001You totally had the best time. We had I did Model UN. Oh, me, too. Yep. Oh, yeah, I had a good time. I'm the president. Nice. Wow. Excellent. So, you having a Yes, I am. hard time right now? What's going on in the world? Wow. Good. The board has returned from executive session. If we could It is um 18 minutes past 7:00. We are back to our public session. If you could please call the roll. Mr. Spicer? Here. Dr. Combs is excused. Ms. Anderson? Here. Mr. Ryder is excused. Ms. Corsones? Here. Mr. Lamb? Here. Ms. Kerns? Here. Dr. Bernabei? Here. Mr. Jang? Here. Dr. Backus? Yeah, I'm here. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands,
002one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing for just a moment to remember a long-time Kingston High School employee who passed this week. Thank you. We have one action coming out of executive session. BOE 40, it is approval of an MOA. Be it resolved that the board hereby approves the provisions of a supplemental memorandum of agreement between the district and the Kingston Teachers Federation, Kingston Educational Support Personnel, Administrative and Supervisory Personnel Association, Civil Service Employees Association, dated April 8th, 2026, setting forth the terms of an early retirement incentive as presented to the board at this meeting. A copy of said supplemental memorandum of understanding shall be incorporated by reference within the minutes of this meeting. If I could have a motion. So moved. Second. All in favor of BOE
00340? Aye. Any opposed? BOE 40 is approved. We have um minutes from March 18th to approve. We could have a motion. So moved. And a second. Second. Any discussion on the minutes from March 18th? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The minutes from March 18th are approved. This brings us to public participation. Is there anyone signed up? There is no one signed up. Is there anyone here that would like to address the board? Seeing and hearing none, we will move to the superintendent's report. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. Uh first on superintendent's, we have a budget update with Mrs. Carbon and myself. Good evening. So, we're back again for our current update for this year's budget presentation, which is and our budget is still in progress. Uh I just want to make that disclaimer up front.
004A lot of work has been done. So, just a general overview or recap, in our district, our revenue sources are state and federal aid, investment income, miscellaneous tuition revenues, fund balance, and then we balance out with our tax levy. Our main budget drivers, these aren't all of them, but just the high categories, obviously salaries and employee benefits, our costs for uh students with disabilities, our BOCES services, our debt service, all which have grown in recent times, including transportation costs, our contractual expenses, and our operations and maintenance for the health and safety of our district. So, our new landscape that we've been addressing, um and not to be dramatic, it truly is the perfect storm of circumstances coming together um in this moment. As everyone knows, we've had declining student enrollment, but really how much things
005have declined um became highlighted in this budget process, our state aid reductions, and significant cost increases in in various necessary expense categories. So, as those components are converging, what that translates into as as far as what we're looking at budgetarily and what decisions that have to be made and the things that we're analyzing, our class sizes have decreased K-4, but district-wide we've had uh declining enrollment. So, we now need to strategically realign um our class sizes, which Dr. Pedlow will talk about. As we've been talking about at length, our foundation aid formula, those changes made last year, they have resulted in Kingston receiving the minimum aid increases, 2%, well, the executive budget this year is 1%. We expect 2% based on the information that's been given to us for the past 2 years. Lower reimbursements
006for what's called an expense-based state aid. We spend a lot of time speaking about our foundation aid, but our reimbursements is a category that is significant for our district, especially as costs are rising, but the amount of reimbursement we've received over the past several years have been sliding. But last year we received a significant decrease, so that's another factor that we have to look at and weigh in. And those main categories that it affects are transportation costs, special education costs, and BOCES services. And just to put a point on this, the significant shift, it went from a slide to literally a drop-off, which you'll see in future slides. The same um factors that have contributed to our housing crisis, there's actually an article in the Freeman about a recent report, they translate to school district
007foundation aid and state aid because those same factors, housing costs, um property values, they factor in along with our declining enrollment. So, in addition to the cost of inflation, the post-pandemic costs of transportation, out-of-district special education, they have increased significantly over the past 3 to 4 years. But our student needs, they remain significant. They require resources, but also strategies. So, when I came before you to present and give you an update at our last meeting, I used the word reimagining. I was not being um I wasn't trying to use metaphorical language. I was being very literal about what we as a district have to do in order to move forward and address these issues that we're facing in these moments because our mission hasn't changed. We still inspire, we still educate, we still graduate all
008students all the time. But we can't do that for free. So, our budget considerations. We talked about lower enrollment district-wide. We spoke about foundation aid. The loss of some pockets of school improvement funding because there have been improved school designations, and this is over the past couple of years. Revenue adjustments that we have to make based on those factors I just spoke about, the increased costs, continued inflation, special education projections, these are things that we're looking at now. Health insurance increases, as many of you are familiar with, they have been significant this year year-over-year for school districts statewide, nationwide, companies as well. The impact of staff retirements. We continue to review our line out of expenses to see where we can create efficiencies, where we can replace certain practices with new ones, reimagining them at
009that level as well. And then finally, the allocation of fund balance and reserves, which we will do again this year. Dr. Pedlow will take you away to speak to our declining So, a couple months ago, I think we I came up here to talk about our possibility of redistricting, which is one of the goals the board set forth for me. And I think during that process, we look at some of the things that are going on around our enrollment. And this is just kind of a giant picture of our enrollment from 2020 till today. So, You're looking at a loss of 891 students since 20 since 2020 in the Kingston City School District. So, 891 students, that's basically the population of Bailey Middle School, or population of three of our elementary schools. So, if that
010just give you a little perspective of the number of student number of students that we that have that no longer come to the Kingston City School District and our enrollment decline. Just getting a little more specific. Again, these are numbers that I showed you a few months ago. Uh our elementary school enrollment, you can see the the decline year to year from each of our schools. Here it is in a different format. But you see, our total students have have decreased more than 300 students. That's just at the elementary level, 320. Again, that's the size of Edson. Our class sizes continue to go down. Obviously, smaller class sizes have been the goal of the district for since I've been here. I think we established it maybe 15 to 13 years ago. Staying keeping our students
011between below our K1 and two below 21. We're well within that. Um the issues are when we look at our averages in the teens, those are those are concerns we have to take a look at. Our middle school and those of you who were paying attention 13 years ago, we when we totally redistricted and put 37 and grade eight in Miller and Bailey, Bailey was significantly larger than Miller. That's no longer the case. We've seen a significant decrease in enrollment in Bailey, but not necessarily in Miller. So, now we're looking at the difference is much different than it was when we first did this work. Kingston High School, once again, 2020, 1,951 students. 2025 26, 1,681. When we look at all those numbers and we realize we [clears throat] have the same staff we had
012in 2020. And we have the same supports we had in 2020. We have the same administration we had in 2020. We have to look and reimagine how we are serving our students and do it in a way that is responsible to our taxpayers. Things we've been doing, obviously all along and we will continue to even with this with this um budget. Smaller class sizes, we continue to look to keep our small class sizes, multiple pathways for graduation. The new state uh the new state inspires New York and the portrait of a graduate is going to help us to get there. We're going to continue our robust and athletic programs. We'll continue our social emotional supports for all of our students. Uh our bilingual elementary program will continue. And did our in-district universal pre-K will continue.
013You know, obviously that's one of the governor's big push to create four-year-old uh opportunities for every four-year-old in the in the state and in the case of the school district, we were already way ahead of the game as far as that's concerned. We've been doing this for seven seven years now. So, we have more than 300 students there. Um which is almost equal to the number of kindergarten students we have. So, we're really right up against that number where we we're offering everyone. Our one-to-one Chromebook initiative that we put in place back in 2021 is still here. Transportation is still here with a 98-square-mile district. Again, transportation is a bear. The cost is astronomical. The coordination is like a it's its own science, to be honest with you. It's it's just a really difficult situation.
014It's one of the things we're working on right now to find out how can we make this more efficient for ourselves, make it make it actually more efficient for ourselves, but also better for our students and our families. Our investment in our in our in math for our K-8 students we talked about, our reading curriculum, our professional development of our work back to the staff, and our operations maintenance of 11 buildings that's over a million square feet. Our facilities and maintenance people are stretched thin as it is. They do a great job. We'll turn back over to Ms. Carbon. So, our revenue budget. One point I want to add in terms of our investments, it's not um student facing, but one of the recent investments the district made um which I think everyone would agree
015that is needed, we now have uh front desk monitors in all of our elementary buildings. So, that is significant. So, just to give viewers a breadth of the commitments that we've made and the improvements that we've made to invest in the health and safety of our students and our school community as well as our structural investments. And all those things are being balanced out. So, our revenues, as I've showed this graph before, but just in case someone's watching for the first time, half of our revenues come from our property tax levy. Over the years, that percentage has crept up as state aid and foundation aid, both buckets of state aid, have shifted downwards. We used [clears throat] to be closer to um more state aid formerly than um tax levy, but this is where we
016are with this current revenue budget. So, about 42% of this year's revenues come from state aid. And then just to highlight fund balance and reserves this year, we're at 4% which is unusual for our district, but just as a reminder and recap, last year when I stood before you and the community, we spoke about making an I appreciate the board agreeing to make a commitment of investing more fund balance and reserves than usual to buy us the gift of time to adjust our changing landscape because a lot of these changes that I highlighted in the beginning hit us for the first time last year. We didn't couldn't plan for it. Couldn't see it coming. So, this is also something that we have to balance out because this was a an investment a strategic investment that
017we made a conscious decision to make, but it's not something that we can repeat year after year. So, our tax cap calculation, there are five key factors. It's a long calculation, but at the end of the day, the heart of what drives the the percentage increase in the maximum allowable levy year over year is our current year tax levy. So, the 2026-2027 tax levy maximum allowable levy, it starts with this year's levy. The tax base growth factor which is set by New York State real property tax and it's assigned on an individual basis for each school district and municipalities separately. Inflation or CPI, change in pilot payments, and our capital uh exclusions. For our debt service. So, this year's tax levy calculation is here for you to read at your leisure. The highlight is that
018our tax levy this year maximum allowable levy is 130 million 877,575 which is a 4.4% increase over last year. So, it's $4.7 million higher than last year. And we will be requesting to levy the maximum allowable this year out of necessity. Dr. Padalino is going to speak to the long-term impact of levying a certain amount. So, what Ms. Carbon said was really a a very important piece that the most important part of the calculation the tax levy limit, I don't want to say tax levy, I don't want to say tax levy limit, is the previous year's tax levy. So, everything is based off of that. And I just want to point out to the board that in 2020-2021, with good reason, we all know what was going on in 2020-2021, the board had made the
019decision to make a zero increase in our tax levy. So, you know, again, we were looking out for our taxpayers, looking out for our community, knowing that a lot of people went through a lot of hard times during that that that those couple of years. So, we made a tax levy of zero. Now, that has a ripple effect. So, if you extrapolate that ripple effect over the seven years since we've been here, think about it as I always think about it as a reverse credit card. The compounding of that and the lack of and the aid that was lost by not not um making our our tax levy what it could have been, which was about 2.4. Okay. So, so without, you know, levying that, the board left a certain amount on the table money
020money on the table during that year. But that money right, compounds over seven years. That money today would be $14.5 million. Almost. So, I think that's just a an interesting piece that that we have, you know, obviously there was a good reason. Don't don't I'm not I'm not regretting it. I'm not saying the board shouldn't have made that decision. It was good. I think, but it's an important piece when you look at where we are today, all the factors that Ms. Carbon laid out, and then add on the $14.5 million that we did not levy, that we did not we will not be receiving. So, I think that's just a a really interesting piece um that we worked on over the last couple of weeks. And just for anyone who's wondering, we that number because
021I was actually surprised. We knew it'd be significant. Dr. Padalino and I batted around thoughts and numbers, but I laid out the years and did the math. And honestly, those factors that I just highlighted is what really drove um the significant compounding effect. And I just want to go backwards for a moment because in many years in the past, I would do a a slide a comparison slide so people understood that when we levy below the maximum allowable levy, and sometimes it's it's necessary, it's the right decision to make. People we when we talk about it, we get so caught up in the percentage increases, there's really no significant change in the percentage increase, but all the difference in the world in terms of the dollar amount that the district is receiving. So, I just
022want to take a step back now that the information amounts been shared. One significant factor for our district that made it compound so much is this tax base growth factor. For our district with all the um property changes going on in our district boundaries over the past several years, this factor has grown significantly over the same uh seven years that we've been looking at for both enrollment and revenues. So, that's one of the primary drivers of the compounding effect that we're seeing. So, this is the governor's executive budget for Kingston City School District. And nothing's changed since the last update. 1% um increase in foundation aid that was put forth which is just shy of $700,000 which is significantly different than what we've historically received in increases. And then these are our expense based aids
023and reimbursements I spoke about. And everything else is pretty flat, but what we expect to receive um in state is about a hundred and five six million dollars. The changes to the foundation of that school about this graphic helps chart that out pretty well. So in yellow, this is the 2023-2024 budget where the formula formula that was in place was fully funded for the first time and the district received a significant increase year over year and not that we expected to always receive such increases but certainly these numbers at the top are the increases in foundation aid that the district had been receiving since 1920 until that point. And then we see the drop off when the formula was changed and last year well, there was a slight change in the formula and then a
024significant overall last year which brought us to the minimum. This year is at 1% but we hopefully hope or expect that it will be at least a 2% increase which is a big 1.35 million dollars increase. And these are just the numbers. So when I spoke about the increases ranging from 2.2 million to 3 million dollars and so we landed in the land of hold harmless and minimal increases of about 1.4 million dollars. And if you look here, these are just the average increases. So in terms of planning because I think it's important especially because we're in this challenging time for people to understand that this isn't all the district just was just reckless with money and didn't plan. Things have been planned out and mapped out and things also shifted and we have to
025pivot. So going back to our reimbursement ratios and factors that are involved. Our wealth ratio, it drives it's a reflection of how wealthy the district appears to be. So the same factors that have inflated property values for so many people in our community, it's done the same for the district's profile whether or not we're considered a high needs district. So this bar is the state average which is a one which is wealthy. We've moved from 73.8%. So it's really more important than the number just the swing up but as those of us who have lived here for these years, we know that actual incomes and this the financial situations of the people who actually live in this district, they have not improved in this manner but this affects many of our aid ratios and that's
026why I'm sharing this information. So it carries over into some of the reimbursement rates that we've spoken about. In orange, we have one of our special education reimbursement ratios. In blue, we have transportation. And in the purple, we have our BOCES aid ratio because we do get reimbursement on what we spend on BOCES services. They have trended down but I put this table here for people to review later because we see things have been pretty even. They slid down a little bit between 2024-2025 and last year or this current budget that we're sitting in, we have significant decreases across the board. So going back to transportation aid, this change of 5% 5% of a 20 million dollar budget is a million dollars less money. So when I call the perfect storm, that's just one category
027of reimbursement revenues that we would not be receiving. So by the time we combine all these factors, here we are having this conversation. And I think it's important also to note this not only these but also our our aid factors that go into our aid for our students with disabilities which we know we have a large population students with disabilities coming up next. Councillor It's right here. It's It's Thank you. It's our public excess cost and that's where spending, you know, a significant amount of money on that. So when you look at some from 62 to 55, that decrease is substantial but you check with the transportation, that 8% decrease on a 20 million dollar outlay is very substantial. So we look at these things and we talked a lot about foundation aid. Everyone wants
028to talk about foundation aid and they forget about these but these are what I Even more so than foundation aid, this is what's impacting the Kingston City School District because of the money we spend on services such as this. And on our next slide, we'll talk about how much we did spend. So orange is directly related to special education. Transportation as you all know is bussing but then going back to the change even from this current year to the governor's executive budget, we have another slide and in BOCES aid, we now have almost 3% decrease. So now, these aren't all the categories that we spoke about but this is special education and transportation because they've had the most significant increases in this period of time that we've been talking about. So if we go back
029to 1920 school year, our transportation expenses that year were just under 6 million dollars but part of that was the COVID effect. So closer to 8 million dollars is more more normal for what we were spending. But even from this period till now, this is two and a half times more where we are now than what we spent previously. However, if we walk through how we got here, it wasn't by accident. We had bus shortages. I remember because this was my first year very clearly the challenge in opening up the year because of the bus driver shortage just coming back from COVID and the district had to and this board worked very hard with our contractors to realign our routes and find efficiencies so that we could have better bussing. That came at a cost
030and at the same time, our contractors who had not gone out to bid to adjust their prices for inflation and to address the increases for the shortages, we had significant jumps back to back in our transportation costs. We had another significant jump this year but this number is actually lower. This board worked very hard last budget season looking to see what could be realigned, how things could be removed to bring this number down because our initial number last budget season was more like 21 million dollars. Special education out of district, sending our students out. 1920 school year, just about 17 million dollars. We are now about 50% higher at to the tune of basically 25 million dollars closing out this year. So these significant increases while they were necessary, we need to support our students.
031The reimbursement aid that we get back for it that we that we need to move forward has been reducing as well and significantly drops at a time when the increases happen the most. And I think another important piece to point out when you look at our special education out of district placements, we talked about our declining enrollment they find over years but we are also not only our enrollment declining but we're also sending 300 students to other places. So our enrollment declined and then there's 300 300 and more students we're sending to other places. So that creates that creates another conversation about our our allocation of resources within the district. Hence the reimagining. So our current budget Yes. So our current budget summary, where are we on April 8th, 2026? As you know, our current
032budget is 249.5 million dollars. The 25-26 tax levy was 125.8 million dollars. Thank you, community, for your support. Right now, our current revenues are at 242 million 300,000 dollars essentially. Our current expenses, I say current because we are working on the 263 million just under 200,000 dollars. At this moment, the gap is 20.9 million dollars. We've always looked at our maximum allowable tax levy recommending that we do levy the maximum 4.4304% increase. So at this point, this is where we are but in this moment, we are also work working on our transportation costs. We are working on our BOCES service requests at the same time and still going through the review of various processes and expenses and seeing what can be reallocated, what can be realigned and what needs to be cut. Thank you. Any
033questions? Oh, it's not Mr. Price, sir. It's It's just that we heat 11 school buildings. Are the rising the unforeseen rising cost of fuel being um predicted in in our budget? I I don't know how I don't even know how you would do that. Because it's a moving target with our current economic or market situation, there are increases baked in but to your point, Mr. Price, we don't have an exact number. So we are estimating the best we can based on trend information. We do have certain contracts in place that locks in some pricing which is wildly helpful but it's it's a moving target that we're homing in on to come up with a solid estimate because we have to make sure we have our bases covered. Sure it is. And does this also impact
034transportation? Or or are those prices set? Those prices are set. Um some of them include fuel costs and some of them don't but many of them expect it so set our contract prices are locked in and only a couple of contracts do we have where we purchase fuel. Um a lot of our contracts right now have a cost of fuel baked into the price which is set in. But once again, a moving target. Thank you. And I think that's a good point because we're not immune to the effects of inflation, we're not immune to the markets and the fluctuation in interest rates. Obviously, we have we have massive amounts of money in the in the market around our our um our building project. So we're not immune to these things. So we we look and
035we shop and actually there's a resolution on the board tonight asking you to allow us to keep looking for a better rate on what on a bond that we have out there. So we continue to We're not immune to that. We play that We play a little bit of that game as well, whether it's fuel or it's bonds or it's inflation. We do a lot of that work. Thank you. Thank you. >> Mr. Lamb and then Mrs. Kennedy. You're amazing for coming and no one went screaming out of the room when you said how bad it is. Um what I want to hit on it when we do a building project, capital project, we base in our head that we're This is the rate that we get reimbursed at. But my understanding is we don't
036set that rate until we actually borrow that money. Or Or Correct? That's correct. So our rate is Is our rate on our capital going down also? So that is impacting us on top of the perfect storm. Yes. Fortunately, in this moment, building aid ratios don't appear to be sliding as drastically. They still have a slide and not the cliff effect. But they are they are two shifting again because at the end of the day two factors for all just about every pocket of ratios related to state aid there's all there's almost Let me phrase that. Almost always some RY which is our enrollment effect as well as some form of real estate. They're varying degrees and some things have more enrollment baked in than others, but as as those things slide And And we had
037just started receiving quite a bit more on our building projects. And my the per- the the rate that we're receiving reached a peak as people were voting for these projects and then the state turns around and doesn't fund the projects the way they said they were going to fund them. Which is adding to this. Yes. Just not as badly, but yes. Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Harvey, thank you so much for all of your work on this. I think the budget tells the story and it's really important the way that you presented this to all of us. It seems that the deficits were able to be closed to what it has been in the past and considering the stark contrast in funding in the state, I think it's really commendable that you're supporting and doing so closely.
038I'm very excited to see the results of the review of some of the um deeper studies on what can be done based on the um parallel review of the operations. And I thank you very much for looking so closely at opportunities that make sense for the reimagining of how we're running this district. So um I just wanted to call that out and thank you for all of your work. Thank you. But I I have to say everyone sitting at that table you've had hard conversations that have twisted around our brains and their brains on the instructional side on literally how to reimagine. We've had you know we've had systems in place. We've done had certain supports done things a certain way for so long and the team literally we've been coming to the table and
039the team has been coming to the table with we can try this. We can try this. I can find some money over here if we do this. So it really has been a team effort because we won't get to where we go without it. I appreciate all of you. Any other questions or comments? I just I just wanted to add I say this every budget season to the community conference. I say it every budget season. You have an outstanding talent of making very complicated um uh concepts and calculations understandable to ordinary people like board members and we really do appreciate it. So thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. I do just want to say add to what um Mrs. Harvey Mrs. Harvey said that on top of the people over here working, we are
040in a very good place here in Kingston because of the collaborative collaboration cooperation we have significantly with our Kingston Teachers Federation, but as well as with our other partnering unions. We're all in here for exactly what um Mrs. Harvey said about you know we inspire, we educate, we graduate students. So there's there's conversations that we can sit down and have with them at the table and not have combative conversations, but collaborative conversations on what's best for kids. So I appreciate that. I appreciate them. Thank you. THANK YOU. WE STILL HAVE WORK TO DO THOUGH. YES. OH YEAH. While we're sitting here in front of you Yes, it's going on. Uh just two other quick things from Superintendent. I know I promised the cal- the calendar today and I I'm sorry I don't have it. Um
041but I will have a draft out to the board by the end of the week and we will post the draft just for parents. I know one of the big questions I always get is what's the first day of school? The first day of school will be September 8th. That's the first day of school for students will be September 8th. So people can plan on that, but I'll have the rest out by the end of the week. It's just It's just It's in formatting right now. It's done. It just needs to be formatted. Um and lastly, I know a couple weeks ago there was a group of people here to talk about the green team. Um I do want to say I don't know anything about the green team. No the green team has ever
042communicated directly with me as the superintendent. I have no We've We've talked a lot about it within the cabinet. Um obviously they um worthwhile ideas, worthwhile efforts, things that we need to look into. Um and we're going to continue to talk about how we could creatively find a way to um do some of the things they were asked to. I will say you just saw the presentation. The idea of hiring another administrative or a director in that position is is not going to happen, but that doesn't mean we can't pool our resources, look for some assistance not only from our community members, but from within our our faculty and staff and some volunteering can happen. So so you know it's worthwhile for us to volunteer this kind of um effort and we're going to work
043together and I'm going to reach out to the people from the green team and ask if they would like to have a conversation with me instead of here at the podium. It is my understanding that they have had conversations with our food service department. >> Joe has been involved for sure. I think Joe has been involved. I think it maybe even a board member or two may have been been in the meetings. I I I got to answer I wasn't even aware that the meetings existed. So So wellness, I think the wellness Now that I know community Now that I know more, I'm willing to have conversations. Thank you. Any other questions for Dr. Padalino? >> I just have a quick question because of the budget and timing. Um summer school or I know we've
044got 12-month students, so that I'm assuming is going to be continued in the future school year. Yes. Our Our Our extended school year for our students with disabilities is mandated. That That is going to continue. We are evaluating all of our other summer school programs. We're looking at attendance, looking at results. Um and we have actually several interesting thoughts about what we can do. I In the high school our our 10 through 12 is is is really necessary. It's a It's a Regents based thing. You know it's our students who needs to pass the Regents pass the Regents exam. We're not in a place where they don't have to do that anymore yet. But um so you know but we're looking at some ways to maybe do some things differently around summer school. Um base
045based on data, not so much based on money, but based on data. Okay. Any other questions for the superintendent? I think just two of our student representatives if they have a brief report to make. Yeah, this is we have a small report that's more like a team effort for the future of our school revolving around annual communication, especially with students' knowledge around ICE and the district's policy. And our intentions are to survey students that are listed of detainment by ICE and make a decision based on recommending the board or the district to make another announcement or to keep off and wait possibly for when when it drops. Yeah. And really because I think we're all aware, especially with the last post about ICE from Dr. Padalino, there was a lot of uproar from students and
046a lot of worry. So of course we don't want our students to be you know afraid and have to worry about it when there's not a current extreme harm, but we also want to make sure that our our students that we're educated about the district's policies. Yeah, there's definitely a fine line between um being educated on a topic and inciting greater fear in students. Obviously, we want students to feel informed, but we also want them to feel safe. So when there are major issues occurring, obviously I believe it would be important to have another announcement, but for now I think a lot of students are feeling a little bit more stable. Perhaps not feeling better, but I think stability has increased. I think uh student opinion is about stable. I think students just want to
047feel safe. And that That's the bottom line. Students just want to feel safe and I think that has been improving, absolutely. And I think the clarity that has come come through through your messages has very much helped in the like long term despite the like uptick of issues at the very beginning, I think overall it had a positive impact, absolutely. And I think that a positive impact is obviously good, but we don't necessarily need another message right now. I think perhaps in the future it could be good, but not necessarily at this moment. Sophia and Benny, are they feeling informed? I think it probably depends school by school. Um I think high schoolers Perhaps they do a lot of their research on their own time. I don't think they feel necessarily informed by the school
048about these matters, uh but I don't think that they feel that the school is shutting them out from the issue either. I think they I don't think a lot of their opinion is swayed by the school. And I'd say it's also really dependent on the person. So, if you know, if people aren't or students aren't affected and they aren't adverse from being detained by ICE, they're or and a lot of them don't even remember the past superintendent's message. It's really the people looking at, students looking at and and say similar. I think measuring the timing around our statements, again, we had several statements from myself, a statement from the board. But what we're doing right now kind of I guess kind of behind the scenes. Um just over the break I I received from I've
049been working with the UIDN on creating the know your rights um workshops for our faculty, staff and students. So, we're going to I just got that um proposal from UIDN last Thursday or Friday, so we're ready to start moving forward with that and do that in the spring, which will start off it's going to start off this year kind of as voluntary after school stuff, but then we're going to find a way next year to mesh it into our regular trainings for our faculty and staff. That sounds fantastic. All right. I think that's all we got. Um staff and students are a little tired right now coming out of spring break. I think the board is the same. Thank you, Sophia. Have a great night, everybody. Thank you, Sophia. Thank you for being here. Thank
050you. And that brings us to our consent agenda. Are there any items to be removed from the consent agenda? Hearing none, if we could have a motion to accept the consent agenda. >> So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor of accepting the consent agenda. I. >> I. Any opposed? So, our our consent agenda is approved. We do have a couple of donations. We do. So, the Board of Education of the Kingston City School District hereby accepts with grateful appreciation the following generous donations. The Ernest C. Myer Elementary School from the American Heart Association, a check for $350. Thank you so much. To Kingston High School from Connect Kids to Park Field Trip Grant Program, an award of $465. Thank you so much. And to Kingston City School District from an anonymous donor, a donation
051of $3,000. We appreciate you. Thank you. We are at our Board of Education Policy Committee Reports. Okay. Policies are being second reading and voting on. I'm going to start them with Policy 2220, Board Officers revised. I move that policy. Second. Discussion. All in favor of 2220. I. >> I. Any opposed? 2220 is approved. The next policy is 3140, Administrative Authority during absence of the Superintendent of Schools. We had discussion at the last meeting about this. And I think it's as it needs to be at this point. So, I will move that policy also. Discussion on 3140. All in favor? I. Any opposed? 3140 is approved. Policy number 3200, Administrative Organization. I'll move that policy as amended. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I. >> I. Any opposed? 3200 is approved. Policy 4010, Equipment and Instructional
052Staff and Materials. I'll move that. Second. Any discussion? All in favor of 4010. I. >> I. Any opposed? 4010 is approved. Next policy will be 4311, Display of the Flag. I'll move that policy. Wait, what's that? Yeah, it's got two different numbers, 4331 or 4311. Which one is it? Ooh. Wait, I'm confused with that. 11. 4311. So, I move 4311. Mhm. And we have a second? Second. Any discussion? 4311. All in favor? I. >> I. Any opposed? 4311, Display of the Flag, is approved. The last policy that we have for second reading is policy 5020.3, which is a new required policy and it's mostly the law, but we are missing two board members. Um and I would like to move that we postpone doing this until the next meeting so that we have all board
053members present to discuss any issues with this one. Move to table. Yes. I just did. I'll move to table. Need a second. >> Second. All in favor of taboring policy 5020.3. I. >> I. Any opposed? So, we have tabled this Students with Disabilities pursuant to 504. Policy meets this Friday in this room at 9:30, so if anyone has any concerns with that policy, if you want to get those to me so I can bring them up in the meeting, that'd be great. Thank you, Julian. We are moving Dr. Collins to Teaching and Learning. So, we'll move that to our next meeting 424. And that brings us to Facilities. Good evening, everyone. >> [clears throat] >> This is going to be a little lengthy evening. Very busy. The following 2023 bond phase one projects up for
054Edson and Bailey. All progress are planned to begin soon at Edson. I should Edison at Edson we have asbestos testing and removal continues for the building crawl space. On March 31st, Titan roof inspection was done on over the fan room as it will be as it will be the final verification needed to locate a rooftop unit for the gym. Staff electrical uh electric continues fire alarm work. And this is at Bailey. Ceiling removal from the classrooms between entrance B and C and first and second floors continues. Cafeteria ceiling removal, but not the cafeteria corridor is underway. Tile floor in the nurse's suite is being removed. Concrete sealer is being provided. Asbestos testing and removal above the projector room is underway. Ceiling from the boys' locker room shower is being removed. Replacement of wet insulation is
055underway. This is phase two for Edson and Bailey. Project phase two construction administration is underway. Shop submittals are being reviewed and processed. Phase two A for Bailey and kitchen, this is the renovation project. The Department of Health has signed off. We're waiting for final SED comments and issuance of building permit. Cash Q is coordinating the early equipment needs that will be bid out as part of two A and installed temporarily at Boices Lane. The design team has met with J B and is coordinating the final equipment for this for equipment list for review. Bailey kitchen bid pack uh package to be out out to bid towards the end of April uh of this year. This is phase two B, temporary kitchen facilities at 50 uh uh 505 Boices Lane. existing kitchen facilities at the rear
056of the building have been identified as a temp swing space kitchen while Bailey kitchen is under construction. The design team is moving forward with the construction documents for the submission to the local building department and the Department of Health towards late spring and early 2026. Group discussion the group discussion for a scheduled outline to include improvements to the existing space in late 2026 early 27 2027. With the school districts move in in 2027. The district will remain in the space for a minimum of one year with the move back to Bailey kitchen likely the summer of 2028. Phase three projects Judge Washington regular acceptance of submissions is ongoing. Demo for the elevator pit installation is underway. Temporary wall installation at the at the ground floor is also underway. Family dance heating and cooling will continue
057with piping installation. Phase four projects for Graves JKF and Myers schools phase four construction documents were uploaded to SED on February 15th they're waiting technical comments from SED. These are the district wide facilities updates Kingston High School East IT room split unit was installed mass stage lighting a quote was received and is being processed with the business office additional AEDs were delivered to the warehouse coordinating with the safety office for locations and installation wrapping wrapping up they're wrapping up winter operations with 140 tons of rock salt used on parking lots so far this winter that's the amount they used. And lastly and and I know facilities departments are very technical but they're also sent to our board members so you can review and then get back to the committee as well so don't worry about
058all the stuff you're hearing but lastly as we plan the board building inspections inspection findings have gone out to all the trustees and committee members. Thank you Mr. Mr. E for getting that out. I'm asking for all the responses by Thursday April 23rd I'm hoping to prepare our final report to go to the April 28th facilities meeting. Thank you for all trustees and all committee members and also KSQ and BBL for all the responses so that we can complete this final building inspections report and also special thanks to our board president Marie Anderson a lot of hand holding a lot of support a lot of collaborative work being done between her and the chair to get all of this done so thank you everyone. Just one quick question we only have one bottle filler at
059Kennedy school for both floors. Now I thought we're going to have bottle fillers on each cuz that's really and we're sending kids from the second floor down to the first floor when they want to get water. I [laughter] don't know about that I mean I know you're gradually replacing all the old water fountains with bubblers so let me I'll check in with Dylan for that's a great thank you. Yeah I don't think that was on though. I I think yeah I thought we missed that I was and I just find out. Can you can you throw that cuz you have it throw that in yours at to make sure we add that as as an addition please. Review the Kennedy report you could add that in. All right. This is current thank you for the
060update Mr. Spicer I really interested in our facilities and I just wanted to give a huge shout out to Dylan and the team because even walking through one school and reviewing the details and the mountain of things to constantly be attended to because right it's like a beating heart things are constantly needing attention I just see how much work and the huge details being done and I know it's a mountain of work so I just think that's reflected in these thorough studies and thank you for your And I can concur with what you just said and the other thing I enjoyed which most trustees enjoyed when we were doing our walk throughs is as Dylan saw things he said okay we're going to get on and we're going to take a or or he pulled
061out a schedule. He knew the status of what was happening with it. So we're very fortunate to have him and and and I think this year we got a great deal out of the building inspection so thank you everyone. And we are due to report to the state by the by June? For the five year? Yeah so that the report's actually due at the end of April so we're in the process tomorrow they'll be at Anna Devine doing the inspection. CPA And I'm done. Pardon? No I said and I'm done. Thank you very much. That brings us to old business. Dr. Renee Very briefly I promise I just wanted to again appreciate the good conversation we had last meeting and good collaboration with teaching and learning through Dr. Collins to suggest that we might use
062a teaching and learning meeting potentially May 11th to talk through and sharing that LGBTQIA+ but particularly trans and NB which is a term for non-binary kids the education and the tools and the resources the teachers and faculty have are developmentally appropriate and she had mentioned that we that there might be an opportunity to use the next teaching and learning meeting to do so I just to get into it deeper and I thought that was a great suggestion and so I wish you were here to say yes we're going to do it on May 11th but it would be great to confirm that that date works with Dr. Collins so that the parents who came to that meeting could listen in if they felt like they were wanting to do so so I'm just putting that
063out there and thank you very much. And we will be moving the May 11th meeting cuz we have a couple of conflicts I talked to Dr. Collins but it's it's going to be in May. Great so yeah whatever day it is just so we can get it to folks who are interested in listening. Thank you. At the last board meeting we had a robust discussion about board training I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot but where are we with with with that? Is it does anybody want to Anyone Mr. Spicer would you like to respond I we do we all have some update information. >> Okay great so we have been contacted through email by the consultant for the next step which is to sign up for the one-on-one meetings that are 30
064minutes there were two dates selected to do that either virtually or in person to make sure it accommodates everyone's schedules as a a fact finding you know experience so that she can collect the necessary information to inform for preparation for the facilitation of the retreat. And those dates I think actually five board members have signed up for those individual dates. >> I haven't. It's in the it's in the email to you. Okay okay. Several of the options were a Sunday afternoon and I I know that that could be a conflict for people that have religious obligations and she responded that she is open to setting up times that work for the people if that if those dates Is it too late to sign up? No no it's not it's been forwarded to you. Thank you.
065I wasn't going to bring this up however since we're discussing this just that the cost is above the amount that is in that line of the budget and therefore if it I I know it's being paid for but it's it is above our budget at the time when we are telling teachers and students they have to tighten their belts and whether it's coming out of somebody's pocket now or whether it's coming out of the budget we're not tightening our belt. And it's just that I don't know if it's just a for the public who's listening just to feel that there was an anonymous donation made to the Board of Education to pay for this. That's what you were saying. Yeah that's what I was yeah so but it's still a time that we are not
066tightening our belts. >> [clears throat] >> Except that we made a commitment to have our retreat back in the fall before the the belt tightening. We have had retreats without cost to the district and I'm I'm going to tell you that I I to spending money when we are not spending money that was was already approved um voted on by the public for student costs. Superintendent Just a point of clarification. So, there was an anonymous donation made. How what How wonderful. Um thank you to that anonymous donor. And also, I thought we voted on it last meeting. So, I guess I'm just unless we're going against our last vote, my assumption is even though it's not unanimous, it's still happening. That would be my assumption. Okay, great. Other I don't want to show other hands
067raised. Um I just wanted to remind everyone that we had a request for a an additional budget workshop um that we have scheduled for a week from tonight. Um hopefully it's it's not in a a meeting, but it is a workshop in which the board can answer questions and since you had a great presentation tonight, that'll that'll give us kind of homework for the next week. We do have that that presentation. We have board members. Can you Can you just share again the the amount of time? Like the estimate? for for the for the 15 >> at 6:00 p.m. Uh-huh. And the more questions you ask, the longer it goes. So, Okay, 6:00. Thank you. We are starting at 6:00 o'clock. Right. Any other old business? Any new business? Any board member announcements? Just a
068reminder that tomorrow night is the voting the annual meeting. Um and if you wanted to go, you are on the list to go. I can't remember if I'm on I can't remember if I am. Oh, good. It's on my Am I? Then you are on the list. I don't know. Good night. Are you happy now? And just remember, it is not at at court you, and it's at the I I-Park at 6:00. Um site. Any other announcements? Congratulations to our Kingston High School drama program. Wonderful show. Just wonderful. On stage and backstage. Great job, everyone. Public comment. Anyone who would like to address the board? That brings us to a motion to adjourn. So Second. All in favor? Um I was not as enthusiastic as I was >> [laughter] >> She was so funny in
069the