Board of Education Meeting 3/24/26

001meeting to order, Mr. Rice. You ready to do? Perfect. I call the meeting to order. It is 6:00. I think I could show that all board members are in attendance. Please stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We are going to make a little bit of an adjustment to our agenda. We are going to move J to the new C. Everything else will shift down. Are there any other changes? Yes. Um they have a acceptance of resignation for a teacher. Approval of a boost program tutor mentor. Um Approve appointment of an impartial hearing officer. And J is new, the resignation to retire for Rinella. Yes, Rinella. We are going to

002move that up cuz they don't have to spend their evening. Okey-doke. Do they want to? They kind of want to, but >> [laughter] >> the nervousness in the room is I said we could talk too. Can we get a motion to approve the agenda, please? I'll move it. Thank you. Second. Thank you. All in favor? All right. Opposed? Abstained? Motion passes. Do we have anyone who signed up for community comments? Yes, we have one. All right. Is the Is the topic SRO? Yes. Okay. We are going to ask that the comments on SRO wait until after we have the presentation on SRO. Just in case that changes what anybody has to say. Is everyone okay with that? We will open when we Normally we don't open it back up at the end, but we are

003going to make that Cuz we're not voting on anything, but I think it will help if we have the presentation first or discussion. >> I have some questions. Okay. So, that was the only comment. We're going to jump ahead to C, which is the old J, which is >> [laughter] >> the resignation to retire for Rinella. So, we would like to congratulate Mr. Michael Rinella tonight on his retirement. So, Mr. Rinella has been in education for 34 years, 20 of which in Marion, um working in special special education both at the elementary building and at the junior senior high building. And I think um anyone you ask in our learning community about Mr. Rinella would tell you that he's the kindest, most most supportive teacher that you'll ever come across. Uh he's definitely a tireless

004advocate for his students. He's a great communicator with parents and really works hard, especially Currently he works with a lot of our upper classmen, but building those skills for academic success and independence, and we will miss him going forward. So, on a slightly unrelated note, is there any problem that we approve the MOA after we approve the retirement? Yes. I Sorry. I don't I don't want any potential for any type of legal issue. So, [clears throat] should we approve the MOA, pull that out of consent, and approve that first? Yes. And then approve [clears throat] the retirement? So, first Okay. We need to do that. Well, we have to have an agreement that allows him to retire and get his benefits before he can retire and get his benefits. >> All right. So, first, let's

005have a motion, please, for the approval of an MOA between Marion and the MTA concerning the retirement service benefits for Michael Rinella. I'll move for that. Thank you. I'll second. Thank you. All in favor? All right. Opposed? Abstained? That motion passes. Now, the part that lets him have some time off here. Can we get a motion to approve his retirement, please? I'll move it. I'll second it. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Same. Motion passes. Line up so we can congratulate you, please. We just want to shake your hand. Come right around. Congratulations, Mike. Thank you. Congratulations, Mike. Congratulations. Thank you, Mike. Congratulations, Mike. Thank you. Thanks for your service, Mike. Congratulations. [clears throat] >> [snorts] >> You're welcome to stay, but we will not hold you if you want to go celebrate. We

006get it. >> [laughter] >> All right. We have a presentation now. We have a a guest. Yes. So, we have Dr. Rick Timbs here tonight uh to present on the long-range financial analysis for the district. So, the board had discussed previously about taking kind of a deeper dive into district finances and being able to look not just at like our current budget, but like moving forward what the big picture is for Marion. So, um Rich and I recently attended a training with Dr. Timbs. Some of our board members read the four county school boards where he presented um and we felt like it was worth the investment to have him take a look at the district's finances and kind of project out what things are looking like for us into the future. So, we're excited

007for him to come join us tonight. He'll do a board presentation kind of with a summary of his results, and then after the meeting we'll move into a board workshop to go into some more depth with financial analysis. I think Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. Uh I'm going to go through a little uh presentation here. I'm just getting my clicker. And um I'm going to talk about the district's finances and what we found out. So, thank you for inviting me. It's been a pleasure working with your team. So, uh first of all, let's just talk a little bit about some of the things we actually investigated. That's probably the most important thing. Uh I don't want you to think we just came up with

008a spreadsheet to show you a pile of numbers. That's not exactly what we did. We did a deep dive. We actually started off with number one, which is district submission to SED, State Education Department, in the form of the ST-3 document. Now, this document is the official document of the school district, which we didn't want to use anything that wasn't official. We wanted real numbers on what really happened. Uh so, what happens? We use those documents for the last five years. So, I went back and what they do is they include things such as what your budget was in terms of revenue, what actual revenues you got in, what was your budget in terms of expenditures, what expenditures came in, where did they come from, what was the money spent for. Talks about your debt

009services and things like this. Talks about all the different accounts that you have. It talks about your state aid. It gives us a real nice view of the school district finances to get started. Number two, State Education Department website aid calculations as they're updated. Now, this one's really critical because uh the State Education Department about publishes a new state aid run, they call it, or their analysis of state aid every couple months. So, that means every couple months the one before it is wrong. So, we have to keep looking at the update. Matter of fact, your district sends in data right off the bat at the beginning of the school year in October, and they publish the results in November, but they don't include all the enrollment data, which they then update in Jan- January,

010and they publish it in February. Meanwhile, the governor comes up with her own run to do her budget presentation, which is based on data from November, which is wrong because the data is updated back again in January, and they bring up another >> [clears throat] >> edition of it in February. So, if you see anything in the paper about your state aid, chances are it's wrong. But, we have the latest data here, so we'll explain it to you. We also took a look at your external auditor reports. You have uh an auditor. The board's required to have an external audit every year. You meet with your auditor, you go through your audit. Basically, the auditor is a cross-the-t's, dot-the-i type of guy. So, in other words, is everything in the right place? Do we have

011to make journal entries? Uh is the money appropriately placed inside codes and things like this? Uh they do monitor a lot, but they're really short on recommendations. We look for them, but they usually don't help a lot with that. They're more like accountants type of thing. My question that I'm trying to figure out is where have we been and where are we going? Okay? Uh the next thing is we looked at the capital projects bonds, bond anticipation notes, and existing debt service schedules. So, here what we're doing is you got to keep in mind almost every school district in the state of New York, not every one, but most, have debt for capital projects in particular. You could be borrowing money for buses, for instance, those types of things. There could be a giant [clears

012throat] BOCES capital project you borrow for. There's all types of debt instruments. We look at all those to find out how much they are, where they came from, what they're used for, and when they're going away, when this debt would be absolved. So, we take a look at that always. And besides, all that data is actually inside your tax cap calculation. So, that's going to be very important. Next, we take a look at the foundation aid history and potential changes. I hope you've heard a lot about the foundation aid and what's going on there, and the answer is not a lot, unfortunately. You are heavily dependent on a major revenue source called foundation aid, and the state is really not helping you very much on this, and there's a number of reasons for that, and

013I'm going to go over with you. Other related state aid expense driven, including not limited to excess cost aid, which is aid for special needs children, but also BOCES aid and transportation aid. These are called expense driven because they are partial reimbursements for state support for money you spend for particular purposes. So, the idea is these are kind of sacrosanct aids in the sense that we don't want the formulas to change because we've already counted on getting this aid. For instance, when you do a capital project, the aid comes in over 15 years. So, you don't want them changing in the middle of it after you've already planned the project, things like that. We also took a look at the types of reserves used by the district. I'm going to show you every reserve you

014have and what they're used for. Uh and I'm going to explain how they work. So, that's what we're going to do. The degree to which the district possesses or uses capital reserves. Those are specific reserves in the general fund that have specific purposes and are required to be voter approved by voters. In other words, the board cannot create them without voter approval, and you can't spend money out of them without voter approval. But, they're probably one of the most powerful reserves known to man here for us. So, we're going to talk about those. Finan- fund balance history and our our future opportunities or threats. And I've got COVID-related CRRSA ARPA federal grants and operational. It's a mouthful, but basically, here's what it means. Five years ago, pretty close to five years ago, you were rece-

015recipients of what they call the CRRSA and ARPA grants, huge federal funds, right? And the district was able to use these funds to help stop learning loss. Remember, you had to use it for that, but you could also use it for a little bit for capital project pieces or putting in a playground. Some people put people put in air handling units, little types of projects. Some people build up fund balance. Some people hired additional staff. So, there was all types of things. So, that was a great opportunity for you. But now, it has become a threat because the the federal government has withdrawn all the money. So, in other words, to keep all those things going now is on your dime, not their dime. So, you if you could maintain those costs, you have then

016inherited the costs. So, that's something we want to take a look at. Now, operationally, also keep in mind that what happens is is that the budget is a big item. There's all kinds of things going into budget. We're going to take your whole budget and put it take it apart for you so you can see how it works. But, you it's not just educating children, which is your mission. That's why you're called the Board of Education. But, the key thing is that you also have to keep the infrastructure going. Keep the lights on. In the winter, you got to get the boilers working. So, a lot of times what people do is they spend some of this money on operational things such as, you know, improvements to the buildings and things like this. Again, without

017that continued money, it's on your dime, so so to speak. Next, examination of tax cap calculations. For those of you at four county school boards, you know I'm big on the tax cap. I don't like the tax cap, personally, and I really resent being having held on the tax cap, but the truth of it is it's here and we have to live with it. But, it does have certain implications we've got to be aware of because when it goes awry, I think we inherit a lot of problems. We'll talk about it. Potential financial events that have implications for the tax cap calculations. If you remember, it's four county school boards, for those who were there, the big pieces are increases in full value. In other words, the property values inside the district actually, as they

018growth they increase your tax cap. So it has an implication for you. What the state saying is there's more to tax go get the money. Question is does anybody want to pay it or does anybody want to ask for it? So we're going to talk about that. The other thing inside the tax cap is inflation. And the reason the tax cap is called the 2% tax cap is not because it will ever be 2%. It has never been 2% will never be 2% in practice almost impossible to be 2%. But there's one line in the entire formula that says this number cannot exceed 1.02 which is 2% So if inflation was a billion percent this number cannot exceed two. So sometimes it looks like it helps you but it really holds your revenue back. Okay?

019Next thing we're going to take a look at a statewide reports of the controller of the state of New York as they relate to the district. So I had a you know duke it out with the controller a couple times because the controller wants you to live day by day. In other words he doesn't want you saving a lot of money for purposes that may come up 10 15 years from now. He wants you to kind of live day by day. But that creates a problem when you have a tax cap because every time something like I don't know the bus garage the lift breaks down and cost $300 and $300,000 to fix it you'd have to go and try and challenge the cap [clears throat] for $300,000. Now he doesn't seem to get that

020part but I do. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you places he wouldn't like what you're doing but I actually love what you're doing as a finance guy to safeguard the district. So I I I have no problems doing that. He can't hang up on me anymore. All right, use of funds appropriated fund balances non-appropriated. So the key here is this. What are the appropriated fund balances? And every district in the state of New York believe it or not it is almost impossible literally to get your your revenues to totally exactly match your expenses because what's happening is here is you're trying to estimate your revenues and you're trying to estimate your expenses. So think of the miracle occurs in a business office. So right now you're going to be

021approving a bunch of pretty soon which is the month of March or April. The budget won't take effect if it's passed by the population until July 1. That budget must stay in existence until the following June 30th. So no matter what happens the budget must function. Now what do I mean by that? Well you don't want to underestimate or overestimate too much your revenues particularly you don't want to overestimate them. It's like your paycheck didn't show up. In other words you can't tax twice. So you got to be pretty good on your revenues. You'd rather be surprised by a little more revenue coming in than be surprised that you're short on revenue. Okay? Now the other thing with your expenditures on this budget is very important. Remember the expenditures have to be big enough so

022no no matter what goes wrong during the school year you can pay for it because there's no other way to go get more money. Okay? You would actually have to tap your savings accounts. I don't know if you spent time watching school districts but once they start tapping your savings account it's it's a never-ending drip drip drip until it's gone. It's kind of like your home budget the same type of thing. So the idea is you need money left over for a number of purposes so we'll talk about that. The unappropriated fund balance is what they call a 4% limit. Now what it's all school districts are allowed to have undesignated cash in other words cash that they have not said what purpose they would use the cash for. Allowed to have it in an

023account no more than 4% of next year's budget. We are the only municipal entity that have that restriction. No village town fire department county has that restriction. They can keep as much as they want. You can only keep 4% but the thing is you're going to need that 4% for cash flow and I will explain that to you. Projected teachers retirement system employees retirement system rates. Now we're keeping an eye on these because they're big ticket items in your budget. In other words they they they are a big part of your budget and you have no choice but to pay them. You can't bargain them away. They're instituted by law. Okay? So that's that's important to know. But the thing is the rates change but so do salaries. So right now we have ERS the

024employees retirement system which is really like non-certified staff that's moving up for about 6%. And chances are people in your district and other districts that surround us all in New York are going to get a raise. So when the rate goes up and the rate and they get a raise at the same time the total cost tends to go up a little bit more. Now the TRS teachers retirement system is going down about a percent and a half but people are still getting a raise. So the question is even though the rate goes down but people get a rate bigger than the rate change will the cost go up? Chances are yes. So we have to keep an eye on it because it's a big ticket item. Projected contractual obligations of the district. So what

025we look here is you all have collective bargaining agreements with a lot of units inside inside your district. So what we want to know is how much do they cost now and if we were going to try and maintain all staff or replace staff when they come and go exactly how much would they cost 5 years from now because what we want is long range planning. In other words we want to know want to know how we're doing now. I want to know how you're going to land 5 years from now. In other words are we in still good shape. So we've got to keep an eye on those contracts. Analysis of the impact district district budgets due to potential loss of pilots. Pilot agreements are in the tax cap and if you were at

026the four county you saw that it was in there. When those pilot agreements come in they tend to reduce your cap. They take the place of a tax payment. But when they go out they increase your cap and if they go out in a large way they could severely increase your cap. The I always look for this because it's hard to explain to voters why last year's cap was 2.1 and this year's cap is 12.6. Because the pilot went away. So I always look for it. Not a big problem here but I do look for it. Tax levy history exactly how much have we been collecting in taxes and how does it how does it relate to your budget and a number of other factors because you got to remember your two big revenue streams

027are state aid and taxes. That's all you have and you only have marginal control over taxes. In other words you can request people pay them or that amount or ask for their approval shall we say when you offer your budget. But you have little or no control usually over state aid at all. The next one would be the district's revenue and expenditure variance history. So what this is is this. We budget certain amount of revenue. The big question is how much of that budget came in. In other words did we come in so we had more revenue than we budgeted? That helps us build fund balance and increase cash flow and potentially increase reserves. >> [clears throat] >> On the expenditure side we budget certain amount of money for our expenses. But keep in mind

028for instance it's not as easy as it sounds. So people would say well if we have money left over we've over budgeted. Not exactly. All we're asking the business office to do is try and guess how many special needs kids are going to arrive next year that have not arrived yet. How many people will be out on leave so you'll need more substitutes. How many people may get married and take off a couple days so you hire a substitute. How many people going to be in car accidents going to be out 6 months so you have to hire a long-term sub. You see what I'm getting at? So we have to have a bigger. What's going to break next? What boiler pipe? What controller system? What what water main? Okay I think we've all been

029there done this is good news. So the key thing is you can see we want the budget big enough and we'll talk about cash flow as well. Recent or pending statute regulation or decisions of the commissioner that might have implications for the district. Well that's pretty easy. Uh many of you may know I was a district superintendent of Avoca so I worked for the commissioner and he used to send me around as an enforcer of sorts unfortunately for school districts saying what are you guys doing you can't do that. So what happens is so [clears throat] I'm used to having you know one club or the other. But the key thing is is that there's a couple mandates I think we've got to be aware of that are going to be really important. One is

030is the zero emission bus mandate that we're all facing and I everybody's probably talked about it till your blue in the face. Um I'm going to talk about your ability to actually meet that mandate. By the time I'm done you'll know where I stand in terms of where I think you can do and can't do. But the key thing is it is still there it's still a mandate and there are waivers and things like this so there are ways around it temporarily. But the key thing is to me I'm sitting out here in your parking lot with a hybrid car. So I'm not opposed to a zero emission bus. But my problem is can we buy can we afford to buy it compared to everything else we got to pay for is what I'm worried

031about. And can we afford to retrofit your transportation facility if you get my drift. And of course even after you do it is anybody going to bring the power to us? After we did it. I actually had a district talk to me the couple weeks ago actually a month ago and say we have just finished retrofitting our entire transportation facility and we called National Grid and said we're ready to be hooked up and they said we miscalculated we'll be there in about 2 years. After they retrofitted the entire bus garage. Okay so to me I work for you so my job is to try and protect you. Not be Mr. Pleasant with Niagara Mohawk or National Grid or whatever. All right so the second one is the new one that's coming up by the governor

032where we have the UPK mandate that's coming up where it says that any four-year-old that presents to your school district in the 2029 school year must be educated by you. Any. General Ed, Special Ed, whatever. Okay? And you have to provide them a class you have to have give them a teacher and an aide in their classroom, and it must be a full day program. And because you're a rural school district, even though you have a couple of hamlets around, shall we say, the truth of it is you may have to transport these kids. And right now, as we stand here, there's no real transportation aid to support the transportation of those kids. Like, if you can fit them on the bus, it would seem like no harm done, unless there are multiple extra stops,

033and you have to pay a driver longer to make more stops, if you get my drift. So, it's these hidden types of things in there. So, but these are enforceable by that if you don't do them, the commissioner can withhold your state aid, which is a major revenue source. So, we're always looking for, okay, what are we going to do about this? The zero emission bus is particularly interesting because by the year 2027, you can't buy anything but a zero emission bus. But you can't buy any bus without voter approval. It seems to be a little bit of a rub. Now, I I have been lobbying with the legislators, many of you may know, and I think the ones who are on school boards know. I meet with legislators all the time, and I'm trying

034to convince them not to get rid of the mandate, but to move it back 10 years till we find out if we can actually make it work. Okay? Uh they're reluctant to do that because they don't like to back up. We'll see what happens. I think they're going to pour more money in there and help us less. We'll see what happens. District-wide long-range financial planning. I've got to tell you, I've looked at a lot of work going back those 5 years, and the business office, Rich in particular, he's been here, I think, 6 now. There has been a lot of financial planning, and I think the good state you're in right now is testimony to that. So, I think you there's been a lot of wise decisions made along the way, and I will point

035them out to you because there should be credit where credit's due. Interviews with the school business executive and superintendent. I've met with Ellen and Rich. Uh I've driven Rich totally crazy. Uh he's probably been therapy now for the last three or four weeks, >> [laughter] >> uh because I I ask questions about everything. And my most common questions are like this, where did that number come from? How many numbers are in that number? How'd you come up with that number? Why that number? Cuz I came up with a different number. Why don't you like that number? All right. So, I mean, seriously, this is what we've been doing. And we've been going through this budget till the cows come home. And I have actually tortured the man. So, I think the thing is is I

036just want to say thank you while he's here, and thank you to Ellen for having some faith in me to come in and do the report. But, uh a lot of good stuff going on. All right. Let's talk about your state aid. So, I'm going to walk into the middle of the floor, if that's okay, so I get out of the way. Okay. So, let's talk about your state aid. Let's look at the top number. That top number is called foundation aid. And this is the one that's really critical. If you notice, it's the biggest number on the page, right? Except for the total, it's the biggest number. You're heavily dependent on it. It's big like by a lot compared to every other number. Now, in the '23-'24 year, you got $9.248 million. Let me

037see where I'm at. I don't know if this is a this is a this doesn't do Well, anyway, it's right here, right? '23-'24, 9.248, top number. In that year, you were [clears throat] given what they call fully funded foundation aid. It was the first time you actually received all the foundation in a single year you were supposed to receive in the in 15 years. It was the first time. Now, what this did was this was a good chunk of change for your district and many other districts, and it lulled a lot of districts into a false sense of security. In other words, they were sitting saying, "Wow, this is pretty good. I can't wait to see what we get next year cuz we got this good chunk of change this year." Well, look what you

038got next year. You got nothing. See that? No increase at all. And that's where the warning bells for most school districts started going off. All right. So, what happens is I I do state aid for 400 school districts. That's why I was at actually for for common for common school boards because I'm executive director of statewide school finance consortium, as well as semi-finance company. But the key thing here is is that you got nothing. So, what's happening in those 2 years is the biggest state aid package that you could possibly get had no increase, and your expenses continued to escalate. Right? And you were up against it with the tax cap. So, right off the bat, warning bells should have been going off. And I got to believe when Rich was at my workshop, and

039I was talking, and I think Ellen was there, too. That's why I think they came over later and said, "Can we talk to you for a minute?" [laughter] They're they did have warning bells. My point would be is is that there are a bunch of districts out there who have not seen the warning bells, and I'm really they're going to be in big trouble. Okay? Seeing a warning bells is important, and your district did see them. But look at the next year. It went up 2%, a whopping $184,972. I mean, what do we do with all the money? The key thing is it looks like it's a lot of money, but not in a budget your size. So, 2% was helpful, but the part that kills me, no part of your budget was moving at

0402%. It was moving at more than 2%. So, another warning sign, if you're really paying attention. And Rich was. And then now the governor's proposing a whopping $94,335. Okay, 1%. You could probably not hire a first-year teacher, pay their pension, pay their health insurance, pay their social security, and workers' comp, and you would eat up all that money. All right. You see what I mean? So, but you have a whole budget yet that's still moving at a greater rate, the whole thing. So, the dilemma here is is you're being kind of starved here by state education, not state education department, but the state government. State education department just sends you the check. All right. Now, the next year, you'll see there's zeros there, and I have yellow zeros on the bottom, where it says foundation

041aid change. And that's because if I'm going to do an analysis for you, the last thing I want to do is pretend you're going to get more money. Does that make sense to everybody? So, the idea is I just don't think it would be doing it wouldn't be it would be unethical, I think, to say, "Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You're you're probably going to get more money." And then have you bank on it because I don't know if you're going to get it. So, I I really not sure if you're going to get it. Did you know that 2% you got in that year, the governor suggested that they actually take money away from you? Okay? For those of you around. She actually suggested you you take money away. And she asked the Rockefeller Institute

042to actually come up with a formula to do it, and they did. But she found it political and, know, it was impalatable right there. Within an hour, she changed her mind to 2%. So, I have no idea where that came from, but it's unbelievable. Now, the next thing we got to look at is the expense driven aids. As you can see, it's summer school transport, summer transportation aid so it's summer school I get there, and there's some without summer school, which is the regular aid, building aid, BOCES, public act, which is excess cost high aid, and private excess cost aid. So, let's go through them. Okay. So, if you have a small summer school program, you don't have transportation, you get a little bit of aid on it, but it probably isn't going to pay

043for the whole program. Remember, expense driven aids mean that you have state support for them, they pay for part of the cost, not all of the cost. So, by doing services for kids or communities by using summer school transportation is really good, but you are bearing part of that load. Transportation aid without summer school tends to fluctuate up and down, and if you'll notice the last couple years, it's gone up, but a couple years ago, it went down. Depends on what you're buying, and so on. We don't know if they're going to change the rates on these things. We don't know exactly how much the aid ratio will be. And again, this could this could really have a big effect when we go to the zero emission buses. Right now, when you buy a school

044bus, the aid comes in over 5 years. So, you have to front the money and wait for the aid on the on the school bus to come in. Zero emission buses, the aid will be paid over 8 years. And they will cost two and a half times the cost of a regular bus. So, think of it this way. So, right now, let's make it up. You could buy a zero or you could buy a diesel bus, let's say, for 170,000. Let's just make up a number, it's pretty close. So, you're you're going to you're going to get a mortgage for 5 years on a $170,000 bus. You're going to get help on that mortgage, there's no doubt about it, for over 5 years. Or you can buy a $400,000 zero emission bus, pay for it

045over 8 years. You see the difference financially? It would the the bus the diesel diesel would be an easier lift. Building aid. Your building aid's gone down for a couple years, and now it's snapping back, and you're going to see a big bump right there in the '28-'29 year. You can see it. You can see the difference of 1.8 as your current capital project comes to fruition. Remember, the building aid is paid over 15 years, usually, right? And that's the length of your usual debt. Now, there is exceptions to it, but that's how yours is working. But you can see some red numbers trailing off there, and that's because you also have old debt falling off. In other words, as the debt falls off, the aid falls off. And I'm sure when you paid your

046capital project, you looked at all that. The only way to stop those red numbers at the end is to do another capital project, and you'd have to start planning it probably next year or the year after. Okay? To make sure that you can hit that debt service schedule. BOCES aid's gone up and down a little bit for you, but mostly up. BOCES aid is tends to be working out pretty good uh for most people. The dilemma with BOCES aid is it's really hard to calculate, and that's because the number keeps changing. In other words, you really don't know what the aid is until probably after the school year, to be actually honest with you, when you take account of all the aid you're going to get. So, that one tends to be hard to calculate.

047Public excess cost aid, high cost aid. These are for kids that are either in your district or sent to BOCES that are high needs uh special needs kids. They're in high cost programs. Again, there's a there's a threshold you have to meet. You pay the first uh you know, tens and tens of thousands of dollars, and they give you a percentage after that. So, when you're getting, let's say, $35,000, you're probably spending closer to 60, 70 to get it. Private excess cost aid are for special private programs. Could be like school for the blind, school for the deaf, these types of things, or other types of private entities for high needs special ed kids. Uh you'll notice those costs for you are extremely high uh because you can see the aid is high, and you're

048paying more than the aid, if that makes any sense to you. So, each one of these, actually, what's happening is you're spending more money than you're getting. Software, library, textbook, and hardware aid. Now, if you'll notice, you'll see some red and some black and some red. And these are based on enrollment. They tried to move the library and software aid around a bit to give you better more per child. But as your enrollment starts to add those red numbers at at the last two for textbook and hardware, they start to show up. The good thing is they're not really high high payment aids, if you get my drift. I mean, they're the smallest numbers on the page, right? But every penny hurts. Well, all I look at it is if we lost $3,000 over 5

049years, could be a, you know, part of a classroom set of books. I mean, everything's worth something. Universal pre-K. You'll notice that thing has gone up and down around around and you've got you've done well and then not so hot. You can just see it here. So, here it's gone up, you got more. Here it went down, you got less. Here it was going up, you got more. So, what's happening is the state's trying to come to grips with this UPK business. Right now, it's an opt-in program. In other words, no school district has to have it. But like I said, like 2028-2029, you will have to have it one way or another. Now, whether or not that amount of aid's going to pay for the program is going to be subject to debate until

050you will actually start the full UPK program. Now, if you have a full program right now and and it is not causing any financial difficulty for you, you're doing great. Uh the key thing is is that I don't know how many 4-year-olds you're going to present in 2028-2029, 2029-2030, 2030-2031, and so on. So, it gets kind of tough kind of figure out where the program's going. I mean, I love the idea as an educator, and I am an educator still, that that we have UPK programs. They're very important to have. Any school that has them has got their thinking cap on it. Because to me, it looks like if we could do more with UPK and capture as many kids as possible, the need for remediation in middle school would kind of start maybe falling

051away. As we can get maybe better readers at an earlier age, things like that. Better better kids at math. Now, you'll see there's a total aid. Now, the total aid is what how the state government adds up your aid. They add up the UPK with your aid. But the interesting thing is is UPK is orange because that money does not go in your general fund. It goes into a special aid fund. It's a separate fund that isn't running the school district. So, what happens is what I do is I just add up the I just add up the aid that's going to help your school district every day, whether you have UPK or not. So, what's actually happening is you'll see that you've got some increases here from time to time, some decreases. Overall, you

052can see this here. See it here? Here's your building project coming in. But then we don't actually have much of an aid increase at all. Now, there might be small aid increases over time in transportation and BOCES and all those types of things. But I really have no evidence that they're going to accelerate very rapidly. But the dilemma you've got is you're considered a save harmless school district. Sometimes they call it hold harmless. Maybe you've heard that term. So, you see this 6,316 I've got in here in black? If the foundation aid formula were to run as it exists right now, this would be your foundation aid. Not 9.527. Do you understand what I'm saying? So, the state believes they're actually giving you an extra 3.2 million. That's what the governor was after. Interestingly enough,

053because of my position and what I do for a living, people have called me up and they want me to they want me to help them take that money, the red number, away from you. What's happening is some some big cities Think Think of big cities in New York. They believe that they should deserve more money cuz they have so much poverty issues. And they think the way they would get it, because the state doesn't want to give more, is to take the money from you and give it to them. We used to call it Robin Hood. Okay, think of that team. So, what they do is but I've said no. I I represent districts like yours. I'm not doing that. Tell them to go get their own consultant. But the truth of it is

054she did try it 2 years ago. So, it's always in jeopardy. It always worries me. But the last thing I'll say is that even if that 1% increase of yours goes to 2%, it's not going to be enough like the quote save the day for a school district. So, the legislature, by the way, both houses of the legislature just passed one-house bills saying that that number, 1% of yours, should go to two. Okay? But last year, they said it should go to three and she would not give up on her two. So, I don't know where it's going. We will know probably first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth week of April, whenever they decide to pass the budget. Okay? Okay. I guess nap time will be over at the state legislature. Now, here's some demographics

055I think you ought to be aware of, just so you know. Why am I talking so much about foundation aid? That's because I don't see you getting out of this problem very quickly. In fact, I don't see you getting out of it all. I'm I'm going to be very forthcoming tonight. In other words, I just call them as I see them and we'll let it go as it as There's something called TAPU. See how I'm T A P U? Total aidable foundation pupil units. We used to call them children. So, what happens is um what these are is these are weighted children. All right? Now, I don't mean like how much they actually weigh, but I it is similar. So, a general aid kid is counted as one one student and a special aid kid

056is counted as 1.41 kids. Okay? So, a lot of times when districts compare each other, they start comparing enrollment. But you never compare enrollment because that's not what goes into the formula. Enrollment goes into part of the formula, but the biggest part is this TAPU, total aidable foundation pupil It's not on the test after this, so don't worry about it. But here's the key thing. The key thing is is that it's a measure of financial burden as well as educational burden. So, let me give you a quick example. Let me just give you this real example. So, all of us last year, everybody in the room ran a school district and we had 1,000 pupils, and I did too. 1,000 kids were enrolled. This year, we all have 900. So, we're all in the same

057boat. That's what everybody would And that could be That's not even true. Here's how it works. You all lost 100 general aid kids, and that's how you got the 900 from 1,000. I lost 150. 100 I I lost I lost 150 kids, but 50 special ed kids showed up. So, I got 900, too. But my educational burden is heavier and my cost is heavier. So, we both have 900. But look what's happened to you. Last year, you lost two TAPUs. So, in other words, your weightedness, your burden went down. But since the beginning of foundation aid, and that's what they're measuring, you've [clears throat] lost 578 of them. So, the way the governor's looking at it is, to quote the governor, "I'm tired of paying for empty seats." Do you understand what I'm getting at?

058So, it's not just your enrollment went down, the weightedness burden went down. Okay? Now, it doesn't mean it won't go up. So, let's say next year it goes up by 10 TAPUs, then the governor would say, "Okay, congratulations. You got 10 more. Now, you're only behind 568." You see the dilemma you've got? So, this is becoming a problem. Now, you have other things that are going on. It's called small area income poverty estimate. It's actually a measure of community poverty, that 0.10. It's a very low number. It measures 5 to 17-year-olds living in your your school district, whether they go to school here or not. And what it is, it's a low number of poverty. So, again, the formula would say, "Why would we send more money to Mary? It's a low number." Your economically

059disadvantaged number is 0.49. Very very small. Of course, it can go up to 90, 100%, but the key thing is it's about halfway there. So, you do have some families that have the SNAP program, right? Food stamps. You have some families that have the heat program, the heating program, and things like this. So, you do have a cadre of them, but it's not very very large. And what they call your need resource capacity, when they look at everything, they call you a five. And a five translates into an average need school district. So, right now, there's nothing there that really sends money your way. Then there's the PNI, the pupil needs index, where they start really tearing things apart and looking at other things like English language learners and things like this, migrant hands, and

060stuff like that. And your number is 1.62. The highest it can go is two. The lowest it can go is one. So, you're a little over the middle. Okay? Now, you would think that would help you out a little bit. And it should cuz it's going up. See a difference there? It's going up. But the problem is your TAPU's gone so far down, the one number that helps you go up is not enough, right, to help weigh the loss of TAPU. Then you've got property wealth ratio, 0.58, and income adjusted wealth ratio, 0.80. What is this? This is This is combined These two numbers are added up and divided by two to create what's known as the combined wealth ratio. You are a below average wealth school district. Either property values or income values. So,

0610.8 means you're at 80%, we'll say, income per pupil compared to the state average. So, you're not a wealthy district at all. And your property wealth is at 0.58, a little over half the state average per pupil. But if you'll notice that CWR, that averages over time has gone up a little bit. But the problem you've got is that TAPU number, that 578, is undoing your chance to get more money. In other words, your wealth is in the right spot, right? All right. Now, if we go up to the top though, we've got another couple of problems here. If we go to the expected local contribution, I don't know if you're aware of this, but the state pulls a really interesting phenomenon inside the formula. The formula, by the way, is only 40 pages long

062in cell to break. So, it's really easy to master, but here it goes. So, what happens here is they have an expected local contribution. What they're actually doing is they're measuring the full value of your school district and property values over time. The The expected local contribution is how much property value you had five, four, and three years ago averaged together. Okay? And so, the one for '16-'17 is is actually four, three, and two years ago. And if you'll notice, the number has gone up $770.78 or 11.3%. What does this mean? This means the state says, "You know, I don't know what they put in What's new in Marion over the last five years?" Could be a Dollar General, could be a minimart, could be a gas station. I mean, because I saw a Mayan

063I'm coming up here. Okay? Hello, everybody's got one, I think. All right, it could be a this, could be a that, could be somebody put in a three-bedroom colonial with three-car garage uh down on five country roads or something. But whatever it is, there's more to tax in good old Marion. So why should we send them more money? They should be paying more for their kids. What they're going to do is There was a number that they calculated they were going to give you per child. Okay? And what they did is last year they subtracted this number from it. And this year they're going to subtract a bigger number from it to get how much they pay you per child. So they're saying, "You should be taking on more of the burden." Okay? Cuz there's

064more here to tax. Now, a quick story to make you understand what I mean by more to tax. [cough] The number is based on equalization rates or assessed values. It's based on it like a little story like this. It's Thursday night at Rick Tenney's house. And uh four guys come over to play poker with Rick cuz they know he's a born loser and they're going to take his money. So what happens is they all throw a dollar in the kitty, including stupid Rick. So now there's $5 in the kitty. So that's the winnings. That's our base. That's what we can collect. Just before we start shuffling the cards, Mr. Six shows up, another person. >> [clears throat] >> We don't take money out of the kitty, do we, to keep it $5? No. We ask

065this person to add their share into [snorts] the kitty and it made the big kitty bigger. Therefore, there is more to collect. Our base has gone up because there's more players. More minimarts, more gas stations, more Dollar Generals, more houses, more barns, more garages. You understand what I'm getting at? More players. So that's what the state's looking at. And the other place you find it is in the tax base growth factor right there. The next one, 1.0098. When that number gets starts getting any bigger than 1.005, your tax base is really growing. This is where you can increase your taxes or your levy by 3%, but on average, people's taxes might only go up 2.6. Cuz there are more people contributing to the base. And that is a part of your tax cap, and it's

066going to start driving your cap up if that continues. The bottom one is square miles, 42.058. So uh I'm an upstate New Yorker. I know what the climate's like. I've been all over this place. I was town rich. Not to distract from the conversation, but my rock band played all over [clears throat] here for 20 years when I was in a rock band playing So what happens is uh 42 I've been all over this place. I've been all over your neighbors. I've been all over the place. I've been in every party house when I was a young man playing for weddings and parties and everything else. And the time of my life, but I wouldn't want to have to drive a zero-emission bus and pick up all your kids, and that's the number of square

067miles. [laughter] Do you see what I'm saying? With this climate, with this weather. Okay, that's all I'm saying. My point would be is I look at other evidence that may impact you. Okay? Not just financial. So kind of to summarize this, your foundation aid is about 9.4 million. Uh the governor wants to give you a 9.5, $94,000 increase, 1%. Your real foundation aid by formula is 6.3 million. Governor's believing that she's giving you 3.2 extra just cuz she's a nice person. And you're getting $8,886 per kid. All you would need to get rid Make this number zero. In other words, you're still not getting another penny. All you would need is 362 kids [clears throat] by June 30th. Ain't going to happen. See the problem? So that's kind of your stuff. So my my summary

068here is we're going no place with foundation aid fast. Okay? And that's a big revenue stream. You have some nice aids. You got building aid at 83%. You've got transportation aid at almost 78%. You've got high cost ratio here at 64. All these numbers are pretty reasonable right now. So they are good. In other words, that's the amount of state support you get when you engage in those areas. All right, now let's find out where your money is. >> [clears throat] >> So here we go. These are your reserves. Now, what I've done is the reserves is a red line going straight down from top to bottom, and that's because the official records end there. After that, we kind of updated some things based on we'll say interest earnings and things like that. Okay? Transfers.

069So let's start off with workers' compensation reserve, $670,000. I love that reserve, and I love you have $670,000 in it. And to me, it shows me that somebody had their thinking cap on. And I can see that the number over time has actually grown. Everybody see that? The controller would hate it. And that's because it's supposed to be self-funded workers' comp, and you're not. But the key thing is is that I love it so that if say, I don't know, your drainage line went to cabin or water line or something. If you had to, you could always, you know, also find that money as a rainy day fund. Controller wouldn't like it, but it would be possible. Unemployment would be the same thing. So you got 815 in there. So the controller, if he showed

070up, would say, "Rich, how much you paid on unemployment the last five years?" Rick says, "Well, total's 10,000." He says, "My goodness, you've got 81 years' worth of money in there. What, are you crazy?" And he would think it was overfunded. As a financial guy trying to save the district, I love it. Because again, same type of thing. We could go rate that as a rainy day fund. Because they don't allow you to have many reserves. The next one is ERS and TRS. Whoops, I did I'm not redlining it because it [clears throat] is perfect. I like the way it's funded. It looks like it's totally adequate. It's a great idea. You'll notice the blue numbers over next to them. You can see that what's happening here is we've got some interest earnings taking effect

071or where where it goes down, we've actually used the reserve in supporting of your budget. Both of them are very viable, very good way to do it. So we had some go up, some go down. Okay? Because of use or gaining interest. You also have uh there's also property liability insurance reserve. You have some money in liability claims. I think it's always good to have a couple of $10,000 into a liability claim in case you need, we'll say, hire an attorney or something to sue the state, you know what I mean? And that would kind of cover you, so that's great. But you really don't have a big liability for property loss or insurance or even a tax certiorari claim right now. The reserve for employee benefits and accrued liabilities is fine, but I actually

072wouldn't put any more money in there. What I would do is this. To me, one of my jobs would be if I was your finance guy is saying, "We want to know how much should be in there based on what somebody else tells us. So if the controller shows up and doesn't like the amount, we can blame it on them." So to me, I would always ask your accountant how much should be in there and then underfund it. It's a highly restrictive reserve. Uh general municipal law 6-P for the academics. But the key thing is is that it can only be used for unused sick, personal, and vacation days upon severance from the district. So let's just say, for instance, you say to Rick, "Rick, if you retire, I'll give you 5,000 bucks." Can you

073take it out of there? The answer is no. But if you say, "Rick, we'll give you up to 5,000 bucks by giving you $200 extra for every unused sick, personal, or vacation day you had," then you can take it out of there. Okay, so it's very limited. So to me, don't put money in something that's so limited it's hard to get it out. But you've probably got enough in there, but I would ask your auditor and take his number, and if the controller shows up and he doesn't like it, say, "Talk to my auditor." So there you go. All right, next, capital reserves. So capital reserves. Capital reserves. Somebody had their thinking cap on and continues to have their thinking cap on. I love capital reserves, but they require voter approval to create and voter

074approval to expend money from. So let's just take a look at one up here. Capital reserve capital projects, 10 year, 2018, $5 million max. What does that mean? Let's translate that for you. What that means is we have a designated purpose for the capital reserve that we're asking voters their permission to save the money for. Capital projects. Perfect. And your resolution probably defines what a capital project is. You know, like doing site work and fixing roofs, and it gives a big description in your resolution. So that's great. 10 years, it tells how long the reserve will survive. All right, with me? The next one will be what year it started. And then last, how big can the reserve get? In other words, not how big can it get at any point in time, but what

075is the sum total of the deposits that can be placed in the reserve over its life. So what actually happens here is you can start building the reserve. You don't build it all at once. You build it over time. Just like it is there. And then all of a sudden, look at this. Right before it expires in 10 years, 2028, you use a good portion of the reserve. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect plan. Okay? So what happens there? Now, what are we going to do with that other 100,000 that's in there? I've got it going on, but what's going to actually happen is probably next year, maybe, you'll have a resolution to create maybe a new capital projects or you transfer that money into a different capital reserve, cuz you can do that by voter approval. So

076you've got a lot of opportunities in this plan. This is excellent. And we have that new capital reserve in 2026 with 5 million that we want to max out over time, and we've already started to seed it. See the 500 and then going to 600 and so on. Now, we also could have transportation support like it says transportation vehicle, which is genius. I love it. If you'll notice, you got another one underneath it that's expired because you got a newer one. See, one was 2010, the other one's 2019. See that? Genius. Okay, perfect. And we even have an old capital project there. So, I can see all these reserves have been used totally appropriately and really terrific planning. Now, this thing about the transportation vehicle. What's so good about this capital reserve? This one's important

077because if you buy a bus, you can still get aid on the bus, but you don't have any interest cuz you're paying cash for the bus. You don't pay the firm like mine to go borrow the money. But I don't know if you know this, but you get aid on the interest you're not paying. So, it is brilliant to do this. So, the district is doing it. Now, the only problem we've got here is that based on our bus replacement schedule, we're going to run out of money in that reserve by these two years. But oh, don't worry. We got those. Everybody see what I'm talking about? So, we still have a lot of opportunities here. So, the district is still a great plan. Excellent plan. Excellent. Now, I put down some other things like

078transportation vehicle. I got other ones. But there's other ones. You can have multiple reserves of the same thing that phase in and out over time. Some people have a transportation reserve for buses and have a separate one for vehicles, like pickup trucks, snowplows. You can have one for equipment, okay? Like the big lift that goes in the gym to change light bulbs, okay? Something like that. Okay, backhoes. Right? Tractors, mowers. >> [snorts] >> You could have one for classroom furniture. Why would I suggest I got districts that have classroom furniture capital reserve? Why? Because when I plan capital projects, one of the questions I always ask is, are we buying any furniture? Everybody ultimately always says, "Oh, yeah." But it's not aidable inside the capital project. It's not aid eligible. So, that part is on

079your dime plus interest if you're borrowing money. So, if I use started a capital reserve with my replacement schedule for furniture and during the capital project, I have voters allow [clears throat] me to use the money and I buy the furniture cash. Okay? So, there's ways to look at this, but I got to tell you, everything I see in so far on this page, everything on this page, by the way, is fantastic. There's There's I There I can't find no critique about this entire thing. Remember I talked about the COVID and how there was an opportunity to make some money? COVID year. COVID year. COVID year. COVID zero money. Brilliant. Absolutely [clears throat] perfect. Okay? So, you've done a lot of good things. Credit where credit's due. Now, you have adhered to the 4% limit

080religiously. Great. The controller would love you for it. You probably might even get a bouquet or something. I don't know. But the truth of it is he would love this. Okay? So, spectacular. I love it, actually, because here's what you've done. Instead of putting the money in here where it's target for the controller to critique you, you put it where it belongs. Excellent. Okay. Next, you do have what's called a debt service fund and you have some money in it. And you can see it's accumulated over time. Now, if the controller looked at it up until we get this red line, he would have a cow because he actually wants this to start decreasing. But the district has instituted a plan to maybe start using it and I just wrote out a little example of

081how it could be used and decreased. The problem is using it too much too fast actually minimizes the tax cap, so we don't want to do that. But I think this would be a pretty respectable plan. Your school lunch fund is okay, but you can see we've lost a couple bucks there. But as long as we're upgrading the school lunch program, we're doing well. The idea is, you know, it goes up, it goes down sometimes. What actually happens in school lunch programs is sometimes we have a change in guidance, employees, there's other benefits. It hits the plan kind of hard for a year or two. But right now with 141 in there, it's not the end of the world. All right, so let's do a scenario. So, what we're going to do is we're going

082to test something. So, when I'm The first thing I'm going to do is the tax increase is based on a preliminary tax cap estimate for the current year. I always like whether the board wants to go to the cap or not, I always ignore their wishes. The first I think start off with is at the cap, what's going to happen? Because what happens is boards tend to say, "Well, I think we ought to go for this number. I think we ought to go for that number. Maybe this number. I think people go with this one. I think people will like that one." To me as a finance guy, it doesn't matter what you want is the number. The number that's important is the one that will work. Does that make sense to everybody? So, I'm

083going to start at the cap. >> [snorts] >> Okay? Now, if you end up doing a smaller number, you can. But my question would be is if I did a little scientific experiment here and said, "If I do the revenues based on everything I've told you so far and I have taxes moving at these percentages, the question I'm trying to answer is, will the district be financially viable in 5 years?" So, I'm going to test whether or not that will occur. Everybody see what I'm going to do? Okay, so what I've done is I moved taxes at these rates up here and that means in 5 years your total amount tax increase would be 1 million 15,000, 13.1% in the first single year, 192,000. Then from that state aid page I showed you, I put

084all the state aid in here. See it? That was from the state aid page. And then you have other types of revenue, federal aid like Medicaid. You have those interfund transfers, remember I showed you from the debt service fund. And now with miscellaneous other revenue sales, scrap, use of money is a big one because you have your money in high interest bearing accounts, which is exactly where they're supposed to be. Another good thinking cap thing done by the district. So, this last number right down here is actually pretty darn healthy through interest earnings. Okay? Did you know as a municipality you have an advantage in interest earnings. So, and you've taken advantage of it. So, then this bottom line really represents the total picture in your revenues. So, in other words, in '26 your revenue

085picture was 22,579 and in '27 is 23,855. And at these rates of increase and change, this is what your your revenues would look like. The orange is basically the change in your revenues. So, you can see here's that building aid. See the building aid popping in? There's the increase. See it? Then earnings flatlines right out, hardly anything. See what's happening? There's the effect of the foundation aid kicking in. In other words, multiple zeros, right? Okay. So, to make a long story short, what I'm going to do is bring over the revenue picture on the top. In other words, this the revenue picture. And we're going to tear your budget apart in big increments. Your budget's divided into general support, instruction, transportation, community service, employee benefits, debt service. So, let's take it apart. General support, salaries.

086Who's in there? Superintendent's office is in there. Everybody works in superintendent's office is in there, salaries. In general support salaries. But so is the entire business office and all of its functions, the people who get paid there. But the biggest part of that is really operations, buildings and grounds, you know, cleaners, custodians, right? Those types of folks maintenance Based on your contractual obligations as we see them right now, from 5 years, so I went from '26, 1 2 3 4 5 years. The difference over the 5 years would increase about 15.9% about $164,000. Everybody see what I'm doing? All right, next. What is in other? Other's a big item. I mean, there's a lot of things in other. The biggest one of the biggest cost items is your utilities, right? The heat and electricity for

087this building and all the other buildings you have and every place else. Also, prices anything else you have. And if you've looked at your own utility bills, you'll see they're they're really starting to move up. So, utilities are really moving fast. But also what's in there is mostly administrative expense, purchase of technology is in there. It could be equipment, supplies, materials for operations, maintenance, buildings and grounds. All those are in there. It could also be legal fees are in there. It could be your liability insurance is in there, right? So, there's a lot in there. Where's Where I estimate it's going to move from about 1.975 million to about 2.456 million, about 408,000 in 5 years. The next one is instruction. Here's the salaries. Now, instruction's the biggest number on the page because it's the

088mission of the school district, right? I mean, that's why we're here. That's why you're on the board of ed. So, thing is is this starts with principals. Principals are in here and also all the teachers, general ed, special ed, behavioral specialists, guidance counselors. The nurse is in there. The librarian is in there, right? Everybody works with a kid. Any teacher aides or teacher assistants are in there. Coaches are in there. Class advisors are in there. Everybody makes Everybody has a salary who works for the kid every day is in there. Now, here's the interesting thing. Moving based on our contractual obligations as we see them now from about 7.2 to 8.7, about 1.5 million over 5 years. Now, the key thing about we have to keep in mind with salaries is this. School districts have

089to stay competitive with salaries. In other words, if you lose your physics teacher and you want to keep a physics program, you got to hire somebody. Now, I was I I was also union president for 12 years. Went to the bathroom, came back, I was president. So, what happened was is how desperate they were. Terrible, actually. Um All right. I don't have hair longer than you and a beard. So, I mean, it was really bad. So, what happened was uh so, I stayed president for 12 years as a sacrifice, apparently. But what I What I learned along the way is is that a lot of times when districts get into financial issues, they turn to the union and say, "Listen, you know, we're going to have to take it easy because, you know, we got

090some financial issues." Our standard answer would be, and I believe it's now the complete standard answer these days, is that it's your problem. That's not our problem. We're working hard every day. What's that got to do with us? But the thing that's important you have to realize as a board is you got to stay competitive. So, if you're going to offer me the physics teacher a job in Marion, and I also got an offer from Pelham Manor, if you get my drift, I'm going to be comparing the salary and the benefit package. And if you want the best and brightest, you got to be able to compete. So, it's not so much we have as much control over this as you think. The big problem is is that usually um you got to stay competitive,

091that's it. What's in other? Other is all the kids you send to BOCES for career and technical ed, special ed, BOCES, but it's also supplies, materials, and equipment for the instructional purposes. So, it could be the copying machine, it is the art supplies, it's the basketball for PE. You know what I'm getting at? It's all the supplies, the textbooks, it's the chemicals for chemistry, it's every single thing that you order over to Saranac to get that get this place humming so it's ready for the opening of school. And it keeps going throughout the school year as you know. Uh so, there's a lot of BOCES services in there. Staff, volunteer, big turnout, bunch of stuff. Now, that's moving from about $4 million to 4.7, up about 734. Transportation. This is the bus drivers, any bus

092monitors you have, any dispatcher you have, but head bus driver, mechanics, anybody like that. All the people work in the transportation system are there. Moving from about 973 to about 1.1 million, 158 up. Okay? Next one is other, which is be like, you know, the brake lights, the brakes, the tires, but it's also the diesel fuel. And of course, we all know what's happening with diesel fuel if you watch the news at least that once uh in the last month. But the thing is I don't know how long it's going to last. All I know is it's going to cause us a lot of grief if it keeps up cuz that number is going to be a problem. Moving about 414 to 787. Then we have employee benefits and I divided it up into five

093categories: retirement, social security, workers' comp, health, and other. Now, remember, these are joined at the hip to salaries, if you understand. In other words, they're they're related to salaries. But we we take and and watch them carefully each way. But the biggest one of all of them is health insurance. It really sticks out. It's the biggest number in this category right here. It's going from about 3.6 million to about 7.7 million, up 4 million. Now, here's where we got to stop for a second for a reality therapy. Everybody ready? Brace yourself. This number is bigger than that top number on the page. Does everybody see that? Just that number. So, right off the bat, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out I think we're going to have some issues. See what

094I'm getting at? So, in other words, we're going to have to hang on because this this is not going to work. All right. Now, debt service is debt service, as you can see, you have this this is where you was dropping off right in the eight was dropping off, here's the eight is going up, and then there's that final drop off, right? Remember I showed you the building eight going up and down. So, if I bring over the expense side of the budget, there's the revenue, here's the expense. Here's the total revenue increase 3.7, here's the total expense increase 9.2. We are definitely out of sync. So, the way I would summarize this despite your best efforts, greatest planning I've ever seen in the world, what's actually happening now is we're starting to see throughout

095the entire state of New York salaries escalating rapidly, uh benefits were escalating rapidly, and particularly health insurance. You are not alone. It's probably got to be happening to your neighbors, I'm sure of it. And I'm doing 42 of these. I only have two that I don't have this ratio. Okay? I only have two. I don't even tell you how they did it. All right. So, what I did is I brought over the revenue side and the expense side so they're right next to each other. See what I did? Okay? Well, here's how you got to look at this. This orange and 26 is more money coming in. This 888 is more money going out. This is more money coming in, more money going out, more money coming in, more money going out. You see the

096imbalance starting to occur? It is it's erratic because of the building aid coming in and out. Right? And and it's erratic because the foundation aid is frozen. Okay. Meanwhile, your costs are accelerating and they're compounding. So, this is a problem. Now, we do have some money left over, but it's getting tighter. Now, these are best estimates here, but in 25, [clears throat] at the end of the year, again, excellent planning by the district, you had either more revenues than you budgeted or you underspent your budget, sum total of the tune of 2.7 million. Now, it sounds like it's a lot, but I got to tell you it's really not as much as you think. Now, why is that important? This is cash flow up here. This year, we figure we're going to end up with

0971.5. So, between these two years, you can see the budget has been made tighter. And it's been made tighter, again, that's why I say, with some fund balance cuts. In other words, we have even less left over cuz we're tightening the budget to decrease the rate of increase. Does everybody see what's happening here? But what that does is it gives us less money at the end of the year. Now, we also have capital projects and we're trying to buy buses, so we're going to take money out of reserves. So, these things are operating as we speak. We also have that 4% I told you about you're allowed to keep. This money plus this money is your total cash flow. This money plus this money is your total cash flow. Why is that important? Well, let's

098think of a school year. It's July 1 in the school year. Who's working? All the central office, all buildings and grounds, right? Operationally, you're mowing lawns, right? You're fixing the rooms up, painting, whatever you got to do, maintenance, and so on. But you're also ordering everything for the school year, correct? You're paying liability insurance, right? Exactly. So, what's happening is you're paying people and and so on. How much tax money's come in in the month of July? None. Everybody see what I just said? You are fronting the entire $30 million operation with maybe $2.4 million. The good thing is you can order a bunch of stuff and not pay for it till maybe September, if you get my drift, when tax money shows up. When the invoices start flying into the business office. But let's

099make it worse. So, all that's going on in the summer. Meanwhile, your state aid check is a pittance in July. In August, September, and October, it starts looking pretty good, except guess what the state does? It subtracts from your state aid check your entire pension costs for the year, all at once. So, so, we're rich as [clears throat] anything going, "I got to stay I got a check that's not worth a lot." And how much how much tax money do we have yet? None. Last week in August, first week in September, everybody shows up. Sports teams are sporting, librarians are librarianing, nurses are nursing, right? Guidance counselors are counseling, teachers are teaching, right? Principals are principling, whatever's going on. But the thing is is everything's going full blast. We're burning diesel fuel, right? Like crazy

100cuz we're transporting all the kids. We're getting ready for heating season, and the bills come in from the summer. So, last week in August, first week in September, how much tax money do we have now? Still none. You don't get the tax money till either late or September, October, November when the county makes up all the difference. So, what's happening? When is the biggest state aid check a school district gets? It's in the month of March. March. So, you're fronting a lot. You need cash flow. So, having this amount of money is fine. Meanwhile, we're tapping our reserves simultaneously as this is going in in reserve cuz we need to buy those buses, and we want to buy them cash so we don't pay interest. It's probably the best way to go. So, where's the

101rest of the money? Well, here's how it works. The distance between that $22.1 million budget and this $22.65 million budget is 555,000. That's called the appropriated fund balance. In other words, the district is promising that if we spend out that budget and we only get that in for revenues, we promise they'll go find in our reserves $555,000 to balance the budget. See what's happening? The next year that goes to 691. This year, cuz we're in a little bumping spots, it's going to go to 947. But here's what's going on also at the same time. What's happening is if he brings over 1.5 million out of the business office at the end of the year and we only need 961, we can start moving our fund balance up. In other words, we can save some money.

102In other words, he needed 961 to balance the budget, but he ended up with 15, 1.5 million. So, we can actually build some fund balance and put some money in reserves. The problem becomes as we go into the out years. So, in other words, we're perfect right now. But all of a sudden, when the aid isn't coming, the building aid's been paid, we need 2.8 to balance the budget. All he's got is 8.7 left, 879. So, therefore, we're going to find 2 million bucks. And we have to keep in mind the next year we're going to need 3.2. Every year thereafter, we need more and more money as the budget gets more and more out of balance. Remember I showed you what's happening to your expenses compared to your revenues. So, what happens is if

103this number here is a is an absolute value, think of your math when you were a math teacher or if you weren't. In other words, think of this as 3.2 million and this is eight. This is 4.7, this is 3.6. If this number gets bigger than that number, you're going to run out of money cuz your appropriated fund balance that you need to balance your budget is bigger than all the money you got. So, we're going to have some issues here. So, the big question is over time, we see this deterioration. So, they keep into the cap and using the the revenue picture I showed the 2.5 syntax will be enough based on your current expenses. The answer is no. Not in 5 years. You are in excellent shape now because of excellent planning, but

104you like other school districts did not count on foundation aid being practically nothing. You did not count on special aid costs rising as your population increased. You did not count on neither did anybody else by the way the health insurance taking a giant hit. That you have to stay competitive in this market. And besides you probably have more programs now than you had maybe 10 years ago. There's like no doubt about it. I'm going to bet that many of the kids in in Marion your faculty and staff and you to some degree are their family. You're taking care of a lot [clears throat] of kids in many many ways now that never were done before. Now if you don't like all the numbers I gave you a couple graphs. There's your revenue trajectory up there

105in orange and you can see for instance state aid's hardly moving on you. See the building aid's making the bump. See it? Here's your trajectory for expenses on the same size graph. They're going up faster than your revenues. And then here's them put together. You can see your red number which is your expenses are far exceeding your blue number even though for the the 24 25 or 26 and 27 year they look like they're really pretty much the same then the wheels come off because what happens is like health insurance costs they start escalating at really large rates and they compound. And everybody understands compounding, right? If you've ever had a mortgage you understand compounding. If you've ever had a credit card you definitely understand compounding and that's what's happening. So what's going to happen?

106We'd have to eat up we'd have to we'd have all your reserves. What that mean? No more capital project, no bus buying. That's off. So what else can we do? Now these are scenarios remember. These are scenarios. So I'm staying to this original original uh revenue picture. I haven't changed the thing in the revenues. See the revenues? What can I do to cut expenses? If I made an immediate $1.2 million cut to expenses now can I survive? Well, where would I get the money? I just picked out two arbitrary points. Now I don't mean that you have to take the money out of here, but what I'm saying is I took it out of because this number is moving fast and it's big. Does everybody understand what I just said? And this number is moving

107fast and it's big. Remember if you have two credit cards and you owe the same amount of money on each of them say you owe 20,000. How do you know which one to pay more on the credit card? It's the finance charge. Right? It's the rate but not the rate of interest. It's the charge the amount of money you have to pay extra. And these two are really moving. That doesn't mean you have to take the money out of here. This is just an example. Does everybody understand that? >> [clears throat] >> Does everyone be picking on it as the next union president? So here we go. But the key thing is you'll notice I've dropped the rate of increase. See it? I've dropped the rate of increase. Everybody see that? Okay? And therefore if

108I add everything up and I go [snorts] across and I make create the same scenario I'm pretty darn close. Barely make it by 30 31. The question would be is okay then what are we doing 31 32? You won't make it. So 1.2 will get you in cuts. Now what do I mean by cuts? Cuts is expenses not the budget. In other words I'm not decreasing the budget I'm decreasing things that cost money in the budget. What are the biggest ticket items in the budget? It's actually people unfortunately. So what happens here is what we want to keep in mind is is that you know there's probably some type of jobs or things that we're doing now and you're going to have to take a look at whether or not they're absolutely needed or not

109you got to trim. Now somebody could say okay maybe we'll do it in a year or two not now. The dilemma is if you don't do it soon like this year coming year you'll actually burn off that money. In other words you would have paid those people instead of kept the money. Does everybody understand what I'm getting at? So that's why there's an immediacy to this. >> [snorts] >> Now I'm not saying you have to cut 1.2. You have other alternatives obviously. For instance think of it this way. If you increase taxes more you would make less cuts. If you don't go to the cap you have to make more cuts. Think of it as as the relationship [clears throat] between revenues to expenditures. So the thing is is let's take a look at some

110considerations. First of all Rich is still working diligently to find exactly how much money we'll have at the end of the year and we're hoping that we won't spend another penny unless we absolutely need it so that we have the maximum amount we can do. B. This process is difficult. We got to make assumptions. If you said to me Rich is health insurance really going to cost that exact number in the year 20 30 31? I would say actually I'm not sure, but I've got to tell you it's going to be close because I know how much we're paying now. I know how much staff you have now. I know what kind of insurance they [clears throat] have. I know the rates at which the insurance is moving, right? It's not like we're going over

11110 years we're only going over five and I know how much we've paid so far. So it's going to be pretty close. Yeah, but I can't tell like for instance look at the things underlined. No one can actually calculate the exact unanticipated costs or revenues of such loss through the staff resignations. So the big thing is is there's what they call attrition versus breakage which I'm going to get into in a second. So we got to take a look at that. Like for instance I bring up marriages. Well why would I bring [clears throat] up marriages here? Because when married people have married in the middle of the year they take off time you're still paying them and you're still paying for the substitutes. How many times that going to happen? I mean I don't

112know. How about car accidents, getting sick? Think about it. Cover leaves of different types. How about new students? I was working with a district this morning and I said so how are we doing with students with special needs? He said three weeks ago we had a family of four move in high cost kids. So the big question is how many are going to show up before June 30th this year and how many more are going to show up next year? Now I have to keep be careful when I say this because as an educator these kids need all the help they can get and we're bound not only by federal and and state law but I would think ethically to help them out all we can. So it's really a high need area and it's

113certainly costly but educationally it's important. Keep interest earnings. What if they change the interest rates? What about foundation aid? What if they do take some away or what if they move it like half a percent next year? So we're trying to be reasonable and make sense in our estimates. We're not trying to make it look worse. C. Inflation costs for schools. I don't think you understand CPI is washers, dryers, and microwaves. It has nothing to do with our business. Textbooks cost a fortune. Technology costs a fortune. Servers cost a fortune. The the cooling for the in the server room costs a small fortune. The wiring costs a fortune. Fixing a roof costs a fortune. Think about it. Everything we do costs a small fortune. We are not bound by the CPI. D. Immediately reevaluate purchases

114and staff needs. Examine the possibility of attrition and breakage. Attrition is where you don't replace somebody when they leave and breakage is when you do. But when you do replace them you replace them with someone who makes less money or costs less or we say overall cost than what the person leaving did. The problem is you save more money through attrition than you do through breakage. Nobody wants to lay people off and attrition is always the preferred case. My guess is we're going to have to make some more serious staff changes for next year and then after that continue with attrition so we can get into 20 31 32. Okay? E. Escalations on long term expenditures include not limited you got to look at health insurance, salaries, pension costs, transportation. They must be addressed and

115don't forget you have limitations on revenues. The only thing you can do is ask for more money. You have no other control over any of the revenue. None. No other revenue. But you got to keep in mind. Look if you want for instance I've run I've actually had to do this. I've actually had to live through this uh three times in my career this whole situation. I could say okay we got to do less field trips and no night games. But what do I save? 450 bucks? what I mean? So you got to be you got to be smart about it. F. F is a long sentence to tell you that the state is not coming to help you. There will be no cavalry. Okay? There's no reason I can see I can find. A

116tax cap at two, three, or even four percent will no longer be sufficient when faced with double digit increases and large expenses in portions of the budget. Future amounts of foundation aid increases are in question and the draw down of reserves even if widely used is going to occur. The timing of the capital construction bus purchases is a great financial strategy must be taken in significant cost escalations. In other words the sooner you do them the more money you save, but at this point it looks like you may need those monies to keep the district going. This is staffing. Three. The district has consideration regarding revenues and expenses. There's always a willingness to pay more taxes conundrum. I have never in my entire career which is long. I mean I started when you know the

117earth was cooling. So what happens is is that it was a long long time ago. I have yet to see a taxpayer come in and say please I'm not paying enough. All right? You know it's it's just I haven't found any. I've looked I've looked under rocks. I've looked everywhere. They're not there. I think it's a myth. But the key thing is is that if you want a school district that has a robust program and the state's not willing to help you you got to pay for it. That's I hate to say it but that's where we're at. The district cannot spend more than its revenues. It simply cannot be done. Examine the needs for for staff throughout the district as greater efficiencies are needed. You have to look at everything. This is the tough

118part about this is going to be there will be a million sacred cows that are brought to your attention by somebody or some group or something. Oh you can't do this or my kids in this don't do this now. Well, you're going to have to make some tough decisions. The goal is to significantly decrease expenses and quickly. The district must right-size the relationship between expenses and revenue based on the minister Romans and what you're seeing coming up next year. Trend data, course offerings, can we afford to have a class with four kids in it, six kids? Not that you do, but my point is that's the kind of thinking you got to get into. Class sizes, student demographics have to be kept in mind. Of course, those special needs kids have to be kept in

119mind as well. Reductions in fund balance within a budget instead of cost reductions, that reductions of cost will strengthen the district's cash flow and the ability to financially function rather quickly. What I mean by this is people say, "Well, let's just make the budget smaller." Well, that's not going to do it. We got to cut the expenses. The expense killing us. Okay? So, you know, it's that type of thing. Uh next, uh the uh the ability to build meaningful reserves, I think it's gone at this point. So, now it's triage. Absent significant sums of previously available extraordinary funds like federal grants, the district has lost fund balance opportunities and the ability to create and maintain reserves in the future. That is, you have to have money to put into the reserves. Right now, you're going

120to need all the money you've got to operate the district. Costs associated with zero emission bus mandated currently unreachable. Waivers are needed. I wouldn't spend another millisecond talking about zero emission buses. If you are talking about them now, just wipe them right off the table. You're never, at least according to this plan, in 5 years going to be able to buy one, have one, plug one in. Okay? So, we got to get rid of >> it in writing so that when the garbage trailer comes, we can say we talked to Greg King. Yeah, it's okay with me. I do get out of before. I'm not afraid. The distance between anticipated revenue and expenses will grow significantly over next couple years, and I showed it to you on the graphs. The distance between anticipated revenue and

121expenses becomes more magnified because your expenses are escalating revenue. So, look, if you have Let's Let's make it up. Salaries going up at I don't know, let's make it up, 4%, 3%. If you have uh health insurance going up at 8%, 10%, 20%, whatever it is. You have social security going up. You got pensions going up. And your tax cap is moving at two, I mean, come on. Right? I mean, you have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. The at current trajectory, and I think I demonstrated to these to these salaries and benefits will overwhelm your finances versus any ordinary revenue gains. So, if you want to cut your cuts, you're going to have to increase your revenue, and the only one you can ask for more money in is taxes.

122I hate to say it. It's going to be unpleasant, but that's it. Failure to act immediately over next few years will make it more difficult to sustain the district's financial potency. That is, the longer you wait to do this, the worse it gets because you will burn off the money you could have saved. It's that simple. The larger the tax increase, the smaller the cuts in expenses. The smaller the tax increase, the larger the cut in expenses. So, to me, it's a balancing game. District needs to revisit all possible options for cost savings, and financial triage has got to be implemented. The state foundation aid 1% is chump change. We're not going anywhere. There's no guarantee you're going to get another penny out of them. Okay, so we don't know, but you're going to have

123probably more enrollment declines and demographic issues. But the expense-driven aid, thank goodness, is is being maintained. So, but so that's good. But the key thing is, remember, it's only a partial reimbursement. Your state aid part is still a partial payment. You're paying part of that cost. So, immediate cost reductions must produce a financial yield that is significant enough to for the district to have a cash flow. We don't want to go borrow money to meet payroll. I was superintendent of a district. My first day on the job, I was told we could not meet payroll by the end of the week. We weren't broke. We were already We weren't going to be broke. We were already broke. No, but nobody wanted to say it. It was hysterical. Uh that's when I was getting sued by

12412 parents for educational neglect of their special ed kids at $1 million a pop. So, first day on the job, we got sued for $12 million within an hour and a half, and and torn down verbally by the parents, and the union beat me up cuz they didn't have a contract for a year and a half, and I got beat up for a year uh an hour and a half there. And then the business official told me that we have 4 days to find $500,000. Monitor the tax cap. Yeah, it was a great day. It I was late for my own board meeting, my own first board meeting, cuz I couldn't get through the pickets. I had to park six blocks away in the in the village to get there. Note growing use of appropriated

125fund balance. In other words, the distance between your revenues and expenditures are growing. Be aware what a supermajority is. It's 60%, not 50% plus one. It will have financial political implications. There is no blame in anything I've said here. There's no blame. Everything looks like a good idea at the time. This district has planned well. It should be proud of its planning. But what's happened is the lack of state support, right? The tax cap calculation and these unanticipated expenses, especially in things like health insurance, which is hitting most of the state, is what's victimizing you. So, I don't want you to start saying, "What did we do wrong?" You did nothing wrong. Everybody may think so, but we're going to convince them otherwise, I hope, because it's not true. You Everything I saw up until

126this point when these these costs started hitting us like like the wind. Remember, we started seeing those little bubbles where the state aid wasn't coming in, those little hints. That's And you're not alone. Uh I just drove through Liverpool, New York on the way here. They're laying off 83 people. Okay? You imagine? 6% of the whole staff. So, that's like lining everybody up and counting up by 12 and telling all the 12s to stay home. That's the ratio. I don't know if anybody's good at math, but I mean, that's how it works. So, here you go. Now, I'll answer any questions that you may have. I know we're going to have a workshop after, but Is there anything you did not understand? Anything you need more clarification on? Anything? At this moment. Hey, you're going

127to have to digest some of this. We'll have some time in our workshop to talk more about it. Okay. Okay? All right. Thank you. Thank you. The bottle water is worse than water, if you think about Oh, okay. Thank you. Maybe we'll talk about the cookie, too. I have needs and burdens. No thanks. God knows I should lose weight. I got to go. >> [laughter] >> Do we have any education reports? Did anyone on the board have any topics they wanted to discuss? These and buses versus bus kids. >> [laughter] >> I hate the whole bus conversation. I think we all know that. Uh and we That is not here. And Jim got our cookie. Uh Dr. Lloyd. All right. >> [clears throat] >> Uh you want to just unplug mine there? Yeah, do you

128mind? Oh, go right ahead. Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> All right. I have two topics for the board tonight. So, the first is the end of year calendar, and then the second is the results from that SRO survey that we put out to the community. So, for the end of year calendar, um in the 2025-26 school year, we have four snow days built into our district calendar. Um this year, we've used one snow day and one emergency closure day. That was at the elementary school. All students, um per New York State requirement or New York State Ed have a 180-day requirement. For our students, that requirement will be met on June 22nd of this year. So, our request is that the board approve the last student day as Monday, um June 22nd, with the

129last staff day remaining as June 26th. Um and as we have in previous years, we would use those last staff days as work days, um to include professional development, curriculum updates, classroom moves. Um we find that we get in a lot of meaningful work um during that last few days without students present, and it helps us get a jump on things that would usually happen at other times over the summer. It helps us be prepared to move into the fall. Um kind of helps maximize our time while our staff is all in the building. So, that would require board action to officially make the last student day uh June 22nd. Is it also going to be a half day or is it a half day? We've been doing full days. So, they're coming back for

130one day that week. Yes, the Monday. But you know, the elementary, it's like a big The last day of school is a big deal at the elementary. So, lots of celebrating is happening. So, it's just the elementary school? The high school will have classes over before the 22nd. So, the high school, because of Regents testing and end of year exams, um the end of classes is earlier in June, and then they're in the middle of testing during that time. Your son rises in the east. Yes, I know. Yeah, I'm looking at the down on play. Notice my question there after I said it. >> [laughter] >> Um, and then so that would have been they would have been done on the Wednesday. Yes. Yes. Do any of you have any other questions? We have someone

131who's motion to approve. I'll motion. Thank you. I'll second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Motion passes. >> [clears throat and laughter] >> All right. Next up is the results from our SRO survey. Um, since I've been here like this is the greatest amount of responses we've gotten on anything we've put out to the community. So, I feel good at the level of response that we've gotten. We had 289 responses. Um, we distributed the survey digitally. Um, also we made hard copies available. We had talked about that at the last meeting. So, um, Mrs. Friday distributed hard copies for the town hall, the library, and at the cafe so people could have access to hard copy if they couldn't access digital. Um, what I'll walk you through is just a breakdown of the

132survey data. So, looking at who responded, um, if people are in support or not, um, looking at the feedback around we gave multiple options for if we're going to finance this like how would you um, like what are ways you would consider doing that? And then I have just a high-level like uh, summary of the feedback and comments for the board. I will also send you all of the comments. There are so many comments and I think it's important for the board to like take the time to read through those. Um, there's easily over 320 comments in there. So, um, I have a summary that kind of categorizes them for the board to consider, but it's definitely worth the time to take a look. Like people were thoughtful in their responses and I really appreciate

133that. Um, and then some group specific breakdowns. So, quickly just the role. Um, there's the graph and then I just broke it down for you by um, what's the role of the respondent and then how many responses and what percent of the total that group represents. Then, this is just overall like of all of those people, do you support the addition of an SRO to the district? 54% yes, 46% no. So, again that's like all of those people as a whole. Um, I'll go down I'll go later into the group specific breakdowns. Um, and then this is the question we asked, if you um, had responded yes, you support the addition of the SRO, obviously we have to be able to fund that. So, what are some things that you're willing to consider? So, um,

134you can see the breakdown here. Uh, reducing staffing, considering a tax cap override, reducing student programming, none of the above. So, yes. Or 30 or 71 people said yes and then said, but I don't want to pay for it. Yes. And the other thing to think about, I know we've discussed we discussed last meeting, um, about the tax cap override as a strategy to possibly fund the SRO position, but as we talked about to do a tax cap override, you need to have a 60% supermajority. So, if thinking about if this represents just our yes people, it's, you know, half of the half that said yes that are willing to support a tax cap override. So, I know we had initially felt like this could be a great strategy for us. It's not looking like

135that might be a viable strategy. So, then you're left with, okay, if you're going to fund the position, it has to come from somewhere in the budget. Um, feedback summary. So, um, the summary around like support for the SRO and safety is really, um, thinking about the importance of having increased safety and security on a daily basis that's present within the desk district. Um, that, you know, there's obviously multiple districts that already utilize SROs or some other security service. Um, and also like there was definitely the threat of like SROs helping to build positive relationships, um, build trust between students and law enforcement, have students be able to have access to specific resources that a SRO might be able to connect them to or bring to the building. Um, a lot of concerns around the

136cost. This is something that, um, you know, if people hadn't tuned into our conversation, I think the $120,000 price tag was shocking. Um, so just to reiterate like that is for a 12-month SRO position and that's, um, the cost for Wayne County. Um, quite honestly like talking to colleagues from Ontario County who have this, it's more like $150,000 for this type of support in Ontario County it sounds like. Um, but again people feeling like that is a large price tag. Um, and then thinking about, all right, if we're going to fund this like how then can we pay for that? Like can you reduce costs administratively? Can you utilize grant money? Um, we can't utilize grant money for an SRO. Um, can we share the SRO with a neighboring district? You know, as we heard

137previously, we can't. I will share like I reached out again just to like confirm is this a possibility? It's not a possibility to share. I'm going to start answering the phone no. >> [laughter] >> Stop reaching out. Um, so another big category, um, from the feedback is just, um, thinking about how can we prioritize mental health and education over the SRO positions? Um, so really like it was loud and clear that people aren't looking for us to cut any student programming in order to fund this position. Um, and a lot of people said if we're going to spend this money, they would prefer spending it on mental health supports for, um, students. Thinking about, um, funding more staffing around counseling, social work, uh, making sure that we're being supportive and restorative with students and not,

138um, unnecessarily maybe connecting students to law enforcement. Um, also a lot of feedback on need for clarification around the role and justification. So, again like talking through what would the SRO do on a daily basis? I know they shared in their, um, presentation kind of what a day in the life looks like, but wanting some more clarity around that. Um, wondering about like duties, hours, if the position would cover both the elementary school and the high school or if we'd be looking at two positions. Again, the board knows it would be one position, um, to cover both buildings and that, you know, they have contractual hours that they follow through the sheriff's department. Though they do have that overtime cost built in so that they can be at school events. Um, and then looking for

139some more specifics. A lot of questions around like, so what is like how how are you quantifying this need? Is it because of the level of suspensions? Like is it because of specific disciplinary, um, items that are happening at school? Um, and you know, feedback around the district seems safe. Like is there something we don't know about? Like what is the like data-based need I guess for this position? So, again those are the like four big categories of feedback, but I'll send the board the full results and it is, you know, we have excellent comments in there and I encourage the board to like read through the full feedback. Um, oh, sorry, one more. So, just again that concern about a possible negative impact, um, and just some alternatives. So, like is the SRO, if

140we had an SRO, would that cause anxiety or discomfort in students? Um, would it lead to like an escalation uh, or a criminalization of things that we typically see as minor behaviors here and kind of handle in house? Like if a SRO was present, would it unintentionally lead to things that we typically love handle as low-level behaviors being seen as more serious? Um, and then thinking about like are there other things that we could look at instead? Like, um, vape detectors, security guards, um, thinking about like increasing adult presence just with the staff we have. So, things like a greater presence in the hallway at arrival, dismissal, those types of things. Okay. So, I'm just going to give the board the group specific breakdowns. So, I pulled out the data and just um, you know,

141disaggregated it by group. So, we'll just go through each of the groups and I just kept it to specifically like the do you support this yes or no? Just so the board can have a feel for like how each of the specific responding groups are feeling. So, the parent group 60% yes for the SRO, 40% no. The student group 52% yes, 47% no. The staff group 54% yes, 45% no. And then the resident, so these were community members who don't have child currently enrolled in the district, 43% yes, 56% no. So again, like this is all the data from the survey. I'll send the board the full like survey results with all the comments. But does anybody like have any questions based on this? The wouldn't the SRO presentation that presentation that was given it's

142on video, right? Yep. So, people can access that through the meeting archives on YouTube? Yeah. It's minute 19 of the February minute of the February meeting. February 19th it was? No, it's minute number 19 of whatever the February meeting was. Oh, okay. I got you now. Yes, February meeting minute 19 is the start of the presentation. I understand. I've sent several people that. So. That's your idea for tonight. >> [laughter] >> Okay. I'm going to be addressing the reading of the comments. Mhm. That's going to give a better a real feel of what people are thinking behind the yes no. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Cuz watching it on Facebook it was you could see they had the thing it wasn't researched. It was just an assumed storyline and I must be right. Yes. Nope. But I

143do like again, I feel like the board should feel great about the level of response to this and like >> we had we managed to get 30% of the respondents that were not parents. That is an area we've struggled. Yeah. Oh, not associated with the school in some way. That that's been an area we've struggled to get respondents from. So. Just Chris, do you know how many we received from the library the cafe in there? Oh, the hard copies? Do you know how many hard copies total we had? There was 12. Okay, so that wasn't a huge source. No, there was zero. Most of them were founded online. But at least some of them were sent in and out. Okay. It's still 12 people we got. Yeah. But no, but if it had been like

144100, then we need to put more effort there. Sure. Absolutely. Like make maybe put copies in the like night banner there and they don't get sent out or Yeah. But at least it kept the conversation going. I'm sure it spread. Like my most concerning part of all of it is um actually the last comment. The last one that we shared that concerns me greatly that um there's that concern. Kind of shows us how far I don't know. It kind of strayed a little bit. Especially if you could see the SROs that were here. Um if we could show um parents and those that were concerned with that conversation or those comments that it's nothing like that. They they do become very integrated with the students. They really do. It's not like they're out to get

145anybody. >> [laughter] >> They're here to work with Well, and that it ties into personal experience with law enforcement and not everybody has the same experience. And while um individual officers can be very good people and act with integrity and serve and protect their community, there is enough bad apples in the bunch so to speak to have that negative impact the relationship between the civilians and the law enforcement. That's why it's just kind of sad, isn't it? Sad state. But we would also see if if the relationship is not working, that is something we can change as we go. Yeah. If it and it could just not be a good fit. Yeah. So, all in all, I feel like it is good timing for this to come up right when we're like discussing our like

146financial outlook and I think like it is a weighty decision. Like where do you get $120,000 um from if that's the direction the board decides to go? Like all of this will be difficult decisions. Oh, well. Well, now is there something uplifting scheduled? I do have a question for the rest of the board. We've had a community member sit here for almost 2 hours [laughter] waiting patiently. Do we let her speak now? [clears throat] I have absolutely no problem with that. You have something you'd want to say? Now that you've seen the presentation, it makes more sense. I should have went first. No. >> [laughter] >> Um well, I was nominated to Oh, just one second. Sorry, we have to we should really read our public comment. Like we have our public comment like outlined.

147Okey dokey. Oh, I think it's on the inside of that yellow. Okay. >> [laughter] >> This is the same thing, isn't it? No, is it? I don't think so. Oh, it's out of order. Okay. >> [clears throat] >> You're addressing the board this evening. Please be aware that each public comment section will be no more than 15 minutes in length with a limit of 3 minutes per person. If several if there's not several individuals >> [snorts] >> um if you exceed the 3-minute time limit and are asked to stop but refuse to do so, you'll be asked to leave the meeting. When addressing the board, we expect all speakers to model our core belief of treating each other with mutual respect and dignity by not making disparaging remarks and demonstrating and demonstrating civility when expressing

148your opinion. In addition, we ask that you refrain from identifying personnel or students by name in your address. If you violate these protocols, you'll be asked to leave the meeting. Please note that this is a business meeting that is open to the public. It is not a public forum. Therefore, the board will listen to your questions and concerns [clears throat] but will not you will not receive an answer this evening. Concerns will be taken into consideration for potential future action by the board. I I just probably spoke longer than you're about to. >> [laughter] >> Um let me introduce myself. I'm Lori Wright. Um Marion graduate, proud Marion graduate. Um My son, Adam, graduated in 2020 2020 and I also have a 19-year-old that um goes to the BOCES in Newark. Um I have worked

149at the Marion school at the elementary school as a monitor and um I also worked at the Pal-Mac school, the middle school and I first hand see how valuable an officer is. The relationships, you know, they bring in lunch and have lunch with the students buy ice cream um just it was a really nice even the staff enjoyed it. Like they would walk into the cafeteria and they'd be like oh, thank god. >> [laughter] >> You know, and it it just especially your students that struggle socially would gravitate more to the officer. I'm I'm not sure why. Maybe they just felt safe. It was really pleasant to see. >> [clears throat] >> But I was asked by five other parents. I think their main concern and mine too is um I encourage you to not

150to take away services to your students that are out district. That would pertain to my son. They're over they're at the BOCES because they need those special services. Those are trained professionals that have worked with students like my son and other students that need these high intense services. Um I know the five other families myself said they would other kids from the school. So, you would lose that. Tuta tuta, whatever that word was. >> [laughter] >> Tuta, there it is. Um So, I just wanted you guys to really take that into consideration. Thank you. I know it'd be a very hard decision for you guys. You know, you know, it's going to be you're going to be darned if you do and darned if you don't. But thank you for your time. >> Thank you

151very much. >> you. >> [clears throat] >> All right. Jump it all over the place tonight. Bring me back to Mr. Walker. All right. So, every year in March the board approves a seeker for a capital outlay project that will get voted on in May by the voters and it's required to be done at least 45 days in advance. Um this is a type two seeker, which means it has no impact on the environment. Um this is a requirement um by the state to have this done for any outlay or capital project. So, it's it's basically a formality. Do you want to share what the outlay is? Uh so, the outlay will be at the high school. Um outlays are restricted to one building. And for this outlay, it involves um working on um some

152floor work in the high school that is the tentative and also uh classroom renovation. No work uh done in the uh four science rooms. Some of the work has uh been in there. Uh rooms 17 and 19 I'm talking about in particular. Uh the shelving and the countertops and things of that are in rough shape. It's not in the science room. It's the old science room. >> [laughter] >> We should call Michael McDonald. When I was on the phone with >> [clears throat] >> Know your audience. Know your audience. It was way before [laughter] I was here. All right. Could we have a motion to approve the seeker for the 2026-2027 outlay project, please? I'll move it. I'll second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? Motion passes. Um First reading of policies 7580

153to 7690. Anyone have any questions on this that you'd like clarification on? No. Okay. Moving on. Next up are the consent agenda items. We've already removed number 10. You can hear that, [snorts] so it is the remaining. Anyone have any questions? I do not. Okay. Could I please have any motion to approve the consent agenda items? Move it. Thank you. I'll second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? Motion passes. Did anyone else have community comments? I noticed our students all ditched us by an hour. Mr. Dean, just make sure you're aware. >> [laughter] >> I gave them permission to do that. >> Okay. It's only 8:00. Okay, could we please have a motion to move into executive session for the purpose of discussing the dismissal or removal of a particular person in the

154due process complaint filed against the district related to pending litigation. I'll move it. Thank you. Second? Second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstained? Motion passes. We will be moving into executive session. We will come back out to complete the workshop.