001meeting to order. Could I please get a roll call? Trusty Lakia here. Trusty Braxton here. Trusty Omecha here. Trusty Amory. Trusty Fogerty here. Trusty Copans here. Trusty Crackler here. Trusty Welton here. Trusty Witovich. Student member Ballser here. Student member How. Thank you. Please join me in saying the pledge of allegiance. Could I please get a motion to approve the minutes from January 8th? I see Ashley in a second. Lee, is there any discussion? Okay, seeing none. All in favor? That's um Oh, okay. Uh, any abstensions? Okay, so that's hang on. Six in favor and one abstension. I'm sorry. Um, can I please get a motion to accept tonight's agenda? I see Tony and then Lee. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor? Okay, that's unanimous. Um, I did not see anybody signed up for public comment.
002Is there anybody who wishes to address the board? Okay. Um, seeing nobody, we will move on to board committee reports. Does anybody have a report? Matt? Uh, the, uh, policy committee met. Uh, and Ashley uh, feel free to weigh in if I mistate anything here. You'll get a first read of, uh, a few things tonight, so I just want to go over them real quick. Uh, for policy 8130, emergency training. Uh we added uh trauma informed language to a lot of the the stuff. We've already we've been doing trauma-informed work, but we're adding it to the policy. Uh the admissions policy 5150. Um we're adding that we're communicating with parents in their preferred language. Uh and added that um students be in age appropriate grades regardless of their English language skills. Uh the curriculum uh
003policy 4200 not not much changed. We're added that the professional learning teams will have a a stake in the the curriculum. Uh policy 5251 is a new one. Uh we don't have a fundraising policy right now. And so this was the f sort of first pass at that. Um there was some uh discussion I think about whether or not it was specific enough or or focused enough about what is allowable, what isn't allowable. Um, my feeling when we came away from it is like having a policy is a great place to start and then we can fix it as we go. Um, I don't know that that was the consensus of the of the committee. Yeah, I think do you want to add anything to that, Ashley? I think everybody will do a read and
004then we can we can decide if there's anything further we want to discuss. But I think when we left the meeting it felt it felt okay, I think where we landed. Yeah. Um, are there specific things that we should be looking for or considering as people who are not on the committee? So, um, I think our concerns were that, uh, what what the groups were that were allowed to fund raise either on campus or with students was not drawn clearly enough as to what is allowable and what isn't. We talked about potentially if a I use my example. If a group like Planned Parenthood wanted to fund raise on campus, how would that be allowed or not allowed and it it's unclear in the policy if there if there are clear lines like that and
005and if there should be and I think sorry we just also discussed I mean this is this is the language that was put out by by the state like as a recommendation. So albeit there does feel like some ambiguity ambiguity, it's also do we need to get super specific. So I think that was just kind of the conversation and I I think we trying to feels like a long time ago last Monday, but we walked away um thinking, you know, like Matt said, we can use this language right now and then if we have to revisit at any point, but hoping that we don't truly need to. So because we have an we have an approval process for our clubs and I think that's what we really landed on was like we need to trust
006in that. And again, just part of that conversation did go back to that last point of any student fundraising efforts is coming from one of our board of education approved clubs and activities. And there is a process that the adviserss and the student leaders of those clubs have to submit fundraising forms that again are approved by that advisor go through a building level approval process and ultimately uh Bobby's got his eyes on it for the business office. Um so there again there are some checks and balances along the way. Um, you know, we've always had, uh, again, an approach to limit the amount of students out in the community fundraising. You know, not wanting elementary students walking doortodoor, knocking on the door. Um, but there are some legitimate things that um, do happen within schools
007when there are efforts to help support a cause that do come from student participation, interest. Um but again having having the policy kind of outline um what the expectation is and then having that process in place for further review before something gets approved I think is a is a best practice. Do any board members have any questions? Tony? Yes. Sorry. And just if this is repeating, I'm I'm sorry. But for 4,200 uh curriculum management, it seems like that um you know, the core of that is over 30 years old and then it was revisited in in 2019. What what was added or what's being revised in this uh version? It was really including uh the teaching um teams, the the professional learning units. Yeah. as part of the the thing. It's not highlighted in blue
008here. So, yeah. Thank you. Any other questions from board members about policy committee? So, I guess I'll just say that if any board members have questions at the next meeting, we will again have these policies in front of us and we will have room for discussion on those. we can pull a policy to discuss it further and we can also discuss it during the board committee report section. So, there's going to be plenty of time to ask questions and um yeah, any other board committee reports? Angie? Um yeah, property met was it last week I think and I yeah last last Monday and um talked about some repairs that to the gym and the doors around the gym that are going to be folded into our um budget going forward. So they won't be capital
009project but they'll be part of our thing. So I think finance will hear more about it and we'll hear about it during the budget process. Thank you. So, any other board committee reports? I'll just say that um Beth and I joined Dr. Patton at the Aderandic Area School Boards Association last week. Um, and it was interesting to hear again about the portrait of a graduate and the ideas behind it and how education really needs to be accessible to every student in our state rather than being um, you know, I already don't think it is, but at least here in Saratoga, but um, rather than being one-sizefits-all, really being focused on figuring out the right pathway for each student to access an education, to move forward as a learner, and to set them up for adulthood,
010um, which is really great to hear. Next, we have our student committee reports or sorry, our student member reports. Okay, this is working. All right. From Division Street Elementary, last week, their fifth grade students enjoyed a special opportunity to work with the high school coralers through a district-wide musical collaboration. Division Street No Place for Hate Club renamed itself as Project Pride. And last week, they visited classrooms to share the mission of the club and describe what Project Pride means. Students signed a contract committing to the values they stand for as a school community. Through the arts and education program, classrooms have been energized by interactive mindfulness sessions with Miss Jilly Sansone through her Ready, Steady, Focus program. Their belt team is excited to host a technology safety presentation for families on the evening of February
01110th held prior to the PTA meeting at Dorothy Nolan. Fifth graders have started their work with the drug prevention council through the Too Good for Drugs program. Fifth graders also got to meet and work with the high school coralers as a part of the district-wide musical collaboration. Their HSA is working in collaboration with their PE teachers to host some fundraising events including time on the ninja course, Mario Kart races, strider bike fun, and rollerblading. Staff is working to analyze midear data and student performance, determining the best course of action to support each child. They said it was great to see so many students already exceeding their expected growth for this time of year. At Geyser Road, they danced their night away during their annual snowball dance. Their fifth grade students also enjoyed their trip to
012the high school and their work with the Coralers. They're also happy to have the prevention council working with their fifth graders to ensure they are too good for drugs. At Greenfield last week, Christina Talamo from News Channel 13 visited third grade students as they learn about weather in class. First grade students had a presentation about birds in our backyard and their kindergarten and third grade students are continuing their work with the prevention council's apple a day program that focuses on building self-esteem, developing healthy habits, and making positive choices. Second grade students had a great grade level store ran by parents to practice counting coins. And fifth graders also got to meet and work with the high school coralers as part of the district-wide musical collaboration. This Friday evening, their HSA will be holding their annual
013family bingo night at Lake A. Their Beyond the Bell program finished up its first session and they will be running a second session and looking forward to continuing their targeted tutoring with students. They were able to serve 40 students in their first session providing tutoring before or after school twice a week. Last week, their fifth graders collaborated with the high school coralers as part of the district-wide musical collaboration. And in addition, their fifth graders are participating participating in the too good for drugs program presented by the prevention council. Elementary classroom teachers had meaningful conversations at grade level articulation last week and focused on essential standards for their future standardsbased grading report. Their drama club is working hard to prepare for their performance of Mary Poppins Jr. in March. At Maple Lab, their seventh grade students
014visited the Capitol down in Albany last week and met with Assemblyman Jim Tedesco and learned a bit about the New York State government. Over 40th and eighth graders submitted their work and poetry to Skidmore's annual art show. And Hannah Weeden's grade 8 students presented original MLK poetry at Skidmore on Monday the 19th. At the high school, the coralers welcomed all grade five students for a coral workshop last week. Students worked in groups with the coralers and then sang a finished work after the workshop. The high school is happy to report a successful January regent week while holding regular classes. The second quarter ends tomorrow and the new semester begins on Monday. The blue streak thrift had its soft opening last week and students can shop and thrift at the store for free. They are accepting
015donations to provide for their students. It is a partnership with many different groups and programs in the school including their construction classes who are working to develop shelving for the goods and their special program students can receive work-based hour learning experience. A grand opening is planned for the spring. Thank you. Thank you. That brings us to our administrative report. I changed my seat over here to the corner so I could uh see the screen. So, um we are very excited tonight uh to present uh in draft form um the kind of the first review for the board of education uh after several months of community and school engagement uh or updated strategic plan. And just to give a little historical perspective, uh the district over many years uh has had a strategic plan uh that
016kind of guides all of our district efforts and initiatives and uh again is an important uh way to make sure all of our initiatives across the districts are aligned. So when um resources are dedicated or professional development opportunities are provided to our staff um that all those things are aligned with the overall uh vision of the the school district. Um so before I came to Saratoga Springs um we had vision 2018 uh which Dr. Picarello had led and uh tremendous amount of uh opportunity there uh and achievement uh succeed by the district. uh and when 2018 rolled around is when I would join the school district. And so one of the first things the board asked was to engage the community to update uh vision 2018. Uh and so we met with stakeholders for several
017months uh starting in January of 2018 uh right up until when we opened school uh that se uh September um with feedback from our students and from our teachers and support staff and parents and community members um is at that time when we created our current pathways uh vision. And so the the mission and the vision and the core beliefs and then each year uh developing actionable items um that again uh start at that district level but then filter right down through the work that there are principles do uh leading efforts within their buildings and then teachers working collaboratively within their PL uh professional learning teams uh help align again all th those goals uh to back to uh our pathways uh vision. So that's been uh 2018 boon forward and again have achieved wonderful
018success, a lot of pride across the district of things that we've been able to accomplish through the leadership of the board of education. Um and again it it had come kind of full circle uh that we're now entering into 2026. And so with the board support uh last year we talked about using this year as an opportunity to re-engage the community uh to get feedback again from our students to evaluate where we are as a school district and where we want to be. Um and so uh starting in October, we started with a survey uh that went out to all of our students, all of our staff, out to our parents and community members. Uh so we ran a thought exchange survey for the month of October to gather initial feedback and then we spent
019the month of November and December uh starting with the board of education uh you know getting some feedback from the board uh as to uh where we are and the direction where we're headed. Uh and then we engaged a really large group. There was about 60 individuals um that volunteered to come together for about a fiveh hour u stakeholder meeting uh to provide further feedback and developing um that mission and that vision and and reestablishing our our core values and beliefs and then starting to think about what action plans would look like uh for the next four to five years uh of the school district. Um so over the Christmas break um while we were here uh you know kind of putting all of this information together based on all the feedback that we received
020from our stakeholders. Um we worked with Kevin McGawan who was a superintendent out in Brighton. Uh Kevin did a really great job facilitating the process to make sure that we you know engage as many of the stakeholders as we possibly could. Uh so tonight just again we're excited to kind of share where we are in draft form. Uh again, we think we've done a nice job capturing uh a lot of the feedback that we have received. And after tonight's initial presentation to the board, uh what next steps you'll see there's going to be a kind of an actionable item at the end of the the presentation is we'd like to get back to those 60 members. Um allow them have the opportunity to read the document as it as it currently stands to provide any
021additional feedback. uh and then in February uh bring the final product back to the board of education uh after we've made those final adjustments and edits uh to the existing document and ask the board to adopt uh the updated strategic plan uh which would then uh again allow us to share it out with all staff and with all the community and again this would be our guiding document uh moving forward. So tonight, um, after a quick introduction from myself, I'm gonna ask both Lisa and Dave and Bobby each to take a portion of this to kind of review, uh, some of the information that has been gathered. Um, and again, I'll I'll finish it up about, you know, how this document is going to help us create actionable item steps and, uh, you know, developing
022goals as we move forward into the future. Um so this is just an introductory page uh explaining pathways excellence and again where that title kind of we wanted to uh give credit to the pathways mi vision and mission uh that has kind of led us uh to where we are today. Uh but updating uh that and the excellence and what we achieved to do for all of our students. Uh so updating the strategic planning process obviously uh will be continue to be the backbone of the work that we do uh serving all students uh for the next several years. Uh so that's just a welcoming introductory uh letter from both myself and from Natalyia as the president of the board. Uh just an overview of the process. So how we intentionally engaged all the members
023of the community. Uh obviously student voice was critical uh in evaluating our current mission, vision and core values and then engaging that large group of of u both district and community stakeholders. Um facilitating some action planning sessions with the board of education and with district leadership team. Uh setting that kind of roadmap uh moving forward to make sure uh not only is it transparent but there's accountability and it's future focused. Uh and again you see the timeline line there where we started in uh in October with the community feedback through the thought exchange survey. Uh in November we had that draft mission and vision developed by the board of education in our leadership team. Uh the large community group uh assembled in November. Uh then we started kind of uh following up on some of
024the action plans that that uh committee uh initially uh provided us some feedback on and then revisions over the last month or so uh of creating this document that you see tonight uh by our leadership team and then obviously it's important for us to be able to communicate this out uh to the staff and to all of our community stakeholders. So who we are again this is obviously our shared purpose our uh aspirations and expectations we want to make sure that we're clear. So these are updated so a little different um based on everybody's feedback uh from our current pathways. So our updated mission is to prepare all learners to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Uh driven by our vision, our school community will foster a safe, welcoming, and rigorous learning environment that values
025relationships, promotes meaningful connections, and respects the individuality of each learner. And it continues to be driven by our core values of equity of opportunity, community, and collaboration. And one of the conversations that we had throughout this process, if you remember previously, we had personalization uh as its own core value and really the feedback that we heard from everybody, it's really embedded into all the things that we do. Uh so uh you know ensuring that each learner you know making sure that every person and that that collaboration obviously working collaboratively um you know that personalization continues to be an important aspect but uh but we felt that it's now truly embedded into all that we do. Uh so the core values uh will will continue with equity of opportunity community and collaboration. Uh this is just
026kind of an outline and a little summary about our district, about our community. Um the our leadership team from the board of education uh and our district administrative team uh the plan itself. So kind of a narrative uh of some of the important uh aspects that we heard back from our stakeholder groups that help drive the priority areas. Um again both from mission and vision those core beliefs and then into those action plans and then uh really uh synthesizing it down to three priority areas. Uh first focus on academic excellence and the student experience. Uh so uh Lisa is going to speak to that. Uh collaboration and what collaboration uh looks like in a variety of forms. And Dave's Dave's going to speak uh about collaboration. And then finally operational excellence about again how do
027we dedicate and re utilize our resources uh to ensure uh student success. Uh so Bobby's going to speak a little bit about the operational excellence piece. So these are the the three priority goals um have goals uh directly aligned to those three priority areas. And then you'll see uh there's action steps um again that will you know are ongoing because over the next four years we anticipate this is going to be the focus uh of our work. Uh and again I'll talk a little bit about what that process may look like um uh kind of continuing our efforts of each year updating this uh with very strategic uh and smart targets uh that will help us drive the work. So, I'll turn over uh for Lisa to just talk briefly about the academic excellence and
028student experience uh action plan. Great. Thank you, Mike. Um trustees, it's really exciting to uh reflect on the experience um working with teachers from across the district, administrators, parents, uh as well as students. So our uh priority areas and what you'll see um as far as they're organized um uh there is a goal. So for academic excellence and the student experience our goal was we will provide an engaging rigorous curriculum that empowers all learners to think critically, communicate effectively, innovate and reflect on their personal growth as global citizens. Some of you may be hearing echoes of the portrait of a graduate that you've mentioned and that was deliberate. Uh we leveraged the wording from that because we knew that that's the direction that we will be moving in not only as a mandate from from
029the state but really um it makes sense because it's preparing um the academic part the personal growth part creativity problem solving and preparing students not only for whatever their work life will be um post Saratoga but also as contributing citizens. And so under the action steps um for this goal uh it was divided into uh three parts. The first is engaging and enriching curriculum instruction and assessment. And um under each of those areas are descriptors. I know you can read them. I'll just briefly um provide some insight. The curriculum is the what and the why of uh the content that we teach. And the conversation about this was very rich in terms of um making sure we're continuously reflecting and refining to make sure content is relevant and um that we are it's important that
030we explain um why and how it can be used um and have our students thinking about that as well. The next uh column over are the people responsible for that. And I know we know how much you love acronyms. So PLTS are there front and center, professional learning teams, which are a key part. As you know, they're organized at the elementary level uh by grade levels and then secondary by content and grade levels. Um and then the time frame for it is ongoing. One of the things I'll point out under curriculum is that the curriculum renewal teams you hear presentations from every year. Um so we have some mechanisms already in place that really fit nicely uh with this uh instruction is how we teach and again the conversation about that was making sure that
031we are using evidence-based um strategies. we talk there's a lot of research out there but the evidence-based piece is important that um it's actually was implemented and shown to have a positive impact on student learning and we're already doing uh more work in that. Uh and again our instructional staff um administrative teams and through professional learning we're focusing on that and ongoing. And um the last part under that assessment um it's how we um give students the opportunity to show uh to demonstrate what they know and making sure we're doing it in varied ways and providing hands-on, relevant, realistic um opportunities and application and using u community partnerships. So some great conversation about that. The second uh action step, equity of opportunity, rigor and supports. You've heard us talk about um MTSS, multi-tered systems of
032supports. So that's a great example of where personalization is woven right into uh the work um and the support for professional learning for teachers and administrators to be able to provide that um targeted support whether it's academic um or it's through our um related service providers who are our social workers, psychologists, uh occupational therapists, uh physical therapists, counselors, etc. Um and then um underneath that of course is incre in increasing student achievement across the board and you'll get more uh details similar to how we uh work under the pathways from each of the buildings about this. And then the last piece, but it's a really important piece that actually um is a thread that runs through all of the action steps, but um we felt it was such a big piece of the conversation and
033so important is that elevating student voice and engagement. Um and that goes into not only the extracurricular uh opportunities for students, uh but it's also student voice and choice within the classrooms too. um obviously age appropriate, but building it in where you can to create those um u innovators and uh problem solvers and more independent thinkers. So, we're really excited about the conversations that we had. Um it was hard to pair it down. You know, I could talk forever on this, so I'm just going to be quiet um at this point. Happy to um answer questions you may have later. Uh but I'll turn it over to Dave to talk about collaboration. Thanks Lisa. So priority two is collaboration. Um we will promote active school and community partnerships for all learners to feel supported, value
034and connected. So you look at some of the action steps you have professional development and support um collaborate and we kind of spelled out professional learning teams PLTS um which is something we're already doing. um strengthening our curriculum, refining our instructional practices. As Lisa said, there's work to be done looking at how we assess um with a portrait of a graduate coming and looking at are we measuring those potential success skills that are required in a portrait of a graduate. Um provide re or effective and relevant professional development opportunities. Um there's a professional development plan, professional development committee that meets um multiple times throughout the year. We're engaging our staff um and offering PD courses uh through a variety of different ways. Um and again trying to promote growth um from our our individual learners
035and our our stu our teachers. Um consistent and timely communication establish consistent feedback loops to collect, review and respond to stakeholder input. Um and also streamline communication systems. The last few years I think we've done a great job. We've moved to parent square. Um we before parent square if some of you that were here we were kind of all over the place and we communicated from a lot of different ways and a lot of different platforms. So whether you like parent square or not at least it's a kind of a consistent system that our teachers are using to communicate with families um across the district K through 12. Um and that's how our buildings are communicating out as well. So we've heard a lot of good feedback from families that they like that consistent platform
036that we're using. And then I think there's um an action plan under um another action step is safe, welcoming, and affirming environments. Um and again, there's committee work throughout the district working on creating a safe, welcoming, and affirming school environment. Um we've done a lot of work and you I know the board has seen some of this. I think you saw some of it tonight regarding um using restorative practices um consistently enforcing the code of conduct and demonstrating mutual respect for all. So that's a work in progress for us, but I know we're a leader in that area. We've made great strides with uh the work that some of the committees have done and some of our administrators, teachers, staff, and students are working on right now. And I think I'm going to pass things
037over to Bobby. All right. Thanks, Dave. Um so I'll talk about the third priority, which is operational excellence. Um and the goal associated with that priority area is maximize the effective and efficient use of district resources, create flexible and innovative learning environments through the legacy project and strategically manage enrollment. Um so the action steps um are I think pretty familiar to most of us considering you know what we'll talk about tonight is just the beginning stages of budget development. So the very first uh effective and um or action step I would say to address the effective and efficient use of resources is to develop and maintain annual and multi-year financial plans um that will align our resources to the student learning needs um uh plans that sustain highquality programs and um ones that preserve long-term
038fiscal health. So you'll see the people responsible for this and we said that this was an ongoing item because this is truly something that we do um on a continual basis from the start of the year when we first implement the budget. We're talking about things um at a committee level uh at finance um uh just about things that we expect to come. Um so this is this is again something that we keep our finger on the pulse of just to make sure that we are um we do have the ability to meet the needs um going which you know you guys are familiar they change pretty much daily it seems. So, we want to make sure that we're in a position to to meet those needs. Um, continually continuously improve the operational efficiencies and
039effectiveness of food services, transportation, and facilities and operations departments. Um, so this is things like, you know, transportation has been a focal point over the last few years. The trouble that we've had securing drivers, how do we address those things? those those discussions uh engaging in um the transportation study, those are all part of trying to be um efficient and excellent uh in terms of maximizing those resources and also being responsive. Lisa talked about, you know, um elevating student voice and engagement and that's something that I know food services really tries to do um to be responsive to what the students like um what they dislike as well. you know, things like that we can pull off the menu. Um, the other thing that I would say also, just not written here, um, but acknowledging
040the participatory budgeting because that's something also that really is unique, um, to our school district. Um, but that also in the budget process helps to elevate student voice and engagement as well. Um, so turning to the the flexible and innovative learning spaces, that's more closely aligned with the capital projects that we've been doing. So, I know everyone's well aware we're in the middle stages of the December 2020 legacy project. Um, and then we had the voters approve uh in May the the uh May 2025 legacy project. So to address those um that that action step, it's continually to develop the long range capital plans, collaborate um and provide innovative learning spaces and uh base it on input from stakeholders to support the diverse learning needs of students. Um so we've also made it a point
041to make sure that we continue the expansion of um classroom upgrades um even though they might not be identified which is this uh next next uh part of this action step is utilize that five-year building condition survey. So, like I was saying, even if classrooms might not be identified as a as a priority area, we make it a local priority area because we know it's important to keep um the learning environments updated not only for students but for our our teachers as well. They deserve um the most up-to-date um you know and cutting edge spaces to deliver uh the instruction. And then the last one um is enrollment management. Um so in February uh we will have Capitol District Regional Planning Commission um here presenting the enrollment report. Um but this kind of goes in
042line with this action step which is to utilize effective uh enrollment management strategies to support responsible use of district resources including our facilities staffing transportation instructional programs. Um and this is something that we also involved transportation in. Just the other day we were meeting about flex zones and you know potentially looking at tweaking some of these zones. That's based on the committee work that that was done last year um at the flex zone committee level. So things like that are uh you know done consistently pretty much on an uh evergreen basis here just they're they they don't stop and what they do is they just consistently change. So these are just the items that are here to address um these things and all of the people involved. So if you do have more specific questions
043about that in the future, feel free to reach out. So just uh again some outline for next steps and the accountability measures uh that we'll be reporting back to the board on our progress. Uh so tonight obviously the presentation to the board uh looking for uh obviously the continued input from the board tonight as well as our stakeholder committees. Um having the the final presentation for board adoption in February. Uh getting this information out obviously to our faculty and staff and to the community. Um obviously this is going to help drive a lot of our budget recommendations uh for expenditures you know for future years during the budget development process. um uh obviously updates to the the board and the community throughout the spring and then each summer in July historically what we've been doing
044for the last several years uh is each year identifying ways to kind of measure the progress as to what does this look like at grade level you know within each of the buildings uh setting academic targets uh and then again sharing that information with the board uh each year as to kind of what are those uh targeted areas are. So, you know, think of this as a more of a blueprint, our overall vision. Uh, and then each year in July, uh, we'd be having planning meetings, you know, with the, um, instructional leaders and the board's input, um, to, uh, to provide updates for each year for so for this July, we'd be looking at the following school year. So for at least the next three summers uh over this four-year strategic plan of identifying what
045those individual goals would be for the school year uh and then again to continue this process and keeping it fresh and looking to update uh that by the fall of 2029 uh again to re-engage the board and the community um again just to keep our uh strategic uh plan a living document uh that again helps us inform and and drive the work that we do with our with our students. And again, I know the text is a little off on this slide. It doesn't do that when I print it. Um, but uh this is just to recognize that community stakeholder group. And like I said, there was about 60 volunteers uh that help provide feedback. So, this will be the group that after tonight that I'll uh be reaching out to to make sure uh
046that they have an opportunity to offer their feedback as well. And that's it. So any initial um feedback tonight from the board for having the opportunity to now to read it and hear from some of the folks based on all the feedback that we've received from our stakeholders Lee. So first of all I want to say thank you to everyone. I know that this is a really big heavy lift um and this is a really great document to have had the opportunity to review and also want to thank everyone who participated. Um as a researcher I'm always endlessly grateful for people who give their time and uh energies and thoughts um to to things like this. Um I was wondering if you could say just a little bit about how well the proposed pathways and
047and values reflect the range of community input. Um I was just wondering if for example the feedback largely converged around a couple of ideas um or you know if there were many distinct perspectives if that varied by the different segments that were represented like students, teachers um were there any things that you felt were not able to be captured um in in this? Again, uh the survey that we sent out, um we had well over 2,000 responses. And so when you looked at the breakdown, uh for responders, we had a great representation. Mostly it was high school student responses of of the students who did respond. Uh we had students who participated in our in our breakout sessions. So the students had an opportunity to um give us even the feedback on the survey results
048is what we heard from the survey is that actually you know what students are most interested in. Uh and then again between our faculty and our staff participation and then parent participation um uh Kevin has done similar work in district school across the state and he he was pretty impressed about the level of participation uh that we had here in Saratoga. You know Saratoga Springs, you know, when you put out a survey to get over 2,000 people to respond uh captured a a pretty nice wide range of of participants. Um and then having 60 members, you know, come that night when we spent about five hours um making sure we kind of captured um you know, the review of this of the survey. Um we did uh for the folks who were there that night.
049I think one of the most kind of inspirational things was having those high- five presentations, you know, five minutes of fame uh where each of the buildings had an opportunity to kind of come up and talk about, you know, things they're most proud about their school, the challenge that each of the schools face, and then what are the opportunities for the future. Uh and again, that helped drive a lot of this uh work as well. Um so again in a three-month process having board input having community input um students and staff uh as well as those 60 you know individuals who dedicate that time it it felt like we we had really encouraging participation for the through this process. Right. And so when looking at the underlying data set that you have of like the
0502,00 plus um were you you know when you were looking at that to sort of extract these themes and ideas was there any like look at that level of of you know the different segments that were participating or or sort of like you know individual Yep. Yep. So actually we were able to present back to the committee each like by building you could you could look at the data um by which subgroup had responded. So whether it was staff members um participation, student participation or community participation. So there is that data we still have available that we could include if that you think that it'll be helpful if people want to be able to kind of hey what were those themes that came out from each of the groups and then to pull all that
051together and into one document. As Lisa had said it was a challenge you know because again we could have had probably 10 12 things. We started with a list from the night of the six 60 participants those action items there some of them were 15 long and we knew you can't do 15 of anything. So how do you try to incorporate as many of those ideas into one actionable item. So um but that that was the that was the probably the greatest challenge. No, absolutely. I mean, I um am dabble in qualitative research and and I'm very well uh um familiar with the the challenge of extracting uh core themes that really capture uh breadth and and depth and and do so um in in in ways that um are like we seem mutually exclusive,
052you know, completely exhausting. One of the things I was impressed by, and again Kevin was pretty masterful at it, was the utilizing the technology tools that as people put their responses in, it prioritized and then people could use within thought exchange of of a ranking of of the feedback, you know, so everything would rise the to the top even though we had a hundred comments sometimes um comments that were most often referred referred to or, you know, liked by responders, uh, things that rose to the top. So, that that was also a really neat tool that I hadn't, you know, seen used in the past that kind of helped, you know, direct the work. Yeah, the survey was was really cool. I I guess I'm just um wanting to just uh make sure that we
053feel that the input um is consistent or like or if it wasn't consistent across the different groups or you know if there are different areas or pockets where we weren't able to address concerns or questions or things that we're just um aware of it and that we're sort of um highlighting it here. Um I also have one other or comment. I just um you know again I think that it's really so um such a challenge to come up with these um ideas and values and and make them clear. Um, and I just I was just curious that we have some overlap. We have um uh commu uh sorry, what is it? Um there community or sorry, collaboration. Collaboration is both a value and a goal. Um and I'm wondering if that might be confusing or
054if you could just sort of um talk through that. I mean, I I can see why it was placed in these different places, but I'm wondering if using that in both of these different um ways um might be um might be confusing or might sort of muddle some of the the the messaging or if there maybe some like tweaks that you can make to maybe the value or whatever or if you've or if you had that conversation. I was just wondering. I I think that's been a central theme. You know we hear from a lot of the groups the importance of collaborate collaboration and collaborative effort um of working together with all the different stakeholder groups. Um it is one of the carryover core beliefs from our previous pathways. So I think people felt like
055hey let's it's important let's to try to maintain that. Um but your your your point is well received is it's both a core value and it's it's one of our action steps. It's both you know. Yeah. Yeah. So again, if there's another term that would be similar, um, but even a lot of the focus of our, you know, the professional development and working within teams so much is focused on those collaborative efforts. But but yeah, we can we can ask for if there's another way um to delineate the two so it doesn't look like it's it's the same thing. I can I can see why they are why that word is in places. Um and I just wanted to raise it because that might create um confusion. Good other feedback. Matt, I have a quick
056question and then I'll tell the long one. The quick question is for Dr. Cuddi. In your section, uh there was a thing listed as a CIA office and I wasn't I wanted to make sure it wasn't what I thought it stood for. No. And actually I had circled that but in my excitement I forgot to clarify that no we are not a federal entity. We are um curriculum instruction and assessment. That makes way more sense to me. Thank you. Um my sort of longer question is uh so I was really happy to sort of see certainly in the mission and the vision and the values this emphasis on relationships and connections and community. um especially sort of in the the world that we are in now and world we're traveling into those connections are going
057to be I think more important than ever for our students. I I'm not sure that I saw that that idea um carry through to the action plan. Um, and so I guess a as we're getting presentations, you know, in the future with this, I'm going to I'm hoping that those values will also be used in the in the presentation to sort of explain especi especially after our presentation today from the students how how powerful and important those sort of moves can be. I'm hoping that that that continues even though it's not explicit. I think Dave mentioned it a little bit in collaboration, but for the most part, it's not wasn't really explicitly in the the action steps. And again, I think the philosophy of your core beliefs is they're embedded in everything that we do,
058you know. So that's why it's important that those three or four things are consistently applied. Um, I just wanted to, I guess, have a direct response to something that Matt did bring up, which is just in this document, especially as we're expecting members of the community who are not, you know, at two meetings a month with this group um or working in the schools um to be, you know, reading through this information. Can we make sure that these acronyms are like spelled out the first time? Sure. And then that way, that way it's just clear. Um because I also noticed, you know, PLTS are obviously something that we're discussing every meeting. Um but definitely there are people who won't know. Yeah, Lee, a minor thing to add to that. There's administration like there's um administrators
059like maybe just defining what those differences are for for folks. Yeah, I agree with that. Any other comments or thoughts or questions? Angie, I just want to compliment how um streamlined I feel like this is and the three going down to three um and putting equity of opportunity at the top because without that we go nowhere. Um I I just it's been a really great process and I also really appreciate going back to that group of 60 and allowing them to look at it again and see the fruition of all of what they put in in those. What was it? Four hours. It was a lot of hours. Five hours. Um, and then be able to see does this reflect what we see, what we said, what we heard. Um, I'm so impressed with our
060community and all the engagement. I think it's makes it really um easy to get behind our budgets and our votes and and really stand behind the district when there's that much support in our community. And this document even is really snazzy looking. So, great process. Um, having gone through the last one, uh, this is really impressive. Did you have your hand up? Okay. Any other comments or questions? Okay. So, this process is obviously still ongoing. So, if anything comes up, um, we should still time for feedback. Yep. Still plenty of time for feedback. Okay. Perfect. So, I just want to make sure if board members have something else that arises, they should email you directly. Okay. Perfect. Um just before we move on to the next presentation with Bobby and Joe, I do want to
061take the opportunity just to thank Principal S um for the tour tonight. It's our it was our visit official visit to the high school and we heard from several of our students and teachers and adviserss uh who have been huge supporters of our restorative practices and supporting all of our community building efforts uh through their student leadership and professional development. uh and Jill Calburn and Chris Connley uh who are our conduct and restorative instructional coaches for the PD that they provide uh for their colleagues. Uh again, all those uh community circles and community building efforts uh are definitely as we hear from our students having a direct impact on improving uh culture and climate uh for our students experience uh here at the high school. So, uh, but again, I just want to recognize and
062and thank the students for their support and to our administrative team and the teachers for everything that they do for our students here at the high school. So, we do just have uh the one additional that that was all part of my superintendent's comments tonight for the pathways to excellence. Uh, but we do have one presentation. It's our annual staffing and our pre-budget outlook. Uh, so at this time, I'll turn it over to Joe Greco and to Bobby Esco. I think Can you hear me? Yes. No. Me? Good. All right. Well, hello everyone. I'm Joe Greco. I'm your new director of personnel development. Um, so I kind of just again walk you through the staffing. This is very similar to what you've seen previous years, uh, when Hillary and Michael would give the presentation. So
063really just trying to build off of the template that you've seen. So again, we can see some historical data, kind of show you where we are and then some plans for moving forward. So in our department right now, uh, the structure is after I took over in September for Hillary, uh, it's the four of us. So, we have two HR generalists and one HR coordinator. In the end of October, I believe Michael was able to find employment closer to home. So, Michael has left us. Bye, Michael. Um, so now that Michael is out, uh, this entire time we've been without our HR coordinator. Um, so it's been a little bit tough as far as the transition uh for me uh again because I'm losing some of the historical knowledge with Hillary because Hillary definitely set
064the bar very high with uh her organization and structure. Um but again, some of that knowledge leaves with Hillary and it also a lot of knowledge leaves with Michael at the same time being the coordinator. Um but has also helped me kind of gain a lot of insight into all of what's happening in the department. um and also showing some blind spots that we might have in the department as far as crossraining and making sure that everybody understands the different roles that if somebody goes down other people can kind of jump into those roles seamlessly. So I think we've done well uh but again it's been a little bit of a struggle. Now keeping with the themes again coming from the business office of trying to operate lean and mean um this might be a
065little bit too lean for us to be uh with 1100 employees just the three of us. Um, so what we're looking at right now is replacing that HR coordinator position uh with a little bit more structured clerical position. This will allow some clerical task to come off of the HR generalist and maybe a little bit more structured or technical uh HR type of jobs going back out to those uh individuals that would be a little more suited for that. Um, this is a very similar structure to the way it used to be for the last 10 or 20 years. again, we're just kind of getting a little bit more lean and mean. Um, and I think we can do that with this structure. Um, so just again very big over, you know, arching view of
066what's in our office, but basically anything that's doing with any of our legal um, you know, compliance, civil service or any of our collective bargaining agreements, our tenure appointments and keeping track of all that certifications. I know how everyone feels about acronyms. So they are foot footnoted there at the bottom. But our CTLA which is again referring to our professional development for our teachers and our DAS or dignity for all students uh anti-bullying all that's tracked in our office uh workplace violence our onboarding offboarding uh file management of all of our employees. So again there's a lot of moving parts here and a lot of legal compliance that we just have to make sure that you know tees are crossed and eyes are dotted here. So let's talk about the most important thing which is
067our staff numbers. Now I know every time that Bobby and I had talked about the budget we would always reference that around 75% of our operating expenses are salary and benefits. So it's really important that we're looking at the number of uh employees that we have and where are they distributed throughout the district. So for our overall counts here in the budget we have uh 1,084 and a half positions. I did put a little asterisk down there at the bottom. These are budgeted positions. So, we are not running at full capacity. We have you if you look there on uh our website, we have openings. We're hiring in certain areas. So, again, these things are budgeted, but we're not always running at 1,84 and a half positions. So, our distribution here, we have 29 certified
068administrators, uh 10 non-certified supervisors, uh 515 and a half non-certified staff, and then we have 530 certified staff. So, I'll give you some breakdowns of what that actually looks like. So, of those total certified staff here, um again, our overall administrators, we have 29. Our general education is 401. And at the bottom, because I know that this can be confusing, at least at the top, what makes up that general education? This is your classroom teachers, any of your special area teachers, uh academic intervention services. So, anyone who's a certified uh teacher in the district, your instructional supports, those are your counselors, psychologist, social workers, and then any of your special education teachers. Those would be the ones that are in your classroom, your direct consultant or co-e, your resource. uh but also your speech, your
069occupational therapist, physical therapists, etc. So, your overall staff history here, again, this is just giving you kind of the same thing that you've seen from Hillary over the years. Not much fluctuation across the board, uh going from 562 to 559. Um you do see fluctuation in buildings year-over-year. A lot of times that happens if we're reducing a section perhaps in certain areas, but also sometimes specialized programs move from one building to the next or things get expanded in certain areas. So you'll see some of our resources kind of move up and down across different buildings. And then for our non-certified, this is uh 236. Um again, our admins, we have three clerical across the entire district is 72. So that's anywhere from, you know, your keyboard specialist, your senior typist, clerks. Um, and then we
070have special ed aids and special ed uh teaching assistants. So again, below that table, I do have them kind of broken out because I know that there's sometimes is general confusion. What's the difference between an aid versus a teaching assistant? What are their roles? Uh there is different schooling. There's different uh you know pay differentials for them. But again, that kind of gives you an idea. And then you have your general education. Same thing, aids and general education, teaching assistance. Um, and again, those teaching assistants are providing instructional where the aids are more or less providing classroom supports. Then you have your general monitors in the buildings. And then you have your nurses, 16 across the district. So our district-wide support positions, again, similar to what you've seen previous years is how Hillary was breaking
071this out. You see HR office coordinator at the top. So even though Michael has left, we're still holding that position currently in the budget. So I still want that reflected. And then facilities operation staff um basically unchanged from previous years. Uh you'll see this get reconciled out in a later slide. And then for food service, uh you know, we have um eight kitchens, so you have 12 cooks across the district here. Um what you don't see is supervisors. So Eric um and Megan are both Capitol Region Bosey's employees. So we actually contract that service out. So even though they're working for us, that's coming from a different portion of the budget. It's not part of salaries and benefits. So that's why you're not seeing it reflected here. Uh technology has remained unchanged. and then our
072transportation staff. And we've had a lot of conversations about this over the past six to eight months about changing our CSA contract, trying to increase uh the pay for our bus drivers, trying to help out with some of our recruitment and retention efforts here. Uh so those bus driver numbers have increased. Uh we have 74 driver positions here. I believe we have 72 that are currently filled. Um but I think in 2425 that was about 100 total employees. So you're seeing again increases in this transportation section. So when you reconcile all of those slides out again this is kind of the historical looking from 201819 uh all the way to 2526. Again even just year-over-year going from last year of 181 a half to 1084 and a half pretty stable as far as our staffing.
073Again you see some fluctuations movement uh in and out of different areas. Um and obviously you see a little bit more of that jump in that transportation area. So like I said before, not all these positions are filled. So we talk about help wanted. Um teacher aids is a struggle. Now that's an entrylevel classroom support type of position. Uh so the pay is lower on a position like that. Um and they are difficult to attract. uh we also see some significant turnover in those positions which is something else that I'm again looking at future research and you see some of those research questions on the side because it's important to bring folks in but it's important to really look at well why are people leaving and sometimes we lose teacher aids to teaching assistant positions
074which is a natural progression and losing teaching assistant positions to eventual teachers again I'm okay with that that's a good kind of attrition u but if we're losing teacher aids uh to the district completely. Uh then it requires us to look inward a little bit more and find out what's causing that. Are we not providing enough support? Um what are the needs of those individuals? So teacher aids is one that we're struggling a bit with. Um but also our custodians. It's a large district. Uh we do have a lot of open custodial positions especially kind of in that second and third shift areas. Uh bus drivers we still have open positions there for. Um you see building principal on there. So that middle position. We are working through that process, but that position is technically
075still open. So again, it's just something to be mindful of that we do have open positions. Uh we're constantly looking to improve our recruitment efforts. Uh but also looking at what's our retention practices and are things are are there things that we could be doing better. So substitute fill rate. Now, this is something that I know that Hillary has shown this over the years and I wanted to continue that practice because again I want to be consistent. Um, but looking at this data, I do have some concerns and I just want to kind of talk through those with you. So, one of the first things that we look at just over the first four months, uh, because this is the most accurate right now. If you look over those four months just at the fill
076rates and I know Hillary has talked about this in the past that you know prior to COVID we were getting substitute fill rates in the high 90s even 100%. Um and then obviously after COVID we definitely saw that drop down quite a bit and then last year when you saw fill rates of 85 or you know mid 80s there it looked like we were kind of trending in a better direction and then I look at it this year and it looks like it's dropping again which is concerning. So again trying to dig into well why is that happening that we're getting less fill rates. Um the other one to look at as far as data wise in here is the need. So when you look at these needs over here um this is actually very
077positive news because I look year-over-year and I go well look at this need from uh before we had needed 1700 and now we're looking around 1,200. Um, and that trend continues. And when you look at this at first glance, you go, "All right, well, this must mean that our attendance is improving because we have less need for subs." Well, there's some issues here. One of the issues is I don't believe we're comparing apples to apples. Um, I was unaware of this in the past. I always read this as substitute fill rate for teachers. I was unaware that transportation, food service, facilities was all included in this. Now, since we've moved facilities, transportation, um, and food service over to a different platform, those numbers are no longer reflected in this current year. So, naturally, we're going
078to see a lower need when you take those individuals out. So, the comparison data, again, that's going to be an issue when you take those individuals out. There wasn't a real good way that I can go back and kind of pull all that data apart. Uh because again, we're looking at multiple systems and they're not really talking to each other as cleanly as I would like. So, moving forward, we'll probably just be looking at this as a standalone teacher attendance and kind of look at that year-over-year. The other piece in here about the fill rate, um I was unaware of this, um but again, this makes sense. substitutes when they get that call in the morning uh on whether or not they want to take that job, they can refuse that and they can refuse
079because they know exactly what that position is. So they may say, "I only take math positions at the middle school or they may, you know, be wide open or they say I don't take Mondays and I don't take Fridays." So our substitutes, even though we may have more and more substitutes, that doesn't mean that they are naturally going to fill these vacancies that we have. Um other things to consider are certain substitutes choosing not to sub in certain buildings or into certain programs. And again, that's going to require us to dig a little bit deeper into the data to again not just automatically go, well, we're having problems with subs, so we need to add more subs. Maybe we need to again look inward and see what are some of the issues that we're having.
080Not only just our attendance issues, but again, are subs choosing these certain uh positions? And if they're not, why not? Um and then this sub requests again just we've got to be cautious with this number. Um because when I get the daily reports on subs I see that teachers will indicate no sub needed. Um and again sometimes this happens with uh half day where I can get somebody down the hall that's going to cover my class so I don't need a sub from the budget side of things like yeah we don't have to pay a sub. Um, but when you're trying to look at this data and kind of use use it for some meaningful conversation, um, that could be misleading. Um, if and we have this also with uh, academic intervention services. Sometimes if
081I'm not going to have kids pulled out of class to me and then I cancel my sessions, that could be another indication where I don't need a sub even though the teacher is out. So, it may not be telling us the full story. So, again, it's not bad data up here. I just want us to be kind of cautious on how much we glean from it moving forward. One piece of data that is interesting though is when you do look at the substitute request just yearover-year. So this is 22 23 23 24 25. Now if I add in 25 26 obviously this is going to be lower because again we've removed the facilities food service etc. But look at the pattern when you see that the increase in October, then it goes back down November,
082December, then increase again in January, down in February, up in March. So looking at a pattern like this, then it starts to peique my interest on why do we have that? We've typically kind of looked at this very isolated almost on a weekly basis where we go well we have a lot of SS on Fridays funny um or Mondays but you know the middle of the week it seems to be a little bit leveled out but we're also seeing some strange patterns here uh during the school year. So again, we'll try to dig into why we see some of that, but this could be useful data for us and at the administrative level when we're planning professional development and not hitting certain times of the year that we might exacerbate the problem even more. So
083again, trying to manage this. Now, some of this could be tied into shorter months or months where you have holidays in. That could be a natural progression in here. Some of this could be tied to outdoor temperature. Who knows? But again looking at this critically to kind of see these patterns and then adjust some of our practices as a result of that. So wrapping up here uh just what's next for the personal development office? Uh communication. So one of the things that we've done just recently everyone got their yearbook pictures taken. Not everyone loves their yearbook picture. I've gotten plenty of emails about that. Um but what we've done is tied everyone's yearbook photos to their email account. So now any of the emails that folks receive in district and again we're talking 1100 employees
084here um it is nice now to actually have a face with the email uh it is not only positive from a safety and security issue on who's sending these emails um but again it's helping us kind of put names and faces together and making a very big district just that much smaller. Um again improving some of our communication with our guidance documents that are going out. uh looking critically at our hiring plan, making sure that we're keeping up to date with that and doing refreshes as necessary. Uh from a customer service standpoint, we are updating onboard uh materials and practices, trying to get a little bit more digital um with our processes here. Uh again, developing tools and training materials, videos. Um, and then for our CSEA groups, what's new in the last CSA contract
085is that some of our groups are required to now use electronic time uh piece. So, they're scanning in and out. So, we're kind of transitioning over to that. So, that's a big lift uh for a lot of individuals, but again, it's working through that process and helping people with that process. Uh, but ultimately, it should improve our attendance. And then finally, just outreach. And I know this is kind of a little bit of an outlier for the personnel office, but kind of a carryover from my work in the business office is to help support the participatory budgeting program. But again, that was where we decided to set aside uh some funds, $25,000 for high school students to come up with different ideas, work with administrative teams on coming up with feasibility of these different ideas,
086put them on a ballot, have an authentic vote, which the vote will be in this room on March 23rd, 24th. Uh we've already contacted the county board of elections and we're going to have actual voting machines in here. So it is going to be as authentic as it possibly can be for our students. Um I would encourage you if you want to know more information on how this process is going. Sydney and Olivia are both participating uh on the panel of students that are working through this. So, at some point, I would encourage you to reach out to either one of them and kind of talk to them about their experiences. Uh, because this is not adult-driven. The adults are helping to kind of keep things organized. Uh, but all of this, the ideas, the
087investigations, uh, how ballots are developed, the whole voting process, that is all student driven. U, so the students are doing a remarkable job. So, again, I would encourage you to reach out to them for more information on it. And that's all I have for staffing. So I gladly take questions. This is the first time that I've seen um it's been on my radar that we have bus assistance and I'm wondering if uh well I'm sure we've had them and there's a number there every year but it's just been on my radar especially with the retention issue with bus drivers. Are we do we have more than we used to or are we adding bus assistance? Um I I'll double check and I'll get back to you on the number year-over-year, but I think we're pretty
088flat on the bus assistance. It's the bus drivers that we're having more of the issue. Okay. Do they ro like are they roving assistance? So they are they assigned to certain buses that need help with student population? Primarily our bus assistants are working with our special needs buses and those students to to support them. Okay. All right. Mhm. Okay. Okay. That was the role I was thinking more of. And I'm wondering if there's only a few then maybe Not much to see, but if that helps with retaining bus drivers if they have Yeah, exactly. Okay. Interesting. All right. Thank you, Matt. Um, that's that was great. Thank you. I thought it was really clear. A question about the uh substitution page. Um, the needed col the needed rows. What is that? What is that number
089about? Is that a is that that can't be days or like a sub for a day? Like you can't have needed 2,000. So that so in the month of so we'll look at September. So in the month of September there were 1,261 subs needed. So there could for the whole day there could have been well there could have been 40 in one day and 40 in another day. So as you add that up through No, I mean I understand. I just but it it feels like a very like I looking at October and that's that's like 70. Are these all teacher subs? So that last that last one in there 25. Yeah. Yes. Because now we no longer have facilities, transportation or food service in there. Okay. So I mean that just seems like a
090very large number to me. I mean I was I was trying to do the math like it seems like 70ish a day. Some some days are definitely higher than others. Now, again, you want to be cautious with some of these numbers because even if I'm putting in for a half day sub, it's still it's going to show up as a full one on that. Yes. Okay, great. And then I This is a question I guess probably for for Dr. Patton. We we do we have a student presentation on the participatory budget already on the schedule somewhere? Um so we don't have a formal one. Um, but you have two members of your board that sit right on that. So, feel free to ask. I was just trying to decide if that needed to be something
091we added to agenda planning at some point. When we had our meeting at Geyser, um, we before the meeting, we had, you know, information about how Geyser had participated in participatory budgeting at the city level. And when we were walking back in from that, Olivia had mentioned that she was interested in presenting to the board as the process continues. Um, and I, for one, I'm really interested in learning more about what's going on and hearing directly from you guys about it. I can definitely bring it up. I think we have a meeting this coming Monday, so I can bring it up to both the teachers and all the students there. And I'm sure everybody would be more than happy to come because we're very excited about our projects. And so I guess I'll just ask
092right now what's the right process for the students? I mean should they connect with you Joe about that or what what is as far as presenting? Yeah. Um again I I want this to be as student driven as possible. So I'm trying to step away from it and just provide support as necessary. So whether you know Sydney wants to kind of orchestrate that with Olivia and the board again, high school seniors here, they should be able to handle this. Awesome. Thank you. Any other questions for Joe? Oh, I'm sorry. Beth already had her hand up and then Ashley, that is okay. Thank you. Um, yes, thank you for um I I really like the way that this information was organized. It was really clear. it was easy to kind of follow and make sense and
093see the relative kind of need and um how resources are spread out over the district. Um, kind of along the lines of what Matt was just asking, you know, I remember when I I think it was my first year on the board or maybe as I was anticipating joining the board or running for the spot. Um, I remember the discussions about subs being a a fairly large component of this discussion and presentation and and that it was a real burden on the schools um and on the resources and the staff um just that need for subs. And so I like that we have a more accurate number here in terms of what's actually um you know instructional staff. And I'm wondering like is that so I know it's not it's kind of apples to oranges
094a little bit with that percentage of you know the fill rate. Um but I'm wondering are you hearing that there is a burden this year? Is this is this an issue? I I think subs continue to be an issue um and they seem to be targeted in certain areas. So I've had some conversations with SSTA membership on just kind of looking at the data together. So again, we all want to solve this problem. Um and then you want to look at where do you have these issues with subs but then also why do we have certain attendance issues perhaps in certain areas and are teachers maybe not feeling supported? they're feeling burnt out and are there other things that we can do to try to mitigate that because I'd rather treat that than treat the
095symptom by trying to add more and more subs to it. So again, it's a complex issue that definitely deserves more attention. Um I so I don't want to skate over the data and and again identify this is what it looks like and here's some strategies for us going into it. That's great. Yeah, thank you for that. And then I also agree with I I was going to ask about getting an update about the pers p the PB. So hard to say. We just we just say PB. The PB um the participatory budget because it sounds very exciting. So I'm really excited. How however we get that update. Um I look forward to it. It sounds good. More about substitutes. I'm sure you're excited. Um I think the one thing that that I just have a
096question about is um how do how do we decide in a school building on a dayto-day that there's a no sub needed? Um to me that I just I think budget reasons great like we don't have to pay a substitute. I also wonder just like the morale when we talk about burnout and whatnot like if there is no sub needed but that's the AIS teacher taking over the class for the day is that pulling services like just how we handle that from leadership like saying like hey like actually you don't need a sub like or is I just curious how that works because it can get sticky I think and it's a great question and it's one that we need to sp we need to spend more time looking at it and again making sure
097that it's consistently implemented across all of our buildings as well because it may look different and we need to kind of understand that problem before we can try to solve it. Good question. Lee, just one final question not about subs. Um I was just wondering um you you mentioned that there were a couple of open positions um uh like teachers aids, monitors, groundskeepers. I was and um you were talking about the need for recruitment and retention. I was wondering if you had some ideas or um things that you were thinking about that we could kind of keep in mind, things that you were thinking about that might be issues or complications or challenges just for us to be thinking about as we look forward to solving some of these issues. I I don't know yet.
098Um again, I want to jump to a conclusion before I've kind of really identified what the problem is and and can kind of break down as a researcher. I know you understand that. Um, so yes, I do have ideas or suspicions on certain things that we might be having problems with with some of our recruitment. Um, how information is getting out. Are we targeting the right areas? Are we targeting right the right people? Um, like I said before, I'm okay with some natural attrition of aids going into TA positions. I think we built into the CSEA contract the ability for them to get credits paid for. So we can actually essentially pay for their education to move over to a TA position and essentially growing our own teachers right in the district which is an
099ideal situation. Um but we do have turnover like I said in certain areas uh some of our our hardest uh to fill areas are some of our high need students and because the the need is very high some of those aids are burning out quicker than we would like them to. It takes a very special person to do well in a situation like that. Um, so again, it's going to require us to not just look at that, but also look back at ourselves and say, are we providing enough professional development? Are we providing enough supports for these individuals as they come in uh that they can be successful in those jobs and not just have this churn because it's detrimental to our children. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, then we'll move on to the
100second half of the presentation. Thank you. All right. Hi everybody. Um, so moving right along. Um, this is a slide that I know looks familiar to most of you. It's really just a snapshot of our budget development process. Um, the entire uh, fiscal year is in front of you broken down by grid. So just has activities here. We are right at that red line. So we're just, you know, at the end of January. Governor's run has just come out. Um we've finished meetings with building administrators and have started groups collectively as an administrative leadership team. Um and we're in the beginning stages of trying to um comb through all of our budget proposals that have been submitted so far and then prioritize. Um and then you'll be hearing a lot from us over the coming
101weeks and months. So the construction of the budget uh briefly. So we really just roll things over yeartoear. Uh which means that we start the the current year or the coming year budget construction at the current year um budget level. And then we'll really just apply increases to certain areas. Um salaries, benefits, utilities, uh debt service. We'll look at our budget priorities like I had mentioned. Can we do any of them? Uh can we not? Um look at the revenue that's coming in. Revenue that potentially is going out the door too that we don't anticipate on receiving anymore. Um any modifications. As you'll recall last year, we talked about combing through some of the excess funds that we had built in. So, part of the modifications last year was really going through and reducing a
102lot of the Boseies lines that we had built in. Um, and then we uh look at utilization of fund balance and reserves. Last year, you'll recall we had three different charges of options that we came back provided to the board. And the the last one um after combing through the budget was let's let's plug the remainder of that 1.2 1.9 million it was um in fund balance. So when we go through all of those exercises over the course of the weeks and months that are in front of us, um that will give us our proposed budget that you guys will approve in April that will be presented to the voters in May. So, just to go over briefly the governor's executive budget proposal. There are some highlights from the budget. Um, overall it was about
103a $ 1.6 billion increase to total school aid uh which is 4.3%. Uh, statewide is a 3% increase to foundation aid uh with a 1% due minimum increase. Um, as most of you know, we are one of those districts who are quote unquote on formula. Um, so we are part of that 1% due minimum population. There's about 450 um, schools, school districts statewide. Um, and then there was also a 52.5% increase to universal pre kindergarten allocations. Um, so like I like I show in the next bullet, it's the increase the minimum state UPK share to $10,000 per pupil. And I'll I'll go over that a little bit later. Um, it's exciting when you hear it, but then when you see the math, I was like, you know, maybe maybe things could be a little different,
104but it's okay. We'll we'll happily take additional uh money to support our UPK students. Um, continued full funding of universal school meals was another positive development. Um, and a commitment that the governor does seem um really I I think proud to keep pressing forward with the initiative. Um, and you know, just from my perspective in the role and being so closely tied to the food service program, it it really is beneficial for students. So, I I I hope that this is something that does continue for years to come. Um, SED is now or if if the governor's proposal um, you know, is agreed to, SED will be required to issue best practices for math and numeracy instruction. And then there's like a followup um where districts will have to prove that those best practices are
105being implemented in the classroom. So it's just going to be another accountability uh exercise with SED. And then there are no new proposed changes to the S uh zero emission bus transition mandate. Um we did get clarification because SED did release um guidance on the waiver process. So there's um a waiver available to school districts. So we will plan to submit that waiver um even though we are now moving along engaging in our fleet electrification study. It will just delay the implementation or the start of this mandate for two additional years. So we anticipate that we will get a waiver to be effective starting next school year um and it will carry over to the following year. So potential budget drivers, I think these are pretty similar to most of you year-over-year. Um, state aid
106is a big one obviously, especially now with just we know it's a due minimum 1% increase. I can tell you off the top of my head it's 253,000. So, it's really not much money. Um, health insurance we're looking at right now conservatively I'm hoping about 10%. I'm actually really optimistic that it will be less than that, but trying to be conservative from the onset. ERS rates will tick up uh positively. Uh, TRS rates will be ticking down. So, that's a a good thing. Um, Boseies and CTE, you know, just like us, Bosey's cost continues to increase even even though we comb through the budget to make sure, you know, we're we're more appropriately budgeting for what we're actually contracting with uh with them for. Special education is another one that we have really seen um
107significant increases. Uh utilities and commodities is another driver. Um any mandates. Um last year we talked about the the mandate to educate now 22 year olds who might have an IEP. This last goound um with the executive budget there is no proposal to um actually fund that additional year of you know mandated education now and then as we do every year we'll evaluate retirements um and then the potential for breakage and and open positions. So, current advocacy efforts over the last couple years related to foundation aid um really have been over the it's kind of been a whipssaw. You know, a couple years ago it was um they're going to put us on formula and we're overfunded by $4.8 million, which we still are. And when they apply the due minimum increases, it only continues
108to, you know, exacerbate the difference between what we're actually, you know, due on formula and what we're getting because of the due minimum increases. Um the other side of this too is foundation a is a per pupil formula. So the longer you continue the do minimum increases on formula actually means they apply the per pupil decreases because you're realizing less and less students per year. So in theory foundation aid as you lose enrollment you lose foundation aid because you have less students to support. That's the theory behind it. But you know then then the the political reality comes into play and it is an election year. So that's also something we're cognizant of. So like I showed and like I mentioned, uh the increase is 1%. But it will be different from if you went
109and pulled up a state aid run and you want to see what's Saratoga's foundation aid allocation. What we do is a little bit different because like we went through last year, when you look at our state aid run, there's a cost of educating local students, um certain students they call it, and it's a deduct. So what it does is it actually just takes away right off the top the amount of foundation aid that's due to you. So I don't like surprises. So when I when I pull these reports in December based on the information we report from the prior year over the summer that's how they produce this this deduct. And really all we can do is estimate. So last year we estimated that the deduct would be $173,000. So, we budgeted not our 25.3
110million in foundation aid and 2526, but 25.2 million because we took that local deduct into account. And what you're seeing here is the most recent update of our state aid run. So, on January 12th, I pulled our state aid run and we budgeted $173,000 deduct, but right now it's $121,000 roughly. So, that's a positive thing. we were a little bit more conservative. But I can tell you when I looked at this last year, so 1225, it was that 173 that we're using. By the time we got to June, the local deduct was $21,000. So even though we're in a positive situation right now, you know, the local deduct is only 120, it's very likely that by the end of the year it will be more in line with that 173 number. And if not, then
111great. That just means, you know, a little bit more actual revenue built into our um our our revenue uh budget. So, that would be a good thing. So, like I like I uh like to point out to you guys, we will continue to budget for the local deduct, and it really it's going to be no dollar change year-over-year. Um but the net effect is still that 1%. So we we changed it last year in the current year budget to correct our I guess correct you could say our our budgeting practice to make sure that we're not unexpectedly short on our revenue side. Um so this is just something that we'll continue to do on an annual basis. So another part of our ad advocacy efforts has been to talk about UPK and to increase our
112funding. So the this is what our state aid run looks like. And sorry I I thought it might look a little bit better than it does. Um so in that red box is is our district's information. On the top they'll put your current year and then on the bottom they put the the coming school year based on um the governor's budgeted numbers. And based on all the aid categories, that's where our um aid would come out. And I'll go through this in in a couple slides. You don't have to be able to read this, but I want to talk about UPK now because this is where we have an allocation up here of $583,000. The proposed allocation next year is $1.12 million. And then the difference down at the bottom, they show you current year
1132526 aid per pupil is $5,411 per student. Next year it's going to be 10,000 which is great when you look at it like that. So then I want to look at some facts that I know to be true related to the UPK program. So like we said we we know our per pupil funding was $5,41 and in this proposal it will be$10,000. The total allocation as we see it in this run is $583,000. But prior to this year, we've always been provided a maximum allocation that you have the potential to tap into, and that was $1.679 million. So, the way that the state was was communicating our UPK allocation was with the $1.6 6 million you have available, you can you can fund your UPK program for up to 311 FTEES. We only were able
114to get 108 FTEES, which is why you see the discrepancy in the total allocation compared to the max allocation. The per pupil amount is exactly the same. If we had 311, we would be receiving $1.679 million of UPK funding. So applying that same logic to 2627 with the updated per pupil allocations essentially we're carrying forward the exact same population now. So I'm confident we'll be able to identify the population that's reflected on these aid runs for $1.12 million. But I'm not confident that we will be able to actually expand the UPK program because this is a per pupil allocation and those per pupils are based on an FTE of 112. So when you when you look at the math like this, yeah, the allocation has grown, but they've so essentially it was like they doubled
115our allocation and they they cut in half the amount of kids were eligible to serve. um or even greater cuz you know 112 is not half of 311. So I mean it it's just how the math plays out. So it's just something that we need to be cognizant of because we'll hear a narrative. Um you know the whole the whole notion of this is to get to truly universal um pre kindergarten. But talking about an enhanced per pupil allocation um is a little bit different than expanding and making available the opportunity to you know and apples to apples. I would assume our allocation would be $3.11 million you know because that would be the true funding for 311 FTEES that we had available for this current year. Um, so just FYI as we see it
116now there it's early stages of the budget release. So I'm sure we'll get more information um you know over the coming weeks. So the actual um you know meat and potatoes of her proposal here. We'll just briefly just talk about 2526. So these are all our uh aid categories as you see it. Our budget was $38.4 million. Um the governor's run does reflect the numbers to the right hand side in the 2627 column. So you'll see based on what our current year budget is and then compared to um next year's executive run it's about a 3 point or a 32% increase. And when we look at just you know where we are budget to actual this year right now we're about $875,000 short. But I'm not so concerned because we have a lot of moving
117parts and we talked about that last year because um a lot of the um a lot of the changes here will come from building aid and the way that we're projecting that because as you guys know there's the ability to actually realize some aid in here that the governor does not realize that we're actually intending to submit some cost reports associated with our capital program. So when we look at what we intend to do based on our plans, we know the governor had proposed for 2627 $4.2 million of building aid. We know we're going to file some final cost reports for um Caroline Street and Division Street. So we'll do that by this June. What what will happen is because we're talking about next year's budget, we'll have a full year of building aid now
118coming back to us for those two projects. But the governor doesn't know that. So that's why we build it into our local building aid projections because we know that we intend to do this and there's a revenue that's going to come back from it. So that helps to change that amount. And then we also know, and going back to the ones that we know we're going to file by 26, it also has a current year impact, which is why I said I'm not so worried about that $875,000 shortfall because when we file those final cost reports by June of 26, we're going to get a half a year building aid this year that the governor didn't know about when we were budgeting last year, but it is included in our $4.8 million building aid figure.
119So, it will be more like a $300,000 shortfall and that is because we had intended on filing a final cost report at Lake A, but we ran into that asbestous issue. So, you know, this is one of the the big, you know, um narratives about budgets. They they are estimates and they are projections. So, we have to move forward with the information that we know to the best of our ability. Um it's just one of those things where you catch a snag like that, there really isn't much you can do. Uh especially regarding, you know, asbestous abatement. So comparing our aid figure to the governor's aid figure, it is an increase of about um $1.3 million, which is positive. So when we bake into in our building aid estimates, we're looking at a $1.4 million
120increase year-over-year, which is about 3.7%. And so this is also the meeting where typically we'll talk about our reserve balances and just we'll briefly go over that. Um this was something that we talked about at the finance committee in December and then the board approved the fund balance and reserve plan on uh January 8th. So the balances that you're seeing on the left hand side for 2425 are balances that were audited, reported to the state. Um so they are our actuals based at on June 3025. The 2526 column are estimates based on what we um project to be uh in reality at June 30 of 26. Uh a couple things you'll notice here. Um the capital reserve for 2025 does uh increase to $10 million. So the the um the funding for that reserve will
121be rounded out. Um the funding level was approved at $10 million. So it will be a good thing that we'll be able to have the entire reserve funded as of the end of this year. Um and then everything else is pretty much just um you know an annual increase or decrease uh based on the fund balance and reserve plan. One item in here that is a little bit different too is the repair reserve. We've had discussion about um putting a proposition to the voters to appropriate a dollar amount to the repair reserve. Caveat with this reserve is we have to get the voters to authorize the amount that goes in there. It also needs to be authorized to create and the voters created it years ago. We just have never funded it. So, you know,
122part of what Angie was talking about before with um the bleachers and the conversation at property committee um one item that we are looking at the doors um of the of the blue gym. Um it's a safety and security issue, but unfortunately not part of the existing capital project. We don't want to have to just replace the doors and not be able to get building aid. So, there's the ability to do a capital outlay project, build it into next year's budget, and accomplish um the door work. Um but there's other items like the bleachers, for example. They're significantly in disrepair. they should probably be replaced, but because it's not an actual reconstruction, they wouldn't qualify for um for a capital outlay project. We wouldn't receive building aid on it. So something like that if we
123could establish a repair reserve so that things that are actually in disrepair need immediate um you know attention can't wait to be included in a capital project over the you know course of you know years and potentially decades like that. That's one of those things that it it might be worth our while to to put a proposition together and ask the voters to support that. So right now we've baked it in assuming that that will be something we do as you know we can amend this plan going forward based on you know what what the decisions are. One of our advocacy points at the state level was the current um cost for capital outlay project is up to $100,000. So again you're kind of limited as to what first of all counts as a capital
124outlay. So, we can do door replacement, um, but we can't repair the motors that allow us to open up the bleachers in the gym. So, that would be a something that would qualify under a repair reserve cost, right? But yet, as long as you stay under $100,000 for the capital outlay projects, you could submit those um to generate some aid on those projects. Exactly. Okay. Yep. And so this is just a summary um year-to-year comparison of the fund balance classifications. So um we have our non-spendable fund balance. Um actually a large portion of that I can tell you is just prepaid um uh claims. It's like we we have an account for um workers comp and it's like a prepaid account that will fund claims that come in as necessary with perma that they it's
125our tail claims account. Um restricted balances. So that is all of our reserve balances. Our assigned fund balances that is the amount that we we decide we're going to put to balance the budget on an annual basis. So that's what that number reflects. And then the unrestricted is um essentially the unassigned. That's the amount that's limited to the 4%. I'll put limit in air quotes. Um because I do think it's generally understood, you know, we're comfortable carrying a level above 4%. Um even the governor, you know, the other day was louding the state's reserve position and the fact that they are wellprepared um to deal with the the federal revenue shortfalls because of their bolstered uh reserve position. So, you know, I I she she does have a point, but we also have to do
126the same thing because she talked about the trickle down effect from not getting support at the federal level. Well, that's a reality from us when we apply the same logic and say the state level. So, the more that we can, you know, utilize and use our reserves to to maximize, you know, what we're providing here, um, that is, I think, the best course forward. So, expenditures to fund equity ratio. So this is something that we track on an annual basis. Um you can see we've been trending downwards in recent years. And then here is how we stack up to our peers. Um what I can tell you is the lower the number uh the better. So you could also look at this is so for every $1 of fund equity the district spends $35. So
127Boston Spa, for every $1 of fund equity, they spend $5.56. Any questions about this? Okay, so our assigned fund balance and reserve history. Again, assigned fund balance is how much we're uh committing to balance the budget on an annual basis. You can see the um big increase that we had. Don't forget it was $4 million we had built in here as a transfer to capital. So if we remove that, it'd pretty much be right in line, actually a little bit underneath the prior year of the 9.24 million. When we will have 2627 on here, it will also be a pretty high bar, but step down a little bit um because we we will only have a $ three.5 million transfer to capital in the 2627 budget. So, it's the last part of the 7.5 million
128that will go to the May 2025 legacy project. If we were to present to the voters back on that previous slide about establishing a repair reserve in order to allocate the funds to establish the reserve, would that most likely come from Nope. where where would that fund come from? So that would actually the money right now is sitting in unassigned fund balance and um the the assigned fund balance. You're really not seeing that on here. I know it says assigned fund balance and reserves, but that's only because some portions of reserves are then used as assigned. But again, this is the amount that we're putting towards the the next school year budget. So that repair reserve, so the $500,000, that money right now is sitting in our unassigned fund balance. Yeah. And it would be
129so say the voters um approved the funding level then since the vote is in May at June we would be able to establish the reserve and put the funds in that account so that it would be reflected like we saw um you know on the fund balance and reserve plan tax levy history. So here's the last seven years. Um the average is about 3.07% 07%. We do have a bus bond proposition just to continue our bus um fleet replacement cycle. Um also non-transportation related fleet replacement too. Uh you'll notice the two Suburbans on here for non- studentent transport and one for student transport. Um but you know we have uh facilities it grounds vehicles all you know we support um and maintain on our inventory sheet. Um but just the same as school buses become
130in disrepair after years of trying to maintain so do those vehicles. Um maybe sometimes even more just because they're driven so much more and beat up a little bit. Um you know and don't have to be really in tip-top DOT shape to get around. So, they need to start being addressed a little bit. So, that's something that we're going to continue. This past cycle, we also acquired a couple Suburbans as well. Um, and then just as it relates to the large buses, um, 870 passenger buses and 530 passenger or yeah, 30 passenger buses, which are small buses, um, will also go on the the ballot. So, in terms of cost, we're looking at an estimated cost of about 2.7 million. uh just shy estimated transportation aid um it's roughly 38% um so we'll get back
131about $993,000. So our local share would be about 1.7 million and when you amvertise that cost over five years you're looking at about $341,000 per year. So open items. Um Bob Bobby just one clarification on that last one. with the governor's mandate to the transition to EV. If nothing changes, y even though we apply for an extension to allow us to complete our study, next year through 2027, if nothing changes, is the last year for us to be able to purchase gas buses. Correct. If we didn't get the waiver and if we get the waiver, we have future years to continue to purchase. Yeah. I think the the deadline would then be pushed to June of 29. Okay. Which would allow you to continue so it would give you the ability to acquire gas diesel
132in um 2728 okay and 28 29 and then and then a and then move and thereafter you are right unless again unless things change. I also understand we would have the ability to submit another waiver too after the first one. Um I've heard some discussions from people at SED and they've said the first waiver, the initial waiver will probably be be more like a cart blanch approval. Um but the second waiver process they will scrutinize a little bit more to make sure that you're actually trying to make progress on the mandate. And we are making good faith effort. Um, actually just yesterday because we had a a snafu with our initial application, but the NAERTA flex application that we worked on with CNS engineers who are doing the fleet electrification study, um, it got kicked
133back, but they resubmitted and it was accepted yesterday. Um, so we're moving along in that. I know we've also talked about having a prop another, you know, uh, proposition separate from the regular transportation one for one or two EVs. Um, more to come on that because the consultant said, you know, it might be a good idea to wait to see where we land with this fleet electrification study and then you could potentially put something to the voters. So once we have our kickoff meeting to talk about what the steps are going to be to accomplish, you know, uh, start to finish the entire study, that will be something that I want to, you know, get my hands on so that we can have good information coming to you and a plan because, you know, these
134weeks go quick and we're going to run out of time. So we want to make sure that we have our our ducks in a row here. Ask a question about that. So when the whether or not we have a waiver, when the mandate goes into effect, is it across the board or is it a stepped um phased in or is just like that's what we're advocating for? Okay. Is a progression towards Okay. But that's not the way the law is. The way the law is written is you are% cannot one more. Okay. Wow. But all the advocacy conversation is is to allow districts incrementally to introduce them for routes that we know would be appropriate for an EV. It's a burden, but it's weird to be weirded out about having buying diesel buses when you
135know envir um the EVs are better, but it's a big lift. Yeah. And you know, the the true difficulty comes in the fact that all of this needs to be approved by each local community throughout the state. So yeah, it's a mandate and we can do our best. But guess what? The voters hold the ultimate, you know, uh, voice in this mandate and if they say no, there's absolutely zero way we could accomplish this mandate. So the state truly has not reconciled that yet. And we will go I'll go on the 2nd and 3rd of February to advocacy day. Ask them the same question I've been asking them for three years now. And they're still going to say, "Well, you have the waiver available to you now." But they'll say, "I don't know." So, open
136items. We're still trying to um just see where we are with Bosei service requests. Um a lot going on with the capital project stuff. So, that also has a direct impact on the property tax levy. Um like I mentioned, we're going through our staffing needs and projections right now, any program proposals, um renewals, um and then capital planning items. Here's our list of important dates. uh May 19th being the most important budget vote. Um, and I will just say, you know, about participatory budgeting, we participated in I don't know if it was like a feedback session or what, but they had met with us, proposed ideas. Um, I guess you would call a feasibility session, you know, trying to gain information about what this proposal might take, what that proposal might take from your perspective.
137Um, you know, do you see it cost prohibitive? Like all all types of things really well thought out. Um, you know, and I think with Joe being the brains behind a lot of this, I was really I was really pleasantly surprised and caught off guard because I was like, "Wow, this was, you know, just organic um buttoned up, authentic." It was It was great. It was great. So, they're doing a great job and um you know, from an outsers's perspective, I'm excited to hear about it, but I'm even more excited for them to tell you about it. So, they're really doing good work. I I actually met with a subcommittee today that they wanted to kind of pick my brains on one of the ideas that they had. So, it is really neat to see
138how much the kids are students are doing awesome research in I personally like the golf simulator one, but that's just me. All right. Thank you guys. All right. Oh, are you taking questions? Do we have any questions? Sorry. Go ahead, Matt. I just had some clarification questions on the UPK uh stuff. So, the per pupil FTE, that FTE is not full-time employee, is it? That's full-time like student. Sorry, I I got to get better. But yeah, full-time equivalent. So, when you say like you had like, you know, we're having the same number this year as next year on that slide as opposed to having up to 300 whatever. Yep. like is that 300 plus number is that the number that that you or that the district thinks are the number of potential UPK students in
139the district that are either not applying or not coming or is that just a number that the government I'll be straight with you Matt I don't know how the state ever came up with that 311 number but what would happen is they they notify school districts in late winter early spring hey here's the funding organizer here's the allocation that you're entitled to and here's the FTEES that you're available to serve or are available for you to serve and that is the information that has been available to us you know for the last however many years the allocation truly has remained the same and the potential FTEES have remained the same but so I guess my question then is do we know the number of children in the district of UPK age who could be part
140of the UPK program probably. But I I I don't know the number. But no, I mean, but but if that number were like 200, does that does that change the max FTE number that we could present to the state? No. So the way that I look now at 2627 is um we will give you $10,000 for 112 kids. That's it. So it's a per pupil number but it's capped basically. Yeah. Like it's it's it's not a per pupil number. It's a it's a number and then they divided it by 10,000 to get you a get a cap. Well, no, because this is actually now 10,000 per pupil. Last year it was $5,41 per pupil, but the amount of full-time equivalent students totally changes. But is that Sorry, I'm sorry to to dwell on this. Is
141the full-time equivalent number of students driven by us saying these are how many students we have or is it set by the state? No, it's set by the state. Okay. Yeah. So, Oh, go ahead, Beth. I had the same question. So the 112 is a number that the state has given to us. I'll be honest. I think the state came up with 112 because right now that 108 is a in 2526 is actually what we're doing. So I think what they did was they discontinued saying okay now you have a max allocation and a max FTE. And it basically was like nope this is what you're doing. We're going to take your current and and I don't I don't know where 112 comes from. Um because if you do the math, it's like 6.22. Um
142we can't run 6.22 classes of UPK. So it would actually be six because UPK is 18 students per section. So that's 108. So I would expect our allocation next year if we ran uh you know an identical program to this year we would get 1,80,000 even though our total max allocation could have been 1.12. Um but again on the current year as as you guys know it costs more than $5,400 to educate you know per pupil but at least knowing that that was the allocation like you could tap into impacting 311 full-time equivalent children. Now they said okay we recognize it costs more money. Yeah, it does cost more money, but you've limited the population that can be exposed to UPK by like 200 kids. So, I mean, yeah, I guess you could just say
143they divided by a number, but like the way I look at it, they're just limiting the amount of students now and saying this is now the amount of funding we'll give you per FTE. Like, okay, thanks. Is it is it now limited because of what we've used in the past and we didn't max out the 311? We we just don't know right now. No guidance. I'm literally just doing division on this giving you guys like but but there's been no other information to say these are the changes. All that's been said is hey 10,000 per kid. But when I look at the math on this state aid run, I can tell you right now if I take our max allocation that's on there and divide it by the per pupil, like no, we're not expanding
144UPK. We're helping cost share. That's all. Any other questions or comments? We will have so many more budget presentations coming up. So many. Go ahead, Beth. Thank you guys. Just really quickly, I I remember in previous years um you all talking about in this process meeting with building leadership to identify needs. I'm assuming that's something that is just built into your budget development process if that continues. And we had those meetings um before the holidays. Um it yeah getting all the proposals have been interesting um you know and trying to figure out how we can accomplish all of them knowing we have limited resources that's always the difficult thing too. So you know a as we do every year you'll you'll see the you know the additions the subtractions and then the proposals as you
145know leadership comes through them and they make it to you guys. Any others? I just had two very quick. First one, you mentioned the ERS and TRS rates. Can you remind me what those stand for? Um, employee retirement system, right? Um, so those are all of our non-certified employees. Um, so really primarily it's CSEA is a large majority of our employee retirement system employees. Um, and then all certified employees are part of TRS, which is teachers retirement system. Thank you. Um, so yeah, the the rate in TRS has fallen year-over-year while ERS has increased year-over-year. And then my other question was, um, I know last year you didn't you deliberately took the number of buses off the ballot because are you they seem like the numbers have come back? The numbers have come back. Um,
146didn't really, you know, all everything that went on didn't impact uh what we were uh planning on. So, I figure if if I've got the quantity and I'm confident in the number, um we've already signed letters of intent, um which are always, you know, subject to voter approval. Um the letters of intent lock in the quantity and the price. So, as long as we know the vendors are comfortable with the price that they're offering us based on that signed letter of intent subject to voter approval, then we are good. Thanks, Matt. Thank you so much. All right, now we turn to our consent agenda. For those in attendance or watching at home, a consent agenda is a commonly used vehicle provided for by our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure that allows a board to vote
147on a large number of items in a single motion. Typically, these are business items associated with the everyday running of the schools and their inclusion in the agenda is the result of a great deal of prior work and care by the professionals of the district. There are from time to time business items that by law cannot be included in a consent agenda and when this happens, we pull those out and vote on them separately. Consent agenda items are known to trustees and the public several days ahead of the business meeting on which they are considered so that board members have the chance to ask questions of discovery and do any advanced factf finding that is part of their due diligence process. Beth, do we have any modifications tonight? We do not. So I move to
148approve tonight's consent agenda items E F and G in their entirety. And can I get a second? Tony, any discussion? Okay. All in favor? That's unanimous. This brings us to our second public comment period. Do we have any members of the public who wish to address the board? Seeing none, we'll move to agenda planning. Are there any agenda planning items to discuss tonight? I just sort of a a question. Do we need to propose for the next agenda planning session an agenda item for so that or does does Sydney need to propose at the next meeting? I I'm not sure. I'm not sure what the process is in order to get participatory budgeting on the agenda, but it sounds like we all want it. I am also not sure. So, Mike, what do you think?
149I think it was coming from our student representatives. Um, we can incorporate that into the agenda. So, we'll just we can talk about when you feel you have enough information leading up to the vote in March. I did just reach out I sent an email to the other members of the committee and just the like adviserss of the committee just so we can present it because we have the meeting on Monday. So, so I figured they can send it out and see and then we can plan maybe for for a future meeting. Yeah. Okay, great. So, it sounds like we can move forward with that without a vote, and that's great. I'm really excited. Are there any other agenda planning items? Okay, moving on to board member comments. Any board member comments, Tony? Just uh
150the thank yous uh for donations this cycle. Um, thanks to Racing City Track Club for about $1,100 for expenses to cover a a track or cross country trip to Pikipsy. And um uh thank you very much to Skidmore Cares for about $1,700 in uh Walmart cards for use um by kids who qualify for uh Mckin Vento funds. Any other board member comments? Just one reminder, uh, both Tony and I tomorrow morning will be attending the legislative breakfast up at the Southern Aderandic Education Center. So, a number of our elected, uh, officials will be there and just another opportunity to hear from our regional advocacy group. Then I will make a comment about that which is that I wish that our um legislators would consider that unfunded mandates really are a burden on schools and I
151wish that any mandates that they would put um forward for our schools would be fully funded. Um this brings us to the end of our meeting. Before that I just wanted to say that our next meeting is on February 12th. It will be here again in the teaching auditorium at the high school and we will hear our district technology report. Um, some board members are also going to be attending the SSTA liaison meeting which is next week on January 28th at 5:30 p.m. As of right now, I have Lee, Beth, and Angie in attendance. If anything has changed, if you could just let me know um as soon as possible so that I can offer it to other board members to attend in your place. Um, and I will also be at that meeting. will
152be at in room 225 in the administrative building down at the end of the hallway on the right hand side at 5:30. All right. Um, could I please get a motion to adjurnn? Matt and Lee has a second. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor? That's unanimous. Have a great night.