001Welcome to the Monday, March 23rd, 2026 regular Board of Education meeting for Marcellus Central School District. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. To the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for The meeting will begin with recognition. Great. We have a lot of recognition. So, fasten your seatbelt. First off, just a big huge shout-out to our girls basketball team. As many of you know, they went to the final four in Troy on Friday afternoon. And for the first time in Marcellus' history, won a sectional title. So, we were hopeful that they would move on, but they did so well and we're so proud of them. So, just a big shout-out to the players, the
002coaches, and all the families that supported our girls basketball team. And if you did not know by now, we have our boys basketball team are back-to-back state champions, which is just again an incredible feat two years in a row. I'm sad Tucker Burnette, our student board member, couldn't be here tonight, but again, he was a driving force on that on that team. So, just a congratulations again to the coaches, the players, and all the families who have shown their support throughout the season, and if anything I'll get it on Friday night. And then I do want to just give a shout-out to Brian Seavy for helping to organize a high school assembly that was so poignant. I was able to sit in in some of it. It's the story of Matt Angelilo. I don't know
003if any of you remember the story. He was a skinny Atlas high school student at age 17. He would be 38 years old today. He lost his life in a tragic drunk driving accident. And so, Brian organized this assembly. Students, we had incredible feedback from students. It was his mom that, you know, just talked about what an amazing kid he was, and just he made a tragic decision that night that she would never have imagined he would have done. So, again, just a shout-out to Brian and the high school staff for organizing this. I do want to give a shout-out to our ag program. We have Joe Killian, Caitlin Eaton, and Jenny Stratton here. They organized a professional development afternoon for the New York State Master Teacher program. So, we had I probably around 30
00435 members of the New York State Master Teacher program who visited the Marcellus ag facility on St. Patrick's afternoon. And as you can see here, they were right in on all of the different offerings at the ag facility. So, just a kudos to the advertising and the showcasing of what we have to offer here in Marcellus. I do want to just give a little shout-out to Tyler Cooper, also the mayor of Marcellus, Chad Clark, our town. We presented last week at the Onondaga Planning Symposium. And as you can see, front and center, Bronty Stall, who is a graduate of Marcellus, and Jack Waterman, who is a current student, spoke about their work around the Green Gateway. Austin Rake is also a graduate last year. He submitted a video of his work. He was on spring
005break. >> [laughter] >> But it was incredible. Just the the whole presentation started with Mayor Clark, the town talking about the site of the Green Gateway, and just the work that our students have done leading up to the site right now and the plan for that site for the future. So, just an incredible showcasing of Marcellus. We had many people who came up to us after we were finished with the presentation who were like, "How do we figure out how to do this in our school districts, in our towns, in our villages?" So, just a thank you to the students. And here Bronty is a graduate, but came back to show what the work that she has done, and that work that's been carried on by our current students. And then I do want to
006just give a shout-out Liz Millican. There was a New York State FCCLA new conference this past week in Cal-Mum. And Liz Millican won an award, the National Spirit of Advising. So, a huge shout-out to her and all that the work that she does with that group. Two of our students, you can see Maddie Carver and Charlotte Stasik in this picture. They will be officers for the New York State FCCLA, and they were inducted on Thursday night, and their families were there. It was a wonderful event. But just incredible for them to be part of the board of FCCLA for New York State. We had 15 students compete Thursday and Friday. I think 15 of them won gold and will now go on to national competition in Washington, D.C. this summer. And here are just a
007few pictures of the competitors. And then our very own Dawn Webber, we went to a Utica Utica National Insurance meeting today, and Marcellus schools was awarded with titanium wind honors for school safety in Arizona, accepting the award on behalf of the school district. So, just yeah, all of the hard work that Dawn does and all of our administration and staff our SROs, partnering with our SROs to make sure that we keep our students safe. Absolutely. Thank you. And that is it for recognition. Lots to celebrate. So, we'll move on to presentations. So, we have Joe Killian, Caitlin Eaton, and Jenny Stratton here with us tonight. And they're going to talk a little bit about the work that they have been doing to launch a community garden. And you guys can come right on up. So,
008on behalf of the agricultural program at Marcellus, I'd like to thank you guys for giving us the opportunity to come and speak with you, particularly about our past experiences and programming, as well as what the future's going to bring, particularly over the summer. I'm Joe Killian, Caitlin Eaton, and Jenny Stratton. We're the three teachers in the ag program as of right now. Over the course of our little presentation here, these are the three things that we'd like to talk to you about. First and foremost is what our agricultural program has been able to do, um especially with the new program and the new facility this year. And then we're going to transition into how we'd like to extend that beyond just the offerings for our kids into the community. Specifically, we're going to look at
009a rooted in learning grant that we are cooperating with Cornell Cooperative Extension with. And then finally, what that means for our our Marcellus greater general community over the course of the summer. So, this this year, we didn't miss a beat in terms of opening up the new agricultural facility right off in the fall. Mrs. Stratton's sustainability students jumped into creating our orchard that is in the contained space. A lot of people think that's for large animals or something of that sort. The only animals we're containing are the rugrats that we teach every single day. So, we've been partnering with Slate Hill Edible Farm to bring a variety of fruits to our orchard. So, we have raspberries, we have blueberries and grapes. We also have a variety of apples and peach trees, varieties that you're familiar
010with, like the Honeycrisp, but also varieties that you're not familiar with, like the Fireside Chat Apple, which has its historical roots none other than with FDR. So, we can keep moving through there. In addition, we we The opportunities that we're providing at the facility don't just exist for our 6th through 12th students, but also the students in our KCH. This is a program that Caitlin's been doing for several years now, and this is the apple pressing. We're fortunate to be able to partner with Beak and Skiff Orchards here to show the kids how the apple cider's made. And this year we were able to do it in our own orchard, and moving forward, hopefully have these students come back and be the presenters when these trees are full size, and do the same thing with
011the UPK in the future. So again, this is just a kind of a cyclic activity that we hope to keep bringing back year after year as the kids continue to grow through the agricultural program here in Marcellus. So, this is one of the nice photos that we have here. Believe it or not, they're all surrounding a little apple sapling that in three years is going to be bearing fruit, but right now, I can't imagine in about, you know, 10 or 12 years when we take the same exact photo when these kids are are surrounding the trees, what what a what a cool experience that will be. In addition, we've been continuing to extend our educational opportunities through Ag in the Classroom. This is a partnership through New York State called Ag Literacy Week. This is
012something that we just got wrapped up doing uh with the the middle schoolers in the second grade in the uh KCH. Uh this year's particular book was focused on uh seasons on the farm, so we were able to show the kids uh not only the different seasons on the farm by reading a book, but also demonstrate and show to them uh the maple facility that we have where all our uh boiling maple sap and maple syrup. Uh this is from a few years ago. We're going to just about getting into another UPK program. We're going to be planting Mother's Day basil plants with the students as well uh so that they're getting connected with their food that they're ultimately raising their own uh food and then make that into their own basil pesto. So, that's
013something again is a large focus of our program is connecting our kids, whether it's the timber that we're milling at the mill or the food that we're growing in the garden, um how exactly do we connect it where it's coming from and where it goes ahead and feed ourselves. Um so, this is again just extension activity that we've been working uh relation between the uh middle school, the high school, and uh the KCH. Uh so again, uh this is such a wonderful experience to expand on our growing opportunities for the students. We're we're in the uh greenhouse. We're continuing to grow. Mrs. Trenton's kids are are planting petunias for the third graders, uh so those will be able to do a Mother's Day sale sorts for the their mothers over the Mother's Day. We're also
014collaborating with uh the Village of Marcellus to uh plant the hanging uh baskets that will be lining all of our streets uh downtown Marcellus, so we'll be uh those are the geraniums in the uh the hanging baskets. So, uh again as you guys saw, uh we we hosted a master teacher program um this past week as well um as well as a professional development for our teachers too to hopefully develop and foster additional opportunities for kids across the campus as to how this building and facility and opportunities can serve them moving forward. And ultimately, I think we've had a blast of success and we continue to grow this program and reach all as many kids as possible, but in addition, we also are looking to see how uh the Ag Culture program can not only
015be the center of uh our learning community here, but also the center of our greater community. So, then in comes Cooperative Extension with a grant. We were um We had Tom Cross reach out to us from Cornell Cooperative Extension and mentioned that he had got the funding through a grant to work with the school in hopes of building a community garden. And he has heard about our program and wanted to see if we were interested. So, when we met with him, we also met with a community member who was interested in starting a community garden in Marcellus, and we talked about what our goals were in the future in that space where we have our orchard, which part of the goal was to build some raised beds. And with speaking with Tom and the grant
016that he had, there were three C's that were of focus. So, the classroom, the cafeteria, and the community. And we had already had an idea of connecting those things in the future, so this just gave us a little bit of a a head start, this conversation. So, ultimately, our goal for the classroom is many things. The first is building the raised beds, and Joe and his classes, they'll be making the the lumber. Um they'll be building the raised beds. Jenny and sustainability science as well as grades 6 through um 8 in the middle school will be working with plant science and picking out plants to grow. So, that's the classroom component. The cafeteria, we'd like to work with Amy Mitchell to see what types of uh produce would be great to feature, and we could
017do a harvest of the month and do taste testing outside of the the cafeteria to highlight some of our local produce and things that we can grow right here in um our own community. And then, the community connection would be that con- connection in the garden. So, one way we'd like to incorporate community is having volunteers be able to come in over the summer and help us harvest, pick weeds, water, things like that. Um but also, Cornell Cooperative Extension will provide educators to help us teach the community as well. So, like Joe said, we want this to be a learning hub not just for our students, but also for the community. So, we envision things like when the tomatoes are ready to be picked and harvested, maybe we would have someone from Cooperative Extension teach
018about making salsa or sauce and how to can and prep for the winter months. Um so, there's a long list of ideas when we were talking with Wayne from our community and with Tom, the possibilities were endless, and we had a lot of more discussing to do, but that's where this um community garden kind of started. So, just to kind of paint a broad picture of what the community garden will look like, um we've got some picture hypothetical pictures on the board. We have a high tunnel. It hasn't been assembled yet, but that is part of our plan so that we can extend the season both in the spring and the fall um for growing things like greens. We'll have raised beds. We'll have raised beds of different heights to make them accessible to everyone.
019Um So, I think So, with the grant from CCE, we're able to put in um stone pathways, landscape weed fabric. Um we're able to do like a really nice job to make it accessible and easy for people to move around the garden and also to make it aesthetically pleasing. We'll have a compost management system in place because if we start growing vegetables, we're going to need something to do with our um our waste. And this is the design that was actually created last year for the eighth grade Earth Project by Ella Haaks and Mason Haaks. Um they did all their project on developing a community garden in Marcellus, and as part of their project, they designed a hypothetical garden space. So, our plan is to start small this year with its four raised beds and
020expand from there, but you can kind of get a visual of what it might look like. And they also went to Amy Mitchell and talked with her. They did an interview and asked her what kind of vegetable she would like to see in the school cafeteria that maybe we could produce on campus. So, you can see the list of vegetables um that she thought would be a good fit for the cafeteria. And again, these would be things that maybe we would do taste tests with, you know, different colored carrots, things like that, different kinds of cherry tomatoes. But these could also be potentially foods that are featured once a month as the harvest of the month. So, you know, there's a lot of things there that we can grow in this garden. And our plan
021is that when students are in school, the produce from the garden will go to school. It will be used in the cafeteria. During the summer when students are here, this is when the volunteers will come in and um in trade for their help maintaining the garden, they'll take home whatever they would like from the harvest. And our plan is to donate the excess to the food pantry. Um And that community garden So, it's not a typical community garden in that people cannot rent a bed that's theirs. They cannot plant whatever they want in their bed. They can't come whenever they want to garden, right? Because it's on it's part of our school campus, there will be hours when people can come um staffed by a Marcellus staff member. It will be a community garden where
022the students are deciding what to plant based on Ms. Mitchell's recommendations. The volunteers will be there to help and assist throughout the summer um and to keep things going and to benefit from that harvest. So, we envision like a weekly open garden time, probably an hour to start with when the community members would come in and help out, and we would get the chores done and the harvesting done that needs to be done. Cornell Cooperative Extension also um has offered us their master gardeners to come in and conduct workshops in the garden for community members and for students um when school is in session. So, we've been working with Wayne Bland from Marcellus together. He had the idea of starting a community garden in Marcellus, and Tyler Cooper was able to connect us with him.
023So, his vision is access for fresh food, safe fresh foods, healthy living, community empowerment, social connections, education, and access to nature. And all of these things that he was looking for in a community garden fit right into um the three C's that the extension was looking for as well. So, it's like a perfect matching between project. Um as I mentioned, it would be a series of scheduled community gathering, and it would be supervised by MC staff and structured in terms of what is grown. What it is not is a traditional garden where people are renting out beds, growing whatever they want, and coming whenever they want. So, it won't be open access. It will be during specific times. So, what we need going forward is staff. Um Ideally, we like one staff one paid staff
024per night on site at the garden to chaperone the volunteers that are there um for the 2026 to 2027 growing season, we were able to um get So, Cornell Cooperative Extension put us into a second garden grant that they've been writing, and they wrote in a line to pay a staff member, so it would be a contractor um who would be a Marcellus staff member who could be on site for the summer season. But, that isn't until next summer and if we want the garden to take off, we need to do something for this summer. So, you know, looking forward, I think that is our one big hurdle that we need to consider with this. And we're hoping in the future that we'll be able to find a sustainable um funding source to carry this
025forward. Does anyone have questions? Do you envision having somebody there every evening or like what like >> Yeah, I think it's going to be a once a week for the garden Okay. Okay. once a week um You know, potentially depending on how things go, maybe we would need to open up the second evening, but I think we'll be able to get a lot done with a group of volunteers and it you know, one evening. I mean, I think what you're doing is incredible. Really and and so many friends. You know, I I love how you are connecting the older kids with the younger kids. I mean, that's that's so good for for both um cohorts of students and um you know, in that program or that um yeah, program-based learning where they're a project-based learning
026where they're just, you know, getting right involved and doing I mean, those are the things that kids really love and that's um that's and and connecting the the kids with the community is really exceptional, too. So, great stuff. Thanks. Something just the you know, the community supported the egg facility, so it's awesome that we can give back to the community. I appreciate that. That's along the lines of what you're thinking as well. And it was this year that you guys are doing the planners in the village? >> Yeah. New this year. A new opportunities are coming online just because of the opening of the facility and then we just expect them to continue to grow and develop as we kind of familiarize ourselves with everything in the program and how it's all going to work
027between the three of us and the district and the community. And I noticed you mentioned the composting. Could you ever see yourself composting some of the food waste from the I mean, you know, I know it's a big project, but Yeah. um No, that would be an awesome connection, I think. >> Yeah. You know, the cafeteria Yeah. Yeah. >> So, have it going both ways to the cafeteria and waste from Yeah. I think that yeah, I know there's a lot of opportunities for grants to purchase like large-scale composters and things like that. That's something that we've been investigating. >> Yeah. Yeah. Cool. This curriculum that you're you're creating this curriculum, right? You're going to be creating it. It's incredible to put it all together. Doesn't feel like there's a model like We're very lucky that
028we have all of the resources that Marcellus has. Thank you. We appreciate Yes, definitely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, I'm going to continue on with presentations. I'm going to start with I'm going to ask Bob Montgomery just to talk a little bit about our superintendent's conference day last Friday and Mr. Killian alluded to it that they the egg facility, Joe and Caitlin did a little bit of PD for our teachers. So, I will let Bob sort of give the rundown of everything that occurred that day. Sure. So, last Friday we had our last full staff development day of the year. AM sessions, our teachers were able to build their own schedules followed by lunch and then of course we had faculty meetings scheduled and then grade level department time. We had 22 people
029off campus at different area-wide conferences. We sent 12 of our teachers to the Reading League's Writing Symposium downtown in Syracuse. We also had regional art conferences and then a couple of our PE teachers went to shadow another district to see how they work in PE every day and the system and the schedule that they do. >> [clears throat] >> We had another 36 people CPR and AED trained. So, Desha's Law was put into place this year and our 15-minute video took care of the requirement, but our team decided that we wanted to move forward with another 2-hour session training. So, Paul Smith from Onondaga BOCES comes in and he's now trained 70 of our staff in hands-on AED and CPR training. And we strategically chose people like our nighttime custodians because they're here with large
030numbers of people all the time in order to help out and they were thrilled to be part of that. Mike Dingman and Ellie Glassman offered Notebook LM some of AI with Gemini and how to make lesson planning easier. Our counselors updated our counseling plan. Our world language teachers updated all their checkpoint exams for French and Spanish. Our pilot teachers continued on with their planning for benchmark assessment. And then we also had our UPK teachers looking at their assessments and what's coming up for the end of the year. So, we had a lot of assessments uh going on this time. Tyler Cooper presented pathways his pathway his professional pathways to three different sessions of teachers so that they could >> [clears throat] >> match what they believed are the soft skills that students need and then
031Tyler was able to wrap that around with what we're seeing out there in the real world uh to help teachers think about ways they can incorporate that or strengthen it in their own curricula. The egg center maple syrup was a hit along with the greenhouse and then of course with the lumber mill. And then some of our teachers went on to read some more and do work with the portrait of a graduate and then we finished up with a whole financial series. So, New York State Teachers' Retirement System came in and did a virtual presentation along with Medicare was here to help our teachers understand how to navigate that along with some a representative from the Reagan companies came in to do some financial literacy with our teachers. So, it was an action-packed day. Thank
032you, Bob, for all of your work just organizing that and providing a myriad of opportunities for our teachers. So, we've been talking the last few meetings just as we were developing the initial budget and now we're getting closer to putting the final budget forward to all of you on April 6th and I wanted to just sort of give you some of our enrollment and um projections just as we see right now. Um so, UPK um that is what we will have 54 students in UPK. That's three sections and that is really the mandate. It's one teacher and one TA um and those class sizes are fixed. So, 18. In kindergarten right now, we have about 88 students. We're looking at around five sections. Um if that number grows, um typically like 95, 96 might tip
033us to needing another section. Right now, it's we have 88. So, um that is always sort of a a point that we're looking at carefully as we head into June. Um first grade um will have 93 students. There will be five sections, so that's about 18 to 19 uh class size. Uh second grade, 102 are projected. Again, five sections, 20 to 21. Um and third grade right now, you can see there's these bubbles that occur in different grade levels. We have about 118. Our plan right now is to run five sections um which would be about 23 students, 24 um max. And then in fourth grade, the projection is 106 students, five sections, 20 to 21 students. Um grade five, 115 enrollment, five sections, about 22, 23 class size. And then sixth grade, we're forecasted
034for 103 students um about five five sections, about 20 to 21 students. And then just so you can kind of get a sense of grade 7 through 12 um seventh and eighth grade, um you can see the bubble. There is less than 100 students. Um and so, that those class sizes with what we have forecasted are going to be anywhere between 19 and 20. Um grades 9 through 12 you [clears throat] can see ninth grade is 109 students, 10th grade 104, 11th grade 90, and 12th grade 124. There is a wide range there, eight to 27 because some of our classes like welding has has a cap. You can only have eight students. So, um that's why you see that wide range. So, we're we're paying very cognizant again in these sort of challenging budget
035times um looking at class sizes very carefully to make sure that you know, we maintain what we have, but um we're we're not building classes with three, four, four kids. We we cannot operate that way. So, um our administrators, our principals have done an outstanding job just forecasting um our needs, our staffing needs, and and courses so that we can make decisions as we move forward. Jean, did I'm sorry. Um yep. And did you say that the these projected numbers are the current year standing or is it this is what will be for next year? >> Okay. Projections for 26-27. Um and so, we we I I mentioned this at the last meeting. We do have to make some reductions in force, and there is not a superintendent in New York State or in in
036all of uh the US that wants to do reductions in force, but we are coming to a reality that if we don't do this now, we potentially could harm ourselves down the road where we're instead of making six cuts, we're making 12, right? So, um, we have done a very good job of trying to be very intentional, um, very measured, and finding, um, positions that really are currently not not maximized. Um, it is no secret. It's not just Marcellus. It's across Central New York and even universities that expenses are outpacing revenues. Um, so, we're looking at approximately six positions that we are going to uh reduce in force. Again, um, what we'll do is make those notices this week, and really it's just a notice that your position may be eliminated or reduced, and as
037the budget comes into more of a a finalized form, um, some of that could change, but um, I feel obligated to give people enough notice that they have the ability to to make some moves now if they feel like they they should. So, that is essentially what we're looking at in enrollment and projections. Again, we were so careful to look at things and and have a good sense of staffing for next year. Um, and Don will take it from here so that he can kind of give you a sense of where we are with our our budget at this point. Uh, thank you. Um, so, that was probably the biggest, um, the biggest news, I think. Um, I'll start, I guess, with this year's budget. Uh, we we instituted a spending freeze on Friday just
038to kind of make sure that all discretionary spending is kind of done for the year. Um, materials and supplies, of course, we're going to continue to to purchase all the goods that we need and that are essential to support student student learning for the rest of the year. But, um, so, that should hopefully help us end the year on a positive on a positive note. Um, And what I would do want to point out is that it's no different than what we Tony has been doing the same. Freezes around that time for the past several years. Um, so, uh, last we met, uh, the initial budget gap was originally projected about 1 and 1/2 million dollars. Last meeting, um, we had uh, identified some expensive reduction of expenses. Uh, the budget gap was about a
039million. Shortly thereafter, the state released a updated run of state aid projections. So, the initial budget was based on information that we gave or they got from us uh, in October. Uh, they then go back and rerun it based on updated da- data, updated enrollment numbers, uh, updated expenses, and update their aid formula. So, uh, based on that, basic aid, uh, I'm projecting to decrease by quite a bit. Um, some of that is changing numbers, and some of that is just, uh, maybe a an analysis uh, change on my part of what I think it's actually going to be. That's made up of, uh, uh, building aid, transportation aid, and basic per pupil aid. Um, so, I'm I'm revising that estimate down quite a bit. Uh, expense based aids, textbook aid, software, hardware. Again, the
040these numbers are driven really by enrollment, and as those numbers change throughout the year, we're constantly updating that information to New York State, and they can pull that and update those numbers. Uh, so, you can see some various revenue changes over in the right hand column there. Um, we do finally have a final employee health care contribution rate. It is going to be 10% this year. We were initially fearing it would be closer to 13%. Uh, the health we're part of the health consortium, which I think I've I've mentioned before, about 20 other school districts. Um, this is kind of a middle ground. I think the consortium itself would have liked to have gone higher, but the member districts, I think everybody felt that this was kind of a a middle ground where this the
041consortium could continue to be uh, fiscally solvent, and you know, districts could live with the the number for now. It does sound like this is going to be in this ballpark for the next couple of years. It has been 6, 7, 8%, but we're expecting it to be in the 10% range for the next few years driven by Um, just expenses of the consortium. So, it's our members and their expenses that we're incurring. So, we can kind of see that data and forecast it a little bit. Um, you can see below that we have a a retirement uh, that's going to reduce expenditures by about 141,000. That's salaries, payroll tax, uh, pension contributions, and health insurance. Uh, the six staff reductions, uh, that Superintendent Charlow mentioned. And, um, the final line there is BOCES services.
042So, Superintendent and I met with representatives from BOCES and went through the entirety of our BOCES bill line by line. It's a not insignificant part of our budget. In our 43 million dollar budget, this is, you know, 3.4 million dollars. So, it's the percentage of total spending. So, it's important that we understand, you know, what we're getting. And many of those costs we have very little control over. It's student needs, but we do also uh, purchase a lot of services from BOCES, which is a smart thing to do because many of them are are aided. But, um, because of the the the budget that we're in, it really made sense to look at the services and see, do we need these services? Yes, you might be getting aid back on them, but if they're things
043that we can do without, do we need to spend the money in the first place at all? Uh, we identified about 250,000 dollars in reduced spending. You see the number there is 155. Um, that is because when the initial budget came out, BOCES hadn't updated their pricing for 26-27. So, we knew the services that we want we wanted or we're going to buy, but we didn't yet know how much more those same services were going to cost next year. So, uh, those reductions we think are going to reduce expenses by about 155,000. So, at the end of the day, we still have a relatively small gap of about 218, five, uh, which we're confident we can close a number of ways, but we're very close to a balanced presenting a balanced budget to Any questions?
044>> [clears throat] >> Yeah, this this is, yeah, really a a struggle for us to, um, Nothing. We have to put forward a balanced budget. This is a little alarming. I I guess I have some solace that we're not the only district. It's just Uh, one of the things that I do appreciate that Tony did and Don is following suit, um, is is really trying to give a very accurate forecast of what we're looking at and um, at at the end of the year, and that's why the spending freeze. We we want to make sure that we end in a in a good way at the end of the year. And so, um, you know, I I think year to year we we've always just been right where what we budgeted is what we spent,
045and that's really some districts end up forecasting way more, um, in their budget, and and they have more surplus. We would never have that. So, our reserves are not what Tony could meet. Budget right on the line. Um, so, I appreciate that Don has taken a similar approach to Tony in trying to be very meticulous about what we're forecasting and doing it very accurately, we hope. Any questions on anything? All right. This time we'll move on to residents' comments. Public expression at the Board of Education meetings is encouraged, and a specific portion of the agenda shall provide for this privilege. In most instances, the Board shall reserve judgment regarding questions and concerns that are brought to the Board's attention at a board meeting. That is as it is typically not prudent for the Board to
046make instantaneous determinations. In addition, many issues that are brought to the Board's attention do not require a formal determination by the Board, but instead are most appropriately addressed by the Superintendent of Schools or persons designated by the Superintendent without further Board action in accordance with Board Policy 3220 Community Relations. Do we have any residents' comments at this time? All right. At this time we'll move on to the business portion of our meeting. Item 5.1, Oswego County BOCES Cooperative Purchasing Program. Resolved that the Board of Education approves the attached resolution authorizing participation in Oswego County BOCES Cooperative Purchasing Program. Can I have a motion? Motion, Justin. Justin. Second. Jen Second Jen Okay, questions or comments before we vote? Schools are required to do lead testing every three years on all of their really all of their
047water fountains, sinks. Um and so this is really just for um city BOCES to enter into an agreement and a request for proposal for our company to do that testing. All those in favor? I am fine. Opposed? Carried. Item 5.2, forego first reading of board policy. Resolve that the board agrees to forego a first reading of the board policy 5670, records management, for the purpose of its expediency to take advantage of grant funding by April 1st. Can I have a motion? Motion Amy Amy Second Sean Questions or comments before we vote? Robert require that there should be two readings of a policy and so if really what we're asking is that the board forego the first reading um primarily because um Tony was working on a grant and Don has picked up where he left
048off and in order to take advantage of that grant, we have a April 1st deadline where our policy has to be in line with the law. So you'll see the language in that records management is just um referencing where those records will be stored. Um and so that's really that's all you're voting for in this is simply that you'll forego that first reading so that we can move it up move it forward to to hit that April 1st deadline. Amy All those in favor? I am fine. Opposed? Carried. Uh 5.3, second and final reading of board policy. Resolve that the board of education approves the second and final reading of the following proposed board policies. You can see them there before you. Policy 7522, concussion management. Policy 5670, records management. Can I have a motion?
049Motion Jen Jen Second Second Erica Questions or comments before we vote? And just to point out that records management really has not been revised since 2009 and the language um that has been added again and in uh to be adhering to the grant um really just talks about the retention and how we will dispose of of records and it's again just in line in alignment with the law. All those in favor? I am fine. Opposed? Carried. Item 5.4, propositions for the 2026 annual district meeting. Resolve that the board of education approves the attached resolution establishing the propositions to appear on the ballot at the 2026 annual district meeting and election. And we'll go This will be a roll call vote. Um so Sean, ED vice president, how do you vote? >> yes. Amy Bartolotta I
050Erica Pacquata I Justin Pritchard I Kelly Rosters absent and I vote I as well. Oh, Jennifer Tedesco. I'm so sorry, Jennifer. I I I apologize. Okay. Um All right. Do I need to I think get a motion before we voted. Is that going to be problematic? Okay, let's do it. Okay. Before we begin, resolve that the board of education approves the attached resolution establishing the propositions to appear on the ballot at the 2026 annual district meeting and election. Can I have a motion? Motion Sean Sean Second Jen Second Jen All right, and I don't think we need to vote it. Okay. Yeah. Really all all we're doing is establishing that the budget will be put before the voters um 365 passenger school buses, 136 passenger bus with wheelchair lift um and one 10 passenger van
051as well as the Marcellus Free Library proposition. Um and so those are things that you see on the propositions every year. Just so the public knows >> [clears throat] >> we have a replacement plan for our buses, so we're we're simply following that plan and that has also been forecasted in the budget for multiple years. >> Mhm. Um so just to And just to be clear, these are not electric buses. We are yeah. >> we're not using electric buses. >> Yeah. All right, at this time we'll move on to item 5.5, which is the discussion of school bus stop arm camera program. Yes, so um I mentioned at the last meeting that I was approached by Onondaga County um to see if Marcellus would be interested in entering into the school bus stop arm um
052safety program. And so essentially this is how it works. Onondaga County contracts with a company and that company comes out to a school district and free of charge um puts little cameras on at every school bus. So no cost to the district. And um if a bus car passes the the school bus stop arm and they're they're captured on that camera, that person receives a a ticket. That cost of the ticket is split between Onondaga County and this company. So that's that's you know obviously the the angle of why this company is is doing this. Um Mr. Pritchard asked a question just about the security of uh the data when once it's captured and the vehicle plate number, all of that. And so I did get an answer. Um Vera Mo- Mobility and I'm just
053going to read it cuz it's it's technical. Vera Mobility utilizes a secure cellular network to transfer evidence data to our on- president premise servers with a variety of details security requirement requirements that are detailed below. So they follow a protocol. They secure the main video on their server vault and then build evidence packages off to copy and send to uh Onondaga County. And so all of it is in a in controlled environment access access only by Vera Mobility certified employees. So it's it it sounds like they're they follow similar security um that that you know many entities have to follow. So really what I'm wanting to just get a sense of from the board if it's something that you want me to pursue and say yep, we're we're willing to jump in. Really >> [clears
054throat] >> regardless of of the company or Onondaga County, it's in service of safety of our our students. And so if people know that cameras are on the buses, perhaps they'll be a little slower and and higher on the list. So what are what are our thoughts? Oops. Yeah, I think it's a great plan. I think I I like the uh the idea that I like the uh the visibility and the uh mindfulness as Jean said, my my only concern was, you know, who had access to servers and who shared with and then um but it sounds like it's an internal and they're different Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Anybody have any objections? Really that's No. I don't. Yeah. We're not the first school district that I know of that have gone before. Um I think FM,
055Jamesville-Dewitt, um Lafayette added them not too long ago. Right now um Marcellus uh is on the docket as well as Solvay um and I think OCS. So those are the they seem to be capturing them three school districts at a time. So um but again I you know it's it's really up to the board if you want me to pursue it. Again, I do think I think there was a story I saw not too long ago on social media of one of our our buses stopped and a car Yeah, it's shocking that it happens, but it does happen. I've seen it. And certainly I've seen buses on our country roads and you see it, you know, I mean it is it's it's a big safety concern for sure. So I do think if people know
056that cameras are out there, they it it might give them a little pause. I was going to ask in the last year too is um what has been the the frequency of that happening for our district? And if bus drivers reported that out or how Yeah. Yep. We we they do we do get reports of that. I just I wouldn't be surprised, but it does happen. I I may not even know the extent of it. You know, I I have heard that it does happen. Um but yeah. So no one objects, we can Yeah, that sounds great. I didn't know if we could move forward. All right, we will move on to personnel. Approval of personnel items. Resolve that the board of education approves the following personnel items. You can see them listed there before
057you, 6.1 through 6.7. Can I have a motion? Motion Justin Justin Second Jen Second Jen Questions or comments about any of those items before we vote? One thing I just want to point out just so you may be wondering, Carrie Boyle is splitting the position um with Lauren or yeah, Lauren Soule who we previously put forward. So I didn't want if someone's looking at the paper week, I didn't want someone to think that we're we're paying Carrie less. It's just she's splitting the position with someone else. All right. All those in favor? I. Opposed? Carried. All right, moving on to item 6.2, modification of retirement of instructional staff. Whereas on November 17th, 2025, the Board of Education adopted a resolution accepting the retirement of Ms. Kathleen Ryan effective November 11th, 2026 and whereas Ms. Ryan
058has requested to modify her retirement date. Now therefore be it resolved that the resolution pertaining to Ms. Ryan adopted on November 17th, 2025 is hereby modified nunc pro tunc which means now for then as follows. Resolved that the Board of Education approves the following personnel item 7.1.1, retirement of instructional staff. Kathleen Ryan effective 2030 2026. Be it further resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves and ratifies an agreement between the district and Ms. Ryan incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second? Erica. Questions or comments before we vote? All those in favor? I. Opposed? Carried. Okay, moving on to consent agenda, approval of consent agenda items. Resolved that the Board of Education approves the following consent agenda items. You can see them listed there before you,
0597.1 through 7.7. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Amy. Second, Jen. Jen. Questions or comments on any of those before we vote? All those in favor? Opposed? Carried. Okay, informational items. Um yeah, so just some informational items. I'm noticing there's a little typo there. It's actually March 30th. So March 30th to April 3rd is our spring break. So next week students are on spring break. Just a reminder of that. The 26 27 student board member application process is going to be initiated on April 6th. So Mr. Seavey will help get the application out to students in grades um Well, really it's any student in grade 10 and 11 right now. So it could be an 11th grader or or a 12th grader next year. And so those applications will go out to students.
060They'll have 3 weeks to complete them and then we'll do an interview process with a committee. And then we will announce a student board member for the 26 27 school year in early May. Just a reminder, Board of Education elections will also be on May 19th for the budget vote. And those petitions are available from Colleen O'Leary, the district clerk and they're due April 20th by 5:00 p.m. Um we are going to have and again Brian has been heading this spearheading this, a drunk driving simulation. I'm going to let him talk a little bit about it just so everybody is aware of the plan and the extent to to which this is really a a true simulation for students. Yes, I think Jen is overselling the idea that Brian's driving this, but I appreciate the
061credit. So I had worked [clears throat] in the fall to get MADD in and have them come do a presentation for us. The thing I didn't realize is while I was doing that, we had one of our seniors in Mr. Cooper's professional pathways program, Claire Chase, who actually wants to orchestrate a true drunk driving simulation here at the school. So it turned into just like a beautiful marriage of you know, the the presentation that MADD did with them last week as well as what we have coming up with Claire. So what this is, and you may have heard about it in other schools, you may have seen it. Like I was a part of this when I was in high school you know, 10 years ago, but essentially what it's going to be is we're
062going to have a donation of two different vehicles that are you know crashed together. They're going to be positioned in our senior parking lot. We're going to have all of our cars exited from the the lot that morning. We're going to do tons and tons and tons of communication up front. The idea is that we're going to run a live simulation with students um live after the fact, after the crash of the the ramifications and fallout. So we're going to have some student actors that are all going to be seniors whereby you know, we have one of them who is driving under the influence and hit another one. We we Claire has been working very intentionally with the MAV handling service, our Undine County office. We have the Mercy One flight helicopter that's going to
063be coming in and we're going to airlift an injured student out of here. The kids are going to come in in the morning. They're going to get all you know, dolled up to the nines with their their Hollywood makeup artists and you know, their their fake injuries. Um It's going to happen the morning of prom which is very intentional and timely to kind of send the message that it's hopefully going to feel as real as possible. We understand that it's going to be a little bit traumatic and also a little bit sensitive in the way that it's going to be on the morning of prom. But the idea was to make it as big of an impact as we possibly could. So we thought no no better way than than planning it for the day
064of. So what will happen that morning, students are going to go about their business first and second period. Starting third period, we're going to have a 911 dispatch call that gets displayed over the PA system here whereby we're going to have one of our student actors you know, making a 911 call with an actual 911 dispatch. It's going to be all you know, in in our sphere. And then we're going to invite the kids to come outside. They're going to come outside. They're going to see you know, it's going to be it's going to be chaos. It's going to be students yelling and screaming and you know, calling for help that were just part of an act part of an accident. You know, we'll have the first responders on scene. They're going to assess you
065know, the the medical condition of the kids. We'll have a student who is dead on arrival. We'll have another student who is banged up and needs you know, serious medical attention who's going to be you know, taken out of here in an ambulance. We'll have another student like I said being airlifted out of here in a helicopter. I think that's going to be a little bit of a dramatic scene. We'll have our inebriated driver cuffed and they feel sobriety tested by local sheriffs that will end in his arrest and will leave in the back of the police car. Students at the end of all of it are going to be invited into the auditorium. We're going to have a hearse pull up around the corner. When we get into the auditorium, you're going to see
066the student senior picture on display on the big screen with a casket up front and Claire's going to do some you know, some necessary closure component to it and then I'm going to deliver a little bit of a closure as well. Like I said, it's going to be it's going to be a lot. These things if you've seen or been a part of any of them before are incredible. They have such such a huge impact, but they are very traumatic. So we're going to have our support team on staff ready to go to you know, accept kids and staff members. We're going to just say there's some staff members that are going to actually be upset by this. Um So we're going to have our full court dressed support team on hand. We'll also be
067communicating this up front. We have you know, the obvious opt out procedures in place if you know, students or families of students who do not want their kids witness any of these things, then certainly you know, this this is going to be the opt out where they can stay inside and you know, be in our library during during the action. Any questions about that? Have we ever done anything like that before here? To my knowledge, it happened once, but it was before most people who currently are employed here were employed here. Mhm. Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be a a really powerful experience. And I'm I'm glad that you're going to have some extra support on hand, you know, because they do I think that um you know, you never know how you know,
068how that will will impact students and and uh so yeah. And I again, the after hours going to be very important. Yeah. Yeah. Um I think it's a a good reminder right now especially students at this age um who think they're invincible. >> So um just a a good reminder and again, they they know it's acting. They know these kids that are actors. It's really just helps put them in the perspective of yeah, yeah. >> Yeah. And it's grades 9 through 12. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And truly like I mean, with a little bit of oversight from both Tyler and myself, it's it's student led. It's driven by Claire. Mhm. And I think truly family members who have lost somebody from drunk driving appreciate I'm sure Matt's mom would know Angela as mom who came here
069just to to remind it was a special day. >> Yeah, for sure. drinking and driving. Mhm, mhm, yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? Okay. Well, then the next thing that April 6th is our next board meeting and that meeting really essentially is when we will put the final budget forward to the board for adoption. >> Mhm. And that's it for information items. Okay. All right. So, at this time we will move into executive session. Resolve that the meeting in public be adjourned and an executive session be convened for the purpose of discussion of personnel. Can I have a motion? I'll second Jen. Jen. Second Justin. Justin. All right, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carried. Okay.