001foreign what do you think so welcome everybody we'll bring the meeting back to order we already did our roll call vote and just returned from executive session um we will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance would you please join me thank you could I please get a motion to accept tonight's agenda as presented Connie second John Ellis any discussion okay all in favor that's unanimous Tim motion carries next we have public comment um I'll briefly mention a new procedure that we're going to thankfully actually make use of tonight um we are uh as of tonight uh reserving the first three spots in um public comment for uh students regardless of when they come in and and get in the queue um and then public comment will proceed uh in the same way uh after the
002three students are heard the rules for public comment which I'm about to read apply to everybody including students um please note that board of education meetings in New York state are not public meetings with real-time dialogue between officials and Spectators they are board meetings held in public where we conduct the business of the district with one another but do so visibly so that maximal transparency and information sharing with the public can be achieved there is no conversation between the board and the public during the meetings however we do provide two public comment periods during which speakers May address the board to share information and opinions that may inform our work we are eager to hear your voices and opinions if your statement or question requires follow-up the appropriate District official will be in touch outside
003the confines of the meeting to enable an efficient environment in which the board can complete the meeting's planned agenda the first public comment period is limited to 30 minutes total while the second comment period has no official time limit the ground rules for public comments include asking speakers and the audience to conduct themselves in a civil and constructive manner we are invested in hearing your voices and ask that you model the same respectfulness we expect from the students of our district we do not allow comments about specific individual employees students or trustees and ask that you be succinct and try not to repeat previous speakers in order to allow more people the opportunity to address us we now open the first public comment period each speaker is allotted a maximum of three minutes and the
004period is limited to 30 minutes total before you address the board please clearly state your name and address first up is Eden Copans jinx yeah usually they do foreign as often in general and the systemic factors that LED these problems what it creates further down the road I hear all the time about kids getting dress coded for wearing a tank top or a crop top and like our clothes are apparently distracting and are disturbing our school environment but I guess racism and slurs aren't I mean I don't know if this is a message but we should be sending out to our kids and our larger Community because if people think that it's okay to joke around with slurs that are incredibly hurtful that they're going to grow up to be adults who are inconsiderate and
005think that it's okay to use someone else's life as a joke I don't want our school's Legacy to be that and I don't want to have to deal with every day walking through the hallways and hearing slurs because they're not thank you I think I think William Mancini is also a student is that right come on up William [Music] I'm William Mancini I live at nine Ruggles Road and I'm also here to talk about racism within the school so today I'm here on the behalf of our amnesty Club at the high school today I've come here to discuss issues and responses on the subject of racial discrimination within our school in the wake of the recent articles a large concern has grown amongst both student population as well parents of those students on the last
006two Tuesdays when meeting with our chapter of amnesty we discussed our reactions and emotions seeing the recent articles many students within our club had shared personal experiences both encountering racism in our school Community as we'll discussed our dissatisfaction of how Administration went about dealing with the matter our first issue we have is with the consequences dealt out to students who have made racist remarks and offenses currently the punitive action given to a student is five days of out of school suspension we feel that doesn't make sense to release a student from school for making race remarks but instead we offer a solution of an educational ISS to educate a student of the dangers of their statement or action we feel as if a student also participates in extracurricular activities such as Sports there should be
007longer lasting consequences than the amount of time that they're facing their punishment a student who preaches racist rhetoric should not be seen representing our school in the playing field often when faced with the issue we watch a consistent and present practice I have Administration attempting to quell and suppress the matter of racial discrimination although often not addressing it to the student of population the school's discourse on the subject often results in no public address being made especially when an act of racism is seen and felt by a large number of the student population although instead we're just met with Silence from Administration this lack of properly addressing the issue puts our school in compliance allowing to continue of this undesirable hateful culture to live within our school Community all we currently have addressing the subject
008is this upcoming no place for hate event being held in the month of April although a step in the right direction one event simply will not bring an end to racially offensive behavior in the district as the also the objective of the event seems to be more focused on bring good PR in the direction of our school other than educating the student and staff population we hope to see additional initiatives followed including more educational activities being pursued with the goal of informing and teaching students with the dangers and harms of racially offensive rhetoric causes in our school Community also we hope to see better training teaching staff properly how to address matters of racial discrimination well now since the Silence has broken Publications have come out calling out our schools less than desirable response is
009taken we hope in the future to see less reactionary responses from Administration and more proactive steps being taken to dismantle a culture of racism within our school so I ask what access will the Board of Education take to address a climate of racism and intolerance in our school and how will the school going forward maintain transparency among stakeholders in the district thank you [Applause] next up is Warren I just have Warren oh Warren Dart okay good evening Board of Education Dr Patton and administration well that young man just about took my whole speech but let me do it this way first of all I'm a graduate of this school district I'm also a retired 38-year teacher from the school district when I started in 1974 I was one of three black teachers Charles Johnson Dolores
010Burris and myself Charles Johnson retired before me then Dolores Burris and in 2012 I was the last one and one hasn't been hired since there's a sign when you come into Saratoga Springs off of exit 13n that reads words shape reality and yes we're finding through the Times Union and Daily Gazette they sure do because we're finding that the n-word is being used in our schools um one of the things that I think should happen in our schools is that history should be inclusive and I'm not talking about just with the history teachers but you can include black history in all your subject matter don't wait until February for Black History Month included in everything that you do every day that way all students that are of color that are black will feel accepted that
011you see them um last week last Wednesday I was fortunate enough to go to Skidmore College to hear Professor Dr Salto Manning and her topic was expanding the politics of belonging in the pursuit of justice meaning that every student in your classroom should feel like they're a part of that community um oh boy I gotta skip over some stuff um I disagree with some of our commentators on TV like Whoopi Goldberg and then I saw a video of Dr um or nut doctor but Mr Coates and then I read in the Schenectady Gazette about a nominee Professor that said the use of the n-word within your group meaning black people is okay but it shouldn't be used by white people well I have to disagree with all three of them I am the son of
012a documented original Tuskegee yearman and for those of you that don't know during World War II they fought for something called the double v victory over the Axis powers in Europe and then they also wanted victory at home which didn't come right away because we were still under Jim Crow and I'll give you a little bit of a bit of a lesson on Jim Crow Jim Crow was a Minstrel character it was a black face character they used shoe polish to blacken the faces in Minstrel shows or black cork so that we had a whole part of our history where everything was separate but equal then we get to now the use of the n-word now in our schools we need to teach our students that that n-word is definitely derogatory it's making a person
013feel less than what they really are and again going back to history sit the kids down and teach them the contributions that black people have made in our country and then I also read in the newspaper the end pass now I'm not going to be accusatory I don't know if the administrator at the at the middle school addressed it but the way the paper made it sound was it wasn't it was out there but it wasn't really addressed I I personally feel that that end pass right away that's got to stop no student should be required to sign a pass to give another person permission to call someone else the n-word again it's derogatory we we taught we teach our kids sticks and stones may break break our bones but names will never hurt me
014baloney baloney the n-word when used hurts just like being punched because you're saying to me you're less than and then no place for hate um yesterday I learned something about no place for hate and this young man just mentioned it but if it's done at the high school why can't it be done at all six elementary schools and the middle school too in fact if we start teaching kids when they're really young um I think that would help an awful lot and then resources we have to wrap up your your thoughts I'm going to wrap it up right here thank you um resources you have colleges down the road you have Skidmore College you have parents you have the naac and you do have the Department of Education thank you thank you very much next
015up is Mark Crockett there we go good evening uh Mark Crockett I live in a Dorothy Nolan School District or part of the school districts in Wilton and uh I want to uh I don't know Mr Warren's last name but I want to thank him for his comments I totally agree um I am totally against any kind of racism I grew up in a time where it didn't seem to be happening in our schools um and I'm disturbed that it's happening now and if it is in fact happening what we heard from the students and whatnot then it should be stopped and it should be punished with discipline that's significant so people understand the message let me switch gears a little bit recent news New York State fourth graders fared twice as badly as national
016average with respect to covid-19 impact on learning the New York Fourth Graders lost 30 weeks versus 15 weeks nationally and then I'm just picking a couple data points prior to covid-19 approximately 40 percent of the Maple Avenue Middle School students were performing below grade level in math in Reading I would summarize that by saying we're not doing that well now I appreciate the teachers I appreciate all of you but I'm just stating some facts here so what are we investing in our time energy and money into Dei now I know it's not going to be popular here tonight but let me just hear me out Dei does not prevent racism it is in fact teaching it it's Doctrine focuses on skin color and other immutable fact traits that students have no ability to change white
017students are bad because they are responsible for oppression of black students and non-white students are victims non-white students are victims of this oppression and therefore have no hope for a bright future that's the message the message is white people are bad now again I don't want to see anybody treated differently this is the definition of racism Dr Martin Luther King told us to not look at skin color he dreamed of that time and all we're doing is talking about it but it should be disciplined if it happens meanwhile teachers are overwhelmed with Dei and dozens of other initiatives which do not focus on the problem of poor academic performance here's what I recommend create a working group of appropriate people to investigate and develop actions to be taken to help our emotionally troubled students create
018another group to investigate ways to get our students back on track to Excellence in the course subjects in Short Stop indoctrination and start teaching our students what they need to learn to prosper in the future thank you thank you [Applause] next up is Holly Hammond good evening holiday Hammond leffert Street Saratoga Springs I've lived here 30 years I am a mental health professional so I work with people all day long about how to talk about difficult things and handle conflict which is part of normal healthy relationships in society we have conflicts we disagree and um I'm also along time member a community organizer for MLK Saratoga which is all about promoting peace and social justice in our community seeing those two is inextricably linked and we do that through a lot of community events programs
019that are educational performance and dialogue inviting people together to talk and over the MLK weekend we had a program on restorative justice which I talked about before here but I'm bringing it up again because I learned some new information and we had students and faculty from South Glens Falls Central School come we had about almost 100 people participate in community circles and this is about basic like listening skills because you are you're not having cross conversations you're listening and um one student a graduate of South Glens Falls School drove from Plattsburgh to participate these students talked about feeling included like they were part of something that helped their Community they felt more connected wonderful program we only regretted that we didn't have more time I learned something recently and I was very surprised to learn
020that superintendent Patton was the superintendent of South Glens Falls High School when they were laying the groundwork for this restorative justice program that started in 2016. um it's flourished and they have a full-time director of counseling and SEL they have a half time teacher release who does restorative justice practices work and they have budgeted and are hoping for that to pass for another halftime teacher release to coordinate peer mediators district-wide support for restorative Community circles students staff and administration have meaningful opportunities to be trained in community circles and spaces and restorative practices they have monthly staff circles available to all staff who want to participate they have a vibrant student facilitator and peer mediation program over 30 students participate in this this is students working with students they also have at least two times a
021year days of dialogue which is school-wide and facilitates deep discussions into difficult subjects we need this so my question is superintendent Patton kind of why hasn't this work been brought to Saratoga and um and ask that we do this thank you next up is Kristen Dart Kristen Dart and I live in the city of Saratoga Springs um first of all I'd like to thank the bray students and parents who spoke to the Times Union in The Gazette those are not easy stories to share but I'd also like us to remember why it is that Emmett Till is famous it's not simply because of his age nor the year in which he was lynched he is famous because his mother chose to have an open casket showing his beaten body after it had been hanging from
022a tree and then dumped in a river I can guarantee that may may tell would rather her name and her son's name not be in the history books but that is not the case and when students are willing to grirtuously say that to students other students their peers we have an atmosphere problem in our schools she wanted to make sure her child did not die in vain and we should not allow the parents and students who shared their stories to do so in vain even with her courageous act we did not ban lynching in this country until March 29th 2022. it was the actions and attitudes of white adults that caused Emmett Till's death and it is the actions and in some cases the lack of actions that is causing suicide rates among black youth
023to Skyrocket the actions and attitudes of white students happen only when the adults allow these actions and attitudes to happen and when teachers and administrators do not step in this is the culture that is created and when teachers or the the building administrators do not feel supported in stepping in and stopping action it continues and that lack of trust and support is created when a board is willing to defend disproportionate rates of discipline among black students by inferring that they are more likely to be troubled more likely to be violent to bring drugs or weapons into the school when the national data points to the opposite it is our responsibility as adults the responsibility that you all have chosen to run for the board to be school administrators to create a plan to communicate that
024plan and execute that plan expediently we cannot allow this can to continue students teachers and administrators should feel safe in their communities and should feel safe to stop these actions thank you our last speaker for the first public comment period is Art Holmberg good evening good evening board administrators I am art Holmberg I live at 21 Summerfield Lane in Saratoga Springs and I'm retired I'm a retired Board of Education member not in this District but in New Hartford and um I would just like to reinforce what Holly said about restorative justice I recently been trained in restorative justice and found it fascinating interesting not punishment oriented but an opportunity to have two people or small group people address each other on how they've been harmed and how they've been treated and the data that I've
025learned is it's far more effective than punishment or exclusion for five days or whatever the student mentioned so how they really articulated it well I know the superintendent knows the concept well and I hope the board will continue to have the courage to address this very important issue in our community and I hope that we have success because we need to thank you thank you all right that concludes the first public comment period uh we are on to board committee reports are there any board committee reports Dean thanks Tony uh the property committee did not meet uh within the time frame of the last board meeting but uh as I usually try to do touch base with John tenor the day of and John uh um is is always got something going on that's worthy
026of reporting so as part of our capital projects as many of you have heard we finally have received all of the new cameras the security cameras all of those have come in and new systems are being installed currently throughout the district that work should be completed by the end of May um in the much anticipated school break that comes up I believe not next week but the week after the work will begin at the transportation garage on the new bus wash system and the last bus lift that's to be installed with in the garage thanks Dean anyone else John the policy committee has met I think twice um the uh one um change that the policy committee is bringing has already been referenced and that's that we're going to have three slots on the public
027comment period uh the public comment form and those are for students to use even if they come in after other folks have signed up so we always try to protect some space for student input another policy before you pertains to the term limits for officers we currently have a restriction a limit for a two-year term for the president I'm not sure we have language on the vice president but just for the president we have been advised by we've been learning from nisba and then Consulting with our attorney who has advised us that that is um not a good policy for how for us to have it's illegally dubious policy so we are file following that advice and removing that that term limit in this in this new proposed policy am I missing anything policy committee
028members part the lawyers have done their part and then we took our first look at that and then we'll have some next steps coming up from Dave thank you any others Angie Finance has not met but not because we're derelict because we see everybody once a week practically with budget workshops all right that concludes board committee reports we're on to Kate and Ryan with student representative reports oh hello all right alley gav they just had their annual pasta dinner last Friday their event went off without a hitch and their fifth graders came ready and prepared to serve Danny Samosa presented to kindergartners about special effects last week students got to use oil clay to create their own character the orchestra concert was last week their kids did a great job fourth and fifth graders even
029joined the high schoolers in a piece to end the concert was very impressive at Dorothy Nolan their third grade chorus in fourth and fifth grade Orchestra had beautiful performances this past week filling the Maple Avenue Auditorium it was great to have all their family and friends supporting their student talents the Dorothy Nolan drama club delivered great in school and Community performances of aristocrats last week the number of students involved both on and off stage helped make their show a hit all fifth grade classes participated in the short lesson crumpling a perfect plain white sheet of paper and reflecting on the ways in which our words and actions can have a lasting effect on others they have been challenged to look for times when a reminder about not leaving a crinkle may be necessary the Dorothy
030Nolan building Equity leadership team got to spend time with Anna Munoz this week delving more deeply into culturally responsive teaching practices lots of connections to the current curriculum and instructional efforts were made along with outlining desired outcomes for the future Caroline Street Spirit day and assembly are coming up on April 6th in their chorus concerts are in full spring swing they have New York State assessments also beginning after spring break division streets fourth and fifth grade spring Coral concerts is this evening March 30th the students will be joined by the high school choraliers and at Greenfield they just had their annual literacy night this past Friday students came to play literary activities mingle with the Cat in the Hat and then end with deer time their grade 3 students are joining enjoying an animation workshop
031with Danny samosa and our drama club has started hooray then at Maple Avenue Middle School the spring modified Sports began this week at Maple the 8th grade semi-formal dance took place last Friday and the turnout was great and April 24th to April 28th is a no place for hate kickoff celebration for Maple Ave over at the high school today it was announced to students that next year there will be a coffee shop implemented outside of the auditorium there is a challenge for students to create a brand identity for the coffee shop winning teams can get up to fifty dollars in their school lunch account a big kudos to the entire Mamma Mia cast and crew for putting on four amazing shows the international history Club will embark on their trip to Greece a week from
032today and the high school will be holding a college fair Monday April 3rd 6 30 to 8 P.M in the gymnasium that's it thank you next up is Mike with administrative reports all right I also want to congratulate the entire cast and crew of our High School Musical Mamma Mia hopefully you had a chance to come out to see our students perform it was an incredible show the just the the music the dance our students and all the musicians and the directors just did an incredible job so a tremendous amount of time and effort obviously goes into a musical production like that so again congratulations to everybody that was involved in a wonderful production last week I was very fortunate to be joined by principal Sal at the Post-Star teen excellence awards and one of
033our seniors Claire hegener and her parents attended to be recognized as this year Saratoga Springs recipient for the teen Excellence award so congratulations to Claire and over the next several weeks we have a lot of recognition events that go on with um a lot of our Community Partners both Adirondack and Saratoga County School boards associations we have some student recognition events so we'll keep the board updated to all the wonderful accomplishments our graduating seniors as they're being recognized at the end of their academic careers next Wednesday night April 5th is the our BOCES annual meeting so it's a business meeting as well as an opportunity to meet the candidates that are running for the BOCES Board of Education so that will be at the southern Adirondack education center next Wednesday the 5th starting at five
034o'clock and I believe both Tony and Angie will be joining me for that event this year spring recess which is something everyone is looking forward to both students and staff begins next Friday so we have a four day week next week and then vacation the following week and obviously when we come back uh from vacation there's just a tremendous amount of activity as we head into the end of the school year at all grade levels obviously with culminating with the graduation ceremony class of 2023 at the end of June um just I want to first thank all the folks who who came tonight to speak and I do want to just make a few comments of the opportunity to address the concerns obviously that all of you shared and this is just really just an
035opportunity we had a a really productive conversation and last week at our district Dei committee but having a superintendent the opportunity to respond to some of the racist language and the inappropriate behaviors that occur here in our school community so over the last few weeks I've had the opportunity to talk with many parents students as well as community members you know who are very upset about whether it be racist homophobic uh ethnic or religious incidents involving our students here in school the use of any racist language specifically the use of the n-word causes significant harm in this type of hateful speech will never be tolerated here at school our school school district does not condone or tolerate racist sexist homophobic or anti-semitic language or behavior and we do take these incidents very seriously so we
036have been as a district working for many years on creating a safe and welcoming the school environment for all of our students our staff and the many visitors that come to our schools every day we know obviously there's still very important work to do to educate not only our students but also our community and to engage our parents in important conversation that's going to help eliminate hateful speech or actions in our school as well as in our community so we do need the entire support of all of you in these efforts to support our community to share in the responsibility of how to teach our children to be mutually respectful and to be kind to one another so we encourage students and parents to report any incident that occurs here at school so it then
037can be investigated and addressed appropriately by our Administration and our District staff so we continue to have conversations to listen to gather your feedback and then to plan for what appropriate next steps would be whether it be professional development further training not only for our students but also for our staff and our community members so we all can intervene appropriately and act as allies for all of our students so our district diversity equity and inclusion committee supports this important work so that all students and their families feel welcome and safe here in our schools this year actually all eight of our schools so Mr Dart had asked if the no place for hate was only a high school initiative and actually all eight of our schools are involved and engaged in working with the Anti-Defamation
038League jdl and again just another first step to become a no place for hate school and this work encourages schools to foster a culture of mutual respect and what I really enjoy about it it's an opportunity to engage our students in the conversation uh to have them lead student-led efforts to help address bias and take a stand against hateful language in our school and Community our Dei committee is working uh again throughout the course of the school year but in organizing a community event April 26th and this is the student voices event uh in the High School auditorium and the goal of this evening is to Showcase some of the work that our students are involved in in helping build build community community within our schools but more importantly to engage our parents and families
039as partners to help us with this important work and also I think it will give an opportunity for for us to just educate more about Dei and no place for hate and some of the initiatives that are taking place in the district and again listening to the opportunity for where we can continue to improve so again we know that there's many things that we still can do to help improve and that we know we must do better for our students so I look forward to continuing to partner with our students with our parents as well as our community in creating safe and welcoming School environments for all I had opportunity to meet with several members of the AMC International Group a few of the students that are up there as well as our ncbi students
040so we've committed to meeting with each other on a regular basis with a high school teachers High School administrators and administrators at the district level again having those discussions with students about what their thoughts and suggestions are moving forward obviously is a critical step for us to continue to make as a district so I again appreciate your feedback and again your support as we move forward as a school district and community I do want to I've got one other thing again just want to bring the board up to speed in the community unfortunately this morning and a little after nine o'clock there was a swatting incident and again I was only aware of what swatting was by watching the national news last night uh because there were several local states in the Northeast and across
041the country that had been dealing with this over the last few days uh so a call was made to the Saratoga Springs Police Department uh this morning and I want to thank uh both the Saratoga Police Department as well as the Saratoga county sheriff's department for their immediate response uh in their support of our school district so we were one of many school districts this morning at the same time who received one of these phone calls the phone call this morning didn't come to the district it actually went directly to the police department so as soon as we were notified the police immediately responded to the high school the high school was put into a hold in place to make sure first and foremost that our students and staff were safe we had an opportunity
042for our law enforcement Partners to sweep the building and then obviously communicate this out to all of our families into the community so if you haven't seen so already there's been several media reports throughout the day that several school districts unfortunately in the capital region had to go through this unfortunate experience this morning so um so again we debrief with law enforcement uh thank them for their immediate response and their support of our schools uh and hopefully those who were involved um again are found and again it's difficult enough in the environment in which we try to live and work and support our kids that incredibly disruptive incidents like this again make it more and more challenging for our students and and our staff every day in our school so but again fortunately everybody was
043safe and again appreciate the support that we received from our partners in law enforcement this morning any questions from the board I saw Angie then John yeah I just wanted to follow up on your response to the racial incidents in the newspaper and appreciate your quick and robust response I I know it's hard to imagine the pervasiveness of of racial incidents um you know someone tonight even said if in fact it is happening and it's it's hard and we don't want to imagine it uh whether it's happening or imagine the damaging effects of a black student hearing the n-word every single day as a but I'm especially grateful for because of the people who have come out the the folks who um were in the article but as the mom of two black children in
044this District who um attended and attend currently I don't have to imagine it so I know it's real and I can tell you it's an onslaught constant few few student cents are using the n-word like we're hearing in front of their black peers even and it is damaging so I'm heartened to hear that we're going to be taking action I hope we will look at the restorative justice um option I did after the Articles can't came out asked my daughter if she'd heard of the end pass and she actually Shrugged me off and said it's a thing mom it's been forever it's just how it is um I asked her if she hears the n-word and every day and she laughed at me and said of course I do I'm just used to it so
045it doesn't affect me but that's not true and she and probably others won't report it her quote was why would I bother what are they going to do it's too many people so to hear our community support change to hear you supporting change is really meaningful the resignation to this being the community or the environment that our students are learning in is not okay every student in our buildings like we say in our vision statement and every human on this Earth deserve the same dignity safety life chances and innate belongingness in the spaces and places that they occupy and working towards that as a district which is often called Dei work does not discount any other person's worth there's plenty of Worth to go around and we all benefit from this work so I hope
046and I appreciate you saying we're going to keep working we're going to do better we have the opportunity right now to hear the voices speaking out so we can try harder to understand these experiences even though it's hard to imagine that they're true or happening because we don't experience them and may not be able to fathom the effect and we don't want to accept that it's real but it is so I implore all of us whether it's us at the table it's us working in the district it's in the community everybody I implore us to not let this divide us this is not divisive there are no losers in striving to do this better and there's Only Winners so thank you and thank you to everybody who is either brave enough or felt safe enough
047to come and speak or talk to the media and I just think this is a wonderful opportunity for us to really make a change thank you John I want to comment on the same issue like others I was very distressed by these these two articles I firmly believe that most employees in our district teachers and administrators have been working in good faith they deal with so many complex situations and often do a great job helping to resolve really difficult situations but these two articles have made more visible what many have known for a long time there is a significant problem that we have in our district and we just don't have a handle on it I want to read some language that we adopted it's going to sound bureaucratic and administrative but I just want
048to remind this board what we have committed to this is from a board of education resolution passed June 10th 2020. be it resolved at the Saratoga Springs City Schools board of education has zero tolerance for racism of any kind is dedicated to fostering a supportive and effective educational environment for all students is committed to working with the District administration to ensure that the ideals articulated here are converted and integrated into our District's culture and everyday practices that resolution was unanimously passed by the board then which includes five members seated today this is from District policy 105 racism discrimination and marginalization of any people or groups of people whether intentional or not have no place in our schools our district or our community such actions not damage not only those individuals and groups at which they
049are directed but also our community as a whole we are committed to addressing these inequities to helping each and every student equitably access learning opportunities in school to enable them to thrive and to build a better Society this policy was unanimously adopted by this board which includes seven current trustees Across the Nation we see very well documented spikes in hate crimes physical violence we see so-called leaders stating openly racist ideas we see Insidious efforts to sanitize American history and we see distorted representations of what anti-racist work really is and here we have young people and their families describing terrible patterns and here we also have distorted representations of what anti-racist work is I believe we have no choice about whether to energetically engage with issues related to diversity Equity inclusion and belonging there's ongoing racism
050in our district I have to do more I hope together we will all do more thank you Natalia then Connie I have a few comments which aren't as well thought out as John and Angie's but I've had a lot of conversations over the past few weeks starting at the school where I work where a third grader called a peer at the n-word uh just about a month ago and his teacher reached out to me and said I don't know what to do because I never expected to have a third grader in 2023 using that language against another student in my class and the day she messaged me that that night I had a friend who lives just outside of our district messaged me and say my first grader came home and asked me what this
051means because a friend said it what do I do and my answer to both of them is I don't know what to do but I'm willing to learn one thing I've been thinking a lot about is how harmful this language is and how a lot of times we frame racism as if it's hatred and hatred is certainly a component of it but I like to think about it more in terms of the harm that it does focusing on the impact rather than the intent because when I was a kid in school and kids made racist comments they'd always be followed up with that's just a joke like I'm just joking and I had an eighth grader who told me last week that's what kids say it's just a joke I'm just joking and I think
052jokes are funny and I think that racism is harmful and I don't think those two things can go hand in hand I had a talk last week with my first grader about harmful language I didn't say any slurs but we did talk about language that is okay for adults to say and okay for uh not okay for children to say and then how there's some language that's not okay for uh people in my family to ever say and we started that conversation which uh maybe I'm late on starting with him but that's what we're doing I read last week that racist and anti-semitic incidents are up by a lot a lot Nationwide and I know that we're not alone here in Saratoga Springs but I look forward to being part of the solution here to
053making our schools safe and inclusive and welcoming and affirming for each and every student I do have one question for you Dr Patton which is that in your statement you uh referenced reporting and I'm hoping that you can clarify what is the best way for parents and students to report what do you recommend this might not be a question to answer right now but to think about because I want to make sure that our community members and especially our students have the tools to report effectively in a way that can be followed up and can be documented for later reference and can help with the understanding that this isn't a series of disconnected incidents it's systemic it's part of our culture and the change that needs to happen is our culture thank you [Applause] well
054let's uh move on to Connie and yeah just wanted to say that ice I support Dr Patton for your efforts you have built a 40-person Dei committee you've provided significant resources to students and staff for Dei and for anyone to say that you have not tried to tackle these issues is grossly inaccurate there is extraordinary proof to support the claim that you have made Dei a priority within the power of your position and this board has supported you all the way clearly something is not working but it is not you so I did want to express my support for your efforts thank you um I'll just add again I'll Echo Natalia I don't uh have this as well thought out as some of my colleagues but um it occurs to me that you know this
055this use of the the first the first student Eden who spoke uh tonight um you know mentioned a you know an almost constant uh state of hearing these words um used in the hallways and it's clear that we adults are not hearing it we're we're either unable to kids are great at um at excluding us from their speech or we're unwilling to uh for a variety of reasons uh those you know could be um fear of dealing with it inability to to know how to deal with it it could be an ability or not knowing how to report it to to Natalia's question uh we have to get better at all of those things we we adults we have to our ears have to get better we have to be a little braver we um
056uh and this is this is the community of adults this is not focused uh on any um specific group of individuals it's it's something that all of us have to uh commit to doing [Music] um but it's also pretty clear to me that the discussions we have to provide a forum we adults in the community schools and other places have to provide forums for uh kids to talk about this amongst themselves because there is a clear disconnect between what some kids feel they have the permission to say and what other kids clearly feel that they don't and and in my opinion they don't um so discussions among kids you know have to be at the Forefront of our our solution and you know they maybe they they happen without adults present but then there's got
057to be an adult component that that listens and basically works from that Center and uh you know takes the takes the message out because kids will start this for us and and probably do most of the work uh and then we just have to follow their lead I you know it's a bunch of people mentioned restorative justice practices tonight um the uh the presentation from South Glens Falls uh didn't stop with with talking about restorative justice uh as you know a conflict resolution tool or whatever it also it's much bigger than that there's a there's a whole um you know philosophy of restorative communication practices and those are the types of things that I think we could benefit from here uh in our school and those are those are circles they're basically what I was
058just just discussing um with a name on it you know starting with kids and uh listening to to what they're saying and what each other's saying and then uh sort of taking it out from that Center so um I just feel we as a a board need to do what we can to encourage that next step of um sort of introspection and communication among the students and then let them tell us what to do from there um everyone's set okay um and you're yep we've actually have uh two presentations tonight so uh at the request of the Board of Education uh last fall uh we have a group tonight of our district Health teachers as well as several building administrators uh that are going to present on some of the Vape prevention and education efforts
059some of the programming from both the education and prevention perspective uh things that are occurring in the school district so I'm going to turn it over to our health education team so great well good evening thanks for having us um we have a we have a big group here tonight to give an overview on on things related to vaping which we know is grown into a modern day concern um you know not just for our adolescents here at Saratoga but I think worldwide um you know it's a it's a growing health issue and we'd like to give you an overview of how we're addressing it within the classrooms and I know Mrs house here tonight also to talk about how it relates to the code of conducts so I'd like to start by introducing some
060of our health education teachers I know you know the administration that's here at Sinai so starting with our middle school health Ed teachers we've got Allison Hubbs and Jen Mead and then our high school health teachers who have Bob Hill and Holly Lewis we also have uh Andy Cuthbertson who is our teacher on special assignment who's working with the Department of Athletics health education and physical education so thanks again for giving us giving us the time tonight uh so to to lead off I I do want to share and I'm not going to bore you by reading this but this is the list of the New York State and national health education standards and I just highlighted some of the key components with these standards um it's certainly important for our students to have the
061the understanding of the content or the functional knowledge related to the dangers of vaping but more importantly and this is what our our health Ed team is doing on a daily basis is they're they're trying to build skills and confidence to use these skills to make important Health decisions and not just for Vaping but nutrition and exercise and sleep and other substances as well so that that's really become the focus of our our um our approach through our health Ed classes and our health teachers will touch on that this evening as well so you can see you know advocacy practicing Health enhancing behaviors goal setting decision making skills I think we would all agree that if our students have the confidence and some experience to work through these necessary skills you know we can we
062can really just hope that they're equipped with the confidence to be able to say no if they have an opportunity or the opportunity is presented to them to to use a vape so I'm going to turn it over to Andy cuthrason who's going to talk a little bit about the yrbs which is the youth risk behavior survey which a component of that survey does include the use of Vapes um all right thank you uh so as Nick said the youth risk behavior survey was administered in both the middle school and the high school in both the physical education classes and health education classes to get a gauge on student usage their participation in some of these risky behaviors and tonight specifically in relation to vaping tobacco use and other risky behaviors so this chart here
063kind of shows the results of that test in comparison to the results released Nationwide in 2019 you can see there that you know the students that are currently vaping both at the middle school and the high school are less than possibly the state and the national averages but once again this tool was used to kind of gauge where our students were at and their participation in these behaviors and furthermore Drive some of those content-based instructions in the health education curriculum both at the middle school and the high school next the the middle school health educators are going to speak specifically about their curriculum and some of the content related things to this subject all right um Jen and I are middle school health teachers and our seventh graders have an opportunity to get a skills-based
064health education for one semester in middle school and then they get it for one semester in high school and we touch base on vaping four different times during our units so I'm going to cover the first two and then Jen's going to tell you how we do it for the second too during self-management students go through case studies and have an opportunity to go over all of the reasons that students choose not to vape and discuss what they could do if they possibly are ever in a situation where other students are vaping during the decision making unit we which we're in right now students access some valid resources to obtain more information on vaping and on other drugs and then we do something called the social norms project where students create a poster to Advocate
065and inform other students that most of our students are not using other drugs and the social norms approach has been found to actually decrease substance abuse in the communities in which it's used then when we talk about Stress Management we make some of the connections between mental health and substance abuse including vaping and so the students do an advocacy project where they try to advertise a strategy an app or a service that could help address mental health when they're learning about advertising we pull in a lot of information about vaping and many of our students choose to address that as their advocacy topic you see two of their posters on the screen on the right and then lastly when we talk about communication students have an opportunity to actually practice what they would do in
066a situation when offered to vape so the curriculum kind of comes full circle they talk about it in the beginning and then practice communicating about it in the end with the Hope like what Nick said that those skills equip them to make healthy decisions for themselves then they go up to the high school good evening I am Holly Lewis and this is Bob hill we have been teaching together here at Saratoga high for 19 years um we as well as the middle school health teachers have a semester-long course um the big difference is is at the middle school they get all seventh graders and at the high school here they get to pick and choose when they want to take the health Ed requirement at the high school level I personally believe health education at
067the high school should be in 9th or 10th grade right now I do have some second semester seniors and I think education as you all know is key and starting that young is something that needs to be done so I'd like the board to talk about that on a different night um I am very passionate of what I do as well as Bob as you guys can see here we focus on really a lot of things within our vaping education within our drug Ed unit here at the high school we focus a lot on refusal skills we also focus on what Vape companies do to Target today's youth what they do with flavors and even making these devices super tiny now to attract even kids from hiding devices from their parents from us as teachers
068from everybody we do spend a great deal of time focusing on the stages of addiction what to look for how to recognize red flags with ourselves but also our loved ones and our friends what to say to those individuals and how to get help and support we do watch a Netflix documentary it is called Big Vape I recommend that everybody watches it I think it does a great job again and as to getting into deep as to what vaping does especially to our youth with not only targeting with advertisements and flavors and devices and what have you but also you are going to see in that documentary seniors in high school really struggling to quit that started vaping in 9th and 10th grade and as 12th graders they feel that they are just addicts and
069they can't stop and it's extremely sad um our doors are always open some kids do come to us asking for help and support a big portion of our health Ed part of drug Ed is showing them resources here at the school we do offer help and support obviously in our classroom but we do offer online resources for them to utilize in our school and also what's available in our community as well in our counseling department and thus far as they continue to try to stay away from vaping or try to get help from quitting with quitting if they already had started so that's what we do here at the high school I know I got to keep this short but thank you thank you and Michelle Tau High School principal as you just heard from
070our Educators there's a lot of work that is done preventatively inside of the classroom I'm going to speak a little bit about what is happening outside of the classroom so um on the right you'll see a module from the Stanford medicine online resource that is available for our students if at any time a student receives a consequence inside of the building because of a vaping infraction students are asked to complete this vaping module and here's a sample of one student's reply at the end it's a it's about an hour or two that students have to complete it and you can see much aligning with what Holly had just said this student indicates that they want to quit that they have an addiction and that they felt like this tool kit that was used was helpful
071to them and this is just one of the um examples that we have received from students who have completed the modules indicating that they would like some help and so I'm going to skip down to the bhsn referrals Behavioral Health Science Network one of the preventative measures we provide is that when students indicate that they would like some help or if they are caught with a vape in school there's a referral process that is made for harm reduction groups so students every student who may have been caught with a vape in school gets an automatic referral and then students also who indicate they need some help because of addiction also receive a referral for some harm reduction where they focus really about on their addiction any mental health and then some strategies to help them
072grow another preventative measure that we have started piloting this year shortly after February break was installing some Vaped factors around the high school and just a quick statistic that that since we have started the pilot we have seen a 14 daily decrease in students vaping in the bathrooms Additionally the Staffing support that the board has approved recently in relation to adding monitors in the high school and probably in the middle school as well has been extremely helpful they provide a lot of visibility they're very proactive they build great rapport with our students and they really have been instrumental in keeping the bathroom flow clear so that students feel safe going into the bathrooms and to minimize any vaping that is occurring there so they've been extremely beneficial to us and then finally sharing information with
073our families so on the next slide you'll see this is a sample communication that was sent home in the newsletter in December of this year we sent a very similar one last year in the spring to our families the newsletter goes to all students and all families of Saratoga Springs High School and the purpose of this particular slide and the text was to show families that there are so many different kinds of nicotine and or THC products out there they come in all shapes and sizes some look like they're bubble gum some look like they're pens so it was a really just a way to educate to see what they might find at home and the purpose in communicating these examples was really to create that partnership between home and school so that if they
074do find something and they need some help they can certainly give us a call sorry if these numbers are too small for you to see but I will just kind of verbally summarize for you this information um at the top you can see is a chart that shows a five-year trend of the offense and there's two offenses labeled up here one is use possession sale of drugs and that is a state category and then the second is possession or use of nicotine products or paraphernalia and I wanted to just show that the information represented is not limited to just Vapes or cigarettes it also includes paraphernalia such as a lighter so you can see that our Peak year was in 2018-19 pre-pandemic with 154 offenses at the high school and you can if you look
075obviously during the covid years you'll see decreases because we had the shutdown and then of course the following year we were hybrids so we only had some of our students in the building throughout the year and then you'll start to see the increase again starting last year and currently we are on track to surpass last year's data we're hoping with the implementation of the pilot of the Vape detectors we'll start to see that slowing um and then the chart underneath it shows a five-year trend of the number of incidents um total and the number of students involved in those incidents so what you're seeing obviously is not a match and that is due to recidivism that is occurring and again alluding back to that idea of some students have an addiction and that they are
076they continue to have offenses after they receive a consequence so by no means is this inclusive of every student as Holly had indicated earlier product management and marketing is about you know hiding and this and uh disguising certain products but what I want to show with this is that the number of students that we have in the high school for example which this year our current enrollment is a little bit over 1900 when you look at the number of students that have had offenses relating to these two offenses compared to the number of students that are in our buildings that you can see that it's approximately three percent it's a small percentage it is I think although harmful and people feel that it's unsafe that it is not as pervasive as some individuals may think
077the other piece is that it does correspond to the behave the Y RBS survey that Andy had referred to earlier in their presentation that we are showing below our national average that there is a nationwide upward Trend in the use of nicotine Vapes and or THC Vapes and even though we're below the national average we will still continue to educate and work with our students to reduce use so again more kids I think showing this data are choosing not to vape than to vape and I think that that's a very positive thing for Saratoga Springs High School so I am going to turn this over to Scott singer of the Middle School thank you can I see that it's going to go back a little bit thanks for having us all right so at the
078middle school we're definitely have some preventative measures we have an excellent group here our admin team working with Tim Harris Amy Totino also Nikki nivadomi and our excellent Health teachers because they work with every single seventh grader I walked into Miss hub's class today and they're actually teaching about the drug unit so the kids are intrigued a little bit because this is the first time some of them are even hearing about these type of things but they're also talking about the actual negative effects they have when it comes to vaping some of the things we do yes we have because the district has supported it we have vaping modules within the building um some even have approached us particularly they see The Vaping the actual module in the detector in the bathroom some students they
079even have you know maybe throwing a sandal at it and actually that information comes right to us so when that student throws a sandal tries to hit the sensor and it actually emails right to us it says a triggers that it's been impacted and they're intrigued a little bit but we have caught a very small number of students within Maple Avenue you might see that more in eighth grade um we do in you know the slide I'm going to show you in a second here we do have let me go back as you can tell we do have a small number last year we did see an uptick and being brutally honest we did have four female students in eighth grade that we worked very closely with um because they kept on going into the
080restroom and they were vaping we had to educate families we worked like I said very closely but we also wanted to educate them and we knew that they're going to be going to the high school as well the negative side of it but when we have these conversations with the students we give them statistics but you have to understand we work with 10 to 14 year olds and the goal is all about education it truly is about education and when we sit down and talk to them about the Vapes and so when they see a particular vape and they don't see the liquid moving on it we have to explain to them that is marijuana inside that Vape they had no idea they got it from a sibling they got it from a friend they
081got it from somewhere downtown and they brought it into school and so we have to educate them on that also we're working with very young kids and they even see a marijuana leaf on that Vape they're like what is that they had no idea so it's like they're intrigued by it they like the smell of it but also too when they bring that into school they like to sometimes show off in their friends it's all about see something say something when that article came out uh just just recently and did mention Maple Avenue we stressed that to the kids and the staff we can't have blinders on anymore and that has to be coming right to us and when that does occur when let's say a student tries to vape or even when the sensor
082goes off we act on it right away and you see the slide before the district has supported us having monitors in the building when you see four boys go in the bathroom four goes in the bathroom something's up maybe they're just having some fun in there doing something awkward but also too we where we act on it right away and we're very very blessed to have those monitors all right so but with the middle school you can say the numbers are definitely different from the high school but it's all about educating those individuals those youths all right but lastly I do run it I just want to thank you know this board for supporting and also the district supporting some of these initiatives that we have in the building yes when a student does Vape
083there are consequences that assign we're not all about busting kids students but the goal is really sitting down and educating them because they when they start doing that it's going to lead into something else it could be a gateway to something else so and I think I'm passing it back off to I don't know who but we have questions yeah so I'd like to open it up for any questions uh speaking of my microphone and giving my back gun I appreciate the administration being responsive to the board's uh request and really have happy to have the All-Star team here tonight uh to talk to us um and I appreciate the slides that have your names and titles I think that should be always in every presentation thank you three questions one is are we doing
084anything in elementary schools my my sense is that I mean I see the numbers in the middle school which is in some ways encouraging but my sense is that we we probably should be starting this education maybe a little earlier but I wonder if you have thoughts about that um I'm wondering how you know that the vaping in the bathrooms has decreased how do we collect that information and then um my understanding is that once kids get addicted that that is really tough and so the referrals for addiction treatment seems like a key point of intervention and I wonder if there's any any sort of systemic assessment about how well the um the resources for addiction treatment are working are those questions clear yeah I'll I'll respond to the first question um related to Elementary
085and through our conversations that we've had we can do a better job down to Elementary level currently we don't have uh anyone in each of our elementary buildings a sign for that type of information but even with how low the usage rate is at the middle school or even the exposure if we have one kid exposed there's a good chance they were exposed before they even got to middle school so uh through our conversations that's something that we talked about putting some pressure on our PE teachers who have contact with all the students in that building you know our PE teachers some of them are Health Ed certified but right they're encouraging lifelong Fitness lifelong health so I'm confident that our elementary PE teachers can absorb some of this and we can talk about how
086building that in down at the PE setting I'm going to pass it over to Jen she's got a comment which definitely addresses um vaping and nicotine because she was disgusted by the lungs they showed her so there is some of it but I think just like Holly would like the kids to get it earlier in the high school I would I would love to see Health its own special in the elementary school to deliver SEL and all of this important content and skills to kids thanks passes over to Mrs South for some of the incidents I think your first question was how do we how did we get our data so The Vape detectors were starting to be installed around the break the December break through February so they were activated prior to us letting
087all of the students know that they were there so we actually had a weeks or two weeks worth of data from pre-letting students know and then collecting the data from post after students so that's how we collected our data point to show that 14 daily increase your second question great point so the once we submit a bhsn referral bhsn we have two clinicians here in the high school they will reach out to the families and I can tell you that we wish that the participation in the harm reduction groups was higher it does require some consent from the families and there have been times where some families have not consented to the harm reduction groups I think this is great and I appreciate all the hard work with this this is something that I think
088is very worthwhile and should have a great response from the students and part of my question actually is have you been hearing any positive feedback from the students and they what are they proactively and asking questions and asking for more information and also specifically if there's any plans to expand on this like with issues of opioids in schools and unfortunately the fentanyl issues that are happening where kids may or may not even know that it is fentanyl and and the education not to take anything and then from someone that you don't know something that looks like candy and again that whole issue and starts in elementary school so I'm sure you're working on that but just wanted a little bit more info thanks to answer your first question when relating to has anyone given me
089any feedback I have not received any feedback from any of the students um I I think if there's any feedback it's probably given to our monitors who are see our students on a regular basis they're so visible and they're in the bathrooms or by the bathrooms um I don't know if anyone else has I can say in terms of traffic flow in the buildings we have 1300 plus kids and three grade levels you're starting to see because of the sensors when we didn't put it out there they've been kids talk you're starting to see less kids go into the bathrooms together we do have kids signing one and one out but between classes we have Finance between classes so you're not seeing as many kids congregate and also too because of the the sheer you
090know staff that we have in the hallways that they do notice that so the kids are talking but also too especially the middle level um in terms of like we talked about racial slurs tonight like when they hear those things it does come to us it's not like people are you know blindsided by it but like when let's say a student brings in to uh you know brings a vape remember a little show and tell not planning on vaping but look what I have kids turn them in right away and so they you know they they do come right to building Administration and it's all about education others hey Ben I'm sorry the uh this this isn't a time for asking questions this is a presentation technically to the board I'm sorry about that we
091love you Ben if someone might want to touch base with Ben on the way out and get his questions answered there or feel free to come up here and I can get them uh directed where they're supposed to go does anyone else have any questions from the board all right um we are now uh at the yeah thank you very much Ben also there's a second public comment period after this wraps up I just want to thank our health Educators and our administrators I know they put a lot of time and effort I know this has been a priority of the Board of Education to learn more about not only prevention but also education and I think it's very real of the struggles that our students are having with addiction to Vapes so the more
092I think our parents are informed as to what to look for at home that a lot of the conversations that we have with students and families most parents really have no idea what to look for in their in their you know at the home so um so again really appreciate the incredible efforts of our teachers who work so closely with our kids and our students are very honest and open in providing them with feedback and then the support both through prevention and counseling that is so necessary you know dealing with some of these challenges that are that our teenagers face so great job in the presentation so now I want to turn over to Tim hilker our assistant superintendent for business and Joe as the board mentioned we've been meeting on a weekly basis for
093the last several weeks uh so we're getting closer to the end of the budget development process we are scheduled for April 18th as our next business meeting so Tim and Joe will obviously provide an update as to where we are now as we continue to gather information in finalizing a recommendation for next year budget next year's budget to the Board of Education that the board is scheduled to adopt uh April 18th so I'll turn it over to Tim and Joe great thank you uh hi Joe Greco director of budget and program integration um so the stuff that we'll cover tonight again it's pretty similar to what we've had over the last couple of months now so we'll give you the update on the budget app where we are we'll keep going back to those three
094decision points you have as board members Tim's going to talk pretty extensively again about the fund balance and reserves plan and and what we can do uh as it relates to our budget Gap and then finally we'll be hitting some of the important dates so we show this every time our dotted line keeps creeping further and further to the right here so we are almost at April um and at April this is when we adopt our actual budget so this is the last board meeting before budget adoption which is right after our April break so as far as the budget Gap again everything else has stayed relatively the same our preliminary Gap was 420 000. we had worked over this past month continuing to make reductions throughout most of that looks pretty similar I think
095some new ones there on the left hand side at the bottom some of the supplies and contractual we went through some of the codes made a few reductions around thirty thousand in there I think Tim had mentioned at the last meeting about the inner fund transfer to the cafeteria fund traditionally we had always set aside about a hundred thousand to deliver to the cafeteria fund we feel that we can step down off of that by around 65 000 savings and then also we were able to capture an RN position through attrition at the high school again picking up some additional savings so throughout uh we're saving or reducing about 700 000 which not only closes the Gap but actually gives us a budget surplus of 275 000. so good job team we're trending in the
096right direction so if we take that whole budget and um again just looking at the the board decision point so we've talked about this at length here we can either be managing our programs or Staffing so things what are we adding what are things that we're reducing um how much taxes are we levying so this is the revenue coming in and then also our use of fund balance and reserves so the reserves plan that we have in place we've been appropriating uh 454 455 000 towards the Gap essentially uh the the levying of taxes the plan that we've established was 2.75 percent or two and a half million dollars for a revenue and then as far as managing the programs again we had started with 420 000 Gap over this past couple of months we've
097been continuing to make reductions and then at this point now at 275 000 Surplus through those reductions so again reducing around seven hundred thousand dollars in expenditures if you look at our budget as it currently stands so right now we're looking at 142 million dollar budget still in draft form um but what I wanted to show and I've shown this before is how these different pieces of the budget are because sometimes we have to kind of put these things in perspective on percentage-wise where these things live in our budget so you're looking about four percent in Central Services about uh five and a half percent of the budget is facilities and then a huge chunk which is what we would expect in a school system um 32 percent is for your general instruction and then
098you tack on to that another 11 for our special education so a large percentage of our budget here is directly related to our instruction piece we also have another five percent for pupil services so that would include your Sikes your social workers your guidance counselors your school counselors your Librarians that's all kind of lumped in with pupil services then we have a few smaller percentage pieces here technology for all we talk about technology again smaller piece here of the overall budget very small percentage for our clubs and activities our Athletics transportation and then finally a very large piece here not surprisingly for benefits and then finally we have our debt service and inner fund transfers so this gives you again an overall view of where in that 142 million dollars the percentage breakdown throughout this
099whole piece but again you look at these percentages 75 percent of the general budget is in our people it is in salaries it is in benefits so we look back at our Gap analysis what I wanted to do was start to layer in now that we have that 275 thousand dollar Surplus start to layer in some of the things we've been talking about over the past few weeks so at the bottom there on the left hand side that I put in bold we had talked extensively about a school counselor that 1.0 position so that's around ninety four thousand dollars so now we're not subtracting anymore we're adding that into the side of expenditures we've talked about the enl position at a 0.6 FTE so again estimating around seventy thousand dollars for that and then we
100talk quite a bit at our last budget Workshop about our Tech Hardware replacement again trying to get ourselves more in line sort of like our bus replacement schedule now we have all these devices how are we starting to work this into the budget so we have a we don't have just a swell of money to buy a lot of devices and then we're waiting for that next swell we're just kind of doing it in a systematic way but when we do that we've kind of undid all the work we just did to get our Surplus so when you've added in that school counselor the e l position and now the tech Hardware replacement it kind of puts us back at our estimated budget Gap now of around 300 000. so what do we do now
101next steps um so on the expenditure side we're still actively looking at things like curriculum renewal are there potential reductions that we still can make in that area to try to capture a little bit more money to to reduce some of our expenditures we are still in discussion about the e l position is it possible to put that in as a 0.4 position as opposed to a 0.6 again trying to capture a little bit more money there on the revenue side of things we're still waiting for the Governor's budget deadline is April 1st realistically we probably won't see anything till mid-week next week so there is the possibility of some additional revenue and then also I have there on on the revenue side appropriation of fund balance and reserves we did have our original plan
102up there uh 454 000 but that's still an option when you think about the board's three different uh pieces there of managing programs levying taxes and fund balance and reserves so that is another option to close that Gap and get us to a balanced budget a couple of weeks ago Tim had talked about just budgetary Impact versus programmatic impact and we want to make sure that we don't lose sight of things that do have a programmatic impact but sometimes are not affecting the bottom line at least currently so a couple things I just wanted to at least make that separation for budgetary impact the reason why we start out with the with a gap and then of course um you know all the programs that we're putting in there to to close the gap um
103our CTE program remember we went and increased that by 40 slots so that was pretty significant increase to our budget so it's a budget driver for sure the additional SRO positions that again increase the amount uh that we had to or what that actually increased the Gap to to start for our rollover we also added an additional uh FTE for elementary for for need um now that we've put that in as that additional school counselor the 0.6 e l teacher and then we've talked about this as well the 0.4 FTE for World Language or Latin and eventually kind of stepping down off of that for the students that are currently in the program and then finally the tech Hardware plan so here we have all the pieces that currently that we're talking about that absolutely
104has a budgetary impact current year programmatic impact and I didn't want to lose sight of these things so this is why I'm putting it over here on the programmatic and doesn't have a budgetary impact at least not yet the social worker we were acquiring a social worker through a temporary Grant so now we're again it's not having an impact on the general fund we're putting out to voters um but it's programmatic impact because it's impacting us right now again we're not paying for it out of the general fund yet uh behavioral coach was one of those ones I was mentioned before again we're able to acquire this out of one of our temporary grants to FTE for math AIS and coaching out of a grant the 1.0 FTE tosa Athletics again being paid out of
105a grant we've picked up a psychologist out of one of the coveted relief grants the additional 0.8 FTE for attendance officer again out of a grant our Summer Orientation programs that we've put in the last two years again largely supplemented out of our grants and we've expanded our tutoring programs at the secondary level quite a bit again that's all been subsidized through grants so just these alone up here these are all Grant funded and again I just don't want to lose track of that because that has a way of sneaking up on us in a year's time or two years time and all of a sudden those become our top priorities additional programmatic pieces in here the 1212 section at Lake and then also the 812 section at Maple we did have reductions within our
106special ed department so through those reductions we were able to kind of horse trade and be able to put those programs in place so net it didn't impact the budget at all but it is a programmatic impact so we just want to make sure that we're acknowledging that so we're thinking about those grants I do want to attach some dollar figures on here just kind of rough numbers again it's not Mission critical tonight but this is a slide I guarantee I will bring up next year probably about nine months time to be like hey remember this one um so the arbor Grant the American Rescue plan that does expire in 2024. so here's a couple of main pieces that are in that grant that we'll have to make a hard decision next year are we
107continuing to support these programs because there is not another Grant that's waiting in the wings to capture these so the reality of our situation is we're either going to cut these programs out or we're going to readjust our budget and find a way to to fund it within the the general fund for in perpetuity so you have these pieces in here also your title one title two we had some carryover money which is essentially kind of like fund balance for that Grant so it is temporary that is also going to expire in 2024 so that's the carryover that extra money will expire not title grants title Grant should continue um but right there all of that together in one year's time we're looking around six hundred thousand dollars that we either have to make a
108decision on essentially um additionally looking one year beyond that so two years out the McKinney vento grant that does expire in 2025 in that Grant we are capturing a social worker position so again that's something that we're gonna have to look in two years time and the Ida 611 the special ed Grant we're picking up behavioral coach in there over the next two years but again that expires in 2025. so again not critical for this evening but I I want to give you early warnings that these things will fall off and we just want to make sure that we have good conversations about it early going into next year's budget cycle so we're not surprised by any of this so when we look at the uh this this takes into account everything that we've discussed
109up to this point and when we look at this on a budget to budget basis you can see that comparatively this is a higher than normal increase and that's not meant to alarm but rather to just raise an awareness which kind of gets to the point that Joe is just making which is simply that in years past we have um done better at offsetting the increase of the budget by reducing or reallocating other expenditures and resources so that hasn't been as much the case but also this is driven by some inordinate increases in expenditures like health insurance like fuel some of the things that we've talked about throughout the the budget process so again not meant to alarm but just to raise an awareness that when we look uh budget to budget we have a
110higher than normal comparative increase so we talked a little bit a couple weeks ago about fund balance and kind of where we thought we would end up and this is an early estimate but in large part the decrease represents the the funding of the capital reserve that was in last year's fund balance and reserves plan and that's uh a large contributor to why we think we're going to end up where we think we're going to end up at the end of this year but just using that as sort of a jumping off point to project out wanted to kind of give a sense in in part respond to the question that has come up a couple times about the use of fund balance and what you're seeing here is more of a worst case scenario
111but really kind of want to illustrate the point as we get further into the discussion about closing the Gap and how we do that and so this takes into account several things it takes into account the appropriation of fund balance that we talked about early on when we were developing the fund balance and reserves plan it also takes into account all of the things that Joe just got done discussing that would come off of other funding sources and it assumes bringing them into the budget and those decisions had not been made yet either but then also uh really where we want to bring the discussion to tonight and this is the question that I believe was asked previously is what does it look like if we use fund balance to close that budget Gap right
112and so this also incorporates that and so this holds all other things equal and I assure you they are not but I I just wanted to kind of give you a sense of what happens over the next several years if all of those things held true that if we absorbed all those positions into the budget and if we appropriate that fund balance and if we don't then take steps to address our Reliance on that fund balance and you can see that just in a matter of four years that we get down to about three and a half percent fund balance where we historically have been closer to the six to seven percent range and sometimes higher but we haven't been at least not in recent history this low and so we will obviously bring recommendations
113to you probably first thing as part of the budget development cycle next year in fact to address the Reliance on fund balance so that we don't end up here but kind of wanted to give you this as a picture and I showed you this previously um it's a similar Dynamic where we have a Reliance on our this represents our retirement Reserve we have other reserves that for that are for other purposes but when we talk about appropriating reserves as a part of the budget it's more typically out of the retirement reserve and so again you can see if we did nothing to address it and our recommendations would not be that we not do anything to address it but based on our current appropriation of of the retirement Reserve you can see just in a
114matter of years how quickly that depletes so um with that I kind of want to bring that full circle and talk about what are the options for closing the budget Gap Joe showed the slide that showed that with all of the Staffing and all of the program including the the technology Hardware replacement plan that we fall about 301 thousand dollars short of closing that budget Gap and but for the things that Joe mentioned we're still looking at the curriculum renewal and more specifically what the Legacy costs are going to be with American reading companies so that we budget appropriately for that but that we uh also reduce that to the extent that we can and then also taking a closer look at the enl position whether that needs to be a 0.6 or a 0.4
115position because that would represent another roughly twenty three thousand dollars in savings if we were able to reduce that need and then really it's waiting to see what happens with state aid and then we're really left with that use of fund balance and reserves and so um with those few open items in mind it is going to be our recommendation that we do appropriate the fund balance to close that Gap such that when we adopt the budget in about three weeks time and we can certainly we'll have much more summary to that end but wanted to bring that recommendation to you and just talk through any questions that you have and um hopefully conclude tonight in a place where we're ready to adopt the budget the next time we meet so I'll just open it
116up for questions with that Dean oh um I probably won't um can't promise anything we were going to hear more about the conversation about the music FTE as well tonight right because we had that conversation and discussion between the department and folks hadn't happened yet so are we going to get that and hear how that's going to go oh is that after this or oh it is part of that okay um that would be great because I I really tried to gather my thoughts after last meeting because I've it's the first time I was really confused at where things were in the budget process and my sixth year that was strange but um I I just feel like we've been talking about it for the past few years and about the attrition that we've been
117losing ftes and then hearing from the music department twice like in in this budget cycle once in December um about the desire for uh one full-time um employee FTE equivalent thank you and then um and then hearing the same thing last meeting but then not a request for it so I just want to make sure that um yeah we're going to get that update and make sure we get the budget right for this year unless other people have a question questions about that too first or totally or do you want to Lisa to go and then answer great should we hear the update did you I just had a quick question about the music and just I guess before you give us the report I would like to also know like how we're going to
118grow the program with whatever plan has been put in place great um happy to update you so I think some of the confusion perhaps from the um presentation and the discussion last time was because typically you're not hearing directly from um that sort of thing within a budget Workshop um with the budget process there are many layers and conversations that happen before if there is a request for FTE it's something that usually goes up on the slide that you've seen with all the other positions so with the music the conversations for the additional 1.0 occurred with the Department with Dr Whitley Dr Packard and our wonderful musical faculty they did put in a request for a 1.0 the reason why it was discussed and we felt we needed to give it the due diligence and
119the explanation last time was because it had been brought up by the ssta a couple of times to you in those other venues and that we felt that you needed to have some of the information about that last time so you typically would not get that you wouldn't there are many many conversations that happen within all of the content areas that we don't tell you which positions don't make it up there and the exact reasons why we have many conversations internally and end up prioritizing including conversations with the larger ssta so I think part of the confusion from last time was trying to give you an explanation because that had been publicly brought to your attention of some of the inner workings of how we go through the budget process that said many conversations were
120happening the music department did put in a ask for an additional 1.0 specifically to address Coral lessons when we looked across at our FTE and looked at being able to address some of those needs with the Department helping to prioritize what the goals of the department are felt that we could address some if not all of them and with some of the concerns that were shared with you those were some of the pieces can we maintain if not add some so at this point in having these conversations looking at two pieces the elementary being consistent in ensuring that the elementary buildings that everyone has a schedule that is full and able to meet student need needs with the either the program as is or modifications because we do have some people who travel between buildings
121so taking a look at all of their schedules looking at shared staff between if there's middle and elementary or Elementary and high school and again trying to look at just like we do with every other K-12 Department math or excuse me art enl if they're across buildings with AIS similar at the elementary level again trying to look at what do we have to with FTE to be able to meet student needs and then arrange that most effectively and efficiently so many of the conversations were how can we look at schedules to do that and with Dr Packard being a former music teacher and the liaison to that music group working with some options so um we shared some options came back together and think that we have some solutions to the elementary level without having
122to add additional Staffing at this point at the secondary level some of the unknowns are the middle school schedule they're still tweaking on the Block and some of the changes in the schedule will address some of their concerns some of the concerns were the frequency with which they met with students one out of four days and and so that time span should be decreased with the new schedule the length of the black those sorts of things so they came up with a lot of their concerns and so in looking at the FTE and how do we meet what their concerns are and needs have been able to meet most of them without adding FTE given the priority in Staffing that has been discussed at our admin meetings and with the ssta the additional music teacher
123did not rise to the level and if you see on the initiative inventories as well did not rise to the level as other pieces So the plan for the future and we already offer more um than what we are required to and I know some people don't like hearing that but we want to continue to offer more we have to have a longer term plan and that is what looking at the curriculum renewal process and having these conversations a lot earlier and together they're very difficult conversations nobody nobody wants to say no to adding things that we know would be good for kids but you have to prioritize and you've sat here through all of our budget meetings and then some to figure out okay what is priority right now but maybe what are we
124looking at down the road so we had a great meeting today where I think we've got the elementary piece almost all figured out and then the secondary one will be meeting again with the teachers and Dr Whitley and Dr Packard to see where we end up with that but without adding additional FTE for this year so I I just wanted to follow up really quickly and just make sure that um because I I went back at the and looked at other meetings and we we have as a board been asking it this isn't a pet project I guess because of sstn I wanted that not you know not to be like on there okay because yeah I remember we asked for a special presentation I think it was November in 2021 because we had we're
125having questions so um and so it'll be a there will be a conversation next year about growing it did they withdraw the request or it is still there for next year well they would still like it but we've had the conversation that given the other budget priorities we feel we can meet the majority of their needs and their concerns without having it okay the thing that's hanging out there is we'd love to be able to add additional Coral lessons but we feel with some conversation and some better planning on all of our parts ongoing communication we can look at that and the student to teacher ratios will be kind of equaled out so they're better yes the honestly the elementary was there was real growth made in that so John I see your hand acknowledge
126it um I um I just want to try to frame this a little bit because I'm privy to the questions that board members send in in the spirit of not surprising um you know the the administration or the board beforehand um and I want to acknowledge that I we may get into unfamiliar territory here um there's a disconnect between what we think we're hearing and what I guess we're told we're hearing um and uh with this discussion and I don't think any of us on the board based on on questions that were asked want to make this adversarial or turn it into a one-sided demand but I think that based on the the questions that were asked and apply seven different board members so it's a big chunk of the board uh in the last
127couple of weeks um I'd say that we do want to be heard on this and have a real dialogue because I think and the growth question is really um pertinent here because I I still don't I still hear we want to grow but the solutions presented don't seem to lend themselves towards growth so you know three years ago we lost a music FTE through retirement same thing again two years ago at that point the music department said we'd like to have an extra FTE to replace the person who lost but we were able to through shuffling things around and moving things more efficiently we were able to cover that in theory um without the FTE without replacing the person that that left but now two years later we've heard it twice um that that maybe
128that hasn't worked that that they're still uh asking for an FTE and so with the solution again being to to cover from within rather than adding Personnel um I think there's a legitimate reason to have a discussion on this in my opinion um and uh figure out whether or not we're capable of covering this stuff from within uh so anyway I just I just wanted to frame that and um it really I think the spirit of the requests that came in and the questions that came in were you know let's have a discussion we want a real dialogue and um and that's the end of it I mean that's the the end of the the demand so to speak so John you're next Connie you're after John I hope you don't mind if I read
129and I offer these comments with um respect and humility and affection I very much appreciate I respect how the budgetary process should work with robust input from teachers and staff and Leadership from the administration and oversight from the board that said I feel the need to share my personal opinion at the end of the day I think our students would be better served by an additional FTE in music as my kids pointed out to me we lost Mrs Bailey a couple years ago and then Mrs Lee who retired and were not replaced I believe Mr Lee is going to be replaced along the way the board has heard a number of concerns starting two years ago when seventh grade General music was cut and the courses were more concentrated among a smaller number of teachers
130we heard last December a whole range of problems articulated by music teachers including concerns about equity for our students and teachers I find myself unpersuaded that the plans outlined for us without nft will be sufficient also I think the music and art teachers made a very strong case for the secondary benefits of music and art on top of academic education they spoke about mental health mental well-being I think we know that pertains to safety students connect strongly to their experiences in the Arts in my heart of hearts I don't want us to Simply meet New York state requirements or keep up with other districts even though those things matter I think our schools would be better more healthy more creative more happy more safe if we had more Arts and let me be clear about
131one thing that Tony was just alluding to I'm not trying to force my individual will onto the administration no trustee should ever do that but I think the board has heard plenty of evidence from music teachers and at times different administrators indicating that we have problems in music that need attention I am asking my fellow trustees to join me in asking the administration to reconsider this issue and I will say to my fellow board members if you agree please say so I support the request from the teachers for an additional FTE in music Connie I also support the FTE in music I and I concur with you know we don't do what what's just required and some other things I spoke about Dr Patton's extraordinary work with RDI committee there's no other District in the
132capital region that has a committee that big or does what we do so um I'm not sure why music should be excluded from that sort of effort um in a post-covered world I understand that more students want to do more music and in order to meet that demand and build the program we would need more people and during covid I think music was a huge Lifeline for so many people and I think we we just need to respect that and I do support the same Dean so real quick I I have a handful of other things but I think this is a great conversation that's happening specific to music right now so if any of my other fellow trustees have anything specific to music please take my place now and then I'll jump back in
133line and and kind of follow up so if anyone has music related stuff but to just music only music I just want to concur with all of John's sentiments from the humility with not really unders fully understanding I think what you're saying maybe the process piece of what like how we've been introduced to this I feel like I've had bits and pieces of information I just think generally I would also add as something that I gathered from my first year of having ssta liaison meetings being back part of our our board process and related to music um that we don't really I feel like we could do a better job of communicating with one another and I don't know what that is or how that is I would defer to probably Angie would be the
134one that knows most about this how to communicate with one another what does occur during those ssta liaison meetings because I was not privy to the one where so much was discussed about music I've heard bits and pieces but had I known a little bit more it may have made a lot more sense why Dr Packard and um Michelle we're at our last meeting um and there was a lot that I gathered from the ssta liaison meeting that I went to that my board members may have benefited from especially as it relates to the budget process all that being said um I feel like I've sort of come into this music discussion kind of towards the end um I felt like a lot happened before I came onto the board but I would say that
135I fully support growing this program and I'm not really sure how that can be done with what I think I'm hearing as the current proposal which is just to kind of Shuffle people around and make do with what we have some of the best experiences I've had as a board member and certainly as a parent have been the result of our incredible music department Natalia I have a few thoughts that are not in any particular order um so I asked for that uh music presentation at the beginning of last school year after we had for the second year in a row of me being on the board cut a music position and um we had a lot of discussions then and I had a lot of questions and I I guess I have a two
136different thoughts here the first is about just music in general and I think that music truly brings us together and I think that we need that now more than ever and so I strongly concur with what John said I really would like us to examine having that music FTE um I think that we've spent a year hearing really so much about how our kids are struggling and I think that music is an essential part of helping them heal and making our schools stronger and safer and better um To Me music is an essential part of Social and emotional learning it's an essential part of our culture and I think the music room is a safe haven for so many kids and I think that the more that we can grow the program the better our
137students will be um and that's not even getting into the impact of Music on other academics which we know that having a robust music education program helps students in all the other ways so we know that that's going to support our students with math and with reading and with writing and it just seems so essential um I'm glad to hear that there is some work being done Lisa like you said about the scheduling at the elementary school because it's my understanding although I wasn't exactly clear that even chorus like is different from elementary school to elementary school and at least one elementary school so getting to what you were saying Amanda at the SSD liaison meeting we heard from one of the music teachers at Dorothy Nolan who was telling us that uh Second Grade
138course is 120 students so just the process of I understand that you know there there's appropriate number of adults in the room but just the process of getting 120 kids into a room takes a lot of time and it's taking away from that that essential part of the the school week for these students um I also was talking to a friend who has kids at Lake Gavin it sounds like they only have Chorus for half the year for some of the grades and it's my understanding that at division where my child goes that that's actually for the full year so I think that I would really love to hear how we're going to uh standardize that because I really just think our kids need it um past that I um I really appreciated all the
139information that we got including more today from other districts to see what they're doing um and I love that districts are approaching music differently but um you know working to make it really robust I I do have I guess outstanding questions I feel like those that information is really programmatic versus about Staffing that's something I discussed with Amanda after the last meeting I would love to know how those other school districts are doing with their Staffing um and then finally I I say this with so much uh respect for the work that Administration does and the work that our plts do to figure out how to serve our students this is something that I don't envy you all doing and I really am so grateful for the work um I am concerned that this is
140the third year of us being told that a restructuring will take care of the issues in the music department and I would say that I feel unconvinced that this is the year that will take care of the issues and I really hope that we can add an FTE or take a look at you know laying plans to add that FTE so that we're not playing what from a board level position sometimes feels like a little bit of like a puzzle piecing or like a game of whack-a-mole of like there's a problem here so we'll rearrange there's a problem here so we'll rearrange and I would love to hear how we can maybe step away from doing that year after year and instead grow the program thank you Connie I had one more thing that I
141did mean to mention earlier that came up in the presentation last week and the words compressed schedule came up like that the elementary school teacher day in general for the classroom teachers is compressed and the word stress came up and then the fact that the classroom teachers as I understand it are supposed to go into the music the chorus room with the teacher and stay there I'm just wondering what if and I know we're in the middle of still in the middle of negotiations and all that but with all that going on and this is a time for maybe some shifting but why can't we shift things so that those classroom teachers can leave and get some planning and I don't know if that involves the FTE or not but um it was just a
142thought I had that maybe there could be some multiple solutions to the same problem so we've I guess we've asked a lot of questions is there any is there anybody that wants to tell us why where we're missing the boat or or have that dialogue that I talked about just you know this is this is offered in really good faith and it's we realize we don't have the full picture all the time um we're just uh we we have certain Impressions that that keep coming back and coming back and I think we just are interested in hearing um hearing uh you guys respond to it in some way and again I think the conversations um that we've had with Department have been very productive I think as a school district we have a responsibility of
143financial responsibility as well as a program development responsibility to balance those needs all the times and so you see already we still have a three hundred thousand dollar Gap that we have not been able to address so anytime we have conversations with any Department again this we're discussing music right now but it could be technology it could be business it could be family consumer science it could be foreign language it can be any of the core areas it can be enrollment driven when we have to add an add a section to meet our class size targets it could be provide extracurricular opportunities for all of our students so I I know the board appreciates the complexity that goes into providing programs services and opportunities for our kids at the same time being fiscally responsible to
144our school community and to our taxpayers so the challenge that we have every year is to take a look at Staffing since Staffing as Joe mentioned is close to 75 80 percent of our budget is to how do we continue to maintain and grow programs at a time that financially the district is under more and more stress because of these increases in cost of operating from one year to the next so I think the productive conversations that I have the responsibility to lead as the instructional leader of the school district and the support that we get from our building administrators and from our directors and from our associations the bargaining unit members is when there are opportunities to evaluate program we have a curriculum renewal process we review program we ask for input from our
145entire staff but we also challenge them with to see can we still deliver our program and opportunities for our kids in a more efficient way every single year to try to maintain the programs and opportunities that we can for our kids and so over the last few years we've had those conversations with the music department they have stepped up they've done incredible work to be able to offer things so but there's a reality here that we do have to take a look at what we offer currently what are our goals what do we want for our kids and sometimes it's a difficult decisions within is do we continue to do what we've always done or is an opportunity here to maybe change the way that we approach things and again all of those decisions are
146difficult decisions and when we pose those to the department they see the challenges you know of of 20 members of a department that are all coming from much different experiences and and when you talk K-12 with 20 FTE you know that spread over six elementary schools a middle school and a high school ultimately is how do we get to the point where we feel like we're balancing not only the staff what their concerns and requests are but also helping support the growth of the program so like today we had a great conversation about lessons and what do we do for our kids in school to help have them grow as musicians and so from fourth grade on for orchestra every student has the opportunity for lessons from fifth grade on and band every student has
147the opportunity for lessons when it comes to choral group squirrel groups start in the high school which is which is pretty normal typical right for the instructional method of delivery when it comes to choral groups the ask is we'd love to be able to offer that to our eighth graders so that's a good goal to set for ourselves so how do we get to that point as an initial step to expand those opportunities with our current FTE to support choral lessons in the eighth grade and so at the end of today's discussion I think we've gotten to a point where we're looking at Equity across six elementary schools so irregardless of what school a student attends they should have the same opportunity and same experiences and again that's working with the staff to be very
148creative we have to be creative but we also have have to encourage efficiency and scheduling and so music is unique right because you have people who are hiring with a specific skill set they may come with choral expertise they may have a band expertise or they may have a String's expertise you know the smaller school districts when you when you ask around the area it's not um you know very untypical for an elementary teacher to sometimes be able to do all three you know they are the general music teacher there are the choral director and they also lead the band and then maybe somebody from the district pushes in to help support the strengths so you know I think as a district we just have to establish what those priorities are I think what we've
149learned through the research that we've done in some of the comparisons of of things that we value in Saratoga Springs having second and third grade course as mandatory we're the only District in the area that does that but if we take pride in that and we value that we want to maintain that then that's a priority that we have to establish as the department that makes us unique that right now doesn't allow us the opportunity to offer choral lessons in the eighth grade so we're looking at schedules you know again we're Gathering feedback from all the stakeholders to see what are the things incrementally that we could do to help achieve some of those intended goals and some of the outcomes that have been again explained by the teachers and again we're getting closer and
150closer what what I don't want to do is just add ft to add FTE that if you say to me Mike we want to add a 1.0 I got to make sure I can fill a teacher's schedule right I got to be able to fill that person because a year from now I'd come back to you and say we hired a position that I can't schedule for that I don't have enough of a responsibility across the district to hire a full-time position so one of the things that we're talking about is at the middle school one of the final decisions made with the new master schedule at the middle school there may be some additional FTE at the middle school that'll allow us to start making growth into incorporating eighth grade choral lessons with some
151additional current FTE at the middle school so every Department every decision you see year to year we put things up there as a priority and every year we don't hit every single priority right So eventually we have to draw the line of things that we know are going to happen next year and the things who don't get on for the next year they get carried over to the following year and that's the starting point of our conversation every year because that list is much longer of the conversations that we have with all of you as to where we you know can kind of fit these things in each year based on the priorities of the conversations that we hear from our principals the conversations that we have with the bargaining unit members again so there's
152a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes that we have to evaluate and then we just have to make you know judgment on the urgency of what would be the things initiatives programs that we want to have in place for next year resoundingly this year we heard SEL we hear we need a social worker weaned a school counselor we got to continue to develop uh behavioral uh a coach to help support our tier one interventions at the classroom level so you can see the things that are up there are the things that we heard have heard from everybody now yes we hear from our music teachers that's why we want to have those conversations so the reality in our conversation today was hey Mike so we've had this conversation now for two years in a
153row can we just make sure that this is going to carry over the next year so it continues to be part of the conversation and every year evaluate what progress that we're making and again if the numbers continue to to blow up that we have the student interest and that we're filling sections and that General music sections are being scheduled appropriately across all grade levels and if we decide the priority is we want to be the only School District in the capital region that's offering second third grade course for every kid great let's go with it all right but that may mean in a year or so from now we are prepared and ready to say you know what we've done everything we can to vet these positions and we're ready to make a recommendation
154to the board to add additional FTE and I just don't think we're ready at that point yet and again that that is my responsibility as superintendent to make recommendations to the board that's based on really good conversations with our staff and doing everything we can all right to meet our student and program needs so again we could talk music but I could also tell you there's 10 other departments that would love also to have additional fde and in a year that we still have three hundred thousand dollars ultimately that's a decision that you're gonna have to make as a board um I I would just ask that you know you have to give us that opportunity to have those difficult conversations and look at where are those opportunities for future program uh growth and development
155John I know we need to move on I just want to say quickly thank you for that Mike and I I respect the complexity and how much you understand it and I don't pretend to understand or think I belong in operational decisions I will just say that um I personally don't have a problem with hard choices I think we heard passionate well-articulated Arguments for a Latin and I think we're headed in the right direction on that despite a lot of unhappiness that people have I would also say on this note um to me it doesn't feel like asking for an fde it asks for a replacement for Mrs Bailey which was a which was several years ago and if we don't get this done this year I sure hope we will we will actively consider
156it in the near future let me suggest we've we come back to this right at the end um I I want to be really clear to uh our administrators what what we're asking and what what we've kind of wrap up what we've talked about but I want to let Dean get his question in on uh regular other budget stuff and I think Amanda had another one as well so go ahead Dean thanks Tony thanks everybody um so Tim and Joe um humor me with a handful of questions referenced on a handful of slides first and foremost I think the biggest question that I have and pardon me if I missed it but I certainly don't see it anywhere in the finances Mike earlier this week you let us know that we have been approved that
157we will receive our reimbursement in the amount of 385 thousand dollars from former funds where is that in the budget um because I didn't see that line item specifically my guess is that it's not uh oh my goodness we forgot it you're right now we're balanced but I just want to know where I missed it because I'm sure it's in there somewhere that's question one I have a few more I'm sure that'll be just as easy well thank you for that credit um that is a reimbursement that's going to occur in the current year and as such it'll be recognized in the current year and we do have a plan for that to and actually if you saw in the summary that I provided yesterday where we had originally presented the uh the long-term technology
158replacement plan included a 35 000 line item for replacement of the Wi-Fi it was a Wi-Fi upgrade essentially in a building which represented about thirty five thousand dollars uh each of the next five years in that long-term plan that we presented uh that when that reimbursement comes in we're going there will be a resolution to come to the board to uh give the authority to to appropriate that money into the current budget we're going to spend roughly half of that reimbursement on that Wi-Fi upgrade which allows us then to reduce that long-term Tech Hardware replacement from the 521 down to the 486 and then that was further reduced by another budgetary reallocation the other half of that if you recall back to the tech Hardware discussion is that we've got roughly 2100 devices that are
159going to be beyond their useful life at the elementary level so the remainder of that reimbursement is going to be used to help us get caught up on that plan so is that 50 cost allocated somewhere in the current budget even though it will be a reimbursable for this year so 23-24 right what do you 50 cost of I'm not sure you said the remaining balance of the 385 right so you took you took basically 50 of that you're allocating it as 35 000 over the next five years for the Wi-Fi upgrades well no we're gonna use that this year to upgrade all five buildings at one time at one time so it okay just a matter of strategy when we have one-time revenues try to match it up with one-time costs we can go
160ahead and knock that off we can take it off of the long-term replacement got it so that's quick math 210 000 of that 385. about 180 ish five buildings so at 35.75 five buildings I'm sorry so about 200 left I said six so about 200 left yep and that 200 is but not towards the number that's in the current the tech Hardware the long-term plan that we presented yep was just that it was intended to be able to sustain this forever more and maybe when we're caught up like you raised the question maybe we can afford to budget less because we'll be in a better place with technology yeah it that plan did not include the catch-up of the 2100 devices at the elementary that are evade okay it it evened the replacement schedule out
161over a number of years we're still behind Okay by putting this long-term plan into place okay so the the the remainder of that reimbursement would go to help catch up at the elementary level with the tech Hardware devices okay two more quick easy ones I think budget development summary Joe you you somewhat facetiously mentioned with your color-coded graph that also goes to kind of the looking ahead and the grants that are uh so that slide there kind of everybody kind of screen grabbed that but then jump back to like your third slide I think and the importance of something that I've been asking for for the four years that I've been on the board and I think everybody agrees with and I know that you try uh hard to do this but I want to
162focus on the fact that your calendar that you provide the most important piece of that is the green line at the bottom right and that's the same way that anybody at this table runs their household it's the same way that anybody at this table who's responsible for a budget in their work or in their employment considers their income and expenses right and that's monitored on a regular basis I think we need to do that and we need to focus on that more here at the district level from a board knowledge perspective we need to be talking about it all 12 months out of the year the reason I think that's important is that screenshot that I asked everybody to mentally grab looking ahead right we talk about these grants that are going to be falling
163off and Joe somewhat jokingly said in nine months from now let's start talking about that next month let's start talking about how we can allocate funds for the important positions that we know we're going to need kind of in perpetuity or at least for the short term let's not forget the fact that we approved a grant writer's position a grant coordinator's position this year if we know that we're going to have seven grants that are going to expire or seven positions that are going to expire due to grant funding next year that person should be focusing on those right now in my opinion finding ways to write grants for the for the money reimbursement for those right now and as a matter of fact probably even working on the two for 25 right so that's
164just my opinion on making sure that we're talking about it as early as we can and I think it's important right we talk about that a little bit this evening with with respect to the music position and you know the other the other important areas of our budget that have to do potentially inadvertently with social emotional learning right if you look at your your pie graph we're talking about a very very small percent of extracurriculars that kids have the opportunities to do extracurriculars and specials clubs and activities Athletics I would throw music art and even the healthcare component of things into that that percentage of our overall budget is really really really small and I think if we give those students the empowerment and the opportunity to have the ability to choose that stuff um
165it it impacts the social emotional learning aspect of the student environment that we're trying to wrap our hands around anyways and so let's start talking about it as soon as we can I know we talk about that every year but whatever it is that we can do to spend 15 minutes at each of these board meetings just with a quick summary and I'm sure that that's done at the finance level a little bit but I think it's important and I think it makes the conversations that we have here a little bit easier um and so you know good job with the budget I know it's it's a hard task 142 million dollars is a huge number and I also understand that there's always going to be challenging circumstances in which we as the board have
166to decide on certain things but if my little two cents of feedback provides any sense of of light at at the end of a never-ending tunnel that we may all look towards uh as the the group of us collectively that work together on this the feedback that I provide is really just let's focus on it as early as possible thank you Amanda sorry I spaced out for a second track um so we spent a significant amount of time hearing about the results of the initiative survey that you both spent a significant amount of time putting together and the staff did as well engaging in that to me that indicated that the administration would be proposing ways to make Cuts or savings based on what you found in that survey for the following year and during
167our last budget Workshop we heard quickly about four things that had possibly been discussed um at least with some administrators they weren't included in any documents or presentations received so I jotted them down but I don't fully understand them therefore in preparation for this final conversation I had asked to hear a more comprehensive list of possible cost savings that we could either be made aware of or consider to me in order to be fiscally responsible is not just the board's responsibility to approve additional expenses but consider cutting existing expenses or creating more efficiencies so I don't know if that was to come um but we're sitting at a large gap I see that if we keep dipping or if we start dipping into fund balance we may not be in a good position we all
168seem to agree we want to add an expense um but I think we do need to start having those as John said you know making those difficult decisions if something needs to go and I don't know what that is I don't pretend to know what that is but where we are now is very different than where we were last year in the year before and the year before that and we all are in agreement of of some things we want to shift into um to address SEL and behavioral concerns and maybe some of the things before us now that we want to add outweigh some things that made sense a few years ago but I'm just I'm not feeling like I have a full picture I can sit here all day and say definitely I
169want to add this and I want to add that but at the end of the day I feel like we need to understand what the decision you're sitting on these enormous decisions on comfortable conversations what can we do as a board to help provide some oversight um you know and help guide this so we're not sitting at the 11th Hour with this huge gap just about the initiative about the initiative feedback that we got from the survey right right right so and these and these are the difficult decisions that we have to make every year so when you roll over our budget and you say hey we want to maintain all of our staff we want to maintain all the programs and opportunities for our kids there's there's that expense that goes along with it
170this year as as Joe pointed out in the beginning there were some unusual increase in expenses health insurance rates over 12 percent that's not the norm you know and so we don't anticipate next year that that rate will be as high we had 40 additional students at the high school make the request to go to Career and Technical education so we usually have 130 kids you know we're looking at potentially up to 160 kids next year is that going to be the norm or the following year we're going to be returned back to what we've seen more consistent over the course of time so there are some spikes in increases in expenses that are we know of for next year whether they're going to be sustained or not that's kind of hard to tell so
171when you go through the list of every year of the decisions to make that we make to reduce expenditures you know you're looking at supply lines you're looking at reducing equipment all the things on the edges of the 80 of of the of the resources that's dedicated to our people and so over the last five years we've made some really difficult decisions to make those uh Staffing reductions and again they have the greatest impact on the budget but also has the most significant impact on our daily operations whether that's from instructional perspective whether it's from you know facilities and operations or asking John hey can you do less with your equipment budget and still maintain our facilities the way that we want them maintained um you know so those decisions every year again it adds
172up to over 600 000 in additional reductions that we're making for this year so when I mentioned the things the other night is when we get down to this level the choice is do we go further and make further Staffing or program reductions or is this a year that we say hey you know what maybe it's not going to be 300 000 you know we're going to see some other things ever come in here in the next week or two but is this a year that we should rely more so on the fund balance than we've ever had before as an as an option other than and so the things I talked about last week that people get really uncomfortable with and I heard it the next day is to say hey we want to
173add a school counselor at the middle school one way we could do that without adding any kind of FTE or adding additional costs of District would be to reallocate an existing counter from the high school that's it's an option I don't like it I would never want to do that I was a school counselor I see the benefit that our school counselors have and the role of our school counselor in the high school is much different than what the school counselor is in the middle school I don't think anybody is going to support that you know but it's a conversation that we've had to have just to say hey is that something that would be a possibility nothing that I don't think any one of us at this point supports that we're not to that
174point it's that dire of a need the other thing is our clerical staff our clerical staff are the backbone of our organization they're the ones that it's on the phone they're having the daily interactions with our kids we've made reductions you know in the clerical staff across the district through attrition so at the high school right now you see there's a position that we're looking to reduce and and they're reallocating some of the resources within the high school um but they're probably two or three other positions between the middle school and high school that we can reduce but again at what cost you know we're going to get down to the point where we're not going to have coverage in certain offices and when parents are calling or when students are going to get to
175the offices if those offices aren't going to cover we're going to hear about that you know Partnerships with Community groups so when we talk about project lift 130 000 that could take care of half of our remaining Gap but knowing the benefit that programs like that have for our students and families in the community at what cost would that have if we reduce that program to offset any additional contribution that we're going to get from our fund balance so that that's the balance of a lot of these decisions so you know talking to the administrators yeah we can continue to cut Supply costs you know across the district but it gets to a certain point that you right you can only go so far you know and so over the last several years we've done
176a lot of those things and at the same time we also have needs and initiatives that we want to support and to be able to add and so that's why a lot of those positions you know that you're you're seeing with the school counselor can be budgeted for but also we've been very mindful about how we want to utilize the grant Monies to fully utilize the grant monies they have to the point that when when Dean was speaking is that I want to make sure we address that I'm very honest with people when you hire well you are hired on a grant position and we say it's two years it's going to be two years and in those two years that position will be done and you're going to return to whatever position that you
177have whether it's with us in the district or if you were hired from the outside we appreciate your service but that position is not going to be available to you I don't think that's fair to any candidate to think that they're going to come in and interview for a position that we only can fund for two years that the position is is no longer going to be available so those are the difficult decisions that we're making right now that when you say are all those positions going to be sustained now Tim has it budgeted to be sustained I can tell you right now they're not going to be sustained we're going to be able to do these things some some of these things for one or two years that's what the Federal grant monies has
178allowed school districts to do but we've been very mindful not to put all of our money in FTE and so we've done a lot of other things again that have been very creative and constructive that we don't have Legacy costs tied to those things so again with I think maximizing the use of our our grant money that is available to us this was a year to do it but again that's not a long that's not a long-term investment we may have those things for a year or two so next year I would say hey probably the number one thing that's going to be our budgetary request for you for next next year is going to be the social worker position you know because the social worker position we know there's a need and obviously we've
179got to be able to build that into the budget you know some of those other positions although there are a need right now I don't necessarily know if they're going to be sustainable so you know those are the conversations that we're going to have into the summer into the fall Gathering feedback from all the stakeholders about what our programs and issues we're making a significant investment right now in additional fde at a time financially that is probably one of the more challenging years that we've had with some of the significant increase in cost that I think we're all anticipating hey health insurance you know was over two point three million 2.1 2.3 million 2.3 million dollar increase in health insurance costs in in one year again I don't think we're going to anticipate that's going
180to be the case again next year so having a multi kind of looking out down the line and saying okay is this the time to help address the immediate needs that we have in you know supporting our students when it comes from social emotional lens that's that's the priority um and so if it's it's going to be here to say do we start moving around school counselors when we hear from everybody that SEL is a priority I don't think that's a great move to make is it cutting out Community Partnerships you know that are truly benefiting our students and our families probably not the time to make that kind of move you know bowling as much as we kind of joked about last time you know it's thirty thousand dollars that we allow our students
181to be able to participate in a lifetime skill to have that opportunity that they're we're not asking families to pay that out of pocket the reality is we're going through a capital project next fall next year I'm just advising is not the year to cut it the following year we're probably going to say hey it's been nice we've been able to do this it's an elective course we're not going to be able to probably continue something like that Beyond next year but I just know structurally at the high school we need relief because we're not going to have the gym space available so hey we pay another twenty thousand dollars thirty thousand dollars a year to allow our kids to bowl Lisa will find you know be creative to find that place in our budget
182to be able to do that um so again it's you're hearing from the music department how critically important it is just to add hey give us eighth grade choral lessons I would love to be able to say let's do that you know but we've got a lot of other priorities that we want to be able to address but at the same time what's going to go in order to do that and I think we're at that fine line right now from a fun balanced perspective with some additional work I think there's still some work to be had that may not be three hundred thousand dollars but you know for a year to utilize we're very fortunate that we are a district who has those type of resources to tap into that this would be the
183appropriate time to do it knowing that over the next two or three years we're probably not going to be adding the level of programming and support that we've been able to add this year at a time that we need it the most um so you know that's kind of had been our conversation and our thoughts uh heading into this cycle so I think you're you're saying that represented up there the the cuts that we saw already achieved those are the palatable Cuts everything left is unpalatable and I think that's the that's where their their expression of the cuts is at right now did you have something Angie I really want to get to finish up with Tim and then um finish up wrap up the music thing um I um we did get the executive
184summary so it's in we do have all that information it's in our email um and um and I I think there was a misconception maybe with or understanding John was not saying that he's going to Advocate to you know added it's not our job to add a line or delete things it's um up to us to hear what they have to say in their analysis so I just wanted to clarify that but my new question are number one um I after hearing about fund balance um for six years and starting to understand it I think I do um like your proposal and would support that to to make that um meet that Gap I would also like to maybe know I would like to next time see that slide we usually get about the tax
185increase per 100 000 of Home worth so we have that to go out with when we're talking to folks and that was those are my okay absolutely so Tim just procedure here are you are we through your presentation or were you asking questions in the middle of it I just have dates for you at the end okay um and I can wrap up but go ahead yeah oh you had another one just a comment because we're talking about it really could go to board member comments but it is specific to this so I'll try to be as quick as I can and part of it will be what you're going to finish with which are dates I want us to think about this for next year and the years moving forward today is our last
186meeting before we adopt this Budget on April 18th it's a little bit funky I think it happens all the time because of the spring break that happens in the middle so it's like three weeks before we meet instead of two weeks so it seems pretty long until we're going to get together again the biggest reason I bring that up is because there has been some great great discussion at this table both from the board members perspective as well as Administration and I feel although I I understand the direction that we're headed and where we might ultimately be on the 18th which is probably getting pretty darn close to um to a a budget that we can we can manage with minimal fund balance and reserves allocation to it and then we will have that budget
187established as we go out to the public but what I'm uncomfortable about is that there's been a lot of great discussion this evening and we're going to leave and left with three weeks from now coming back in to vote for it what I want to advocate for is moving forward in the month of March when we meet every week moving forward whatever we have to do from a date perspective please give us the board members the opportunity to chew on and digest and really get into the nitty-gritty of this budget for those four weeks not just the last week but for all four weeks of that process I know that makes things a little more challenging for you it kind of moves up that that timeline three or four weeks for you as well um
188you guys are like Batman and Robin up there you got it you got it covered you'll figure it out um but I think it's important if I'm the only board member that feels that way throw an egg at me and tell me to be quiet and tough cookies but I really really think there's value in us as a board taking those alternate weeks of Workshop topic as well as business meeting time to really have these conversations so that when this meeting comes next year we're pretty darn comfortable with where the budget is and we're okay when we leave to wait to come back two or three weeks later when we put the stamp of approval one of the challenges that every Board of Education School District face is the April 1st deadline is there's still
189the unknown even heading into next week and again it's been I think at the state level corrected a little bit you know when you know that our 2.9 percent increase in Foundation Aid is is probably what we're looking at you know but um you know there's been those years of conversation and it's almost a discussion of does there need to be a meeting in between from the time the state budget is finalized and we know what the impact is going to be locally for us here in Saratoga Springs to when the budget has to be adopted but there's a there's laws right that outline the calendar of when these you know adoption has to take place to when there's going to be posted publicly so the last two weeks scramble it again as much as
190we try to prevent that um you know you can get to a certain point where we feel like we're in good shape and then you just kind of have the plan right hey if we get this we can do this if we get you know so I think one of the recommendations that Tim and I have talked about in in the case that we see any additional reduction in expenditures or any additional state aid that's going to fund balance you know so we're going to be reducing our Reliance on fund balance and each year I know we take those three decision points usually usually the maximum tax levy limit is set it's been established we have kind of you know fully utilize what we can up to that tax levy limit and then so it's
191the program and expenditure side and it's the use of fund balance side and it's usually some combination of both to kind of get us across uh the finish line so I I completely agree with you but an April 1st deadline with still the unknown until we get the final stated Aid runs which is usually the first week in April if we didn't have April break from the 7th until the 15th we'd have a little bit more you know probably a little bit more time to have that conversation but again if we get in as soon as we get information that we can then share out to all of you to say okay here's here's what we've got um here are the kind of those final decision points that you know between those three critical decision
192points would have to make what's the combination that everybody is comfortable with and I I think your your comment is is great Dean I think one of the things though that knowing what how the schedule that might just just talked about works and knowing how certain pieces of information both from within the district and from without that they always come in on the same schedule we may it may not be a a matter of having certain conversations before we as a group if we really want to meet a meet before the 18th we might have to be willing to do another budget Workshop next year next week you know the the week before spring break I think that's probably the more realistic solution is to to closing the gap between this meeting and the 18th
193rather than they just don't have all the information three weeks before they start giving it to us but that's something that that we may want to consider because it does feel like a long time uh you know we we get almost there here and and then 18 days and 19 days and we're asked to vote on it it does feel strange Tim yes so to kind of wrap up you know we we've been through now uh the month of March and we're we're really at the end of finalizing the budget priorities but um General consensus at all Albany is that we are not going to see an April 1 budget the next Milestone as far as the state's concerned is really April 5th that's their next payroll uh so it seems reasonable to expect that
194we'll see something coming out of Albany by April 5th um hopefully a final budget and uh like Mike said um really we're kind of at that point where if nothing else happens we would recommend the appropriation of fund balance but to the extent that we can still make reductions to expenditures or that we see increases in Revenue particularly with state aid that we would use that to offset but essentially coming out of tonight ready to adopt the budget on April 18th and then um a new flurry of processes begins in terms of getting the newsletter out getting meetings scheduled with various stakeholders so we can get the word out about the budget and then leading up to the budget hearing one week prior to the to the budget vote so I'm happy to answer any
195other questions that you might have Tony's chicken and said no so I'll just we still have a consent agenda to deal with um I do want to just just wrap up I think a great discussion um I I I'll I'll wrap up and frame what I think I heard from uh at least a majority of the of the board on the music um ask needs a situation Etc um I I think is it fair to say that the board strongly recommends you know heating the music Department's call for more Personnel now or in the future if the gold truly is as has been expressed but in by multiple levels of the of the employees here including the administration to grow the program you know if if that's the goal um than a than a a
196program that has lost two ftes in three years and has dropped a you know required music for example in seventh um I I don't think there should be a worry about filling a new fte's time in the future if we add content or restore content um that that has been dropped so is it is that a fair way to end this um I'll just look for shakes ahead in terms of um what we're asking we're we're asking that this remain a top level relevant conversation and that um we hear we truly hear what we what we think the the music department is saying is that fair Connie yes and we hear that there's only so much money like correct and that's why we're not saying damn it do it you know right we we recognize
197that there are levels of complexity that we don't we don't get all right so let's move on to I believe we're at the consent agenda time here I'm sorry I have on here that Dr Patton will provide executive summary but is that not verbal that is the just in the email the executive summary was in the email um why don't um why don't we do this in the interest of time since we're at 10 now um if there's anything um we want to hear further from the administration let's just bring it up in agenda planning in a few minutes and or in board comments and then we can schedule because uh I think this was a pretty um substantial uh executive summary both from a data perspective and the the the less tangible uh what
198did they call them unconstructed response uh things uh constructed response portions of the the survey so let's table that for a second come back to it and then if we need more from from Mike or anyone else we can ask for it okay Natalia are there any modifications to the consent agenda for roll call votes we do have the option to do one roll call for all three of those but if any board members disagree and want to do them separately please say so now and Tim did you want to just summarize those yeah these are all related to the um borrowing for the buses and and then ultimately the propositions to be placed on the ballot so um really a lot of legalese around the authority to issue to purchase and then to issue
199the bond related to the bus purchases does anyone have an objection to voting on all three with the same vote I don't see any okay president crackler yes I yes vice president yes trustee Mecca trustee Bruggeman yes trustee Borman trustee Ellis yes trustee elethorpe trustee Culligan trustee watovich yes thank you oh yes thank you um I almost got out of that uh just for those uh in attendance are watching the consent agenda is a commonly used vehicle provided for by our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure Robert's rules that allows a board to vote on a large number of items in a single motion typically these are business items associated with the running everyday running of the schools and their inclusion in the agenda is the result of a great deal of Prior work and Care
200by the Professionals of the district there are from time to time business items that by law three of them today um need to 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 in 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 commotion to approve consent agenda items GH and I in their entirety second from Angie do we have any discussion all right all in favor that's unanimous motion carries uh we are now at the second public comment period This has the same rules as the first public comment
201period but no set End Time same rules as far as three maximum of three minutes and the same rules of conduct that we ask people follow is there anyone who wishes to address Us in the second public comment period Mr Crockett I'll be brief I know it's late this is about budget wasn't planning on asking this question I know I can't ask a question to get a response I'll kind of ask it to the atmosphere [Music] um and the pie chart that was put up there I think the big one on the right hand side like two o'clock to six o'clock I think was called instruction my question is does that include Administration yes it probably does okay so I understand that so here's my question I heard a lot of discussion about trading one
202FTE for not FTE and and wanting to have a music teacher we I think I heard I'm not sure if we can afford it do we ever evaluate the administrative staff can we reduce administrative staff because if I understand administrative staff they're not in a classroom I'd want to prioritize classroom ftes just a question when people retire can we Elon Musk let ninety percent of his staff go and Twitter still operated administrative staff has increased 700 percent since 1950 teachers only 250 percent and students by 100 just a question thank you and I do appreciate all the work you guys do on budget it's crazy it's not easy but that's my thought thank you anyone else okay that closes the second public comment period um on to agenda planning are there any agenda planning items
203that uh board members want to bring up Connie I'll leave it to you if you want to uh I'll start with you if you want to talk about the so this is really related to the budget process but also the survey um I did and I did ask ahead of time so it's not a surprise about the training from generation ready that is a forty thousand dollar a year expense and we've had that for at least seven years so I know it's not a legacy cost per se but it's longer than some of these Grant positions that um that we know that we support as well so I'm I'm just wondering if since we're talking about making some shifts is it something that um well I question the effectiveness of of the program only because
204we wound up in the paper twice so I'm not sure how effective it is I'd love some data on that on teacher feedback from those sessions but maybe if I'm just throwing out like what if we were to pay a teacher a stipend who takes on that responsibility and maybe there's more buy-in from students and and other teachers because it's someone that's in-house and I can't imagine that over seven years that there's not someone that Administration could identify um you know or that generation could just do like a warm handoff for um to let someone else within the district to take the the reins on that the survey does show that specifically the PD is a low priority not that the initiative is a low priority and it just seems like the quality of the
205PD should be questioned and I know these are difficult conversations especially right now but um I just I can't imagine there's not a teacher who's like a consummate professional a member of an affinity group with a positive rapport with all stakeholders and um that we don't have anyone here that that has the ability to lead that so I just wanted to ask that question and just kind of throw that out there for consideration um Mike is it possible in the context of the when the Dei presentation occurs that an assessment of uh relevant people's um relevant people's assessment of generation Ready's performance and future uh is included in that sure anyone else um okay that should end agenda planning board member comments are next uh I see Natalya's hand you're first okay I have a
206few um the first is I wanted to recognize the donation of bikes and helmets from Saratoga shredders this is not their first donation this year and we are I feel so lucky to have this organization in our community and to have them partnering with our schools I think that's incredible um and then also thank you for the donation to cover the cost of Game officials for JV volleyball I also want to I guess reiterate some of what I said earlier and to say thank you to um the community members especially the kids who are speaking up for change in our community our children deserve to attend schools where hearing slurs is not commonplace and where there is trust in the work towards reducing harm and um I'm glad to hear so many people speaking up
207here at this table and in um you know our work staff and in our community I think that's really great when we work together we can make our community a lot better um I also just wanted to say in 2014 I moved to the area and I was told that this was an Arts community and I really look forward to us doing work to grow Arts education in the areas of music and visual arts and dance and all of these areas that I think are so essential for our culture and in building Unity across our community thank you thanks anyone else Angie I just want to thank um the budget team the curriculum Team all the people doing all this work and having these hard conversations so I know they're hard and I just appreciate
208everybody being at the table anyone else all right that closes board member comments and oh sorry Connie um I did want to always do that to me right at the end [Laughter] um I did want to thank the team they call them the health Team on The Vaping and the one teacher did make a comment about ninth grade like for health but I was really it kind of brought me to something that may be done in another district for ninth graders and it kind of combines the team building and I don't want to call it like trauma trauma bonding but people sharing their stories and about like where they come from and their perspective but in night like I will say it was my district pre-covered all ninth graders would take part in a field
209trip where they go off-site and it was run by like a different company but it was really really it really made everyone feel like they're part of a family and I'm just I'm just wondering if we can look into those options going forward for the kids and people that are directly working with the kids to work through these issues thank you anyone else all right sorry um okay so uh the next two meetings are the much discussed April 18th regular business meeting and then uh April 25th we have that 8 A.M uh brief meeting for BOCES and do we does it looks like we have a quorum for that this is uh April 25th 8 A.M it's the BOCES budget and election it's very short but we need a quorum one two three four five
210I see it okay so looks like and yours right we start a date we'll be out there at 8 10. all right um can I get a motion to adjourn please Connie second by Amanda