001Mhm. >> Mhm. >> from Morocco that we're all set. You made it. All right. So, we're going to call this regular meeting of the Saugus Union School District School Board to order. Um emergency exits, we have one at the rear of the room and one on each side of the room. Um Ms. Carney, would you do roll call, please? Here. Pledge of allegiance, everyone. Dr. Borba, our mission and vision statements, please. For our mission, we provide equitable, engaging, inspiring, and holistic experiences that support success and empowerment for students, families, and the community in a diverse and changing world. Our vision statement, we are a beacon of educational excellence where every individual is inspired and able to achieve their fullest potential. All right, thank you. So, I I apologize for this little curveball, but we will
002keep it to about 10 minutes. So, we need to we need to recess into a quick executive session. I And literally, I mean 10 minutes. There's a couple of financial topics that we need to discuss before we push meeting. I know we have a lot of people here tonight and we're going to be cognizant of that, so we will not extend it. We'll have our normal executive session at the end. Um but I just want to make everybody aware we will be as quick as possible. Okay? So, can I have a motion to recess into executive session? By Ms. Crumley? Yes. Seconded by Mr. Welton. Any questions? All those in favor? Aye. Okay. >> Mhm. >> everybody for your patience. Um, can I have a motion to reconvene open session? By Mr. Wells, seconded by
003Mr. Pramolia. All those in favor? I'll count. All right. Moving on, we have uh approval of minutes of our March 10th meeting. Seconded. By Ms. Bellarosa, seconded by Mr. Wells. Any questions? All those in favor? Aye. All right. Dr. Warback, staff soar awards. Yes. Okay, so for the month of April, we have two we have a whole class we would like to honor and a staff member we would like to honor as well. So, this month we are proud to recognize an entire class for exemplifying our soar core values of being solution-focused, engaged, empowered, and collaborative. We celebrate Mrs. Mulford's third grade class at Abernethy Elementary School for their thoughtful work to reduce plastic waste in our environment. These students partnered with food service manager Sheila Melville to explore and propose practical solutions for minimizing
004plastic use in our cafeterias. So, one idea emerging from their collaboration is finger food Fridays. It hasn't happened yet, but we look forward to it. While their project is still in development, their initiative, advocacy, and partnership with staff reflect a meaningful commitment to real-world problem-solving. So, we commend these students and Mrs. Mulford for turning the learning their learning into action. So, they didn't have a lot of notice and I'm going to their class tomorrow, but if we could all give them a round of applause. >> [applause] [applause] >> And then for our staff soar your soar's award, the administrative team reached a clear and unanimous decision. We are honored to recognize Angel Rodriguez, senior inventory control assistant. In his role overseeing district shipping, receiving, and inventory, Angel consistently demonstrates professionalism, integrity, and care. He always
005goes above and beyond, whether it's transporting a sports team in a pinch with very little notice, or transferring boxes upon boxes without ever complaining. His responsibilities He goes above and beyond for all his responsibilities, and he is known across our schools for his positivity and willingness to support others. His daily interactions leave a lasting impression, and each building always looks forward to his visits. Angel's work embodies the spirit of service and excellence in we value across this district. So, congratulations, Angel Rodriguez. >> [applause] [applause] >> Awesome. Okay. That brings us to our first public recognition. Um if there's anybody who would like to address the board, um this first public recognition is reserved for things that are on the agenda. So, if there's any if there's other topics that are not on the agenda, they
006need to um we'll address those at our later Anybody? Okay. Adriana, our student representative report. High School >> [clears throat] >> Congratulations to all of our National Honor Society inductees. This distinction reflects your commitment to scholarship, leadership, service, and character. It was a wonderful ceremony. Great job to all to all who participated in the Pops Concert. Your talent, dedication, and hard work were evident in a truly outstanding performance. We will recognize and celebrate our third quarter our quarter three core value award recipients with a breakfast on April 21st in the high school library. Junior High Our spring spring fling social was held on March 18th for junior high students and to dance and socialize with peers. Thank you to the FCCLA and Spanish Club for hosting. The agricultural classes have been busy learning about sustainability
007and taking visits to the greenhouse. Our ABC classroom will be taking a field trip to release the trout they have produced in the partnership with the Shokan Environmental Group, Kahl. On Thursday, March 26th, we held our first annual genius hour and science fair. We had over 45 projects from students in grades K through 6 present their work to the community. Our spring concert was on Thursday, April 9th. The band and choral groups put on a wonderful performance. We are looking forward to our Kahl's got got talent show on April 17th. We started New York State ELA testing this week and will continue math, science, and New York State English as a second language achievement testing this month. The next PTA meeting is on Wednesday, April 15th in the Kahl cafeteria at 6:00 p.m. Morse Students
008and staff are doing a great job with the New York State 3-8 assessment. We are so proud of of everybody. At yesterday's all staff meeting, we did a safety focus and did a hands-on demonstration of the AED and stair wheelchair. Our fifth and sixth grade band and chorus concerts will be on Monday, April 20th at 7:00 p.m. Our next BTA meeting is Wednesday, April 15th and our next PLT meeting is Wednesday, April 29th. Riccardi, New York State assessments are off to a great start. Students are energized and showing all they have learned. We are continuing our year-long focus on trauma-informed practices with all staff with a particular emphasis on taking care of ourselves and one another so we can fully take care of our students. Riccardi's chorus and band band are excited to announce that
009their spring concert is next Thursday, April 23rd at 7:00 p.m. with doors opening at 6:30. We are looking forward to our kindergarten and first grade small and tall ball on Friday, April 24th at 5:00 p.m. All right. Thank you, Adriana. Um now moving on to Mr. Tryon. And you look like you have a team behind you that looks like they're ready to bounce out of their chairs, right? >> [clears throat] >> All right, I'll start while we're getting it up. Thanks for having me. My name is Paul Tryon, principal of Riccardi Elementary. Uh it's a pleasure to be here and thank you to all of our student representatives for coming tonight and helping with uh helping represent what makes Riccardi great. Um so this organization uh this uh presentation will be organized uh according to
010the four pillars that we have. So, uh academic excellence, family and community and engagement, professional culture, and our students are our sole your experience. And of course, all the work we do is concretely aligned around our mission and our vision. And so, everything you're going to hear tonight is our pursuit of educational excellence so that we continue to be a beacon of educational excellence. I guess I have the power now. There we go. So, we are most certainly in pursuit of academic excellence at Riccardi. And I'm very proud of the progress thus far that that we're seeing. So, if we just look at i-Ready and our state assessments, right, two of the major metrics that we use, we have seen steady progress over the last 3 years. So, our math and ELA rates are up
011from 3 to 6% over the last 3 years, which is really great to see. A lot of time you see, you know, in data academic data it looks a lot like the stock market, right? And this is kind of more consistent over last 3 years. So, um and most recently, I'd like to point out that two out of four of our testing grades, so third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, scored or they had pass rates in math that were 10 to 20% higher than state averages. So, state averages are typic- typically around 50% give or take. And so, that means that 60 to 70% were our pass rates in math in two out of four of our testing grades. And it's two out of four, right? So, we've still got growth to make, but it's
012really proud of of the trajectory that that we're on academically. So, how are we doing that, right? There's right there's no silver silver bullet, but there's a number of initiatives that we have. And the one thing I'd love to highlight tonight and we have a a quick video clip that I promised Dr. G we're we're going to get right up there um and not waste any time with it. But we've got a couple third graders uh who were talking about something called uh number talks with Mrs. Pettit. And uh they're going to you know who better to hear from than our students about you know how number talks influence them. So Rocco's going to pull up that video if you can. Thank you, sir. This is Leo and Keith in third grade at Riccardi. Okay,
013sitting with me I have two third graders from Riccardi. I have Leo and Keith and they're going to tell me a little bit about number talks. So boys, what is a number talk in your own words? A warm-up. A warm-up, okay. And a good question to get our brains ready. Oh, why do we use number talks in math class? What do you think? To see what we already know and for prior knowledge. Oh, how do number talks help students become better mathematicians? What do you think? Practice our math vocabulary and teaches things we might not know. Oh, what are the rules or expectations during a number talk? Um to raise your hand and restate our ideas and use hand signals to show we agree. Ooh, what hand signals do you guys use to show you
014agree? Nice. And what does it mean to explain your thinking? Not just saying yes or no and to justify our claims with evidence. Oh, there's that math vocabulary. Well, thank you, boys. So thank you to to Mrs. Pettit, thank you to Leo and Keith for for doing that. Um right, the whole point of number talks is to to think conceptually about about math, right? So um ensuring that they're able to clarify their thinking, right, build off of others' ideas, um evaluate one another's responses. So, it's uh less this is the formula that you should use, right, kind of like a lot of us were were raised with, and more about understanding how conceptually to talk about math and the math concepts that we we teach every day. Um so, uh just very briefly diving into
015the data, you know, we have some noticings and wonderings. Uh in the primary grades, we see some summer learning loss, uh specifically in phonemic awareness and phonics, which are foundational to literacy growth. And we're seeing that comprehension and vocabulary are also priority areas as we move forward. So, as we're identifying next steps, these are the areas that we're focused on at Recardi. Um we're seeing similar summer learning loss across domains in math, uh you know, for example, uh geometry and number sense. So, one of the things we're working on is how to make learning stickier, right? How students can remember what they learn better, so right, so whether it's spiraling assessments or spiraling instruction, um ensuring that there are opportunities over the summer that are cost-effective uh to support our students and our families, uh
016so that come September, the proficiency rates are just as high or nearly as high as they were in the spring. So, we're on the right track, we have momentum, um and we also have some next steps to sustain that momentum. All right. The moment we have all been waiting for. Uh in terms of family and community engagement, we have so many wonderful priorities, but one uh so many wonderful initiatives, but one initiative I want to highlight tonight is our Recardi Community Service Club. I am so proud of this club. It is completely student run. Um they are excelling under the leadership of Ms. Daphne. They have countless initiatives. So, the community service club uh is at the children's hospital, the food pantry. They're caroling at the nursing homes, at the animal shelter, the veterans. We
017have incredible strong student participation. Over 55 uh fifth and sixth graders participate. We had to find another classroom to to house everyone. Um and I'm just really proud of everyone. So, I want to share three specific examples and um Zoe Gressel is here. I'll call her up in a minute. Uh she's the president uh to share a few words. But, I just want to share three examples of uh two other students who are here today and a third who who couldn't make I don't think she can make it. Um So, the vice president of the community service club, Michaela Longo, wanted to make sure that we had enough gifts for all the children in the Albany Children's Hospital. So, she came up with the idea to challenge the fourth grade. Uh whichever class brought in
018the most toys to donate to the hospital would have got a cookie party and Michaela would would personally bake herself. Uh so, this action alone raised 101 toys for the Children's Hospital. Um second example I want to share uh that I think captures the spirit of giving at Riccardi is the club's advertising manager, Marley Sasso, volunteered for the St. John's Food Pantry and brought in many donations herself. Uh she was so touched by what she saw at the pantry while volunteering that she approached her mother's boss and got their organization to do a food drive for the pantry. Um and she was just again so inspired by what she saw. So, um big round of applause for Michaela and Marley. >> [applause] >> UH PLEASE STAND. THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORK, MARLEY. AND AND LAST
019MONTH, Maddie Weeks found out that the food pantry was in desperate need of juice. So, she challenged the entire third grade to bring in as much juice as they could. Uh with the winning class getting a brownie party. And they were able to donate 67 large bottles of juice. So, thank you, Maddie. Please stand. Let's give her a ROUND OF APPLAUSE. >> [applause] >> WE'RE VERY PROUD OF ALL OF OUR STUDENTS. SO, THANK YOU, MICHAELA, uh Marley, and Maddie. Three M's. Tongue twister. You're trying to mess me up with that one. Um and now I I do want to uh invite Zoe Greshup, our president of the Community Service Club, FOR A FEW WORDS. >> [applause] >> MY NAME IS ZOE GRESH AND I'M A SIXTH grader at Riccardi. I'm the president of the Riccardi
020Elementary School's Community Service Club. My proudest moment of being president of this club was seeing an idea grow into something that truly made a difference. I wasn't sure how many people would show up to the event or how successful it would be, but seeing every event we we did be a success was inspiring to me. To list a few of our accomplishments this year, our club has raised over 1,500 pairs of socks for a shelter and gave 500 pairs to our school nurse for kids in our building. Donated Christmas gifts to every resident in the Ivy Lodge. And we also don- decorated ornaments and read with the residents. Donated over 350 toys to the Albany Children's Hospital. Donated food for the animals at the Sagamore Animal Shelter. Donated $2,697 of gift cards to our veterans
021and over 197 boxes of cereals and boxes of cereal and other food items to the food pantry. Being the president of community service club, Avacardo has taught me so many things. It has taught me to be prepared for meetings, be a better listener to my peers, leadership skills, teamwork, but most of all empathy and compassion. This experience has been an been amazing and I hope to continue when I reach seventh grade next year. I really want to thank Miss Daphne for all of her time and effort that she puts in everyday to make this club happen and for helping me grow in my role and for believing me to be the president of the community service club. You are a true inspiration to us all. I hope that next year even more students will want
022to join the Ricardi community service club and it continues to grow even bigger. This club not only helped me find my voice, but most importantly it helps our community we all love. THANK YOU. >> [applause] >> THANK YOU, ZOE. AND OF COURSE, THANK YOU MISS D as well. >> [applause] >> All right, moving on to professional culture. So, we will continue to have deliberate work around Carol Dweck's mindset work. Specifically when it comes to data, right? And in terms of how we as adults at Ricardi view data and how it moves us forward, right? Moving away from this idea that it's just an accountability tool to evaluate how we're doing and more in terms of what's the next step? What's the one thing that we can do as teachers, teachers aides, teaching assistants, as an
023aide, as a principal? What's the one thing that I can do to move us forward based on the numbers that we have. Um, we have a you know, um, a continuing hyper focus on student engagement. So, we're still thinking about our engagement as a continuum and not as a binary, are is a student engaged or not. Um, we are continuing our trauma-informed practices as we are across the network. I'd like to shout out the Riccardi Kindergarten team for working closely with Dr. Jen uh, and myself on the the science of reading shifts. Uh, they spent a lot of time preparing for those meetings and sharing what's working, what's not, and what they need from us as a district. Um, uh, so that's been a great collaboration. And then of course, just uh, to end on
024a fun note, uh, yeah, we had a staff band because even professionals have to have a little fun. Uh, and so thanks to Mr. Hogan, you know, we learned and performed a a Taylor Swift song um, last year and I think it's safe to say safe to say that the cafeteria never had so many children's voices singing and the players going to play, play, play, play, play. Um, so that was a great experience. Um, it got really loud in there. And the finally, the student experience. So, to close out the presentation tonight, I'm fortunate to be joined by our student government officers uh, and uh, yeah, please give a warm welcome to Emma, McKenzie, Owen, and Matthew. They're going to come up and talk about what they're most proud of uh, and what uh, what
025makes Riccardi great. So, come on up, guys. >> [applause] >> Hello. My name is Owen and I'm the Riccardi social director. I helped plan the pop assembly and I was one of the actors in it along with my social student government peers. We rehearsed a lot every Wednesday with the student government and became down during lunchtimes to practice it with Mr. Tryon. We also recorded pop videos to help make the story line make sense. That would be published on the district's social media page. Our goal was to make other students want to read more by adding a fun twist to it. We met our goal because we had thousands of minutes read across >> [clears throat] >> Riccardi. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Hi, I'm Matthew Splane. Now I'm the vice president of the Riccardi
026student government. I'm really proud of being part of this wonderful school. The teachers and students are both so nice and we have really memorable events like field day, the line bowl part, spirit days, classroom activities, and many other fun events. I also want to thank our hardworking custodians, lunch monitors, security guards, secretaries, um teaching assistants, aides, our nurse, our special teachers, bus drivers, OT, PT, and speech, our food service staff, and of course, Mr. Trial. Um with all these wonderful people, Riccardi is a wonderful school. THANK YOU. >> [applause] >> HI, MY NAME IS EMMA AND I'M THE Riccardi student government treasurer. I'm really proud of making it to student government because we worked really hard and all wrote an essay to get in. We also had to make posters. We also had to say
027speeches and make posters and talk about why we should be elected for the position. After my speech, I went over what I could do better so I can learn from it. It was especially hard to go against my classmates and friends who were running for the same position, but it was worth all the effort that I put into it. I'm excited about possibly running again in middle school. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Hi, my name is Mackenzie Katan and I'm the president of Ricardi Student Government. I'm really proud of the time and effort we put into making a music video to go along with the theme song that Mr. Tryon wrote. In fact, some of our fellow student government office officers recorded the song as well as some other fifth grade fifth grade students as
028part of the enrichment class with our music teacher Mr. Hogan. When we made the video, we got to observe many classrooms and how they run and we were excited to star in the video ourselves. I really enjoyed spending time with my fellow officers and we had a lot of lots of fun doing this. I hope everyone enjoys Ricardi's music video and is inspired to work hard, be kind and most of all have fun. >> [applause] >> All right, great job everyone. Thank you for coming out tonight. Uh, so we to close, we know that students are more likely to uh, come to school, right? And be engaged when they feel a real connection to the day-to-day, right? The the minute-to-minute, everything that we do and I'm so proud of all of these initiatives because we're
029seeing it in the data. Uh, we're seeing um, specifically an incredible improvement on Ricardi's chronic absenteeism rate, which improved by uh, four percentage points over three years. So, we went from 20% to 18% down to 16% um, chronic absenteeism. So, we're on the right track. Um, kids are coming to school and and they're engaged and they're having fun. So, thank you everyone. Thanks for having me. Uh, if you have any questions, please let ME KNOW. THANK YOU, MR. TRYON AND THANK YOU TO ALL THE STUDENTS. UM, that was that was fantastic. Um, okay. >> Dr. Rohrbach, superintendent's report. Well done, Mr. Riccardi. Thank you so much. Safe travels home. You definitely inspired all of us with all of your just amazing giving, generosity, and humanity. Thank you for making Salida look so good. Oh, yeah.
030We're going to talk about budget? A little offensive. So, >> [laughter] >> I know some of you want to see the budget. Um in all seriousness, this is my favorite time of year. Our fields are full. Our students are active. I see smiles on their face when they're outside uh with a palpable sense of energy across our schools and throughout our community. These moments really, and especially tonight with Riccardi, reflect the very best of who we are and who we strive to be as a district, a true beacon of excellence grounded in opportunity, engagement, and pride. Tonight, as we enter our third budget conversation, um it is challenging. And every single day working with Mr. Saeger on the budget has been a challenging exercise. I want to be clear about our North Star. Students are
031our why. They are the center of every decision we make. Delivering on that commitment requires people, resources, and environments that support learning and growth. It requires staff, materials, safe and well-maintained facilities, and experiences that bring learning to life. As we develop this budget, we consistently return to one question. What is best for students? At the same time, we recognize our responsibility to be fiscally responsible to our taxpayers. These dual commitments require difficult, thoughtful decisions, particularly in a time when student needs are increasing, mandates continue to expand that are very often unfunded, and costs in general, like costs, are rising. There is no simple equation between enrollment and expenditures because the needs of our students are more complex and more intensive than ever before. So, our work remains anchored in our four pillars. We continue to
032advance academic excellence through strong instructional practices and new opportunities, such as the literacy assessments that Mr. Tryon applauded, the kindergarten working on. We are strengthening our professional culture by supporting and developing the adults who make this work possible. We are deepening family and community engagements through efforts like our Sawyer family and in community series. So far, we just finished that series. It was the first time we launched this series. They were all virtual and webinars, and we had 52 parents who actually attended all of those series. We had 113 registered. They will have access to all these videos at any time that they want. So, it was a good, healthy start, and next year we'll do it again and hopefully have it expand. And we are elevating the Sawyer experience by creating meaningful, engaging opportunities
033for both students both inside and outside the classroom. There's so much to be proud of as we advance academic excellence, elevate student voice, and enhance our Sawyer experience from student-led events such as the National Honor Society induction to the accomplishments of our valedictorian, Emma French, salutatorian, Sophie Voss, and the principal's award recipient, Chris Stokes. And the achievements of our all-county musicians, I was so thrilled that our elementary students are finally wonderfully participating. Well done, music teachers, for getting them involved. The Seal of Civic Readiness, today there were presentations. The mock trial continues. And their competitions, and our science researchers who presented to the internal review board to receive approval for their science research. The IRB approves whether a science research project is ethical and can continue to be researched. So, not only are our students
034meeting high expectations, but actively shaping their learning experiences, their work, their voices, and their growth are the clearest reflection of our mission in action. So, additionally, as I'm wrapping up here, we received encouraging news from SED with approval of our planned pilot Regents waiver in five subject areas. While implementation details continue to evolve because this is all brand new, and Saugerties is charting the waters along with 23 other districts, it is very exciting, and we are a leader in this project-based learning and alternative assessments as for the third time this week, Ms. DePino and her team of teachers were asked to share their experiences with other high schools and at state conferences. So, as we move into tonight's discussion, I ask that we remain grounded in a shared understanding. This work is really complex. It
035requires partnership, transparency, and a collective commitment to both our students and our community. Our goal is not only to balance the budget, but to do so in a way that preserves and strengthens the educational experience our students deserve. Thank you for your continued engagement and your commitment to our schools. Please continue to reach out to me and my admin team. We want to hear from you. We want to engage with you. Any questions or concerns that you may have. And in closing, please continue to take care of yourself, take care of our students, and take care of one another. All right. Thank you, Dr. Rebecchi. Um Uh board member remarks. Start with Michael. Uh good evening. Thanks. Uh I will be very brief, but I really enjoyed uh Deborah Cardy's uh students' presentation about their
036service projects. Um I I'm not here, but I applaud their uh thinking of their community members, uh fellow students as they provide food and essentials to um those in need. Um so, it's good to think of others. Um and then just quickly uh was able to attend the BOCES annual meeting last week. Um while the meeting itself was not that entertaining, the real benefit was talking to the students uh that were there. Uh it was really great to hear from the various uh technical um uh groups and the students really were very proud of the work that they had done. They really like they found their niche, they found their tribe, and you could really really get a sense of their pride in the work that they were doing, the food they were preparing, the
037automotive, uh veterinarian, the whole whole gamut of things there. So, it's a great resource. Um That's it. Ms. Pellerossa. Um just quickly, I just wanted to thank um Mr. Tryon for his presentation and really thank the students who got up with the courage to speak, and they were all very confident, and it really shows in what they're doing, um you know, and how much they care about their school and their community, and that was really nice to see. So, thank you. Ms. Irizarry. Yep. Got me. Mr. Willis. All right. Got me? All right, good. Uh I guess I would kind of echo what these guys said in regards to Mr. Tryon. Thank you very much for the uh the presentation. Um I think the the community service club is like just amazing. I I was
038not aware of that, and I would push my daughter maybe a little bit more to get in there if she was not. Um so, I think it's really awesome that to kind of see what you're doing. Um I hope that you know, it it's showing all of the 65 students all like how the and compassion is received and how to care for one another is just an amazing feeling for both people, honestly. Um so, I I think that's really awesome. Um you know, I'd I'd like to say thank you to the students that you guys you had here for getting up and speaking. Some of them I I knew personally, which is great. Um I would love to say thank you for the the first picture on the slide. Which is that's a little inside
039thing between me and I, I guess. Um congratulations to the National Honor Society uh students. I think that's that's an amazing accomplishment. I mean that's something that you worked really hard for and it's you should be very proud of what you what you've done with that. Um, I'd like to know more about the trout produced. Um, that's that is like a pretty cool thing. Like you said that I'm like, "Huh, like how did that happen?" So, I would I think I might need to do a little more digging on my side for that and then uh congratulations to Kay Hill with the science fair. That's all I got. Mr. Lonon. Good evening. Good evening everyone. For those that were probably sitting next to me, I always cry when I'm like proud of things. Like I
040just had the tears in my eyes with these McCarthy kids. So, congratulations. That's the mom in me, but so they were so proud of themselves and that's a moment they're always going to remember and just the numbers they were talking about putting up it was absolutely astounding to me and that is us creating thriving members of society that are putting other people first and I think every single person in this room that's listening to this should be very very proud of that. Um, we can't ignore the the good things that are happening. You know, we've got a a rough couple of meetings coming up. We have to talk numbers. It's always difficult. Um, the numbers of unfunded mandates that are being placed on our districts and particularly related to certain things around special education um
041and transportation within is just absolutely astounding. Um, you heard me say this before. I've learned an enormous amount in the last 9 months about the actual cost of doing some of these things. Um, out of uh district transportation and the the cost of implementing 504s and a variety of other things. I think it's really important as we look over the next week and I'm entirely confident in uh Dr. Varba and his officials to bring us a balanced budget. I know we're going to get there, but we need to be looking to the future as well. We can't just be looking at a one-year budget. We need to be looking at what have we accomplished to get us to where we are. What are all the additional programming that we've already added over the last 5
042years? You're talking about some specifics in executive session. Where are we going? Um and what does this mean about the changing student population? What do we need to anticipate in the future? Um this is an opportunity for us to invest in the district, invest in the students, and putting the students first. And I really hope that the community comes out and votes in favor of this budget. And we look forward to presenting this to you in its final form next week. Ms. Keller. I think everyone has pretty much said everything that I wanted to say. Um I I also want to congratulate uh Recardi students. Um you know, I think that we are very fortunate in this community, as everyone else has said, that we have students that really care about one another, and they
043are continually, I mean, we've seen it throughout the year with the presentations from some of the other students at the other schools, how they want to take care of of our community. So, I think that's great. Um and not just the people of our community, but, you know, the environment of our community. So, congratulations to Ms. Mulford's class. I just happened um this afternoon to hear one of the third graders tell me about um no plastic Fridays for no plastic day, no plastic in the cafeteria, and I heard a little speech that might be uh coming up on the announcements. I think they're announcing different things each day. So, um uh I I just think that that's awesome. Um I think that, you know, those are the types of things that are authentic learning as
044well as what we're teaching in the classroom, and they're so important to make good human beings. So, that's, you know, what we strive to do at um Sorities. Um and Ms. Daphne is she's wonderful. She's she's wonderful and she really puts everything she has into that um program that she does. So, like uh Michelle said, we have some difficult meetings that are coming up um to talk about the budget. Uh you know, and if you've been reading the Freeman or um any newspaper, it's it's not just Sorities that's in uh a sticky situation. It is all of um the school districts, you know, in this county and the surrounding counties in um New York State. So, you know, we're all in that situation and we are doing the best that we can to make sure
045that we are um looking to preserve these wonderful programs and opportunities for our students, but you know, there are going to be some difficult decisions that we're going to have to make um in a short period of time and uh so, if I I would encourage anyone that's listening, if you have questions or you have concerns, to reach out to any of us. Um let us know now because next week, you know, we're going to be um you know, making tough decisions. So, that's all I have. Dr. Haas. Excuse me. [clears throat] Sorry. We can't hear you. No. No, now you can. [clears throat] I didn't Yeah, there we go. There we go. Um yeah, um I just want to say that I agree that, you know, it's not even the very only hard meetings.
046It's just that we have a lot to think about and how um how are we going to be good stewards of the money and the resources that we have to serve students and families in the district? And I have to say that I am glad to be with the people that um I am with on this board and in the administration to make these decisions because I feel like they are thoughtful and um efficient and know what they're up to. So, anyway, and then I look forward to sort of looking forward and beyond I mean we need to get through this season. Um and we also need to make sure the decisions we're making today are going to serve us in 2 years, 3 years, 5 years. So, um and then we just have a
047couple of policies. We have three policies on the agenda later on. There is the These are all coming up for a second read. Um if you click on the policy that's in the agenda, you'll also have links to the marked-up versions of them. I just want to um call out Dr. Capler for really providing such um quick and efficient feedback on the two policies on um the medication and personal care items and the students with life-threatening health conditions. I feel like these policies we discussed them and then it's just the way policy is supposed to be developed, right? Bring it to the people who are actually engaged in practice and saying, "How does this policy align with practice? And does the practice need to change because the policy we need a better policy in place
048or does the policy need to make sure that we're reflecting uh the current practices?" So, I think we have some three very strong policies that are um saying what they need to and um yeah. So, that's all I have. Okay, thank you. Um I will be quick. Um there's a couple things. Um one, thank you, Mr. Tryon. And I I you know, I kind of joked at the beginning, but your your students behind you literally be bouncing with energy to get up and talk, so that was great to see. Um I take a little different view of the budget um from a a and they are hard decisions and and discussions. Um and I this is my third school budget that I've been involved with from this table. Um but I in 30 years I've
049never gone through a budget in any aspect of [clears throat] my life um in the private world where it was easy. Um where like wow, revenues was always was here, expenses were here, and we just signed on the dotted line and it was over. Um with every budget that you put together, there are going to be decisions. Um I don't look at the decisions we have to make this year any different than the decisions we've had to make the first 2 years that I've been here. Um the decisions that are going to have to um be made um they are across the board. Um it's a give and take here. I am I I have to tell you I am confident in the team that we have in place um from Dr. Warback and Mr.
050Steiger and just as important um Dr. Warback's cabinet that she's put together um that they're going to make the right decisions that are take our students first um and then go from there, which is the only thing you can ask from this type of budget. Um the other thing is from people being engaged, you know, um as Ms. Kelder said, if anybody out there who's listening or in the public have questions, um email us. Email Dr. Warback. Email Mr. Steiger. Um our emails are all out there um and you know, just in the way sometimes the questions are formulated for the public or from the public allow us to think about something in a different way that we didn't think about. The other thing is there are things out there to get involved. Um you
051know, one of our actually I think it's our largest uh non-employee um expenses is our transportation. Well, right now there's a survey out there to all the main household contacts asking for input on transportation. Um, please take that serious. Please respond back to it. It's open until the 17th, which I believe is Friday. If we have to extend it a little bit, we will. We'd rather not extend it past Monday because Tuesday, next Tuesday is another meeting and a big day. But your feedback on that will allow this team to look at some things on what we do around transportation. Um, and really, you know, trans as I think Ms. Romalia said, transportation and special ed are the two areas where we budget at the beginning of the year and then because of things that
052happen, they change. And I don't mean change by $5,000. They change by hundreds of thousands of dollars. So everybody's input on those couple of areas are critical. Um, and that's all I have. Can we talk? Can we read the services us too? Just so we know what Correct answer is yes. Even if I don't know if we can, but yes, we'll get the answer. It's out there, yes. Yeah, it's an open public meeting. It is going to be singularly budget focused. If there are a couple of resignations or appointments that we have to get in, we will, but there'll be nothing else on the agenda but a budget. So it is Tuesday, April 21st at 6:30. Okay? Um, and then just going forward, just be correct if I and correct me if I'm wrong, you're
053getting but I believe in May, the meeting is on the fifth. It's the first Monday, not the second Monday. At least that's the way the calendar set up now, so we should check that and we can talk about it later. Okay? Yeah, okay? All right, thank you. So we will get the transportation survey dialed everyone around this table. Um, and we got the meeting for next week. Okay, any other questions on that stuff? All right. I am turning the microphone over to Ms. Chelsea DeFino. Pilot program. Hi, I'm Chelsea DeFino. I'm the assistant principal for grade 7 through 12. I'm also our plan pilot coordinator at the high school. So, I've presented a few times about the plan pilot program, and I just want to add um, some very exciting updates that we recently got.
054I shared a slide deck with everybody that has some examples of student projects um, and links. So, I'm not going to read through everything, but I am going to highlight the important stuff tonight. So, again to recap um, plan pilot is a three-year action research program that we are involved in. We are one of 23 schools in New York State who was selected to participate, and we are in year two of the program. Right now, we have a working group of teachers who are piloting project-based learning and performance-based um, assessment tasks in their classrooms. And we were recently approved by NYSED for regulatory flexibility for part 100 of the commissioner's regulations. That is the Regents exams as diploma requirements um, flexibility. So, just some acronyms that I'll be using tonight. There's a lot of P's
055and L's in there. So, PBL stands for project-based learning. That is the instructional practice these teachers are trying out. PPLA is performance-based learning assessments. Those are the assessment tasks the students are doing. And presentations of learning are how students are showcasing their work to the public, whether it be peers, staff members, or community. I have also linked in here the published case study on our work here that nice said published about 6 months ago, as well as the link to the plan pilot information. And this directly relates to New York Inspires and the portrait of a graduate. So, we're actually doing the action research to shape for the rest of the state what assessment looks like, what the future of learning looks like, and how students will be assessed on the portrait of a graduate
056competencies. And we're getting a chance to actually um shift the trajectory of what that looks like rather than be told what to do years down the line. So, it's it's very exciting work. So, the exciting exciting part. Um we were approved for regulatory flexibility. So, what that means is students in classes that are completing performance-based learning assessment tasks, we had to submit all of our proposed tasks to New York State. It went through a very arduous feedback process. We got a lot of um feedback from them that we had to change and tweak as we went to make sure that the projects were rigorous and aligned to standards, and it what they were approved. So, students who take the Regents exams for those classes, if they do not receive a passing score on the Regents
057exam, but receive a passing score on their PPLA project, they will get the um graduation requirement credit for that course without needing the passing score on a Regents. So, my example there is a 11th grade student takes the US History Regents. They get a 63. They're right on the border there, but their PBLA portfolio receives a score of a 75. They do not have to keep retaking US History until they pass. Their PBLA task will count as the graduation requirement. So, this is huge for our students. Some of these exams are real barriers to kids who struggle taking standardized tests or have anxiety around that. Um, and I think it's we're really going to see it make a difference for our kids. And currently the courses for which we are approved with the regulatory flexibility
058are Life Science Biology, Algebra 1, so those two exams apply to all of our ninth graders, US History, which is typically taken in 11th grade, and then Chemistry and Physics, which are typically taken in 10th or 11th grade. Um, I included in the presentation some student work samples. I'm not going to go through all of those, but you guys have the slides if you want to look through them. And this is also on the website now. Um, again, the courses participating, the ones with Regents exams attached are highlighted in blue. And we were approved for every exemption that we applied for. Another really exciting development that was completely student driven. We have been working with a mentor school, Thomas Edison High School in Queens. Um, they came to visit. They brought a group of their
059kids with them who actually work with teachers and help design curriculum. Our kids met their kids and were like, we want to do that here. So, we actually have students who are now attending our curriculum planning meetings with the teachers, um, and co-planning with the teachers. It's totally open to any students who want to participate. I sent out an email to everybody a couple weeks before and the kids join in. So, we had another meeting tonight. We had one 11th grader and two ninth graders come to planning and they've actually started their own after school club because they want to be more involved in this work. So, that was completely student driven, not a part of our plan at all, but it's been amazing to see. Um and then one thing they also want to
060do this year is have a showcase event open to the public in the evening so people can come in and start to see some of the work that they're doing. So, stay tuned for more communication out about when their assessments and presentations will be happening. We'll definitely be inviting you all to join and see some of those, but it's very very exciting work um and we're super happy that our students are getting this opportunity. Any questions? Yeah. In terms of the assessments, the PBLAs, are they happening automatically? So, do the students have to fail the Regents to then do the PBTA or are the PBLAs happening every student They're all doing them. Yep, in their classes right now. And they're They are counting as their final exam grade. So, the Regents grades aren't counting um
061in their grades at all. Every student in those courses will be doing a PBTA. I was going to ask the same question. Yeah, and it's been going on all year since the start of the year. Um thanks. Uh if a student doesn't have a successful PBTA during the school year, is that going to be available in the summer? I know the summer school is typically focused on the Regents, but Yeah, so part of this is instilling growth mindset, right? And the test is kind of a one and done thing and you don't pass it, okay, now you have to take that new test with different questions and hope for the best in 3 months. The whole point of shifting towards PBLA is giving the kids the opportunity to actually revise and learn from their mistakes.
062So, the goal is if they're not successful on the PBLA, they're getting feedback on everything they need to fix and what they need to work on and the chance to try again. Ms. DeFino, when some critics might say that this isn't as rigorous as the Regents, what would you say? >> Yes, I have that in a slide, too. I forgot it was the next slide. Thank you. Um, yeah, so there's a lot of misconceptions with PBLA that people have. One of them that I hear often is that, "Oh, we're just doing this to lower standards for kids so that more kids pass the Regents and it looks better or get the credit and it looks better for us." This is actually raising the bar, right? Because a typical standardized Regents exam we're just testing kids
063on their content knowledge. With PBLA, we are also assessing their speaking and listening, their critical thinking, their communication and collaboration, their professionalism, all of those attributes of our portrait of a graduate. So, we're actually adding additional, um, competencies that we are assessing students on. It's raising the bar. Another thing people wonder often is how this affects college, right? So, is this going to affect kids' transcripts or their ability to go to the college that they want. Um, we have some flexibility in how we display PBLA on our transcript. So, we can put students' Regents grades if they do really well. We can report it as an exemption if they do not pass the Regents. We can also put in there their PBLA scores and what that is. So, we do have local flexibility there. Um,
064and there is research documenting that students who do PBLA in high school are actually better prepared for college. They're more confident. They're able to speak to professors and advocate for themselves and communicate better um than students just prepared for a traditional exam. [clears throat] So, we want to give our students an edge above their peers rather than just maintaining status quo. Um and then with anything new, there always comes the fear of initiative fatigue and people feeling like this is just another new thing that we're trying. It could be different the next year. Um we've been doing PBLA in this district for a long time and in many departments, it's been going on for decades. We had a district-wide focus on project-based learning that started in 2022 before we even got into plan pilot. So,
065we are just continuing to build on a lot of the work that's already been happening here. Other questions? I I have one. And you probably already answered it, but So, students, they have to take the Regents or can they opt out of the Regents? They can't opt out of the Regents. They have to take the Regents no matter what and then they're doing this anyway. So, will it always be like that where you know, they'll they'll always have a PBLA to do in that specific class as well? >> So, for right now, yes. So, as part of ESSA, the Every Student Succeeds Act, we do have to have our students take the Regents exams. So, in order to qualify for the exemption, they have to show up to the test and attempt it. Um we
066have been granted this waiver for this school year and next school year. And then New York Inspires kicks in shortly after that. So, I'm hoping the plan pilot bridges the gap between now and then, but we do have this waiver for at least 2 years. Um and I did put out to New York State that we're hoping to expand into additional waivers next year as we continue to grow the program. What? Um hi. Uh I wanted to ask is there an effort to seek out students who may have passed the class but didn't pass the Regents to pull them into um ELA? Like to give them the option to do this? >> the option to do this. If they if they passed the class, they no longer have the class, so is there an option
067or is there a path for those students who still have have a failed Regents to participate in this if they're not actually sitting currently in the >> yeah. So, that's a really good question. It does The waiver does apply to kids who failed previously. We would probably have to get creative on a case-by-case basis with the counselors on what that looks like for those students cuz they're not in the class where they're doing the ELA the whole time, but I think it lends itself really well to things like summer school where instead of just reviewing random topics for 3 weeks, there's an actual task that students can be working towards. Right. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Dr. Warhaftig, Mr. Steiger. Thank you. Is this ours? Did you
068switch? This slide too. Okay. It's okay. I'm going to move forward right ahead. Okay, so this evening one of the things that we really want to lean into is student needs. Historically, every time there has been a budget conversation in this particular district, it almost feels oppressive because it's the same old reoccurring conversation of there is no money and we need to make cuts. So, where I want to center the conversation, especially after everything you have heard tonight from our Ricardi students taking leadership roles in the community, to us being a leader in New York State with the plan pilot, is thinking creatively, thinking with fiscal responsibility to our taxpayers, and putting the needs of the students first and foremost. Every decision we're going to do has to be centered around the students of Saugerties
069Central School District. So, tonight, some of the things I'm going to share were requests from board members, and then tonight Mr. Sider will share some of our expenditures and where we are at with our numbers. That transportation survey is going to influence a week from today what we present. So, everyone, please fill that out because it is really important information to us. So, again, we need to start planning for our future and not just this year. So, we need to stop taking away academic supports and we need to continue student-driven programming and we need to start designing programs with the portrait of a graduate at the center. So, in 2027, the Regents are going away. That's why Saugerties is ahead of the game with our plan pilot. So, it's so imperative that everything we do
070with our budget needs to be aligned with the portrait of a graduate, with our four pillars and our blueprint. So, again, as a healthy reminder, some of our current drivers for our budget are already predetermined, things like contractual salaries, things like benefit and health insurance, transportation, and special education is a huge driver. It is really important tonight that as we're talking about special education, it is our duty, every single child is has a right to an education, and some children have different needs and require different supports, which may or may not cost more. So, this was an ask and it was a really good ask. This is our district as a quick snapshot. We have 2,463 students. We have 613 students with disabilities today. Today, we have 69 English language learners. And we have 1,027
071students who are below the threshold of poverty. Uh that's free and reduced lunch is what gives us that data. And we have 445 staff, and half of that staff is certificated. So, one of the questions that happens again and again and again is why is our budget going up when our enrollment is going down? And as you can see in this graph, it is significantly going down. And I've shared this before publicly, but 8 years ago in my former role at an SCDN conference through a um it's a statewide group. We were told throughout all of New York State enrollment is going down everywhere. That's why regionally so many schools have consolidated schools or closed schools or restructured. What I want to remind everybody is declining enrollment does not translate into proportional budget reductions because
072the intensity and the complexity of students' needs and the resources required to meet them have increased. So, that's our situation here in Saugerties. Our enrollment is going down, but those 615 students with disabilities, they have needs and the cost of those needs are different. And it might be transportation, it might be a one-to-one aide. And the range is very extensive. So, here are some trends within enrollment. And [clears throat] you can see that in we've jumped way down to total students. And again this year, 2,466. The varying needs are run the gamut of everything from academic to we might need two teachers in a room for co-teaching. They may not even have an IEP. And I need to remind everybody of that. They might be a student who has a 504 plan and not necessarily
073an IEP. They might need occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech. Um one of the things that has happened is 5 years ago we were not doing our due diligence of assessing students in their literacy capacity. We were not attending to students with dyslexia. We did not even have reading specialists here in this district 5 years ago. That was a disservice to children. Today, we have five reading specialists. They have been trained in the Wilson reading program, which specializes in dyslexia. And if they haven't been trained and completed the program, we provide that training for them because we fundamentally believe that every single child has a human right to learn how to read. And that is essential. But consequently five reading specialists which we're not going to cut that that drives the cost up, right? And that's
074our job. If we're not doing teaching and learning, then why are we here? So, as you can see on the right we also have on the opposite side of academic needs, we have some pretty extreme needs with mental health. And sometimes our students need therapeutic settings. Sometimes they need hospitalization. Sometimes they need home teaching. All of these situations have a dollar amount associated with them. Also, one of the things that is very difficult to budget for are students who have displaced housing. Uh and that is very often referred to our McKinney-Vento grant. Social services may take one of our Solidarity families and place them in another district. Uh we are responsible for transporting them. So, it could be as far as the city of Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Cairo, and we have to transport them. And that
075is very hard to budget when we don't know where and how families are moving. We can project, and we always do, but it's not a finite number. Thank you, Dr. Worrall. So, I'm going to get started by going over the revenue side of the budget. Many of these slides are things that we've been talking about over the last two or three meetings, but it's important that we touch on them again. Um as these are the things that make up the revenue side of the budget. The one big part is the tax levy. Um so, this is our tax cap calculation for um upcoming school year. It starts with the current tax levy of the school year we're in. It's multiplied by the tax base growth, which is um set by New York State. This is
076how much new construction that they're seeing in our area. So, they allow for that into the calculation. Um the calculation also accounts for pilots, which are payment in lieu of taxes that the district is involved in. These are economic development projects. And it also includes the capital levy. This is for voter for um capital project payments on the bonds for those. So, the $22 million capital project that was voter approved, um the energy performance contract um project, and the BOCES capital project that we're a component district in as well. Um one important part of that calculation is the tax levy growth factor. So, this is a 2% Basically, it's a 2% cap on the calculation, so we take either the lower of 2% or the inflation rate. For this current school year that we're um
077budgeting for, the CPI projection from the New York State Comptroller's office is 2.63%, but we are limited to the lower of 2%, so we have to use 2% in that calculation. And this has been the last few years, school districts aren't immune to inflation. We've been dealing with um increased costs of supplies, electric, utilities as well. Um so, this is something that limits our way to raise revenue to make up for those increased expenditures. So, even though inflation's 2.63%, we're limited to just 2%. So, in the end, after that calculation, it comes out to a 3.15% increase in the tax levy, which is about 1.5 million. So, for our taxpayers, um it's important that we know like how does this affect their um town tax bill? So, in the So, last month I presented um
078on a $30,000 So, home in the town assessed at $300,000 is about $116 a year, or $10 a month. Um we also, for this board meeting, we projected out what it would look like for a home valued at 450,000. If you remember last month I had coffee cups, I forgot to bring them this um month, but it's $175 a year, or about $15 a month. So, if you drink store coffee, maybe about seven cups of store coffee, five of Duncan a month or three from Starbucks. While we're talking about the tax levy, I think it's important to talk about the tax levy limit. So, we're allowed to increase it to 3.5% 3.15%. Well, in last 5 years, we have raised it to the tax levy, but there were years in years past where we didn't
079raise it to the tax levy. So, in this current budget, because we didn't raise in previous years to the tax levy, we're missing out on what potentially could have been $734,000 in revenue in this budget. But, there's a compounding effect to that. So, since 2012 and 2013, for not going to the levy, it has a total impact on revenue for the district from that time to now of about $8.6 million. So, it's important as we budget, that we think about not just this year, but future years as well. Moving on to the state aid side of the budget, um state aid state budget was due April 1st. It is April 14th today. We still don't have a budget as of 5:00 today. Um last I knew, they passed a second the state passed a second
080extender for their budget um so, we still don't have firm figures of what to anticipate for next year, but I am going to go through what the governor has proposed. So, the biggest part of state aid is made up of foundation aid. And um that's about 18 million. This number here, we are getting the minimum due increase of 1% um as we are considered what the state considered a hold harmless district, which about 70% of districts in New York State are. Um what this does, it ensures us at least the same funding we received the foundation aid last year to the next year. This year she's including a 1% minimum increase for home full harmless districts, which for us is an increase of 180,000. The rest of the aids um they remain the same since
081last time we projected. Um just a reminder, transportation building aid, BOCES aid, the high cost aid, software aid, those are all um expense based aids. So, more money we spend possibly and more aid we would get. Um the excess cost aid, I've explained it before. Um those are just a snapshot in time that New York State takes. As more students, as they get um students entered into this system for tracking and counting students, those numbers could increase, but for now those are the numbers that the state has budgeted. Um I also think it's important that we talk about in these calculations, they're complicated New York State calculations, um but they also include a wealth ratio in those calculations. Um a factor of one would be um for the school district, for the communities, but one
082would be an average um wealth aid ratio. Anything above, of course, is a higher wealth ratio, anything under is a lower uh wealth ratio. So, in 2019-2020, our wealth ratio was a 0.835. Since then, as we've seen um more wealth move into the district, that number has increased to almost the state aid the state average, so we're now at a 0.992. So, as New York State calculates these things, it's showing more wealth moving into the district, which takes reliance off the state and passes it on to our local taxpayers. Any questions? Yes, Ms. Bello, where was that? Um Is this Okay, so just a couple questions. So just what you just said, does how does that drive with where you know, the wealth of the district is now getting to be New York State, but
083the a prior slide showed where 50% of our students are at the poverty level or below. So that that's I that I have a hard time wrapping my head around. So wealth ratio is just house communities houses in the ratio. That doesn't reflect necessarily the population of our students in the buildings. Um it's just um household incomes for the entire district, not just households attending the district. >> Okay, thank you. Um and then the other question I have is we're talking about public excess high cost aid and private excess cost aid going down and going down significantly sort of as a dollar value percentage. And we're talking about increasing of our special ed costs and our special So how do those two things If we have increasing costs within the special ed environment, why isn't
084our why is our excess high cost aid going down? So New York State projects that off of what's entered into their system at that time. They consider it they call it a snapshot at the time. Um so like if we went back to previous um So if we were at this time last year, like they were projecting those numbers lower. They're Again, it's something that's hard to predict. Um so those numbers of our budget those numbers from New York State, typically tend to be low um as it's hard to predict what the high cost students are going to be into the district. So We are we on the same page? Okay. So, it's also based on the students that we have enrolled out of the district and what we get back on those students. So,
085it's sort of yes, we're getting back money, but we if we bring them in, we're not paying out the money initially to get it back later. So, I think sometimes it's deceiving and hard to follow the the dollar the whole way through um if you're looking at how much you get back also based on, you know, we send a kid to BOCES, we get a certain amount back and if we send a kid to, let's say, wraparound, we get another percentage back. So, all of that is sort of folded into there as well and whether or not the student stays in that placement or comes back into district, it's it it is when you have like a certain number of students all coming back, then you're not paying out as much and you're not getting
086back as much, but you're also not paying as much up front. Does that kind of make sense a little even a little bit? So, ideally ideally for us, we'd rather have the students in our district. So, you just said Yes, if you have enough to substantiate like a classroom. So, I would say that if you have >> [clears throat] >> in my calculations when I'm looking at it, sometimes it's between like four and five students. Uh is that kind of threshold? If it's one or two students, then it doesn't cost to hire a TA and a teacher and to keep that classroom going and to have the OT needs and the PT needs and the speech needs met, sometimes it costs more than to send them out, but So, the fewer the out of district
087placements, the better. In theory, yes, but you're going to see that number go down then. Either either we'd rather have I say yes, but this number is not going to like they're two different places in the budget, so you're not going to ever see them together. So, you're going to keep seeing this number go down the more we bring in. Okay. Even though we're not You're not going to be the tuition rates in kind of my budget lines would then decrease and the salaries in the contracted salaries would increase. So, does it mean the money's being spent elsewhere? And this is going to come in I always want You always want to bring them back. You always want them to be with their community, so sometimes when we bring them back, it does cost us
088more because now we have to supply all that and we're not getting necessarily the high cost aid like we would if they were going out. So, when there's a lot of decisions that go into an individual service plan for the 613 kids that need and then probably the decision And is that something that's taken into account in camp? You cannot take that into account when you're sitting at a CSE meeting. You have to take into account what that individual student needs in front of you and the district is required to create the program if it doesn't exist. So, but what if there's two different solutions like one in the district and one out of the district? Can you then take cost into the equation if they're both equivalent outcomes? Essentially, no. It's really what's best
089for that student. It's really It can't be like monetary wise. We can't be talking about that in a meeting. Sometimes people will talk about that in a meeting saying like, "Oh, we don't have that." or um "We can't do that." And there's a certain degree 90% of the time I'm sitting at the table when these types of conversations are happening because I can see that we're going in that direction for a student. Um so that I'm able to kind of flow it appropriately if that makes sense, like while still keeping the student at the center of the decision. Um but a lot of and a lot of times, like Lisa said, we err on the side of keeping them in because that is the the environment in which they can be part of their community
090and they can be accessing maybe some other things like clubs or sports or things that are really hard for them to access if they're out of district. But we do have students where we're never going to be able to provide all that they need, but the specialist that they need, um they're going to have to go out of district. >> Right. So, we don't have a ton of discretion about this. It's it's really, you know, we're we're meeting the requirements of the state education system and it's not really discretionary is what I'm hearing in a lot of cases. Is that Is that fair? Okay. Um the one other question I had for Mr. Sager was I heard you say that the compounding effect of not going to the tax cap since basically 2012 [clears throat]
091is roughly $8 million. Does that mean that if we had gone to the tax cap every year since 2012, we would have $8 million more for one particular revenue year, or is that the cumulative effect of all of those years? It's the cumulative effect of all those years for just one year would be the past 735,000. Thank you very much. So, you take that along with the fact that there were years in which Saugerties did not have a capital project and both of those were areas in which the district lost revenue, money, opportunities in aid. Right. Can I just ask a question about um So, just to kind of clarify about the special ed program. So, keeping a student, even if it's even if it's less cost-effective by bringing those students back because we we
092have a program here we create program here. The fact that I mean we have to um place a student in the least restrictive environment, which is you know, a regulation, right? So, sometimes having them able to um having students able to access um their own community and clubs and things like that. Is that the least restrictive environment? Are those kinds of things what would be considered that? Not really. No. Okay. >> So, technically the least restrictive environment is like bell to bell. Um you're not talking about those other pieces, but when you're sitting at a CSE meeting, you're certainly talking about those other pieces, right? When you're sitting in front of a parent talking about their baby and what they need to be successful, um we're always talking about the whole picture and those things
093are important. Um but in terms of regulation-wise, that's not really They're talking about their education. I'm just thinking like like going to a private placement where it might be different, but rather than staying here, I mean that to me seems like that's least restrictive instead of going to a private placement and staying having a program right here in our own school. That No. Could be. It could be. Right. I guess it depends. I think by regulation-wise, the answer is no, but by like ethical and what's best for [clears throat] students and the committee that's to make that decision, I think um in my experience would say, yes, it's best for the student to be here with their peers as much as they possibly can. Okay. These are really good questions. We really appreciate them. Good.
094Then moving on to our next slide. So, this is our total projected revenue for the whole year combining the baked factors of the tax levy, the state aid, um some other things I want to highlight in there. Um leases, so we have leases at the Mount Marion building. Um it does show an or rather a decrease in that calculation. It's not an actual decrease in revenue. It's just the way um there's a new governing agency, so GASB 87 it's called. It's the governing AG agency standards board. They passed a new um regulation of the way we account for leases. Um so, some of that revenue shows up in the interest and earnings column now. So, I think of it kind of like buying a car. So, in leases, you have your principal and then in
095interest, you have the interest. So, it's accounted for differently, but we still have all the same leases at the Mount Marion building. Um some other ones in there. We have E-rate reimbursement. This is federal reimbursement meant to help pay for internet and technology. Um reimbursements and other miscellaneous revenue. This covers a couple different things including facility usage, um student fees, prior year expenses, sale of scrap. And um so, overall, our total revenue for this school year increases 2.8%. Um last year we appropriated 2.8 million in fund balance to get to that 79 million 876 to balance the budget. Any questions? Last year we appropriated So, of the 2.8 that we appropriated last year to balance the budget, did we touch it? So, that wouldn't be until the end of the year. But in previous years,
096we have not touched our reserves that we have had to appropriate. So, we have appropriated reserves in the years, but we have not touched them. We don't know where this year is going to land yet, but we did appropriate 2.8. But there's a possibility. Have we touched any of it yet? No. Not for this year. And our fiscal year goes through June 30th. So, we have basically two-ish months, 3 months left. Okay, so we're on a hopefully good track with that. No. And then this chart just shows how our revenue budget is made up. So, most of it consists Can you go back? Yes. So, the BOCES refund is exactly the same. Yes. So, it's always the last 2 years that's fallen right in that same range. Um, I believe this year was a little
097higher the year before. Well, >> the same in each year? No. That BOCES went up. This year it significantly went up. Um, last year to balance the budget we significant significantly cut a lot of our needed BOCES services, but in the end we even had an extra meeting with our colleagues at Ulster BOCES to question it. Um, because at one point you'll see that it goes up 15%. Is it this slide? Table 10. But really their budget is only going up 2% which you need to vote on next time. But our expenses to balance the budget again last year we cut a lot of services, but at the end of the day our students needed those services. So, we provided them anyway. We had to. Through BOCES or on our own? Through BOCES. I need
098to understand that a little better. Sure. I don't know where this would be embedded in these projected revenue line items, but what about grant funding? You know, like I think about the plan pilot where one of 23 districts in the state that's doing exceptional work. Is is there grant funding available >> No. Not for the plan pilot. No. Or other things? So, here's an example of where we did where we are using some grant funds is in Ronco's technology budget 88,000. Take that out and we can use smart bonds. Which is through New York State and we can use that. So, anywhere where we can use grants or funds like that, we absolutely are. Not to attack BOCES. Um that's not what I intend here. That 600,000 in 2025 and 26 is what percentage of
099our total BOCES expense and then the same thing in 26-27 where it stayed the same, but our cost went way up. What are we talking about? Is that 50% of what we pay for BOCES, is it? 25% of what we pay for BOCES? I can get you an exact I don't want to say figure out loud. I have a figure in mind, but I'll get you an exact figure for that. >> I'd rather have it down. Okay. All right. Can I ask a question about Medicaid? So, the Medicaid for last year was 300,000. Would be And then we we've increased the number of um special ed students. Does that mean that that would that Medicaid or is that just an estimate? >> Carol, I am so glad you brought this up because through Dr. Kaplan,
100this was one of the things we found recently that most districts are not No, I have a note. Well, somebody's on Oh. Okay. That's probably what he was talking about. Okay. No, it's not me. It was Christina that was walking and had unmuted her phone. I just fixed it on my phone. Probably somebody else. >> [laughter] >> It's all good. So, the Medicaid is a great example of how uh many school districts who don't take the time to recoup for Medicaid are missing out. And Dr. Kappler uh a few years ago with her support team realized this and brought more funds back in. Did you want to say something quickly? Yeah, so you know, we So, we we continue to bill all the time. Um and yes, we're getting new special ed. We have to
101get the consent from a parent to bill. Um that's been probably our hardest thing. We've sent out I mean, we've gotten a lot of them. Um but we have sent out probably four different times to a group um to get it. So, right now, I mean, we're hoping I'm pretty confident it'll stay the same as it was last year, but we'll have 6 months after the school year ends to keep trying to get more Um Diana Thompson works with me um getting scripts all the time and she just does it all every day. Um and we just keep submitting it. Um so, I I think we could get it up a little bit more. Um but it's just hit or miss on whether parents don't have to sign off to do it. That's too bad.
102You know, I mean Yeah. Okay. I mean, we try to word it that we're not looking to find out if you know, what you're making and all that. >> Right. >> but some people just don't think it's all that simple. >> Right. Yes. Yeah, I get that. Thank you. Are there other things like that? You know, that you know, over the years that we haven't sort of taken full financial advantage of? Other than certain what went on in 2012? I don't think anything like that on the revenue side. Um, we have missed out by not doing not continually doing capital projects. We've missed out on building aid. Um, should work should do work to our buildings that are needed um, to make them more compliant. So, like for like those things we've missed out on,
103but nothing that we can think of on the revenue side of it. Great. Then this next slide just shows how our revenues make up our budget. Um, so most of it is non-discretionary. So, the tax levy is the big number in our budget. Makes up almost 60% of the budget. A third of it is state aid. And then other things that we get interest earnings. Um, so last year we switched to NY Class, which is like a high-yield savings account for school districts. Um, funds are liquid. Um, so we're able to get money when we're when we need to pay the bills. We're able to do transfers what earn high interest rates. Um, so that has helped us with our interest earnings in previous years. And also So, that's 1.2% of the budget. And last
104year we had 3.5 of the percent of the budget was made up of fund balance and reserves. So, then we move into the expenditure side of the budget and where we are currently at with our projections. We'll go through here starting the first code here covers Board of Education, Central Administration that includes Superintendent's Office, um, our attorneys, business office, personnel. So, that has an increase so we're restoring positions. That has an increase of 18.65%. So, some people might think the Board of Education is paid. You Board of Education is not paid, but there are trainings associated and some legal advisement that is associated. And again, I just want to reiterate this. What's also in that top line are unfulfilled vacancies in Mr. Steiger's office and in central office. And we had two internal audits this
105year. And both of those different auditors said the biggest risk of our district right now is personnel. That we didn't have enough personnel in central office for things like curriculum and instruction and for things like human resources and Mr. Steiger did not have enough personnel in the business office. So, again, I want to be crystal clear that these aren't new positions. We are filling vacancies. And then moving down to the instruction side of the budget had about three 3.11% increase. We've talked a lot about special ed tonight. So, that projects for the special ed budget 4% but then we move down to that doesn't include the BOCES portion which is in the next line for BOCES services. This is where we're seeing a big increase as Dr. Warbeck um touched on earlier, an increase of
10615% over what was budgeted for last year. Part of that being as she said um programs that we needed to have that were trimmed out for last year, but services we needed to provide and are brought back for this upcoming year. What kind of the question with BOCES? I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead cuz um How much Can you talk to things on? How much of that 9.2 that's budgeted if you know would have been avoided if we didn't have to make the mandatory contributions into I-Park 87? Like how much did our costs incrementally go up through that mandate? And if you don't know that now, let's talk about it next week or we can find out interveningly. I'm just curious. We can find out for you. Because these are things that it's important for the
107public to understand. >> Sure. They're not discretionary to the district. You know, we were we were instructed that this was what we needed to contribute. But I think Jeff, to your question, if we're looking at this apples to apples, it was 600,000 on revenue that we saw with BOCES, right? And it's 9.2 million dollars on the expense side. Roughly? Yes, so that revenue is BOCES can't make any type of profit. So at the end of the year after they close their books, any additional revenues that they have, they return them in the prior they return them the following year to district their component districts. Okay. So, help me understand something else. Cuz I I've heard it three times now. Sorry, I got to talk all night. I'm sorry. Um so BOCES, so I've heard this
108said said three times and I'm I'm not getting it. How much of that 1.2 million because forget the 15% the 1.2 million is is what's in my head. >> [cough] >> We're saying we cut those expenses. We cut some of that stuff last year. And we're adding it back into the budget cuz I'll be honest with you, I don't remember going through a budget last year and saying we got to hack BOCES. Maybe you did. I don't remember that, especially that kind of amount. I can't remember yesterday, so So So how much of that is just services we put back? But then also BOCES simply increasing their their costs. So a couple of things. They're again, their increased costs for next year is only 2%. I have a video. I will share it with everybody.
109It's a 2-minute video of their budget. If you want to know the exact what was cut and then what we put back in, we can certainly work on that. That's why we met with Ulster BOCES again last week. Um did you want to give an example of a service that we needed and needed to do a budget amendment form for? So a lot of times Um I'd say like assistive tech is a big one for us. So every assistive technology. So every time a student needs an assistive technology evaluation in the past year, that's roughly like $3,000 for that evaluation, right? So we have to and then they get a service which is then provided by BOCES. So we do a budget amendment form for that evaluation, go over the evaluation at a meeting, we
110decide the services, and they come in and do that. Now we're hopeful this coming year we have in-house person that we trained up that I talked about at my last presentation, so that some of that will be reduced. Still students though that are going to other out-of-district placements will need that support. Additionally, each student they charge us um each student's tuition. If they have a one-to-one aid, then that's an additional charge. And then every service, depending on the frequency, is another charge through BOCES. That's at a certain rate. So, if those rates change, each piece of that child's rate changes. So, even if I have I just kind of did a rough count, it's about like maybe 28 students, and it didn't really change year-over-year um from last year to this year of the number
111of students we were sending, but each of those students, the cost to send them goes up. Um so, then you have to kind of put that into perspective of each of those individual, you know, they're not going to be the same price to send to BOCES each year. BOCES is going to increase a little bit for each one of those students. Are you saying 28 students go to BOCES? As um as special placements. Just for special placements. Right. >> $9 million for 28 >> Way more. Wait, this is not just for special education placements at BOCES. No. >> This is all of it. They don't piece it out and then number for you, but that's part of the number. It's special education, it's career and technical education, it's everything through instructional services. Like there were
112some co-sers that were taken away, and we absolutely need school improvement. That is the arm of the state that supports all the standards work. Um it's everything. Okay. Uh moving to transportation. Um we've been as we I'll be the third person to say it now tonight. A survey went out um that will help us with um route potentially help us with routing efficiency. So, if you got that, please do it. So, right now, as we look at the budget, we're seeing um a big increase in transportation costs, um $885,000 increase budget to budget. Um we've We about this previously with the influx of McKinney-Vento students uh um and the need to provide transportation to them. Um this is on par with what we've seen this year. We've had a lot of um students with needs
113all over within a 15-mi radius. Um Hudson, Carroll, Allenville. Um so we do have students that we're transporting from all corners of the county. Um so we are seeing a high increase in transportation costs. Um this >> Mr. State Holder, you have a question? Great. Do we get reimbursed at all from the state for those McKinney-Vento students? Is that part of revenue as well or It's It doesn't cover everything. Right. Right. Right. You know, yes, there is support, but it's the transportation costs that they're we're not getting enough to support all those costs. Okay. Okay. Um I just want to put in one plug for Mr. Sayer. He and I and everybody here, we have always been told that we needed to provide transportation for every single pupil, every single student in the district. And
114he in our research of going line by line and researching everything, we found out that the regulations have changed. We don't need to do that. So that is the reason why we're sending out the survey. Because that's I think up until earlier this year, we that's what we were told. Correct. >> could be a big Correct. So yes, that coupled with Yes. Insurance. Yeah, that is major. Yes, so about the survey. >> [laughter] >> If you're listening got the survey, please fill it out. It is very important as we're developing a budget. So let's hit the other couple of things. Let's hit property insurance. Yes, so prop Not to beat a dead horse on the transportation, but yes, if we're able to cut the transportation costs down, transportation isn't state aidable line item, so we
115will see in future years a reduction in state aid revenue if we bring down transportation costs. Is that Did I understand that correctly? >> Yes, so transportation is aid based so or expense based rather, so obviously if we were to spend less in transportation costs, we would get less aid in future budgets. Um but some of these bus routes are can run over $100,000, so if there's a possibility of trimming down and being more efficient, that's something that would be very wise for the district. Thank you. So again, fill it out. We have a large geographic area and we won't know unless you tell us, you know, if a bus is going into a neighborhood, you know, that bus needs to go into the neighborhood and it's not going to make a difference if it's
116one or two kids, but if we can cut two, that will make a difference, two buses. Then when I touch on another big line item in here is property insurance where we are seeing a large increase budget to budget. So in here I have budget it currently 1.2 million. Just going over this number in 23-24 our actual expenditures for our insurance were 267,000 based on claims we've had, insurance rates raising. 25-26 our insurance cost is just over 1 million dollars for this current school year. One thing to note of that we are self-insured for the first $200,000. So any claim we have come in the district is liable for the first $200,000 currently. So what we're doing to rectify this is we went out for an RFP a request for proposal for insurance brokers to
117explore our options to get this cost better under control for the district. This is obviously one of the large drivers we see here and Dr. Warbeck and I are looking into ways to bring this down to a more sustainable number for us. If I remember correctly um so it's 70 it's $455,000 higher now. But 3 years ago that number that 774 was what? $300,000? >> It probably even less than $200,000. >> about that number is a million dollars higher Correct. >> 3 years ago. Correct. In just And that is only because of how we are insured in the instance with that. Correct. And then another one I just want to touch on debt service and interfund transfers see an increase in there. Most of that being to fund the extended school year for the summer
118program for special ed students providing tuition and transportation for that. That line increased in about $260,000 overall. So when we add all these up budget to budget it's a increase of 5.2 million and 6 and 1/2% as we stand at the moment. This is just a pie chart just showing the breakdown of all those expenses. As we can see a large portion of that is employee benefits money spent on instruction as well. I don't have them grouped together, but between salaries and benefits, it makes up 68% of our budget. So, a lot of the budget, as we're doing these things, they're contractual. They're things that we don't have much control over. Um, health insurance rates went up high this year as well. So, those are all factors as we were budgeting through. This is a
119slide just to compare our historical budget amounts over previous years, um, between 2020 and 2023, the budget remained relatively flat. That's when we were getting the uh, American Rescue Plan, the COVID funds. Um, so the general fund budget remained relatively flat, but after those funds ended, this is where we see it start to increase. So, some of that increase was adding those positions back to the general fund budget as we saw the need the needs that our students had and um, the success. Um, so adding those positions back, also inflation, student needs, all driving our budget up. So, now that I've presented the revenues and expenditures, we get to our current difference between revenues and expenditures as we stand right now, 5. almost 5.9 million. Um, so this is a number that Dr. Warbeck and
120I are looking at very closely. As of last Friday, that number was about a million dollars higher, 6.9 million. So, we are going line by line. We are looking at every source of ways to bring that down. Which we will get into ways next of how we can balance the budget. So, there's a couple ways we can increase revenue, we can consider exceeding the tax cap, re-examine our revenue projections. Uh we could use fund balance and reserves um as we adjust to this change in landscape that we have. Um continue to optimize our interest earnings. Some things on the revenue side, there's also ways for us to decrease expenses. So, that would be reviewing staffing levels, future retirements, monitoring class sizes and sections. As we mentioned, review transportation routes. There's a survey out. If you
121received it, please take it. Very important. About Mr. Dr. Warback, who did the Who did the uh survey go to? Like It went to the primary contact for each student. Because we didn't want the data to be skewed by sending to both guardians. >> Primary contact was The primary contact. [clears throat] Email to them? There was a link that went out through Infinite Campus. We're going to send it out again tomorrow. And then again in the doing Friday. I know what Michelle's thinking. I'm the primary contact for my student and I didn't receive it. >> going to say Oh, okay. >> [laughter] >> And then as I mentioned, we also did that request for proposal for insurance broker. Um other ways that we are looking to decrease expenses. So, as we're doing this, we're looking
122to make strategic decisions that align to our blueprint for excellence, prioritizing um programs and services for our students. They're at the center of all the decisions we make. And as we plan this budget, yes, we're doing the budget for the 2026-2027 school year, but we've talked a lot about Dr. Warback and I have talked a lot about future budgets and what those will look like and what the needs will be in planning for that. So, I did mention earlier, we our the difference before was about 6.8 million. So, we did bring it down about a million. So, how did we do that? We went line by line, every single line item in the budget, we went through. We reduced supplies and materials where possible, overtime and extra pay opportunities where possible. We've met with our
123admin team to receive feedback for building expenditures and staffing. We Now that we have the D-Hague rate, we updated health insurance projections based on the 9.71% that the D-Hague, our health insurance plan, will be increasing. Uh we eliminated transportation routes that won't be needed for next year. And right now, we are reviewing the BOCES services and programs as well. I apologize for not knowing the answer to this question, but for all of our collective bargaining units, do any of those contracts come up for renegotiation in '26-'27, or are they all So, they're all settled right now. I believe STA is our teachers union is up at the end of 2027. I believe it is. Yes, technically they are, but in discussions about possibly extending it. But, I guess for my purposes, we know what those
124expenses look like for this school year because those CBAs are done for '26-'27. >> Correct. Yes. >> Okay. Thank you very much. And as we're going through this, some things to consider um to find some savings could be reducing armed security down to one in the um remove removing them from the elementary and increasing an SRO at the elementary level. Sure. So, let me just expand this. This is a possibility. So, for example, right now we use Atlas Security. So, what we are proposing and inviting you to think about is the safest school is a locked school and locked classrooms. That is the safest. So, if we reduce the armed security at the elementary, but add an additional SRO, so we will have two SROs, one for the elementary schools and one will remain here.
125It does save us. And with that, the other thing I'm proposing is keeping the one Atlas secondary uh security armed security for secondary. And as you can see, if we do that, it saves us $155,615. Um we talked earlier about using Smart Schools Bond Act to purchase um some of Rocco's um technology purchases, um about $88,000. Um we talked about the transportation survey opt-in and out potential savings and a reduction of bus routes. Um we also have um teacher uh teacher assistant retirement and one to two teacher retirements. Um there's possible attrition there. There's nothing final. Um there's a UPK nurse, which is not required. Um we have cameras in the budget for $35,000. Um this is something that has been moved into the budget, new for this year. We get building aid at a
126ratio of about 66% on these. Um but they are in the budget for this current year. Um there's a walkie-talkie contract for $28,000 that we have for admin walkie-talkies. Um field trips at a cost of $85,000, looking at club reductions, um which for clubs that aren't utilized as much with possible reductions in stipends, and modified sports at 75,000. Mr. Mike. Hi. Uh I just had a question on the instructional technology. Um can you please just expand on how that's a cost savings? So, we would be use So, we have funds available in the Smart Schools Bond Act, which is um a grant. Um so, we would use We'd utilize funds that are available there to buy some of the smart display boards um rather than purchase them them from our general fund budget. So, are
127the items in this table are not currently in the current budget? These are things that are They would be in the budget right now. These are already in the These are currently So, these are things to consider. That's an important thing that everybody takes. The These are not Yes, nothing options, right? Yes, nothing here is final. They're just potential possibilities, but just cuz they're on the list doesn't mean that anything on this list is being cut. So, is that Is that the field trips Is that field trips for everybody? That's like field trips K-12. Field trips and transportation for everybody. Yes. Right. So, 2 years ago they were taken out of the general fund, then we put them back in, and obviously uh the PTA, especially at the elementary level, they do a beautiful job
128of supplementing this because field trips do offer a wonderful experience for our young scholars to experience the world and have place-based learning. So, yes, all of these things are considerations of other things that could be cut. Yeah. And And this is not You don't even have to answer this. Um And this is not I know you guys have done amazing work over the last week and a half. But it always seems like we have these conversations, it's the same things I see on the slide. Right. Field trips and modified sports. Mhm. All right. If I go back 2 years ago, it was field trips and modified sports. That's what we looked at. Right. Yeah, it's you know, and morally do I agree with those things? Do we agree with those things? When I opened up
129today of the Sawyer experience, no. We need those things for the Sawyer experience. As a mother of a 12-year-old, I know the healthiest place for him to be is in modified sports. I believe every junior high kid, let's keep them busy. Let's keep them in clubs. We want them here, healthy, engaged, and active. Unfortunately, they do end up frequently on most school budgets, it is, you know, low-hanging fruit to grab first. And then the other question is, um and maybe it's great that we're just looking at different things. Um I've always had And one thing that's always popped up in these discussions is um what's mandated and not mandated. I haven't seen those two words all the time. Right, because so this is where we drew the line a little bit differently. Okay, so if
130to be clear, is kindergarten mandated? No. But are we going to put that up there? I said 3 months ago, it would be absolutely ridiculous and against our value if we even considered kindergarten. Okay. So, we just moved away from those two words of what's mandated and not be Okay, that's fair. Every other reason every budget freeze days I've seen from the school is always these two buckets and then they make sense. Well, we've talked a lot about what is mandated and what's not. We've talked about how there are a lot of unfunded mandates. >> Uh-huh. Um and that is true. Okay. It's fair. Any other questions folks around the table? Not right now. So, I was giving Christine just a minute. Mike turned on, right? No, I just um I I know nothing is
131set in stone, but I mean a couple years ago there was a big push for armed security in all of our buildings. Um and to step back and specifically in the outlying elementary schools who are kind of rural and getting to them in an emergency. Mhm. Um so, if you're going to increase an SRO and they're going to be deployed to the elementary like how do you envision that working to ensure the safety of our elementary schools and that was you know a big push two to three years to years ago. Right. It was a big push. Uh I believe it was Yeah, absolutely it wasn't in this community wanted it. There was a survey that went out and they wanted armed security. That's what this community said. Again, what the research will say is
132the safest school is a locked building, all exterior doors, and every classroom locked. So, in our facilities meeting just before this board meeting and also in our safety meeting, one of the things that we do here in Socrates is we do unannounced safety walks to remind our staff to lock their doors. Um and we also partner with Ulster BOCES to ensure that we're doing everything that we can. So, that is our we do those two mechanisms of locking. In terms of your question of how they will be deployed, the elementary SRO, they would rotate through the buildings. There would be a monitor at the door, like a monitor, much lower salary. We do have a Vader system that we use uh that came in under the supervision of another superintendent a few couple superintendents ago
133and every single guest needs to sign in, their license is taken. It's a very high-security way so that we know the people who are coming into our buildings. And we would continue to do that. And I guess this year, through the capital project, every building now has a secure vestibule where we didn't have that 2 years ago. >> Correct. Thank you for bringing that up. Yes. So, does that number take into account then with monitors that you would need to hire? That that savings, did it take into account So, either we may not need to hire them. We have a lot of part-time monitors, so maybe they would there's ways in which we could restructure the employment of our our current monitors. Um we may have to hire a few. We need to take a
134deep dive in that, but the cost of a monitor versus an armed security guard is much lower. I have one more question. Um would Atlas provide just one security guard? Would that have a contractual impact where we've had three or four of them? I think we dropped one last year possibly. I think out of Mount Marion. Um would they still consider us a client if we dropped to one? Well, we won't know unless we ask and we'll have that decision very quickly. And in the next slide, we're just looking at for this current school year that'll be ending June 30th, um retirements that are coming through. Um so, we have some elementary school teachers, secondary teachers, and one social worker, and a teacher assistant. Um so, when we talk about savings, um one thing is
135salary breakage. Which what that means is when a teacher retires and they're on a higher step possibly like a step 30 if they've been here 30 or more years and then we rehire for that position, um a new employee at a lower step, um we get that breakage, that salary savings, um from the new employee being on the lower step. So, right now, we know of 18 known retirements that'll be happening over the next two school years following this school year. Um Mr. Wilder's office is working very hard, the HR office is working very hard to um look at our staff ratio and try to determine our upcoming retirement predictions that we may have and projecting those as well as potential savings. Sorry, can I have a question? So, the breakage, I mean, you really,
136you know, is there a policy or a practice that you have an elementary teacher retiring who's probably on the top or close to top step. When you rehire, if you need to rehire that element, are we, you know, do we have a policy that we're not going to go above a step four? Like are we going to hire them at step one? Because that's the only way you're going to actually see the savings and if you do have significant savings on the you know, high step versus low step. Yeah, I I understand what you're saying. So typically what Mr. Steiger does is budget like step seven. At the end of the day we want the best teacher we possibly can and we want to recruit heavily so we get good quality people but the reality
137is yes, we're going for those early career teachers at a lower salary and then Mr. Steiger budgets not a step one so we're caught off guard but like a step seven so it balances out. Thank you. And also just to piggyback off that a little bit, it's also savings in social security and TRS. We contribute so we're projecting 8.24% we next year for TRS contribution rate so we contribute 8.24% towards the salary so any savings in salary is also savings in retirement system cost and social security cost as well that we contribute towards. I want to give an update on our reserves. These are like our rainy day funds for our school district. So we have a couple different reserves, just going to touch on the first few first, the employee retirement system reserves. So
138this reserve can be used to pay towards the employer contribution towards employees benefits or retirement. So for the ERS system we're projecting that cost to be about 1.1 million for the 2026-2027 school year. Um we contribute 17.6% of salary to for each ERS employee to that fund. Um so projecting 1.1 million for next year, that's about 3 years of expenses there. So we do have healthy um reserves in the employee retirement reserve. Um there's also we have one for the ERS system that's for our non-instructional staff. We also have a teacher retirement system. Those are for our instructional staff, which has about 2.3 million in there. Again, I said it before, but we um are required to contribute the employer contribution rate 8.2 24% of salary for each employee in that system. We are required
139to contribute that rate towards. Um there's also 4.7 million in the capital reserve. Um it's important to note that that reserve can't be used to balance the budget. It can only be used for capital projects. Um to use that reserve it requires voter approval. Um so that one's much more restricted and isn't something that we'd be able to look at for balancing a budget. And then the tax certiorari reserve. Um So this reserve we use for when people dispute their um tax bills and we get um a court ruling that their taxes are being their assessments being reduced and they're owed um taxes a reduction in their taxes. So we use that tax certiorari reserve to offset those costs as they arise. Questions on the reserves? Yes, Ms. Bellrose. Um so I understand the capital
140reserve we can't use that to balance our budget. But also understanding that that capital reserve had a 10-year life that expires in 2027 and needs voter approval to be used. We're coming up on the 26-27 school year. Does there need to be something within our budget vote to release that reserve for like I you know we haven't talked about a capital project that's on the table, but does that have to be done now in the May vote or to use like how how is that going to work? That's my question. We're not into that cycle yet. Yes, so we wouldn't have to do that for this upcoming vote now. Okay. No. We're we're still finishing up a very large capital project. But that reserve had a a shelf life of 10 years, which expires in
141June 30, 2027. >> end of next year, right? >> So does that mean we have to use it by June 30, 2027 or do we have to vote by June 30, 2027 to release it potentially the following year? I I guess I'm just trying to understand because I don't want to leave that money on the table. I don't want to lose that money. So, I just want to [clears throat] understand that. So, I don't have the exact answer for you. Um it doesn't change anything for this we wouldn't lose that money. That's um the district's money. Um so, there's no chance of losing the money. Um I can find out if we'll need show it So, we are supposed to use it by this or June of 2027. I can find out from our legal
142team if we have to do a resolution if we don't use it by then to extend it. Um I can find out next steps for that. Um so, just some key takeaways as we wrap this up. Um It's a couple things. Expenditures are rising faster than revenues as we saw. Steady growth is minimal and isn't keeping pace with inflation. Um much of our budget is driven by contractual and mandated costs, non-discretionary things that are out of our control. But as we build this budget, we want to be fiscally responsible to our community, our taxpayers, as we make strategic decisions that are are going to be required not just for now, but for future for our future budgets, for our future students. Um it's going to require prioritizing what's most important for our students. So, I
143heard someone recently say, "Where is Swagerty's five-year plan?" And we were last year on a trajectory with bringing in Dr. Tim's of really developing that. And obviously with transition in leadership and vacancies at um central office, we are still thinking about it. And we still need to plan for five years. So, some of the things I want to reiterate in for Swagerty's, we can't go below the tax cap. We're not doing any student any favors at all. And as Mr. Steiger said, we're trying to play catch-up now of years missed out and where we did leave $8 million on the table. So, in the next couple of years, this year is super tight and challenging, but I do see a light at the end of the tunnel because we are going to have a lot
144of retirements and we can leverage using attrition where and when viable. Um and there are like Mr. Steiger said, there are known retirements. We look at the age of staff and the years that they have and we will be having a lot of retirements coming up in the secondary. The other things is transportation. Uh our efficiency, looking at that. In the next 5 years, we need to look at our elementary schools again. These conversations are not new. When districts are really having fiscal constraints, very often they look at enrollment, they look at where they can close a building, they look at restructuring. Solvay has done a lot of those things. What's left is really looking at our elementary. Is there a different way in which we might use our three elementary schools? Um and if
145we did that, we might have better supports for co-teaching uh through retirement attrition of elementary teachers. We need to continue ensuring that our Medicaid billing is fully happening. Uh and we need to continually make sure we have those capital projects happening so that we are receiving the aid. Our buildings are old, um just like every other public school, there's constant improvements that are needed. And ideally, there is other creative things that we can think about. So, what if we had our own fleet of Suburbans for our McKinney-Vento students that are out of district? That potentially could save the district some money instead of contracting out. So, thinking about things like that, it's not too soon, and we need to keep pushing forward and thinking about the future instead of getting stuck in the cycle of
146being underwater fiscally. So, just a healthy reminder, being a board member is a fantastic civic duty to your community. It's a great It's a great group of people. And if you are interested, you can at this point on Monday, April 20th, the board petitions and first candidate expenditure report are due on or before that. We're going to come together on Tuesday, April 21st. Um And then on May 15th, the second candidate expenditure report is due. And on May 19th, board member and budget proposition vote. That is our vote, and I hope everybody comes out and votes. If all of our employees come out and vote who live and work in Harbor, we will be in a very healthy place. So, if you live and work in Sag Harbor, please come out and vote. So, that
147was a lot. And one of the things I would like to ask the board to consider is how we might use some of those reserves. Any other questions? Thank you so much for your time. All right. Thank you. Okay, moving on to L, personnel, instructional, and non-instructional. Let me break some of that Um We have an L1 and L2, which are resignations and leaves of absence. So, can I have a motion um to accept L1 and L2 A through D. Second. Second. Seconded by Mr. Meyer. Any questions on any of those? All those in favor? I. All right. Next up is L3, which is appointments. Um and before we um before we vote on it, if um Mr. Wilder, our new assistant superintendent of HR and instructional leadership, could you go through those appointments for
148us? Yes, sir. All right. So, we are excited about the new team members that are joining us here at Sagamore Elementary School because as we know that every team member that joins us is contributing to our mission. So, I'd like to say that we would like to welcome the appointment of Kimberly Johnson. Uh she is going to be joining us as Riccardi secretary, and she comes with a strong business background, exceptional systems-oriented thinking, and uh has the attention to detail that we uh need very dearly. She'll be a welcoming, positive contributor right away. Next up, we have Pedro Wick. We're excited to welcome him as our new lunch monitor to the team, and we appreciate the positive energy and care that he is going to be bringing to supporting our students each and every day.
149Uh in addition, Christina Tucker is going to be appointed. Um she's going to be a lunch monitor at Cahill Elementary, and she brings a strong sense of responsibility, attentiveness, and care for student well-being. She is also a parent with children currently in the district. And so, we welcome each of them to the Sagamore Elementary team. All right. Thank you. Um so, >> Can I have a motion to accept L3A through G? So moved. By Ms. Kelder. Seconded by by Ms. Dellarosa. Any questions on those? All those in favor? Aye. All right. Thank you, Steve. All right. Business office recommendations, uh we have M1 through 6, which is our monthly treasurer's report, our revenue and appropriations, claims audit, cooperative bidding blanket, budget transfer, and the 503 thousand. Okay. And the single audit report. Can I have
150a motion for items M1 through 6? By Ms. Gramaglia. Seconded by Ms. Dellarosa. Any questions? No, I'll just um I'm going to just uh mention number six. Um it's a single audit report. That's uh just something that the auditors do in addition to the financial statement audit. They look at the compliance of our um federal spending, um our grant spending. So, they go through um that to make sure they're in compliance with how that money's being spent. And that's um just an add-on that they need as a requirement of the school district audit. And that was um issued in in March. So. All right, perfect. Any other questions or statements on that? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. All right. Board action items, we have N1 through 13. N1 through CSA, our 504, the three
151uh second readings of policies that Dr. Haas mentioned before, and the rescission of an appointment, um start date amendment, and then the final uh the change order on the um Cahill fire alarm. All right. Can I have a motion for items N1 through 13? So moved. All right, seconded by Mr. Leary, seconded by Mr. Meyer. Any questions on any of those? All those in favor? Aye. All right. Christine, anything on audit? Nothing. Nothing on audit. Michelle, facilities. Everybody just stay tuned. We're going to be having meetings about the party easement. Um the engineering work is ongoing with that. We hopefully going to be making a decision on taking custody of the boat granted land um in the next couple of months. Uh we're talking about Matt Marion and uh what to do with that. So
152please pay attention to facilities meetings. And those aren't open to the public. Fantastic. Okay. Second public recognition, anybody in the audience? Um but I think we're good. No, we're good. Okay. All right. We are going to propose um motion to move into executive session. By Ms. Kelder, seconded by Mr. Wells. Any questions? Okay. When we reconvene um we will not be voting on anything. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. >> Mhm. >> By Mr. Wells, by Mr. Calder. Any questions? Okay. >> [clears throat] >> Motion, uh yeah, motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. By Miss Erezary first, Mr. Wells second. Any questions? All those in favor? Aye. Aye.