001e e e yeah e e e all right welcome everybody our junior high students um and the stations that was fantastic um and it was much better um than having you simply stand up and present us something to be able to go around and see the different stations was tremendous so thank you Miss and thank you for everybody who participated that was great um so call to order uh regular meeting of the uh sores um Central School Board of uh board meeting March 11th 2025 um emergency exits are at the rear and to the sides um Virginia you do roll call for us here here okay um Fe for the Pledge of Allegiance just because we moved it the flag is next States Nation God indivisible and justice for all okay Dr uring our mission
002statements and vision statements please so School District we provide Equitable engaging inspiring and holistic experiences that support suc and empowerment for students families and the community and a diverse and changing world and our vision has become a beacon of educational Excellence where every child is inspired and able to achieve their full potential all right thank you uh moving on um approval of minutes of our February 11th uh meeting uh do I have a motion to accept those Mr Wells a second Miss Bosa any discussion all those in favor all right um our upfront public recognition um if anybody in the audience would like to address the board um now is our time okay moving on Miss Mills our student representative report this is our monthly Verizon commercial hear me now it should be towards the
003person can you hear me now yes okay thank you the next BLT meeting at ricardi is on March 19th reach out to Mr Tron if you are interested in joining The ricardi BLT students across the three elementary schools enjoyed the park pick a reading partner closing Ceremony this week and an exciting reward is in the works for the grade lover level that has read the most a big thank you to miss rii who spends countless hours every year creating a par experience that students will remember for the rest of their lives students at all three elementary schools participated in Elementary career day where students heard from 17 parents and community members about their careers students have the opportunities to learn about various careers such as a registered nurse a psychologist commercial/residential lender US Coast Guard
004actor attorney firefighter secretary and more sorry more students held the first granty moris Passion Fair inspired by the Junior High's genius Al and one book one school reading 40 plus students and staff shared that they are passionate about this passionate share what they are passionate about with the school Community I'm sorry about that the next BLT which is a building leadership team sorry about that at moris is April 10th please reach out to miss gan gan Greco if you are interested in joining the building leadership team in junior high news the junior high building leadership team meeting will be on Wednesday March 12th at 2:30 in the junior high Library Junior High Science Olympiad came in second place at the Regionals in are heading to States and modified Sports begin March 23rd in Senior High
005news spring Sports begin Monday March 17th for junior varsity and varsity congratulations to all those was involved in the shs play the music manand this past weekend the high school building leadership team meets April 3rd at 2:30 in the high school library and a congratulations to Savannah tiac for representing for representing sties in New York State's first official state tournament for women's wrestling Savannah plays sixth in the tournament and the secondary parent teacher conferences are March 13th from 5 to that's all I have thank you thank you Mar um that was a fantastic update um going through all the schools and the junior high and Senior High so thank you very much after our technical difficulty there which was not your fault so um moving on uh Dr ersi so just just some general updates
006as well as sports updates uh just want to just acknowledge our cast and backstage crew of the plays this past weekend was phenomenal they a round of applause uh parp we had the parp assemblies this past past two days so that's wrapped up uh the fourth grade is the winning grade I'm told read the most so they will be going to the Orum for a movie um so thank you to Orum for you know partnering with with us as well a big thank you to Mr RI for putting that on for the past couple years the force behind that um in terms of sports we had uh 39 scholar athletes so that's farity athletes that maintain an average above 90 or more during the season scholar athlete teams include girls basketball bowling girls wrestling and
007winter cheer where 75% or more of the athletes on the roster maintain an average of 90% uh Savannah tiac got her 100th wrestling win and won first place at sectionals uh she finished six in the State uh there's some great pictures of her on our Facebook page as well uh EJ cotton Stephanie Coxwell Harper Ferraro and mine Brooks qualified for the New York State section 9 composite team and will Bowl in Syracuse in March Harper captured the overall High series The section 9 championships girls basketball team m to the preliminary sectional play and boys m to the section 9 finals uh it's also important to point out our um Science Olympiad team high school team will be competing at the state tournament in Syracuse on the 21st and 22nd and our Junior High team will
008be competing in April uh that's our second year year in existence after that so thank you to all the students as well as the advisors for those activities thank you Dr Mrs Bale Junior High School update is it on yep I probably don't need this but I need it for the for the video um so thank you for coming tonight and thank you for participating in our glimpses of Genius inspired um by our genius Day last year we gave you a little glimpse of what the end of the year is going to look like and my assistant principal nice my assistant principal will be talking about that more um good all right all right so um I love the idea of a strategic blueprint I was happy to be a part of the Strategic blueprint
009drawing up last year um just so you know the junior highs Journey when I took over as principal um these are some of the initiatives that we had over the last three years that line right up to the blueprint um some of the highlights here um in 21 and 22 we revamped multi-tiered student support we we were a we were guaranteed a one person um in our math lab and one teacher in our literacy Labs so that we could have consistency and support in math and English and we also created what was called targeted learning lab for atris students with IEPs with 504s or just those students that were at risk to give them executive functioning um skills and build learning skills that they need um throughout the year um also 22 23 we saw
010the sixth grade we looked into revamping sixth grade to 7eventh grade and we brought the shadow day where students like the ones behind me have been asking me if they get to be a buddy this year for the sixth graders and they look forward to that every may we added that in 2223 um I started flipping the faculty meetings to bring forward some of the executive functioning training engagement training things like that the faculty meeting always has a slice of things that they can use the next day in their classrooms um we also had our first Community night as part of the parent teacher conference nights we've been carrying that through in 23 and 24 last year we partnered with torren Hampton for the genius pilot which you just got to see also we brought
011the instructional coaches up into the junior high school and I'll be talking a little bit more about those because of 24 and 25 so the Strategic blueprint hit and we can go ahead and map the junior high to that um the four focuses the student experience academic Excellence family and Community engagement and professional culture have always been there but it is so nice to have one document that states it and that states a purpose and that we can utilize across the board as a common conversation for all of us to have so I was so grateful when that got published I was very excited if you can't tell already all right so I know you don't like listening to me too much so I've asked for our president of the student government Aiden is here
012tonight to give you his um synopsis of what Junior High has been like for him oh oh okay uh hi I am Aiden Kow I am the student government president uh I can say I'm a little nervous here uh from what I've heard I believe I'm the first student government president to be in the special e program here yes so I'm how do I say this in a way that doesn't make me feel like like so SES has here as a high school and the high school and Junior High School has helped me grow in ways that I didn't expect it back in sixth grade and how it's running currently under Miss Vil is perfect I would say well there there's a few M only a few mind uh and this school in general has
013had an impact on both my life and my parents life it's where my mom went to school and from what I've heard from my mom I'm exactly 10 or I think never mind about that but and I also partake in the modified uh wrestling team and a few other teams here in the school and I can say that the sports is quite organized same with the current people who are running the student government um one second I can say uh some of the stuff with Halls need to definitely be regulated it gets in the holes and the cafeteria it's a bunch of crowding that's pretty much all I have to say up thank you so he didn't he didn't want to give kudos to himself but he actually traveled to States as a wrestler this
014year correct yes and he had some huge growth um he talked about his resilience in the football program and how they work you really hard and he felt like that got him in shape for wrestling so he was about to quit football and didn't and stuck with it so I do appreciate him taking the time to come tonight and tell you that my school is perfect so I'll that's it thank you good night I guess I'll keep talking all right so a lot of the buzz that I've heard um that we've heard great Buzz um centered around one big decision that it took probably 3 years to make about the cell phones in the junior high so last year we started looking into a lot more research I had teachers approach me about the mental
015health concerns about the addiction that they're having to screens about the lack of concentration that they were seeing in their students um so we actually had an invite meeting at the end of the school year last year where teachers were invited to come talk about cell phones from that we created some questions for our community and we held a Google meet over the summer um and inviting all parents and students that wanted to talk about what could be done about the cell phone policy to a meeting in the Summer where it was a collective and a lot of times we're hesitant because we're worried about the parent that's going to say my daughter needs her cell phone or I need her to have her cell phone and I don't want her to not have her
016cell phone or the parent that just wants to know where their child is at every minute um so we were able to have those really hard conversations as part of a collective I think almost eight parents sign signed online and we had three arrive so we had about 11 parents participate and over 16 teachers this summer um in that meeting uh so we finalized a more concrete policy because there was a lot of well you can have it here but you can't have it there um you can walk with it but as soon as you enter a room you have to tuck it away um and it caused a lot of problems and references so the new changes um that were rolled out in the fall was that we basically shut it down um for
017the hallways and lunch so they can zip it in the front of their backpack or they can lock it in their locker that's supposed to be from 7:30 to 2:30 they are teenagers so some of them think the front of their hoodie is the backpack so we just have to explain that it's not their backpack um but they're often silent during class they can't disrupt the building those were all the same but the big change was no hallways and absolutely not in lunch um and I do have a student speaker who did a great job um we actually always have a sixth grade panel when our sixth graders visit in February so she did a wonderful job at the sixth grade panel explaining um what the change meant to her uh so I asked her
018to come to the board meeting and explain it to you so Katana are you here you ready um before I'm Katana Dior and before I start I'd like to thank m b for choosing me to speak on this topic um why having no phones in school is beneficial having no phones this year has helped our school tremendously I remember my seventh grade year was full of drama and broken friendships but now my eighth grade year has been quite opposite the new no phone rule has helped students communicate with each other more and help wants that no one knew existed back when we had our phones school days were very chaotic we had students taking their phones out in class and disrespecting teachers just to go on social media lunch SL recess was even more chaotic
019students would go to other students and confront SL threaten them just to get clapped for two seconds I myself have fallen victim to these type of incidents and it does not feel great on behalf of everyone there has been many incidents where I didn't want to come to school because of all the stress the cost these reasons I just listed about why cell phones are bad show why having no cell phones in schools is good for teachers and students because it just makes both of our jobs easier and at the end of the day school should be a safe place for all not a place where students don't feel safe to [Applause] be so like I said um at the sixth grade panel we asked the sixth grade guidance counselor to ask the sixth graders
020to write down questions for the seventh graders so it was like a third of third a third so a third of them were like can we have our phones and then a third was is the food better or not and then the other third was how long is it going to take me to find my way around that big building and questions around scheduling so the cell phones were definitely on their minds in sixth grade and I had three different panels and Katana head it out of the park but the other k did to on those days but I really want to I appreciate Katana for Having the courage to stand up and give her side of things thank you so much all right next so last year um 2324 the building goal was to
021improve attendant attendance rates at the students of the junior high I remember Dr ERS presenting the um chronic attendance rate um to us and it was 15 students I think in 2122 was the first time he showed us that um so it blew us out of the it might have been more than that back then so in 2223 at the end of the year it was 104 happy to say at the end of 2324 it was only 38 students that were chronically absent so we saw great improvement from 28% to 10% this year right now we're sitting at 22% at the middle of the year but there has been a lot of flu so my hopes are as we finish the year you'll see that rate dissipate because we have more days for the percentage
022to go down if their attendance stays the same and doesn't increase so right now we're at 22% but I'm hoping that that goes away with the better weather and healthier people um so again the reasons for that Improvement um we do an attendance review at every brand round we still have our interdisciplinary team meetings once a day um in seventh and 8th grade for them to look at that data and misso and I go in every other week to talk about concerns and to look at the attendance data we bring it up every five weeks we look at attendance um we also still have student support meetings we invite parents in when we notice students have an attendance issue we look at The Chronic attendance so right now we were calling in meetings for anyone
023that had over 10 absences now if we haven't met with them yet if there is a true reason and we can't figure out why they're not coming to school we the parents in to sit down and make a success plan with our social worker their guidance counselor um sometimes misso and I will also sit in on those meetings and then we are always looking for the story because there's a reason they're not walking into the door and not coming in and our students more than ever are presented with struggles that not everyone can see because students are very resilient and they don't always show that there's a reason so we were happy that olster County received the Grant from LEL mental health um so we actually are partnered with LEL school um and we identify
024families that need help students that need help working on how to get into the building uh so right now we have served 27 families to date with the LEL program they can have 10 on their case load at a time Vic is the counselor that works with the families and we received very high reviews about how they approach the problems and how they discuss it at the teenagers level and how they work with the families um and right now we only have one family on our weight list so this was added um as an olster County Grant so we took full advantage of that um and it's one of the things that we do suggest at the student support meeting so again um it's always been a goal of mine to make sure that I
025know if the student is okay and I want them to run back to the building the next day I want them to have a great day so these are some of the things that we've done um the parent teacher conference communication we run data and we do send home a letter if we notice that students are falling below expectations in two or more of the core subject areas we send a support letter inviting them to make an appointment with us and I always time it with the upcoming parent teacher conference this Thursday so they did go home last week um even two weeks ago I think we mailed them out right Miss lamber yeah um so we sent those home and it is a message of support to make the appointment to come talk to
026the teachers and make a plan for them to be able to attain the grades to move on to the next level so we instituted that about three years ago I feel like we did it in the hybrid year we instituted that letter when we were half in half out that year just to show our support um I do want to invite uh Miss defino up to talk about two of our new initiatives that are listed here um so I'm going to pass the mic so that you have a change of voice hi you got to hear from me two meetings in a row that's exciting um so one piece of feedback that I got from parents last year is they wanted to have a better idea of what was going on in the junior high
027so we have been putting together a twice a month newsletter to send out to both our staff um and parents so that they are reminded of any events coming up and also to celebrate um Student Success so we just highlighted some essay contest winners Yousef and Ethan won a Elks Elks what Patriot what patriotism means to me essay contest that they'll be honored on Thursday for um we had Science Olympiad highlighted in the last one and again just to remind families of events and things going on in the building and then some feedback I got from teachers is they wanted a better way to recognize students when they doing something right so we created a positive referral sometimes teachers would come down and fill out like one of the behavior referrals and just cross it
028off and write positive on the top so I wanted something more professional that could be mailed home um and we tied that to the core values in the Strategic blueprint so hopefully a lot more of those will be getting mailed home soon um move to the next another initiative based on staff feedback was changing the way we do our I ready Diagnostics so students um use I ready for Math and Ela to track their progress over the course of the year and the Diagnostics take about three class periods to complete so roughly two hours um in the past we had done those day by day so each day of a week maybe three days in a row the kids would work on their Diagnostics and we shifted that so they are working on them for
029a chunk of time um and then we wanted those days to be really fun so that students aren't just sitting and taking a test for three periods and then going to their classes so we decided to incorporate Field Day activities games student Choice um all sorts of fun other things in the other periods of the day so that it wasn't just all test focused and we got really really positive feedback from our Student Government students and kids um about those so we did those in the fall and the winter and we'll do one more around of them in the spring back to Mrs Vale for the data the ma you can talk about data your science yeah you're a math teacher you don't have to tell people that um so the diagnostic day just the
030the feedback to the connections we're always looking for connections and it was great to see teachers doing yoga with kids in the morning and participating um all day and getting to meet the kids in September they actually they got to know them better because we did a community day around the Diagnostics so the I ready data this year um another celebration we had um growth as you can see uh 58 students moved a grade level um from the fall diagnostic to the winter Diagnostic in seventh grade in reading and 67 students in 8ighth grade did move um at least one or more grade level from the fall t diagnostic this year and then the same success um is reflected in mathematics so whether you want to attribute it to them being more comfortable on those
031days or you know there is um pathway work that is being done um and just some of the activities in the classroom and I think it's a full effort there's not one thing that is speaking to the success it's everything that we've put together in the junior high that's making um these strides so we did do a data dive and these are staff generated um bright spots and targets for growth and next steps brainstorm um I showed them the Diagnostic in the fall and they looked at the data in the um the cores of what the diagnostic does comprehension um those things and they looked and then we asked for some feedback so we recorded some of their feedback that you can look at in the spreadsheet um one of my takeaways here was that
032teachers were talking to teachers about the data and comparing notes about what they were going to do next so it was really an opportunity at a faculty meeting to talk um and to have data be the talk but to have the kids rise as the subject around the data so our four focuses I just got rid that I apologize our four focuses of professional culture um the writing Revolution um there is an ongoing after school class and I have 12 Educators I believe eight of those are from the junior high there's actually one interdisciplinary team that all participants including map are participating in the writing Revolution the writing Revolution Is spearheaded by Dr Jen um and what it does is it's bringing it's breaking down writing skills and having them create writing through through um
033it's actually like seed kernels so they're coming up with ideas and then putting it together um and it's really showing growth and mathematical discourse you need those pieces to put together how you solv a problem so there's connections across the subject areas which is also if you talk to me for a long time I like to break down the silos I don't want the English teacher job to be to teach writing I don't want the math teacher job to be how to figure something out it's a group effort so the writing Revolution is really um kind of rides on the shoulder of the science of reading that I know Dr Aurora has talked about before but it really has grasp bringing literacy across the content areas so there's some great work happening there um C-
034teing and collaboration that's through IDE and also we have um State Partners working on co- te and collaboration our learning walks really highlighted that this year I was pleased when Rory um said from the state he said it was really great to walk into the junior high co- teach classroom I couldn't tell who the content teacher was and who the special ed teacher was and that's a huge compliment that they're actually co- teing so I have to really brag about my teachers there because that was super important to hear um so we always want to focus on that co- te and then the engagement Continuum I introduced that a couple years back and it really has grabbed on what I really the book um by Amy Barry uh it brings three engagements to the Forefront
035so there's an academic engagement like what they're doing in the class and there's a cognitive engagement what they're actually thinking about and wanting to be engaged and then there's emotional engagement so whether they're actually able to block out what's in the way and be able to dive in so that was a really important takeaway from that book and the engagement Continuum work is in every class pretty much every classroom I've been asking that question at my APR meetings and each teacher has their own little way of presenting it but it is a full conversation throughout the school I know you've seen it in other presentations so I did not talk about project inquiry because I'm handing the microphone back to the guru of the PPL Miss Chelsea defina so I know our students made it
036look really easy to talk to adults that they didn't know about their work um but that is actually a really complex skill and I'm really proud of them so if everyone can just give them a round of applause so last year we started this process that you saw today with something called genius day and some of our students who are here today participated in that last year as well um Mrs V and I really want our students to be able to talk about their work and explain what they learned to adults and peers and have conversations about what the learning meant to them so we piloted this last year students um were given the opportunity to present to both adults and older students in the building um we asked all teachers to just ask for
037volunteers to see who wanted to present what and we had um pretty much every content area represented which was really exciting and we tasked our students with just talking about a piece of work that they did this last year um for 3 minutes and then opening up 5 to Six Minutes of discussion with the people at their table so you see some pictures there of what those tables looked like and it was probably one of my favorite days from last year I was just so blown away by the conversation between high school and junior high students between staff and students um and just seeing people take two hours of their time to talk about learning and what it meant to them so that brings us to our next idea so when Mrs Vale and I
038get in a room together it's really scary we're just talking and bouncing our ideas around and we come up with really really exciting things um so this also came out of Junius day we have a group of Really Brave teachers from Ela social and social studies and science who are going to try something new for final assessments so instead of giving a sitdown final where kids answer multiple choic or fill-in theblank questions students are going to be presenting a project or a body of work that they completed over the course of the year um so we have Ela and social studies teachers working on portfolios where kids are adding work all year that they're going to reflect on and then our seventh grade science teachers are going to do some form of um Symposium gallery
039walk so that is going to be really really exciting stay tuned um and then for June that will be happening we'll have full presentation of learning days as well as some traditional exams um for Math and the eighth grade science classes who are not quite piloting yet but I think our goal in the future is everyone will be doing some sort of presentation of learning um and then the 17th and 18th which will be half days for junior high students we're going to ask every sing single kid in the school to share some piece of work that they learned similar to The Format um that you saw today so very informal and just getting kids and adults talking to each other about work so we're super super excited for this and I will give the
040microphone back to miss Vil One Last Time thank you thanks Chelsea okay we're almost there am I doing good doing all right doing good good my mother would not like me say that um so here's our next steps I don't like to read um for bom um but I do want to move forward in the attendance um study and take a look at relationships um I did have something planned on the half day but unfortunately the buses got blocked and we got cancelled but I really do want to do relationship mapping and I want to make sure that every child has an adult in the building that they go to I actually just asked a student today at the end of the day who's your person here and he said I don't have one so
041that's my first goal tomorrow is to figure out why and if we can set hook that student up with someone um and I think that the teachers um will Embrace looking for relationships and looking to see what students may not have a person to go to and um or not know that they have those people that were here for them um also uh we had a presentation at our last faculty meeting from Jonas from family of Woodstock and he introduced again trauma informed practice and why students need support and why they may be behaving the way they're behaving and to not look so much at punitive and what we can you know the punitive measurements or Consequences that we're doing but actually have conversations and we've begun that with our restorative practices so I've had
042a conversation with Jonas he's is going to set me up with some professionals that are going to be able to do a full staff training hopefully on trauma informed practice because we've done training with our guidance counselors and special ed has done some work but I want it to be again break down those silos and everyone needs to be aware um of trauma informed practice when you're approaching a student that may be off that day there shouldn't be a snap judgment they're just trying to act up for a show we have to get to the bottom of it um also uh one of the things that we've been working together Mrs maleno and I um full building initiative with dep Department chairpersons especially with the New York State initiative of Pathways to graduation we want
043s Sawyers to be able to identify what they want to graduate with what they want to um achieve and maybe even have the form of like a high school major or concentration so we're going to be working with Department chairs to kind of line up what coursework can look like we looked at the fact that it's 22 a half credits I think to graduate and if you divide that by four with eight class periods you kind of come up short so we want to make sure that that we're not just asking for the minimum but that we are planning for them to move forward so we're going to be um looking to enhance the Sawyer experience and get to student voice and choice and look at some Pathways here that can really Inspire students to
044study what they want to inspire and we started that with you saw some presentations of desktop publishing so a business course in eth grade is one of those things that we started so they know that there's a four plus1 option in the high school and again um the last thing is just we had the work with our coaches inspired our teachers to say hey we'd like to get into those classrooms and we'd like to talk to each other we'd like to actually see what we're doing in real time so some of the work that we've done um we're going to be looking at the Prof professional collaboration period to have teachers looking at teachers and talking about what's going on and what's going right and wrong in the classrooms so we're going to be looking
045at that for next year as well so just full circle um you know I couldn't be happier with the Strategic blueprint and us working together as a collective I think breaking down as many silos and as many walls and having conversations is a way to really have the children benefit the most so I appreciate your time tonight and um that is my presentation thank you are there any questions just the Lal Grant does that when does that end what's the how does that work they keep they keep renewing it so okay right now the county has identified as the need so so something County pays for and then we are able to use yeah we are partnered with Anora so they get 10 we get 10 okay um and they've been filling theirs too so
046we really haven't had an opening when somebody goes out somebody comes in so and is the newsletter an electronic distribution it is get on serve can we get on that serve that's a great way for us we'll look into that fine thank anybody else a question on pilot sounds uh exciting to to explore the new way of evaluating students at the end of the course work um I guess I was just wondering is there any way that sort of as that pilot unfolds to kind of do a correlation between those evaluations and their sort of I ready scores and just going to see if there's any correlation I love that idea def point that yeah anybody else well thank you Mrs Veil um thank you um I'm I practice it three times Kat did I
047say that right Katana okay and a thank you um appreciate and all the people who presented to us again one last thank you this was much better than um just getting up and presenting us a few slides so thank you very much Dr ersc he's going to he's going to get up and present us a few slots a I know yeah thank you thank good to see made all right so uh first of all I need to say I I I hope that when you're hearing uh Miss Bale and misso present right some of those things that they're saying are things that New York state are just starting to do now with with por of graduate with the the with the ribbon commission so we are definitely on on the right path and kind of
048ahead of the state in some sense um moving forward so that's all exciting things to see now talking about presentation right budget stuff is not necessarily exciting so I probably broken every presentation rule possible with this uh with the slides here uh this numbers on paper we'll make it prettier in the future um so first clicker here we go s okay good all right just a timeline uh so March 1st we submitted our our tax cap we'll talk about that in a second April 22nd board member petitions are due sorry April 21st April 22nd the board sets uh the budget for the vote May 6th public hearing for public vote May 20th board member and budget vote obviously and then we count those affidavit ballots all right so today and when we talk about budgeting
049right there are more than one budgets uh that we handle as a school district so there's the the general fund that is the budget that gets voted on by our taxpayers that is the only component that that gets voted on okay we also have the school Food Service which we develop internally the board does acknowledge um the special Aid fund so we also get money through grants so for instance we get uh 6 611 619 Grant title funds that is additional money that gets to us that is not part of our our general fund so in those things there could be professional development that gets paid for it could be staff that get that that their salaries get paid for and so forth but that's outside the Ved on budget all right Capital the H
050fund that that has to do with capital projects right so we just had our $22 million Capital project so that money is held in that area and then last year Debt Service but with once again the thing that we vote on as taxpayers is our general fun all right so with that turn over so we're going to talk a little bit about the tax cap um this evening the um calculation is is quite confusing and complicated so before I start on the controller's website there is a link to a presentation from the controller's office and there's also a spot with definitions of all these phrases that I'm going to go through and I'll be happy to send the link out on to the superintendent he's seen it um but we can send it in case
051anyone's interested in that what we what we do is when we talk about the tax levy we talk about the current tax levy we start with the 2425 tax levy that was approved by the board and then we added tax based growth factor which is provided to us by the by the Controllers Office the year is 1 um 26% increase which brings us up to 46 million 362,000 then what we do is we're going to be adding and subtracting some information from the 2425 school year to come up with a base so we have to add the pilots that we budgeted for for this year which was 48,8 and then we have to subtract where it says 25 Capital Levy it's a little bit confusing the capital Levy basically is what you pay out in
052Deb service net any age you get it any state aid for building Aid that number is what can go on to the capital Levy so last year if you were to look at last year's tax cap you would see the levy Capital Levy was $1,179 th000 then we get to add um the 2% tax cap what's confusing is that it's the lower of the actual inflation or the CPI or 2% so in this year came the controller's office put on the website it was 2.95% but we cannot exceed 2% after we take into account the few things that we talked about to add and subtract for the current school year I mean the upcoming school year 2526 we're estimating on the pilots at the same amount $ 48,8 that brings us down to a $46
053million number and the capital Levy for this year was $1,266 th000 and that's um part of that is getting um additional Debt Service when we're finishing up the high school project that extra money was able to go to the tax levy so the the maximum Levy for next year if you're not going to decide to exceed the cap is 47,3 54,000 this has been um submitted to the controller's office on time if for some reason anything with building Aid or anything else changes we're allowed to change that number but the the building Aid numbers and the debt service numbers we we reviewed with our fisal advisors last week so we're pretty pretty certain that there's not going to be any big changes in that one so just to recap the 2425 school year we had
054an allowable growth factor of 2% the 45 million was a taxes that were raised um the exact amount the increase was 3.62% which is a 1 $1,600,000 for next year the tax levy growth is 2% which means our maximum Levy could be 47,3 54,000 the increase would be 1.5 almost 1.66 million the increase for next year would be 3.43% and like I indicated before it's $1.5 million we're gonna Michael stagger our account is going to be talking about revenues for this year of projections and for next year but are there any questions on the tax cap before we go further so that that amount is added to what to give us our budget number he's going to go through all these things that come up your Levy the amount you collect in taxes cannot exceed
055that money so then you take all of the other funds that you're going to get in in terms of Revenue which we're going to go through with you right now and what's left I got is the okay light is on so the cap the the the tax levy is 2% because we can't exceed it the the cap cap but that you can see it's going to be going up a little bit more than that because of their exclusion because the because of the exclusions right so that that's what confused me is this there's a 2% cap and then there's tax levy cap it's actually the next slot so anyway but go yeah right here so it's it's 2% because that's all we're allowed we can't go over that but the actual increase is 3.43% for
056the well yeah so because you use 2% for the allowable growth factor right so it's part of the formula so part of the formula only has 2% CPI is 2.95 but we can't go over two correct got it okay okay right so the allowable growth factor is the same as on the previous slide tax cap the 2% cap on inflation increases in that left hand column right so this is where I think it's a language right so I think I'm not sure if it's in legislation or whatever but the 2% tax cap comes from this part here but it's really 2% tax cap it's one step of the formula that's C at 2% and it's the allowable next SL the allowable increase okay that helps me and then they throw in your Capital Aid to
057to get and this is just the maximum that you can actually tax it's not the amount of the whole budget corre got it percent okay good evening um good evening I'm Mel stagger than the count here in the business office so I'm going to take you through some of the revenue projections for the 2025 2026 budget that we're projecting um first slide we're starting with is the governor's proposal from her most recent February data um the very first number you see there is foundation Aid and it's looking like a 2.5% increase to 17 m865 780 the high tax Aid is staying exactly the same as it was at 34274 we do see a decrease in transportation um down 3.36% um but building Aid is increasing by by over 10% um that increase is due in
058part to us submitting the final cost reports for the $22 million Capital project in December so we do see an increase there we do see a decrease in B's Aid um that's partly because the percentage of 's aid went down um down to I think 52.7% from 58 2% um our access cost a public and private for special needs students we're seeing a decrease in the public portion of it and an increase in the private um for software Aid we are seeing a 45% increase to$ 38,9 34 Library materials are staying pretty flat right around 16,000 textbook Aid is increasing slightly by 1% and another big increase in Hardware technology a to 30 , 331 the next one um Universal prek Aid um that is a grant that is not part of the general fund
059um but it is a part of her projection but is just to keep in mind that that revenue is not for the general fund it's a separate Grant um and the governor bases it on 130 kids but right now we have about 80 kids in our upk program I believe next year we're hoping for yeah so we're with prek right now there's a cap at 80 students uh if we oversee the program which we said that we would do they can actually increase class size from 16 to 18 without any additional staff so that allow us to service 90 students there and so then we get moreid right but the agid we get really we just it just goes so as we get closer to the budget like April can we change that to show
060exactly what we think we're going to get instead of having to do that explanation every time like we're not going to get 700,000 that's just what the governor said we would get if we had 130 can we show what we would get if we have 81 students or I think it just it will eliminate a lot of confusion people just pull out c yeah they're saying they're getting 700 but they're really not I don't believe so what it's all just going out yeah there was talk of the state including funding for the cell phone pouches is that included in any of this Aid no so this is all so Foundation Aid is based on population demograph Graphics a couple host factors uh everything else is really expense based Aid so we we we've spent money
061so that we get the the refund based on based on this uh the one Senate bill came out that's just texting my phone I check my phone somebody texted me that in the Senate one house bill they're they're recommending a minimum increase of 3% of foundation Aid so we'll see how that ultimately plays out if that number will go up higher for foundation Aid and then is the building Aid does that represent that's all capital project correct so that's our 22 million Capital project that's EPC project capital outlay projects would be that number does okay and then the final number down at the bottom is just the a that we're projecting um we are looking at a 1.59% in general fund Aid that's without the upk um on to the next slide we just summarized
062um the tax L Foundation Aid and expense based aid from the state we went through already and then there's also Health and Welfare um Services we are expecting to see a 3.86% increase in Day School tuition as well we're looking at 1.59% increase and before we move on like just for the people who are dialed in and listening this is the government this is the governor's proposal so this this has to be voted on in a April I believe is it well there's the deadline of April 1st deadline of April 1 so this is this is her projection and her proposal this is not what has passed yet I just want to make that clear that people were violated so if these numbers change yeah so that is a particular this slide here all right
063and then this corresponds to the foundation a line here and expense base a so these two ones are are dependent on what happens up at your ykc okay thank okay okay great um just one thing to point out if you compare like this year's to last year's we had projected that the boage refund would be $650,000 this current school year after speaking with bosis they say there's no necessarily effective way to predict it but like this year we came in at 5 585 um so so you know even our projections from last year to this year are are always going to f to all right okay next thing we're going to look at are the lease payments which are at Maring um it's going to increase to 1825 Medicaid will be about 210,000 we're projecting
064moving on to Pilots next year we're looking at 48,8 the number that we have for this year 2024 2025 we have so far received 29,8 58 we are working with our attorneys to get to the full amount with um some of the ones that haven't paid yet to get to the 48,000 8815 on that one interest in earnings we're projecting almost a five 5% increase up to 975,000 in part due to um joining n class pending approval tonight and tonight's resolution um the next slide is U miscellaneous revenues these are things like Grant um um donations sale of scrap building use um so we do see that number decreasing we did get some grants this year that were 80,00 um we've received quite a few donations that we may not receive next year so that's
065part of the reason why there is a decrease in this number for what we're projecting next year e rate stays relatively flat around 27,000 interfund transfers which are for indirect cost from Grants are 25,000 again for next year tax penalties and interest on property taxes um down $4,185 um pre service providers these are things we provide for uh prek such as speech PT nursing Services um this year we're at 33,000 we're hoping to get that up higher next year to 75,000 um there is a decrease in homeless Aid next year that we're projecting and then our final number we'll have to figure out there our reserves and fund balance will need to balance the budget last year we used 3 million as we get um the approved state budget and things like that that would
066be able to finalize a number that we can use in there so uh just to reiterate so the 24 25 column these are what we're projecting for this year based on what's actually happening right this would be our projections for next year uh in terms of possible Revenue coming in right the budget right is what we're going to spend so we don't know if we're going to spend this much less than this much more and kind of adjust so that's just and is the Medicaid I mean is that potentially affected by decisions Federal decisions for for the Medicare reimbursement no y no as of as of tonight no no well no I'm just wondering if if that's anything that we've anticipated yes yes we so we bill for each service that students if families are
067Medicaid eligible we ask that they fill out the form so that we can bill for the services that they receive so it's kind of I dependent and our paperwork tracking dependent okay so we work with uh several agencies to figure out all of those components so that we can get maximum reimbursement per okay so that could change yeah so I I'd say this is pretty high and like we'd like to keep it high we're trying to get all of the information in but if like a couple families decide that they're not going to fill out that form even if they're Medicaid eligible we don't get that right it's more like a local issue that goes downed we really worked hard to get that high it used to be we would get about 30,000 so you
068know this is like just really we have to send out the scripts to the doctors get it back make sure they're accurate and simply because we weren't building we weren't building Medicaid when we should when we could right Christine the reserves and fund balance um from the projected Revenue sources do we anticipate that we're going to have used all of that this year is there way that's what we're working on now and that's what Dr said we're going to come back with the recommendation as we get so well the question is this year at the end of this year we have money left over is what you're asking yes right yes so did we when we last year to balance our budget we had to put up uh reserves to get there so do we
069see us having had to use those reserves use that savings the part of the 3 million yeah yes but I think that the the long range plan would be to becoming that $3 million becoming lower each year so that you're not not depending on fund balance and those types of things so that um we don't we won't we don't want to use 3 million next year so right now we're not on track to use all that $3 million correct right so say yes and then we're trying to to decrease that amount because that's a big amount to generate each year and extra funds on that so just for Simplicity if you brought it down to 2,250,000 next year less than that and the following year you're down to a million5 and by that time you're
070at a very good reasonable number to have to keep the budget in balance and then that money yeah so as Dr ERS before um indicated just going to give you an update on where we are with our all of our reserves for the general fund um for right now so the Employee Retirement System and the teachers retirement system together it's about $5.3 million the employee benefit liability Reserve which is part of the auditor piece on then going out with all of your benefits and those types of things to start to put some money into reserve for that um un assigned fund balance was a $3,147 that's the 4% capital reserve is 4.7 million at this time workers comp Reserve is at$ 250,000 unemployment Reserve is at 117 um for that 117,000 and our taxer Reserve
071has $595,000 in it one of the things that I we were looking at today is that we are still um we were on the phone with our legal counselor about unemployment Reserve because you think that how many people did you lay off but what I'm understanding is that um when someone's laid off um the unemployment office if someone is saying they're actively looking for a position it used to be just 26 weeks you collect unemployment and then during Co it got extended um there's different rules about that now so it's important that we still have keep as much as we can in the unemployment Reserve because we've had some reflecting since 2023 any questions on the reserves what is the last one people always ask tax tax oh tax it's a big number I mean
072600,000 and we've seen um significant increase so a tax R are is when when individuals fight their assessment and so ultimately a judge can determine that they should that they owe Less in taxes so the school district would have to reimburse that the home order and at times it comes back to they they will put in for a tax ciary or a claim it could be a business could be someone it could they usually put them in at 3 years so that's why that doesn't come true sometimes they they'll give you a settlement but it'll be for three different tax years okay okay thank you good all right now we want to cover factors that are affecting uh the upcoming budget um so I park lease so our students are schedule to uh attend CTE
073at I park in September um so that our our contribution for that LE least is is $230,000 um deck health insurance so deck came out and say it's going to be a 6% composite increase the active increase is going to be 7.52% so active employees their health insurance will be going up that much uh TRS contributions TR R contributions are actually going down slightly but as each year we pick on additional um salary right when when people go up so yes there's a decrease overall uh but there's additional salary new money that we have to contrib before uh ERS is going up about 1.3% um temperature so this is has to do with uh legislation that was passed and signed by the governor uh requiring that if it's above 82 degrees schools take proactive measures
074to reduce the temperature if it's at 88° it can the room cannot be occupied um there should be an amendment coming out that's saying they can't be occupied we're practicable um but this $50,000 represents uh us purchasing window AC units uh for for various classrooms in in our district uh particularly the junior high wind gets hot right um and then other buildings are obviously designed differently and set up differently so a couple rooms know here and some of our elementary schools as well but that's just for window units right that's not going to cool down to 68 deges it's going to bring it down hopefully enough um cell phone ban uh so as part of the governor's proposal she's proposing a BTO Bell uh cell phone B uh there is supposedly supposed to be legislation
075for language to be reimbursed we have not seen what that would look like um this $47,000 represents uh going out and getting a a bag for each student uh to to lock their phone up um during the course of the day General Insurance um unfortunately the past couple years we've had four major insurance claims um so right we had we've had two things that kill now Senior High moisture uh two summers ago and then we had the rard claim overs uh winter break um so last year there was a big increase in our insurance uh Michelle and Mike met with the insurance UA and Reese to to see if they could tell us what the rates would be um the Reese group is going to be going out and and getting rates from other companies
076as well uh for us uh right full transparency there is concern that UDA may actually drop us um because of the number of claims that we had okay so there's these claims and there's also uh times we get soon as well I know um long-term therapeutic program I put this up here because so long-term therapeu program is a program from oler bosis um districts initially said that they would join and it's and the the cost of it is broken out per student so our right so we p a fee based on our enrollment um last year one District pulled out and there's possibly talk of two more districts pulling out out of this program uh we currently have three students in in this LT program it's intensely therapeutic they've got services for as they're providing
077Mental Health Services um but right if they pull out that would drive up the coaster now right that's an increased cost but on the flip side of it right we do get reimbursement back from this uh we would get a refund you know if if there's extra money in this uh Department back to us as well but also the cost for us to send a student out of District you know for one student could be $100,000 right so if we're spending sending three students out ready to get the help that they need we would far exceed the cost of of the co room Dr top just on the top there is any of that U aable yes we would get back right right Michelle yeah yes all right schools that are dropping out of that
078what are they doing for their students like what's their Al uh may be suspension it may be just you know home instruction right but home instruction I mean you know going to a school getting instruction and therapeutic services are going to you know for surpass uh progress um other things that we've already considered and kind going through I give kind of rund down right to administrator is not replacing so um currently we have not replaced our director of HR um and we have a retirement in the administrative ranks uh that will not be uh not be refilled we have one teacher retirement who we will not be replacing um three teacher retirements who we will be replacing uh there's obviously be a savings in terms of salary breakage um for coming on at at a
079a lower step than we'll doing out run uh one technology retirement we would want need to replace that person and then we're also exploring uh so right now we get Services through Bose for technology but if we can bring that in house we might be able to bring it in-house for cheaper and have more um support for our students so we're exploring that as well um right Administration always comes up um so we'll kind of address it here here is our 23 24 so last year's uh certified administrators the business official um 23 24 right was certified Uh current business official is not certified Civil Service employee uh which is fine but I still love to get in there cuz it's kind of central office um so you'll see uh from last year to next
080year we're going to be down uh three positions director of HR Elementary project coordinator and then our athletic director/ assistant principal uh just made a note there that our athletic director is a s position this year we probably continue it for next year um and then the one retirement is in October so there is some salary expense for that all right board member election so we have three seats up for election this this year um just once again the timeline Friday March 21st the petitions package are available on Thursday March 27th we're going to have the candidate night Forum um so we'll have our attorneys here to share with everybody what the role of a board member is our board members will be present as well to answer questions and kind of share their perspectives
081I think it's very valuable last year Monday April 21st the board petitions um are due for expense report we draw the names on the ball on 22nd and then the vote is on May 20th all right uh other things happening in addition to the budget is kind of some proposed changes for special education so I'll have Jamie explain all right how about this one okay so um we had some meetings with our building teams which included the lead teachers the school psychologist the principal myself the director of PPS and our district chairperson who's kind of overseeing our out of District students um to make sure they get what they need and we talked about the needs for uh each of the buildings and made a very large list of what uh we think we should
082do moving forward so some of these changes that came about where right now we have fifth and sixth grade getting a co- te model full day which we we love to see we love to see co- te all day every day for all students but due to our elementary model of having three different elementary schools um we we aren't really able to sustain that given um the the number of special ed teachers we would need to do that and also provide services to our kindergarten and second through second grade with uh consultant or sorry co- te services so right now they're just getting consultant teacher Services which means that special ed teacher goes in for about 30 minutes and then that's all they get for those early years which we also know from research that
083early intervention is key especially with the decisions we made last year to increase services for our preschool students we want to get in there early whether or not they have an official IEP or not we want to be definitely putting those services in place as soon as possible and um working with students there so we kind of decided as all elementary teams that each that came up at each building and we talked about how we could do that um and we decided that going to that Coe slta support model for all grades was better than having uh less support at kindergarten first and second and more support through fifth and sixth grade so that change will be that in fifth and sixth grade they'll have a co- teer during their Ela and math blocks and
084then they'll have a teaching assistant during science and social studies and that'll be now the same across the board so that is already what is in place for third and fourth grade and so now that will be just in place K through six um so we be kind of giving that support across the board it makes our consistent continue of services and then um you know buildt in that support for primary levels uh and additionally um we saw a need for the ABC Academy to be extended uh into the junior high we have a large group of students in that program at kill right now and they're uh academic Behavior communic ation academy uh I think previously it was termed the autism program but we see not just students with autism in there sensory sensitivities
085that really lend itself to needing those uh supports so those students instead of saying oh 7th grade is coming we all need out of District placements or whatever it may be we're going to meet them where they're at and try to integrate them as they're nicely integrated into kill now um through having a classroom that will meet their needs in the Junior High um and again that will be like a 36 month spread so right now it's likely just going to be seventh and eighth grade students and um maybe n depending on um if a student is in need and that will kind of keep them in their home school district and hopefully they'll learn kind of the system here with support and be able to talk in high school even just integrate out into
086some of our general classes as they get a little bit smaller and more interest based I think that's it any questions on that um other District happenings uh so we've got several construction bids and request for proposals going out um so more site work project so that bill bid went out on Friday uh that's additional work at Morris Elementary School I show a picture of in a second uh Ada Capital Outlet project for um ricardi element school that's going to go out this Friday that's the plan and then we've got RFP for bus transportation um so our bus transportation has not gone out to bit in a number of years I'm told um so this will hopefully get us the best uh value for our students um RFP for internal auditor and RFP for external
087auditor so we're kind of keep going out to make sure that we do the best for our taxpayers as well uh more of site work just so everybody's clear uh with the additional funds remaining from the capital project um the this is a playground area uh and this area up here all the way to about here would be the base bid to get this uh dug up to get new base material in and then and then repave it um Miss Gian greo student government is actually designing what the what would be painted on the playground area so they have some ideas already for that um alternate bids would be kind of Paving the remaining half uh Buffalo Road here like it was down there ripped up repave it uh resurfacing this area over here and
088then a walkway to the back um so we were able to do this because we did come under budget with the work that was performed um already okay sprinkler so this is Room 101 at kill this is where the sprinkler was broken right above the door here uh the sprinkler was broken so uh we did have Ser Pro come in uh They removed the whole the new flooring in there this was a cabinets and obviously the sheet rock and everything so we're working with uh Insurance to get everything agreed upon so that we can start having the Reconstruction part of it and then lastly for tonight uh I did want to show this this came up at our facilities meeting as well so this is our uh debt for capital projects okay just just one
089thing kill thing I mean that wasn't that wasn't contractor's fault right correct so why do we get dinged with that on our insurance so it still goes through our insurance and then they have to subrate formally subreg and then the other person would would take responsibility so the contractor has taken responsibility I forwarded the email that you know that I've C correspondence with them to our insurance company um so I don't know if it's going to affect our rate that's but it's one of those things to you know know we're pushing the to get answer by April 1 so we know what the plan for that yes but I would have loved to just through their insurance and their insurance alone right all right so for for future Capital project so this bar graph is
090showing the taxpayer component of our Capital project debt all right so if you look out here these years at the bottom 26 27 28 29 this is showing that roughly a million dollar from taxpayers is paying to for their Capital project debt in in 2030 we have a drop off right so something has been paid off in a sense so what this presents opport for a capital project for us right so if we bring on debt at the same time that it's dropping it down and bring it up then it will be what we referred to as last time as as a tax neutral uh Capital project right so in theory right the taxpayer would not see a big swing a big decrease and then a jump if you do a capital project it would
091be more level okay so I'm showing this tonight because this presents an opportunity for us to begin to explore uh through our facilities committee and our building condition survey about bringing on or doing a capital project beginning it somewhere over here so that we can bring on on debt and keep this bar kind of going across right so we can get more work done and we want to do that because we have tons of facilities that are going to need work no matter what we do right I mean because the inclination is to say oh we want to have less debt right so allows us not to have fluctuations and to keep things and to keep yes because we're going to have ongo Capital needs yes and if anybody would like copies of our building
092position sures I'd be happy to share them publicly we need work to get done and if you look at if you look at every other surrounding School District they all do capital projects every 3 to 5 years like clock like clock and then once you get in that routine it's it's easier right CU that's going to fall off you're just going to jump back on get going to fall off jump back on um just kind of timeline wise if we wanted to hit this Mark of 2030 we would need to get voter approval probably December of um our financial advisor said if we wanted to bring that on a little sooner we could also we could we could work some magic legal magic to make this part go down sooner much needed ricardi easement project
093not wait until 2030 to start that correct so yeah right and the idea is this when you want to bring thatt on so the work has to start so you have a ban or a bond to to to go ahead and do that um there's also potential so right now we've got I think it was 4.6 million in Capital Property reserves so that would give us if everything that we did was aable like $1 million worth of project that would be just be tax there would be no no no tax impact we would just be kind of paying cash for it in my simplistic mind um and then if we kind of take this Gap we could prob we could possibly get another $7 million worth of work done if everything was aidable so we
094could go out for like a great $18 million project right does that make sense yeah and just to kind of reiterate this here has nothing to do with kind of the the budget that we're going to be voting for in May right this would be a whole separate thing with a separate vote to authorize the expenditure and so forth okay questions all right so moving forward um O So moving forward uh on March 24th we're going to have Dr Tims back with us at 5:30 we'll uh messag going to go out to the community about that that'll be more of a workshop based we'll be sitting around Hill is going to go over kind of what he has so for for the financial projections so be more of a workshop format for everybody and then
095here y here and then on that Thursday the 27th would be uh the forum for perspective board members our meet and greet and then we've got two board meetings in April lined up um the one board meeting will actually be closed on school that day with the give back day I'm pretty sure the 22nd so we we'll still have the board meeting so no vacations for anybody so there are four more meetings public meetings about the budget uh well at least three I would say right so april8 April 22nd and the 24th and the 24th yes and then there's the day we put it Forward correct one in May the formal hearing anyway so yeah yes so there are a lot of opportunities for folks who are out there who are still following us today
096um to come and ask your questions and find out more about what decisions and things we're putting forward yes and we're not showing numbers today in terms of what potential growth could be because we still have a lot of things up up in the air right so one thing is the Bose's budget we had our our initial service request meeting uh I reach out to them today to see if I get a copy of the final service request so we actually know what values to put in CU I don't want to that's something I don't want to guess at and then be off by a million dollars right and either worry people or you know create Comfort um so there'll be more information from and the night of the night of the 24th that is
097just Mr Tims yeah we're just going to just have just the budget and the work okay yes and May 20th if I'm not mistaken I think somebody mentioned an email a uh that it's it's a long weekend that weekend correct or coming out of a long weekend so this year it is not we're getting off the Thursday and Friday we have that conversation about I just want to make sure that so if it was I want make sure know that so that nobody's here I just want to make sure it was long we I want to make sure we put that out there right out of the okay all right thank you Dr um board member remarks start over here yeah I'll save you Mr ready I know Carol always thinks I skip it but
098I have method we spoke about it Carol um I'm going to start um the first thing I'd like to do um is just um make note of the fact that we did have a board of education member former Board of Education member Larry Marcus uh passed away recently um Larry was here on the board in the early 2000s um Larry was a uh an international businessman um but anybody that knew him knew that um or would have known that he started his career as a as a public school teacher uh because he was exceptionally uh empathetic person exceptionally kind person and um L will be uh missed very much uh By Me personally as well as the district um excuse me I want to thank Dr uring for that presentation similar to what Dr hos
099has shared you know we we have very limited opportunities before this this budget vote um and I thank Dr ERS for continuing uh to to present in a in a an ongoing and transparent fashion um and be available for questions uh regularly I want to thank thank Miss Vale and her two speakers her two students and those names I did not write down but they're both uh uh should be proud of themselves uh anytime kids are able to get up there and speak with us and join us they should be proud of themselves so thank you Miss Bale and those those two students uh thank you to the junior high students that did all of the presentations I I apologize I was not able to get here early enough to see all of them but
100uh kudos to all of you kudos to our drama students our our student athletes uh Savannah tiac wow you know uh talking with a uh you know talking with someone recently the the very fact that three three years ago we weren't even talking about this right um it's it's so significant uh so so what an incredible achievement and then best of luck to the uh the Olympiad teams as they go forward um my final thing I want to just share because we are talking about board of education budget and elections and things I wrote a few comments down for myself I don't normally do that but I did and I wanted to share with everyone that I'm I'm choosing to not stand for election to the Board of Education this upcoming May um this June
101will conclude my three-year term um I feel a slight personal necessity uh to explain my reasoning largely just because so many board members that I've known um throughout the years have served for more than one term more than you know two three terms in many cases consecutively um and to those folks you know we all owe a debt of gratitude uh it's a volunteer position and it's and if it's done correctly it's an extraordinary really an extraordinary commitment um so here's the part where you know I just share a little bit of of where I'm coming from you know I started you've heard me talk about this before I started an elementary school Mount Maran School many many years ago uh happens to be where I met Mr rii uh our board president both both
102proud alums but I tend him out married for four years so high school for 6 years uh junior junior senior high school uh after college I came back here and worked for 10 years our oldest son began School in 1998 our youngest son graduated in 2019 uh that was 21 years um during those times uh Sports boosterism National Honor Society graduations um I'm not going to do the math for you um they were all on sports teams for six years uh two to three seasons at least um so I've been a part of this system for 40 years like formally intimately um not just living here um the they been busy years my decision to not stand um is because it's time to those people that supported me thank you I stand on my record
103and my comments um through the past three years but you knew that our Board of Education looks different today than it did just 3 years ago I'd like to congratulate and thank all those folks to my my left for their uh engagement um and I'm talking about our my colleagues uh in the three years that I've been on the board I believe this board has upheld its primary responsibilities in every respect and that includes the hiring and evaluation of the new school superintendent and the development of the school budgets including uh the work that's going into this this budget this year uh I'd like to say that I have confidence in the Board of Education that I'm leaving and in our administrative team my greatest hope is that the next Board of Education continues to
104navigate the challenges using the tools that have been developed continues to focus on the big picture allows administrators to administrate teachers to teach and keep children community and con connectedness as the priorities always thank you thank you Mr W thank you for your service appreciate it Mr Wells Miss K I just wanted to than Miss Val and um misso for their presentation tonight and the students that um presented as well um and I want to thank Miss Churchill for you know sharing with us during our budget presentation um the idea I'm I'm sad to see that uh co- teing can't stay full day in the fifth and sixth grade but I'm happy to see that we're going to go back to really servicing those kids K through two because I think that was a big
105I that is something that I've always said that is so very important if we catch those kids early they won't need that well they're still going to need that support but maybe they won't need it as much so I was happy to hear that tonight so thank you and thank you Mr wall for you know being such a cool colleague thank you Miss K Dr hos sorry thing missing there is this good test test yes um I have a lot of things here on these notes but um Bill I just want to really thank you for your service on the board and for your words of confidence um for all of us here makes a really big difference and I really just value anybody who has stepped up and encourag people so we know there's
106at least one spot that's not uh contested um to run and to remind everybody that it's a volunteer position um but people everybody's bringing sort of their best selves to the work and I really appreciate that so so thank you really um Miss Vale I want to thank you and your junior high students they're fabulous I suggested to the uh alphabet group back there that they bring all of their letters to the kindergarten or have the kindergarten gallery and see if they can identify what those letters are anyway and they were very excited about that so I cannot tell you how excited I am to hear about teachers collaborating in small groups and that that is actually now appearing in the work students are doing and students are getting into small groups my daughter graduated
107in 2022 and I asked her and she was only here for night to uh for high school and um she other than her English class she had a very hard time even remembering if there were any small group work happening in classrooms and pretty much High School classrooms should be tons of small work and them really working on their stuff and looking at it and sharing and talking about their ideas so anyway there's lots of stuff around that happening here and I'm thrilled um I also went the The Music Man was a fabulous aside from the regressive sexual politics in it um it was amazing the music the singing I love the show and everybody who helped to make that possible I came with a 2020 graduate who it was the first time she was
108here I think since 2020 and she was so excited to see her flute teacher Miss trees in the pit playing flute and um and it just I just want to remind us that it's those interactions that really make a difference and that all of our daily interactions and as we're facing a tight budget time and are we cutting and do we have to lay people off or what are our reductions in staff that all the interactions that we have with each other and that we have with kids are the things that are going to make a difference and we can control those and so if we're going to show up and we have enormous amounts of resources in terms of people in this district and I'm just really excited to see that being leveraged so
109um I think that's it thank you okay thank you Dr H um so I I will I will start by thanking Mr B as well um as he said we were marry Alum together um and um actually it's through conversations with Mr wall that I was kind of convinced to run for the board so thank you welcome um yeah we'll see um but no thank you for your service and and just your guidance and things like that on on everything so I appreciate it um couple of couple of things one I this week I I got to see some other another aspect of sories of our high school um somebody who's very involved in theth atics it's always easy to see our athletes get recognition um they're the ones that are in the paper um
110they're the ones that are always not about but when you look at the talent we have across our high school in every other area it is amazing um and if I start with par I just want to be I want to clear clarify because people said it quick it was Miss rii I had nothing to do with par um but um that program just starting with that yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to the assembly at granty Morse um and and see the show and when you look at par and what that whole program has done um our students here logged a half a million minutes reading um that that's amazing to me um the other thing that I saw that amazed me out at granty Morris was the genuine Joy Jo when
111one of their classmates won an award um I saw second graders you know this this little this one girl got called up for a thing and this little boy literally jumped out of his seat clapping for his for his uh his classmate so just to see that was was incredible um and yes Mrs riyi um does a fairly good job at that um and uh but it's over today were the last two presentations at kill and at uh at ricardi so um but then you then you talk about the play and everybody mentions you know all our students that are in it and you know you'd be remiss if you tried to name them you know but sticking with our leads you know Grace and James um really LED that and did an amazing job
112um but I think we would be remiss if we didn't say thank you to Mr zamsky and Mrs McDougall um you know I talked to them after the last show on Sunday they start that process in October they start to play in October so it is longer than any athletic season it is longer than anything and then you know around the mid January they kick in to go until 5: and then last week um they were all here till 8:00 at night because it was Tech week so thank you to both of them um just for that that's an amazing effort um and then the other thing I got to see last just highlighting high school students was I know um uh Sakina joined me for one of them I Dr ersc was there but
113getting invited to um Mr Cooper's um I wish he was still here entrepreneur class um and being able he ran a school store project which was to select new products for the store and they will actually they actually get money um whoever wins the competition to actually go purchase their product Market it and put it in the school store um there were six different products that were highlighted um and all the presentations were just amazing um on how they researched it how they you know did actual mockups of it and um you know sat for questions and presented so when you look at the talent across everything um at our school I am continually amazed at that so um the only two serious things um one is cell phones um people keep talking about it
114and I think and I've seen some comments out there and I've seen people come up to me that it will not happen that that it's just talk it's coming so get ready for it and it's necessary forget about um you know kids spending time on social media and things like that from a mental health and from a bullying perspective it is needed and if I do nothing else while I'm on this board it's going to be we're going to fix the cell phone problem um and it's going to be sooner than later so the last policy meeting I thought we had really good we had I thought was one of our best discussions about it um and I encourage people to come to the policy meeting it's it's always the same time of the month
115it's the first Tuesday um it's the week before the board meeting come and talk about it come give your ideas um I I just don't want people to be surprised come next September when it's here um and if people have want to reach out to me directly with questions or concerns go right ahead but I can tell you social media and Facebook is not the place to get your comments away it's here it's through email it's talking to your board members and it's coming to the policy meeting to give those ideas so um and then the other thing I'll Echo just finally I'm sorry for Tak a little long tonight but just echoing what every what Dr hos and other folks said about the budget um time is short I the advice I always give
116to people when they ask me you know what should I know about the budget no what can be changed in the budget if you want to really understand and and be part of the budget understand what components of the budget can actually be altered and changed there's some things we can there's some things that are out there that are going to be there no matter what so understanding that is a is a very big help as we come into this so thank you for giving me some time all right moving on to I personnel we have uh resignations i1 and I2 appointments um give everybody a minute just to look through those if they haven't already um and I have a motion to accept one and two Miss B Ro a second Mr Mayor May
117any discussion all right no discussion all those in favor I all right moving on our business Justa my agenda or is it your agenda Mr I'll be quiet okay I I I had it noted in my handbook sit tight okay um moving on to um business office recommendations we have the treasures report revenue and Appropriations internal claims audit and the budget transfers so I have a motion for J one through four Miss Bel Rosa seconded by Mr ball any discussions all those in favor all right board action items we have several 1 through 20 um which includes some resolutions which include the appointment of our School business manager Dr IG um then poll offices and then I also and then this also includes as you go back further um the uh some policy components second
118reading of our um student ex official board member um Title Nine and sex discrimination first and second readings and I'll just say explain to everybody why that is first and second and for people listening while we're doing both at the same time based on a court case um changes that we had made to the policy in 2024 had to be I'm going to use the word redacted and and taken back to revert the policy back to what it looked like in 2020 um we had no say as a policy committee or as a board um but that's why you it's a rarity when you see first and second for one policy and that's why that one is like that okay all right and then um also in there is both the water damage of remediation
119at both K Hill and ricardi so can I have a motion for items K1 through 20 by Dr hos second by Mr Wells any discussion yes Miss BOS yes um just number eight is the adoption of next year's school calendar um to Tim's point that you made earlier I did notice that May 18th is one of the give back days should we not use all of our snow days um that would make that weekend because May 19th is the superintendent's conference day with the budget vote um so that could potentially be a 4 Day weekend where families might just decide to go away and not be here to vote um and I think we experienced that last year with the uh first budget vote that there were a number of give back days around the
120budget and some people felt that maybe the low turnout for that was due to that reason so I don't know what the if we're able to change that date now or you know as a school year progresses and we know where we this is next year's calendar this is next year so uh currently like this school year we're going to have off the Thursday and Friday the concern is this year is that kids will be in school Monday off on Tuesday in school Wednesday and then not have school Thursday and Friday so like our kids going to avoid the week alt together um so one proposal then would be to maybe we just Identify two give back days on the calendar and then this time next year we can have a conversation if there's a
121third or fourth day where that date should be um we do need to uh also keep in mind that another concern was you know that Memorial Day Weekend they're going to have four five days off and then coming back to take redance exams right is that the best um in May the first two weeks in May are traditionally the AP exams the schedules are not out but they always say the first two weeks of May so if we do change it we may want to change it to another day in April um so so just to be clear this this year they have they school on Monday they don't have school on Tuesday that's the budget that's fine that that makes sense then they're backing on L then we we were doing Thursday and Friday
122actually Thursday and Friday we're give back days I thought we were moving that I thought we were doing that around Easter instead no that was if we were going to have a fourth give back day okay I I have a concern we're going to run into the same people are going to take the whole week off and not be here yeah I I guess I my question is broader why do we have to identify it on the calendar why can't next April we have discussion of what the days are like we hey we have three we have three snow days that we didn't use we're going to pick these days like why do we have to decide like in May of 24 what we're going to do in May of 25 I'm just curious about
123that that just question hisorical practice I don't think there's I mean we could no because I mean I think some districts will give will identify more days fewer days I don't think there's a law about it um I mean we can always uh make the recommendation now to take those days off and then if we need to change it we can update the calendar for next year we can also modify this year's calendar tonight too okay all right is is talking about the C something we do the taex session okay well I I I don't I we're going to run is the same problem I I don't support giving Thursday and Friday off because you're going to have and rightfully so you're going to have parents do the same thing my son has to go
124to school two days that week I'm going to take the entire week off and go on vacation that's what happened last week and it's not a it's not a thought that that's what happened I had several people come up to me and go Jee I wasn't here all week I just took the week off because didn't have school but I also think we weren't very clear with that like leading into it as well like CU I know me I'm not thinking like May 20 like where am I going to be that day you know kind of or what's that week like for schoolwise so I know like some parents probably in the same mindset as me I'm just I can barely figure out what's happening next week let Al on this week so I guess
125my proposal would be is you want to act on everything but eight yeah let's pull it I agree first yep and yeah no you can just pull it out just pull it out we're not going to vote on so we are going to do items um K1 through 7 and 9 through 20 that's what we are voting on okay any further discussion all of in favor next yeah April do you want to add a conversation about this year's calendar then can yeah I think we we can't wait till April to discuss the2 for this back okay Rocco can you pull up the calendar on that big screen if you just go to our District web page as one of the just scroll down halfway snow Rocko if you can just go to our District web
126page then scroll down halfway calendar right here all right so right now our give back days are the day after Easter right which is fine the 22nd right we'll have board meeting those school's closed Y and then the 23rd and then the 22nd right so kids will come to school Monday be off Tuesday come to school Wednesday be off Thursday Friday through can we just give them the 27th and the 28th it's still make it a long weekend but that was like something conflicting with like the the test cor we had I thought we had talked also about giving one of the days being the Friday before Easter correct so we could take this 22nd date away yeah and then add it to April 11th the day before Easter break spring break so they would
127they would they would they would go to school till Thursday and then they wouldn't go back to school till Wednesday correct and then then you keep the 23rd keep the 23rd May the 23rd of May would still be off that we did that and we couldn't move that to the 27th then right so you have two three I mean you could move the 22nd to the 27th like the we have but the only day off then on the day the budget is that is that full week of school so just verbally ver we're going to n the 23rd that's going to be on the 27th yes yeah okay and then the 22nd give back day going Friday we're just we're just looking at State Testing too we just want to make sure that we're not
128cutting things close to we we looked as an admin team we looked at the calendar say that again can you just say that again so basically like that week leading into Easter break or April 7th through the 10th not the 11th and then makeups would be April 22nd and 24th that's Ela and the math is April 28th through the 30th and then makeups are May 5th through the 7th science did you say science no science is May May 13th the 16 a makeup date I said the 22nd get a make no it's May 22 April April April 2 we should be okay okay all right I'm going we at the calendar we deed good so then you're going to move yes we have the power okay so the the motion as understand it would be
129to modify our give back days to have April 11th we're going to have April 22nd be the first give back day still April 11th would be the second give back day I guess with the to order up and then May 27th Tuesday May 27th will be the third give back day yes now we're going to get three days of snow a couple days sometimes of so so my the motion is going to be we are going to alter the 2024 School calendar 242 school calendar to have the our give back days be April 11th yep the 27 first one is the 22nd I know but I want to do it in order okay April 11th April 22nd and April and May 27 correct those are the days okay in that order in that order yeah
130okay I'm going to make it k21 it's a board action item so I add it to action okay so I'd like to make make a motion uh k21 to alter the 2024 2025 school calendar um on the order of give back days and move the give back days to be effective tonight April 11th April 22nd and May 27th so by Dr H seconded like misser all right any discussion all those in favor I so moved okay so exciting thank you Miss Bosa for thank you and Mr well for lead the discussion that okay moving on to uh L committee reports Miss Bosa a a committee um so we the audit committee met on Monday February 24th um the attendees were myself Mr gy Mr ball uh Miss Turk our internal claims auditor uh Miss Maloney
131and Dr ersc um were all in attendance um the basis of what we discussed at the meeting were um a claims auditor update uh we try and meet with her she is an employee of the Board of Education and looks at all the warrants and payments that go out of our district uh so it's important that we meet with her a couple times a year to um get uh information from her on how it's going we look at reports every month from her um but it's nice to have a face to face with her as well so we had an update with her um we as an audit committee need to do a self assessment uh so we the three uh board members uh that are on the committee um filled out a survey of
132where we think we stand as a committee um we got a good reading overall I believe um areas of improvement um that were identified were possible some training for audit committee members um and to maybe enhance our communication with the um external Auditors not just the but the internal auditor so um the ex auditor external District I should say um we also discussed um something that we mentioned last board meeting um engaging um school aid Specialists through the Nisa uh New York State School Board Association Consultants uh to look at um the information that we submit to the state aid for uh State uh reimbursement and um that should be on a fourth coming agenda with the contract with those uh with nisp and the Specialists to do that and that would be done um
133outside of budget season so probably in the June time frame um you saw on this agenda tonight that we also discussed going out for requests for proposals for our external and internal auditor um our external auditor contract was up and expir ing so we needed to do that and this just good practice I don't think we've been out for RFP um for the internal OT for a number of years so it's best practice to do that as well uh so um thanks to Michelle we are getting those out um and then something that also was perly mentioned tonight um doing and what's on the agenda is to uh use something called NY class uh which is a New York Cooperative liquid asset security system and and it's just a way to to segregate um our
134um excess cash because we're not using it all all the money that we collect in the state and um the taxes that that can be invested um in a safe way and earn interest and it allows the investment to be um segregated so you can earn interest in in this buckets so you can track your interest earnings on certain of your investment classes um you know right now I guess we just use MNT CDs which are liquid um and we can get interest on that but this is just an additional way that the district can utilize um its shortterm investing discussed thank you the next meeting of TVD that's going be thanks thank you Christine um quick update on facilities so in addition to what I've already shared today um we did talk about that
135they hopefully be testing our rooftop units um over spring break uh to make sure B that the temperature has to be above 70° consistently for them to do that um the generators are online they did a simulated load so we had a conversation about if we should really test the actual load so we're getting uh feedback from our Architects on that um and then I think the big thing that's going to be coming in the in the months uh to follow would be uh the need for next Capital project and what that would consist of all right thank you policy okay Dr Dr um I I think besides the uh besides the things that were on the agenda already um around the um student representative and um the title 9 uh component the big discussion
136was around cell phones um uh and understanding what exactly is happening in the junior high how some of those things would be applied to um to the high school and then also kind of the process of what's happening at the at the governor level and the legislative level um but at phon was was the main topic okay okay um the second public recognition um okay um I'd like to have a motion to recess into executive session to discuss um collective bargaining for aspa and cessa the board self assessment and the superintendent evaluation and then a couple of uh specific Personnel matters so move by misser second by Mr Wells any discussion all those in favor I e e e let me tell I know it's wrong e e e have a motion to reconvene to
137open session move Mr Wells any discussion all those in favor I motion to adjourn all those in favor I for