actual like if we took out 3.2 right now we're still at 4%. >> We have the four 4%

087reserved in a big like a specific account and set aside right now we would have to generate the 3.2 to appropriate to next year's budget over and above the 4%. So this recaps our use of reserves and last time we were at a funding level of 2.5 million. So I just took a step back from this and because I was able to adjust some of the state aid estimates, I looked at maybe some some parameters that would be good fund balance planning. And so I tried to keep um the dedication of reserve use for future budgets under 50% of the annual estimated cost um just as a measure. um we don't right to parameters of using fund ballots. These are things we would develop over time because we haven't used our reserves historically. So we

088would begin to look at how we appropriated fund balance in the future if we needed to. And this use of fund balance stayed under 30% of the overall balance which I thought was a good number to to be within. So this is a recap of our budgettobudget expenditures. As you can see, it also represents a 4.1% increase. And what I've done here is I've shown um these things in declining order of the driver that they are on the overall budget-to-budget increase. So you can see that employee benefits represent $2.4 million of the overall $5.1 million budget increase or they represent 47% of the overall increase. Um the next category there is salaries. Those are increasing at uh 1.9 million or 3.43% year-toear um with a budget increase of roughly 38% of the overall $5.1 million

089increase. Um the next category that's a large category for us um gives some context tonight that Boseies was here. um we spend a a lot a significant amount of money with Boseies um from anything from professional development to highost um student placements and the like. So what's happened here is we do see some some drivers of enrollment that are driving the Boseies um Bosey's contract invoice up this year. So we have to plan for that in the future and we're budgeting more for that as well. Um, and you can kind of see down there towards the bottom, the supply line is sort of mirrors what we've been talking about, the reduction in supplies. Um, but the things we don't have control over, you can see are the highest drivers of the budget. The one thing

090I I do want to highlight on this slide and and I mentioned it earlier, if we did nothing and just continue doing the same thing that we were doing last year under uh per or dollar change, that $5.1 million would have been 9.6 million and the percent change would have been 7.68%. So the fact that we were able to make some really strategic decisions um with with the team, it really helped us to present a budget that is fiscally fiscally responsible uh to our taxpayers while at the same time preserving uh the drivers that we had. So this slide does for the expenditure side what what the last slide did for the revenues associated with state aid. So this shows every year what our budgettobudget increase was. So this is a slide that represents the

091proposition that we took to the voters and the increase that the budget represented. And so you can see a similar spike in 2324. We were able to increase the budget um because of the foundation aid that allowed us to increase the budget in that year. Um and a lot of that was salaries that came in from pandemic relief funding similar to what we're doing now with the community resource grant. If I take a look back, I do see that we hired a lot of people with p pandemic relief funding to support kids and we brought those in that year, those people into the general fund budget. Um, and so this shows that there's declining levels of increases over the consecutive three years following that and that would be a trend that we would continue to

092monitor and bring forward so we can put into the context of how we're managing our spending year after year. So this slide is what's required by the state for us to calculate breaking our budget into three main categories. We have the administrative category, the program category, and the capital category. The graph there represents the different categories and as you can see on the right there's a little table and so the state has a manual and they prescribe what expenditures we are required to put in these different buckets and how we are intended to aggregate them. So this year our administrative budget is actually less than our prior year budget. Um so it was at 9.85%. So that's it's good cost control on the administrative side. And here we're just going to recap our prop two

093um that will be at the budget vote. You'll have two propositions on the ballot this year. Um of course first is the budget and the second would be our buses which we buy annually. And so we are asking the voters to vote on the addition of four 66 passenger buses fueled by diesel fuel and three 30 passenger buses fueled by gasoline for a total cost of $1,90,913 of which the district will earn state aid or a return on that investment of $648,000 or a net cost after state aid of $442,000. 911 and that takes place over five years. So we finance our buses over a 5-year period with bond anticipation notes. And so this cost does not hit next year's general fund budget. It is spread over the cost of the financing. >> So this

094evening uh we're presenting the budget. uh at the next meeting if there's any additional changes we will certainly uh present that along with the final budget recommendation. Um Tanya will also uh share information about the property tax report card. Um the the board will then um vote on the on the budget on the recommended budget and on the Boseis budget. Uh May 7th, we'll have our public hearing uh with the budget hearing. And then on May 19th uh will be our vote um which will be taking place uh at Aland Middle School from 6 uh a.m. to 8:00 p.m. And for any um uh voters uh registered voters for more information on the budget vote, um Jay um our district clerk um can be contacted at 845294000 or email her uh to get more information

095on the process. Um at this point that concludes our presentation and we're open to any any questions from the board. I have a few. I actually um I'll start with the little ones on slide seven. It would be great at some point to see expected savings for that. All of those, you know, the the mailings and all of that. Um I think historically we kind of see a breakdown if we're saving this much by taking that out. That would be helpful. Um the newsletter idea is great. Um except I just don't want to forget our hide park residents. Um, I don't want to people who may not have access to social media. Um, how are we going to stay connected with them? I just want us to just keep keep that out there that we

096should find ways to connect with the taxpayers who might not, you know, they they kind of look for the newsletter. So, and and the budget is important, but they also want to know what's happening in our schools. So, just keeping that in mind. Um, is there a class size impact? It looks like there's only one teacher at the elementary level being cut. Um, so I'm assuming there might not be a big class size impact, but that's >> Yeah, there will be major changes in terms of what we currently have this year. >> Okay. And then and we'll get more details on class sizes as we roll through. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Um, the last one is a little more. Um, I appreciate why this has been so compact. Um, a lot of work has gone

097into this. Um, and you talked about re-evaluating positions and that we want, um, we want to focus on services for students and keep students first. Since this came out, um, a lot of people have reached out with concerns about one position and they talked about the impact on students. So, I just feel like I should share that. And I guess my question is, have we looked at other positions that have less of a direct student impact than the MLL coordinator? The the and I could go through the reasons, but really that's the question is because we're looking at student impact. We're just hearing a lot of very positive feedback on how that position has impacted students. I got a letter this afternoon with very clear delineations from a teacher who has worked in this with

098this population. Um, so if we're looking at students first, are there are there other positions that don't specifically focus on students? I know that our um population in that area has gone down a little bit, but if we're looking at taking care of the students we have, that position has had a real impact. So I just want us to keep that in mind as we >> yeah we I mean we we have spent a a tremendous amount of time evaluating each of the positions. Um we have looked at you know ways that we can avoid you know um reduction of positions. As I stated earlier the bulk of the the the budget is salaries and benefits and um you know certainly we we're not forgetting about the needs of our students. Um, if you recall

099prior to this, we had we we had a stipen uh available through the through the administrator's unit um to be able to to do some of this work, but it wasn't meeting the needs. So, we are looking at exploring some other ideas around continuing to provide a higher level support than what was previous, but not to the extent of having a full position. >> Right. And that's why, you know, it's still in the back of my head that a year ago it was we really need this position. Right. >> Right. And now a year later, we're getting rid of it. So that's >> Yeah. But let let me just share a little bit of data around that because the children's home had anticipated 36 new students coming in from Latin American countries. Um, additionally, we

100were seeing an influx of students in in, you know, our English language learners. we haven't seen that increase actualize. Additionally, those 36 um beds and seats are still vacant from what was told to us about a year ago. >> No question. >> So, I would just ask um slide seven again. You know, I'm all for saving paper and cutting paper and doing things more efficiently. Um, some people like the calendar, so I wondered about the school calendar if that would still be considered. They like putting that on their refrigerator. And >> That stopped a long time ago. My district where I work, they still do that. >> Yeah, they that stopped a long time ago. >> That's sad. >> Um, and then slide 13, I just ask about the network analyst being a techie. um

101you know in a time of increased cyber attacks and you have techies now are asked to do phones, cameras, board meetings um you know are we going to be okay with that? >> Yeah. So we didn't do these we didn't make these decisions in isolation right >> um so we evaluated the whole infrastructure with with the support from leadership in that department to make these these determinations. >> Sure. But ultimately, you know, we we again going back to the other position, if we can keep every position and funding was unlimited that, you know, we wouldn't be, you know, reducing, we'd be adding more, right? >> Sure. >> Um but because we have to be fiscally responsible, present a budget um that, you know, preserves programming for students while at the same time that's going to

102be um you know, digestible for the community. I think that that those are the tough decisions that we have to make unfortunately. >> Sure. And in regard to, you know, cyber security and so forth, there are a lot of tools and monitoring systems that that can kind of automate that so that the people we have get notices of those type of things, I'm sure. So, >> thank you. >> So, fund balance, right? So, I noticed we kept it flat 3.2 from last year. Did you play around with any numbers to to say what if we did 3.5? I mean was any was any playing around to see if we did 3.5 what would that look like? You know would that bring us to you know 3.75% or you know >> so because of the um

103health insurance holiday not taking place and this being the first year that $2 million reduction of expenditures will not be realized. I think that that's um unreasonable to think that we would earn that much fun balance in the current year based on the information that we have at this point in time and it would be not a very conservative estimate of where we might end up. Um you know the these things are all we evaluate multiple years of information. So last year at the end of the year we had $4 billion of additionally earned fund balance, right? And and so taking into account the four the $2 million in the health insurance costs, right? That will be an additional cost from year to year, that's in that's going to impact our our fund balance generation.

104So I >> So we we generated 4 million with the 2 million deck holiday. >> Yes. So if everything were the same, we would be at a $2 million fund balance. So we're balancing that number. I think it's already relatively high for a fund balance appropriation for a budget of this size considering some of the things I've seen >> the average percentage of the overall revenues in the budget it is a it is a very aggressive estimate. We want to really maintain fiscal responsibility and sustainability over multiple years. And so when I look at the budget, I look more at how could we sustain the budget over time because if we can increase these things that we have to generate in the future and we continue to put downward pressure on how we spend the

105budget and we cut out any of the additional contingencies that we have in the budget. So we we generate less fund balance. So we're saying we're going to use fund balance generated from the prior year to balance the next year's budget. But if we're putting downward pressure on what we're budgeting, we won't be generating as much fun on balance. And I think >> and I don't I don't think we want to go much below the 4%. We want to stay right around the 4%. So >> it's consistent with what we did last year. Um and much less than what we did two years ago. So I think it's a fiscally responsible um well thoughtout plan while preserving programs. um was a right there's been a lot of thought put into every >> and I think

106we'll see less underruns because of fuel cost right I mean that's going to kill us this year >> impact and although we do have the EPC which is saving us money Gregory shall share with me today we have added some additional capacity for air conditioning in certain buildings which will drive up costs so those EPC you know reductions may be balanced by some of those additional you know that's mandated by the state right certain temperature we have to keep that classes to when we lose instructional time. So, we've started to address that as well. >> The only other thing I had was um related to grants. Um I think going forward whenever we get grant money, I think we need to be smarter about what we're doing with it because the grant lasts for three

107years, one year, five years. And if we bring on people, that grant dries up, then we're kind of stuck figuring figuring that out. And I think we went through a period after COVID where, you know, money's fallen from the sky and and we probably didn't think ahead enough um with with some some positions and and and gets us into a into a pickle. I think going forward, we we really have to be smarter about grants associated with positions, right? you know, not to say we're not going to do positions. We just have to really think about long-term effects of the grant drying up. That's a valid point. >> It's a great recommendation. >> Any other uh >> I have a question just to piggyback on that. Was the um coordinator of the multilanguage learners, was

108that a grant position that we funded through a grant? No. I just noticed on slide 13, there's no actual alternative on the last thing to those positions. Like some of the other ones are either retirements or they have a restructuring component where that those skills or those um the position is replaced by something. But with those the ENL and the multil- language learner coordinator there's no like where where are those um jobs going? >> Yeah. So so there there's current as I was mentioning earlier um previously there was um a stip there's there's currently a stipen in the administrator's unit that was doing some of this work. What we know from from p from the past was that it was too much for the one individual that was carrying that weight plus the the amount

109of the siphon. So we are looking at some creative ways to kind of think outside the box around that to see how we could divvy up the responsibilities. Um, so we have some ideas. We just have to work through some of those details. >> Any other questions? All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Moving on to 724 facilities update with >> Good evening members of the board and the community. Thank you for allowing me to present the facilities and operations department um annual update. Um we are continuing along with we are one with the district's vision and mission wrong button there. Um some of our discussion drivers celebrating successes, impact of previous investments, uh current work and targets for improvement, budget recommendations, priorities delineated. Um one of our celebration or celebrating successes and impacted

110prior investments is um the restoration of the columns at Violet Avenue on the picture on the left there. Um, part of our capital project, the renovation of our beautiful HMS auditorium. Um, and continuing along, um, somehow one of our photos got deleted there. Not sure what happened. Um, but >> here I see it. >> Okay. So, um, we were able to, um, within the facilities department, our our maintenance team were able to put together all of the, uh, new, um, library shelving at Ralph um, not Ralph Bar, um, >> Netherwood Elementary School in the library. Um and we also added um in FDR in the ceramics classroom uh some air filtration air scrubbers um and that's what uh our maintenance mechanic is doing there in that middle picture. There it is. Yeah. >> Um other

111impact of prior prior investments is the repaving of the uh transportation facility parking lot and driveway. Um as well as adding additional muchneeded lighting in the rear of that facility. uh so that our drivers returning from uh evening runs are able to safely walk across the parking lot to get back to uh the building and and be able to um and then the added parking at uh North Park Elementary I keep pushing that um we also implemented a new um software program last uh the beginning of this school year uh for our work order system. Um and this program also attributed to the uh reduction in the software um line that we talked about in the previous presentation. Um this program came in as at a significant cost savings compared to our previous um software

112program that we were using. Um, but this allows us to track our work orders um to really pinpoint um what trade what areas we're seeing a lot of um requests for for maintenance. It also allows us to um really pinpoint what mechanics are being able to to get that work done for us. Um, and it it just allows us to really pinpoint down um where we're doing most of our our maintenance work. >> What's an example of other >> of >> other the big the big blue other >> that that the category other the 110? >> Oh, I >> what's an example of that? >> I would have to look into into the the actual work orders to see. Uh some of that might be preventative maintenance and it just wasn't selected when we did

113the the graph. Um another component of that software is the drawings program that allows us to digitize our blueprints. And on this particular photo, this is our district office. Um, it allows us to also implement and pinpoint where our um, assets are, whether it's HVAC equipment or technology equipment. Um, and then within the program, we can click on those assets and be able to uh, create a work order. it'll pop pictures up um of the the actual equipment um so the mechanic can really see what what piece of equipment he's supposed to be working on. Um and it again it is fully compatible with the work order system so it really makes things more efficient. Uh some current work and targets for improvement. Um this is part of our um facilities department wildly important goal

114to support our district's literacy goal and um we are working with Honeywell on the energy performance contract and all aspects of that. Um, and our goal was to uh take the district from what was about 25% of existing LED lighting to 100% LED lighting by June 30th. Um, and we're really going to be ahead of schedule on that. Um, we're at 98% complete with the LED lighting implementation. Dr. Roman stole my thunder a little earlier on on this room, but you can see here um the the gr the the vast improvement in the lighting. Um and this is happening districtwide in in all of our classrooms and and um spaces. Um our second department uh wildly important goal um which supports decreasing chronic absenteeism um by 23% 23.6% to 15.6% by June 26th. Um we

115our our lead indicator for this is we want to um with the implementation of the computerized maintenance system um be able to try and reduce our turnaround time on those work orders from what could be 72 hours plus to 48 hours or under 48 hours. Um, we are struggling with this one a little bit because of lead times on equipment and things that we rely on to come in to be able to get some of that equipment done, but it it is helping us um to get them done a little bit sooner. uh some of our budget recommendations. Um we want to uh maximize our snow removal um equipment inventory and try and um obtain versatile equipment that will allow us multi-seasonal use um to maximize yearround uh utility throughout the district. Um we also

116um want to enhance contract contracted services to include comprehensive preventative maintenance ensuring asset longevity and safety. Um and that picture on the left that's showing a couple of dead trees. So that's part of our contractual services is having a tree company come in and and be able to on a more routine basis um take care of the those types of situations. Um and then redesign spaces to maximize square footage, improve overall workflow, efficiency, collaboration and visitor comfort. Uh the the lower picture there is the um future plan for uh North Park Elementary School main office that really doesn't currently have a uh seating area for visitors coming in to see the principal or uh folks in the main office. Um and with the the help of um some of our vendors, they were able to

117try and and uh reduce the number of file cabinets that we have as as we move forward into um the electronic age and and um really make the space more versatile for our um clerical team and our security uh persons. You can't really see that desk. It's it's down below there. Next up, uh our three-year investment projection plan um for the 2627 school year. Um got to pull up my not the best. Um, so for our operations and maintenance staff, uh, salaries, that's an an item that we really don't have a lot of control with. Um, that's at 3 3.8 million. Um, operations, um, 1.7 operations equipment, um, we have a a slight reduction there. and that's at 220,000. Uh maintenance, our maintenance department is uh 498,000 and maintenance contractual um which has um most

118of our contractual services uh were the maintenance of of our facilities and it is at uh 817,000 Um this is a financial summary. Um we see our our staff is at the 3.8 um operations and utilities. There is a $70,000 increase there and that's attributed to our projections on cost for increases in utilities. Um, and then a little bit lower down under the maintenance section, you'll see that under our supplies line, budget lines, uh, we were able to to trim that down $25,000. Um, our our maintenance equipment is again at the 220,000 and our maintenance contractual at 817 uh, 665. Um so our total new investment is 45,835. Um the benefits of our investment um under contractual services to enhance services to include preventative maintenance on our growing modern more complex a complex HBAC infrastructure.

119um these the this new equipment is very very complex with computer uh technologies built into them. Um our technicians are are now needing to carry laptops to be able to u diagnose this equipment much as we seen with uh automobiles and and that kind of thing. Um, and that holds true to our boiler systems within the buildings as well, all the way down to the thermostats in in the classrooms. Almost everything now has to be done with computers. Um and then um uh we want to um replace and and upgrade our um snow removal equipment like we stated and uh that would be replacing a much older uh salt vehicle. Um and it's again it's a vehicle that's used all year long. So, it not only does the the salting in the in the wintertime,

120but we use that for um like dump truck purposes and and that sort of thing. Um in the the other months of the year. Um, and we want to replace a a box truck that we have been uh since I have been in the district has not worked and has been deemed irreparable and we've been renting uh box trucks when we need to use them. Um, so we we want to be able to replace that truck and that is built into our uh equipment line. And that pretty much does it for facilities. Does anyone have any questions? >> Um, so maintenance contractual, right? You said that that's, you know, >> the high-tech um, you know, HVAC that we have, right? Is that the is that the primary driver of the 800k? >> No. there. So,

121maintenance contractual there there are so many other things that fall into maintenance contractual. That would be like our our tree trimming uh company that we bring in and that kind of work. Any any outside vendors that we typically have to bring in? >> No, I get that. But what what are examples of that? The tree is one example. HVAC is another. What are some other that we're bringing in? >> Road repairs, uh asphalt repairs. Um that also um under maintenance contractual is there are certain supplies like uh clay for the baseball fields that kind of kind of stuff. Um trying to think of under maintenance contract >> also include supplies for plumbing supplies, electrical. >> Yeah. >> So it says contractual but it is also all the supplies that are used for the staff the

122right operational staff. So this line is summarized down there. Great. Right. There's there's a lot of there's multiple lines in there that are are supplies. >> Yeah. And it's it's tricky because of the way the state wants things broken up to go from operations contractual. Operations contractual is more um like supplies like cleaning and and custodial supplies, consumable supplies, that kind of >> and do we have HVAC people on staff? >> Yes. Yeah. So, is there an opportunity, maybe this is for Ryan, too, is there an opportunity for them to get, you know, training, new certifications in the in the higher tech equipment and not have to pay somebody else to do it and and it could be cheaper and it's a win-win. We get somebody in house and now this person has a new

123skill. Yeah, that's that's definitely something that I need to to look into with uh Tanya and and uh our construction managers on the uh specifications of the capital project. Um because a lot of times that is built into where the contractor installing the equipment has to provide uh factory training. Um >> yeah, sure. Right. But now we have a trained individual when right they they're more trained and they got you know >> and and and we Brian and I have been in discussion with overall for the facilities team um some some really robust cost um professional development >> okay >> then the other question I had for the benefits of investment recommendations I I didn't connect any dots to the to the budget so um like fleet replacements for the box truck. Box truck. Is

124that in the budget or did that I didn't see that anywhere in the in the budget? >> That that's within the our equipment budget line that that 220,000. >> Okay. So, that made it in the budget that the the salt truck replacement that's that made it in the budget and then contractual services. Okay. >> Correct. >> Okay. Any other questions for uh regularly? >> All right. Thanks. Thank you. And now for our special education update. >> All right. 7.5 our spe special education update. >> All right. Good evening everybody. Hope you're still awake. I'm Joanna Murphy. I'm the director of special education and I have with me my team Jennifer Malia who is our secondary special ed coordinator grades 6 through 12 and Andrew D who is our elementary and preschool coordinator. Um we have

125thrown up on there our website also because um through some conversation with the board subcommittee um they really liked our website and thought people should really know about it. that has a lot of info. Um, and it also has more because our presentation tonight is budget focused. The website has more about program design, the different programs we have in in our buildings, um, and resources for families. So, we did want to highlight that. And before we really get into it, I want to thank you all for having us tonight. um the board cabinet. Um I really want to thank our um special education office staff and um all of our special educators in the schools who um who really do the heavy lifting with with our children every day. Um and just a special shout

126out to Terry Scott who's with us tonight. He does. She's invaluable and has provided a tremendous support to us as we put together the budget for you all. So just wanted to give her a shout out. Um, of course, our work is grounded in our vision and mission. And we've thrown up a fun picture here of some stylish ladies um at Netherwood Elementary um for Halloween and um as we talk about um you know really the purpose of our presentation today to celebrate our success um give you our targets for improvement and our priorities. some other um fashionable ladies at Kaplan Middle School um school psychologists and social workers who do um really great work every day. Um and just to give you some data, so we serve approximately 630 students in special education. Uh

127our classification rate is currently 17.27. uh that compares to the New York State classification rate of about 21% at this time and the national classification rate of 16. So that's kind of where we fall. Um our classification rate has gone down since our last presentation to you all last year. Uh some numbers that have changed also here. Um the percentage of ser uh from a budget standpoint, it's important for you to know the percentage of students with disabilities that we are able to serve in district, which is 89% of our students. We do need to serve 11 students in out of district settings. Um this is um this number has changed since last year. Um I I don't really love it honestly. Um we last year we were around 90% served in district with about

12810% out and we we I I'd like to be under that honestly. So we have some work to do here. Um but we are working at it. Uh the next bullet shows you that over the last four years we have returned 36 students to district from u more restrictive settings outside of the district to serve them in district. We'll talk a little bit about some of the ways we've been able to do that. So we are constantly working at it. Um I think you heard from um Jod Deluchia's presentation earlier the number of kindergarteners that um they have received at Boseies. um we are dealing with that. We we we see that um Andrew will talk a little bit more about that. But um we do our part to try to bring back students who

129are ready and develop programs here in district um so that we can serve them. Um one of the ways we do that it we've done that is through our pays lab. We talked to you about it last year. Just um Jen is going to talk more about it in detail about what it is, but it has allowed us to serve u more students um at the high school level who would have been in or were in out of district programs. Um and so I'll turn it over to Jen for that. So I during the 23 to 24 school year, uh the PAZE lab was purchased for FDR High School. It stands for practical assessment exploration system. Um, and it really is like a transition assessment tool. It's in our community- based program which is a

130program that's giving students functional academic skills um and also vocational skills. So the the like Joanna was saying that has helped us serve some students that might not be able to do the school to work program. So historically 9th and 10th grade students in the program are getting their core subjects in there and getting those those academics and like prevocational skills and then starting in 11th grade it's always been a part of the program for students to um you know job coaching within the community. But some students might not be ready for that yet and might need some more time to really uh build the skills within the classroom. Um, so there's different, you know, industries basically in there and it's really meant to feel like a work site. Like students come in, they clock

131in and out. The teacher, Miss Hastings, is not their, it's the supervisor. Everything is, you know, supervisor and, you know, it's just it's really giving them um the life skills. Um, and just to give you some examples of some of like the the tasks that they have to do. So, um, for example, like you know, cooking and things like that, it might start off as something basic like measuring ingredients and then it goes up to cooking full-blown meals. So, um, it's seeing where they're at. It's also seeing like it it tracks how fast um, it ask students about their interest, how efficient, how many times they might have done a job in order to get it correct and really gives them an aptitude score. So that way either when they do the school to ro

132program or when they exit, you know, you have a sense of like where what might the student be good at, you know, what might they be fast at or you know, so it's not constantly trial and error. It's really giving them that that tool for success when uh you know, when they become adults and leaves us. >> All right, Andrew, you're up. Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here and everyone at home. Um it's great to be here. So just some important data through the preschool lens or committee on preschool schedule special education. You know the numbers up there are are the trends for the past couple years of the amount of students classified with us as well as the amount of meetings held. You'll note that that's as of February. We are on

133track to continue the trend by the end of the year with our giving annuals and initials program reviews. Um you know it makes me think of the presentation earlier about BOS with a lot of those K kiddos having some significant needs. I I can I can see that just anecdotally you know almost 7 years now doing this position seeing that increase over time and and the need. Um so it's it's great that we're here to do that. Um so you know it takes a lot of effort in in in doing that. Just important to note with the preschool in particular, there are a lot of players as opposed to when we look at the committee on special ed, right? Our our K through 12 kiddos. It's working with the county. It's working with the families,

134the individual providers. So, there's a lot of leg work to do as well as some new um asks of us from the county this year. Um we we we now have to enter in on an electric portal um all of the stacks which are forms that help with payments for the um evaluations, the provision of services. Um we are also now asked this year to help with the county's medicare medic >> Medicaid billing um and and really working with the families throughout the initial process to give them the paperwork, track it down, get it back to the county to help facilitate that. So, it's all good work to be done to be done. The the earlier we can get support for our kids, the better. It's just what the data shows and definitely proof in

135the pudding, but um yeah, obviously we have an increase there. So, it will impact, you know, the funding needs that that we have. >> Thanks. >> Okay. Um this slide refers to um something we've experienced this year which is a significant increase in transfer students who have who are already coming to us placed in a specialized placement outside of the district. So you'll see the trend over the last few years. Last year we had a bit of a dip. Um so we didn't see as many transfer students. We did still send out kindergarten students. This this graph is really just showing you the students who transfer into us who are already placed in a specialized placement that we sort of inherit. Um this year as of February we we are already at this number. So

136we're already at 10 students who have transferred into us um needing um specialized placements. Um so we did want to show you that. Um uh another thing that's really significantly impacting our budget is I don't know if you have heard about the law well actually the law hasn't exactly changed but the guidance from the state education department has changed um that students are now we are we've received guidance that um students are entitled to remain in school and receive their special education program programming through the day before their 22nd birthday. New York state law is um remains that um they age out uh the year in which they turn 21. So if they turn 21 in March, they would age out in June. This change in state education guidance comes from a a a legal

137case that began in Connecticut and um and it's currently still in appeal. Uh but we are working with the state guidance. We um we are allowing students to stay until the day before their 22nd birthday. And this is what it changes uh what it you know the cost associated with that for us. So this year it looks like a really big number and that's primarily because um the particular students that this impacts are in residential placements um which costs a lot more money. Um, but it also the numbers also depend on the their birthday, you know, because previously students would age out at June and so we knew how long they were going to be here and now we've got to calculate it, you know, if they're if they turn 22 in November, it's not

138as costly for us. Um, but if they don't turn 22 until, you know, May, it's it's a lot more expensive. So that's but the the residential cost for these particular kids is really what's the spike is for next year. Um we do not get any because the state law is still age out at 21. We do not get any aid on these placements on on this additional money. So it's pretty significant for us. >> Do they plan is there a plan to make the law match the guidance? >> They are talking about it. Yes. Um but we haven't seen that change yet. And um it's still being litigated um because um school districts sued the state of New York over this. And um at at first um there it's uh in it's in an um

139the district's one, but the state appealed and won and now it's being appealed again. So there's a bit of back and forth happening. Um we also wanted to show you um we submitted our budget in December and so this slide is really here to show you like what a moving target this is. You know uh if right now um this is really just the bulk of our budget is um tuitions at a district tuitions um and um so we've got this just to show you Bosey's programs and the other private programs. Some of the private examples of private programs are um Cardinal Hayes Day School, Anderson Center for Autism, Kaplan Career Academy, um Abilities First. Those are just a couple of examples of the private programs where we have children. Um so this just shows

140you when we submitted our budget in December, we anticipated the costs in the green bar. We anticipated that these would be our bow season private placement costs by February if we were to do it now. We're on the yellow bar. So, we did we did want to show you that. Um some of these adjustments are, as I mentioned before, the transferin students that we didn't plan for that came in needing outside placements. Also, um Boseies didn't um didn't release their 2627 rates until midFebruary and they've gone up. So, you know, we just wanted to show you that um to illustrate the the change. All right. And we'll talk a little bit more about our goals. So, we align before we do that. Can I just so much a question for you? So for you and

141you is is is I mean it's a pretty significant increase from from when you did this in December to now >> is what we saw today reflective of the new number or we base everything off >> throw myself an action item here to call Terry tomorrow we're gonna get to know each other's best. Yeah. >> I also saw all your budget materials and they're >> impeccable, right? Yeah. >> Does that mean that could change things a little, right? >> Yeah. >> So, we aligned our goals with the district goal and um the number we started out with was 26.9%. That was um at the end of the school year last year for students with disabilities. We're our goal is to lower it to 20%. You know, obviously attendance is important for all students, but when

142you think about, you know, students with IEPs, they're missing out on their specialized programs, they're missing out on physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech, um counseling. So, it it really it widens the gap if they're not here. So, it's so important. So we've been talking about it at each meeting and tracking that um you know and just emphasizing celebrating you know if if I hear a student is coming like making a big deal about it to a student to the family. Um at our department meeting so our first department meeting we shared out our scoreboard just to let staff know like what our focus was and so they can check in to see how we've been doing throughout the year. Um, case managers, we've been making them like the point person if we have a student

143that, you know, starts becoming chronically absent or has a history of uh, attendance issues. Um, to really be that connection with the family. Um, and we added like a specific accommodation called attendance outreach. So, if I'm, you know, in a meeting and I'm hearing, you know, attendance might be a concern, I can add that. So, that way it's it's listed as a classroom uh, accommodation. so that the next year's case manager knows, okay, this was a concern. Um, if I see the student missing classes, like I'm going to reach out to the family as ASAP. And especially, um, you know, for me, I'm at the middle school and high school and sometimes, you know, because they're starting a new school, like they don't realize a student might be at risk for attendance issues because they're

144not familiar with them yet. Um so it helps with that like kind of communication piece on you know um some of the concerns that were discussed at previous year's meetings. >> Hello. >> All right. So we have two goals. Um the district's focusing on literacy improvement. So we we were thinking of how we can best support that from our lens. Um so we are uh providing uh to the best extent possible uh direct literacy feedback and all the observation writeups that we're providing for our staff. Um you know previously we obviously look through the lens of special education. How are they differentiating um implementation of the modifications, accommodations, progress towards goals, that kind of stuff that obviously are very important for our special educators. This is obviously very important for all of our learners and

145our teachers. So a focus on this was very helpful. We started at a baseline of zero cuz this is a new practice for us really. So we we started at a real solid baseline there and then figured out that you know with some of the observations we do they're not really conducive for that specific kind of feedback. I know personally I'm thinking of an observation I conducted of a social worker who was conducting a social history with a f family member. So obviously that is not something that's during students but a very important element of of our work. So um maybe not counted for that but you know some of the reason why we have a cushion instead of maybe looking at a higher percentage but overall it's been I think a great experience for

146us to kind of get more immersed in some of that content specific stuff as well as providing feedback to staff which will hopefully benefit to our practices. >> Okay. So in terms of um our um priorities, we um obviously want to continue to meet the students the needs of students with disabilities by ensuring appropriate programs and services. We need to make sure that those students have access to the needed supplies and equipment. Um we also need in terms of supplies and equipment we need some students have um various we have a student needs a brailer for example we have um for supplies we do a lot of assessments in special education and they all have assessment tools protocols things like that we have to use um and also um promoting college and career readiness for

147students with disabilities and always maintaining high expectations. Um so this is um our budget breakdown as I mentioned we submitted in December. Um for um salaries um it's important to note that we do um use the idea 611 and 619 grants um to cover some salaries. So a lot of um clerical staff salaries as well as um benefits are in uh those two grants. So what you see here um in these numbers is only what is coming out of the general fund. Um these are um like I said big ticket items for us are Boseis placements and our private tuitions. Um and um there's not much we can do about it. Um but uh oh well that's not true. Like I said, we we develop programs in district and we try to and we always

148looking to bring students into less restrictive environment um and and serve them at home. So we do work on this, but if the IEPs mandate services and programs, then we provide them. Um here we have um other big ticket items for us are um equipment. Um really hasn't changed equipment. Um we're usually able to provide the equipment needed with this. Um mileage and conferences for us. Um conferences are big for special education staff. You know, we've benefited tremendously from from them. I can give you a couple of examples. I attended a national conference for school psychologists and brought back meaningful work. Uh the program for Ralph R. Smith. Um we have to upgrade our assessment tools. So, we are now working with um the Woodcock Johnson 5 to evaluate students for cognitive functioning as well

149as academic functioning. Our school psychologist brought back all of the training needed to turnkey um administering those assessments to not only the other psychologists but every single special education teacher in the district. And um we our speech therapists have gone to a national conference um to bring back um more information on assist of technology especially for students who need communication devices and infusing them into the classroom. We have speech therapists right now pushing in assist of technology into our programs at Netherwood Elementary which is focused on uh where we have our 812 class sizes for students with um autism and communication disorders. Um and um but not only conferences for mileage for us. It's um we send our evaluators and educators all around the region to evaluate students in all of these placements that we

150we've been talking about. Um and we also send um occupational therapists, speech therapists, um psychologists between buildings um throughout throughout the year. So that's what that covers. Supplies for us mostly is supplies for students. We it's not really office supplies. It's um student supplies. Um we need um lots of um lots of assessment protocols and um um assessment tools. Um so that's a big one for us. Also, occupational therapists and physical therapists use all sorts of supplies in their work with kids. So that's where where what that really covers. Um big item for us is contractual. So this is um for contractual services for us, nursing, um related services like speech, OT, um PT, but for students who are um either homeschooled or um in um uh some other type of program where we have

151to provide it contractually with an agency. Um things like that. uh those services cost um a lot. Uh we try to serve children with our own staff, you know, so we do our best. We offer um families who are homeschooling or private placements to bring students into our buildings to receive therapies, but um we also do have to do a fair amount of contracting out. Um it also it's not just um services but it's um evaluations. If we need um a particular type of vision evaluation um or something like that we would have to contract out for that. Um see if I'm forgetting anything here. Um that's that's pretty much uh that item da memberships. This is a slight reduction of about $5,000. We um a lot some of our memberships are in like technology

152um software and um that's got moved over to Rick's budget. So we there's quite the reduction for our budget there. Um and uh the trans the nursing on buses we wanted to show here. This actually ends up in the transportation budget but it is for our students. It's for students with disabilities. So, we wanted to make sure it was clear that we spend um about $100,000 on transporting students with disabilities, severe disabilities who need nursing on the school bus. Um and then that gives you a grand total there of um nearly $9 million. Um for this financial summary, we're focusing on the things that you know the bulk of our presentation um bulk of our budget is a lot of things we we can't easily change. Um you know, IEP recommended services. Um but we

153have some choice and so we focus this slide on that. Um continuing some of the work that we do, Jen mentioned um the school to work program when she was talking about the pays lab. Um when students are ready, we do uh partner with the Ark of Greater Hudson Valley and they provide job coaches for our students with disabilities who um are um ready to uh spend half of their day in the community working and um they provide um a lot of opportunity. So we have students in um workplaces like the SPCA, the um uh Price Chopper um uh culinary um type work like um in in restaurants like Applebees, but also in um like senior meals or um like um like nursing homes. We do some hospitality also in like the Hampton Inn and

154stuff like that. So those are just some examples of where school work takes our kids. We do pay for that. We want to continue paying for that. Um we have a very small little field trip that we pay for um for um our high school students with autism. These are our high school students who um have autism but are not significantly impacted by their autism, but they have a period a day in a resource room program where um because sometimes just navigating the demands of the FDR school day is challenging for a student with autism. And so it gives them um some support in a small group of five to um um plan for uh the different stressors that could happen during their day and gives them some social skills. Also we do a field

155an annual field trip with with that group which doesn't cost much. And um we also um do safety care training and reertification um to provide behavioral support which is not a lot to it. And then we showed you the $5,000 reduction in the dues and memberships here. Um the new investment for us um is um it was really timely that Boseies was presenting tonight too because um Jody talked about um the the CTI offerings at Boseies. So what we want to do that's new is um we want to Were you supposed to talk about this or me? Can't remember. I'm sorry. I'm talking >> talking away. Well, >> um sorry. We'll do it together. Okay. Um uh I think you want you'll do it. >> Okay. So um we this kind of stemmed from we

156did some work with Bose's um we were targeted skills group looking at graduation rates and um you know kind of reinforced all the pathways and different ways to graduate and and one way that we we thought maybe we could do better at is really encouraging students to to do the CTI program which we already always had but the significance of students um who do like enough hours have the work-based learning hours can get what's called a CADS which is career development and occupational studies and it's a credential in addition to their diploma. Um now there are students who are diploma bound but have you know deficits that significantly impacts either academically or social emotionally. So the regent exams are incredibly hard you know um and that can be a barrier to graduation. But what we

157learned more about is that SEO can be um it can be a plus one, you know, for for all students, but for students who have IEPs, it could potentially uh give them a superintendent's determination to get a local diploma. Um and it's also great for students go to the tech center. They're getting like work skills like they exit and they can, you know, choose if they want to continue their education or if they want to go to work. Um, so we wanted to specifically like we wanted to kind of add to what the FDR is offering and focus on those students who are in like the special classes, you know, um, when they start high school and and students that likely or could struggle with those regions exams um to give them like that, you

158know, that leverage to potentially go to Boseies and and get the CEOs and help our our graduation. >> And obviously they're out. >> Yes. And and this number allows us to uh budget for 15 students with significant disabilities who we believe um the region's exams could be a barrier to graduation and we believe really needed in order to ensure graduation. So it's not for all students with disabilities. This number would allow us to pay for 15 students to attend CTI. And is that based on 15 that you know of now? Is that number likely to be steady up and down? Do you have any sense for that? >> We think it's a good estimate. Um we we I when we really went through the list and kind of I think Jen and I identified about

15920 21 kids but um but there's a lot of you know fluctuation like we we um we advocate they don't go or they don't want to go or they you know >> credits and you know more credits right of school >> and so we figure 15 was a good number that >> going forward too you think 15 >> we think it's a good number um that that seems to be. I mean, if you think about it, at FDR, we um we have our 151 um special education program. So, our our um special classes and we target like, you know, we have it so for a freshman, for example, who needs 151 program for all of their classes takes, you know, a 15-1, algebra, English 9, global history 9, and living environment. And so, there's about

16015 students there. And as they age up, you know, we usually don't have too many more than that that that that we're that concerned about that might not graduate without the seeds. So, we think it's a good place to to be. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Um and I think you >> So, this kind of ties into that like you know, a lot of our budget is obviously IEP directed and students receiving u their services. Um but we focus on that college and career readiness. So again like the CTI program or students who are you know getting the vocational skills in the PAS lab that's really a priority especially for me at the secondary level. Um and again the work-based learning experience so that way students have skills and they leave school feeling confident

161and and not you know struggling to figure out what they're going to do next. And I think this is it. This is our last uh slide. So our next steps is that we want to continue to focus on uh attendance. We have found this really valuable to to really discuss attendance at every cse meeting and um to make sure that we're reviewing that data um at all of our meetings um to invest in these vocational programs. We talked about the BOCCTI program um in particular and um we did attend a national conference this year um the the council on exceptional children convention and expo and um so moving forward we we really focused on integrated co-eing which you know I think is the gold standard and where most students with disabilities should be served and

162I'd really like to develop that program and implement some of the learning from that conference to do so. And that's it. Any questions? Any questions? >> I have one quick one. >> Okay. >> So, if I did my math correct based on the number of students in in in the program, 11% are not served by us. And then I assume that's the Boseies and private member. So, if I do the math, it's about 95,000 per student. Does that go up like is that a high number this year or I mean what where do we see that trending? Is that >> um it seems to be going up as we you know showed some of those slides about the students that were in we're getting more and more students. Um I would say what's hit us

163the most is the transfer and students worried about the number. It's the It's the per student number, right? >> Oh, per student number. >> 5K per student. Is that is it that trend? >> I think that's an average. I mean, like we have students who cost a lot more than that. Sure. Sure. >> Um and then >> residential. >> Yeah. Res obviously residential, but um with a with Boseies is tricky because with Boseies and Terry, correct me if I'm wrong, but Boseies um you know really um we pay for every every little thing. So um you know no offense to them but you know like we send a student to a special class program within Boseies and if they get speech OTP we pay for every one of those services and if they get it

164three times versus two times we pay more and um if they have an aid we pretty much pay that aid salary. >> Yeah I was I was just looking at like average like this year it's 95 average for the whole program. What was last year? I think that's about a fair average, would you say, Terry? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, so it stays pretty steady or maybe a little bit increasing. >> Well, the rates go up every year. >> The rates definitely go up and and that was part of the reason for our one slide where we showed you our December projection to our February projection. A lot of that had to do with when Boseies released their rates in midFebruary, they were h they were substantially higher. >> I think that's how they closed

165their budget gap both to help. >> Yeah. And so we do our best to predict what we think the rate increase is going to be. Um but sometimes we're not we don't quite know uh those tuition rates are aidable through stack process. So we do get the high cost aid back on those tuitions >> except for the um age 22 kids. >> Those costs are not aidable. >> Any other questions? >> Go ahead. I was going to say just as far as the transfers in does that seem to be from you know any particular location is that mostly out of state is that instate is it from one particular district you don't have to mention that's a good question but it it seems to we've had out of state um we've had um kids coming

166from like Pennsylvania this year a couple um that's the thing >> I wouldn't say there's any local district that's more than others necessarily. Um uh I and um yeah, it it's kind of was a little all over the place. And some of them are children's home residents. So some of them are stepping down from something even more restrictive, a residential type of program and then they're stepping down into the children's home and to be able to go to a program for the day. Um and so we've sort of inherited that. Um, so some of some of it I would say were impacted by the children's home a little bit there. >> Thank you. >> You mentioned the two areas of concern and kindergarten keeps coming up. >> Um, and I'm sure you've discussed this, but

167I'm just curious since we're trying to keep kids in district more and Boseies is having trouble housing classrooms for all these kindergarteners. Have we thought about in-house kindergartens, special needs kindergartens? >> We do have that. >> Um, we need more. >> And we did that. We did that. I believe it was two years ago. We opened another 812 at the K uh level um at Netherwood. Um, and then we also last year opened another um uh another 1212 program um to help um with with that. Um uh I'm hesitant to open more um specialized programs. We're always looking at it though. Like I said, with the 36 students we're bringing back, we're always looking at what can we develop here where we can serve the need and bring some of these students in and not

168send them out. Um I will say with kindergarten we are definitely as you heard from Boseies we are not the only ones. Um I' I've definitely heard it from like I think Boseies had to open programs just for Arlington you know I mean they they really were struggling with the same thing. I think um I I'm I'm a little hopeful. I know that we have to send them out initially. Right. So they're coming to us in preschool with tremendous needs. some some non-verbal, you know, some, you know, not toilet trained, like really like a lot of heavy need. Um, I have definitely brought back some of those students we sent out in kindergarten and now like by second grade I have them back in one of our programs. So, we are constantly working on that.

169Sometimes we have to initially send them out. Um, and because sometimes it's because we just don't have an opening. Um sometimes it's because their needs are too great right now but then through like a little bit of um robust programming at Boseies or a program like that we can get them in um eventually. So we are working on that. I'm hesitant to open more specialized classrooms because at the elementary right now we serve approximately 50% of our students with disabilities in specialized settings instead of integrated settings. And I feel like that's really not where I want to be. Like I want I really want our integrated co-eing program to serve most of our students. And um I feel like if we keep opening programs um you know we're attracting more and more you know that

170of that level of need. So but I mean we are always looking at it. >> Thank you. Right. Moving on to 8.1. Can I get a motion to enter tonight's first publication? Some move. >> Second. All those in favor? I post. Motion carried. Uh we'll get a total of three minutes per speaker. We'll give a wave when it's uh time time's up. Uh for a total of um 21 minutes. Uh we ask that all comments be respectful and courteous of all and please provide your name and address when you reach the podium. would like to address the board. >> Uh Roman Pton, Free Stoutberg Drive, High Park, New York. Um I'm a member of the community school steering committee and it's kind of disappointing to me to see that the family leaz them like so

171many of them have to go. Like I know like you need to save money somewhere, but the hope was that we can do this work on the grin and then keep most of it and we c we still get to keep some of it but I think that's kind of disappointing. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you. Would anyone else like to address the board? >> Okay. At this time we'll close public participation. And um so thank you Roman. Right. I know it's difficult, right? I mean as >> Yeah, >> I mean as you can imagine a lot of difficult decisions have to be made. I mean like Dr. Roman said, we wish we had enough money to do everything, but unfortunately it's just uh it's just not possible. But thank you. Thank you for

172your concern and comments. Uh board subcommittee reports, professional development um update. Anybody got a committee? I'll save my notes. Uh yeah, same committee net. Um, I think Gregory is going to transition to be a co- committee chair with Dan Hurley, right? And you're stepping down, which makes sense because most of the issues we were talking about and save were facilities related. So, it really makes sense. Um, so just a couple of things that we talked about, reviews of security vestibules and um, installations starting over spring break if everything goes as planned. Um, with a grant, speaking of grants, some uh, added security cameras were are installed in exteriors of elementary schools. Um, transportation already talked about their app. Um, some drills happening. Um there were some building concerns brought up um vent concerns at Violet

173Avenue that um that are being addressed and then the concrete at Ralph Thar um and just little issues around the district. It's a nice way where everybody is um presenting what's happening at their buildings. And I want to I think it's important to mention again that um the and I hope we can get this message to all staff that any staff member can report a safety issue that they don't have to wait to go through a chain of command. Um because some things came up at the meeting and the first question is well is a did somebody submit a work order? So I think it's really important for our employees to know that um there's an easy process to report safety concerns. they don't have to wait or send it to a superior, but they

174should send it right in, right? Better to get a couple and that was the conversation we had. Better to get a couple of uh work orders on the same issue than to not get anything because people we need to know what's what's going on. So, um that was about it. >> And and just out of curiosity, reporting safety concerns, what if it's a member of the public? >> Well, how do they just go to the building office and report it? I >> I would I would think so. Yeah. But I can't think of it. uh person in the public that employees wouldn't have seen it. Like can you >> but if somebody's walk Oh, you never know, right? I mean, like I walked to that sidewalk and I saw a big lift there and uh

175it hadn't been reported yet, >> right? So, >> yeah. And there are a lot of community members that use our playgrounds and things like that. So if if they know note something they can certainly contact the building principal and >> but and that's an issue like you saw that how many people walked past that concrete slab and didn't report it or they did but it didn't get to where it needed to go. So that and that was a discussion that don't expect a long change to happen. Just report it yourself. >> Went right to the source. >> The work the work order online >> any other committee >> policy committee met item 11.1 is policy a new first consideration of policies. The only one I want to point out is 9640 staff student relations. It's

176a new policy and I believe we got the wording from legal. So just so folks know, we now have a new policy delineating what shouldn't go on. >> Um audit committee met and we um we did a lot um at the audit committee. So we reviewed the uh risk assessment that the internal auditor gives us every year. Um, nothing crazy. Um, I don't know when does that get posted after he after he takes out a draft, right? They'll send it in every >> but there's really nothing major focus area discussion. Um, we kind of led him to look at our whole Medicaid uh recovery process because we see the number of that we're getting back on the decline and like nobody really knows why. So, it's a good place to audit um to see make

177sure we're doing the right thing to get that Medicaid money back. Um so, we had um a a nice claims audits um review. Now, if you remember for claims auditing, we we went with an outside contractor. I mean, hopefully everybody remembers that. Very very good report. Uh very thorough, a lot of good information. Um I think we made the right decision by um going that that route. Um so a lot of um you know a lot of good things that he identified as as as potential problems and and you know he he really will follow up and see if there's a systemic problem or just a one-time deal or or you know try to fix the the issues. Um, so >> does he seem more thorough than our previous >> Seems that way. >> Okay.

178>> Right. >> It's a good thing. >> Yeah. I mean it it Yeah. So just just based on the half hour we met with them, I would say yes. To really give a fair answer, I'd have to sit down to look at the reports side by side and and do that. But I I think it is more of a thorough report. >> Yeah. and I've seen claims auditors over the years and he's he focuses solely on claims auditing for his entire career since he graduated college. He has a very robust report and looks at a lot of different things and he tries to help with the impact on corrections. So I think he's one of the best authors I've ever seen. >> Great. Then we received a draft single audit back um and then started

179planning for the external audit that'll be happening and that's Tommy and her department is planning all that. So um that's about it. Any other committee reports? All right, moving on to board discussion including consent agenda items. So again, I think Jay sent out the uh availability note of when when we can hold a board retreat. So that's like step one. Step two are ideas, right? Um if you have like if you have ideas, you know, send them into to me um and Dr. moment and we'll you know try to try to schedule some meaningful board retreats um for us. >> Any other I think your your consent agenda item was was there so you're you're all set. >> Yeah, I was just asking about the money that we pay out from district to other districts

180when we have a private school student for the health process and that's all New York State law. So I learned about that. Okay. Anything else? All right. Uh, can I get a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda? >> So move to this. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> Opposed? Motion carried. Uh, new business. 11.1 policy first consideration of policies. Uh, can I get a motion? >> So moved. Katie. Second. Proceed. >> Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed motion carried 11.2 two is uh our uh proposition one estimated expenditures of dis of the district for the 2627 school year the budget >> so moved to >> second one >> any discussion I just want to make sure this is not we're not approving that budget right we have to approve that proposition

181one is the budget so that's what we're approving tonight >> 28th I think we approve >> the numbers right This is just saying we're going to have Proposition one on the on the on the docket. So, um all those in favor >> I >> opposed. Motion carried. >> Propos 11.2. Uh Proposition 2, purchase of school buses. Um this is our bus replacement plan. Can I get a motion to approve proposition two? >> So moved. Katie. >> Seconded. >> Any discussion? Same thing. This is just uh getting it on the on the vote. All those in favor? >> A vote? Motion carried. 11.4 legal notice 2627 budget vote and board member election followed by the annual meeting of the district. >> So moved if it's >> second line. >> Any discussion? All those in favor? >>

182Opposed? Motion carried. Uh 12.1. Can I get a motion to enter our second public participation? >> So move. Second, Christine. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. We are now in open session. Um, same rules apply except we'll have only 12 minutes. Um, would anyone like to address the board a whole contingency? >> All right. And since there's no one, we'll close. Uh, second public participation. Any other matters deemed necessary by the board? All right. No need for a second executive session. Right. >> All right. Can I get a motion to adjurnn tonight's meeting? >> We'll move that. >> Second, Christine. >> All those in favor? >> I opposed. Motion carried. Meeting adjourned. >> Thank you.