001All right. So, I'm going to call this meeting to order. So, could I start with a roll call, please? Sure. Trustee Lakia, present. Trusty Braxton, Trusty Omecha here, Trusty Amory, Trusty Fogerty here, Trusty Copans, Trusty Crackler here. Trusty Wilton, Trusty Witovich here. Please join me in saying the pledge of allegiance. All right. Could I get a motion to approve the minutes from June 26th and two sets of minutes from July 7th? Angie, a second by Tony. Any discussion? All in favor? That's unanimous. Could I get a motion to accept tonight's agenda as presented? Ashley and a second from Angie. Any discussion? All in favor? That's unanimous. All right. Um, do we have anybody here wishing to address the board as a member of the public? Um, there will be a second public comment period at
002the end of our meeting. Um, board committees do not meet in the summer, but does anybody have any updates to share? All right. Our student representatives are also not here in the summer, but we'll look forward to seeing them in September. And so, um, Dr. Patton, it's to you for an administrative report. Great. I hope everybody is enjoying the summer. Uh this afternoon, our district administrative team had the opportunity uh to go on a district-wide capital project tour uh with Bill McMorty, our construction management um um leader. And so uh this is the legacy 2020 project work uh that has been obviously planned for the last several years. So we are four weeks into construction uh that began the last day of school. So when students were heading out of the building, uh our construction
003teams were um heading into uh the work that's taking place at Lake A, uh Caroline Street, uh Geyser Road, and some some additional work up at Maple Lav. Uh so um again, with being four weeks in, uh weather has been cooperative. Uh so they've done a significant amount of work. Uh and again, they're uh right on schedule where they hope to be. Again, when you only have eight weeks to do a lot of work uh in the summertime in preparation for our staff and students to return. Uh everything obviously has to go uh as smooth as possible. So at Lake A uh we are currently renovating six classrooms are being fully renovated. Uh there's renovations happening in the kitchen as well as the cafeteria. Uh we have bathrooms uh that have been fully renovated. Uh
004the tile is already starting to go into those new spaces. Uh roof uh work is being done. Um, uh, the the the outside perimeter of the building, uh, where you see some of the lattice up on the top of the building is being repaired. Uh, we've we, uh, replaced all the windows on the interior, the courtyard section of the building. Uh, and then there's also been some plumbing and electrical and computer networking work that's been done there. So, uh, obviously it's a hundred-year-old building. anytime you start taking down walls uh and uh anticipation for the renovation uh it's a little bit slower moving at Lake A um again but there's such a historical u you know um value to that building uh that it does take a little bit more time uh room by room
005to go through at Caroline uh we were there today and they're already actually sheetrocking so the six classroom wing that they're doing uh is a little bit easier for the construction teams to work through um our intermediate classrooms. Uh so they are already uh again being sheetrocked. Uh and so uh bathrooms in each of the classrooms are being renovated there. They are also doing a full kitchen renovation, a brand new furnace. So similar to the work that happened at Division Street last summer is what's happening at Caroline Street. So uh roof replacement, uh new exterior doors, uh new secure vestibial at the front of the building. Uh so again, Caroline Street because of the work that we did last year division uh is really moving along very well because the two schools are sister schools
006and uh the scope of work at both buildings uh is very similar. Uh not as much work at Geyser like I mentioned. Uh there's a new entrance way so a new secure vestibule in the main entrance uh is being redeveloped there. There's some work at the stage uh with some lighting uh that they're working on now. and then uh through the partnership with the city of Saratoga Springs, we're very excited and you're going to hear about the participatory budgeting program. Uh but Geyser Road was a recipient of the outdoor learning center uh that in the last three days is starting to come to life. Uh so the grant uh that uh Geyser Road was awarded by the city uh is going to the outdoor learning center. uh so to purchase the materials and now our
007staff, our facilities and maintenance staff is doing an awesome job uh putting that kit together. Uh so if you do drive by Geyser Road and you look into the apple orchard right at the front of the building, uh you can see that uh all coming together. So it's really exciting uh to see that um that coming to life. Uh and then finally up at Maple Avenue, if you driven by Maple Avenue in the last few days, you'll see there's a renovation to our tennis courts uh which We also have some pickle ball ball courts inside the tennis courts because we know there's a lot of interest in Saratoga Springs in pickle ball. Uh so that's a full uh renovation to the tennis courts there. So uh right back down to the base and then built
008back up. Uh so the paving is down. They're just giving it a few days uh to cure and then uh obviously the the finished top and the paint uh will be on. So the posts are up for the new fencing. Uh so again looking forward to uh having those tennis courts available to our students during the day and obviously for community use um uh in the after school hours. And then we had a full generator replacement at Maple A. So that work has been complete and Dave and our technology team and John Tiner has been very involved in that. Uh our Maple A middle school is a Red Cross site. So if there's ever an emergency situation where we needed to utilize our schools to support the community, uh obviously generators are critically important during
009those times. So uh having a updated generator connected to all the key functions of the building has been critically uh important. So any questions from the board? I took a ton of pictures today. So in my update tomorrow, I'll share it out. And I think Mora's been sharing some pictures on the district website. uh she just posted a picture of uh of the Geyser um learning center um being worked on uh just yesterday afternoon. So, uh we'll continue to keep um everybody in the community updated as to progress that's being made, but uh again, we just have four short weeks to go when you turn the calendar August. Uh we know that obviously uh there's a lot of work to still get done uh before we welcome everybody back for the start of the new
010school year. Any questions capital projectwise? All right. So, uh it's my pleasure uh tonight um to welcome uh Manita Song, uh Jeff Alameary and Chiffon Chaffy uh from uh the city of Saratoga Springs um from their participating uh participary budgeting committee. Uh again, we were a huge benefactor of that at at the at the Guys Road um project and so uh they want to talk a little bit about engagement of our students uh in in their process. So, welcome. Thank you so much. There's Jeff. Uh, thank you, uh, Superintendent Patton. Thank you, uh, board of trustees and all the staff members and, uh, residents here. Um, if you see a certainly 10-year-old, that's my son. Uh, we are excited to be talking about participatory budgeting. is the chair of the committee. Um I am the
011finance commissioner. This is one of the things we initiated uh in 2022 and uh we have seen three successful cycles. Uh let me talk to you a little about what it is. Um and we are really excited that you are going to be seeing participatory budgeting at the school soon. Um so you know we would love to uh talk more. have offered our uh services to uh Mr. Greco. Uh if he at any point of time wants to reach out, we are happy to uh talk more and help. Um so the New York Times calls participatory budgeting revolutionary civics in action. Um that's because it creates um a lot of um engagement with the citizens. So, I don't know if you've come to a city council meeting or a schoolboard meeting, but usually people come
012to these with problems. They're like, "This is wrong. This needs to be fixed. You know, we are unhappy with all of this." Um, participatory budgeting allows that to be flipped where people can come to city council with a solution. Hey, wouldn't it be great if our city had curling? Wouldn't it be great if our school had an outdoor learning center? Wouldn't it be great if uh the dog uh park had a dog water fountain? Wouldn't that be great, especially on a hot day like this? So, it's really ideas that come from citizens um that they want to see be implemented in the city and and that's really what the whole program is all about. Um and that's kind of how we started it. We have at this point funded 19 projects in the past three
013years. that make our city a better place and the theme for this year. Sure. We have about uh I think a total of eight volunteers and the city. This has been a very edifying experience a lot of people a lot of bright ideas from nonprofit individuals and received them. We're looking currently right now. These projects are from cycle one and cycle two. Um, and here you can see Lake Avenue is here because the Lake Avenue PTA asked for money during the centennial celebration which was also funded. And our program goals um largely are to make our government more inclusive, you know, by having more people participate in the budgeting process. Um, I don't know about you, but when I start talking about budgets and finances, everybody's eyes start glazing over. They're all like, "Oh." Um,
014so this is a, you know, a fun way to engage uh students when y'all are doing your PB. Uh but it's also a fun way to engage the citizens. Um it's a small part of our uh budget. Uh but it has a meaningful social impact. It promotes initiatives that enrich our community's well-being. Um and creates, like I said, you know, a lot more engagement and dialogue. Um so I'll let Jeff talk about the project requirements. Thanks. Uh these are either res profits in Saratoga Springs. Okay. So, it's not going to be going out to try to make it possible just focus on One time we don't find All right. The people I can hear myself. The the people uh come up with the ideas. Um volunteers help develop the proposal and then the community the
015vote as to what gets funded. Um and then that that recommendation comes back to the finance commissioner. I present it to city council and we award the money. Um so here is um what uh superintendent Patton was talking about. Uh this is the U Geyser Road Elementary School outdoor learning space uh within its apple orchard and they requested $20,000 and it's coming out beautifully. Uh this was in cycle three. In cycle three we also funded uh $50,000 for community compost uh at Pittney Meadows. Uh if you like composting uh this is a great program. Uh please sign up. They are almost at limit, but if you're interested, go quickly and and sign up on the Pitney Meadows page. Um, we also did u the Lakes Avenue uh Centennial like I talked about and uh we've
016also done Franklin Community Center. They are doing vegetable gardens. So here you can see it's a small project of $5,000 um pollinator uh gardens with so conservancy. So, do you know the the place next to the McDonald's that looks really beautiful now? All those flowers, courtesy PB. Um and then of course the community compost. Um we also have specific ones that are targeting children. Uh so the CH Saratoga Children's Literacy League proposed a 15,000 project to build a book bus that would go deliver books to young readers. and the children's museum here in Saratoga Springs uh wanted to expand art and STEM programming for uh students. So uh now we are at uh cycle four which is the uh year of the child and we would love to see uh projects come from uh parents
017from teachers from students uh from coaches from social workers anybody who sees a need that is in our city right so it it can't be unfortunately uh in Greenfield or Wilton But any need that is in our city, we would love to have uh people submit ideas and projects. Um and and we would love to, you know, kids have great ideas, we can we can listen. So we are here to do that. Um and here are I think you should have got a handout. Uh we are here for any questions. Uh Jeff is an expert. I wouldn't say that, but I guess history. A couple things quickly. The voting is not the kind of voting you go to voting vote for your politician candidate. It's software developed by Stanford University for this exact time type
018of program. So, it's really a preference thing. People in the community can say, I like these 10 in this order uh or I like or I like these three or whatever. And then we force rank them. And that's how we come to the council. once it's been vetted by commissioner. The other thing is if an individual applies for something says you know I want a stop sign Caroline Street we don't send the money to the person expect them to put stop sign up. Okay that's in case anyone was confused. Um what happens is we work with the appropriate city public safety or parks recreations and then we'll speak with those folks and they'll say yeah okay that's good we'll do a basketball court press and so we took the money from TV and we supplemented
019that activity for DPW and that's how that worked and sometimes they'll say that's a great idea we haven't got the manpower to do it we'll put it on our agenda for next season we'll do it so we actually work our way into the future city budget sometimes. So, you know, it's a good way for filtering citizen concern citizen ideas and get them, you know, accomplished. So, the rec department didn't know how much interest there was in curling and this gave them a really good pilot program to see is there interest in Saratoga Springs. Uh same with compost. We have hundred families signing up for compost if there's a lot of interest. Saratoga Springs, the city might actually do composting, you know, for for uh it it citizenry. So, um this is a really good way
020to like try out like little bubbles, you know, to to try out different things. Um do you all have any questions? We would love to answer. Have they got proposals? always Sorry, my wife says my voice doesn't carry. I was thinking, oh, I forgot that. Um, we have a better We have a So many your best. Do you have to be a resident of the city of Saratoga Springs? So, if you're a non-resident teacher, staff member, administrator, you would not be able to write a proposal. Okay? We understand. Sorry. Okay. We try not to the voting that happens political reasons with this um and so this vote is usually you know in December and it goes on for a week so you have to not just one day so you email out the ballot no
021um we put out the information on the city website uh on lots of you know And then a lot of the organizations will also like you know put it out there to to people schools will put it out. You're right in the voting software the QRain and you have to write you have to put in your address and stuff so we can verify that you are actually res and does the software um exclude by IP address? Is that how you prevent mult people from voting? You know, Tony, 50 times or honestly, we're on the honor system. It's easy to be honest with you. I could vote 10 times if I wanted to. You have to attest to your Crackler's name 10 times then then we can exclude those. Yeah. But uh it is not as
022easily you know Stanford has done this for all the cities that do P. So Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York, uh Chicago, lots of big cities do this uh you know California as well and all of that. So it's gone through pretty rigorous uh checks and balances and and if something like that does happen, we see it at our And so it's the Stanford University software. Okay. I I was that was going to be my next question. I was curious that it's used by a lot of municipalities. Yeah. Because they they kind of provide it for free, right? They provide it for free. Yeah. And um but you do have to put in an honor code system that says that you are doing it and it's the only time. And so if we if we need to
023do a police investigation, Thank you. All right. Any other questions from board members or administration? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. All right. And so our only other formal presentation tonight uh is our annual student enrollment update. Uh so Valawi, Dave, and Lisa are here to provide the board an update on our 2025 2026 uh student district enrollment. Um so this is an annual update we do for the board each year before the start of the school year. Turn it over to Dave. Great. Thank you, Mike. Uh what just want to introduce Valerie Alawe who's our district registar presenting tonight and Dr. Lisa cutting who's also presenting tonight on our enrollment presentation. So before I hand things over to Valerie, she's just going to talk a little bit about the enrollment process.
024That's how we're going to start out. Um just want to give some accolades to the registars's office. A lot of times that's the first stop for a lot of our families um when they're entering the district or starting out. So again, it's not always an easy job position, but Valerie Indiana doing it for many years. do a great job. I also want to give a big thanks to Dian Woodard, my secretary, who does a lot with enrollment registration, handles all of our babysitter requests, change requests, which you'll hear about among other things. So again, hats out to Diane for us as well. Let talk a little bit about the enrollment process. Thank you. Okay, so the enrollment process for the school district online. So the registration forms are found at the Spenc registration and parent
025goes into clicks into that and it brings them to a secure website where they fill out forms. They are able to upload documents that require resid. That's all done through the through the website. And we actually are in the process of looking at um kind of revamping the process so that it will be a little bit more user friendly. Um it'll be easier for parents of that have registered their children fork to update their information kindergarten rather than have to fill out the whole form. So, we're looking at doing that. Very excited about that process coming up. Um then the as I talked about so the registration forms are all done online. So that also includes the K12 um students. It includes the UPK to UPK students. includes students is the universal pre kindergarten. Uh
026it includes students that parents that want to have their child evaluated for um eligibility for uh special education, preschool students. Um it includes the registration for parents that want to homeschool. They go in that and students that are going to be private private school attendants. Once we receive that, once the parent fills out that form and submits it, the form comes to our office to the registars's office and we can go through look at form, make sure all the questions have been answered, make sure the documentation is um in there. There have been a couple of times when somebody wants to register their child for Saratoga Springs, Utah. So we've had to call them and tell them that we are Saratoga Springs, New York. So but and that gives us the opportunity also as we're
027looking through that to make sure that um everything that we need and require on our end. big thing is the the proof of residence um and the birth certificate for the for the child that that's all included and anything that we might be missing, we would then contact the family and just request that that be submitted to us. So, thanks Val. Um so, switching gears a little bit, I'm going to talk a little bit about flex zones. So, back in 2019, we were charged by the board to create a better way to balance our class sizes, balance our resources. Um, and that's where kind of the creation of flex zones came in 2019. You can see some of the bullets there about balancing class size, utilizing our existing resources, reducing or limiting the need for
028administrative transfers. And Valer will talk a little bit about what what is administrative transfer, keeping our families together, limiting target and attendance issues. And then in 2025, we actually had another committee task force get together and we relooked at our flex zones and we came up with some really good recommendations from that group and you kind of can see them listed here is looking at our kindergarten placement timeline. Um it's actually something that I think Valerie on Friday sending out letters to families about kindergarten placement. We're excited about that. Um also including in our documentation, you'll see it in the next slide. What is the criteria that the district uses? We place our students in flex zones. Um clarifying information. You'll hear me talk later that we've kind of narrowed it down to two zones.
029We have it. One's called a designated attendance zone. The other one is a flex zone. And we used to use old language and I was old language. I've been here a long time. It's just two kind of ways to put it. You're a designated tenant zone or a flex zone. Uh we looked at the what are called walker zones which is very close if you live very close to an elementary school. And again, typically those were part of flex zones. We're making those part of the designated attendance zones. Um, you'll see in a minute, we're also another recommendation was to look at our flex zones, and I'll talk about those in a minute, and maybe reducing the number of schools that are in our flex zone and then also think about neighbors and do our
030best to keep neighbors together into the same school. So, this is again timeline. We've kind of moved it up a little bit. I think the first year we were sending out letters August. That sounds right. So, we moved that up. So, now it's in end of July. I said actually coming out on Friday. And this is some of the criteria that Valerie that we look at um student needs services. Um we have special ed services. We have ELLL English language learner services. Um those sometimes dictate where our students will go. Um you'll hear me talk a little bit later about class size targets. Um sibling placements. Do you have currently have existing brothers or sisters in a particular school? We want to keep families together. Um, as I mentioned about Diane Wood does a lot.
031We have quite a few child care requests. We call them babysitter requests. Again, daycare is a challenge in Saratoga. So, we try to honor those the best that we can. Um, working with Jerry Keenan, our director of transportation, the transportation impact. Um, how many how long is a student on a bus? It's terrible when a kindergartener has to be in a bus for an hour and some transportation fols here. So that's something that we consider sometimes you can't help it proximity to the school and then the neighborhood component or neighbors component as we talked about. So this two places this is uh this is our attendance two things our designated attendance zones we have six designated attendance zones which are the six elementary schools and then we have five what we call flex attendance zones
032hard to But where the numbers are, the one, two, three, four, five is where the flex zones are. And then Greenfield is probably the easiest one to see in the map. That's a designated attendance zone. Um, it's really spread out and transportation will tell you it's hard to get from spot A to spot B and there's not as many roads maybe as we would like. That's what adds on to our bus trips. I'm just using Greenfield as an example. So these are the flex zones. Um, there are five of them. Door is the only one. Lake Avenue is one. flex zone two and three. Again, I won't read them all to you. So, that's one of the recommendations from our committee is to look at uh flex zone two, flex zone three, flex zone five,
033and is there a way to pair them down? So, instead of three schools, maybe we're looking at two schools. So, we just had a meeting yesterday, sorry, um talking with transportation and kind of we went over some goals for them and they're going to start working out what this potentially could look like. We have another with them I think in November. Um part of our charge sorry ahead part of our charge back in uh 2019 along with creating flex zones was to reduce class sizes. Worked really hard at this and kind of came up with a process. It's actually a six-year process and we're actually in the last year of it. And you can kind of see where we started back in 2021 and then how we've moved in 2526. Um from my research I
034think Valer would agree with this some of the best class size targets in the council area. Again a class size target is a almost I won't call it a cap. It's a number that we try to reach. So let's say in kindergarten you have 20. We would try to keep your class size no bigger than 20. as a target because sometimes depending where the students move into or the services that are provided, we have to go over that class size. And I'm going to give it back to Valerie to talk a little bit about administrative transfers. Thank you, Dave. So, administrative transfers is something that the district as a whole really tries to avoid. Um, it's when we get five students that are registering for, let's say, division street for third grade and we only
035have one seat available before we're at our class size target, then we have to look at doing an administrative transfer for at least two of those five kids that have submitted. Um, and when we do that, it's it's not it can sometimes be a very difficult conversation with the parents, but we always try to just really explain and express that it's a Saratoga Springs City School District. It's not a division street. It's not a Dorothy Nolan. It's not a Caroline Street. It's all six of our schools are excellent. And we've, you know, I've been doing this for several years now. And I would say nine out of 10 times when we have to do an administrative transfer, the families end up requesting to remain at that school that they've been transferred to. So that's that's
036a good sign. Um, so what happens with an administrative transfer, we let the parents know that um the their designated school is has reached or is over their target. So we would then look at where there's room in one of the other five elementary buildings and we provide transportation for the student for that year that they have been transferred to another building. We also tell them that they will have the option after that to select um to remain at that school um but then do not provide transportation um after that first year. If there's room at their designated school, they have the option to go back to that and then obviously transportation would be provided. Um if there is not room that second year, then we continue providing transportation as long as it's the district's
037um you know decision that we have to have go to a different building. That's the admin transfers. Um the elementary request too. Yes. Um those come through for a couple of different reasons. We can get a change of elementary. Let's say a family has moved in January to a different designated attendance zone and they want their child to finish up the school year at Division Street. So they would put in a request to do that. We um allow them to finish out the school year. They do have to provide transportation as long as they can provide transportation and the child will be going to school and attendance stays, you know, where it should be, then then that is approved with the understanding that the following school year they will then go to their new designated
038building. We also get a change of elementary from um parents that are looking for child care. So um maybe have a family that lives in Dorothy Nolan designated zone, but they have a babysitter that lives at the Caroline designated zone. So they would ask that their child because they're going to be dropped off at the babysitter um that they get dropped off and picked up from the babysitter in the 10 Carolina Street. So that would be another reason why we would do a change of elementary. You still there? Yeah. So, this is a chart just to show you some of our enrollment information and some of the trends. And I've actually got a whole bunch more, which I'll go through quickly, some other uh enrollment projections and historical enrollment data. But you can see those
039are the different um enrollment numbers for our elementary schools starting in 2021 and then going into this current year. Those numbers are from what's called beds day which is sitting over there first Wednesday of October first Wednesday of October every year. So it's kind of a consistent um point. That's why we kind of took that data that's there. And in the chart below we also kind of went in we did elementary, middle school, high school. So you can see kind of where we're at again enrollment and you'll see some of the the trends and some of the information from our enrollment study is slowly declining. Um you can see even in that um sixyear period we were at 6,100 in change and you know now we're down to 57 maybe 56 change as far as
040our student population. I won't spend a lot of time on this. This is I used to spend a lot of time ask some of the board members that have been here for a while. This is kind of our working chart or working docu working document. Um, and there's a bunch of different colors on here and the color codes and it's kind of confusing if you it would take me like about a half an hour to go through it, try to explain it to everybody, but we meet u Valerie and I and Diane with um people services and look at our placements, our enrollments. Um, you'll see there's some yellow up there. We have some what we call our class sizes are are full. So that's when as Valerie said, we would look at flexing of
041students or maybe an admit transfer at that particular point. Um, but we watch those numbers pretty closely. I will I'm not sure if you can see kind of the middle of the chart but that's kind of a neat area to look at. That's our class size averages which again that's been one of the benefits of the flex zone and again val team's hard work. It's kind of leveling off our class sizes through the six elementary schools. Again it's not perfect. It will never be perfect with six elementary schools but I was here with years when it was 165 and another school was 2829. And again we had some very upset parents at that point. Why is my student in a class that has almost 30 kids and then over here no complaints my son or
042daughter in a class had 15. So that's one of the big benefits our class sizes. So I'm going to get into this is um from Capitol District Regional Planning Commission and I got a few slides here and I'll go through them pretty quickly. Um they presented to the board this year, right? Didn't they update the presentation you guys? Yes. Right. So this is year two Bobby. They didn't actually come present this year. They just provided the updated report. Yep. So this is our second year with them, but they have updated their document. So this is to me is good. We used to get enrollment studies done um by other groups and enrollment studies within a year, two years, three years. The further you go out, they become very inaccurate. So it's great. This group will
043kind of give us an update, an annual update. So I'll start with the 20 year enrollment. And this chart is perfect for me because actually 2005 2006 was my first year here. So you kind of see we were 6800 6,900. I remember us being close to 7,000 students. And if you look at 2425, you can see how we've kind of slowly been decreasing for 20 years down to about 5,700 and change. Um this is some of our projected enrollment. So I'll get a couple of these and I'll break it down a little bit. Um so this is projected enrollment for the district. So again you can see at 20112 we were 6700 um 6600 and change and then again they project that as we move closer to 2930 we'll be at around 5,500. So again
044a slow decline so kindergarten enrollment and we've been watching this one really really closely. So I think u they're predicting 367 and I think we're like 354 valer something like that currently. So we're close. Again still July we defin have we're going to get more students coming in. We're not done enrolling. So we'll see where that number goes. And if you look at next year they've got it kind of bubbling back up a little bit. They're predicting 436. So we're interested trying to follow those numbers best that we can. And then this is K through five enrollment. Again, 2010 111 around 3,000 students. We can kind of see see that decline. We kind of had a little bit of an uplift there in 2017 2018. Uh but now we're down, you know, they're projecting 2930
045about 2400 students. And our middle school, again, when I got here, I think we were 1,700 and change. Now we're kind of slowly moving down around 1300,400. They're predicting 2930 getting into about 1,200 students. And this is the high school. Um for many many years, a lot of my time here, the high school was o always over 2,000 students. So just in those past few years, we've been 1,800, 1900. And again, you can see they're kind of predicting that we go to around 1700 for 2930. Things over to Lisa Cy. Good evening everybody. Just to give you a little context, even though um the two student populations I'm going to talk about are homeschooled students and students private and parochial schools. The district still has an obligation to make sure we know what's happening our
046enrollment population. So the trend state just talked about it's important to know are we losing students because they're choosing to go somewhere else or is it part of the general population trend particular grade levels all of that stuff. So through my office, the curriculum instruction assessment office, we handle homeschooled students. So we are charged by the state of New York to make sure that for those families who want to school their children at home, they know that they have to abide by certain regulations and the school has to that if you will. So there are still certain courses and credits etc that need to be taken and assessments and reporting. So um you can see on this um on this graph starting in 2021 um we had 147 students that were homeschooled and then it
047dipped and then it has increased. And so more context for you is 2021 was the year that we were hybrid um for high school and middle school and then we had our K5 students here every day. Um and then we had everyone back and then 22 23 onward was regular schooling. So we keep an eye on the different and we've noticed an uptick. Um the other pieces of data that we look at thanks to um Abby Snell is looking at who are our students and what we've also found is that um our elementary and middle school students can this breaks down the trends of the grade levels. Um so you look The dark blue it's elementary. Um the light blue in the middle is Maple Avenue 6 through 8. And then um that royal blue
048is the high school. So um and the top gray line is just the overall trend line. So we uh went down and then started going back up again looking at reasons for that. Um some folks sent their students to private schools when they were in session full when we were not um we found that students who don't go through our system K12 or 112 uh sometimes their parents choose to homeschool. Uh we found that students are who are chronically absent sometimes end up parents choosing to homeschool. So those are just some of the things that we have found in terms of the homeschooling piece. Go to the next slide. Um the next slide is about private and parochial schools. So again we have an obligation to work with our families and our students whose parents
049choose to send them to private or parochial schools. And again you see the trends although these are going the opposite direction that the home instructor ones did on the last slides. So um we have had um significant decreases since 2122 with students coming back to school. Um and you know as far as are there particular grade levels every year we look at that and and it's a shift um you know you can look at the pandemic and all of that I would say the biggest decreases where students um were were not attending the private schools were in um fifth grade seventh grade 11th and 10th so that's a major part of the decreases. We saw a little bit of an increase in Kas we always like to make sure it um The community connections is
050something that's also very important to the school district. We do have um every is it year or every other year where we meet with realtors of Saratoga Springs to discuss um review the process of the registration the flex zone flex attendant zones and the designated attendance zones so that they're familiar with that. And then it has helped tremendously because we used to have parents call and say, "Well, my realtor told me it was at this school and it wouldn't be at that school." So, uh it's been helpful having um those meetings. We also every year we meet with um Wilton and Greenfield town halls to discuss what might what new developments and buildings and residents are going to be going into the area and that helps us in looking forward to the numbers that we
051might be getting in what buildings that they you know the students might be going to. So we've got a lot of right now construction going on out so it helps us plan for that as well. So, just in closing again, Rich's office wears many hats. Um, Valer and team does do a lot of stuff. We just met with Abby and Mora and Valerie today talking about the annual contact verification process, which is where we basically ask families to check their contact information. The emergency contact information is all accurate. It's an annual process. We talked about UPK, military screening. We projected enrollments um CSP um and CSE our special education students kindergarten screening scheduling private school enrollment and parent instru any questions that the board may have any questions I'm so Sorry um in the audience
052it's only for uh board members. All right. I do have a question. Um just back to that um your very colorful chart Dave. Of course. Um I know you said that school assignments are going out next week for kindergarteners. Oh, like tomorrow letters go out, right? Oh, tomorrow. Okay. So, um but then also that kids are going to continue or parents are going to continue to register their children. Um, you know, there's more than a month until school starts. So, I'm just wondering about the projected classes. Um, so for example, when I look at Geyser, it looks like they have actually when I look at Caroline, it looks like they have zero spots. So, if another student registers and they live fully in that designated zone, actually, if like four more students register, are we
053looking at bumping up the number of classes? Is that what happens? Or is it too late? Are we Ed for that and it's too late. Yeah. Okay. So, actually we have when when that with those numbers that there are two other students that did come in and register after that and they will end up being admin transferred um to division street. So that's where there's room is also closed getting they're getting up there. Yeah, they are closed now too. So as students come in if the class size is at target um you know we can look at it that there are um I believe in first grade actually at Carolina Street they are going over their class size target. So there may be some situations where we have to do that depending on needs and
054services for the children. Um but other than that then yeah people come in and the class size is has met the target we'll be doing admin transfer. Thank you. Great. Any other questions or comments? I just have a comment because I want to de vilify admin transfers. I know they're hard conversations but we were one of those Caroline students when we moved here and got admin transferred to Dorothy Nolan and my daughter just graduated with two best friends. in first grade and one from second grade in Caroline Street. So I I think it's um I'm sure they're very hard um conversations. They start out very hard, but it was a really good experience for my daughter, first and second grade. So I guess for our fellow board members, it's really it was a blessing in
055disguise. So um I just wanted to de vilify that whole notion. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. All right. Um, now we turn to the consent agenda. For those in attendance or watching, a consent agenda is a commonly used vehicle provided for by our opted rules of parliamentary procedure that allows a board to vote on 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.
056Consent 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 fact finding that is part of their due diligence process. Tony, are there any modifications to the consent agenda? There's one. Um, financial item G11 is a resolution to decrease the tax levy um for 2425. It can be summed up in the following sentence. Be it resolved that the board of education approve a decrease to the 2425 2024 2025 school tax levy in the amount of 17,584 17,5847. We almost got a big refund. uh due to the adjustments to the 24 2024 2025 tax rules and this has to uh have a roll call vote which Bobby will conduct.
057Trusty Lakia, yes. Trusty Amecha, yes. Trusty Fogerty, yes. Trusty Crackler, yes. Trusty Witovich, yes. So that motion carrying. Um I now move to approve consent agenda items E F and G as modified. Right. Can I get a second? Angie. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor? Right. That's unanimous. I just have a a few recognitions here. So on the agenda tonight, uh the board accepted both the resignation and the appointment of Dr. Joe Greco. Uh Joe has been a longtime administrator in the district, has been serving as our director of budget and program integration uh since the fall of 2018. Uh but he's been a science teacher, department head, assistant principal, uh director of STEM for the district. Uh so Joe uh uh with the board's um appointment tonight uh will become our new director of
058personnel development um effective September 1st uh 2025. Uh so we want to first by starting off by thanking Hillary Brewer uh who has served as our director uh for the last couple years and has done just an incredible job uh leading our personnel development. want to thank Hillary uh for her years of service uh and wish her well as she transitions to her new position uh serving in the Boseies. Um and again, Joe uh will continue to be working with Bobby uh over the next several weeks as we close out uh the books for the past school year uh and then as he transitioned into his new uh roles and responsibility uh effective September 1st. So, uh, so congratulations to Joe and again, thank you to Hillary. Um, and Hillary's got one more week with
059us. Uh, so she's with us until, uh, the end of July. Uh, so want to thank Hillary for everything that she's done for the district. And then also John Morris is here with us tonight. Give John give a little wave. John um has been helping us um is serving as an EML teacher um last year filled in uh for us uh and now is uh tonight based on the board's uh appointment uh is um on a probationary appointment as one of our ENL teachers uh at the high school. So congratulations to John and looking forward to working with you full-time. That's it. All right. This brings us to our second public comment period. Is there anybody who would like to address the board? Okay. Um, seeing nobody, we'll move on to agenda planning. Um, I
060do want to note for the board that last meeting Matt had brought up an agenda planning item, um, but is not here tonight. Um, and it's not, uh, something that's very, um, I guess, yeah, timesensitive. So, he'll bring that up next meeting. Um, does anybody else have anything for agenda planning? All right. Um, seeing nobody, we'll move on to board member comments. Tony, um, I'd just like to thank, uh, four groups, I guess five actually, um, for their donations to the district. um a whopping 21,000 in donations from cumulatively from the Saratoga Schools Education Foundation, the Greenfield HSA, the commencement group uh at the high school, and the staff of the Lightning Rod also um was informed uh the other day that West Avenue Chicken um was donating chicken uh sandwiches on Thursdays for our
061to our summer food truck. So, I want to thank collectively all those groups for their donations. Any other board member comments? All right, we do not have executive sessions. And I want to remind everybody that our next meeting is going to be on August 21st at 7 p.m. here in this room. And it sounds like we'll hear from Dave about whether we have that executive session ahead of time or should we just plan on it happening? Okay. So, we'll plan on that happening um ahead of time for 6:30, but if anything changes with that, we'll hear about it from Mike. Um so, can I get a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting? Tony and Angie has the second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? That's unanimous. Thank you so much.