SSCSD BOE Meeting 4/12/2022

001have public comment periods so that you can speak and we can hear what your concerns are and take them into consideration when we are making our decisions ground rules for public comments include speaker and audience members conducting themselves in a respectful manner please join us as role models for our students on civil discourse and constructive dialogue and in return we commit to actively listen and consider what you have to say with an open mind we do not allow comments about specific individual employees students or trustees and we ask that you be succinct and try not to repeat previous speakers in order to allow more people the opportunity to address the board all right are we okay well they're now they're getting a sign up so if you can sign up that would be awesome all

002right who's who's on there first all right this time this speaking period will be for a total of 30 minutes three minutes each so jason zotty 49 tyler drive i'm going to ask you guys and i know you're not going to respond but i'm going to ask you it's embarrassing for me to ask these questions and i think them to be incredibly inappropriate however these were questions that were asked as students in this building so i'm just going to read them out and i don't know if everybody knows that students in this building were given these questions to answer number 57 during your life with how many people have you had sexual intercourse number 58 during the past three months with how many people did you have 60 the last time you had sexual intercourse

003did you or your partner use a condom number 61 the last time you had sexual intercourse with an opposite sex partner what method do you or your partner use to prevent pregnancy number 62 during your life with whom have you had sexual contact and i'll end it on number 63 you know which of the following best describes you heterosexual gay or lesbian bisexual etc when did this become appropriate to ask children when is that something that needs to be asked in this school why are you asking you are the administrators you're the head of the fish that's what rots first why is this being asked in our schools why doesn't everyone in this district know that questions like this are being asked of our children it's ridiculous completely inappropriate and you you are in control

004of it administrators and board members you're in control don't say that it's that's a teacher and you didn't know you're that's why you're here you're here to know this is ridiculous so if an adult asks this to an adult in a bar in a social setting you probably get punched you wonder why there's so much violence in this school why it's so tension written keep asking questions like this completely inappropriate i can't believe that this administration one allows for this and two condones it and one the third put your head in the sand and pretend that it's okay shame on every one of you up here that think that this is okay thank you next next is mr crockett more crockett uh wilton new york dorothy nolan is our elementary school just to paint a

005general picture that i have at least uh this is something i've sworn up before approximately 40 of our middle school students are not at grade level in math and reading it is almost impossible to find out exactly what our children are being taught on controversial subjects such as such as racism political brutality and gender i'll gender identity which to me is gender confusion but that's my point of view my foil request response is now overdue with no communication that was about agenda items a cert as jason already talked about this survey is ridiculous [Music] i know it's under the cdc but that doesn't matter and it's under the guise of a safety survey that's private information shouldn't be done parents opt to choose to opt out and they weren't allowed to opt out the children

006were told they had to take it and the instructors say it's voluntary so while it appears we are failing to serve our students well enough to keep them at grade level we as parents can't find out what you are teaching what are you hiding surveys that should be optional or not and to top it off there's been a trend of violence in our schools most notably last week's occurrences that videos allowed us to get a glimpse of it is this a typical day for our students we hear stories of kids vaping in the bathroom smoking in the bathroom some students don't even want to go to the bathrooms anymore and while all of this is going on we have huge resources on committees worried about diversity equity and inclusion and the committee on diversity equity

007and conclusion is not diverse so where are our priorities we are paying the school taxes to teach children reading writing mathematics and history not to be indoctrinated on social emotional learning and what they should think about police brutality that's our job as parents not the school district next is mary marklyn [Applause] hello good evening uh yeah i'm also wondering about this uh quote unquote lifestyle survey um i guess it was some kind of information for the cdc i spell it s e e d y c c d c anyway um since when did that become a thing that our children now in public schools let's not forget what public school means we are the public the parents are the public since when that did that become a thing that data harvesting our kids are there

008for data harvesting wow we've come a long a long way from our the original plan here you know like learning to read learning to write learning languages math so on and so forth um regarding the bathrooms yes my daughter says it's a vape hangout basically almost every time she goes in there there's vaping or she's pretty sure there's some drug sales going on too she knows some of the kids that are doing it ish is she going to tell no why because she's afraid she's afraid of getting beaten up she's afraid of being you know having a big fight and somebody pulling her hair and having the police come okay you know what's what's going on with that and how come nobody knew about this horrible fight that happened except for by watching the news

009okay last thing i wanted to say hopefully you're not considering implementing cse i mean oh boy if you do it's it's you know it's suicide it's public school suicide okay consider the fastest growing school in america do you know what the fastest growing school in america is homeschooling that's what parents are being felt feeling that they have no choice and they're being forced out of the public school to have to do all the teaching of their children at home because they don't trust what's going on in the public schools and i mean i don't know if you've heard this saying it's a big saying among people i know go woke go broke two million people okay and counting or homeschooling that's not going to be good for your budget when the kids are all home

010getting schooled thank you next step is carmela fries carmela frias 21 oak street tonight i come here as a concerned parent for the recent light shown on school violence my profession allows me one-on-one time with many of our area student population as a barber i get the opportunity to talk to many children about school boyfriends girlfriends and sports however one of the most disturbing topics to get brought up in the past year is student on student and even student on teacher violence i don't mean to sound like an old old-timer but in my day we had fights sure but not like this to have such a tight-knit community erupt seemed so out of place i did some research and i found that back in may 2021 homeland security warned of targeted violence in schools they

011even suggested that schools will need to increase support services to help students adjust back into the classroom when i heard this i wondered if our local schools felt that this would be a concern also i found articles that suggested a steady deterioration of discipline within the school and of repercussions for misbehavior for offenses or consequences i have heard from several students that this appears to be true in the school system as well as at home so it's not entirely your fault i think that we can all agree that we want schools to be a safe place for learning together in unison i believe that we can solve this problem believe it or not i was once a troubled youth i was in high school today if i was in high school today the principal would

012be very well acquainted with me i realized that suspending or expelling students is not the best answer and neither is a police record i remember the hardest and most eye-opening punishment was community service and i did a lot of it i suggest that instead of these kids being suspended and then going to their comfy homes to watch more tick tock and play video games they learn the value of hard work and hopefully find their place among our community the recent video of a fight from last week at the high school gave me pause to watch two young ladies brawl and continue to even do so while a school resource resource officer tried to separate them i watched in horror as the girl threw her knee into his face and tried to kick him what kind

013of example are we setting as a country when we say defund the police parents schools media and government officials need to foster a trust for authority also last thing i just kind of threw this on there it is a slap to the face to hear school board members downplay the situation on social media quote you never saw a fight happen in school end quote these students are scared they are at risk what if the unimaginable happens and one dies will you still be saying that all right that closes our public comment period thank you all right next we have reports um do we have any board committee reports tonight dean just real brief we haven't the property committee didn't meet but i always check with john tiener before the board meetings and just two quick

014updates because next week is school break starting this friday actually so beginning this friday the boiler room abatement will begin over at lake avenue and then next week they're going to get a jump start on the demo of the dumpster wall enclosure over at maple avenue middle school so those are the two updates uh other than what was provided at the last meeting for what's going to happen for the big project during school break week thank you any questions for property all right tony the evaluation committee met last thursday the seventh uh brief meeting to discuss the process and the timeline uh for the superintendent's evaluation and the board self-evaluation process um it's a little bit in the future for for most of us mike has his uh i sent mike his uh form to

015to for his consideration to to look at but the rest of us we won't get our form to fill out for another month so this is just a heads up that we're meeting we put the timeline together and we're getting the process started so more emails to come in the future all right thank you any questions about that process all right any other reports okay student reports okay so at division street they have completed their ela new york state tests in third and fifth grade um and the math tests will occur after break teachers are doing end of the year activity planning at dorothy nolan the playground is open for recess and students are very excited about that they will also be holding a k through 5 assembly virtually with jared kambell who is an

016anti-bullying leadership and respect singer and songwriter and their blt will be finalizing plans for the spring social emotional learning week at caroline street on friday they held a sweetheart dance for students and a sweetheart adult they will also be performing their 101 dalmatian musical in the spring they will be holding a steam week at caroline street for science technology engineering art and math and parents may attend via zoom and geyser road would like to shout out the best buddies club and miss kovarsky lewis sperry and mick ewens for advocacy for disabilities inclusion and leadership they have a large student body representation in that club and they recently completed a walk at crossgates mall and won an award for the largest number of participants thank you all right that brings us to administrative reports just a

017few updates and reminders this thursday is our last day of regular instruction to begin the spring recess so we'll be off no classes starting friday through next week so i'll be looking forward to welcoming our kids back for the last nine weeks of the school year starting on april 25th uh last wednesday night uh trustee ellis and i attended the boces annual meeting uh where they uh provided an overview of the boces budget uh for next school year as well as each of the candidates that were running for the boces board introduced himself uh so the tuesday that we return uh the board of education will be meeting at eight o'clock uh for uh our participation in in the annual boces uh budget vote and the board elections uh so that will be an in-person

018meeting uh over at the admission administrative center uh again that's usually a quick meeting um so but that's uh we'll get the agenda out to the public uh for the boces budget vote and board election at eight o'clock um as we do each year we partner with the league of women voters and we're going to be hosting a meet the candidates night on wednesday may 4th that'll be right here in the high school ta at seven o'clock uh so candidates have until wednesday april 27th at five o'clock to submit their petitions uh to be included on this year's ballot uh for the board elections here in saratoga springs and so that following week on wednesday may 4th the league woman voters will coordinate the meet the candidates night and that will be a live in-person

019event and we're also working to see if we can stream that as well so it can be taped and again made available to folks so we will be putting a call out for questions as we've done in the past uh the questions are submitted directly to the league and then they obviously facilitate the introductions of each of the candidates for our board of education and just a few other additional information items our administrative team over the last several weeks has been doing some research in what's called board docs and it's an online platform that right now about 370 of the 7 700 school districts in new york state utilize this platform it's an opportunity for us as we develop the board agendas that the public sees on the website and that shared the nights of

020the meeting but just to again improve our timing and efficiency within all the departments within the district that assemble the actual budget agenda but also to help improve the transparency making all of our public-facing documents uh available to the public as well as just our internal communications with the board and then making sure um our agenda can be fully ada accessible and compliant um we are very excited about rolling out the new district website uh and we're shooting for june 1st for the new website redesign and we are looking to start um utilizing the board docs platform on july 1st so it's about four to six weeks to transition from our existing uh kind of in-house system to uh working with board docs and they and they park they partner with the new york state

021school board's association so james page who's a representative from nisba uh joined us in our webinar last week um and so one of the advantages of this platform is our existing relationship with nisba for the online policy service that we've just been implementing here in the last year all of our existing policies uh still could be available to the public that would all be in one location all within board docs have the same feature that people can put type in a keyword and that would pull up the associated policy so there'll be some savings because we don't have to have nisba hosting on their site uh and again since it has been board docs or partners they've really encouraged us to take that route so um so again i'm just looking for some feedback from

022the board just overall consensus i've had several board members just asking about hey how do we improve our systems and again make more information available up front uh on the website on the new website for the public um so at our next meeting i'd like to have a contract ready to go so nothing you have to vote on tonight but i just if anybody had any questions hillary has been very helpful in facilitating and and tim and i uh participated in the webinar with board doc so if you need more information i can make i can make more information available to you but we're hoping at our next meeting that we'll have a contract that will allow us to be ready to implement board docs as of july 1 for the start of the new

023school year any questions on it good awesome and then finally we're finalizing our school calendar for the remainder of this year and like i said after this week we just have nine weeks to go so new york state schools are required to have a minimum of 180 days of instruction and there's also an hour requirement that we have to meet both at the high school the secondary level and elementary level and in looking at our calendar and coordinating the number of days that are available we only used one emergency day this year um so we're going to be able to meet our 180-day requirement in that last week of school leading up to graduation so the majority of the schools in the area will be closed on friday may 27th which is the friday of

024memorial day weekend our boces is closed that day uh so based on uh the conversation of our leadership team uh and communicating out with our district staff and i'm sure our kids will be very excited to get the news uh but there will be no school on uh friday may 27th again which would still allow us to meet the state requirement of days and fortunately the weather uh cooperated this year this year and we didn't obviously have to use uh the traditional amount of emergency days that we have so that information out we do want to get it out to families uh before the end of this week so families can can plan for that uh and then when we come back from break uh we'll have the schedule ready for what the last week

025of school looks like we work with obviously are all of our bargaining units and just coordinating the last few days june june 19th is a new state holiday so on monday the 20th um that's the state holiday so schools will be closed on monday so we're looking at the schedule between tuesday and friday obviously friday is graduation on friday morning so just coordinating what the last few days will look like both in our elementary schools and our high school kids finishing up their the regents exam so that information will be coming out right when we come back from break that's all i have all right so at this point i'd like to turn over to tim helker and joe greco again i want to thank tim and joe for the leadership they've provided throughout the

026budget development process and obviously the feedback that we've gotten from all of our bargaining units uh from all of our our principals and our leadership team uh and especially from the board of education because you put a tremendous time and effort obviously into budget development process so tonight we are right on schedule improving the budget at the state level on friday that we did have a few hours friday afternoon based on receiving our school lead runs to update our current budget status and some of the recommendations that we have previously made to the board and trying to align our budget goals and priorities with obviously you know balancing the budget for next school year so uh so tim and joe gonna present some final recommendations and numbers to the board and obviously on the agenda

027tonight is for the board to adopt our budget uh which then allows us the opportunity to get out and communicate the budget to the community uh prior to the may 17 vote so i'll turn it over to tim good evening can you hear me okay um so we have put together a uh a relatively brief presentation which is uh a high-level summary i think of what has been as you know a much lengthier combination of processes to both assess the financial situation and get feedback on what the budget goals should be and within those budget goals what the priorities should be and as has been common for us over the last number of years we approach march 1st or april 1st rather when the state budget is due with our priorities pretty well in place

028and just waiting for that final state aid piece to know what's going to happen there we go so this was the uh the summary of state aid that was proposed by the governor uh back in january and as we discussed back at that point uh the proposed increase appeared to show 883 thousand that's good and we had shown you and talked through a year to year reduction in our base year state aid of about 927 thousand um and so in total we really weren't expecting we were more or less expecting to remain flat uh in state aid in addition to that we weren't expecting because what the governor proposed was fairly generous as state aid proposals go from the from our governor in recent years the three percent minimum in foundation aid was more than

029i think anybody really anticipated so all that's to say that we we thought that state aid was going to stay fairly flat and for the most part that has remained true when we got the the final state aid runs from the legislative budget uh if you could pull it down so we can see the rest of the slide to be fine and so from what we had been anticipating and and i'll talk when i get to the fun the appropriate fund balance i'll also uh go back to you may recall of that prior year adjustment we had estimated approximately 252 000 that we thought was sort of temporary or a transient reduction in aid but sticking with the comparison of the uh the governor's proposal to the final legislative proposal like you said we we

030only ended up with about another 29 000 increase overall in aid and that's that kept foundation aid flat as we had expected and that 29 000 is just a combination of small changes throughout the other categorical aids the other thing that you might notice there on the bottom is that it provides for almost a 200 000 increase to upk and so we have met as recently as this morning to to try to discuss what options might be to expand availability of upk for students in our community including some of our more special needs and try to bring some of those programs into the district so over the course of the coming months we will begin to strategize on how we might better utilize that upk allocation some other highlights of the state budget were that

031we did get agreement to suspend the 35 000 limit on earnings for retirees in the in the pension system we did not which we had sort of anticipated because all signs from advocacy had indicated that we might have some success but we did not have success in increasing the salary the aidable salary limits for boces even just specific to cte which was one of the proposals we also did not get the limit on small projects increase from 100 000 to 250 000 so those were some of the what we thought were going to be the low hanging fruit that we thought we would get and then there was obviously very various other proposals that um were being debated but those are some of the highlights um we wanted to address this question because this question

032was asked and we thought it was pertinent that if if you followed what's going on in some of the other districts even just in the capital region you might notice some perceived disparities in foundation aid increases between districts even districts that have similar economic makeup or are similar size or however we compare but the reason for that is because saratoga was one of several districts that were already funded with respect to the foundation aid formula and so now that there's been a commitment to fully fund the foundation aid formula and have that phased in over a few years what we're seeing is that some districts uh i believe shen and south colonie are a couple that come to my my mind that saw relatively large increases in their foundation aid but that's because technically by

033formula they've been underfunded for a lot of years and so um just wanted to address that you know we there was the whole harmless and there was the minimum three percent due so we really have a lot to be thankful for in terms of that because had they just run the formula we would have actually been one of the districts that lost state aid in that scenario so um you know i think we're we're making out as well as we can with respect to foundation aid but uh just in case that that question was on anyone's mind we wanted to address that so with respect to the tax levy nothing has changed over the course of our last several presentations here but our statutory tax levy limit is a 2.92 increase and within the levy

034limit we're recommending an increase of 2.9 percent and you can see the 2.6 million approximately that yields in terms of tax levy revenue but and you can also see what's not being levied but i think just important of note here is that we are staying within the limit and so we do not need a super majority vote to approve that so a little bit of history here on our tax levy limit uh and what our tax levy increases has have been and uh we are well within the range of what our average increases have been but also i think this is important particularly as we continue our capital planning discussions because you can start to see the the results of planning ahead for all of our capital improvements and and trying to account for what

035the aid impacts whether that's building aid or transportation aid will be on our local share because as you recall that is one of the major drivers of our tax levy limit calculation and so really those those early years of capital planning have started to yield results in terms of stability in the tax levy limit and with respect to our tax levy increases so just to give a sense here and i want to stress again that these are estimated uh based on the current assessed values and the current equalization rates and so things can change from one municipality to the other based on those changes and those won't be finalized until august but this gives you at least an idea of what our proposed tax levy increase means for taxpayers in the community and you see

036on a hundred thousand dollars a hundred thousand dollar assessed value that would be a little under 45 a year um and then when we break that out uh per month on either 100 000 or more commonly uh we in the albany business review and a lot of others we compare ourselves on the value of a three hundred thousand dollar assessed house and you can and you can see there there'd be about a little over eleven dollars uh per month on a three hundred thousand dollar home assessed value so this data is from the albany business review and like i said this is on a 300 000 home i will point out to you that this is last year's data we're still trying to get some corrected data from the albany business review for current year

037data but we didn't want to leave it out because i think it appropriately illustrates that we are well below uh as you can see by about three quarters um are the next lowest in our uh some of our peer districts that we compare against and so um we don't take that for granted but it is certainly one of the strengths both of of our tax base and of the community and then lastly i talked about the appropriate fund balance in reserves and so you can kind of get a little history here um i mentioned the uh 252 000 that we estimated in state aid has been added into here so overall we anticipated a decrease here but that 252 thousand dollars in estimated state aid uh shows up here and so it looks like there's

038a small increase as that aid starts to materialize um and to the extent that it starts to materialize that will uh organically bring down that appropriate fund balance and then as a result of and joe's going to talk in a little bit uh about the expenditures and some of the budget goal items that we were able to accomplish um but the last thing and this was this aligns with the last discussion we had was that once we added everything up we accomplished as many of the budget goal items as we could and there was about a 24 000 remainder at the end of all that and so we were able to reduce further that reliance on appropriate fund balance by about 24 000 so this is the revenue side of the budget in total and

039you can kind of run down the list and see everything i just touched on which is our total state aid our total federal sources we didn't spend a lot of time on it but that reduction to the federal sources was you may recall last year that we had a little bit of cares act money that we appropriated into this current year budget and so that'll be gone but you see the the fund balance and reserve designations there miscellaneous revenues there weren't a lot of changes to the there is maybe some hope for next year that that will change with rising interest rates um and then you see the property tax levy items there and what the total is and so budget to budget you see um there were just under two percent which is pretty

040well aligned with our our average as well so i will turn it over to joe to talk about the expenditure side of the budget thanks tim um so very similar look on the expenditure side so again you know some of the things that we've talked about before when you look at the pie chart there about 75 percent of our expenditure budget is on instruction and salary and benefits that's your general breakdown it matches up as a balanced budget from what tim had just talked about at 137 million so 1.87 budget to budget change so that's the exact same thing that you saw on the last slide that tim was just talking about with revenue so we did what we set out to do was to present you tonight with a balanced budget so when we

041talked back in february so kind of go back to this so kind of hit this as a touch point we had a deficit of six hundred and ten thousand so when we presented you with that deficit we said we needed to work on trying to make reductions to the expense expenditure side but then we were also optimistic that if more money came in from the state and hopefully there will be more revenue so we try to balance this out so where we ended april 8 is when we actually got those final numbers in we got the additional 29 000 that was coming in state aid but we also made significant reductions we made reductions throughout the last couple of months from some of our special ed placements we had talked about technology reductions curriculum pd

042um some retirements breakage there was also reductions to individual building budgets um so we we kind of spread those cuts throughout in places that we felt we were able to do that so the last thing we had said is if we got ourselves in a position of a surplus and this is essentially where we are that budget surplus of 265 000 so i said well if we get ourselves to a surplus then we're going to look back and say well of those budget goals what are some things that we can start bringing back in so i add those budget goals in to give us a balanced budget so tell you what those budget goals are if we start top there like i said we had a 265 000 surplus so that's the additional state aid

043coupled with the reductions we were able to make um so the first thing that was on that list were the tas those are the six teaching assistants for the integrated co-teach that was the pro the special ed program that was going to continue from k-1 to grades 2-3 at the elementary level so when we priced that out to bring in six tas and we're actually changing some of our regular aids to a ta position so when we priced the entire thing out it was looking to be around 158 000 to do that for full implementation so if we subtract that 158 000 from the uh 265 surplus uh it's left us with another 107 000 uh so then we go to the next thing on the list so our second goal was that teacher on

044special assignment the tosa for the cse meetings to help in support especially at the elementary level so the cost of that was around 82 000. um so we were able to do that so when tim said we were left with around 24 450 that last piece is what we're now using to reduce our reliance on fund balance so again it's the pathway that we had talked about over the last couple of months but now we were able to finalize this um so when you look at our ultimate goals here for our budget accomplishments like we had talked about we were able to get those six ta positions for the integrated co-teach the teacher on special assignment for the cse support and then one of the things that nick mcpartlin had talked to you about a

045few weeks ago was bringing us in for girls ice hockey so that was an additional piece that was not part of our original rollover budget so that's goes in our column here as budget accomplishments so in addition to the budget that you'll see on the ballot we have a few other items one being the bus bond proposition and this is aligned with our replacement plan pretty similar to past years where we've looked to replace because we have a fleet of about 100 buses and they have an anticipated useful life of about 10 years and so we look to replace about 10 of that fleet every year and so this plan is consistent with that and you can see net of the transportation aid the cost of those the net cost of those buses and what

046that looks like spread out over five years so not really uh much in the way of a budgetary shift here but just a continuation of our replacement plan and then another proposition that you'll see on the ballot is for purchase of loaders for snow removal we started talking about this a few meetings ago the estimated savings over the life of owning these machines is there's a cost savings estimated over a 25 year period of six about 670 thousand dollars when compared to leasing those machines which is what we've been doing for a number of years now so those two propositions will be on the ballot additionally we will see the board election we have three three-year terms that will be voted on these these are volunteer unpaid positions beginning july 1st 2022 and so for

047more information you can visit our website the qr codes there but everything you need is there and if there's anything that you can't find i or my secretary brenda roberts can certainly help you in anything you need so we've kind of been chipping away at our budget calendar here but uh now we're at the point uh tonight where um hopefully we'll be able to adopt a budget and then uh begin uh through and and be on break finalizing the budget newsletter and and the handouts that are required for that um we will also begin uh we've we've already developed a schedule but we'll begin a rotation of presentations where we'll go out to various buildings departments community groups we'll present the budget get the word out there answer questions mike mentioned the meet the candidates

048night on may 4th we will have the budget hearing on may 10th which will be largely a reiteration of tonight's presentation with some additional legal requirements that we are that we have to present on at the budget hearing and then that's a week ahead of the budget vote on may 17th so that's all we have i'm happy to take any questions of the board if you have any um i have a question and a comment my question is in terms of the additional funds for upk is there oops sorry is there any consideration being made to or are we allowed to have it be a full day program or does it have to stay that like half day program that it currently is i don't know yet because that literally just came out this week

049um but we had not looked at expanding beyond the half day program when we got the initial increase to the allocation i don't know off top my head but now we've started to have the conversations with people services about um sort of out of the box ideas for our upk program and and bringing those in so that that will definitely be a consideration but but the technical answer can we within the limitations of the state budget i don't have an answer to yet but i will get it okay that was just me being curious so um an impression that and then i just wanted to really um i guess commend your team and commit the whole district on getting here i am as everybody knows extremely excited about expanding the co-teach program because i do

050think that it is so good for our students and so good for our educators and i'm really really excited that we are able to fund it um i'm just thrilled so thank you thank you um thank you for the presentation and and the good work you all have been doing i think one of the things we learned during covet is that um so many of the programs in our schools are so valuable and so important for so many students um and i know you all have been working for a few years to sort of get as much stability into our budget and much continuity as possible you you have shared several times the um the numbers that we have the lowest basically the lowest tax levy increase rate it compared to our other you know

051peers i wonder is that is that a goal or an ideal do we i mean we can only push the taxes up so high and we always need to be responsible with our tax rates relative to the community but i wonder if how you all think about that whether whether the average among peer schools is is another way to think about it or is it even possible given all the complex things in the calculation of the tax limit does that make sense it does so the question about the goal of being the lowest it's not one that we set out for but it's it's something that we're proud of because we're able to fund our programs at the level we are um and uh maximize our increases to the tax levy within the tax living

052limit without arguably overburdening our tax base and so we are fortunate in that regard but to say that that is one of our primary targets i think might be a little off base and i don't i wouldn't say completely um it's a kin i think to and what may be more relevant to your point is the per pupil expenditures which is um something that we're mindful of but not necessarily something that we would pride ourselves on being the low lowest in and so it's a it's a balance between being able to being fiscally responsible and being able to fund our programs but also being sensitive to our taxpayers and our communities so i i think the short answer is no it's that's not one of our primary targets but it is i think we're fortunate

053in that regard and it's something that we're frank i'm proud of so thank you yeah just two quick questions one uh piggybacks on natalya's the um the universal pre-k extra funds are those sustaining funds that year over year it is okay and so i'll give you a little history on the upk we had for for the longest time for a decade or more we had an allocation of about 346 thousand dollars and we we never fully utilized it but we ran program the various programs that we have and we for the most part maximize that allocation last year when they doubled that allocation the stipulation was you had to maximize your initial allocation before you could use the new allocation which um we have not been able to do we did at that time meet

054with the ymca and we we had these discussions about what can we do and how can but we haven't gotten there yet and so now here we are still trying to figure out how to maximize that allocation and now they put more on top of them and so maybe a little political posturing there knowing that districts are going to struggle to spend all this money but i think it's also worth noting that that is a federal source it's not really within our budget it just shows up as sort of an attachment to our state aids runs and so that lives in the federal grants fund it doesn't it doesn't tie directly into our budget so thanks and and one last thing i think you may have addressed this in one of the the emails but

055i i can't remember exactly the um unrestricted uh fund balance as a percent of the budget where are we at there was it five something i have it on the property tax report card i want to say 6.1 was our target i think is that still so estimated for the end of this year would be 6.01 and estimated for 22.23 uh would be 5.79 that's what i saw okay great i think that's good thank you hey tim just a quick question i know i've seen this slide before it just wasn't in the final presentation um based on you know the the 300 000 estimate for for homes in the tax base were at the bottom of the list that you provided where do we fall on the on the cost per pupil i know i've

056seen that slide before and i don't think we're quite at the bottom but we're pretty close right yeah just below the average just below the average okay we have been we've hovered in that that quarter below half if that helps any other questions about the budget erica oh thank you guys i'm gonna try to figure out a way to do this so i didn't see anything on here and i don't know where we would put the the coveted relief money that's left over and whatever that amount is is that already allocated towards next year and if so is any of that money going to be available to deal with the crisis that we're having in our school with uh the issues of vaping fighting um issues of behaviorish behavioral problems um ways that we can

057address these things because we still have this crisis that's going on even though we're packing classes and um we're trying to get back to normal we're seeing the repercussions of of that so i was just wondering if we have any outline of where that money is and if it could be allocated towards that we do um the i think it was our last presentation the last one in march that we provided the sort of a status update of where we are and how much is left i will tell you going back to the survey that we put out to our stakeholders when we initially found out about these allocations is that social emotional supports were definitely at the top of that list and and accordingly we do have resources allocated within both grants to address

058social emotional needs um we've we've worked through some of those some of those we're still working on i know we're kind of in transition with one of our support providers and so you know that's something that's developing that's going to provide some additional services for us so there are a lot of things in the works but those grants go out uh another in in some cases up to two years maybe three if they extend them and so we're continuing to look at those also as you might remember from that presentation we're also trying to be mindful of the legacy costs associated with the things we're funding with the grants we want to make sure that structurally it's going to be sustainable beyond the grants too so thank you um i just have a question and

059a comment um the referendum with the loaders um we're leasing two right now correct and are they for the full year or do we just lease in like half year like winter we only lease them for as long as we need them so some years that's three months some years that's seven months depending on the year we have okay so at least we'll get a lot more use out of them than plus the savings um also just comment about the uh general fund balance uh when i first started here i think it was closer to like 12 to 14 so you know it does take time to bring that down and uh i think you guys done a great job in bringing that down as a result of comptroller's audit but also more practical reasons

060too we that was a gradual uh step down to that we want to be careful because we talk about stability all the time and that's certainly one of the areas we want to avoid any volatility in thanks any other questions what oh connie do you have a question oh connie we can't do that i'm thank you okay great thank you tim and joe yeah all right thank you so much all right um john do we have that ends our reports yep okay do we have any modifications to our agenda yes we do we have two small modifications and one big one the the first two small ones are both on page seven under [Music] item seven civil service transfer appointments items b and c this is for thomas kemlett and heath tubas the dates listed

061in each item there are currently april 4th and both of them should be april 5th and then we have a requirement on page 10 you'll see item 12 we have to we are required to pull out this resolution and make it a roll call vote this is the cooperative bidding of custodial products resolution found on page 10 item number 12. so i think i need to move i move that we pull that item out for a roll call vote can i get a second natalia is there any discussion about this item just for a point of clarification that's we do that annually right yeah thank you right can we get a roll call president of mecca yes vice president bergman yes trustee borman yes trustee ellis yes trustee elethor yes trustee culligan yes trustee correctly

062yes yes and trustee okay that's yes great thank you thank you did you hear me okay i said yes yep we got it thanks okay with those changes i therefore move that we approve the consent agenda can i get a second tony is there any discussion erica if i had a question about one of the policies at this point would that be a good time to ask the question for clarification yes okay thank you um for policy 9620 child abuse in an educational setting refers to um i don't have the language in front of me but um is it inappropriate material or indecent material i'm trying to find the exact wording i wanted to know if there was a um example of of what we would consider inappropriate or indecent it doesn't really give any

063more specifics i think if i'm remembering that section right i think they refer to a section of penal code i think it says as defined in um some state code okay bear with me i'll just point out that this is our first read so we can all uh look look this up and study it if we'd like to and discuss it more when we come back for our second read and vote on it no problem i just wanted to make sure i addressed it yeah absolutely would it be helpful if at the next board meeting i bring a summary to read it during like board reports sure and if and if it is part of the penal code maybe we i can do that okay cool thank you thanks any other discussion all right all

064in favor all right thank you that's unanimous all right there are just two resonations for the purposes of a retirement that i want to recognize under civil service the board just accepted the resignation for retirement purposes with sincere appreciation and regret for susan phillips for the position of clerk at the high school uh sue has served her the high school for over 31 years so congratulations on her retirement as well as the the retirement of geraldine sherman for the position of routing clerk effective june 30th for the transportation partners so just congratulations to both sue and geraldine and everything that they've done serving the district throughout their careers greg congratulations on their retirement all right this m begins our second public comment period is there anyone wishing to address the board yep so again please

065remember this is not a dialogue with the board you may not mention any um employees trustees or others by name and you will have three minutes to speak and please start with your name and address okay hello peggy clancy owen clancy um my son owen is in the universal pre-k program here in saratoga um hearing the budget tonight and how there's potentially extra money for the universal pre-k program i think today now more than ever perhaps the salary of the pre-k teachers and assistants in the room should be taken into consideration along with the fact that i don't believe they're in the teachers union i don't believe they're paid as a as a teacher in the district and i was hoping that someone could look into this for those teachers that deserve the proper pay

066and that's all i have to say thank you thank you is there anyone else who would like to address the board oh go ahead my name is isabel pavino i'm a 12th grader here so i just wanted to discuss some of the talk about the humanities classes versus the typical like core classes at saratoga and some people said they weren't as important so i believe that education is important and that it always has been that's why we're here it's designed to influence our students into becoming fully functional members of society ready to step out into the world and create a positive impact everywhere they go and it isn't just about the memorization of a math equation or the annotation of a text although these things are important it's about fostering our students overall learning so

067that they may draw conclusions from their own research and surroundings finding answers to the issue that the world poses around them and forming opinions of their own so the staff in this building they work really hard to ensure that students are not indoctrinated as it's been said they're just merely giving them the critical thinking tools to learn about the world surrounding them objectively in doing this sometimes tougher topics like personal identity and race must be breached and we can't claim to care about students if we don't inform them about things that might resonate with their own personal identity or impact them as they grow older some students aren't lucky enough to learn this at home and so it's up to the teachers to balance the stereotypical school topics with issues that any well-rounded person has

068to understand the teachers in the school care really really deeply about these students i see it every day and all they want is to help students find themselves and be as successful as possible both in high school and in the real world so this is why they teach these topics and i just wanted to stand up here and say that i think it's really important thank you all right is there anybody else go ahead michelle king middle grove new york i'm actually here to address um a email and a video in parent talk parent chat kid talk kid chat and all kinds of stuff that i've been hearing not just for the past couple days but since the beginning of the year actually violence is on the rise period it's not just saratoga children are

069seeing what's happening in society children are seeing people not being held accountable because of sexual orientation or gender identification or race or uh religious belief and and we're trying to say this all based on oh equity and everything has to be equal well what about accountability we've lost account ability in society so these children are seeing this what happened may have been more violent than has happened in the past but i can tell you my kids come home once a week and tell me there's a fight there has been food thrown at assistant principles officer barrett has been attacked more than once there has been fights that have started outside in the morning and been brought into the school there have been children who have walked into classrooms to grab students out of desks there

070has been defecation on the floor multiple times i have multiple pictures from my son there have been other things that are i can't even discuss um it is bad having said that let's just be honest about it don't hide it don't say it's not happening let's address it let's be honest yes it's happening is it a joke hahaha silly silly we know how high school kids can be sometimes okay defecating on the floor is not funny we address it we don't let it happen again countable sometimes right in the hallway while it was happening not later on not trying to sweep it under the carpet to avoid which child or children were involved i do believe that diversity inclusion and equity critical race theory and indoctrination that is happening at all levels is part of

071this i think we need to be honest we we need to take a look at what's happening and we need to address it i will say i'm very proud of my children i again product of the 80s expel get them out of the school first thing my child said to me my 16 year old son said to me mom who loves us to be tolerant we don't know if some of these children are sorry that's the time there and pull them out thank you are there any other people wishing to address the board good evening lisa adams um so to address the high school situation because i have students in the high school as well i'm appalled that this has gotten to this point what has the administration done at all i'm so i'm furious

072i can't even tell you that you have done nothing to address this i want to i want a full report from the sro and from the head monitor and i want to hear exactly what happened and i want to hear what the hell is this district doing to address this this is appalling the kids aren't even using the bathrooms my son tells me this stuff happens every day this is inexcusable you can't you can't teach these kids reading and writing you can't teach them anything they come home and laugh they're learning nothing and then they can't even go to school and be safe are you kidding me it's atrocious it's appalling and people should be stepping down for this enough said i want to hear reports and specifics as to what the heck you're doing

073to take care of this and make sure our kids are safe we were so worried about the stupid covet thing but yet you can't let these we get drug dealers and people ripping out toilets off the in the bathrooms you can't seem to address that but oh my god if we don't wear a mask the whole world's going to end what the heck's the matter with you people get this fixed now we want to hear reports and the parents are pissed you better take care of it thank you thank you next hi i'm satchel chakra i'm a senior at this school and i would like to address kind of some of the issues that i've been finding about the kind of the topics that are being taught in schools are in this school i have

074noticed and i appreciate greatly the increase in humanities classes that do not just focus on reading and writing i think it is extremely important obviously to teach reading and writing especially um for younger kids when you're in you know ninth eighth tenth grade those kinds of years it's extremely important to build that foundation however what i think is extremely important and it does not necessarily be brought up as much as i like as i think it should be is topics that in topics and classes that focus on analytical thought and the ability to piece together what is happening in the world around you we have added a public speaking class we've added america through a multicultural lens which i appreciate however it is extremely difficult for a lot of students especially some of the top

075students to fit these things into their schedules with overbearing course loads if these kinds of topics are opened up to younger generations for an elective course or something of this or it may be able to kind of teach kids not only what to think not what to think about the world around them but how to think about the world around them being able to address things on their own address them individually is extremely important i think that's also something that will potentially lead to as so many people as of have addressed more tame learning environments because people will be able to have discussions with each other and not just sit back and kind of think oh what is this school teaching me these these topics core topics are obviously extremely important i i love some

076of the topics i've been taking that are the chemistry classes and math classes i think those are important but i also think it's extremely important for people to learn how to think about the world around them and that will lead ideally to a better learning environment for everyone i think that will let people kind of think to themselves oh this is how i need to study this is how i need to learn and those people who go home and think i'm not learning anything in school may finally be able to tell themselves i feel like i'm getting it i feel like i'm improving as a person thank you all right are you wishing to address the board as well okay i have a child in one of these classes give us your name my name

077is katie sheffield nice to meet you i'm sure you've heard all about me i have a child in one of these classes where the social emotional learning is going on my child's in an honors english class where she spends a great deal of her time taking nature walks and meditating but she's not really learning a whole lot so i would like you to address that is that funny look like you chuckled who me no no okay misunderstanding i've also had a child that's witnessed the fights in the lunchroom and saw a principal getting pushed to the ground i would like you to address that i would like you to address the survey that was given out despite me signing a consent saying that my child was not to take it and then you tell me

078that it's my child who chose to take the survey i'm sorry my child is a minor you are the adults get it together next [Applause] hello erin leary saratoga springs as a frequent attendee of board of education meetings i'm here to echo the sentiments of someone whose comments i don't usually agree with a couple of meetings ago a member of the public requested that the district website include information about what the board of education does and what the trustee's responsibilities are i believe that such a public description and resource would be incredibly valuable to parents and members of the public at large to better understand exactly what the board is responsible for is not responsible for and should not be responsible for and help to foster better communication by encouraging people to follow channels related

079to the questions and or concerns they have in the last six months i can think of a few different issues that have come up repeatedly at meetings which do not pertain to the board itself the repeated discontent around masks this year when that decision was made at the state level not saratoga springs city school district board of education the discussion online and here tonight about fights and behavior at the high school which is between individual students parents and building leadership readings chosen for classes which should be directed towards teachers department chairs or building leadership before going on social media or to public comment here as i understand it the board of education is intended for governance not operations and i say that given my own experience as a trustee for a non-profit board the actual

080committees and contributions boe trustees make are not as problem solvers for individuals but as boosters and promoters of the district committed to strengthening it and as providing professional expertise in mission budget oversight property and policy in particular as a parent i have a strong desire to see the school board return focus to oversight of the district mission budget policies and superintendent rather than to the controversy du jour and to see board leadership rooted in skill sets and contributions that's certainly how board development works in the nonprofit sector i believe this starts with community awareness of what the roles and responsibilities actually are and to have this clearly delineated in a publicly accessible place it's fundamental to the successful operation by the board the district and for an informed electorate thank you thank you [Applause] okay

081quick it's uh related to the budget on the on the loaders uh i you know you flash it up there on the money line of save 650 000 over over the 25 years for the two loaders but there was the uh the asterisk on there of uh doesn't include rnm i think that would be incredibly irresponsible to put that out there for uh information to the general public to not have an assessment of what r m is on those two heavy heavy pieces of equipment and in particular i i then heard that we only rent those two loaders for three months a year so it seems like we'd be spending far more money as a budget and i may be misunderstanding it was just a quick flash but i think it's incredibly irresponsible to not

082have r m in there and the second piece is this isn't a isn't a slush fund right i'm glad that we worked to balance the budget but if we had a surplus that doesn't mean that we can just go spend it we fund it we all fund it be responsible with it it's not a slush fund to where you can just go and say we'll get to the 2.92 we're good to go because we'll just raise taxes taxpayers here we're spending 20 thousand dollars a student that's a lot of money it's coming from the public be responsible with our money thank you all right that closes our public comment period do we have any agenda planning items did you raise your hand john um there's been a lot of talk about uh vaping and this

083is this is something we talked about a few years ago and it seemed like we had um maybe maybe a short break of some sort during covid but obviously this this problem has reared its ugly head again i i'm very reluctant to ask the the staff and administrators to take on some big project right now because i think everybody has been pedaling so hard for so long but i would like to propose that we um request a presentation sometime in the next year when it makes sense um from the administration on where things stand with with vaping in our district and and what the best practices are my understanding that all the all the pay all the returns are really in prevention and addiction treatment and um i think there's some good programs out there

084and it might be worth us looking into that and i'm hoping that my fellow trustees will support me in this request and that we not put any particular time constraint on the administration because they got so much to do but sometime in the next year are there other thoughts on that request amanda i just want to say i fully support um this and uh i know you're under a lot this administration is under a lot of pressure especially with the budget but i would like to see it sooner than a year um leave that for board discussion but i would like to see it sooner are there other comments erica i think it's a great idea i'd like to also explore that and i think i think it's it's definitely time to look into that

085i guess i would want to make sure that we narrow down the focus so that we know exactly what we're asking and because we're asking it of our administration and or the high school in particular and that maybe we have the timeline be when the high school presents next year which is in the earlier part of the year um so that it flows correctly with the uh can i direct response yep um i don't agree that vaping is only a high school issue um in fact in what i've learned in reading a lot about vaping attending a lot of presentations about vaping the way the best way to prevent it is actually to start in kindergarten if not sooner and so i think that whatever constraints that we put on this we want to make

086sure that we're focusing on that prevention side and i i mean most of what i attended was before kovid but i attended a program or a presentation from a bunch of high school students at shen who talked about how teaching kindergartners to not put things in their mouth that aren't food or drink is like one of the best like it's like one of the most proven ways to stop kids from vaping later on so i just want to make sure that we're focusing on that end of things too long before we get to high school um connie you had your hand up yes i just wanted to i guess echo that it's not just a high school thing it is absolutely occurring at the middle school from what i understand um so i feel like

087i do feel like it has to be like a district thing okay fair enough john right i agree with con when connie natasha said i wonder if um ask an administration to bring us a presentation on what they understand the problem to be and what best practices might be for addressing it within the calendar year of 2022 which is a lot sooner than a year yep yeah i think working with our health education teachers administrators again as well as community health specialists um again vaping is a community issue as well as a school issue and so educating students education our families parents what to look for oftentimes when we're talking to parents they don't know what a vape pen looks like and so we can have our high school middle school team work on a

088presentation for early in the fall when traditionally they're presenting to the board connie sorry one more thing to add i guess this goes with john's like request if we could also ask what budget needs there would be if any like what would administration need as far as support goes with funding um i know that there are vape detectors i'm not sure how well they work i think that would be interesting to hear from them how effective are they but as far as supervision goes of the bathrooms like do do they need more monitors like those are things that i think we need to hear you know what is needed so that we can approve a budget that funds that sort of thing um i just wanted to point that out thank you amanda i mean

089i'll be honest i think most of us are not uh naive enough to know that this goes beyond vaping that there's a drug issue i'm i mean i'm not saying it's worse than any other school i will say i feel sort of embarrassed at how ignorant i am to it and i think that as a board we need to understand it better if we're overseeing a budget and there are like you were saying there are implications in terms of resources to better understand it and more importantly solve it i think it really needs to expand beyond vaping to just overall drug use drug abuse drug dealing others thanks mike do we have other agenda planning items amanda um it sort of goes with what john was suggesting um i would actually like to see a

090more comprehensive report on the violence that we're all talking about here tonight some of which i know some of which i've known for a long time some of which i'm aware i don't even know specifically what disciplinary actions have been taken at the high school in the middle school as it relates to physical assaults not only from students to students but from students to teachers and from students to staff and our sro bullying and like i said previously drugs and what that action what action plan is in place to mitigate these issues and how it is reflected in the budget and then a follow-up discussion so i would like to add i'm proposing to add to the agenda a report that includes that information and then a board discussion thoughts on that erica well i

091think if if we're going to be discussing the vaping issue and and trying to tackle that i think there is a larger issue at play as well and i could i think it would only help not only our students but the faculty who are having issues that this this should be an opportunity if we're going to ask for this report to include everything so we don't have to keep asking for information and make it all encompassing those are my thoughts i think we need to be very careful about veering as a board over into the we don't oversee the district we do not get reports on discipline we don't get reports on what happens in buildings that is not our our purview at all whatsoever that is our administration our administrators in the building's job

092that is our superintendent's job to oversee and so um so we're veering into going into operations and asking for reports of on operations which i'm i'm not sure is is really a a decent ask so i'm i'm curious to hear what other people think did dean i uh i appreciate both uh comments from john and amanda um on their requests i think that they were both two independent requests that potentially have some of the same impacts i really really liked connie's idea of seeing where we can put dollars or where the need of dollars would be to help support these two potential agenda planning items the vaping and drug use and the violence component listen we had someone in the audience say that we should be responsible to oversee the taxpayers dollars and i think

093that this is one of our ways of showing responsibility if we can see the documented items if we could grab pie in the sky information to say in a perfect world to eliminate vaping and drug use and violence within the schools it would cost x that's important information for us to see to opine over to show to the community right if violence if if we were to completely eliminate violence listen i'm not naive to the fact that's not going to happen but if we were able to completely do it what does it look like from an sro grounds monitor perspective additional monitors within the hallways of the schools that's probably a huge number i get it but it is a responsibility of us from a budgetary perspective to kind of have some sort of sense

094of that i really really liked connie's uh comment of of tying that in with with these presentations i really like that i'll tell you um i sort of lost my train of thought so come back to me i guess i feel like you know we can we could topic we want to take up i take your point angie that we don't want to get into operational things but if if there's some sort of pattern behavior that's a problem then the board ought to talk about it but my concern about um the last couple suggestions is they're so broad i mean there are so many different kinds of issues we we already get presentations on discipline on um incidents on socio-emotional needs on the funding related to those positions and so i'd like some more sp

095i think my point about vaping is fairly narrow and focused and i'm content to keep it that way for now i'm not saying there aren't other issues they're very serious i think some of that stuff we're already hearing about i think so if anybody has another agenda i would ask them to define it specifically so that we're not sending the administration out looking for every kind of information and we've got so so much work to do and they can't they can't go track down you know everything that we think of in vague terms so let's be specific in what we ask them to do i'll tell you um i think also that when we're thinking about solving problems within the schools it comes back to what mike said like these are community issues so violence

096doesn't exist solely within our schools it's existing within our community vaping exists within our community you know um vapes aren't manufactured within our schools so they're being purchased somewhere else the stuff that kids are smoking and vapes is purchased somewhere else these are things that i think that we need to be focused on what's happening within our schools and for me the vaping issue is coming from a health and wellness perspective and a social and emotional perspective it's tying directly into education and in terms of something like well in terms of the other issues i i also would like to know how those are tied directly into what we're overseeing um are the tony go ahead um i i too uh in addition to seeing a little bit of refinement i'd also uh be interested

097in seeing um well let's put it this way on on vaping um you know i it's been a pervasive and documented social issue as few people pointed out it's not just a school issue it's it's um it's national probably international but it's pervasive and it's documented um i would want to see what evidence we have that um this uh the violence that's being talked and talked about is uh actually occurring at a crisis level um because i haven't seen it presented i you know there's one local website that has cited one anonymous source and um that's not enough for me um and so i'd need to see some evidence if i saw evidence i could support it absolutely thank you that was going to be exactly my point i don't think we've seen evidence from

098what has been reported back to us after this initial i don't see that we've seen a huge uptick in our school i don't see that this is like a this is just something that went around the community and is not actually factual and hasn't been shown factual so i see i see so do you think your teachers are scared angie amanda do you amanda because i'm kind of getting tired of this this is the most important thing in front of us amanda the safety of our teachers and our students is the most important thing i am not done speaking and you don't have the floor your teachers are scared angie are they not i don't know i haven't talked to anybody i do know they are okay now i think that we are getting a

099little ahead of ourselves and something we don't have any information about i have some information i'd like to share when you're ready no we're not going to share information from outside here at the table this is about board business yep this is board business that i have you won't give me the i don't know that we're going to get anywhere farther on this tonight and connie i saw you had your hand up for a while yes i'm sorry i was just i mean we're talking about evidence and school districts do have to report it's called a vader report and that does include violence disruptive incidents uh like dasa incidents i mean perhaps that is something that when the i'm sure vaping is in there um but i don't i don't know for a fact i

100i i can't believe it wouldn't be but i do think that that is a place we can look for evidence and that it would be i don't know if it's i don't recall it being uh presented to the board but maybe that's a place that we can look at and if we're looking we do get that the annual labor report for some evidence so that it can help us make a decision um because that is required by new york state for the district to to to have that so it's not that it's not there it's it's online it's just a matter of that yeah thank you are there any other comments on this dean had his hand up so i can't wait he was he was showing me connie had his hand okay i do

101i have something if you're willing to call him yeah i don't okay go ahead okay um there seems to be some concern that there that this isn't happening or it's not happening to the degree that it's been presented either by these parents or somewhere online or suggestion that it's not as like it's not as bad do you do feel that the teachers are concerned with this do any of our board members feel that there's concern by our teachers because they are i don't know okay well we're we're telling you some of us have been told what's going on your parents are trying to tell the board what is going on the teachers union is upset they're asking for the administration to help i see that i have the communication would you prefer something that i

102reached this union coming to you as a board member instead of to us as a board there are people across this district and i'm sure you're not alone they have come to me they i'm sure they come to many of you for months they're scared to come did the teachers union come to you officially to report a concern i have teachers that have come to me that's not my question did the teachers union come to you you said the teachers came to me with communication that went to them from their union and they came to you with it yes they did because they're scared they're scared for their physical safety they're scared for their jobs if they speak up i'm not a fool my mom was a teacher 15 years ago and she was scared

103they live in perpetual fear there are people in this room that work for this district that are afraid to speak up that have asked some of us to speak up on their behalf and you asked us to sign a resolution which i happily signed because i do believe in protecting our students our teachers and our staff and if we're going to sit here and not act like this is absolutely number one important to better understand so that we can keep everyone safe then i don't know what we're sitting here for i signed that resolution in faith that we want to keep people safe i think that was the the goal of it if it needs to be amended i don't know all right does anybody else have anything else to say on this erica the

104fact that there are some uh teachers that are afraid to speak up and are very upset about what's happening is true um it's very upsetting for me uh to hear how frightened they are and that there are um hitlets going around school so i'm not gonna get into specifics of what was said but the fact that that is even happening right now and we're not i guess it's not our job to talk about this is is beyond upsetting sorry i just i can't it is the role of a board member to send people to the right lowest chain of command always we are not a direct liaison to the superintendent for anybody or ourselves go ahead john i had my hand up first angie i'm sorry i didn't see your hand go ahead his hand

105was right in front of me okay no it's i'm just not i just it's starting to feel like i don't have a voice angie because you specifically told me multiple times if i have questions that some people here including yourself think are out of bounds to go to mike don't go to dave don't go to lisa go to mike right if i have any questions go to mike and copy you when those videos were shared with me on friday which literally made my stomach sick and i used to live in one of the most violent cities in america and saw violent crime and that those videos made me sick to see our police officer treated that way made my stomach churn i had a teacher tell me she can't believe i'm still sending my kids

106in this district who teaches in this district then i'm still sending my girls here because of what she knows is happening i went to mike i didn't go to social media i didn't go to the sro i went to mike and i said hey i saw these videos could you please tell me what is going on in these videos which mike replied he was gathering information appreciated it but you the one who has repeatedly told me to go to mike told me that i'm not to do that that i'm not to go to mike and ask questions so i would like to ask mike while we're all sitting here what your preference is if i come across something would you prefer that i keep my trusty amanda hat on and email you from my trusty

107account or should i put my mom and taxpayer hat on and email you from my personal account because everyone in this room has a right to know what happened to our sro and those teachers and the staff and the kids everyone angie you have no right to tell me i can't ask a question they live in america mike can speak for himself mike is our superintendent if he doesn't want to answer he doesn't have to but i asked mike not you i'm asking i'm saying so what would you like me to do michael i'm not asking you angie i'm asking mike what is your preference for communication if we have questions and we've discussed this at all of our board workshops about community best practices and communication if any board member has any question they

108can email me directly and they should cc board leadership and when i have the information to share back as i have yesterday and today i've kept the board completely informed with all the information that's been made available so again on my end i will continue to keep the board informed and if you have questions i'll gather information and i'll get that back to you thank you and my point was that it's not okay to ask for specific report outs and things like that when you're an individual trustee which you were asking for multiple specific things from him that's what we do in agenda planning and that was all i was saying all i asked was can you please tell me more what is going on in the video that's all i asked and honestly as

109an elected trustee i think it's irresponsible not to ask not to know that was violent do we have any board comments do you mind if i just i just want to speak to one of the questions that came up earlier our prevention council has been administering the youth risk assessment survey for at least 20 years when i was a principal in queensbury at least 15 years ago we had been administering the youth risk assessment survey to our students in our schools on a voluntary basis so again we didn't do it two years ago because we were in covid but every school district in the county administers the survey most districts in the state administer the survey so the concerns that were addressed earlier about the survey we've been doing that survey for more than 20

110years in our school so it's not new um it's the same you could pull up the information from the cdc and you can pull up information about districts who've been administrating that for years and it's great feedback for our school for our community to hear from our kids it's completely anonymous anonymous kids don't even put their name on it but that is very important information i think as parents as community members as educators as grandparents we want to know the trends we want to hear from our kids how they feel about being a member of this community a member of this school district so again we could provide detailed information back 20 years uh our director of physical education athletics nick mcpartland said a note out to all of our parents several weeks ago letting

111them know that we were going to be offering the risk assessment survey again that we had not had the opportunity to do it two years ago so again for folks who are hearing about this or experiencing this for the first time again this is a practice that's been going on in school districts for for many many years so again just to make sure the board is fully aware of the history of those surveys being conducted and again our older students probably can remember doing it back when they were younger and again in my previous districts we actually would do presentations to the board just to show the longitudinal data as how that data you know changes actionable items for the school district based on the feedback that we get from our students so so gathering

112survey data from our kids that is not a new practice if anything the more schools who participate the better information that we have to help inform our our decisions so does the board have any questions about that because that is not that is not a new that's not a new thing for school districts to participate in erica um the survey is not not new but is the way that we're if they're opting out if if parents are opting out are they still being asked are there students or the students being asked to complete it against what their parents have asked i guess that's the question and how do we monitor that without getting into a situation where that is not okay right right so so nick had asked parents to respond back if they chose

113to have the kids opt out and again where there may have been miscommunication is the parents who responded getting the information to the teachers having the teachers let the kids know hey your parents have asked that you not take the survey they start at every the start of every survey let the kids know it's optional they don't have to participate it's not required of them so again that's where i think we can tighten up our protocols we had a few parents who made that request and again there may had been a communication gap between those who responded and the actual teachers so the teachers could remind the kids um and again if moms and dad had that conversation at home to hey to let their kids know on monday during phys ed class you're going

114to be taking the survey you don't have to take the survey nobody was forcing the kids to take the survey so it's not a requirement and the teachers as they introduced and explained it said the same thing but in the future those handful of teachers parents that we hear back from will make sure that those teachers have the conversation with the kids to remind them that their parents have opted them out so i think that was the only um you know thing that we need to improve on based on at least one conversation i've had with one parent of 2000 kids who took the survey so we we want to continue to administer the survey because we've been doing it for a long time and most schools in our regions are administering it so again

115gathering that feedback and having the opportunity to compare our results to previous results and how our kids have responded to other saratoga county schools as well as schools across the state has been valuable information to share back to the community this is not a public meeting you're out of order i'm sorry connie you had your hand up um my my i guess my comment was a question was addressed and it was about the opt out process so i did opt out kids um i d so nick mcpartlin sent an email very transparent it was very detailed it told parents you know what the action item was but i did wonder like it wasn't a form so i was like oh i wonder how getting to where it needs to go but i did have a

116conversation with my kids that was you know fyi monday you're gonna you know i just copy and paste it from the email like you're gonna there's gonna be a survey but you don't have to take it so um i appreciate mike that you're you're thinking ahead about firming up that process so that there's no like no miscommunication or he said she said stuff going on yeah and again similar to our threat assessments where parents still have the opportunity to opt their kids out of a state assessment you know that's the same conversation you know kids still come in and they still sometimes want to sit and take the exam and oftentimes our teachers have to remind the kids if their parents have opted out of that type of at least assessment situation so the survey

117would be a similar protocol right um any other board comments dean just one quick one and unfortunately oh no he is there the gentleman that that raised the question uh in public comment about the bond proposition for the loaders i know that we take our show on the road so to speak and make sure that we have presentations to the community teachers public um i don't know if we do online stuff this year or not but because it's important to me and i love the idea of of purchasing our own equipment when we have the ability to do so tim if we can just shore up any of that information ahead of time so that we have all the information to put out to the public that we can so that we can hopefully get

118all the support from the community on that which will be much much different than what they typically see right they typically see on the proposition lines the buses and that's typically it right this year we're throwing the loaders and without a whole lot of conversation or the quick math that really shows the savings people might be like why in the you know why in the world do we need to buy those so i just think just tightening that up a little bit would be awesome if i can for the board's benefit and there are a few talking points that we can include in those presentations to your point the the proposal that we're making is budget neutral currently um the the borrowing on this would last 15 years while the life of the machines would

119be 25 years and so that additional savings just over the life obviously would be used to to cover some of those maintenance costs the regular maintenance would be handled in-house um the the real the one outlier is um the tires on the machines are not cheap um but being that we only use them part of the year anticipate probably maybe two three times over a 25 or 30 year life that we might have to replace those so that's the real big outlier in terms of the maintenance costs not covered in our analysis there yep charlie are we on board member comments okay i just wanted to um commend all of the employees of our district in getting through three quarters of the year and wish everybody a really wonderful and restful spring break i think

120it's really well deserved [Music] and tony this was this was actually covered in detail last meeting but i don't think abby was here i wanted to congratulate her on her teen excellence award in person congratulations that's all i have any other board comments john i appreciate that positive note i i want to commend to my fellow trustees this issue of onboard it feels like almost every story in here is about stuff we're dealing with stuff we're grappling with there's there's a lot of stuff in here that we're doing that sort of affirms what we're doing and there's other stuff that we can learn and um i just want to say that um uh i know we don't always agree about everything and we are we are passionate about what happens here but we have to

121remind ourselves that we're all neighbors and we all want what's best for these kids and we've got to work at that and being collaborative together any other comments all right it was just nice to hear uh hear from the students tonight and i hope we get to hear more from our our students so thank you for coming all right can i get a motion to adjourn dean john go ahead i thought we had to vote on agenda planning don't we usually vote we make a motion for something we want to add and then we vote no what we did yeah we did some of both so what what is the ask i thought the process when we did agenda planning and i'm still new so i'm trying to understand this when someone proposes something to

122be placed on the agenda they make a motion someone has to second and then we vote for it is that not the process it's a discussion to see if there's a majority of support so how do we determine that unless we do a vote so what what issue are we i thought we were done so we had two which am i wrong there was two proposals for two agenda planning items i don't know what you i'm sorry i don't know what yours was i know what mine was mine was for a report as it relates to disciplinary action that's been taken at the high school and i gave the points on that and then what the action plan is to solve that that's what i asked for we didn't vote for john's or for mine

123i think we all went around and said there was a majority of people who we didn't do that so can we do a roll call vote for both of those since we're supposed to vote no it's not a roll call it's not a vote why it's not it can be yeah we have voted in the past it can be a roll call though i think i don't know if you have to move to make it a roll call no i made a motion for mine i i always thought the process was that we had to make a motion to add something and someone had to second it with john's we already decided and mike said he would put it on the fall so when we were discussing it every there was support but i did

124not impossible to do we don't have to vote how do you know if there's majority support everyone everybody spoke in favor of it and nobody spoke about it the timeline for the for the timeline of it though too he said okay so so then my my agenda planning item what exactly are you proposing so i guess it's not being included no i i don't know what you i thought so i guess it's not it's not going anywhere i had asked for more specificity and that's the last thing i heard okay uh no one said we're voting on this because i don't see a majority so my assumption was walking out of here then it's going to be included no okay so what are you asking for amanda i'm sorry so let's do that so let's

125do that we don't have to for john's but we'll do it for mine just that's fine just make your ass it's not it's i'd have made it okay i actually read it out completely i'm making an emotion i just wanna i just wanna say i think that i verbalized that i supported both of those agenda planning items along with the inclusion of the information that connie requested for budgetary purposes right i think it's important for us to see where the dollars land so that we can start having real conversations about how we can combat the issues both of these issues that were brought up so whether it's whether it's a motion whether it's a roll call whether it's a simple conversation this guy right here says that i support both of those that were brought

126to the table with the inclusion of the information that connie requested okay we're done with the the one is already on for fall john uh usually when there's like a request for information and you know it's being discussed and most people have said you know yes to it and nobody's come out and said disagree to it that it it's because that we we get the vote you know the information the information from mike okay so and there hasn't been uh nobody made a motion that you know we vote on this or anything like that let's just ask for support i don't we don't really it's we just need to find out if it's supported i don't know if i have support i just want to actually i'm going to ask right now okay cool so

127we'll just decide so there's been no official vote or can you just repeat what you're asking sure please thank you sure i was seeking a report that includes the disciplinary action that has been taken this school year i will narrow it down to the high school as it relates to physical assaults both student to student student to teacher and student to sro bullying and drugs with related to that to know what the action plan the building leadership team might it doesn't matter who it is has to start mitigating those issues as well as a discussion by the board john what's the time frame you have in mind as soon as possible but i know we're in the middle of a budget season and an election so i will leave that to the board to decide

128i am new i know i'm asking a lot it seems like it's urgent again i can ask the high school again it's not just a high school issue i agree i was trying to keep it narrow it does seem like a middle school issue but request and she's completely accurate every year we have to compile our end of the year statistics and what's called the vadar document and our administrative teams in both buildings complete that report in the summer time so at our august meeting we could summarize the entire school year and during the summer months as they're analyzing their feedback and getting feedback from our teachers and having that end of the year conversation about what the plan would be for september i think that would give us plenty of time to collect all

129that data analyze that data do a comparison between this year and any of the previous years and then have some information that we could share back to the board with what our next steps would be sounds good to me is it reasonable mike to have that same information that john's looking for by that point in time i know john had said i think you said by the 2022 i just think it might be a different thing because it's a because it's a the vaping thing is really an addiction sure issue and i think it might go in a different different place from like violence and discipline i think you could argue respectfully that there could be some connection to them i i just was asking if we thought that four months time was decent enough

130for both of those requests and if one is four months and one six months then it is what it is whatever's most reasonable can we just leave it up to them on their workflow okay all right so i'm seeing support for this ask then around the table okay thank you anything else all right can i get a motion to adjourn dean and john ellis all in favor thank you you