001all right good evening everyone I'd like to call the meeting to order all right Tim can I please get a roll call president crackler vice president trustee Borman trustee Bruggeman here trustee Ellis here trustee Ella Thorne here trustee Mecca here trustee Culligan here student representative McPhee here and student representative Thompson here thank you please join me in standing for the pledge individuals could I get a motion to accept tonight's agenda Amanda and John bergamon any discussion all in favor that's unanimous before we start public comment I'm going to pass it over to superintendent Patton good evening and welcome everybody I would like to take this opportunity to help clarify some of the conversations uh that our Board of Education and I as the superintendent of schools have been having over the last eight months while
002we have been evaluating our school district's comprehensive Safety and Security plan and specifically the roles and responsibilities that our school resource offers play as important members of our district and building level emergency response teams at our December Board of Education meeting we heard from many questions and and conversations from both the Board of Education and our community about the roles and responsibilities our sros have on our schools and there has been concerns shared by several community members from our board trustees parents as well as students making sure that these roles and responsibilities of our school resource officers are clearly defined I have talked about my personal experiences working with the current and passed us a rose and have shared that these individuals have been very positive influence in our school communities and the importance of
003all of us defining clear roles and responsibilities between the role of an SRO and our building administrators and staff as a school district we fully acknowledge and share the concerns that bias and racism exist in our school Community our Board of Education our district leadership team our staff and students have been engaged in efforts to help Foster growth in becoming a more culturally responsive ensuring all students have the opportunity to thrive in our schools and to create a safe and positive learning environment for all of our students and staff our diversity Equity inclusion efforts are working to actively oppose any form of racism and understand that our unique perspectives and life experiences can impact all of our thoughts and actions so we are very proud of the work that our school district has accomplished and
004we are dedicated to meeting the needs of all of our students and families moving forward thank you all right we're going to move into the first public common period on behalf of the board I want to thank all of the community members in attendance tonight for your engagement we truly value input from the community and are grateful that you are here please note that the Board of Education meetings in New York state are not meetings with 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 our meetings however
005we 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 the 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 public 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
006about specific individuals 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 period is limited to 30 minutes total before you address the board please clearly state your name and address first we have Steve Grandam you have taller people than me good evening to the board administrators teachers public my name is Steve Grandin 28 Orinda Spring Drive Saratoga Springs Excuse me while I start my watch come on there we go start okay I'm here to talk about the Latin program or what will soon be the late Latin program I have a number of different issues with it it may
007be a fade to complete at the time but I have some things to say first on a personal level one of my sons is a graduate of Saratoga Springs High School he took four years of Latin he got a 100 on the Regents he won the foreign language award at graduation he went to Boston University on an 85 percent academic scholarship he majored in education and Classics and taught for three years High School Latin and Massachusetts without magistra sadline his entire life would have been different and I mentioned to him about Saratoga doing away with its Latin program and although he hates to talk about his bad experiences as a teacher he said he wished there was something he could do to come back and fix it but anyway that on a personal level makes
008the whole thing really difficult the second one I passed out to the people at the table I'm sorry I didn't have enough for the student Representatives a couple of uh items on the importance of Latin not necessarily to learn the language it really hasn't been spoken much in 2000 years but really the overall importance of Latin how taking Latin really makes a student think differently it allows them to think differently on other subjects I think if you look at doctors and lawyers the one common course that they have will be Latin Latin does more for a student than just try to figure out you know what was Caesar saying it makes them think in different ways it works for things like mathematics computers science but again so many people see it as a quote dead
009language okay the last thing I was on the school board for nine years I know that things like the end of the Latin program does not happen overnight while I was on the board we saw the numbers going down unfortunately nothing was done it could have been done my son who lives in Massachusetts in his daughter's District every eighth grader takes Latin this is an Amherst Mass not a small town and after eighth grade students can move on to other languages but they all have the basics of Latin Latin is important to everybody who comes in contact with it I think Saratoga Springs will be poorer because they dropped Latin Harvard and Yale can drop Latin but they're still going to be Harvard Saratoga Springs drops Latin and then if someone's looking to move into
010the district and says well there's shaker or Niskayuna Saratoga Springs what do you know about Saratoga Springs I'm sorry that's fine that's okay Saratoga Springs has dropped Latin I have a feeling they're going to feel a certain way about that thank you Dora Lee Stanley my name is Dora Lee Stanley and I am living at one and a half Meadow Lane I am here tonight as a parent of four students that have graduated Saratoga Springs School District as well as a member of the Saratoga Springs diversity equity and inclusion committee I want to bring voice to a recent statement by a board of education member and thank you Dr Patton for some clarification of the superintendent about Saratoga is somehow free of bias and racism I would like to point out the hard work that
011the Dei committee has done to try to support all students and when I look around at the Saratoga Springs School District I say to myself there's still more work to be done there is a lot of national level and local data that should concern everyone here at the table tonight nationally the U.S Department of Education Office of civil rights reports that nearly 14 percent of black and seven percent of American Indian or Native Americans students in the U.S were suspended from school one or more times compared to 3.4 percent of white students leading to fewer opportunities for some students to be active and engaged in the school setting students with disabilities are also far more likely to be suspended and expelled than their non-disabled peers we are not immune for the disparity in the Saratoga
012Springs School District where the most recent data from the office of civil rights shows that students with disabilities and black students of mixed race represented a higher number of those who were suspended and expelled what has been done to address this since this data was published in 2019. how are we keeping our students of color particularly those with disabilities in school and engaged in the learning process this District needs to critically examine how bias and racism play in student exclusion from the learning process rather than denying that there are issues and disparities that need attention thank you school board members thank you student representatives for all you do for our school district thank you next we have Mark Crockett foreign good evening my name is Mark Crockett my wife and I live in uh Joseph
013Lane in Wilton New York first of all I want to thank the board for all the hard work you do um I may not always agree with each and every one of you but I do appreciate the dedication you have and uh while I'm here I'd like to thank all the teachers for what you do every day we really appreciate it We Trust our children to you and I know the chill that teachers a few teachers in my life made a huge difference especially when my mom and dad divorced between eighth and ninth grade in particular a male physics teacher who was kind of a father figure to me through that time so I thank you all for what you do um I want to thank the board for passing the SRO um ruling I
014know that's controversial I'm not sure why it is I agree with the last speaker that we should not allow any racial bias anywhere in this country as well as schools on another note uh Dr Patton I would ask that the school district consider making the curriculum more available to the parents last year a lot of parents had a request through the Freedom of Information process documents that really just represent what's being taught to the teachers that was a lot of work on behalf of your staff to gather that information and I would just ask that the board and the uh this is not an urgent thing but there's a growing sense that parents want to be have kind of a seat at the table in their education their students their their yeah their students their
015children and it would be a lot easier if like a lot of things nowadays those things are online again thank you for all what you do [Applause] Molly Dunn hi there I'm Molly Dunn from Saratoga Springs so I'm going to start with an allegory although I'm not actually sure if it's actually an allegory but I bet there are some English teachers here who can tell me if it is or isn't and then I'm going to end with some multiple choice a little multiple choice quiz at the end so let's say our school district was working with a Food Service Agency to provide lunches in schools and that agency was also hired by City Hall to do some catering now and again and is well known in the community now let's say that food service agency
016was recently found by the Department of Health to be in violation of certain Health codes violating proper food handling protocols and neglecting to follow Federal local and state laws when it came to protecting the health and safety of fellow citizens and those violations came about because the Food Service Agency had made several citizens in the community sick with food poisoning in fact 13 people got sick and strangely enough the vast majority of those people who had food poisoning from this agency were all people of color from the community so strange imagine that so now on to the multiple choice knowing that the Department of Health has flagged this Food Service Agency for putting people's Health at risk predominantly people of color would the school district a immediately terminate the contract with that food agency and
017look at alternative Solutions B do nothing and allow that agency to continue working in the school or C renegotiate the contract to invest even more money into an agency which has been flagged for violating federal state and local Health codes and is facing civil and potentially criminal charges because of their actions in our community by adding more sros from the sspd which is under investigation by the New York State Attorney General's office for violating the civil rights of members in our community the school district has chosen option C this is an extreme liability so the question is what is the school board doing to ensure that sros not only follow the law but most importantly what is the school board doing to protect children whose civil rights and health may be in Jeopardy due to
018their exposure to this agency the answer surely cannot be that bias doesn't exist here thank you Aaron Leary Fila Street last meeting I and others noted that the district did not follow the regulation that requires answering five questions to ensure decisions are viewed through an equity lens I can see how one might have been duped into thinking the work had been done for the addition of sros but when asked directly if they'd followed the regulation administration's answers are studies in avoidance in September it was a quick yes in December a Meandering answer that ultimately said nothing a comment about black students in the school to prison pipeline now prison is the worst case scenario but not the only potential adverse effect some examples administrators tend to rely more heavily on punitive and exclusionary discipline when
019sros are in school and there is racial disparity Dropout rates increase academic performance drops but then there was the specious claim that national dish issues aren't in our district we know that Dei is not just about race but no one mentioned other subgroups nothing about ethnicity disabilities queerness or economic disadvantage no data about our district or partnering law enforcement agencies none from the culture and climate survey distributed two weeks after Uvalde which asked students what would help them feel safer the students were surveyed when asked about the benefits the answer was about custody issues or adults making threats to staff to date you have been calling police for those issues at no cost that's not a benefit there was also no mention of academic Roi surprising given interest in both it and the SRO issue
020no interventions were identified to ensure Equity but then again the lens was not applied interventions will need to be more than a clear mou Monday's humiliating editorial in the Times Union reminds us one's experience might not be the only valid perspective and that suggesting that it is comes across as both dismissive and hurtful the most telling question from the regulation that was not addressed which individuals are missing in the discussion to address disparities five questions asked none answered when done by leaders and Allowed by the board dismissal isn't just hurtful it's harmful and negligent the Crux of the editorial is that when schools partner with an agency currently under investigation for civil rights abuses no one can truthfully claim bias is not a concern people reminded you of this investigation they sent in emails identifying
021concerns based on specific experiences and were dismissed as anti-police now ironically some of the people saying that we are anti-police live in municipalities that don't pay for local police saratogians spent 15.7 million dollars annually on local policing 154 times more than Wilton residents Milton residents pay zero the absolute Gall to call us anti-police now we see elaborate choreography to recoup reputation but I'm sick of that dance the only appropriate move is to pause do the analysis and demand the same of your partners before hiring these sros I realize that's difficult to admit you let ideology get in the way that the board was lied to directly and by Omission that the district and the board majority didn't care and were unwilling to support students rights let alone their prosperity thank you Tim mcguigan good evening
022my name is Tim mcguigan I reside in Saratoga Springs I am also a teacher here in the high school for the past 23 years and tonight I am here as the president of the Saratoga Springs Teachers Association I'd like to start out with a few numbers 55 percent 55 is the number of teachers who recently in an Nea survey stated that they're looking to leave education sooner than planned because of burnout 180 000 180 000 is the number of teachers required only in New York state in the next few years to fill the holes left by teachers retiring or leaving the profession they're staggering numbers numbers that we need to pay attention to over the past few years the responsibilities added onto teachers have increasingly been lumped and lumped on during the Pandemic those responsibilities
023skyrocketed in a few minutes you'll be hearing from a few teachers that will show you that our district is not immune to that either we're here tonight as a group to show you that we are united United in our support for our students especially those students who are struggling either academically or emotionally we're here tonight United for each other because the amount of work and the the things that we are seeing in our classrooms are things that we have not seen before we're hearing tonight United to say we need more for our students who are facing mental health challenges we're also here tonight United to show that we are committed to getting a contract that represents what we have done for the past three years and reflects the reality of the job that we are
024doing now what we are doing now is far different than what we did three years ago we are here tonight United to commit to our community that we will continue to do everything we can for our students teachers teach because they love students and they want to see the Next Generation reach the potential that they can it's a passion for us but even the strongest passions can be extinguished if they are not fostered and if they are not encouraged I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight and I thank my brothers and sisters of the ssta for standing with me tonight [Applause] Jill kalburn my name is Jill Calvert I'm an English teacher here at Saratoga Springs High School do I need to give my address so um like my colleagues in
025this community I see the value of my investment in the students of our school district uh while stopping at Market 32 tonight I saw a former student who had just had a baby and we laughed thinking that her daughter might be my student one day we are teachers and students for life saratoga's secondary Educators teach because we want to contribute to our community we have dedicated our professional lives to families and generations of families here since Frank Crowley and Janice White chose me in 2008 I and my colleagues have changed with the times while remaining grounded in our commitment to the diverse population of young people in this District those administrators have moved on while the teachers in this room have tested new ideas new programs new software new systems in an ongoing effort to
026support our students we do whatever it takes to serve the people who will fuel this local economy and refill the pool of talent in Greater Saratoga Springs you chose us for this work when you hired us you entrusted us with the education of young people and we strive to maintain this community's trust our good work must be evident in the 10 75-minute presentations we create for students every week you see it in our relationships with parents and Guardians in the extracurricular activities we take on in the special attention we offer our students in need certainly saw our efforts to restructure instructional delivery during the pandemic we are fighting the tide of student disenfranchisement and mental illness even now the struggle continues for students and it continues for teachers our well-being is intertwined so we Endeavor
027to individualize learning discipline supportively help students through absence and disengagement even as we feel institutional squeezes on time and resources even as some community members lose faith in our work and despite the toll these times have taken on us and on our families teaching is not the same as it was when I started in 2008 my ninth graders have school laptops and they use them to ask for help and feedback to submit assignments or make up for absence I do not begrudge them but my digital life with students is as rich and challenging as my in-person life this is new constant digital connectivity multiple modes of instructional delivery parental and collegial communication for students demands our attention far beyond the school day and our time beyond the the bounds of the contract we teach for
028the same reasons you chose us we made an investment in this community we contribute each day despite challenges and we ask that you trust us and invest in the value we bring to this community thank you thank you Jamie Herman I am so sorry Miss Hansen Jamie Hansen good evening my name is Jamie Hansen I live on Jones Road in Saratoga Springs I have two children in District and I am an elementary teacher I come to all of you on behalf of my Saratoga Springs Teachers Association siblings I want to share our story as Elementary teachers teaching is a calling a passion what we feel we were meant to do to leave our lasting impression on the world we teach for the AHA moments the connections the relationships and seeds we help to plant and
029Foster along the way we love what we do or we certainly would not be teaching anymore however over the past several years this calling has become increasingly demanding at the detriment of our personal lives family lives mental and physical health our days typically start before 6 a.m and end at all hours of the night the part that has made our jobs ever overwhelming are the additional expectations initiatives and curriculum that have been handed down to us without taking anything off of our plates over the past few years we have expected we have been expected to learn and Implement all of the following I ready clever generation ready no room for hate seesaw canvas School Pace School tool data entry Behavior reports erla BC Second Step Kami science inquiries check-in checkout Quaver Arc erla mentoring programs
030teams PBIS the list goes on and on and we're expected to do all of that plus lesson plan grade papers differentiate and modify assignments make phone calls answer emails and plan with our team with only a 40-minute planning period compounding our high rate of burnout is the lack of support staff due to sub shortages many days AIS reading and math providers are pulled to substitute for classroom teachers meaning our most needy students are not being given the support they need to help them be successful that also means that the classroom teachers are left alone with up to 27 students at a time without any other adults in the classroom to assist with even basic needs like toileting accidents getting snacks vomiting Etc in addition our school social workers and school psychologists are Fielding not only
031more mental health issues and behavioral issues with our within our student body but are also seeing teachers dealing with anxiety and depression directly associated with job stress more than ever with the increasing number of students in crises the behavioral and mental health needs are greater than the support that we have social workers and psychologists are spending their days putting out fires and putting Band-Aids on gaping wounds they are unable to be proactive or even reactive in meeting their students counseling goals as dictated on their IEPs and 504s because there just isn't the people power to do so one Elementary School doesn't even have a school social worker Miss Hanson can you wrap up that thought yes we love what we do and we want to continue to love it for years to come something has
032to give we are exhausted and at our Breaking Point thank you for your time foreign good evening my name is Tracy croskey I live on Farm to Market Road I'm here tonight in response to an editorial in the Times Union white supremacy culture is saying yes there have been problems with police but not here not our police it seems that some of you feel that your experiences as white adults represent the experiences of everyone here I am another white adult in my 26th year of teaching in a local District to tell you that your experiences are not the sum of all things as a matter of fact last year I sat here at the Saratoga high school gym at a basketball game with my black daughter and her black friend while your SRO made sure
033to do his best to intimidate them he kept coming over to where we were sitting he would turn his back to the game and stare at them we know he was targeting them as he knows them from protests I was at the city council meeting where sspd refused entry to the meeting to anyone who looked like they were supported black lives matter when sspd was told by the legal Observer that they were violating constitutional rights of citizens the officers laughed at the lawyer these are the people who have you you have chosen to bring into your schools people who care more about their power people who care more about silencing others than they care about being decent human beings I have many many stories about like this about sspd but let's be honest you all
034know these stories they've been written about extensively you know ssbcpd is being investigated by Attorney General James for violating the civil rights of black activists do you really think those racist attitudes do not trickle down to your black students the truth is sadly I believe is that when you see black children you do not see your own children when you see a picture of Daryl Mount you did not think that he could be your child and so you have no problem dismissing the harm and Trauma Saratoga police have inflicted on your black Neighbors so when you hide behind talking about school safety do not think that we are fooled we know exactly whose safety you are really concerned about foreign that ends the first public comment period next we move on to board committee reports
035does anybody have anything to report Angie keep it really brief because we have a budget presentation tonight but um let me get back to my page with the notes um Finance did meet this week and um we've been reporting on our our work looking at the reserves and fund balance and you this will come to the agenda on February 9th to the to the board to look at and approve um as far as the budget which we're going to get an update on more fully today um there have been uh the budget staff and administration have met a few times with Leadership Council and started conversation with bargaining units and so we will get that update today in a more full um more full information and I think that was that's it otherwise we have
036an item in exec session later thank you are there any other board committee reports all right student representative reports so at the primary level Lake Ave this month is celebrating receiving the National Blue Ribbon award each week they focus on a different character trait and their student councils presenting these traits with video announcements to start every week they're having a month-long celebration and it's leading up to an in-school assembly and after school events tomorrow Dorothy Nolan had a great time at the Winter Dance last Friday they want to thank their HSA for planning this wonderful evening for their students students have been enjoying recess time and playing in the fresh snow and teachers have also been participating in data days this week to celebrate student growth in reading and math since the start of the
037school year at Division Street their PBIS Dragon day is tomorrow for the students their students will participate in the pta's stem Expo on Friday February 3rd and at geyser Road Tuesday January 24th they had their first annual literacy night for their AIS families they had several families attend and participate in fun literacy games and activities and every student left with several books to enjoy at home over at the middle school RPI engineering ambassadors recently visited Maple Ave to show The Real World application of stem eighth graders and Colombian participated in a give back day to learn more about ways that they can make an impact and Anna car ruthers a seventh grader in Colombian Springs is working on a community service project prior to her Bat Mitzvah in May and will be setting up a
038donation box for refugees living in Saratoga donations will be accepted over several weeks and there's more information to come on that um at Saratoga Springs High School Mrs labello an orchestra teacher was named a channel 13 top teacher and was featured on the news the academic team has qualified for naqt and Pace Nationals students and staff of Saratoga Springs High School participated in the Special Olympics Polar Plunge and raised sixty three hundred dollars to support unified programs in New York state and students are taking midterm and Regents exams this week following a snow day on Monday thank you so much Mike any administrative reports Just One update uh it was mentioned previously tomorrow Lake Avenue will be celebrating their National Blue Ribbon recognition and so we have had a whole group of teacher support staff
039administrators parents I have been providing a lot of work behind the scenes and preparing for the week-long celebration that will culminate tomorrow two o'clock that's for students and staff in the building we have several local elected officials that will be joining us a few of our board trustees Dr Messier is going to be making a return back to Lake Avenue but again want to thank Miss Carol and all the teachers and support staff who've helped achieve this wonderful recognition and helping plan tomorrow's memorable event so two o'clock tomorrow for students and staff and then tomorrow evening there's an activity plan for parents and community members what's up thank you all right we have two presentations tonight um starting with the annual Staffing report I'm just gonna use it hi everyone let's wait for the presentation
040to pull up but for those of you don't know me I'm Hillary Brewer director of personnel development um oh you're leaving me hello I'm sorry it's kind of hard for me to hear you you can't hear me I can hear you better okay um there's not a day that goes by that I don't speak to somebody in this room so thanks for the support coming out we'll wait for it to come up laughs quicker okay okay so we're gonna try to go pretty quickly I have Mike nagati with me my HR office coordinator but I know you want to get to the good stuff of Tim and Joe's budget presentation and we're going to try to keep it into 20 minutes for two presentations so uh the office of personnel development that's uh this is
041our entire staff we support over 1100 and District employees several hundred substitutes so we're a very very busy place so like I said Mike nagati is my HR office coordinator and then we have two HR generalists Christina and Becky and then Camille Gilchrist is I call her the HR historian she's a part-time person in our office so just as a reminder it's nice to have the board two years in a row all the same faces but our office is in charge of quite a bit um so we I oversee a lot of the federal state laws regulations Civil Service law is very complex the State education law is very complex so we have certificated staff non-certificated staff and all those laws that go along with how we hire people and then also support them so
042teacher certification 10-year appointments ctle uh we'll go on vacancy management that's one of the things that we will talk about the most tonight is just recruiting and retention and the the struggle that we're having there along with our ASAP system and substitute management as has been mentioned tonight already struggling with our day-to-day substitute fill rates so this is what our overall Staffing looks like and then we'll break it down kind of by department but we have a total of 1 126 staff members and that does not include all substitutes we're about even on non-certified staff certified staff and then certified administrators versus non-certified administrators so this is our total certified staff many who were just in the room this does include our building administrators and District level administrators so we're at 30 certificated administrators and
043then broken down by building you can see general education instructional student support is the school social worker school psychologist and then in our secondary buildings our school counselors anywhere where you see a 0.8 or a 0.3 we do have traveling teachers back and forth mainly music a little bit of PE so that's where you might not see an even number but overall you'll see we do work out to 572 certificated staff and I we do break out the special education teachers as well facilities and operations John's team they we have a total of 82 in 15 hourly those are our grounds monitors so we have Mark Lefler and Jose our full-time grounds folks and then we have a group of people that are hourly so we do include those in the totals but they aren't
044considered permanent employees Food Service staff you'll notice there's no administrator there that was a change two years ago we go through BOCES for our uh Eric Bush who is our director of food service but 55 staff members overall run their lunch operation and have been doing an amazing job I know everyone goes to the cafeteria for lunch and it is very good our technology staff under Dave supervision we have a total of 14 folks between clerical and the supervisors and then behind a couple folks behind the scene they don't necessarily see all the time and then our technicians that are out supporting the buildings in our transportation staff the number you'll see in a later slide we're down slightly in the drivers and that's really because over the year from last year to this year
045Jeff has been able to consolidate some roots and not need as many drivers and I do want to point out that these numbers are all of if every position was filled so at any given moment not every position is filled but this is how many folks we positions we have on staff and then our non-certified support staff so clerical we have sped other is a OT assistant the majority of our teacher aides are dedicated to special education you'll see we do have just a few GE general education AIDS they support the library at the middle of the high school our special education Tas that number has gone up slightly this year because as we've been bringing integrated co-teach up to the next grade levels and then general education Tas we have building Tas at each
046Elementary and a couple extra Folks at the middle high school that do ISS testing center things like that our monitors at the elementary levels or our cafeteria monitors and then middle and high school they're both cafeteria and Hall monitors during the day and then our School nurses and then we have a group of district-wide support positions that don't really fit in any of those other categories mainly Folks at our Administration Building I won't read them too but that's the rest of our staffing so just as an annual staff comparison you'll see we are up slightly this school year certificated staff has remained steady and as you notice in agendas we'll have abolished positions we'll have Creations so while you might see a position go you'll see in addition similar in facilities and I think John's
047added a few positions we actually have a couple extra grounds monitors able to work for us and really our students District support staff like I said teaching assistants we added quite a few for the integrated co-teach and that number can very often due to student needs for teacher aids I have to put this slide up I don't want to put this slide up but it is a ongoing issue and it's you know it's all the districts in our area it's Statewide but prior to coming to Saratoga six years ago I actually ran the teacher registry system through the BOCES and Saratoga had the highest fill rates 100 sometimes 99 we didn't have an issue getting substitutes well that is not the case anymore it is very rare that a building will be fully staffed with
048substitutes On Any Given morning which leads to the principle having to work for coverage teachers being pulled as was mentioned earlier so it really truly is an issue we're continually bringing new Subs in we work with the local BOCES for our instructional Subs so new Subs are coming on board all the time and then we actually in our office do all the non-instructional subs we're doing interviews weekly bringing people in but it's a per diem position there's no benefits attached it's an at-will type of position and we're just not getting the number of folks we need to cover our positions every day so while the overall that's the monthly overall is still very low and it's continuing to go lower when you look year to year there are days that I've looked and it's 50
049in some buildings or less of a fill rate so that is a big struggle for our buildings okay so I'm going to turn over to Mike and I'm going to jump in but we just want to talk about our the things we're working on in our office and then some of the challenges that we're facing hi everyone so I'm Mike if you didn't know um so some of the things we've been working on is targeted recruitment uh colleges downstate particularly Brooklyn College Mega Evers College in New York City and other colleges down in that area Iona Mercy College um we've also been developing relationships with colleges in New York state I believe that some colleges are not aware that we overhealth and they kind of work with their school districts that's closer to them and
050they're not they don't know that we're out here trying to recruit people so I'm going to develop those relationships and work with the career uh teams to let them know that we are out here looking for teachers we've also increased our social media posting is kind of challenging with the social media posting simply because the people who look at our postings on social media are the people who are following Saratoga Springs City school districts so it's kind of hard to get that wider range of people outside of the district area so it's one of the things we're challenging and trying to work towards um what else we got oh the infinity groups um an affinity group is something that we're trying to develop here at the at the district level um the purpose of it
051is to kind of design spaces uh for support for our diverse candidates that we are recruiting we want to make sure that there's a space for them when they come here then that they could show up and be there full and authentic self some of our recruiting challenges is that we're competing for the same candidates in some of the harder to fail positions special education math science and technology so it's just going to be a challenge for us to get out there and get quality candidates and again we're going to be recruiting for the diverse candidates and when we talk about diverse candidates we also talk about the racial diversity within the candidates one of the things that I've noticed as I talk to colleges is that certain colleges have their own application software so
052for example Sienna has a career Saint so all their students would apply to all the things that are career synced but other colleges uses handshake and we use recruit front and none of the systems talk to each other so if you look at it from a candidate perspective it's very challenging because the students will of course listen to what their career advisors telling them to do but then we have a different process and it's kind of it can confuse them and kind of lose them in the process um another challenge that we do have is the timing of career fairs um within the next few weeks like next week There's a career fair in Ithaca um and there's another career fair actually in Siena on the 15th um but our positions currently are not our
053teacher positions currently are not available to the external uh population simply because of uh the the window process um so I I kind of understand like what places we have available but it's kind of challenging to talk to folks who are interested in our school district but we don't have anything posted another thing is the recruiting fares occur at similar times for example March 30th there is Rochester teacher recruiting day SUNY Plattsburgh has a teacher recruiting day and Brooklyn College also has theirs on the 30th so I got to figure out which one I want to go to and it's probably gonna it's gonna be Brooklyn um and then turnover and the recruitment so really Mike and I had dinner before we came here and we were talking about you know we do spend a
054lot of time talking and thinking and trying to recruit our teaching staff but a lot of our time in the office with the four of us is spent on the turnover and you guys see it on the board agenda of our non-instructional staff it's just it is typical in a school district that folks come and go our non-instructional staff don't stay the way our teaching staff do so it's it's consistent it's collecting applications it's supporting the principles in the interview process it's getting people on board getting fingerprints doing the onboarding our office is a hub of activity all the time and then you know like Michael's saying when you have new staff coming on board trying to support them getting them to the right the right people so we are very busy we have a
055lot of challenges ahead of us Tim gave some very true statistics in terms of what we're looking at and I shared some of those with you last year with where folks are in teacher Prep Pro programs and what's going to be happening over the next 10 years so I feel fortunate that we can at least be having these conversations and trying to take the steps to recruit staff and recruit a more diverse staff but it's not simple there's not a magic button I can push and I surely wish I could so we will be continuing to have these conversations I'm sure for many years to come so now I'm going to ask if you would do questions for Mike and I before I turn it over to Tim because I want to let him go
056home Connie thank you very much for for your presentation two slides in particular um are very useful and I think would be useful going forward if they could somehow merge so the annual staff comparison where you have from 2017 to 2023 if you could um and then going down further the one with the certified staff it would be very helpful to see the trends over time of the general education versus [Music] you know teachers versus this one I'm scrolling back up yeah administrators general education if we could see that over time that would be very helpful I think as we are going through the budget process I probably have a few I'm a big spreadsheet person as I've gotten further into this position I can probably go back at least a few years that I've
057been managing it and do that look and continuing to look at it moving forward into a similar slide okay thank you very much sure any other questions thank you John Bruggeman nope you're not up there hi sorry I want to thank you for uh putting your names and titles and helping us with acronyms I was going to put pictures but I got busy I appreciate I think Connie's right I appreciate what she said about uh can you just say something about the annual staff comparison the the two trends that are seems especially interesting are the certified staff versus the the district support staff one is going down one's going up can you talk about that a little bit the certified staff is going down and the support staff is going up yeah so I think
058year to year at least since I've been here in 2017 the conversation has been especially when we get retirements looking at positions um and then determining what we really need so you will have seen over the years there have been some cuts through attrition and those positions were not replaced versus the support staff it's interesting that they've gone up because we used to have many more teacher aides but as we've really looked at things and assigned Aid to student ratio and things like that we've been able to reduce that number a bit but I think it's just the integrated coach each Edition that's six Tas per building per K1 and then two three so that's 12 staff right there and then like I'm saying the teacher aids are flexible um and I think it's just
059a matter of the different abolished creates that we've been doing over the years I have one question as well about the slide with the substitute fill rates um I guess how has the need for substitutes changed obviously at least right now it feels like we're dealing with a lot of illness and I know that you know we've had that on our plates um but I also know that substitutes are needed for other things like during the day professional development teachers getting pulled up for different things so is there work being done to I guess support teachers and being able to be with their students rather than getting pulled out during the day and needing that sub when there aren't Subs yeah yeah I mean we've been working on that at the building level to try
060to really you know make it so that we're not pulling teachers out as much as we did prior there are always going to be in cases where you know we just had articulation days where teachers will get together on a particular day but knowing the sub shortage we really have tried to reduce the amount of time we're pulling them out for our own District purposes of course people can can take days off we do we still have a lot of sickness I process I think I process like 10 or 12 covid leaves today for the last week so you'll see that we do you know and this isn't anyone that requires a substitute so non-instructional AIDS assistance clerical we try monitors we try but I think overall you know the numbers fluctuate slightly but there's
061always month there's patterns and months right like May is always a very high use month month um for substitutes and it has been all right any further questions okay thank you Michael and thank you Hillary thank you hi everyone my name is Joe Greco I'm director of budget and program integration and I'm here with Tim hilker assistant superintendent for business so like we said before we're going to talk a little bit on budget Outlook this is still very early to kind of have these conversations but at least kind of want to refresh your memory on some of the things we had talked about back in November in some of our board workshops and kind of give you the Outlook of what we're going to see over the next few weeks and months foreign so earlier
062this month Governor hokel did give her State of the State address we don't at this time have the executive budget thanks we don't have the executive budget yet normally we would have it at this time since it is an election year the governor is given the grace period of the beginning of February to get that budget out to us so we're expecting after February 1st and then for our board meeting later in February to be able to give you some of the first kind of state aid numbers but just taking some of the key points that we picked up from her State of the State address earlier this month she did talk about fully funding Foundation aid from the state level you're looking about 2.7 billion additionals around 13 percent increase there allocating a portion
063of that Foundation Aid towards high dosage tutoring I think it was about 250 million dollars being cut off just for that um there was also talking there about expanding Career Technical education programs uh especially things like the Early College Career Academy p-tech about 20 million dollars she said was going in that direction mental health as we even heard earlier tonight is certainly a big concern even at the state level so talking about expanding mental health supports increasing reimbursements for school-based mental health centers and being able to build that through Medicaid um there was also mention about uh Justin pilot the payment in lieu of taxes and the impact that that has on our tax cap so actually looking at the formula for the tax cap and seeing something could be done uh so schools aren't
064taking a hit with a pilot and there was also a piece in there about amendments to Civil Service laws and Workforce Development initiatives again kind of along the lines of what Hillary is talking about but this was to really be more of a recruitment effort having more of the civil service exams online a little bit more convenient for folks happening more frequently multiple choice so things to kind of make things a little bit easier to get people into the workforce uh and then she also mentioned about implementing an e-procurement or electronic procurement program uh really kind of a single point a little bit more streamlined should be a better procedure overall so these are some of the highlights like I said there's nothing I can really go too in depth with because we haven't seen
065any state aid runs as soon as we get that information that'll be kind of the jumping off point for our discussions so we talked about this back in November this is kind of our budget calendar the dotted line in there in January is where we are so each time we'll kind of come back to this and kind of get an idea of where we're sitting uh we've done quite a bit of things already as far as our budget process initiative inventory our budget Composites all of our budget directors across the district have put their budgets together for next year so now we're getting into talking about our carryover budget that's the rollover budget we'll talk about Hillary just talked about Staffing requirements Tim's going to talk about our fund balance and reserves plan and then
066also evaluation of programs and initiatives this is kind of what we're in the throes of right now with our leadership Division and then the budget process is kind of what we're talking about today also in here later this month we're talking about our tax levy limit we'll be calculating that out before the deadline and then once February hits then we should be seeing state aid figures we get into the budget workshops that's when we all become real close friends seeing each other every week um and then our tax levy is uh our deadline is in March for that and then before you know it we're adopting the budget and then our budget votes in may we post the budget and we do it all over again so it's a constant process we're constantly looking at
067the budget we're constantly tweaking it but right now where you see where that dotted line is we're right in the middle of it we're ready to gear up so there's a lot ahead of us but we have a good plan so it should run fairly smooth so construction or the budget uh again this is a very big broad look at it but one of the first things that we're looking at is initiative inventory so this was kind of new this year where we took a step back and we wanted to kind of really take stock of what exactly are we doing what's happening in all of our buildings but also at facilities and Technology Transportation so looking at all the things that are happening and kind of getting a a pulse on our current reality
068what we're working on now is now that we've looked at all those initiatives and kind of compartmentalize them or prioritize them now we're starting the process of a program analysis so really looking at those different initiatives starting to go through that process of academic return on investment and looking at those things and say well what are we doing why are we doing it is it successful is it not successful how do we know starting to really apply some data to that the rollover budget this is if we took whatever we're doing this year and we did the exact same thing next year how much is it going to cost spoiler alert it costs more to do the exact same thing that we're doing this year next year salaries go go up fuel goes up electricity
069goes up all the other things that we're trying to purchase those go up as well so we do our best guess at trying to figure out if we did exactly the same thing how much that's going to cost and then we start to factor in things like Revenue so once we can get a good idea of what state aid is going to look like we also look at if there's any other additional funding that's coming in that can help support and then we start talking about budget revisions so there are certain things that as we kind of go through our budget analysis we realize that we have needs in certain areas so those are things that get added onto that rollover and then we're also looking critically at some programs that maybe we can downsize
070that we don't need that anymore and those are things that we start to kind of tighten the belt and get ourselves closer and closer um we've done this so many times that uh when we're dealing a lot of times with a budget Gap we get as close to closing that Gap as possible and then usually we come to the board and we discuss the use of fund balance of reserves to close the remaining portion of that Gap if we're fortunate enough to have higher than expected revenues then maybe we're having the conversation of are we putting more money into our Reserves and the bottom line is we're trying to do this whole process to put together a proposed budget so the newest thing on here is that initiative inventory and I just want to go
071a little bit more in depth with that because we are spending a lot of time with our group so we talk about inventory and and this was a good thing to talk about because tonight you heard one of the public comments talked about there's a lot on my plate there's a lot of different initiatives out there and it can feel overwhelming and she was absolutely right there are a lot of initiatives but we didn't really do a great job of quantifying how many initiatives there are so we spend a lot of time in December with our leadership team and we went through and we asked everyone to kind of list out kind of do this dump of all the different initiatives that are going on throughout the district and there was 341 initiatives there's a
072lot there were duplicates so I factored that in and it turned out that across the district there was 170. different initiatives that people reported out unduplicated tremendous amount you mean by initiatives um so initiative so when someone's saying well like the arc reading program that would be an initiative PBIS would be another initiative any programs that we're bringing in um we add a lot of things on and we don't do a great job of circling back to analyze whether or not it's giving us the return that we thought so there's a lot of things going on what of the 170 what I ask folks to do is prioritize okay there's a lot going on in your building what are the top things and when we did that we got 80 top tier unduplicated initiatives so
073when someone tells you there's a lot on their plate they're not lying to you there are a lot of things and we wanted to now take this a step further and say okay now that we've Quantified how many different initiatives are going on let's start to compartmentalize them and start to get a better framework for analysis of those initiatives so when we looked at the initiatives some of the top things that popped up here American reading company the behavioral Sports North attendance tutoring third party assessments AIS and mental health support so these are ones that were top tier for multiple leadership teams or buildings around the district so then what we did after we got this list is then we said all right well let's take those top tier ones those top three mental health
074AIS third-party assessments and then we start to look at all the other initiatives that folks talked about and say well where do they go in a roundabout way how are they supporting these top tier initiatives eventually we want to get to the point where we're looking at each one of those smaller initiatives and doing a return on investment and looking at that and saying all right how much time are we investing how much money are we investing is it giving us the results that we wanted if it is that's great could it be better are there things that we can tweak and of things that are are redundant or the uh not supporting what our mission and our goals are are there things that we can take off the plate uh to be a little
075bit more strategic in our implementation So eventually where we are now is we're meeting with our leadership team over the the last few weeks uh multiple times a week and we've been talking about all those different initiatives and we're asking similar questions throughout the process is this program initiative happening at your school uh your building with Fidelity whom do you personally whom do you believe it's meant to serve how would you define or demonstrate success for that program or initiative is it effective or how effective is it currently what makes you say that again kind of probing asking for some data to support these feelings and then how would you rate this program's value or importance and then finally if it's broken we want to have that conversation if it's broken how might you fix
076it again we're not looking at this from what are things can we cut and get rid of we're really looking at it saying how efficient are we right now and if things aren't working right does this mean we have to kind of revisit our communication plan do we have to revisit professional development what can we do to make sure that we're yielding the highest results and that we're pushing forward programs that are going to be useful of teachers and principals time so these are have led to some good conversations I will say honestly some long overdue conversations they can be challenging conversations at times but this is necessary to kind of get people's General feelings on where they are right now what's the current reality and then how can we work together as a leadership
077team in order to support strong initiatives moving forward so again that's kind of the the work that we've been doing leading up to the budget process and now we're taking that information and taking it to our next steps so today you want to talk about this and before I get started I just want to thank Joe for leading these conversations and I agree it's it's just in the last two weeks we've had some of the best conversations that I think I've had since I've come to the district about six years ago so um I feel like it's been been real productive there's a lot of work still ahead of us this is not um all going to get done in one year or two or probably even three so um but but it is it's
078really meaningful work I think and it's going really well so Angie mentioned that at finance committee we've been talking the last couple meetings about the fund balance and reserves Plan and there's two before I get into details two points that I want to make on the fund balance and reserves plan uh one is that it's a plan and the state comptroller's office requires us to have a plan and we've done so for uh at least the last five years the other point that I want to make is that um the the us as a district but credit to the board is um for the last several years we've done a really good job at sticking to that plan and I think that has helped maintain a lot of stability in the budget development process so
079really proud of that to get into some some of the detail though uh here you can see this is just the restricted reserves so um I won't read them to you but uh on the left you can left hand side you'll see the ending balances for the year that we just finished in June in the financial statements that we just approved what's new the last couple years and I've been pleasantly surprised I guess maybe I shouldn't be surprised but maybe it's just good planning but reconciling where we projected that we were going to be in the previous plan to where we ended up and that's another thing that we've done really well at is staying close to that on the right hand side you see after working through this with the finance committee you'll see
080where we project the end of year fund balance uh and I'm sorry the end of year reserves to be probably the two most notable things here are the rounding out of the capital reserve which was part of our Capital planning that we started six years ago now almost um we had we had asked the voters to approve uh an eight and a half million dollar capital reserve and to that we had contributed 5 million which went towards the current Legacy project and so uh this complete this fully funds uh that capital reserve and then the other thing is uh contributions to our retirement reserves which when we talk about the appropriation of reserves towards balancing the budget that's typically those are the reserves that we're talking about so this is just one component and so
081this is the overall makeup of the fund balance and reserves plan um the non-spendable uh it relates to some prepaid expenses the restricted Reserve there on the second row those tie out to the previous slide those are our overall reserves year to year the assigned represents the amount of fund balance and reserves that we allocate towards the next year's budget and so that's another notable aspect of this year's plan is that we've planned to increase the amount that we appropriate towards next year's budget and then the unrestricted is really that unassigned fund balance and this is really the area where the Comptroller's office tends to hone in on and so we are continually looking at ways whether it's through planned use planned additions to reserves and or planned uses of reserves and similarly with fund
082balance uh planned uses of fund balance so always trying to make sure that we're managing that and one of the things that the Comptroller's office is typically looking for is just that we're following that plan that we're being intentional about how we do that and not reactionary but overall you can see the fund Equity position doesn't really change much overall year to year so um this is another aspect of the plan that we added a few years ago and there's this isn't overly scientific but it was a good way I thought to try to compare against some of our peer districts in terms of relative to our budgets what is our fund balance and Reserve landscape and we set a Target about four years ago of a range of three and a half to four
083and a half as a ratio and you can see up there in the top right that we've done really well getting to and staying within that range there's not a right or wrong answer here it's really about what's right for Saratoga and again I just want to comment on how well we've done at planning that and working towards that goal and staying within that goal so it's something that I'm really proud of and I think you ought to be too assign fund balance and reserves history so again this is just kind of a little history on where we've been you go back a couple years prior to this and there was even a little bit more volatility than what you see here but one of the things one of the first things that I noticed
084when I came here was the need to really stabilize this and not be not have that fluctuating all over the place and again we've done really well at that but you'll see there the increase from last year from this year to to next represents an allocation of that fund balance and reserves to help offset the budget for next year so before I move on I just want to ask because uh it is Our intention at the next meeting to present you with the fund balance and reserves plan it's in its entirety and asks you to adopt that so certainly we'll provide an opportunity to ask questions then but if there are any questions that I can help address now I'm happy to do that John this isn't about that in particular first of all thanks
085for the presentation especially the Slick graphics with the Transitions and the arrows and the boxes it's all Joe I know um um I want to follow up on something I said at the last meeting we had a several of us board members were at a very productive meeting sponsored by ssta um and uh I wanna can you imagine a scenario where say there's a group of teachers like let's say art teachers or music teachers or Carol entry teachers and a bunch of them are like-minded about something they think absolutely ought to be in the budget uh is there any chance that a group like that would not have had an opportunity to feed into that initial inventory and articulating the priorities uh there are two different things in in what you asked Sean um one
086is I think with respect to the initiative inventory maybe not as much because that's really taking stock of where we are today um which I think is important in knowing how to get to where we want to get to um so um I can't say for sure we got our input from mainly principles on that and so whether they solicited buildings for input I don't know the answer to that but um I can tell you just from cross-referencing to budget that um I I feel confident that we did get a representation a large representation of the initiatives in the district so to the other part of your question which I think is more on the where are we going if there are ideas for new programs or initiatives or staffing needs or whatever that is
087we come at that a few different ways again from Department leader and building leaders soliciting their input as a part of these discussions behind the initiative inventory but also with our bargaining units having conversations with them and soliciting input that way and then there are a number of other meetings and discussions that happen from really September all the way through till February and then in March we're really talking about the prioritization of those decisions so um that probably happens differently in every building to answer your question more directly in terms of how principals solicit that feedback or how the bargaining unit solicit that feedback from their staff or their members I don't maybe that answers your question I don't know it does partly I'll just say and I wonder if anybody else who was there
088uh wanted to chime in here but um I I that was um you know a small group a small portion of people in Rel of our teachers um but it felt like there was a disconnect and so it seems to me that everybody in the system ought to be thinking about making the channels of communication more robust including and go to your office and I know you take it seriously the principles the ssta leadership I want to make sure everybody on the ground knows the appropriate channels for them to weigh in not that everybody every individual gets their little pet project but groups of people that have organized around important priorities ought to make sure ought to have their voices heard absolutely yes I'd like to follow up on that but I just want to
089make sure should we follow up on that at the end or is that appropriate for this part of the presentation this is your meeting nice okay I just want to make sure my topic so I guess one of the questions that I have in line with what uh John is talking about and I also did get to be at that ssta liaison meeting is I feel like there are certain decisions that it makes sense that they come up through the buildings and just speaking from my own experience as a school worker not speaking for anybody in this District sometimes there are specific fields in the schools where I don't know that like when there's one speech therapist at a school like me my priorities don't really go up through the principle they go up through
090a group of speech therapists which when we don't have a director which at my district we don't anymore we used to our priorities kind of go and then they like go away and so they you know they go to the next person but they don't really go anywhere so I'm wondering for departments I mean specifically like art and music where there is no program director even though there is a department head but that person is also doing their full-time job of being a teacher and doing the department head work on top of that how do those I guess priorities get communicated to you especially when a lot of those teachers are split among schools so for a teacher who's spending part of their time at Division and part of their time at Dorothy Nolan how
091does what they need get communicated to you how does it make it to your office so there's one of several ways so I know from a meeting this morning that Michelle Whitley is working closely with the Departments you mentioned but the also the building leadership in in the buildings um so that can come through the directors through some of their analysis and discussions they've had typically with department heads sometimes other staff as well but also through building principles and that's where uh what Joe was describing the discussions about the initiative inventories is really looking at those things that are the most important things in analyzing those and through those conversations identifying some of those needs organically so if there are needs that are outside of that we're really relying on a lot of the process
092from like I said we really start in September but I would say more meaningfully probably November to February where we would expect those topics to come up and say I've got a need or I'm hearing there's a need so we I I we in the business office rely heavily on District leadership and building leadership or Department leadership if it were um and how that happens uh at each individual level um may be different I don't know the answer to that does that help yeah thank you and I guess I just want to add on to that to that um I mean in my opinion if we're talking about like the needs for mental health which seems to be one of the big buckets that we're talking about I guess I just want to advocate for
093art and music being essential components of that work as well thank you thanks Tim I was at that same meeting it was a really impactful meeting and it kind of made it made me think more about our budget process and um and two things kind of came to mind for me and one is I feel like there should be there shouldn't be any teacher or staff member here who doesn't know how to communicate that and it was very pervasive in the in the room that they did not know how to get their needs a whole whole departments even to get their needs communicated up and so so that I guess I think we should get that more widely spread that information um and then the other one is that in the past we've tightened up
094the budget schedule to hear more about um kind of what requests have come and what's not being included or the tier one tier two two three and I'm wondering if we can go a little bit deeper so that we are hearing um the other needs that kind of are not being pushed forward but have come forward so that we have a deeper knowledge of what the requests are of you know departments and you know funding so we talked back in November about the process and I think we've maybe talked about it in finance committee as well but that's one of the distinct differences this year is that we did not solicit the millions of dollars of wishlist type items although there was a similar style process run for new courses and so I know those
095conversations were had at Great length um and so as far as like our staffing needs you know the social worker came up um we did have we have a meeting and we're going to have several more dedicated just to the mental health supports and so we're looking at and I'll go ahead and share a little more with you um two really driving questions are how are we determining need and how are we determining Effectiveness and we've had that has been the basis of the discussions for this entire month and so we continue to work through that but but that's we're kind of working from the inside out rather than having a list of seven million so I want to answer your question and I know what you're asked I think I know what you're asking
096is um where you've maybe seen a list of 15 things would it be possible to see a list of 30. um I don't know yet if I can tell you how long that list is but certainly we can have the conversation if maybe you prefer if we uh tease that out in finance committee just to see what exactly we're talking about and then we can see from there if if what we're bringing to the board is the appropriate level or not Connie thank you I would like to just acknowledge Joe's comments and I really I appreciate them but I'm sure there's many listeners here at the meeting and that will hear about what you said acknowledging that the number of initiatives is is a bit much and I'm wondering if that is also part of
097the communication issue where everyone including leadership are so busy doing so many different things that communicating about these things that are very important but it just gets lost in Lost in Translation but thank you very much for saying that and less is more is certainly less is more can be very helpful when it comes to to those things I know everyone is working for the kids but I I just think that that is that was so important to say so thank you um through and I'm I'm also addressing things that my fellow board members brought up about um things that the board is directly heard through so either through School tours or the the ssta Boe liaison meetings specifically we have heard that uh one music position one art position one middle school guidance position
098and one social worker specifically for Caroline Street would be something that would be helpful and all of those would address mental health so I know that the good news that the foundation Aid is fully funded now I don't know if all of those would even be possible but is it possible for you to address them in future presentations just so we can see if they fit and where they might fit yeah I can tell you that it's already part of the discussion but yes certainly we'll bring that back and just to on the foundation Aid issue and we'll get more into that the next meeting but we were one of the districts that was already fully funded so there's not a lot that's gonna that we're anticipating anyway maybe we'll surprise us but um I
099I don't expect that to be a big part of the solution anyway thank you sure all right so real quick um I just addressed the state aid aspect of the revenue budget but want to talk about tax cap and this is just a history on kind of where we've been over the last five years with an average of average increase of 3.04 percent still working on the calculation for next year really if you recall from talking about the the calculation itself one of the major drivers of the tax cap calculation is that capital local share and and really so what that speaks to is our Capital planning uh the net of all of our debt versus the aid that we generate on that and that has as you might imagine with the number of projects
100that we now have going on become increasingly complex and so we're just trying to finalize I can tell you um just a rough estimate that we're probably at or below this average probably somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half to three percent but until we finish planning out all of that debt over the next several years and making sure that there's nothing that we're missing from a timing perspective relative to Aid and debt because we don't want to cause ourselves future problems making sure that we plan that out for the long term but I don't anticipate because when we started this part this Capital planning process and talking about the Legacy project it was really built on the premise that we would maintain the local share that we wouldn't need to raise additional
101money but with that comes as we generate Aid on projects that we also add our capacity to to issue new debt and so it's it's just something that we have to to keep our eye on and maintain foreign budget drivers health insurance probably rightfully top of the list this year we have not the the health insurance trust has not finalized what the rates are going to be but early indications are that it's likely going to be between a 10 and 12 percent increase which is um double what we've seen in years past so um that's yet to be finalized but I do imagine that that's going to have a large impact on next year's budget ERS and TRS rates we've got moving Parts in both directions there I don't anticipate that being a a big
102part of the equation but it certainly is a factor that ties into the contract negotiations we have contract negotiations open with two bargaining units and so um to the extent that we have agreements in place we will certainly use those for budget development but to the extent that we don't we will as we have in the past use estimates in the budget to uh to help keep the Budget moving forward BOCES and CTE BOCES we we've seen modest increases for the most part over the last several years one of the areas this year that we're probably going to be discussing a little bit more in depth is the need for additional CTE placements we have more kids considerably more kids going there now special education pleased to report that that likely will be a bright
103spot in our budget which is not always the case so um we've done a lot of work there and credit to Stacy and her department but uh I think we'll see be able to see some reductions possibly there bad news utilities and commodities particularly gas and fuel going up considerably we're already seeing increases over what we anticipated this year to the tune of about three hundred thousand dollars and so we will do our best to take that into account and factor that into next year's budgets retirements and breakage at present we have I think 10 retirements so that'll get included and then obviously state aid is always the the unknown and the the thing that we're waiting for at the 11th Hour like Joe said we anticipate having the governor's Budget on February 1st so
104at our next meeting we'll be able to bring some early estimates to you on that but April 1st is uh really when we expect the legislative budget and be able to put the finishing touches on our BOCES on our budget at that time the property tax levy has to be submitted by March 1st and so um like I was talking about I will finish that and have a more clear picture for you at our next meeting and be looking for your input as we submit that which is not obviously final but we want to get as close as we can we'll have to finalize our BOCES service request and this is another one of those things that just um we we take pieces at a time as we get the rates for various programs but
105typically we're towards the end of the process when we're finalizing that looking at our staffing needs and projections we've talked quite a bit about that as well as program and initiative reviews and curriculum renewal curriculum renewal were coming off of our second year one of implementation with American rating company so um we're still we still have a pretty heavy focus on that trying to establish what our Legacy costs are going to be to now run that out but the larger investment now has for the most part been made and so we'll begin to shift our Focus to some of the other content areas relative to what we have in the budget we have been and continue to be looking at stimulus grants and the Legacy costs so you associated with those and so to the
106extent that we've made purchases or added Staffing as a part of the stimulus funding that will carry on beyond the life of those grants we need to factor that into our plan and then Capital planning you know I talk about in the context of the tax levy cap calculation which is critical but also we need to be and we have been but we haven't really brought it to you because it's not in a digestible format yet but we really do need to start talking about what the next iteration of the Legacy project is going to look like and what those figures are going to be so we intend to throughout the budget process bring more of that to you as well so uh pretty standard for our bus replacement plan it has been the case
107for as far as I can tell that we've got a fleet of about a hundred buses and we anticipate approximately a 10-year useful life on that and so every year we aim to replace about 10 percent of our Fleet next year is no different in that respect however like everything else costs have gone up so where we have seen Bond propositions in previous years in the in the range of 1.1 to 1.2 million dollars to maintain that replacement cycle we're looking closer to 1.5 million dollars that will in turn generate some more aid but the the local share has gone up to about 177 000 where in years past that number has been more like 130 135 000. um one other note here and I did not bring a ton of detail on this but
108it came to mind as I was thinking about discussing this with the board and that is the Mandate for electric buses and so while this may be a minor pain point the reality is likely that it probably brings us one step closer to what the costs are going to be to implement an electric vehicle Fleet if that comes to full fruition so and then just some key dates here I won't read them all to you but uh we've got the executive budget coming out um the adoption of the budget is scheduled for uh April 18th and then uh one week before the budget vote we'll have the budget hearing and then the budget vote on May 16th so I know I went way over my time but are there questions Angie hi thanks my questions
109are for Joe on initiative slides if you can go to 22 okay um it's the one on the inventory and I'm wondering um so these are prioritized by how many times they were mentioned uh yes so uh but I'm unsure so American reading company should have been mentioned at least six times right so because there's six buildings so it was mentioned as an initiative by everyone this is just if they put it down as a priority and then did some additional diving deeper into providing some additional data with it so it's still a top priority that we're talking about but the one like something like mental health supports not only did everyone mention that but then there was six different buildings that wanted to take a deeper dive and saying this is a top priority
110to discuss okay so the inventory count these counts are they part of that 341 or is the 341 really higher no the 341 was the total okay um and then if we took so if everyone said American breeding company I took and it just counted that one time but then I looked at how many people mentioned American re and Company as a top priority and then that's where it went into that list there so this is really an inventory of top priority top prior is correct okay gotcha and then on the next slide um the the box that says academic intervention services yes is including curriculum renewal and I'm curious why I I understand it's curriculum and it's academic but the intervention services I didn't understand that category categorization for this one again we're trying
111to put things in certain boxes and there might need to be a fourth box that is separate from that it came up in our general discussions because we wanted to see well if we're providing an additional academic support does that align with what our curriculum is and if we change things in our curriculum are we doing the same in kind with our uh academic return of event or excuse me our academic intervention services okay so it's really the academic versus the mental health support correct and you know a lot of our discussions there's so much overlap between these things uh but again we're just we're trying to do it systematically because these are tough conversations and that shouldn't be a reason not to have the conversation so we're muddling through it's year one uh we're
112taking a lot of lumps as we're going but we know that we're setting ourselves up for Success two years three years down the line no I appreciate this work very much it's really brings to light all the work that's being done my last question is on the next one about the key questions yes because it sounds like from what teachers are saying tonight that they're doing a lot of this work on these initiatives but I think I heard in your presentation that the people answering these questions are the building leadership teams yes yes so in the key questions who's who's answering those the the leadership or the ones doing the initiative or so we were asking the building principles or the leadership Council what we've done in the past is kind of answer these things
113as a group but what was happening was that the loudest voices in the room were kind of dominating the direction of that conversation so we changed this to individual kind of surveying real-time surveying answers and then distilled that information down then shared it out with the group again had some deeper conversations about what's the reality you may see a program One Way Tim sees it a different way that's miscommunication how do we kind of get to the heart of what the current reality is and then getting down to if it's not working or it's working in his building and not your building why and then what can we do to improve overall our programs okay you yeah I just want to make sure that those who are providing the initiative service if you will are
114that their voices are being heard without asking them to do more work but there's an extra extra layer for sure um yeah our plates can only be so big but I think their Insight would be really good any other questions Connie I'm sorry quick one can you go to the previous slide what does b-e-i-s-y stand for under third party assessments what's the acronym it's the uh the behavioral survey SEL that see this is why I didn't even attempt it year for the first time this year you're thinking thank you to answer the question I'm sorry I always delegate to the smartest person in the room all right any further questions from the board okay thank you so much Joe and Tim now we turn to the consent agenda for those in attendance or watching a
115consent agenda is a commonly used vehicle provided for by our adopted rules of parliamentary procedures Robert's rules that allows the board to vote on a large number of items in a single motion typically these are business items associated with the everyday running of the schools and their inclusion in the agenda is a result of a great deal of Prior work and Care by the Professionals of the district there are from time to time business items that by law cannot be included in a consent agenda and when this happens we pull those out and vote on them separately consent agenda items are known to trustees and the public several days ahead of the business meeting on which they are to be considered so that board members have the chance to ask questions of Discovery and do
116any advanced fact finding that is part of their due diligence process Angie are there any modifications to the consent agenda there are not can I get a motion I move to approve consent agenda items e f and g in their entirety can I get a second John bergamon any discussion um seeing none all in favor that's unanimous okay one moment sorry all right um we've now um reached our second public comment period please remember 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 that we expect from the students of our district we do not allow comments about specific individuals employees I'm sorry specific individual employees students or trustees
117we now open the second public comment period each speaker is allotted a maximum of three minutes and before you address the board please clearly state your name and address first we have Jeannie Fontaine so my name is Jeannie Fontaine I live in Saratoga Springs I teach at Dorothy Nolan Elementary my kids are in second and fourth grade at Dorothy Nolan Elementary and I've been a teacher in the district for 15 years I've dreamed of being a teacher since I was a little girl my second grade teacher Mrs melander from Caroline Street School was actually my inspiration and motivation to become a teacher however I have concerns about upcoming changes to my building my children's building my classroom due to the new Legacy project plans to my knowledge and our building fourth grade is up first
118the current plan has been explained that you are removing the storage Cubbies and hooks in our hallways and replacing them with new wooden bulky mobile storage Cubbies that will be placed inside their already small classrooms I've had the opportunity to check these out firsthand the individual space allotted for each student is too small for their belongings when winter time comes we have jackets snow gear boots backpacks lunch Boxes Etc looking at the design of the ones in our demo classroom at Dorothy Nolan only confirm our concerns their belongings will literally be right on top of one another what happens when a backpack comes into school with a student whose cat has urinated on it this has actually happened what happens when a backpack comes in with a student who whose backpack smells of cigarette smoke
119so much so that their folders smell like smoke when they are removed from their backpack this has also happened in my classroom or the dreaded head lice outbreak the mobile storage selected for these classrooms will only crowd them further and offer opportunities for germs and unsanitary smells to breed among students and their belongings we don't understand the need to get rid of the hallway Hooks and Cubbies our fourth grade team has voiced their concerns and opinions for months to the planning team and administration we've filled out surveys given honest open feedback and suggestions yet we feel they fall upon deaf ears because it would seem the district has already made up their minds we are hearing that it's already been purchased or what we're getting is what we're getting that all three five classrooms will
120look the same all K2 classrooms will look the same don't get me wrong we look forward to updating our classrooms but we're bummed we're disappointed because it's our standing right now that everybody will have the same different grade levels need different Furniture different teachers prefer different Furniture some love tables some love desks I truly believe that having the autonomy to choose what's best for our own classroom will have a direct correlation to our Student Success and happy effective teachers I don't need a purple colored trapezoid shaped desk what I want is a desk with built-in storage not a plastic bin option that can go on the side with the desk I prefer I can make groups still of two four eight a horseshoe Rose single desks the possibilities are endless I don't want an electric
121blue colored chair that looks like a gaming chair I want my carpet back where my students can sit and listen to a read aloud where I keep them on the edge of their seats because they can't wait to hear what's happening next in the chapter or I want to have meaningful morning and afternoon discussions and meetings with them on this warm carpet the reason I'm speaking tonight is that so that you understand we are not feeling heard we're confused why surveys are given for us to complete when decisions seem to be made regardless of our feedback and opinions we feel we should be respected enough to have choices that make sense to us and our teaching styles and classroom makeup we want our voices heard and our feedback to have meaning otherwise why bother taking
122the time I may only be a second grade teacher but I speak for many of us help us feel heard help us feel valued help us feel respected thank you [Applause] Holly Hammond that was brilliant okay Holly Hammond Lefferts Street Saratoga Springs um I had a written statement that I decided to uh not read um I was just I'm very moved by the presence of all the teachers even though a lot of them have left already and you should you should go to bed and get your rest um I'm very moved by the work that this board does I do a lot of different things I'm a social worker and I'm also an activist in the community um you could call me an anti-racism activist and while I appreciate your comments at the beginning um
123about the work the district acknowledges it has to do um one of the things I do is I'm an organizer for MLK Saratoga and we just had our celebration weekend four days of events and one of them had to do with restorative justice practices within the South Glens Falls School District um we are very pleased that officer Barrett if I have the name right attended um and some people from this board and some teachers came and it was really lovely and the emphasis was on having um communication you know talking circles and that we learn at a very early age we teach our children but we also learn ourselves at an early age how to have difficult conversations and where we can acknowledge that we don't always agree we don't always understand but we work
124toward respecting one another and I really want to support that work MLK Saratoga is very good at organizing events and programs to support that work I would love to work with the school district I'm volunteering myself to be an advisor and help mediation matters has done this kind of work they're working with South Glens Falls High School everyone is burned out and to hear what teachers face is so upsetting and we need to support them and we need to make sure our kids are safe and we might disagree about what safety looks like I know everyone wants their children to be safe but let's not reduce people and dismiss them in categories I know often I misunderstood as being anti-police and I'm not anti-police even though I don't want guns in schools um thank you
125for your time and your service [Applause] Jim Scheer my name is Jim Shear my wife and I live in Glenville New York we have grandchildren in four different Capital District school districts and we're members of New York informed Saratoga yesterday I mailed each board member copies of letters from New York state school districts to Governor hochel expressing their concerns over any future mask or vax mandates in New York most of you have received a lot of those letters previously in December but we're getting more and more coming in December we asked you to follow the lead of bhbl district and be proactive in surveying your parental Community regarding any future mandates so far the sport has failed to act on that with 22 New York State districts in the New York State Catholic conference expressing
126concerns over future mandates to Governor hochel why have you failed to act New York state is number one in people leaving the state and that's one of the reasons vaccine mandates there are currently a bunch of nasty bills sitting downtown that have been introduced or reintroduced by downstate politicians those include this was in it reintroduced Monday a 2178 requires covid-19 vaccinations for all public and private K-12 students in New York state I have a copy that I'll leave with you it's pretty nasty stuff um s 1945 requires a mandatory influenza shot for daycare s 1402 requires instruction in public schools to align to a culturally responsive sustaining education framework whatever that is they'll tell you s 624 requires a coveted vaccination for all New York state college students s 762 provides for treatment of sexually
127transmitted diseases to minors without parental consent or knowledge and includes vaccinations if you read all 22 letters and I hope you all have the themes are all the same no one wants mandates they want choice they want parental choice and they also detail the devastating effects that losing a significant percentage of their student population to homeschooling would have on the district it affects everything including Athletics so we are asking you to be proactive which is acting into anticipation of future problems needs or changes let your elected representatives know what the impact of future vaccine or mass mandates would be on this District thank you [Applause] is there anybody else who would like to address the board my name is Krista Dart and I live on North Broadway in Saratoga Springs I have some prepare remarks
128but as I was sitting here for the entirety of the board meeting I'd like to name a concern that I have that when asked directly about initiatives that teachers are being asked to implement in their classrooms if District leadership can't name what the initiative is how are we asking our teachers to implement it that's a concern for me after tonight's opening comment I am reminded that the real change in this District only happens after the Press calls it out on April 13th at the board meeting the comment was made I can only reference the experiences we have had in Saratoga Springs those types of concerns about the mistreatment of certain types of student populations has never been the case as a biracial graduate of the Saratoga Springs City School District the daughter of an almost
12940 year old 40-year teacher who was one of two black teachers in the district for part of his teaching career and one of one for the remainder of his teaching career I find it disturbing that school leadership could make this kind of statement I'd also like to point out that the only other black adults that I ever encountered in my experience as a student at Saratoga in the Saratoga Springs School District was three months of a DARE officer another failed initiative who moved on and my grandfather when he was asked during Black History Month in Black History Month only to talk about his experiences as a Tuskegee Airman in World War II in 2018 The Gazette published a federal report based on 2013-2014 school data that black students in this District were 11 times more
130likely to be suspended than a white student that article was five years ago and I am happy to say that when I looked at the most recent data there has been an improvement but the data that I could find was from 2017. and in that year white students made 89.9 of the student population and received 84.4 of the in-school suspensions less than their makeup of the school population black students in that Academic Year made up 2.1 of the school population yet they received 6.6 percent of the in-school suspensions more than three times their population makeup of the district so while you may say that SRO involvement is not your experience and I believe that to be true the administrators that are part of this District are clearly discriminating against students of color and if that
131is the cultural environment created by the district that you all lead this is experience should tell you we still have work to do could you please wrap up that thought in fact most education is based not on our own experiences but the experiences of others I will leave you with this quote from Dr Martin Luther King who we've sanitized enough to feel comfortable teaching in our schools I have reached the most regrettable conclusion that the negro's greatest stumbling block and the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Council or the Ku Klux Klan but the moderate who is more devoted to order than to Justice [Applause] would anybody else like to address the board I'm afraid to move this I'm really sure hi I'm Karen Swift um I come here I live in Saratoga
132Springs in fact I was born in Saratoga Springs I am a graduate of Saratoga Springs High School um and before that I was at the junior high school and before that I was at Caroline Street and before that I was at school number four so it's been a while I'm coming here to speak about the programs the art and music teachers that were cut recently in the past years and talking about reinstating them I was an avid member of the music program in this District my colleagues might be surprised that I was a very shy person when I was in high school and in junior high school except for when I was in my music room that's where I was the most comfortable I actually performed and I was happy to perform in front of
133people but I was very shy otherwise if it wasn't for that music program I would have been lost and I it hurt my heart a few years ago when I heard a statement that we were cutting a pro cutting the music department and the comment was akin to well we were still meeting the state requirements and in a district like Saratoga Springs where we are a community of the Arts I never thought that we would be okay with meeting the the requirements as opposed to Excellence so I just implore you that you bring those programs back to their former glory to make Saratoga what it always was before thanks [Applause] Paul Kelly 27 Cobble Hill Drive I was going to speak about something else tonight but in light of uh everything that's been said I
134just wanted to talk about these initiatives and the teachers and everything that's being overwhelmed and it just seems to me that 80 initiatives is almost one every two days and I also am a student of Dorothy Nolan and a graduate of this high school and my daughter goes to Dorothy Nolan there's a teacher who will remain unnamed who was in her class and um I think sometimes as a parent I mean I've got a doctorate degree and she comes home and she's like reflex and clever and seesaw and this and that I give up I'm there goes the White Flag I'm done I can't keep up with it I can't imagine how these teachers keep up with 30 of these kids and then somebody like me who's trying not to hover into their classroom and
135bother them because if they get one out if they spend one hour with me per year that's a whole another week of time that that's taken out of their out of their schedule and I just I can't uh I can't think of a better way to maybe help them out and then I'm thinking well in Saratoga Springs they had a budget initiative and there was something that where there was another hundred thousand dollars where they let the um let the people go and vote on how to spend that extra hundred thousand dollars and listening to the students at Dorothy Nolan or the teachers here and talk about those lockers which I'm familiar with on the desks maybe it might be a good idea to not have so many people telling them what to do but
136to maybe give them a little bit of leeway to spend some of the budget themselves on how they best see fit and then they won't be overwhelmed and then maybe the students will do a little bit better and and so will the parents sometimes having too much is is just too much so hopefully maybe we can streamline that and I'd I like to make myself available to any any students or anybody here on the board to to help out I'm I'm here thanks so much [Applause] would anybody else like to address the board so I'll this is unprepared but um see if I can put a couple things together here it was great to see all the teachers out tonight um I was wondering what was happening but it was good to see them all
137here and I'm not an educator but I've been to college I've been in the corporate world and I've observed organizations and the larger an organization gets the more it tends to adopt things that sound good and look good but then they never get rid of anything so hearing I was just hearing the teachers talk about the additional burdens placed on them I'm not here as a teacher advocate so to speak just just a a guy who's been in a school district for 40 years have children and grandchildren grandchild now they're currently in the school district that it makes sense to me that while our schools in general are failing our children in many ways as measured by testing and compared to the world we're still injecting things other than Reading Writing stem things the core
138things that the children need to learn to not only do well in college or in another career but we're putting these other things in that are overwhelming the teachers and deluding the education of the basics now I'm not again I'm not an educator but it doesn't make sense to me and likewise a lot of these initiatives cost money to the taxpayers so I I you know I again I really feel that the teachers are being asked to do a lot that they don't have much say in probably and their efforts to actually teach our children what is very important to them is not being is not isn't is just not they're not able to do it and I don't know what the answer is but we need to flush some of this old this stuff
139out and keep it down to the basics thank you [Applause] anybody else like to address the board all right seeing nobody um Now we move into agenda planning do any board members have anything for agenda planning okay um next up we have board member comments what any board members like to make a comment tonight Dean hold on a sec yeah yeah hold on a sec I wasn't gonna say anything but I figured I would catch all of you that stuck around to say thank you right so the reason that we're here the reason that the nine of us volunteer is to support you who support our kids I had zero prepped this is completely off the cuff but I think I speak on behalf of my fellow board members that are here thanks for showing
140up thanks for providing us some insight on what you deal with on a daily basis moving forward don't hesitate to come back tell us what's going on our student reps do a great job when they meet with building leadership to provide us some insights and kind of the fun things that happen within your schools right the dances and uh the little get-togethers and you know Kate commented about the snow day and testing and all that other fun stuff for the kids come on back and tell us about what's happening what's working and what's not we don't want you to feel like your your thoughts your feelings the things that are happening within your classrooms are not going heard so thank you for adhering to my quick hang on a second I wish there were more
141of you here um to kind of hear us being appreciative of you being here we we comment about um the community members that come and speak every meeting as well right we it doesn't matter what they're coming here to say we appreciate the engagement of the community and therefore this evening we really appreciate the engagement of our teachers so thank you yeah I'd like to Echo that thank you so much for showing us solidarity and Unity thank you for teaching our students but thank you for teaching us as well um are there any other board members who would like to make any board member comments all right well then on behalf of the board thank you to our community oh I'm so sorry Connie thank you I do hope that tonight is the beginning of
142better communication between teachers and administrations such as the autonomy and designing your instructional space um it is also an opportunity to become more collaborative and and be friends and acknowledge the interdependence that you have with each other that's a very important relationship and I do wish um effective negotiations and mediation going forward so you have a contract soon um I do want to address the accusation that our Administration is discriminatory we do have a code of conduct teachers write students up according to this code of conduct I think statements like that ignore the hours that administrators take in working with families Social Services to try to get kids that are troubled or whatever issues they may be having the help that they need um things are done on a case-by-case basis teachers deal with things
143on a case-by-case basis so do administrators violence weapons drugs these are things that schools unfortunately have to deal with and um I just I felt compelled to to address that accusation and I do want to acknowledge the hard work that our administrators do to help support our teachers to help support our students thank you and The Other Board member comments I just want to say that I feel badly that there was an editorial in a major newspaper that was a fellow board members comments were taken completely out of context and unfortunately I think there was a lot of misunderstanding I know the public doesn't know us very well personally but I know this person personally and um she has the heart of gold and she does not deserve what's been happening to her any other
144board member comments all right um at this time we will move into executive session and anticipate adjourning directly after and will not be taking any action in public session Tim is that correct okay um so I make a motion to enter into executive session to discuss uh tax to tax tertiary cases can I get a second please Angie any discussion none all in favor