Saugerties Board of Education Meeting 4/8/2025

001All right. Good evening everybody. Um accept a motion um to reconvene back to public session. Mr. Wells second discussion. All those in favor we have approval of minutes up from our March 11th meeting. Motion to accept Miss Ker seconded Rosa. All those in favor approval of minutes for March 24th. Motion to accept Mr. Wells. Second. All right. Any discussion? All those in favor? All right. Um, moving to our public recognition section of the agenda. So, if anybody in the public would like to address the board now, now is the time to do it. Please say your name. My name is Aubrey. My address is 312. Um I'm here ultimately to speak about it. Um so I'm here ultimately to speak about the special ed population and mental health issues. But I'm actually not here to

002do that tonight because I know that's a longer conversation. Tonight, I'm here to take the first step. For the foreseeable future, I plan to send as many everybody on the board um and our our administration um emails summarizing what I feel my family's experiences are and the obstacles that we have living in the district. The intention behind these emails is just to simply say what I need to say. Um because I feel like I'm not saying it or I'm not saying it the right way and it's making me sick. Um I'm anxious. My stomach hurts all the time. So, what I I hope to do is just get this off my chest and and um and maybe do something. Um when you see massage by Aubryol.com, you'll see that that's my email and you'll see

003in the the subject summary and a number. You do not have the emotional space to read this. I invite you to hit delete and I celebrate that because I know sometimes my cup is not full enough or it's empty and I can't take anymore. So if you can't take anymore, I'm good with that. I I get I'm here for that. So tonight I'm here so you have a clear image of who I am and what I look like. I know a lot of you. Our kids went to school together. We're friends. Whatever. We know each other. Some, but not everybody. Um, tonight I'm here to let you know what you can expect in those emails from me. Right off the bat, I want to say I'm going to try my hardest to respect the rules.

004And I know right now you like I know the rules like you're not me directly. So I know like nobody's going to talk back to me and you'll say stop later on. I I've been to board meetings many times so I know how that goes. So I know a lot of the rules and I'm a registered nurse and a licensed massage therapist. So I clearly and deeply understand confidentiality. So I am going to try my best with that. And I I do try to read the I all the stuff you sent home. I really kind of try to read when I can. And I'm not telling you sometimes. I just glance because I do just sometimes um and and if I break a rule, correct me right away. I I do that's not my mission

005here. I don't want to break any rules. I want to play by rules. So, please correct me. I also am going to respect your because I get it. I can be longwinded. I'm going to try to see these sites. We all We all don't have time. The second thing you can expect always is honesty. A redacted honesty because I don't want to name names. I I actually don't even want to tell you who the people are. I just want you to know what's happening because I feel like if you knew it, you would be like, "Oh, we have to change that." But maybe not. I don't know. I'm not even going to put that there. I'm going to put any narratives to it, but I'm also going to be honest with myself. I'm going to

006be honest about my intentions when I write something. And I'm going to be honest with myself my my motives. If my motives are I'm going to delete my own. So you have that promise from me. The third thing you can always expect from me is accountability. I will not make any promises I can't keep. If I apologize to you, know I really mean it. Know that I'm going to go back home, think about what I did, figure out why, and try not to do it again. So when I'm saying I'm sorry to you, I really want to learn from what I don't want. The last thing, the best thing I have zero expectations. None. Zero. I don't expect to change anything. I don't expect if it happens, I'm happy. I'm here for it. I'm right

007there. But if it doesn't, I'm good with that, too, because I just need to do this and I need to show my kids there's another way of doing things. And sometimes it's just writing what you feel, sending it out to the universe and letting your community come back to you. So, I'm trying to teach them that. So, the other thing is is that because I have a specialized kid, routine is not just something that's good. something I have to do. So unfortunately I can't stay for the whole board meeting but I will watch it on YouTube. So I think everyone administration board members all you feel like you are trying your hardest and do feel like you're doing your best and so am I. Thank you for your time. Thank you. You're welcome. Anybody else

008audience? You can sit if you want. My name is Lanny Walter. I live at 301. I was member 1990. I'm here because uh among the many things you hear from the federal government is that they are planning to cut title one funding to public education and I would like to learn what the share at some All right. Anybody else in the Okay, moving on in our agenda. Wait for our student. All right. So, we're going to skip over the student report when Miss Mills returns. We'll have her up. So, we're going to move on to um Miss Jeannie Churchill, our director of special education, who has a um special ed update for us. I don't feel like the mic set. I'm hoping it's going to work for us, too. Excellent. So, good evening. I'm Jamie

009Church. I'm the director of special education, and this is kind of a brief update for you guys uh for the school year. First off, we're going to start with um some follow-ups. As a lot of you may know, I began my journey here in Socrates as the director at the beginning of last school year, and we took a deep dive into a special education audit so that we could get ourselves going in the right direction. a lot of the things that were going on that we needed to fix to be in compliance. So, this is a little bit of a followup to that. You'll see the different areas that were addressed in the audit. And here's just some highlights of things that we're continuing this school year. We did do a special education handbook this

010summer, which is something that we're all have access to on our special ed landing page, which is something new that came out of communication necessities for our department. Um, the next section there how we have building meetings for each of our buildings, including our building principles, our lead teachers, um, Lisa Tapler, our director of PPS, and, uh, let's see, our school psychologists, we meet at least once a year to talk about the needs of the building and what our plan is moving forward. We do meet aside from that, but we have one dedicated specific meeting to talk about what the building might need for the following year. We are continuing our vertical special class program meetings. Those will happen at the in the spring after we see the profiles that are being recommended for the

011case. Um we've asked for additional support from RCPC to build some of our programs, our alternative learning program support from RCPC. So this year we got an additional uh social worker who has actually started. I believe updated the board that individual hadn't. They were approved that they had started and she has started now. It's been a really wonderful and we're going to continue to ask them for more support for our junior high uh mental health supports for student needs. Obviously, our students still continue to have pretty significant mental health support needs and we're continuing to look into those items. There will be a full kind of detailed update this Friday from our action plan for the special ed report. So, you'll see all of that as well. Churchill, can you do me a favor because

012there's a lot of acronyms and there may well know around this table. Just give me a 20 second what RC PC is just so people who are listening understand what that is. Rocklin Children's Psychiatric Center. So they um do the mental health support that is in partnership with our alternative learning program at So next we're just going to to some professional development and training highlights. We did this year engage in a targeted skills group for ELA, which I'll talk actually more about at the end, so I'll leave it at that. And we did actually train an additional uh individual in handling with care, who's actually our assistant principal over at K Health, which has been really supportive. Um, that program is the program that provides some deescalation training as the primary focus, but then restraints

013as needed to keep children and faculty. Let's So, department communication always something that's really important. We have lead teacher meetings every month. Um, we have our special education district plan that you all approved in December. Thank you very much. I will continue to state that each year. And then this year, in addition to that, um, I've held weekly meetings with our new department chair so that we can stay in communication at the junior high. Next, our administrative structure. So, I decided to update this so that you all had a little bit better vision of how the special education department works because I could not do my job without the support of all of the amazing people that work in special ed. So, you'll see on this chart, I'm not going to go through the entire

014thing, but you can see how it all kind of comes together as Dr. Kappler is the director of PPS. myself, our building principles are involved in special ed services, including chairing their own 504 meetings and school psychologists chairing meetings and being leaders in their buildings as well as the lead teachers. Uh some of the responsibilities that fall under the director of PPS, you can see here these are very similar to the year before. However, this year she has taken on chairing CPSC meetings. So, she has taken on that additional 58 meetings so far this year, but there will be a ton more as they transition into preschool services. She also does manifestation meetings. This is myself and my responsibilities. Um, they they expand kind of far. This is a simple way of putting it. Um,

015CPSC in the spirit of uh defining acronyms um is a committee on preschool special education office functions. So um she works one of the individuals that works for the kind of office pieces in my office and I oversee those pieces while Lisa does meetings. I do chair the committee on special education for initials program reviews annuals anything increasing services as advocates might be latigious uh something where it needs a little bit more mediation. That's something I'm doing. I'm also overseeing our budget including uh our grant the grant 6169 falls under special ed. We'll get more into that in the budget presentations later. I do the teacher meetings maintaining and updating all of our plans, our procedures, our handbooks, our landing pages and then meetings 148 to date. So there'll be a ton more before the

016school year is out. This is the for school psychologists as their chair people. This is highlighted in that audit just keeping in mind the case load of individuals who are school psychologist and their evaluations as well as their student support. Yeah, I do. So, this is sort of data in a vacuum. Is there any number on here we should be paying attention to? Is there something out of whack? Is there something I like to see it even? So, that's what I'm trying to look at. So, You might notice that the total evaluations. So I don't want one uh person to be doing too many evaluations more than another. Um I might ask someone to support if that were the case. Um that's kind of what I'm looking at there and to make sure that I

017was able to decrease the number of annuals that they chair as much as possible because that was one of the goals that I took over chairing meetings for. Um and then as you'll note here help with their FBA and BIPS that takes a lot of time and energy and psychologist is doing a lot of that above everyone else. Um, this is a slide that I included because it's often a question that uh is asked. So on our report card, if you were to look up Soy Central School District on the the report card, you're going to see the information that's in this first line CSC in district bed. It's going to tell you that our current percentage or when it gets published for next year is this 19.37%. That doesn't address the students that go

018to out of district placements and it um doesn't include the students that we serve that are parentally placed in our Woodstock based school and middle way schools. So I kind of created my own number to give you kind of an idea of the total number of students we're really serving here in our special ed department and what percentage that is. We're really more on this 22.78%. That's not really the number the state's going to look at for us, but it is something to consider because it is a very high percentage. Uh, additionally, I just wanted to point out I wrote down over here that we had 205 students transfer into SARS this year, 39 of them at So, we're seeing a huge number of students who are classified coming into we're doing something right and

019they want to come hang out with us in special ed. Um, but it does tax our our system. So when you say parentally placed, does that mean like they their parents took them to Woodstock Day and they're there and they're special students? Yes. So parents can choose that's how they get to Woodstock Day School or middle. they have to pay to go to that school, but they can still be tested and evaluated. But we don't offer anything there above and beyond like a resource room if they need more support, they come back into our Okay. All right. Thank you. speechologist there would and then you'll see the preschool numbers as well which kind of fluctuates and you'll see I think it increase towards the end of year that number kind of dumps out at a

020certain point of the year because three year olds are or foury olds are moving to 5y olds and the threey olds are moving from from early intervention and classification numbers and I actually think that might be a couple more students this year. Yeah. So I would say a lot of our other 18% some of them are increasing up to And then uh this is a slide I also included because it's often a question that the board wants to know is about graduation rates for special education students. So you'll see here the colors um kind of highlight the cohort year, right? So in 2017 our seniors who graduated are right here. That's about 84%. Our special ed population was as about 65% that graduated. And then the next year, a couple more special ed students that

021were originally in this cohort graduated. So we increased to 70%. And then uh we kind of stayed stagnant the following year for that that cohort. So that's kind of how the cohorts travel if that makes sense to you. Um and so then if you're kind of comparing then the next uh the next kind of cohort. So this would have been from 2023 they would have graduated and included obviously the whole chart for everything. You can kind of look at it later yourselves. Um but that's kind of the explanation of that. So then in 2024 this past school year we had 27 students with disabilities graduate out of 36 and that graduation rate was about 75%. less thaneneral. All right, this is just copy and past. So all of the programs that we offer this school

022year. I'm going to highlight on this next slide the changes that we're making for this upcoming school year. So you'll see over on this side integrated co- teaching. I go back to the old slide. This year we have integrated co- teaching starting in second grade. Second to fourth grade it's just ELA and math and fifth and sixth grade it's for the whole day. So what we're deciding to do for next school year based on some team meetings that we had and talking about early intervention and the resources that we are have available to us given our budget constraint. Um, we're deciding to move to a model where we have co-eing for ELA and math K through six all day. The fun, science, and social studies blocks will be supported with teaching assistance, but this way

023we can provide a little bit more time with the special ed teacher earlier on that we hopefully intervene and maybe need less support later on as students. Um, additionally here, you'll see that we don't have program which is our academic behavior communication academy at the junior high but due to the need of the sixth graders moving up to seventh grade got about four five students um that would have to be placed in out of district placement um if they didn't have this program so we are going to add this program in for next school year um but that will be it will not be an additional person we're how we're using our special ed just a list of places we have students that are at the district and the number of students our therapeutic transition

024program is not a special ed program but it's something that we use a lot of so just to watch the numbers you'll see that just at this point in the school year we're at 9 and four is the short-term therapeutic transition program and long-term therapeutic transition program. And then last, I just wanted to highlight some of the things that we're doing to align with the blueprint that we've uh really taken a deep dive into school district. So, academic excellence, we are doing walkthroughs and professional development with Rory. He's a systems change facilitator for the Mid Hudson Regional Partnership Center. He's come in and done some professional development for us and we've done some walkroughs with um some of our specializing how we're using teaching, how we're using vocabulary instruction and trying to increase the rigor

025for specialist students, family and community engagement. Uh we are trying as we as we might to get a parent counseling and training uh initiative together. Um it's falling a little bit flat each year, but we are still working on it. So, it's something that's highlighted. We also did do our sixth grade transition night this year, which was a success. We had several families come in and meet with the special ed teachers. Professional culture. Um we are going to offer co-e training for our new teaching team. So, as you notice with those changes, we are going to have new teaching teams that are working with different teachers next year. We want to they're prepared to do so. Um, handle with care. We've talked a bit about um kind of how we're using that and doing some

026concentrated training on limit setting and some other initiatives that came up. Um, we're constantly trying to use the new evaluations we adopted that phological processing what it was that I'm not going to remember exactly. Don't quote me on that. Um, but to try to identify which students might need special class reading. Um, looking at the WJ5, which is a new test that does academics and scores for the postcoid students. So, that's very exciting. The three similar thing that's looking at gross motor skills continuing our team meetings and the Sawyer experience. We're partnering you'll see on your agenda today quest who is an agency that's looking to do some job coaching and training for students. They get them internships and students who have a diagnosis. It be specialist students or even just with a diagnosis that

027looking to partner with outside agencies and help us kind of work towards that goal that we set our blueprint. And oh, and lastly to kind of continue with the Sawyer experience, our transition meetings with the teachers where the teachers get to the sixth grade teachers get to sit with the seventh grade teachers and really talk about the students so that we can make sure we get a nice fit for them when they transition up so they're the most questions All right. Thank you. I thought you were just going to take um so our next up is our student representative report. Um and just for people who don't know, Miss Mars is our student representative. She's a senior here and it's nice that we this program that we have with representatives on board students is next

028year the state is actually mandating that all school districts have it so I turn to you okay thank you can you hear me yes for at the elementary school level all elementary students are doing their best work on the New York State ELA assessment this week elementary principles are very proud of their students for their knowledge and doing their best. At Mor Elementary School, students had their drama club production of Annie and their sixth grade lip. Both were great showcases of student talent. Kill Got Talent was Friday, April 4th, and we are in final rehearsals for the spring concert, which is Wednesday night, April 9th. At the high school level, as you may already know, students enrolled computer Sorry. The students enrolled in computer video production and broadcast journalism have been collaborating with Elma Magnetics

029to develop a video about the company. We just not we just we were just notified last night that the video created by SHs students has been posted to the Elena website. If you would like to view the video, please visit elamagnetics.com. Thank you to all that made this happen. Miss Molino staff work would like to thank parents and guardians and students that attended parent teacher conference night in March. Mom trial took took place March 19th in the high school media center. Great job to all students that participated. The spring pops concert was held on March 7th. It was a great performance by allen. And our seniors leave for their Disney trip this Friday and we wish them Upcoming events and dates. National Honor Society induction ceremony is Thursday, April 4th at 7, no, April 10th,

030sorry, 7:30 p.m. We have a blood drive on April 23rd in the senior high gym. And AP testing starts May 5th and goes till May 16th. I don't know. The New York State nicely. Okay, I'm sorry. Testing also begins April 14th and runs through May 23rd. I'm sorry about that. Any students that will be a junior or senior next school year that has been in the district for a minimum of one year and is interested in serving as a 2025 to 2026 student board of education representative, please contact Miss as soon as possible. The application deadline is April 25th and Junior High New York State assessments began today. That's all I have for you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. Superintendent report budget presentation. Good evening everybody. Uh I know that when I

031get going I just speak fast. So if you slow down just yell me. All right. So today we're going to talk about uh budget information. So before we get going on numbers wise just kind of an overview right. petitions are due on or before April 21st. April 21st, there is no school, but our office will be open to drop those off. April 22nd, which is a Tuesday, uh the board will set the the budget for vote public hearing for public vote. We got on May 6th, May 20th will be the vote and then we'll count the affidavit and budget results on the 27th. Can I interrupt you for one second? I just want on the on the April 21st. Yes. Um so the last or so there's been a lot of activity and communication around

032our district. Um, this is the time like if people really want emails are wonderful, conversations are wonderful. If anybody would like to run for the board, get your petition. How many petitions are we having right now? Zero. Zero. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all I want. All right. So, a little bit of background, right? So, in a school district, we've got several budgets that operate. the general fund or the A code is what gets voted out by the public. Okay. We also have the the school sorry school food service fund C special a fund that gets we have yearly applications for that that goes to Mr. Walter's question before which I'll talk about the capital project uh fund so that that's approved through voting for capital project and then our debt service. So in

033our special aid fund, right, this is not what the voters vote on. It's just a little bit of background information. All right, we have special aid through through federal funding. So our idea funding for special education, we have title one, title two, and title four. We also do receive some title three funds, but they float through also. So when the question comes up about federal funding in the future right here you see that this current school year allocation is roughly like $1.3 million. All right. So that's kind of the amount in question about whether we'll get it or if it will be passed to the states and if there'll be a different formula or so forth. But this is the amount of federal funding that we get. This once again does not touch our general

034budget. All right. This does support some of our efforts in terms of PD staff and so forth. But this is not what the booers vote on. This is additional money that we use and we plan for uh in the special aid fund is also the funding that we get for universal prek. So, as you've heard me say multiple times before, right, we do get we do get a UPK grant through New York State. We get about $5,800 per student. We get the money based on the actual enrollment as of day or as as the date in March. That's the money that we get for our students. We then pay our provider with that money for that. So once again, this is not does not affect the general aid just background information additional in the past.

035We did have the federal sorry you know kind of just going back to what you were saying about the special later this is not the general fund but if the funding from the federal government is impacted and as you say we use these funds to support our program would we need to consider putting additional $1.3 million into our budget to support any of this right so if we want to maintain the stuff that we have which is some of the professional development that we would need to adjust for that. Can I just add to that? I know my presentation, but those pass through funds go to special. So that first one that you're looking at a lot of that money is not that they let us know we have this number of students formula and

036we send that money to them. They schools, right? Some of the funding we get for one goes to our private school as well. Um, in years past, we did receive funding associated with with CO, right? So, part of that money on elementary summer academy in the past as well as summer enrichment. Those were our kind of our last two carryovers that were in place this summer. Right? Without those funds though, we do not have funding right now to support those two programs. All right? So that's why it's up here because this was a carryover from the federal funds uh that we used this past summer. Those funds are no longer. So once again, that was just a little bit of background. And now we're going to jump into the general fund which will tax out

037calculation. We have gone through this a couple times already. So I'm just going to jump around a little bit with the highlights. All right. Uh actual inflation is 2.95%. But according to the formula we can use a max of 2%. Right? So once again this is saying that items are getting more expensive. So school districts are capped at 2%. Okay. Follow all the calculations down our tax levy of about 47.3 million which is an increase from the prior year of 1.568 million. Okay, that would require a simple majority. So we just have to get 50 plus one% plus one. Okay, other aids that we get are some of our state aid. So we get foundation. So right now uh according to the govern We are scheduled to get 17.8 million which is an increase of

0382.49% from last year. Now that's for the governor's from her proposal. Each house has their own proposals. Uh the one house I think is like 2.9% and one was a little bit more than than that as well. But we don't know exactly what we're getting because the state budget is not on time. So we won't know the exact amount foundation a state budget pass. Correct. So in theory, the board has to adopt the budget on the 22nd. We still may not have the the true numbers from from state or not from state ed but from New York state rather. Is that is that the highest run? Is that the percentage increase? The highest run we've got so far the governor's budget. So yeah, this is from the governor's budget. The one house the senate and

039assembly bill they they have to add higher numbers. 2.9 correct. So, so we could we could get another like $90,000 if if that happens. Okay. Uh I'm going to jump around a little bit because we we show these numbers before, right? So minor increase in in foundation aid. Here are other uh expense based aids, right? Expense base aid because we have expense money and then we get a reimbursement the following year. We get money back the following year. So high tax that's been consistent as Dr. Tim said over the years. Transportation is actually going down a little bit. Uh building a is going up because we have completed the majority of our $22 million capital project. So we're getting uh the refund on that or the I should say rather's aid has actually gone down.

040Um this is because our reimbursement rate has gone down. All right. It's not that we use less services. It's really that our reimbursement rate has gone down. Okay. Public excess uh high cost for for students who are high cost within our district. and then private districts who are over that that threshold for services. Software, you see an increase as well. Library is pretty uh steady. Textbook aid got up a little bit about $1,000. Hardware aid up slightly and then so now we're going to get to our kind of total revenues. So putting everything together. So we've got our tax levy. If we go to the tax 47 million foundation 17.8 million our expense bas so those numbers that I just ran through 8.5 million roughly our refund so every year we do get a refund

041from both this past year is $585,000 we're going to project $600,000 last year sorry for next year we did talk to them and we talked to them last year too there's not really a reliable way to predict that but that's consistent with historical trends. All right. Health and welfare services. So that's us billing for services that we provide for $242,000 in case. All right. Other revenues would be leases, Medicaid pilots. So payment taxes. There was a decrease here of to be $29,000. That's because we have two pilots that have not paid and we're working with our attorneys to get paid for those pilots. All right. On paper, they should be We did incorporate that this year as well. Interest in earnings, right? Interest rates remain high. Reimbursement of the revenues. Uh e- rate fund transfer

042tax and penalties. Uh prepaid services, sorry, prepaid service providers. Right. So that was us taking the initiative last year to hire staff to provide uh services speech and OT for our students for our preschool students who require those services who were not getting it previously because there were not providers getting out. homeless. I have a yellow box here in case we identified the board's will to use reserves and fund balance. So that gives us a total revenue of $76.9 million. Okay. So that's the money that we anticipate coming in. Now we do have time before the board adopts budget on the 22nd. So we're going to continue to refine and see if we can there's other reasonable changes that we can make. Dan or Michelle just because it's a it's a line item that I'm

043sure some people are like it's a pretty big number explain what the homeless number is just because it's also most impacted people sure will um yes we receive homeless comes from New York state um and it's based on the number of students um that are that are in the district that um are from So they're coming to the rescue of origin and they pay us. So in that determination being homeless is determined by the county or saying it labels that student by the county but there's a whole host of rules to be okay district they're coming from we receive money from I just wanted people that's And for homeless, right, it's not necessarily that they don't have a place to live. It's doubled up. It's right unstable housing. If they're in foster care, questions in

044other districts, but are there any where do we see if we have homeless students that we need to pay? Yes. So, they will contact us and we verify we have verification on both sides. We have students and they will. So, is this a net number or is this just the revenue side? So just as a graph right now just make so you see where our revenue comes from right so right now without using fund balance or reserves tax lev would make up 61.6% of our budget expense bas and foundation aid right so state aids is roughly 20 sorry 34% off my head and other 4.2% if the board elects to use appropriative or fund balance as well as reserves then obviously this little wedges will change slightly. Okay, just comparing it to last year. So

045this was last year's uh graphic on it, right? Our tax levy was 59.3% and so forth. So we're pretty close and once again if we do appropriate other funds then we should be pretty close what that was. Now we're going to take through the budget development side, right? So we already know what our revenues are. Now we're going through the budget, right? kind of starting from trash, seeing what we need to maintain, where we can save and putting numbers together. Okay. So, some of the factors affecting this year's budget um and some of these I've gone through before, but I park, right? So, I park is is an amazing opportunity for our students who participate in CTE, right? They're going to be occupying the first and second floors. I say on the video yesterday the

046first and second floor so the building with the clock tower with with the clock tower um it's a great opportunity but at the same point in time right there is an expense for for our district for that so that's an additional $230,000 the hick right insurance is going up uh active members are going up by 7.52% TRS contribution so teachers retirement system the retirement contribution rate is actually going down slightly to 9.59 that's the estimated But there's also new money because salaries increase. So there's additional expenses for those. All right. ERS contributions. Employee retirement system that's going up to 16.5%. The temperature law was recently passed where next year if a room is above 82 degrees, you have to take proactive steps to cool the room. If it's above 88 degrees, you have to uh

047leave the space. So, we have gone around and we've identified which classrooms would need window AC units to help mitate that. We're anticipating a cost of $50,000 for those windows. Um, in addition, the cell phone ban. So, while the while the budget is not passed yet, as part of the budget, the governor is uh is requesting that there be a bell to bell uh cell phone ban. As part of that, we haven't seen the exact language as to what it will be, but they'll have to store the store devices somehow. Uh we did reach out and we did get a quote for one one form of cell phone storage device which was $47,000 at the time. So that was about a month and a half ago for that. So those things change. General insurance, we

048have had uh a number of claims particularly water claims in the past couple years. Um, so we our premium could theoretically double. And then long-term therapeutic program. So our LT program, so we have some students who have participated in a short-term therapeutic program, we need additional support to go into a long-term therapeutic program, drills or other districts are pulling out of this. Um, we share the cost for that. So if a district pulls out, right, then every other district who's still in it picks up some of that cost. Right. on on our thinking though is is that the cost of this is going to be cheaper than sending those kids out of district somewhere else. cost analysis. Other factors, we've got two administrators who we are now replacing, one's retiring. Uh, one was that changed

049mid year. We are not fulfilling our director HR position. All right. So, some work obviously we've distributed work. Uh, we are exploring a coaster for home instruction students to to go for that process to verify so that one teacher retirement which will not be replacing, right? replace a teacher, there's going to be less opportunities for students in terms of electives, scheduling, and so forth. Uh, three teacher retirements we do need to replace. There is some salary breakage there. One technology employee retirement, we will need to need to replace that. So, hopefully be some salary breakage. We just got word that one of our nurses is going to retire since she's on the agenda today. Uh, additional breakage. We have a do have a do we do have a6 social studies teacher. um that we that

050we could reduce uh currently we pay for most technology support. If we bring that support in house, we feel that we can provide more support for the same cost. ENL we have we have received 18 new ELLL students this year. Majority are at the elementary level but this is requiring our FTE to be increased to 1.0 FTE to provide the required minutes. This is a fally required mandate of number of instructional minutes for students depending on what level they are at. Modified sports. This this budget run does include modified sports bring it back into the budget. It does include field trips back into the budget and then it does include additional TA for academic behavior communication program that Jamie explained previously. Other factors right enrollments based on our current enrollment in our elementary schools we

051need to create a third section of sixth grade. All right. Also at this time we do have a traveling MTS TSS teacher who travels between K and based on our numbers we feel that we can provide those services in the building without having that person traveling. So we can offset the additional section with the travelings. Special ed placements are always a driver of budgets, right? In terms of out of district placements and what services they need, whether it be most or uh another place that could be up in Albany, down so right, that we're always looking at those. Jamie is always anticipating where kids are going to be. even if they're not placed right now, she has an idea of what program might fit and we budget for that as well. Transportation, we do have

052a large bus contract, so we can calculate where our transportation will be for that. We did have a RFP for small bus contracts, so we're reviewing those documents and we'll be able to take that that proposal to put it into our budget as well. Then there are the things that we need to continue working on, right? So the science of reading alignment, New York State is requiring all school districts to certify that their instruction is aligned with the science of reading. Right? While we have made progress towards that, there's going to be more resources, more training that's going to be needed to make sure that we do that we do in fact meet those requirements. The blueprint, right, the blueprint is our our northstar, our guide, right, as to where we're going to go in

053the future. So we do need to take all those things into consideration as we are planning this budget. Woodstock day school. So Woodstock Day School is one of our private schools. We are required to provide nursing services at our private schools as well as a social worker if they request it. Okay. In the past, we have provided we have provided a nurse to middleway and we have provided funds to day school. Uh and speaking with our attorneys, we actually need to provide an actual physical person who is a s employee to Wood School. So there is going to be increase in nursing needs to meet that requirement. Similarly, if they they have requested a social worker. So we need to send a service district employee to the school to provide social workers services. There is

054a calculation that we need to take which will tell us exactly how long they should be there because the services we provide to them has to match the services provided in district. But there is an additional cost for that. Other items currently right now we have our PR specialist with us for five days a week. Right. So additional savings could be going down to four days a week. Yes. Y is a tuition based institutions. So goes to the central school district of charge to the tuition in what we do is there's a calculation for health services that we do it's all of our health services and you guys approved it each year this year people we bu districts that are there for the number of students that are there but then we are required to

055send them a nurse or a social worker or whatever they provide whatever they request and point so what you're explaining to me in this line item I see here is a zero some game well in this case which is fine if it's zero some game yes in this well it's more than that sometimes for us so we are getting we are receiving I believe it would be on 165 students that um for the different schools schools for us that are going out there will be paying about 65,000. So there there's a net difference,000 but at the same time it's also based on the employee that we Uh we've gone through looking at supply lines and material lines to see where we can reduce historical trends. Uh we're using technology purchase purchases, right? So we talked

056about purchasing less interactive displays using our current technology. Uh we're changing our backup phone system for a savings and then looking at software. One example would be eliminating panoramic client time survey. Not that we're not going to do it, but we We we can find there are free surveys out there that we can implement with the current tools that we have such as Microsoft. Other things uh to consider is our sub our monitor pay as well as our substitute pay. Uh so these have not changed in two years. Uh so we would also recommend increasing compensation by 50 50 cents per hour to remain competitive with Jamie already. the change in special education, right? So, this is not um as she said, it's not a new teacher. It's a it's a repurposing of the teacher.

057We will need to hire a TA to support that classroom. Other budget considerations would be a possible capital outlay project at uh when we met with the facilities, we came up with with the following ideas of additional flooring, additional ADA egresses, uh ramp so that the entire building is is ADA accessible as well as possibly installing AC splits in that part of the building. One question that always comes up so I'm just going to address it now right is our administrative staff. So I did share this previously the here's our administrator from lane 324 and then here would be our proposed administrator 2526. So you can see central office wise we will be down elementary coordinator. Those are the two positions I referenced earlier. Uh we we we had an athletic director/ assistant principal two

058years last year. That position has been gone and we but we do have a director. So with those changes that I've identified on there, right, some increases, some decreases, everything out here is what the numbers tell us. Okay, so the board of education central administration um 2 roughly $3 million increase of $266,000 admin capital, so just under a million dollars to 1.2. A large part of this is not the IPAR coming online for that construction. So 38.5 million to 40.2 million right so that's increases in salaries supplies and so forth. All right facility security services 3.6 million just a little increase for that technology once again a little increase about $60,000 transportation an increase of $76,000 uh sports and co-curricular an increase of $100,000. Once again, a large part of that would be bringing modified

059sports back into the budget. Uh benefits 20 million 3 to 20 million8 uh debt service 2.9 2.6 transferred other funds going down from 425,000 305,000 for a grand total of anticipating expenses of $8.1 million. Okay. Or an increase of 3.7%. So taking our starting budget and anticipated revenues, we do have a shortfall of 3.1 million. In order to balance a budget, as Dr. Tim shared last time, we have kind of two options or a combination of the two options. All right? So, one would be to increase revenue, right? So, how do we increase revenue in the school district? As we said earlier, we're going to keep on examining our anticipated revenues, right? Can we adjust any of those numbers when the state budget comes through? You know, can I adjust the foundation? Okay. use a

060fund balance reserve like we did this past year, right? And then as Dr. Tim mentioned, try to recoup that loss tax revenue or go above the tax cap, right? It's a possibility. On the other side, we can also look to decrease expenditures, right? Cost reductions. As Dr. Jim said, we could pull away from student programs first. Recommendation, right? The other thing I did put up here just to kind of keep in the back of everybody's mind is we've talked about it and Dr. particular we have 52 SDA members with 25 plus years of longevity. So longevity is service in the district itself. Right? So that means over theoretically over the next five years, right? We've got 52 of our SBA members who could possibly retire, right? So just kind of keeping that out there that's

061possible as well. Uh this was just a from Dr. Tims, right? Just sharing, right? those years that the tax cap right added up. So you could potentially have had $700,000 more money um or sorry $900,000 and sorry $8 million more spent on our kids that one way to increase revenues was to use our reserves and fund balance. So here are current levels of reserves and fund balance. They do remain healthy, right? 3 million employee retirement reserve. This goes to payments to cover employee retirement reserve expenses for contributions, right? TRS reserve, same thing. Employee benefit liability reserve. So this reserve can be used to pay benefits when they uh sever their employment with us, right? So retires, you can pay out their sick days and so forth. assigned fund balance. Capital reserve is only for capital

062projects. Uh workers compensation reserves 50 million sorry 250,000 unemployment reserve and tax,000. So using these reserves as we have planned this year is still a possibility. Can I question you said it's healthy which obviously is but when I think spoke earlier. He kind of said compared to a lot of other districts actually quite quite small. Correct. Yeah. Just kind of put in perspective. So yes, just to reemphasize that point, right? Because we have $4.7 million in capital reserve that money is tied up earmarked for that. Right. So if you take that out, then then comparatively to our neighboring districts, we're not as well off. So if we're looking at possible reductions, right, we're going to be looking to our non-mandated items, right? Where can we reduce that is not required. So I'm going to be

063listing off a slew of things. All right, so number one is arm security. So armed security is anticipated to cost around $350,000, right? It is not required. We did just finish or finishing our $22 million capital project which does have vestibs. So if we were to eliminate our armed security, we would need to still have somebody there to let people in, right? So whether it be a monitor like you used to arm security, right? It's a possibility. Athletics, we could reduce the number of games that sports play, right? So instead of basketball playing 20 games, I can play 18. There's there's a savings there. We could also reduce the number of coaches, right? So for modified wrestling, there's two coaches right now. We only had five kids, I think it was, right? So there is

064justification there to to remove a coach. Modified athletics, we could pull that back out of the budget or athletic trainer is not required. Uh club siphons, right? So we do offer a lot of clubs for our students to provide opportunities, right? But there is a cost associated with those clubs. Social building. Uh when I first came to sies, social workers and psychologists were split between our elementary schools going back and forth each day. Uh since we've been able to have a dedicated social worker and psychologist in each building, but we don't necessarily need to, right? It's not mandated to uh secondary core teachers. Uh in theory, right, if we were to eliminate teaming, we could be more efficient for that. Uh but There's a cost, right? It's going to be higher class sizes less opportunities

065for our students, departments as well. Uh recently, excuse me, it's been three years, two years ago now, uh our special advocacy specialist who's bilingual. Uh so originally started out at Kill kind of full time. Now it's splitting between Kill and the high school um to to use her translation interpretive services for us. Elementary, elementary library, field trips as we reduced last year. We do have one remaining instructional coach, part-time counselor for elementary. We do have a right. This year, we do have a part time who just going around to elementary. In the past, we did have our secondary counselors pushed down to elementary, right? the tradeoff is and they're not in the in the high school student. So those are so with that before I continue on well I'll keep going. Yeah. We have two

066open contracts. We have three that are coming up at the end of this year. Everybody here. How does that impact our anticipated expenditures? Is that already incorporated in there? Sure. So, we have How should the public think about the fact that we have three bargaining units? We're going to be looking to settle their contracts in the midst of this is our fiscal picture. So what should we be now? Yeah. So because of this, you know, we as a district have to plan for we understand there's going to be some increase, right? So we have to plan for a reasonable amount. Uh and that is also conversations as well. So um I guess another way to say this is that we plan for some Um the question always comes up to what happens if the budget

067does not pass. Okay. So if the budget does not pass uh the revote we could we could revote June or we can adopt a contingency budget. I didn't include the link to uh the contingency to a document that kind of outlines the budgeting for schools as well as focus on a contingency budget. In some though we cannot have a capital outlet project. new criminal purchases and then obviously reductions in opport building maint And then once again armpit. Yes. So we actually cannot go the tax levy cannot be increased. So that's so that's going to be a big factor in it. Um and then there are certain things which are excluded and then noncludable excluded items. Okay. And then if I ask people to speak into the mic but if you're not speaking I can't hear

068you at all. So I don't know what the other questions are. The hockey on um board member elections. So, just as a reminder, there are three seats up for up for election packets available. Uh Monday, April 21st, they're due in the superintendent office in the back. Even though we're closed, the office will still be open. On Tuesday, they will draw the ordering of the ballots. Uh candidate expenditures due identified on here as well as the vote. So with that, I'm gonna go back to this slide here. Okay. So right now with the starting budget, I'm referring to it as $80 million. The anticipated revenue is about 76.9. We have a difference of $3.1 million. So this is where I would like to gauge from the board uh your willingness to increase revenues possibly by appropriating

069funds from fund balance reserves and then that desire to also reduce that budget further. question. So just some general question um we went through the information. So just going back to the factors affecting the 2025 budget. We state that there's some teacher retirements technology nurse retirement and we anticipate some savings on breakage. Is that material? Not material given we know how hard it has been to replace people in the past year like in the past years. Um and will we need to be hiring people at higher steps than we expect to to hire them. So the breakage is not I'm trying to gauge really by SCA contract. the highest that we can bring somebody in on is step 15. So in our calculations, we replace a retiring at step seven, figuring out sometimes we be

070a little bit above, sometimes be a little bit below. But I mean to your point, right, if if we go out and try to hire, we have one applicant who's got, you know, 10 years of service, right? Choice. So we'd have to make an offer accept. um the increase in new ELLL students for this year and I know that we all they all pretty much go to Kill. Um but some are districted in other elementary schools when we talk about the elementary population and we talked about in the past the student concentration between Kill and the party and has there been thought of being able to service the Ricardi elelll students within Ricardi by splitting the staff instead of having all the staff at Kill some of the staff to Ricardi. Is there any savings

071on the transportation of getting those kids from Kill? So is there is there anything that we can do within that environment that may save money? Sure. So in terms of So every student takes a test and it dictates the amount of services that they need. So they might need 90 minutes of a standalone ELA class or ENL class sorry it might be 90 minutes of a integrated class um and then at the high school they actually have up to 540 minutes of instruction. So if we take just for argument sake second grade right and if there's three kids and they go to second grade and then there's two kale kids that stay in Kale I don't need to service both of those kids so I would actually need additional staff to to to support those

072students or have staff travel back and forth. So by having them all in one location, I can service all of my grade 2 ENL kids in their English class, you know, for one 40-minute time slot instead of one 40 minute time slot at Kill and then one 40 minute time slot at the other thing is is that we do get right a lot of influx during the but it's really coming and going. So part of our struggles with the ENL is on September 2nd we can have one plan right we get three kids then we have to shuffle everything up to make sure that those new kids get their services too so by having them all central location it allows for efficiency that way so for ENL class, you know, K one together. Okay. So,

073one of the other questions I had was um in terms of I think it was the um the estimated contribution rates for ERS and TRS those are out there just estimated at this point. Do we anticipate that those could change significantly because of the drop in the stock market that and for those plans to to be able to service the current retirees. But they need to actually increase their contributions from their participants above and beyond what they may have had to do in the past to kind of make up for the change in the portfolio values. In the past, in the past, the estimates especially for TRS, which is the larger retirement system, very very close to where they've come in at um even when the rates have gone up significantly they say it's going

074to be 18% it's come in within I would say half% of that number may impact the TRS for next year because actually the market the state budget just our starts our retirement system starts I just had two questions just really for my context. How we doing? Um we switched our to a high interest savings account and projected that would have about possibly add a million dollars in revenue. Is that already incorporated in there? Projected incorporated. It's not projected for next year. I think I put in the um notes for this week that there was um money transferred into there. Um the last payment that came in, we were able to put $10 million into that. The interest rate at the time was about 5 I mean 4.2% of liquid money. We haven't fully projected that

075into this year's budget and for next year I'm a little apprehensive not just because I know we make more interest but I'm not sure where the interest rates are going to be going right now. Is there is there I is there we talk ballpark a lot right we're guessing at the governor's you know budget we're guessing at a number of other things we're guessing at Bosey's refund right which is never guaranteed um there is a calculator that's on the class website that we're going to take a look at now that we got the money in there and that we have all able to be able to release it from our bank you know same day and all So, we're going to look at the calculator to see if we can update all of our revenue.

076Actually, Michael and I are going to start working on that on Wednesday. The other revenues if the governor's budget doesn't come in, but we're continually paying out services for next year for this year. So, we look like we can maybe reduce that line item in the budget, the expenditure side for that. So we've been updating one more again useful uh to bring in somebody with that kind of experience at the state level at the level you know he obviously mentioned about when you're looking to find savings right start away from the kids you mentioned that so when we look at some of these nonmandated items possible reduction I see social workers psychologist armed security. I know these are in a respect in my mind very studententric positions in terms of what they what they offer

077us. For instance, our security was was something that came out of community concerns, you know, societal concerns uh within within the past three years. Um is the school resource officer mandated? No, we have they're not mandated, but we do have a municipal agreement with the fac. So, so I guess you know that line of thinking just in the great tact we've got balance balance of budget here. Would we be thinking about cutting psychologist and social workers but not an SRO if we have arms? You know, because again I mean I know we're talking what are you comfortable with and take one from column A and two from column B kind of menu option here but I mean it could also be security items we spent a lot of time towards the end of last week

078looking at not just OC services for students but the techn We just received word that our director um did a change $9,000 a year. It's not going to teach at this point, but we're looking at every um so along the lines of what uh Mr. all said as we're looking at non-mandated items. You mentioned something about secondary core teachers is that so is that I know last year we talked about a team of teachers there was a reduced um number of case loads. Um is that what that is or Yeah. So we I mean uh we find value in teamwork right but naturally there is can be a little bit of inefficiency on class and so forth. We try to maximize the number of kids with each teacher. But going purely by numbers, right, we

079could maximize classes more and then that would bring up that. Okay. Um so, okay. And so I just wanted to clarify too. So when you talked about um uh when Jamie presented about the changes in special ed. So that's going to reduce a special ed teacher in the elementary level, but it's going to it's it's going to be a wash, but it's going to reduce one teacher at the elementary level. Well, so it's actually uh the teacher who goes to our middle way school. We're repurposing that position to be back within the district and then our elementary build each sending over a special educator to support those those two buildings. Okay. So shing around. The other thing with that is is that right we're going to have four or five students in that program. Right.

080So that is in my mind is a savings because we're not sending them out of districts and then the hope would be that we could try to bring kids back into our districts once everybody sees that as a successful program. So in turn or even we can take you know kids from elsewhere. Okay. I don't know if I have any more questions yet. No, you go ahead. I got I got through this book. That is a a board decision. So will have that conversation. I'd be happy to put together that question. She was like, "Let me answer that." Yes, there's going to remaining funds put in the budget. What we're going through right now is we're making sure that all the money that we feel needs to be encumbered for the rest of the year

081is done. Um we just went through the post number. We have the money that we have saved from the not having that insurance premium for this year. So that's a million dollars um that we know will be left in there. And we're just looking to see what else that we can do for this year to help us next year. Right. So, as of Dr. Tim's presentation, nonmandated items I think is there what are the numbers areated? All right. So, arm security is $350,000 athletics. So, if we were to reduce modified athletics, statements alone are roughly $75,000. That does not include transportation to events. if we reduce schedules um and then reduce coaches. So that's going from say I said in basketball 20 games down to 18 maybe depending on the season a game or two.

082Um each game roughly cost us if we host a game with two officials in a chap room. It's uh roughly like 350ish to host the game, right? It's like a varsity basketball game. There's a pure varsity basketball game. You've got two officials $100 plus All right. If we travel to a place then we're paying for buses which is next year is going to be what's going for per hour. All right. So to by reducing the schedules and reducing those coaches we're looking somewhere between probably 16 to $20,000. Not a significant sum but every little bit right athletic trainer that's salary. Club stipens I forget that number off top my head like I have that on the spreadsheet. social worker right depend on the lowest salary for those I can share those with you psychologist teachers

083salary those individuals department chairperson we can pull that one um right if we reduce like elementary art library and music right it's going to be a conversation of how much right are they still going to get are they going to get one per 12 days versus one per six days have one person go between all three elementary schools Uh salary salary uh field trips uh field trip amount was transportation amount that we put in next year is $43,000. So I can formalize the other numbers for you. But I think the thing to stress is that right comparatively and I may be a little biased here but has been pretty linear compared to other districts right last year we reduce clerical staff you don't see any any clerical staff because we're getting behind with what we

084have right they're doing an amazing job but I think to pushing our work hard is going to be not manageable Um last year there were reductions in what I'm going to call nonmandated TAS right this year you didn't see that up there because we're at the level where every TA in my mind is mandated because they need to be there when the special educator is not there so we are kind of running at least Carol had asked um when we talk about the four teachers, what do we know right now like on average what is the class for student load in the secondary classes? So like etc. Uh I I have I have a print out of like everybody's um Like so with a cap of 120 students, right? Some staff may have, you know,

085class that might have 25 30 kids in it and then have a class of like five or six. And then kind of along those lines, one of the questions was we looked at, you know, putting the third for that fifth grade. Have we looked at the other elementary um enrollment class sizes in terms of I think April 1st was the due date for any special permissions. So are there any special permissions that are being granted that if not granted we would be able to collapse a section um in any of those buildings? Sure. So I have not looked at the new ones that came in but all the ones last year they were great that they helped us. So in some grades it actually helped a lot but So spaceicial space we did also I

086think I shared this before we did maybe identify we did identify section that we could possibly recruit from that would be that would impact a small amount of redistricting everybody but it would free up space at so that some of our self-contained students more easily because you know, if there's 24 kids in a grade, but we've got two more kids and 26 kids in the class, which is not ideal. So, um I don't I don't really have any questions. Um I if I look at this list, right, we could take this list um from from last year, right? It's the same list we discuss. And if we look at this list, and this is the list we're going to go off of, we're going to have the same conversation next year, right? It's always going

087to be those non-mandated things. It's always going to be that lowanging fruit of let's not have field trips. We have to, I believe, to do this right. We understood from our financial analysis, which Dr. was 10 years ago when they went three or four years and did a great thing and went under the cap which at that particular time looked fantastic actually has put us in an $8 million revenue today. Right? That $8 million those going into the tax that we would have at our disposal today. So while we we found out what happened going above the tax cap last year happened we have that discussion again. But I don't think it's about the tax cap and I don't think it's about non-mandated items. I think it's about rolling up our sleeves and sizing this

088district for the size that it is and not the size that it was 10 years ago and 12 years ago. The other thing with some of these broad buckets and Dr. you know how I feel about this. I think there are way too many sacred cows here. When Mr. Paul says we look at our I think we have to rethink how we do our SRO. I I don't think anything can be left alone. I also think we don't look at things like athletics or modified athletics instead of trying to be everything to everyone. Let's pick things that we do and do it really well. And what I mean by that, this is for everybody listening, is instead of saying we're going to cut modify athletics, look at the kids participating in a certain sport. And

089if there are five kids participating in a certain sport, that coach and those buses cost the same as the sport that has 30 kids. There's no difference. We don't pay a cheaper site. And it's the same thing for the clubs, the after school clubs. If we have a club that has three kids in it, that that that stipen is the same stipen as the teacher who leads key club and the bigger clubs. And I know and I understand that that club may be the respit for those three kids. Well, then us as a district have to figure out what to do with those three kids as opposed to just paying a teacher a stipen to do something after school with them. Those are the kind of decisions we have to make. I don't think it

090need it to be these broad brush. Hey, we're going to cut modify athletics because what happens what's going to happen is if we do that we are going to be having the same discussions next year. Well, let's look at the non-mandated. Let's look at our athletic training. We have shown the value that the athletic training delivers to 400 students day in and day out here. So to me, while the state may say it's nonmandated, the students and the coaches and the instructors in our school have said it's mandated. Maybe not by the state, but it's shown its value. So that one should come off the list. And other things that aren't showing the level of value, we need to look at and we need to look at we have 14 days from today to the

09122nd. That is more than enough time to look at everything in detail and make those tough decisions. Reducing schedule, great idea. It's an option. But let me tell you what's going to happen. You're going to reduce basketball by two games. What's going to happen is the basketball club, which does tremendous amount of fundraising and has a tremendous club balance, is going to put those two games on with their club. the tennis team or the track team that doesn't do a lot of fundraising is not going to be able to add those matches back. So the the the undervalued sports teams were going to have an equity problem, right? And there's there's 50 kids on the track team, but they don't do a ton of fundraising. So they're going to have some meats cut because we

092get the baseball team well. If you cut two games from them and there's a bunch of donors associated with the baseball program, those two games will be added back before they're cut from the budget. There can be no sacred caps. Aora, and I'm sorry I'm being longwinded a little bit right now. Antiora right now has always had a history of very solid baseball. This year they don't have baseball of mud above modified because they looked at the number of students that were going to go out for JV and varsity and it was not cost beneficial. Are there some kids who would like to play baseball at JB and and the varsity level? Sure. They cut baseball round two years ago won a sectional title in basketball. This year they did away with their varsity baseball

093basketball team because there wasn't enough participation. We got to get rid of this. Everything starts with the non-mandated and roll up our sleeves and size this thing correctly so that we're not simply to pass a budget every year to have the same things we had last year that we can actually add things to our students and and and have things that other districts have and keep building on that and have it be better. So, sorry that's my long winded and you just got my board president remarks. We'll do it again this project that Dr. created for us this investigation, right? You went back all the way to 2012. Um, anywhere in there was there zero based budgeting? Has this district ever visited zerobased budgeting? And zerobased budgeting is simply starting with zero and justifying every

094expense you have as you build a budget or have these all just been rollovers? I do not know about the history. You know, last year we went through every line, cost everything out. You know, last year was the first time that we had going through the insurance and actually calculated what the insurance costs were going to be, right? As far as I know. Um, so, you know, we're going through things, looking at lines, seeing historical trends, what can be reduced, and so forth, but we're to the point where we're taking, you know, a couple hundred here, $1,000 here, and so forth, right? I mean, to get the real change, uh, to get ourselves This is going to be if we look at kind of the elementary level, right? We are as efficient as we can

095be to a degree, right? There's always some efficiencies that we can pick up based on the enrollments in each of our buildings. Right? So to become more efficient, we need to look at the enrollments in each one of our buildings. I I asked a question just because you know about how granular we're taking a look at some of those those things bottom line is we we don't necessarily think that historically these budgets have been anything other than rolled over I can't speak to it okay big topic anybody just one last any other questions yeah not question Um what Dr. was asking of us was some direction to what he wants us like what we would you know how are we going to alleviate the 3.152 million gap. Um yeah, I understand that we will be

096coming up um with positive differential this year. Like we we're not going to have to use I think we uh appropriated almost $3 million of our fund balance between fund balance and reserves last year just to balance the budget. Um I was uncomfortable doing it then. Um we didn't have to use it this year which was great, but I'd be uncomfortable using, you know, trying to use all of, you know, fund balance and reserves to meet this um uh difference. Um and and I kind of echo what Jeff said in terms of um you know we're looking at the same things every year and you know we need to get to a place where we're going to put the savings in our budget this year that will carry over year to year. Um and so

097you know I'd like to see some sort of uh I guess expenses and see what can we cut that may have a longer term um savings. Um and I don't know what amount that is but something to that effect. And then I obviously we're looking to use some fund balance and reserves to balance it as we have in the past. I just don't really want to do million dollars if that's possible. Anybody else? I say moving on. I just got to finish up a couple things. Yeah. Um just some general updates. So Morris site work projects. We did receive one bid. We're going to approve that work tonight. That's on Morris. I'll show you an overview quickly. Ricardi capital outlet project. This was for the ADA presses. We actually did not get any bids. So

098we're working with the architects and our lawyers to see if it's worth going out to again reaching out to some contractors to kind of draw up some interest. Um RFP for small buses, we had two proposals. We're reviewing those now. Hopefully we'll have uh you know answers within the next week or so. Uh RFP for internal auditor. We got one proposal. We met with them yesterday for that. And then we have RFP for external which is due on the 15th. More site work. So they we because we came in under budget on 22 million our capital project we're able to do work that was taken out of their original proposal. So all this stuff has already been approved by state ed. We can just get the work done. So we're going to be re taking

099digging up and repaving the bus loop uh the playground area adding some additional black over here. Uh Miss Jean Gre's kids are actually designing what the what would be painted uh for the playground area. They will also be resurfacing the parking lot and then putting in a walkway to the back door. So that work will happen this summer to be clear since we're talking about budget. That is part of the capital project. Right. So that is not it's not in the budget. It's not to be voted on. Correct. It's already covered. I just want sure some people say, "Wow, you paid." Okay. Good. All right. I think I'm up next for the blueprint update, too. I'll be quick. Executive summary. Yes. Thank you, Mary. Uh, so as planned, we do give quarterly updates on our

100blueprint. So, we're going to kind of zoom through this. I'm just going to highlight some of the elements from our four prior priority areas, the goals. academic excellence in the community engagement, professional culture and the student experience. The entire thing, our kind of living document is linked in here. When you open it up, you will see the goals. You will see the action steps that the committee identified. You will see our initial rating back in October, November time when we met with our district leadership team. And then you will see evidence in each month going out or not each month, but each quarter going out. Okay? So, anybody can look at that. That's there. Just some things to highlight. Priority area one, academic excellence. A big part of this is the is defining our own

101portion of a graduate, right? So, what skills, qualities will our graduates have as they walk across the stage, right? Is what it what it is. We we did some brainstorming. We we gave a proposal to the committee. We're working with their feedback and we're hopefully the board will adopt that soon, right? Increasing family community engagement. Secondary team, particularly the guidance team has spent a lot of time uh increasing engagement uh for that. So counselors have been going into classes. Each child was given a sheet where they identified which classes they should take, right? That required them to talk to their teachers to see where they should go next year. Um that sheet was encouraged to bring home, get a parent signature. They're meeting with parents and then we will be sending home a not a

102schedule, but here are the courses that your child picked for next year. So parents are aware. This is one of the big things that came out of our surveys and just conversations with parents in general. Uh professional culture. Uh we're continuing our work with our pilot and as well as our junior high uh staff are working on alternative end of year assessments uh is with our humanities but it's also uh in science one of our science classes as well right so it's under traditional test more of a portfolio project based learning uh research ways implement instructional rounds uh we have started instructional rounds or learning walks rather um so this is a group of individuals going into classrooms uh looking for targeted things right so if they're looking at the engagement rubric, right? Seeing where

103how students are are engaged. Uh and it could also be for um for special education in terms of how how how the classroom is running and functioning. The Sawyer student experience uh big one I'm going to throw out there right develop a workable and meaningful classroom protocol regarding use of cell phones, Apple watches, and earbuds. Our policy committee has spent a couple sessions now on developing a a cell phone and electronic use policy which would prohibit electronic uses during the school day. All right. Only if you it's only a school supply device. And lastly, Chris is still here. Uh she held a passion fair with their one book, one school. Uh so students voluntarily shared their passion with the entire building in the cafeteria. 40 students presented. I'm going to highlight Miss Jen Arcon's class

104who had every one of her students uh share one of their passions. So, it was super cool. And that's it. Um, okay. I'm going to move to board member remarks. Start at this side. Um, I just wanted to say a couple things. Sorry. Um, and just a couple I want to mention a couple things. One, I want to thank people who were involved in um, the Hollow Wizards that was a couple weeks ago. Um, it was a great fundraising event for a couple of our PTAs. I just want to thank all the behind the scenes people who got, you know, organized it, who were there today, and all the teachers and staff um, who got out there to play with the Wizards. I think, you know, just seeing smiling faces that day, I think it

105was a great event and I just want to thank everyone involved. Um, secondly, I just wanted to just mention um about this this social media um post that was, you know, out there over this past week. I'm not going to go through the specifics that was addressed by the the report of the social media post was addressed by Dr. and then the um board response to the community. Um but I do want to say that as volunteers here um you know we are elected to these positions and we put ourselves out there and our information is somewhat public um and we expect to receive emails from parents um about concerns with their kids about concerns that they have with district policy. Um, but when I get an email from a porn site um because somebody

106put out there that we our email should be spammed and we should be put on for porn lists. That is not acceptable and that is not how we should engage and that is not how we resolve issues within our district and our community. Thank you. some of the same topic um engage. Um I was doing some reading on this uh you know on the topic of you know uh schools and what we're all having, what everyone involved in schools are having to deal with right now. Um, like it or not, education, um, who we educate, what we teach, um, who gets to participate, whose voices get heard, who's supported, who's not. All of these things can fall under the head of political. Um, educators are expected to navigate sometimes impossible standards of neutrality and perfection.

107If they're to talk about what's happened in the world, they're expected to be a role model, but not necessarily be who they are. Um, we all care deeply. Everyone here on the board, everyone of our administrators, everyone educators. Um, I don't expect people to say nothing. We want people to be engaged in civics. We want to participate in civics. Um we may not all choose the same sides but we are you know for whatever reason we all want to benefit of these common of setting the right example for our students on how That is my expectation and I appreciate statements from from um I appreciate I appreciate everyone to be engaged but I do think it's unfortunate that going some of the specification. So I hope you Thank you, Mr. U. These are May, April,

108May. These are exciting times in the school year. So, I just want to remind everybody uh there's a lot of uh a lot of awesome things that are going on out there. Meredith does a great job sharing with us. Many of you are are participating um and seeing your your kids and your neighbors participate. ES honor society events, band concerts, coral concerts, and obviously the uh the culminating event for school district graduation this June. So, uh during these exciting months as we as we are looking towards wrapping up a school year, um and spring is approaching and summer is approaching, I just want to uh give once again my yearly reminder to everyone to think about safety first and keep those students in mind and student drivers in mind. Um these uh these upcoming events.

109My hope is everyone stays safe. Um the only other comments I'd like to make ultimately and I think I think everybody can glean from the questions and and other comments of the board um that the fiscal priorities and the budget are are obviously the the highest highest priority that we have uh here in the district. Uh for those of you that weren't present um when Dr. Tim made this presentation, the phrase missile cliff was used that Sor is facing. And again, so those of you that weren't president, you maybe have seen these slides online. essentially um you know he he he unpacked essentially about the past 12 to 13 years and and really in a in a very impressive fashion was able to show how decisions that were made at the district level were were

110what a grandmother might call Pennywise pound foolish. Right? We satisfied some immediate need back then and unfortunately it often is that the political that you're satisfying, pardon me, that the need you are satisfying fact that it is political. Um, and and very often there's no acknowledgement or recognition that a decision like that is going to have compounding uh impacts uh exponential impacts. Um, and I just want to I want people to hear that number again that that the $8 million is money that was left on the table by Sority School District through previous administrations and previous budgets um simply because of the manner in which the reimbursements and the manner in which tax cap and the pilot payments and and all these different types of of minutia are calculated. Um, so we really need to

111think about the longterm health of the district. And it's not easy to do when you're focusing on popups, right? We have we have popups on our computers. We all know what they are. Uh the guy that invented them, I think, has said publicly he regrets inventing them. Okay? But we have we have popups as well, right? Uh in our lives, we have pop-ups in our district. and we we had popups um you know this past month, conversations that don't have anything to do with a fiscal cliff, conversations that don't have anything to do um with the long-term fiscal health of of a of a school budget. Um and and I you know I think that this board, the next board, the next board, there really needs to be a a sense of um a passion

112around preserving the property, the intellectual property that is how a school board functions and preserving the statutory, you know, role of of a school board and not getting into the weeds. We have one very two three maybe max very very important jobs. One is hiring a superintendent uh and and two is is creating and and passing a budget. So in light of these things and in light of these conversations, I just want to remind everyone that um we were told that trying to challenge the cap last year was a good idea by our long range financial analysts. We were told that trying to challenge the cap last year was that had it been successful, it would have gone a long way towards humiliating this fiscal cliff. So, when we're talking about putting a budget together,

113I know that you heard me talk about things like zero budgeting and you talked about, you know, us possibly getting granular. I don't want I don't want to confuse anybody. I'm not losing the force for the trees. There are short-term gains that can be made by by careful scrutiny of of a a district budget. Um, but you can't do so losing sight of that long longer range picture. So, uh, in the next several weeks as some of these revenue streams continue to get analyzed and the superintendent and school business officials will begin to, you know, really target down and and look at the way some of this money is expended and and maybe we consider that that as Mr. Riots said, we don't have any any uh, we don't have anything that's really that we

114can't ask about it. We can't look at it. We can't question whether there's value that's that's giving to our district. Um and and I support that because I think that that is the biggest most important thing that that we can do is create a budget here that kicks start uh it kickstarts that long range um fiscal health and that long range fiscal planning um that that we require. Thank you. Coming back to you. You want me to come back to you? I got nobody else to go to. I can't. Okay. Um I I just want to uh thank Miss Churchill for your presentation tonight. I know you really sped that up for us because we had a long agenda. And uh thank you to Dr. Ersig for his presentation. Um, when I set out to

115run for board of education, I did it with the intent to be a voice of reason and to try to help make decisions that were best for children. Um, and I continue to feel that way. I truly do. So whether it is what we are doing um setting a budget or having those discussions um whether it is reflecting or discussing um issues or incidents like what happened last week um I wasn't privy to um what was on Facebook. Um I've removed myself from Facebook because of those specific things and I heard it wasn't good. Um, I too received an email um much to my surprise and when I I I didn't understand it until somebody shared with me that someone shared our um emails off of uh the I guess Facebook or whatever. So um

116you know I think it is our job to reflect and discuss um on issues and and talk about things like this in a fair manner um so that we can hear everyone's opinions and we can hear everyone's um you know let everyone have a voice. Um, so, uh, I just want to say that that's what we intend to do. Thank you. Um, okay. I, um, I I pretty much said what I wanted to say before um, when I gave my budget things. Um, so I like the term that Mr. B used in popups. Um, and I understand what Carol is saying about having to discuss some of these things. um and they need to be discussed and I agree with that. Um but um I can tell you we I will continue to discuss some

117of these pop-ups as necessary. But leaving here tonight um I am laser focused on working with Dr. and Michelle on getting a budget that is taking us away from a financial cliff and having us not continually simply getting by. That's not how our district should be. Um so from here on out, I would take anybody's email. I will answer their emails. I love getting emails from people regardless of whatever side of the the the issue they're on. But from from tonight on out, once we leave executive session, I am laser focused on April 22nd. Um, and I think it's our duty here to deliver a um a budget and a financial plan that doesn't just have us subsisting living, but having us provide things for our kids and provide other things for our kids. All

118right. So, thank you. All right. Moving on. All right. J um personnel instructional and non-instructional. We have items J one through three which are resignations um leaves of absence and some appointments um including substitutes and volunteers. Um and then our summer school principles as well are in there. Um can I have a motion for uh J one through three seconded by Miss Bellarosa. Any discussion on any of the items? None. All those in favor. All right. Business office recommendations. We have the treasurer's report, revenue and appropriations, internal claims. Um getting rid of obsolete computer equipment surplus items. Um, and then agreement with Tyler Technologies. Um, so can I get a motion for items K 1 through six? Who's that? Mr. Ball. Second to vote. Miss Keller. Any discussion on any of those items? Any questions?

119If not, all those in favor? I. Okay. Board action items. uh items L1 through 14. Um and in here includes our B our uh polling uh inspectors for our budget, the agreement with polling services, agreements, agreements with our district attorney uh for the come upcoming year. So Mr. Well seconded, Miss Bellarosa. Any discussion on any of the items? Any questions? If not, all those in favor? I. Committee reports. Any exciting news out of the audit committee? Nothing to report. Thank you. That's a good report. Facilities. Yeah, I know we had a couple minutes which actually should be mentioned. Uh so in facilities next month May the first two Wednesday in May Chrisa Carlo from Bernie Dinger's office is going to present to us opportunities for another capital project based on the amount we have in

120reserves based on when our debt is falling off and what kind of scope uh the project could be. So if that's something of interest to you I encourage you to participate in our facilities meeting the first Wednesday of May. Policy committee. Uh yeah we have a policy committee April 1st. Our next polic committee will be May 6 uh for any uh interested in attending. As you heard earlier, uh discussion and policies being developed around the the cell phone ban implementation. Um again recognizing that there's some some variation in terms of what the actual direction will be coming out of the governor's office, but that is being reviewed and discussed. Um and uh and I announced uh we do have a next meeting. Thank you. Okay. Um, now is the time uh for our second public

121recognition. Anybody who is still out here that would like to approach us. Hello. Check two. There you go. Um, my name is Brandon Christian and uh I came down here because of a few reasons. It was nice to sit here though and see how you guys are making ter um keeping things going. But um There was an incident recently uh this past wrestling season with Mr. Ers and how he handled an investigation for my nephew and uh I see he's talking about like how to cut sports and cut things like this. Well, he effectively already cut the modified wrestling coach um by going out with your son and uh I see you're talking a lot about um how you're going to save money on the budget and this and that and you talk about cutting

122arts, cutting sports, uh helping uh the uh games uh seasons delayed or like shortened. And the lower sports uh you're are like they're not [Music] financially like valuable sports or you know they're not making their own money with the donors. So, it's um kind of like a a weird weird uh way of looking at it as far as you saying there should be no like sacred cows or anything like that. Um but just uh with the way that like some of the words here I've heard over tonight with uh like how we don't solve problem. We shouldn't solve problems in the community with like going after people or whatnot. It's exactly the opposite what I've seen and and I went to so high school here a long time ago and uh this community has changed

123a lot since then and uh I think there's been a lot of like coalesing of people's attitudes as you were all around political views and whatnot and people going back and forth at each other over uh their differences and opinions in the way they live. And uh I feel like my brother and his son, which uh have nothing to do with what uh I heard he did with his emails, just shows like a level of incompetency in the way he's doing his job. Mr. And uh Mr. Chris, could you keep your comments to what you want? We're we it's part of our thing if you read in here. We're not going to attack personnel for your comments. If you have a particular subject, well, that's just a factual uh well, maybe not factual, my opinion.

124My opinion way handled in his job as a superendent. We're not going to talk about personnel and and how somebody did their job. defending him. He'd like to address you guys like a human shield and and we're talking about what he did earlier this week and how you guys all think it shouldn't matter. You just did that. I have no idea. I'm I'll give you one more shot and we'll cut this off. No, about how you all defended this email thing that happened. That's what I saw just a few minutes ago during your public comments. Um, and some of the other ones were you can't always be perfect. Someone said that we're going to treat everybody in a fair manner. Let everyone have a voice. It's uh a little bit uh funny to hear all

125that and then hear what you just did to me. Trying to cut me off for saying something about Mr. Let everybody have a voice. Well, you should listen to what they're saying. And uh in my opinion, he's showed a few instances in just this past few months that you know are not okay. You keep coming back to the same thing. This thing I asked you not to do. So Okay. All right. If you're if you're done, you're done. If not, I'll end it for you. Oh, you end I I it's very clear what we allow what is here. I just like to say I I would like to see a more a higher level of uh you know I guess character when it comes to how this town is working and and functioning because in

126my experience it's went down. Thank you very much. Appreciate your opinion. Thank you. Okay, we are I'm going to look for a motion to go into executive session. for the purpose of discussing uh a superintendent hearing appeal uh contract negotiations with CESSA CESSA as the CSEA and then matters that are leading to the appointment of a particular um organization as well seconded. All right. All those in favor? All right. And just to let everybody know when we do come out, it will be to uh adjourn the meeting. So there'll be no other business to vote on. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Take a motion to read the email concession. Second, seconded by Mr. Wells. Time is All right. Um, all in favor I I um make a motion to amend the agenda to include a resolution

127out of the executive session. The resolution here be it resolved that the board of education of the sort central school district hereby affirms the superintendent's decision and suspension of student number 17240 issued and further authorizes the board president to inform the parent of student number 17240 of its decision. Okay. All those in favor of the motion to have that add to the agenda. Second second by Mr. Paul. All right. Yeah. Any discussion? All those in favor? I motion to adjourn. I learned last time. Mr. Wells seconded by Yes. Yeah. Remember when we added it last time we can do another it is it is when Okay. Yeah. So all right um a motion to to uh to accept the um change in the agenda. We already did that. We already did that. Motion to approve

128the resolution. Motion to approve the resolution. Mr. Wells, second by Miss K. Any discussion? All those in favor? I want to Mr. Wells. Seconded by Mr. Paul. All those in favor. We don't have to do that.