001well good evening everybody uh we'd like to welcome you to the march 4th 2021 uh regular meeting of the enlarged city school district of middletown take that opportunity to call this meeting to order at this time and i'm going to ask our mr crescenzo if he could please lead us in the pledge of allegiance 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 thank you mr crescenzo i'm going to ask mr perrino if he would read the mission statement and following the mission statement we will have a few moments of silence mr perino thank you mr president mission statement of the enlarged city school district we strive to provide fiscally sound educational opportunities
002in a safe environment that continuously supports our diverse student population we will enable all students to graduate to reach their full potential to become lifelong learners and to be competitive productive members of society thank you moments of silence sir thank you so much the this has been a a a short week but a very tough week for members of our staff and their families and members of the community that are associated with the district one way or the other the first moment of science this evening is for donna malofsky donna miloski the senior purchasing agent in the district over 30 years she began in june 1988 and i can say i work with donna a great person to work with i saw her daughter grow up i remember when she was expecting and then uh
003seeing all kinds of photos as she uh progressed to being an infant and a teenager and then as an adult donna was an expert at negotiating the the state contracts amazing state contracts she always was able to get the lowest price and buy the best materials for the district she spent the district's money like she a very conservative person would spend her own again looking at all aspects of a product asking questions as a being on staff and as a coordinator media services i dealt with her quite a bit and sometimes i tried to sneak a few things by buyers to get a little better item that was pretty hard to do almost impossible just a very wonderful nice person the second moment of science tonight is for austin andersek now austin andersek the husband
004of maura anderson and maura is a very well respected instructor at maple hill uh elementary school she is in the math department i did not know austin personally but if i could just read a moment from the write-up in the paper his family and friends would describe him as a powerful softball player on the field with one of the kindest souls in all other facets of his life he was giving sincere kind and concerted man and a family then family meant the world to him and just as an aside here his dad worked for the district for many years in the buildings and grounds and custodial department randall roger andelson roger was big in the fire company i remember the when he passed the whole town of montgomery virtually the whole town uh pulled out
005there was a parade in honor of him and so on so a very respected family in the community the next moment of sounds is for judith wigley judas the mother of debbie dunleavy who is the director of food service and interestingly enough mrs wigley also had a career in food service she worked for the middletown i'm sorry milford school district milford pennsylvania for many decades did not know mrs wigley however according to what i found out from her daughter personality was great personality she's one of the favorites in the food service department she loved to travel and she was very comfortable driving a volkswagen or a uh a 13-wheeler so um just another good person gone from us the final moments of science this evening of nick corrada owner of the new beginnings montessori school
006nick and being in the community a long time an american successor story he came from italy at the age of 16 with not too much money he became through hard work and entrepreneur interest in education and eventually purchased a new beginnings montessori school he realized the value of value of an education i never heard an ill word about nick everybody loved him and and just a fine individual so please remember all these people in your thoughts and prayers thank you so much you mr perino thank you very much um moving on um our roll call mrs clark mrs blumenow here mr cresenzo here mr gomez [Music] mrs houston here mr lasiniere mr perino miss tobiason mr williams pastor williams here thank you thank you clark i'd like to entertain a motion for the approval of
007our agenda tonight don't move moved and seconded seconded by uh mr bison uh uh any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed so passes uh i'd like to have a motion now for the approval of our minutes from our february 25th 2021 meeting please don't move okay second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed the surpasses moving on to our personnel action items if there's no objection we will we can combine uh personnel memorandum 21a instructional and our personnel memorandum 21b non-instructional may i have a motion for such please almost second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye opposed so passes thank you i know there's no introduction tonight so we'll move on uh we take a moment tonight uh for our recognition announcements and community reports i'm
008gonna go around the bend as you are on my screen and uh and uh be your opportunity to make your whatever announcements need to be uh made tonight we'll try to keep it as brief as possible but uh don't worry you have a few you have a few minutes uh i will start um i will start with mrs blumenow tonight thank you well there is so much going on um in our community in our district but i want to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart the beginning of middletown little league baseball and softball season um it is time to register so if you have not already registered this saturday from 11 to 3 um kids that want to register for little league uh can go to andalini's i'm saying that
009right andalini's pizza ages 4 to 16 baseball and sophomore and anyone who registers for baseball and softball this saturday at angelini's will get um pizza for ten dolla a pizza a large pizza for ten dollars so i love the fact that we're reaching out angelini has actually reached out to little league to offer the space to allow our families to come in socially distanced and um and be able to register our kids for uh for little league so get out there and play ball it's almost baseball season thank you mrs bloomer now uh next on my screen on my screen uh is mr larson here i've been having some uh on and off internet issues i don't know if you could hear me we can hear you a little bit a little bit okay um
010there's not really much i wanted to say i just i wanted to make sure you guys could hear me because i know before it was kind of yeah thanks thank you mr lazinear appreciate you um moving on um next on my screen is uh mrs hewson okay i just wanted to quickly mention that this week we celebrated read across america day in the united states and um i have very fond memories of reading with my students over the years as well as having our big buddies and little buddies reading to each other which i always thought was the best thing ever and of course with all this social distancing that's not possible this year but i thought i'd at least be a good example and say that i am reading a book it's a hand
011hewn in old vermont and i love american folk art so i thought i would share that this evening thank you mrs hewson moving on next on my screen mr gomez thank you thank you very much first i i do want to join uh and express my condolences for uh uh mr peratta of the as the moment of silence we held uh my two boys uh kevin and actually my son kevin and my youngest melody both were children and attended montessori and we saw the dedication of that family and they gave them my kids good head starts to enter the middletown school district as to so many other children so i was really sad to hear of his passing i also want to express my appreciation to all our orange county elected officials assembly members alien
012gunter colin schmidt carl brabanek and uh jason anna martucci as well for their uh participating and making themselves available during lobby week and the commitment to address a lot of the issues we have such as the unfunded mandates as well as education reform and from our end and we will continue to be vocal and persistent to make sure those issues are heard and the action could be taken no matter how long it takes it's just we just have to fight the good fight and uh that's that's all i have to say thank you mr gomez uh mr williams oh can't hear you can you hear me now yes here we go okay how you doing um two things uh there's an organization coming up middletown youth sports um that um i'm kind of really uh
013opened as well with a good group of amount of people uh through the city um adults and parents that's gonna um consist of flag football and basketball leagues um for our community i think it's important that there's a lot of uh travel and group aau basketball teams and travel teams that a lot of kids can't afford you know and that uh aren't exposed to so i think these leagues will be really good um for our kids coming up so as the weather breaks and things get a little you know looser with the uh with restrictions i think it'll be something good coming in our community and also my uh little guy's enjoying presidential he goes in on wednesday and thursdays and uh he just you know he comes out with a smile every time and
014i really like the uh the procedure that he's going through he goes to presidential and um i just think our district is doing a a knockout job with the procedure and the restrictions and everything that are um being put forth so that's what i've got for tonight thank you thank you mr williams yes sir good name um uh uh moving on mr crescenzo um i've been leading a very uninteresting light life lately but so i don't have much but uh we just found out that the health department in goshen has a number of uh coveted vaccines available so give them a call do your part i got my second modernist shot tuesday and thank goodness there was no side effects so let's do your part wear your mask get your shots thank you mr c
015appreciate it moving on to mr purino the king of middletown thank you president williams um i'm going back to the last meeting for just a moment on the personnel agenda was isa wolff the secretary to uh the superintendent and secretary to the other uh administrators in the office her job was expanded uh due to uh budget cut so she has been doing multiple jobs issa is retiring extremely hard working and dedicated person if you call isa before 7 30 she's there if you call issa after four o'clock she is there she seems to be always on duty very very efficient and again a a nice person also on this uh agenda on personnel agenda was uh mr william bartlett the our director of facilities and uh we've given him a permanent appointment uh now i've
016worked with him as chair of the buildings and grounds committee again very good person to work with very easy person to work with if you call him as i i do one of my faults i call people early if i call him at seven o'clock he is in the office working if he's in a meeting he will get back to me so uh i know tom scott's been helping him mentoring him a bit answering questions he's very appreciative and i consider bill a huge asset to the district finally remember last week black history month were past that now but as president williams said that it goes from uh uh july 1st to june 30th i i mentioned this book uh by laura ly thomas lorelei thomas and a a middletown success story an american success
017story she came she had a hard time going up in many respects but she managed to write a book and she managed to become an accomplished artist i'm just going to read one segment from this just to show you uh some of the uh problems and some of the challenges she faced she said so i named this part of my stories cookies for lunch now the cookies for lunch was this it was at the city dump and after we went and dug through the city dump i can't recall what we're looking for but whatever it was we all did it then came lunch and we said well what are we going to eat we didn't bring anything and he meaning the people or the person that she was with the child that she had said
018oh no we're having cookies for lunch his children would take us over to a pile of cookies where they had every kind of cookie you can imagine that were dumped at the dump and that's what we were to eat cookies for lunch it was something to eat we didn't ask where it came from we only knew it was free but that's how they lived back in that day another time there was a store on the corner from my house it was a nice store mother would send us there for bread she gave us a nickel and said make sure you bring back the three pennies changed or you get slapped and i myself would wait until dark on friday night because they were they were kind to us children and i used to go over
019and say to the man he was great mister have you got any heels and bruises and he would say to me wait until i close the store in front of in front and come on back and i'll give them to you the heels were heels of the full meat and that they didn't sell during the day but if you got a couple of heels you could make a couple of sandwiches and the bruises were fruit that had bruise marks on them bananas were stains peaches that were soft to apples with bruises on them and give us a big bag of them and then say i would have a feast and then i would have a feast on that day so that's just one segment of the bomb and much of this we grew up in
020about the same time she was a little older than i was loyal i should've passed now unfortunately we used to also hunt the dump we used to go looking for bottles in that dump in the dump if you if you're thinking where was it there were two dumps on east main street we used to call them the big dump in the uh little dumpster i guess there's condos and houses uh there now but yes there were cookies bags of cookies dumped there i know there was one uh a bakery in middletown a german bakery joe grow owned it it was on north street and unfortunately as a result of a big fire which took down a good portion the uh the sears building which was there too took down that building and they he was
021very scrupulous about freshness and i believe uh they were great cookies because we used to do that too uh he used to dump bags now they weren't free they weren't loose they were bags of uh cookies that were a couple days old in the dump so great book and now we're i i may read some more this has been going it so impressed me really the challenge he she faced and the success that she'd become now we go on to women's history month and there's a lot of famous women in middletown again the historical society in middletown east avenue it's a treasure trove of information see middletown and walk hills attic so to speak so i'm done the time is late i could go on but i'm not so thank you thank you president williams
022thank you mr purino greatly appreciate that uh mr madison uh thank you president williams john stole my thunder again i wanted to correct uh congratulate bill bartlett on his permanent appointment but there john was i was that's what i was trying to look for before to see where it um came on our agenda on and it was under the personnel non-instructional so my apologies bill my intentions were good but on behalf of all of us congratulations the other thing that i did want to mention is that the middletown kiwanis club on saturday march 6 between 12 noon and 2 pm going to be hosting a drive-by food drive collecting non-personal perishable foods and that will be in the parking lot of the salvation army family store on wickham avenue so if anyone would like to
023donate i'm sure they'll be very grateful to receive any donations with the conditions that and the pandemics that we've gone through i know our food department under debbie's guidance has been a godsend for many families so again if you can help please do so thank you it's mr bison uh and so uh mr perrino and mr bison speak the sentiments of all of us in uh congratulating uh bill bartlett on his on his uh appointment his final appointment we're we're grateful to have you here and look forward to many years working with you um so that's that that i'll speak i'll speak that on behalf of the whole board as the president i'll speak that behavior but i'm i'm sure that that's the sentiments of everybody uh also i'd like to take an opportunity to
024congratulate um the inductees of the middletown high school national honor society uh this past week on on this week uh it was a virtual induction uh and if for anybody here you can go back and you can find it on youtube um to watch through it very well done uh very well done a very well put together program and so i want to congratulate all of those inductees with that being said i also want to encourage all of the entities of our district our teachers all of the groups the clubs please please feel free to email the board and i know that we can't be there in person during this particular time but we we are ready to support you and support all the endeavors of our students and our staff and so i want
025to encourage you please uh email the board and let us know what you're doing some of us know and some of us don't but i want to encourage you let us know because we want to support you we want to be behind you uh and we want to let you know uh that we're proud of you and the work that you're doing and so uh congratulations with that being said i i have other things but i think i will um i'll reserve them there are there is a lot going on now as we are shifting into the new sea into a new season spring sports uh or i'm sorry fall sports are beginning uh false parts are beginning and so uh we wanna we wanna uh continue to encourage our student athletes that are participating
026participating in fall sports and those that participated in the winter sports even though it was a shortened season we want them to know that we're proud of them and that we support them even though we can't be in the stands screaming and yelling for them but we can do it we can do it here and so we want you to know that we are supporting you all right i'm i'm done i'm done uh we're gonna move on in the meeting at this time uh uh we have we have we didn't receive any we didn't receive any responses uh to uh to our google docs uh we didn't receive any responses to our opportunity to come in and to address the board uh but what i will acknowledge is is that uh give me one second
027please give me one second uh we we i want to acknowledge that we did receive a letter receive a correspondence from uh uh from a student uh with concerns with concerns over a specific issue uh and although we're although we're not going to read the letter tonight we do want you to know that the district is looking into it and the district is is handling uh whatever circumstances come we take everything that comes across the table we take it very seriously and so i just want to acknowledge receipt of that correspondence tonight uh thank you uh moving on our superintendent's report uh mr del maro and then mr taro thank you pastor williams as it's always a pleasure talking to you and the board vice president tobias as well as the board in general and
028of course our entire school community tonight is part three of our budget presentations uh for the 2021-22 school year so i'm going to ask mr tuttle to present that portion of the budget uh and of course at the end of his presentation members of the board can ask any questions it is also very important to know to the community that the board receives all of the information that he will be presenting well in advance and has the opportunities to ask any questions um so uh and as well as they have now in the public so that um the documents that he's presenting has been reviewed by the board previously mr tuttle good thank you mr del morro president williams members of the board uh tonight as mr gilmore said is our third night of budget
029presentations uh tonight we're dealing with the capital and benefits [Music] in the previous two we've had the administrative budget and we've also had the instructional budget last time which was actually last week because of the holiday we've had two weeks in a row of budget presentations so tonight's capital on benefits and then the next meeting we'll have a revenue discussion which will show us how to fund all of our stuff um so as i do before we do every presentation i just go over some of our assumptions um because maybe sometimes they change maybe sometimes they don't but right now nothing's changed as far as the cpi right around two percent uh our health insurance premiums will be looking at six percent increase uh the tax cap by the controller is 1.56 not the 2
030percent as always however you'll see based on uh when we get to that piece of the budget and revenues we'll show that we can actually go more than two percent but that's based on the formula and how much money you spend and expenditures and things like that uh teachers retirement system estimated ten percent increase uh and that's that's usually standard every year is right around that percentage um so that's our contribution to uh the teacher retirement system for all the staff that are employed in the district uh it's also fair to say um the teacher retirement system is not just for teachers it's for administrators as well that's important to know the ers employee retirement system estimated 15 increase this year and that's similar to teachers we're so steady usually every year it's right around
031that percentage increase um one good thing to note about those increases though we are able to show we're able to use some of our reserves to offset those increases each year uh our service increase right around five percent and that's not just um students with disabilities going that's all of the services uh ctec um any other incremental things like capital rent and things like that i believe we'll be having a presentation from boces coming up mr delmar i think they're going to do a video or something in a couple weeks foundation aid which is going to be a problem for us this is the third year in a row it has not increased so that's going to be increasing our gap for education equity we'll see that keep increasing so it's going to be a
032problem for us community schools stay the same and that's actually inside the foundation age to set aside to ensure that we're meeting some specific programs for the the need of our district our debt service payment has increased 20 percent uh it's right around two million dollars from last year and that's the debt services um the payment the paybacks that we need for all the capital improvements that we do throughout the district over the past ten years and uh the more recent pro projects are included in this increase so that's why we're seeing that twenty percent um contractual salaries increase anywhere from five to five point five million um that's just uh increases in salaries alone that has nothing to do with benefits and all the fica and social security that we deal with as well
033um so we talked about the first two meetings we had the administrative instructional tonight we're dealing with benefits in capital which equals about 70 million dollars of the overall budget so right now you're looking at a 36 about 36 percent of the budget we'll be talking about tonight so first up we'll be talking about our capital budget this has to do with our operation of plant and our maintenance a plant that's all the buildings and grounds functions the cleaning of the schools the plowing of parking lots fuel tanks the maintenance of fields the maintenance of light poles anything you can think of that has to do with the maintenance um also the maintenance of vehicles changing oil spark plugs tires things like that we also have in the program the capital budget is the sro
034program uh we're seeing a two percent increase there and that's pretty standard that's what we've been seeing since the program's inception uh and that's all contractual that's nothing that's what we've agreed and signed contracts with the town of walchel in the city of middletown um another big note on here would be our serial bonds which has to do with our debt service i talked about that before um and that's an increase almost 18 and we're about 1.4 million dollars increase there um and then plus with our bond anticipation notes that's actually going down a little bit so we're balancing um the bonds and the debt service however it looks like a decrease it actually has increased because our aid has decreased a little bit um energy performance contracts uh remains the same um and then
035our transfer of capital has gone down a little bit by 175 000. and i'll show you that in a second so if we look at our total capital um proposed budget a little over 29 million dollars um that's an increase of a little a little over 1.4 million for a total of 5.26 percent over last year's budget and a lot of that has to do with um cobit increases in costs um and then our debt service and that's the cobait is really driving the major increase there for us because uh well we talked about the you know planning for all this we're not sure what next year what july 1 brings for covid um in our for in order for us to have summer school in order for us to open schools safely and clint
036with a lot of cleanliness happening throughout all the buildings and having the right apparatuses to ensure we can have students in class and staff in the building safely so it's kind of hard to predict what that's going to be uh today so hopefully over the next month before the budget is adopted uh we can have a better handle on what the actual expenses will be for that we're looking at current supplies uh based on the stuff we've already purchased for covid and then we're also going to try to buy some of the supplies out of this year's funds um so we have so we have some supplies on hand for when school does start talking about the 100 000 capital outlay essentially we try to do this every year it's a it's an outlay project
037where we get aid back every year anywhere from 70 to 80 000 comes back to the district based on our aid um so and these are just these little small projects that we can do in a year's time frame get it done submitted and then we can get the aid in the next year um we transfer 100 000 to the capital account and this is the reason why we do this is because it's in the actual budget um brochure and the budget document that goes out to the community and this is actually what they're voting on um when they actually vote on election day um as i said it's included in the 2021 budget vote and it wasn't as it was last year last year we did gym doors at twin towers and we also
038had some projects for the sidewalk over at the high school which is still ongoing um we have one year to complete the project um so it's a project that it's under a hundred thousand and we we start the process now getting all all the project details together uh so when july one comes we can actually start the project uh and then folk as i said focus on smaller projects each year and it's really just a way for us to do the keep all the maintenance and everything um up to date in addition to the larger projects that we do so what we're looking at for this year's capital outlayer for july 1 would be external repair to windows over at twin towers this would be repointing of some of the windows that over time are
039starting to fail starting to get some water in the window area so this is a much needed capital project for us um another thing that we're looking at is we're talking about capital reserve um so we currently we have a capital reserve from 2018. that was for 20 years for 20 million dollars and currently we have about 4 million left in that account um so what we're looking for the board of consideration to put forward to the voters this year would be another reserve um creating that new reserve uh in the 20 may 2021 vote and it would be a proposition two um so there'll be two propositions one would be the actual budget boat and then the two the second one will be the capital reserve and this requires voter approval 50 plus one
040to pass and what we're asking for is another capital reserve for 20 years for 20 million dollars now in 20 years and 20 million dollars you have 20 years to fund and spend the money of 20 million dollars so each year you can put some money aside for any future capital projects that we have or a year where you have you cannot contribute to it you don't have to add to it however um once you hit 20 million dollars of contribution to the reserve uh you no longer can fund that reserve that's it and then you need to start spending it so 20-year program the other one only took us less than four years to spend the money out of and create and spend so this one will probably hopefully last a little bit longer
041but it just gives us some flexibility in savings accounts for down the road when we need to do any major projects for the district as long as we're talking about capital reserves um conversation will come up about debt service um starting in july we'll have over 60 million dollar ceiling of debt service which means you can go to the voters for 60 million project if that's what the board wants to do any questions about the capital of maintenance main board members okay as we said before super kind of said we've given this information out questions have been asked and a lot of questions have been answered so uh now we're going to deploy benefits i have a question mr perino go ahead yes i i did submit questions uh mike to you and thank you
042for answering them but uh this came up uh for the uh benefit of the public if you could talk about the um impact of the capital reserve on the tax levy yeah i mean i think i know the question answer to that but could you speak about that okay for this specific um capital reserve um the only time it would really benefit uh the tax levy is if we are using money from um a debt service fund or anything like that to offset the taxpayers um funds that they're required to pay to pay to fund the tax levy this reserve is just basically a set aside um you know for specific projects that you um you know go to voter approval you need voter approval for these projects so whatever it is a new parking
043lot um you know a new field restorations to a new building an addition a new building anything like that needs voter approval out of this capital reserve and that's what we've done in the current capital reserve thank you mike okay um yeah if you could bring the screen back to it was the first one where you had the regular teaching um the breakdown for regular teaching uh see yeah teaching regular school 93 where the allocation for the new year's that is significantly less or over ten thousand dollars less yeah that is that there specifically and we put this in the capital in maintenance um this is for the maintenance of um music equipment oh okay yeah so you'll see the teaching in regular school there it's one of the it's one it's just one account
044code that comes out of the regular instructional programming and we put it in the maintenance and that's where it's coded to for the maintenance of music equipment and we send those out all year long mostly in the summer to get repaired so when the students come back in september the equipment is fresh with new strings or any type of um any type of repair that's needed on any type of equipment so uh and the reason why we do that we also send it out if it needs if it's unrepairable then we have to uh have a way of surplusing it and buying new equipment as well and uh how will the significant decrease in funding affect the ability to do that especially considering i think that by the fall i'm hopeful that we will have
045will be either back to full capacity or if not very close of students back in school where we will need to make sure that all the instruments are hygienically ready for them how will this decrease affect that it's not going to um impact it too tremendously the reason why i've actually looked at lowering that budget line one is i look at the trends over the past two or three years and we haven't spent uh we're a little below you know we're right where we are now for the new proposal um you know additionally you know when we're going through the budget process always looking at some where can we save um some money in some of these lines without impacting instruction and health and safety that's really what we're looking to do um you know
046and looking at the past um you know i think it was three years i looked at this was you know i felt that was comfortable to lower that line to that to that number thank you yep any other questions yeah mike yeah go ahead bro would you just clarify the money that's necessary for the capital proposition two where will that money come from uh that money comes specifically from unappropriated fund balance so at the end of the year if we have unexpended monies uh we can put some money in there and typically what we do with unappropriated we can put it into all the other reserves like tax tertiary um the retirement system reserves unemployment um things like that that's the point i wanted you to make thank you okay any other questions great job
047okay all right so now we're going to the benefits um i thought it was easier to separate the two tonight you know one second okay so here's our uh proposed employee benefits expenditures for this year um as you can see what it outlines is an employee retirement system account a teacher retirement system social security workers composition compensation i should say life insurance unemployment insurance disability insurance and our big one the hospital medical dental insurance for all the groups our union welfare benefit and this year a little over 41 million dollars is the proposed budget line for that again we're predicting um really 18 months out we're looking at what and anticipating what it's going to cost us to fund staff health insurance social security workers workers compensation all these things we're responsible for and when
048i show you at the beginning of the slides is you know the ers goes up 15 although we're only going up 1.82 i'll show you in the next couple we're offsetting some of that with reserves um so we're not if we didn't use reserves or have fund balance um this would be this would be almost 15 percent change right here you would see that so we are we are using our fund balance uh very effectively um and it's and it's been very helpful for us to maintain these lower levels you'll see the teacher retirement system is just a little bit over half percent increase um and that's because we are using um our reserves there as well so i'll go through that on the next slide so right now we're looking at almost a two
049million dollar increase in employee benefits um and that's about a 5.03 percent uh change from last year's increase um you know we're seeing some um health claims rise some uh we're also seeing with kobit uh so we're seeing a lot of different things happen and we're trying to predict although the um our consultants have uh predicted a six percent increase you can see we're a little bit over eight percent just for the unknown in this area the one thing that could deplete us pretty quickly would be the health health insurance because we are self-funded and we pay for every claim that comes through so whatever the claim is we're responsible for we do have a stop gap uh stop loss at 250 000 so any claims above that we're only responsible for however we do
050pay a pretty good premium to have the stop-loss so we're we do we do a great job funding um from our consultants and maintaining um our premiums pretty low we've only had one increase in premiums and that was this past year since the inception of since 2017. so we are maintaining some pretty steady levels and we're able to ensure everyone's health so that's that's kind of a pretty good thing for the district um so that's our health and benefits a little bit over five percent and some of things are mandated like we have to pay the ers we have to pay teacher retirement system we have to pay workers comp we have to pay social security fica we have those are those are our federal requirements that we have to pay on everyone's salary so
051there's no getting anything out of those so those are those are mandates that um everyone's talking those are essentially unfunded mandates right we have to pay all this money um and they're unfunded so i talked a little bit about using reserves um so in the workers comp compensation we use 500 000 so if you think about it this way we have um a savings account in the workers comp and we take 500 000 out of there to offset our premiums for the year same thing with employee retirement system same thing with teacher retirement system and then we use 50 000 of unemployment because that bill is much lower every year for us obviously we don't have a lot of employment so we don't have our premiums are kind of low um so we're using a
052little over 1.5 million dollars in reserves each year to offset you know the budget and that's been very helpful for we've been doing that for the past couple years uh the one thing i don't have on here and we'll show in the revenue is how much we use for unappropriated fund balance and that's kind of like a reserve but that helps us offset the tax levy as well so just a couple reminders uh tonight was the capital benefits uh next revenue uh discussion will be on march 18th um and hopefully we'll have a little bit better guidance from the state that we do right now we're still waiting on guidance on how we're voting and so we're we have a couple things that are we're desperately waiting for uh and as always the big one
053for us is tuesday may 18th is the budget vote itself and the segue into that was hopefully we'll know from the state how we're going to actually be able to vote if we're going to do in person new ballots but we're ready and year to start the process now rather than you know in may so hopefully we'll have some information on that pretty soon so there's any questions about the health and benefits [Music] portion no seeing no hands raised okay yes yes i do okay sorry i was double muted oh yeah houston and then okay i'll go to your connection um mine was to do with the um mention of the voting that you just brought up okay can you please go over for our community members just how much it will cost the taxpayers
054if we have um a vote that is mainland um that could probably range in the 20 to 30 000 range based on all the ballots that we have to produce in the stamps and the labor to stuff all the envelopes and things like that that's that's what i ran us last year and as compared to what would it be if we had in-person voting um probably in-person voting would probably run between 10 and 15 000 because we still have to we still purchase the software to run all the voting and everything anyway so it's an additional you know the the ballots and stuff is an additional ten thousand to fifteen thousand dollars probably and then the postage okay so it's about level yeah so we have to we still have to hire poll workers we
055still have to have people come in and count ballots um so there's a whole bunch of things that happen uh either way so we're still we're still we're still providing a resource um and a service either way we do it right i just wanted to you made the point it's about double what it would cost if um okay thank you so much yep uh mr tuttle yes yeah okay um yeah my question uh is about uh the general general budget uh right now in washington d.c congress is considering the the so-called covet stimulus uh relief bill where only nine percent or seven percent has to do with cobat the rest work but if that bill or a compromise bill is passed by the house and senate and signed by the president how do you think
056that that will change uh the final numbers of this budget especially if that were to occur before well uh what i can say from that is when the budget when the governor sent us our budget um state aid runs in january he did have a um a line in there for the covid's um stimulus and that was almost seven and a half million dollars to this district um so i don't anticipate it being any more than that but it would be nice if it was um but however the shell game for this year is if you look at the state aid runs um the star payment which was supposed to be 5.2 million dollars that is now a negative so that's no longer a payment to us so that's zeroed out um so essentially you
057know with the stimulus we're getting a little bit over two million dollars extra um with the stimulus because they took away something else so it would be helpful to get more money there yeah yeah but you know i'm sure the government is uh in the senate and so they're really um trying to figure out how to balance their budget this year based on the shortage of revenue um if you recall for the past year no one has really traveled no one has paid taxes at gas stations no one's paid taxes at hotels the tolls are down everything is down casinos everything is down as far as revenues are concerned and that's not just new york state that's the whole country thank you so much and i just want to comment briefly on the question of
058raised by uh miss uh houston uh and i've been something i've been raised before i you know i think most colleagues will probably know maybe we'll agree not unanimously i do not think that an election operations expenditure should fall on a school district that should fall within the domain of the board of elections okay that's one and number two and i would like to i think it would be good if school districts collectively were urged through the uh the new york state school board association for legislation to make sure that's put into effect especially given what you just raised that the shortfalls in revenue that burden shouldn't be on the district and with respect to mail-in elections uh if all other elections are being conducted more and along the traditional way i don't think school
059district elections should be an exception this should be uniformity okay i mean if the issue is the virus it affects people when they're voting for governor and every other election oh sorry voting for county executive and every other election is able to vote for school board so there should be uniformity that expense should not be on our districts and i would hope that the district and uh and other districts would let their voices be heard i i i think we have enough on our plate and there has been more demand and little input from from albany where we could have it thank you oh i will say this um orange county that one of the situations that they ran into last year um was that there was a state election immediately following so they it's
060tough for them to turn the machines around and get them um sanitized and cleaned and validated for the next election so that becomes a challenge for them although that's not an excuse i'm just saying that was one of the uh that question was raised when we were going through last spring all the districts were looking for some relief from you know the county election or some help and they provide some help in some areas um but they're certainly not staff to manage all the things that we need to do in every district in the county at the same time so that would be something you know we could we could wish for down the road with our uh senator and assembly any other questions oh god vince is um our health insurance plan being self-funded
061is that still working to our advantage yeah so far it is um you know originally in the in the in the first inception of it uh we saved i think over three million dollars and then over the past couple years we've saved another three so um we're well into the six million dollar savings range um over the past few years um so we're maintaining and we haven't had to really increase um premiums for staff so that's been very beneficial thank you yeah and again it's a volatile thing each one year could be down one year could be up one year you know it's it's it's definitely interesting patterns has the covid uh pandemic affected this at all have you yeah we're seeing yeah we're seeing a lot of increase in expenses with cobit yeah so
062you know it just test just just testing and stuff like that is um you know what i think i had i had a rapid test that was over almost 500 so it's it's expensive uh and that's part of that's part of the plan thank you i just have a comment um to add to what mr gomez said i agree with you i think that we need to have the board of elections handling our elections um i i hope this will get more organized in the future and i i do want to commend our personal district um clerk um miss clark she did a great job um it's it shouldn't all be on her shoulders and it also has to be uniform for every district across the state it shouldn't be a little bit of this
063here and a little bit of that there i agree with everything that circle has said and thank you mr tuttle for your excellent presentation welcome any other one anybody else hearing or seeing none okay thank you very much everyone well thank you very much uh and for those very uh astute questions so that not only you understand but also all of our community uh so as we present the budget uh up for vote uh people understand with all transparency that we have provided that this is another very solid considered program for not only instruction but also understanding the plight of the taxpayer of our community members and especially during this um pandemic and the uh catastrophic offense that this has happened on all of us is just unspeakable so i um i again come to
064the uh public with the understanding that we are open to any questions you may have regarding the budget uh and uh hope that uh you continue to listen to our presentations so that any and all your questions are answered regarding how do we arrive at a considerable amount of money the next part of the superintendent's report is talking about different topics and one of which mr perino mentioned in the beginning of the meeting tonight and that is march no is national reading month uh income you know in combining that uh initiative with read across america all of the schools are working very feverishly with reading throughout the year not just during the month but it's a designated month to put a how should i say an extra focus heightened focus on reading um i was
065videotaped just this past week i read a book uh on my passion uh baseball uh in a particular player uh no surprise but um i implore all of the students to keep reading their passion and what are they going to do about uh an individual in baseball babe ruth i wrote about how he changed the game of baseball from what it was to what um it has eventually come to be and so the connection i was making is find your passion so that you can make the change uh in our society and certainly we need some changes in deciding some of the areas a little more compassion would just do us all well uh also one in history month uh several several years ago this was um constituted as a a month again to celebrate
066um marginalized group within our our society but as we start to unpeel the onions so to speak you see all of the contributions over the course of our history over the course of the history of the world global history the contributions of women so it uh i do think it's very important that all our young ladies in our community uh in our classrooms understand that they are more than just behind the scenes uh it is upfront and um very very important that they understand the power of what they can do if they put their mind to it and i think this is the celebratory efforts of this month to recognize all that in all of the um sciences and math and literacy and performing arts and visual arts wherever your passion is uh in continuing
067our work with equity i will only ask um mrs crean to put up the slide uh that we continue to be working on prioritizing equity uh as you know this has been a very important initiative this year in our school district to celebrate some of the things that we have had done throughout the course of our history of our school district and building upon that and working in new areas that we need to address and one of the area that we recognize very quickly is to be more inclusive in our hiring process and we have made a great uh initiative in our hiring task force uh where has taken upon two different areas the intake and process of hiring and also marketing how do we get ourselves to increase the pool of staff of color
068in particular in our classrooms in administrative positions staff positions in all areas of our school district and so that we're looking at a very very microscopic look at how to change what we're doing keep the things that are working well for us but more importantly what can we do differently as we like to work in this area this was all under the umbrella of what we were doing under the equity audit that we have hired beloved community to work with us along with education elements two partnerships in this very very important work and hiring was one of those initiatives that we wanted to do immediately because every year annually around this time we start to get ready for the hiring cycle so that we're looking at that the subcommittees have been working very diligently have
069come up with some identified areas and soon to be making recommendations on how to adjust those areas that they would like to proceed also the other intake and process is how do we hire people and retain them retention of of staff is very very important and so that um our efforts in that in the area are looking at very very closely as well and so we continue to be working the audit committee has met with um three times worked on three components of their survey uh and they will be analyzing the results of the survey that they have taken they have three more components to do uh we've been doing this uh in early evening to accommodate parents that are on the committee and business individuals and so on and so forth of course teachers
070are on administrators and alike however we have three more sessions to do and then within a short period of time after that there will be a survey going out to all of our parents in the community and then of course this committee will look at and analyze the data from all these surveys to put forth an action plan so we've been doing a great deal of work in this throughout the year we have uh on our fridays where teachers are receiving professional development we're looking at culturally responsive frameworks that's all the curriculum and resources materials and strategies uh we're working very very much in that area to make our children feel part of what they're learning about and that they will recognize people that look like them as they read illiteracy as they work about
071in the area of science and math and so on and so forth so we're working very very uh comprehensively and very eclectically across all facets of this district in this very very important work we also have um a 30-week challenge that we give to all of the people that part of this community school community we're in week 14 of the 30 weeks almost halfway there this past week was focused on early childhood and there is discussion um in a safe environment to vote uh you know vocalize their thoughts their importance their uh their opinions uh and what they would like to see different in our school district or like to see to continue so we're doing a great deal of work in this area we continue to do that it's a major focus for us
072this year we are headed in march our school community engagement activities on our equity audit which we continue as i mentioned uh three more sessions to go there before the plans development and then we head up to week 15 in the 30-week challenge so please understand as we have mentioned many many many weeks ago that we'll continue doing that when we get into in-person board of education meetings we will bring back our uh curriculum and instruction uh team and talk about that we still have work that's being done um and will continue to be done in our code of conduct uh you know in terms of uh the work that needs to be done in that area too of course we're doing a lot of work in the social emotional learning trauma sensitive classrooms uh
073is another initiative that we're working on so there's a great deal of things going on in our classrooms so talking about classrooms what a great segue to talk about the re-entry that so many people are talking about in our community in the county and of course the state and of course the country in terms of how can we get back to what we all feel more comfortable with having our children go to class five days a week and we certainly know that there's been many restrictions that were prohibited from us doing that you know one in particular is uh what was formerly called social distancy now is called physical distancing probably a little more accurate to describe what we're talking about the distance that we are permitted to separate desks and tables inside classrooms where
074instruction usually takes place obviously obviously the size of the classrooms don't change but these restrictions really changed how we were able to provide instruction therefore many many districts went into a hybrid system but now uh world health organization the center for disease control the cdc is more famously known uh or relaxed some of those restrictions uh and said we can go from a six foot to a three foot physical distance with barriers uh and also universal masks except for when eating or breaks that teachers indiscriminately decide whether it's appropriate or where a student needs a break from the mask in the classroom but clearly understood that universal mask is a requirement we've been very closely monitored by the department of health and have given us good marks uh about the cleanliness the disinfecting of our
075rooms uh the signs that are throughout our buildings and the rigorous work that our building and grounds custodial crew has done to maintain that you walk into any one of the buildings you will see men and women with blue shirts on scrubbing walls rubbing banisters rubbing bathroom tiles they're all over the place handrails door knobs desktops etc etc etc and of course we do all that thorough cleaning uh in our evening work before uh the school day starts again now last board of education meeting i indicated that tomorrow which was friday which we sent out a survey last friday to all of our community it was posted on on the website uh mentioned in our facebook that it was there but it was primarily for those parents to ask them who are now currently in
076a remote environment for the entire year how many of you would be interested uh to a an environment increasing the number of days children come back to school whether it's four or five days it's to be determined but how many would people be interested in doing that tomorrow marks the end of that time period to respond please understand i will repeat this probably two or three times in this opportunity to address the community again right after tomorrow we will not be able to honor anyone switching from one area of let's say a hybrid to remote remote to hybrid please understand because of the restrictions of the physicality of that move we cannot do that all right so we are asking uh all of you who are thinking about it i'll talk a little bit more
077about it now in a minute all right but please understand that tomorrow is the end of the deadline right so how would we be able to do this well um the guidance is very clear right we were able to move from a six to three foot fiscal distance right with masks with a barrier what are we talking about about we have purchased the barrier that's approved by state education department it meets all fire codes we had our architects look at the material it is not plastic not plastic the material is polycarbonate material polycarbonate material these plastic and i'm going to ask mrs creed and just to show up what they look like if you can put up that a slide that will show you that we had to order two different types because of the
078shapes of the desks in many of our k5 classrooms we have more of a triangle shape desk or boomerang so we had to order a custom polycarbonate barrier and then of course a more traditional square or rectangle barrier remember these barriers are not plastic they're not flammable they meet all codes and we will continue to maintain at a highest degree of safety for our staff and students you can see here the one on the left here um many other reps right on for you but it is a rectangle here over the desk uh and it'll be adhered fixed to the desk with the velcro uh and we do have another shape more of a triangular shape for those desks that are shaped that way all right so we are trying to increase the number of
079children that can come back k12 back into our classrooms as we said from the inception of all of this back in july getting ready for the school year to begin our goal is to um bring back more children as much as we can possibly and meet the the guidelines uh and the mandates as well as we prefer in-person learning we've done a great deal of work in remote we know that but we know that there are some downsides to remote learning the amount of time on the screens and so on and so forth and but we have to look forward let's not keep looking backward let's see what we can do to to maintain where um our high standard robust curriculum instructional practices can meet and accommodate every reasonable need for our children in addition
080to the academics and performance that we're concerned about that it's not the same in a remote environment we're also concerned about the socialization student to student student to teacher teacher to student and so on and so forth that's part of growth and development as well and the activities that they participate during the school day as well as the extracurricular activities and clubs we've started those back in january we are encouraging you to participate and i want to remind everyone tomorrow is the end of the deadline to make your choice so parents please please please understand that this is critical it is safe we would not put anyone in arm's way this is polycarbonate material it is not plastic it is not flammable and we want to maintain the safety yes still universal masks are required
081walking in the hallways in in and out of the buildings will be tested when you arrive in the mornings or whenever you do arrive for the first time in the day your temperature is taken there is a screening device for our staff in addition to every time i enter a building that security person or the person out there comes up and uh zaps me with their uh thermometer quickly uh so that the understanding is that regardless of who enters our building we're doing our best to maintain that however we have to understand that um the virus is still among us in our society and that quarantine and contact tracing will continue that does not dismiss any of those please understand that that is clear right uh so uh when we send out the bulletins about
082travel uh especially as we're coming up to the spring recess in a few months uh all of that will take place we have to be very very careful again um we're trying to increase i will i will talk to the school community sometime and probably in a week or so in a town hall get into more particulars as i gather all of the data that's going to come to us by the end of tomorrow right the question is whether it'll be four days a week or five days a week we're still evaluating um all of the benefits both sides we've been getting parents talking about four days a week that they would prefer five days a week they would prefer and so on and so forth i'm looking at the advantages uh of either one
083and and some of the downside of either one of those one of which was that we're still working in a remote environment for staff right that's still going to occur there's still going to be individuals who are in a remote environment till the end of the year so that is a very very challenging learning environment for the students as well as for the teacher teaching that in that environment we have to be mindful of that we've been very successful in providing the instruction of that and professional development under this new type of classroom environment for our teachers it's critical you can't build a plane while driving in the air flying in the air you just cannot do that so we need to provide time to um train work out the the kinks in all of
084this uh and uh keep keep our children engaged in a remote environment but i know uh parents uh are somewhat frustrated uh in some uh situations about this and i am we all understand this but we're working with you and i cannot tell you how fortunate we are with your cooperation and collaboration with the school district and so that we continue working together to move forward in a successful manner we're probably going to start this uh when we come back from our spring recess uh probably the uh the second week in april that uh april the 12th and that that's our target date um as we get these polycarbonate barriers into the district uh to assemble them and so on and so forth as you can see now that this recently has come to pass
085school districts in our county in the state and around our country are all going after the vendors because there's not uh a whole lot of vendors that have met the requirements for new york state new york state has a very very high level of requirement for safety and you know uh we are meeting that by the uh materials that we are going to put in the classrooms so um again i know i'm being repetitive here but i think it's for a purpose uh please if you haven't filled out the survey it's up on our website very easy you see access to get to it it's only a few questions it takes a few minutes or less to fill out there are not very many questions on there uh just simply asking if you are in
086a remote environment if you'd like to come back for more in person learning uh whether it's four or five days a week um we want to know that so we can arrange that and assign the appropriate balance in classrooms and so on and so forth and again after tomorrow at the close of business tomorrow let's say five o'clock tomorrow we will not entertain people moving from one environment to another because we have to maintain that stability to understand we have transportation issues to work out ensuring the safety and distancing is in our cafeterias and so on and so forth that's contingent on the numbers that come into our buildings okay are there any questions from the board of education regarding any of my report i would i'll entertain him at this time yes mr cosenzo
087where are these uh petitions made where are they made yeah uh i don't i i don't know the particular state um that it's made they're they're from uh i have it over here in a report that i just received this afternoon um i don't know you don't have to do that now okay sorry i believe i believe they're from new york city in rochester then rochester there we go all right how tall are they well i would say they're about three and a half feet tall three feet somewhere in that vicinity [Music] and they wrap around they have three sides so it looks like in order for them to work the student would have to kind of sit and have their head inside well we have the uh we show you the example we tested
088them here here at central office if you sit right behind like you normally had the flaps come out i don't you don't have to put your head totally in there remember when people speak the particles move out so it protects and meets the requirement uh for safety uh mr del maro yes yes i just want to say that you have as one of a fellow as a member of this wonderful body of trustees you have my full support for every endeavor that you take to make it possible for our children to return to full-time class instruction and that we are with you and that uh i will support every measure that will ensure that and i think all our colleagues rather feel the same way uh it's i think it's time for our children to
089go back and but uh if i have any disappointment i i will it's really with the state of new york i believe that the city of middletown we have i think when it comes to health concerns there is a crisis of equity we are a community where the demographics are the ones are among them that have the highest risk with the covet virus and yet we have been orange county as a whole last in line in vaccination as well as for other medicines that uh for prevention or treatment that should not be weak i believe that overwhelming majority of our parents want the kids to go back asap but their big concern is health because of the demographics cons the effect on the demographics be it age or ethnicity we know that the virus took
090a high toll on people particularly of african-american or hispanic backgrounds as well as many others the buyer doesn't discriminate based on race or color yet there has not been the focus the fact that just this last week the senior citizen center is going to be the kobet dispensary from middletown i think it's a disgrace uh i mean a small place i would have expected the elks lodge or maybe the walmart parking lot or okay and again i'm not just speaking about vaccination my position there is voluntary definitely not mandatory voluntary but other medications i believe our community needs that focus because i believe once that's addressed more parents will feel more comfortable again i support our district's efforts and i might and i would like to see the state of new york our governor i
091would like to see our other elected officials our county legislature and wherever it may be to step up to the plate a little more and make sure that our community is in the radar this isn't our time to be silent it's time to be proactive and uh there's been and our children deserve the best and i thank you for your efforts we're with you there and uh let's keep moving forward i appreciate those and i certainly welcome yours and every board member and parent in this community staff employees for their support i thank you and i really do genuinely appreciate that but i think it's important to know in terms of trying to allay some of the concerns and apprehensions of parents about the safety the fact is very very clear right the contact between
092children and teachers and children in terms of getting the virus is extremely low it is nowhere near the community the positivity rate uh is so low in our schools not only the school this school district all the school districts in terms of that you know uh yes we have to quarantine yes we have to put students out of the school environments because they're quarantined mostly because of what's happening outside the school district but it is the the positivity rate is far below the percentage rates regardless it spikes or even as it dips down as we know we've seen you know we're just before the mid-winter break the weekly we had off in february the positivity ray really dipped well below where it was several several weeks ago and a lot of that had to do
093about that uh holiday pause that was suggested by the orange county department of health however um as a result of uh this mid-winter break we have seen now in the county we've seen the in the school itself the positivity rates comparatively speaking are starting to increase again but along with all what we have doing is i've been mentioning from time to time in these opportunities to address the community whether it's a town hall that we've conducted or at uh excuse me or at the superintendent's reports during board of education meetings and the multiple letters sent home right the safety is paramount that we concern ourselves with in terms of disaffecting uh providing masks where children may have forgotten or an adult may have forgotten the cleansing of all of the walls and materials that are
094in our school district needs to be commended and also communicated to our parents that it is safe to return i would not be moving in this direction if i did not think that it was safe to return to school we're able to do this now that we weren't able why somebody said why did you do this like five months ago at six feet we were not allowed to do that because we didn't have the space so the fact is that we are continuing to provide optimum to reasonability what we can provide in that classroom and that these polycarbonate dividers and barriers will provide that opportunity to bring more children back into the classrooms that's what we want to do so i i appreciate um your comments as well as others the esteemed colleagues on the
095board who feels of the same sentiments as well as parents but i want to assure that we take every every reasonable effort to make sure that our environments are are safe for adult and student alike yeah i just wanted to make um a couple of comments one is mr crescenzo had some very good questions especially about where they were being the partitions were being made um it's good to know that they are being made here in the u.s and um not in the country where the virus originated oh no no also um well i'm just saying how i feel and um i think many of our constituents would agree with me but anyway uh getting back to mr crescenzo he was making a good point with everything i just wanted to emphasize also that um
096the kids will still be having the mass mandate so even if they're not pulled directly into their seats then you know we'll uh still have them um doubly protected if you will thank you you're welcome i want to make another question why couldn't boces do a like a closer on on these petitions i would imagine every uh district in the county is going to be needing these yeah there's been discussion about that um and we're trying to do this in a very expeditious manner uh there has been a discussion about that uh some districts already had purchased them already um and found that uh they did not meet fire code uh and so um i know we were looking at different that's why i didn't know up the top of my head here you know
097this particular uh report that i have you didn't outline it where the it was made i know that that was rock chest it was one of them uh i didn't want to give the wrong vendors location but to answer your question directly that has been discussion about that and uh let's that still could happen i'm sure they must be on state aid no i mean on the state contract i didn't mean to say state aid i do not believe at this time that this was on the state contract no oh wow okay there were there were it was it was interesting there was a vendor i'll name nameless right uh that was on the state contract that were purporting that their product was meeting state fire codes because they were on the state contract but
098that was not so all right so we were very very diligent and insisted on finding the vendor that met the new york state fire code and it's the material i'll be i know i've been saying this a few times because it's important polycarbonate material not plastic right so matt can i can i jump in real quick sure i i want to jump in real quick because i want i want for clarity's sake i wanna make sure make sure for clarity's sake for all of us for for all the board and for all of the public that's watching um to to understand uh that what has been discussed tonight is not something that's just rising up in the middle of a a momentary discussion it's not something this this administration has been working diligently since the
099beginning of this this board has spent countless hours outside of our normal our normal working lives in discussion and looking at action plans to move forward in order to get to the place where we are now and so i don't want anybody to think that anyone's been sitting on their hands twiddling their thumbs or whatever the case may be they're working diligently toward all of this and and it's only because now uh certain as as the superintendent has said that certain uh what was called social distancing now again physical distancing has been lifted that were able to really even look at that every every district and every district in this state is dealing with the same thing but if i bring it even closer every district in this county is dealing with the same thing
100but at the same time we have different circumstances because of the size of our districts the the buildings that we that we have the the the number of our uh our staff as well as our student body and so there's a lot of balls in the air and i say this all the time there's a lot of balls in the air but this this administration has done an excellent job uh in my opinion uh in juggling all of these balls at the same time and getting us to the place where we can begin to move forward what i would encourage anybody that would listen that would listen tonight is uh i understand frustration and understand uh understand some of the things that we're all experiencing i'm a parent but at the end of the day
101i i really want to encourage just a little bit more patience as we move forward in the process um frustration frustration will cause us a uh all of us to say some things and do some things uh that we wouldn't normally do and some things that we can't take back and so uh i i i wanted to say that because the administration the district has taken a beating about this and and in my estimation i think that it's it's a little unfair uh because they have been working and we finally got to this point and they've not they have not shied away from anybody's questions they have not shied away from anybody's complaints or anybody's concerns they have done their best to answer every complaint and every concern to the best of their ability and
102so it's incumbent of us on us now as board members to to begin to also make sure that we as as representatives of the the district to the public and representatives of the public to the district to make sure that we disseminate this information uh to everyone we come in contact with to let them know and give them some assurances that uh we're working to move forward we're working to to make sure that everybody is covered and everybody is taken care of so i want to congratulate um we're not there yet we're not perfect nobody's perfect but uh i want to congratulate you for what you've done i want to graduate congratulations for all the hard work that has been put in and continues to be put in and for this board who has worked
103diligently i'm going to tell you the truth and and and anyone can say what he went the honest god truth is that many of us here sometimes we don't agree on a lot of stuff and a lot of people do it and people might be afraid to say that in public i'm not afraid there's a lot of things that we don't agree on but what i what i i have always said and i sincerely hope that everyone hears what i'm saying i sincerely believe that at the end of the day um our goals are the same uh and so the goal is to ensure that all of our children and we talk about equity when we talk about equity in every situation equity is equity is the is the is the main point of what
104we do as a district we're not good until all of our children are good and so all of our children are safe and so all of our children are are are have got have been covered we're not done so it's a constant work and this district and this administration has done such and so i just wanted to end this conversation from my perspective from my point uh with that to say uh we're moving forward we support we're going to do what we got to do let's stand together let's stick together and let's not be as impatient let's let's let's show a little patience in this process thank you thank you pastor williams i really like what you just had to say um i did want to mention that um mr gomez you also made some
105very good points about the people who are angry and frustrated do need to contact people above just the school district in the health authorities and the higher level state even at our county level in some cases especially with the health aspect because as i said two meetings ago the arbitrary conflicting guidance is very hard and i've also said at our public meeting with our lawmakers that the superintendents of large school districts such as ours are facing a tidal wave of that um but i understand the frustration of parents who want their kids in five days a week and that they feel their kids are not engaged so speak up to people you know speak up in the community speak up to the health authorities and and let people know your concerns in the public thank
106you very much and i'll just i'm tapping into that real quick and i'm done and we're done and we're going to move on superintendent just so everyone understands you have the right to complain you have the right to say what you have to say but understand sometimes we don't have control over everything so you need to go to those governmental agencies especially here in this county i know mr gomez talked about the state we've got to reach this state but this county has has more has more restrictions on it than any of our neighboring counties and so that's why you can see uh some of the neighboring counties and the schools and they're doing other things because they're not facing the same restrictions and the same guidelines that we face here in orange county and
107so until we put the pressure on all of our all of our uh constituents and just as you put the pressure on us community puts the pressure on us but we don't have that kind of control they make those decisions as it relates to the health guidelines and all the different stuff so we got to make sure that we together because we're the community we're the community we have to make sure that we we get that's your right that's your right to to write to them and let them know okay i'm done i've got to stop because i'll get my bandwagon now thank you this concludes the superintendent's report unless anyone has any other questions i'll be more than happy thank you sir thank you very much thank you just want to say we know
108what that mr bartlett's uh department is always busy but we know what you're going to be doing in the next few weeks when these uh screens come in and your your department yes sir yes ma'am that's the truth we already have that discussion already yes it's going to be busy does he will wait yes the crew will be busy let's move on action items i want to entertain a motion at this time for the approval of financial memorandum number 20. don't move move the second any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed there's so passes if you're my if you're beauty and you just wave your hand we'll catch the will catch the eyes uh uh uh motion for approval of special services member random number 17 please have a motion moved and seconded discussion
109all in favor aye aye opposed it so passes approve of i need a motion for the approval of amendment to the education law twenty two eight zero one dash a regarding pandemic planning may i have a motion please all in favor bye opposed we so passes thank you uh moving on to our committee reports are there any committee reports tonight fair funding fear funding first mr gomez the fair funding committee will be holding a meeting i had uh i think miss clark could you put on the record the date we're going to have the meeting on them the 23rd at 4 30. thank you so much and again i thank ms clark for also informing our committee members and uh and i would just asked uh an issue that was uh raised earlier i think
110that mr perrino and uh mr tarakou provide the list of those key unfunded mandates to specific not the general list but those specific mandates that our district really wants to give the boot so we could put a big effort to give them give it a boot thank you so much thank you mr gomez mr bison uh the audit committee will be meeting next thursday march 11 at 5 30. it will be a virtual meeting that date again what was that thursday march 11th next thursday at 5 30. all right thank you any other committee reports i will make my report for oxford orange county school board association our meeting was on last night uh of course it was held virtually uh we had the opportunity to meet with our our new um our new regent
111of this area miss uh miss mrs willis and uh it was a very um informative informative uh presentation that she uh she gave on last night uh i won't go back over a lot of what was said because i think i've expressed it throughout the course of this meeting and even in these last comments that i just made uh of what so many of the so many of the school districts in this county um are facing and uh and it's a struggle it's a struggle uh everyone is on the same board but what i will what i will say the one thing that came out out of it was again the need for us to advocate for ourselves and not just for us as board members not just for us as district as as district
112uh uh members of this school district but even for our community at large for our parents to make sure that they get involved in the process of writing to your uh to your elected officials and to to those that make those decisions um in in the top level and so that's what came out of that meeting last night i do know uh a lot of what was said is that the superintendents throughout the county have written letters and and combined and gotten together many other entities within the county have gotten together but until the entire community comes together and decides that they're going to uh put their voices uh in into one into one chord frame uh i'm a musician so uh and we have we have a harmony we have a harmony we can
113be in to make some difference so uh that's our that's my report from oxbow i also i also had the opportunity on this past saturday uh to uh be a part of my first meeting as a member of the nisba new york state school board association uh committee on diversity equity and inclusion and it was an awesome meeting i will have so much more to share as we are as we are moving forward but i do want to share this one comment that was made by dr uh dr oliver robinson dr oliver robinson made a comment he said that um excellence without equity is simply privilege but equity without excellence is simply tokenism and so uh i wanted to express that uh a statement that is that's been sticking with me since that day and
114so uh i'm looking forward to to more of these meetings and having the voice of those that sit in albany in the uh state department of ed as well as the legislature the work continues all right uh any other committee reports before we go on if there's no objection can we bypass roundtable tonight i know everyone's fading fast motion to adjourn thank you motion to adjourn our next second our next meeting will be win 18 march 18 march 18th we look forward to seeing you on march 18th everybody uh it's been it's been moved and seconded all in favor aye aye opposed no one's opposed to have a good night everybody middletown hi pastor good night everyone everybody thank you everyone thanks mike you