Saugerties Board of Education Meeting 3/12/2024

001e good evening I'd like to call this meeting Bo event to order mer robertman here James Mooney William ball here Jeffrey riazi here Christine Bell Roa here Carol telder here mclary Scott Poston here Timothy Wells here please rise the [Music] FL plge allegiance to FL of the United States of America and to the repu for it stands one nation God indivisible and justice [Music] for I like motion for the approval of minuts of February 13th 2024 I'll make a motion motion by m ker second by m RI any discussion none being heard I'll call for vot all those in favor say I M Mills your um the students have been meeting with their counselors to create schedules for next year and our 10th graders took a field trip to olster bosies late February over 75

002students spent the day exploring exploring all different programs there will be another visitation day in April for students who couldn't make it in February we had 40 scholar athletes at the varsity level who maintained over a 90 average all season for winter sports the varsity girls basketball team our SCH scholar athlete team with 75% or more maintaining an average of 905 during the season our boys basketball players were section 9 Class 8 Champions and spring Sports started yesterday and have tryouts all week um we had a play at the beginning of March and we had a great or turnout um the French Club hosted a a Spring Carnival last week and we also had a great turnout there uh shs Pops concert is Tuesday March 19th at 700 PM in the High School auditorium and

003parent teacher conferences are this Thursday from 5: to 8:00 p.m. that's thank you I just wanted to pick it back off on Meredith's comments as she said we're 40 scholar athletes with the average of 90% or more are very own Meredith Mills uh and Savannah TC won sectional wrestling titles and weight classes uh Santiago Christian and Isaiah Hawks went to the new New York State uh wrestling tournament on 223 Kiera henchi Gabriel Papa Carmela dwit Harper Ferraro all qualified for Section composite team and represented section N9 at the State Bowling competition on March 9th Ed cottington earned boys High series of the season the boys basketball team as you said uh won the class a section 9 Championship they went on to to to the regional finals um and this is one of the things

004I think that makes sorer special just in general right so even at even at the game you know 2 and a half hours away there was countless Sawyer fans not just our students but you know generations of Sawyers there all rooting them on um so that was great to see at all their games and all of our games um know across the season uh took a walk out and saw our athletes uh during for tryouts and and practices today I don't think I cannot I cannot remember a time when they're all out there second day of the Season outside uh getting some reps and which is excellent to say uh and a big shout out to lay that was amazing uh performance hopefully you're were able to get there to to to see it it

005was fabulous from the actors the stage crew the set designers and we had our very own students running the lights and sounds this year in our updated Auditorium uh so that was really amazing big thank you to Mr zimsky and and Miss McDougall for their vision and making it come to life I have no idea how they're going to top it next year uh so stay tuned special audit update making sure this is on I don't know if I need it on but this is Carol report fer U we worked with Hudson River School solutions to complete the special education audit uh we completed it just this P December so she's here to present her presentation for us and I'll be question thank you jimy you just put that mic on you the SL but

006up did you didn't excellent and the clicker [Music] clicker pardon my back everybody um thank you so much thank you to the board of education to Dr ID to the administrative team and to all of you who I had the pleasure of meeting um last November and December my name is Carol Lor Sumer I'm here with my company Hudson Ral solutions to discuss with you um the audit uh experience need to go back to slide one if I could ask the tech team to help me with that yep could just Advance backwards um the audit is being shared with you just completed November and December um just to let you know Hudson River School Solutions is a subcontractor with puam Northern West deposes and also osies and as such districts may be aidable for the

007services we provide so okay there I want to also thank my assistant who's not here tonight she is uh enjoying the Comforts of her Florida homei assisted me in this review just move the microphone closer to your mouth oh sure okay is that better everybody do I need repeat anything okay great so uh we were contacted by Dr ERS who requested this review this is a voluntary process and that is to be applauded he recognized that this was an optimal time uh with a new Central Administration uh coming into the district and especially having a new director of special education the wonderful Jamie Churchill we recognize that an audit provides an opportunity for a third-party objective review and evaluation of what's going on and as such it really gives you an opportunity for course correction

008and a road map for improvement it is truly an investment in the future for your students your families and your staff a review is at least the way we were doing it is very comprehensive it entails interviews we interviewed the central office administrators we interviewed each of the building principles and assistant principal we interviewed the special education teachers related in support service providers and the special special education specialist also known as clerical support we did a deep dive into documents and data analysis we looked several years back at New York State education Department's beds data on the district we looked at to districtwide forms documents CSC process logs all kinds of CSC documents special education lists the RTI plan we also looked deeply into Student Records then may I assure you we had complete we

009confirmed and validated complete confidentiality in that process um all told we were even surprised to see that we had reviewed by the end 150 IEPs we look at them with regard to compliance with regulations laws as well as quality and the Heart of the review is really and the joy of the review is really going into your buildings we visited each of the buildings to look at the special education programs and services housed in the buildings the next chart is a breakdown of the classroom visitations and observations as as you can see um we visited 35 I think out of 37 in total special classes in all the buildings interviewed those teachers that gave us a 95% uh completion rate the two teachers that we missed we actually did reach out to and try to

010reschedule and the presentation of findings well first we uh generated a draft report we shared that electronically with the administrative team gave them a chance for feedback and commentary audit findings and recommendations were then reviewed at length 4 hours worth with the administrative team in December they were very patient they stayed on a half snow day during a storm and let me go on the final report was then delivered in person in January we spoke some more and here I am tonight to pre present you the board and the community with a brief overview of this process along our journey Pamela and I identified many many strengths and of course too numerous to list in the time that we have tonight but I do want to give a shout out to the dynamic leadership team

011at central office um who are here tonight uh what we were very taken with was hearing that three if not four I'm not sure w three out of the four are alumni of this district and being homegrown and some still living in the community the connection to the community and I would include Wendell in this was palpable um very very impressive to see that we were equally impressed with the professional staff and quite honestly many are overwhelmed sometimes despite frustration and and that feeling of being so challenged by work so many of them Express how much they love working here and I don't say this just to flatter the district I have been around I work for the state department doing many reviews that is unusual to hear especially in a climate where there is

012education has become stressful so that says a lot about your District the clerical team too uh we recognize them for their commitment to the sties families and students and the staff they are very proud of the jobs that they do what also impressed us and we know that this is a community with a 48% poverty rate and like all families across this country despite economic means there is a stress level that is very high these days very intense we learned that it wasn't uncommon for your building administrators and your staff to go out to the homes to make home visits to check in on families and make excuse me make sure that they have what they need bringing them essential items that is not typical excuse me we were impressed to see that the district's

013been working hard to develop a strong multi-tiered system of supports an ntss team which takes the time to carefully review individual student progress throughout the year the other uh proactive uh activity that also impressed us was the fact that the district recognized the impact and the significance of the opioid crisis that's affecting Youth and families all over our country and are taking proactive steps by training the school School nurses who are now turned key trainers and will be training the staff the climate culture shift was notable too many staff and administrators were very appreciative of you Dr ersc for being so visible and approachable and for having the courage to take on an audit of this nature they see that as a real investment in the future so during the course of the review We

014identified some issues in areas of concern they fell into six broad areas CC processes and procedures and IEP development and compliance special education programs and Services mental health support for students professional development and training department communication and sustainability of the administrative structure within the special ed department so starting with the CSC process and IEP development we found that the committee on special ed timelines were sometimes exceeded some documentation of parental consent forms notification letters was not available we heard about a problem with generating accurate lists from the IEP system called Frontline and we identified that as a problem having to do with data input so we need to develop more consistent practices of developing uh training for data input on those something that I call IEP gridlock was also noted and that is during the

015Intensive and long annual review season the practice of proof reading IPS which we call finalizing the IPS has caused that gridlock so before the IPS are mailed out they have to be proofed and the structure here has been that that is assigned to two clerical staff we're talking about literally hundreds of IEPs so you can imagine if with everything else going on uh that that's how gridlock occurs so we're recommending consider reassigning that task to the folks that are actually chearing the meetings and know what's been going on and then finally documentation that parent training and counseling for parents and students classified with autism which is a requirement was not evident to us and again here's to the heart of the program the overarching issue when we did the visitations and looked at your special

016programs and services was concern about the Continuum of special education services it seemed to be lacking and a Continuum by that uh phrase there is an expectation that districts will offer a full range of uh special ed supports and services for students with disabilities that goes from the least restrictive keeping a child in general education as much as as possible to the most restrictive which would be educating a child outside of the district in your case here in sties you have a Continuum but it's a little weak at the least restricted end so we didn't see much evidence of consultant teacher Services resource from which are part of that the Continuum recognized by the state education department we do suspect that that's also had an impact on students being placed um in maybe a more

017intensive or even a more restrictive program so for example your integrated co- teing model which is a model that uh has a partnership between a special educator and a general educator we wondered if perhaps some of the classes might have been over subscribed with students who if you had had uh more resource room consultant teacher or other kinds of variations on that theme like your targeted learning Labs your instructional support skills classes they might have been served well there as well we also had questions about the Partnerships that the assignments for the integrated co- teing classes um and with regard to the balance of instructional responsibility that's really where I'm going with this we would caution you to really consider both teachers content area of strength when when you're making those assignments and then finally

018uh with regard to the ICT classes we recognize each day it's just a snapshot so we saw just a little bit of what's going on but we did see a lot of the ICT classes what we didn't see was a lot of evidence of various co- teing strategies or differentiated instruction for students being employed that's not to say it doesn't happen that's based on what we saw we do know and we really commend the district because we understand that there has been ongoing coaching by an outside agency and uh we applaud your efforts for that and certainly encourage a continuation of that we also looked at the program called Alternative Learning Program or Alp or Alp it's also known as the rcpc program and rcpc stands for Rockland children Psychiatric Center this is a collaborative

019model it offers a therapeutic approach for students with emotional behavioral issues so the big concern was that this program ends in eth grade and many staff not just the staff working in the program but staff throughout the district Express great concern that when these students enter high school that there is not the level of therapeutic support that they may have been accustomed to or some that they may require continue to require at the high school scho level um and that may not be present excuse me so that is an area to certainly take a look at and that in a sense is also part of a Continuum because a Continuum is also within a program does it go from kindergarten through grade 12 if needed I'm going to jump down and say also that the

020program um in our estimation lack the cohesive element to it uh we noted that the teachers in the in the classes really did not communicate with one another there wasn't that sense of a program where they're together we do recommend scheduling team meetings and taking a look at what is the mission what is the goal what is the philosophy this philosophy of this program to ensure that there's alignment of the instruction and the social emotional curriculum and a sharing of resources and also suggests perhaps incorporating other therapeutic components there's something called dialectical behavioral therapy or DBT many many schools are using this very effectively um not only in their therapeutic programs but in general uh to support students and as a proactive measure with um for mental health issues also music art therapy equine canine

021therapy other kinds of things to bring in to diversify that program and create more of a therapeutic mure not just talk therapy at the elementary level we looked at the sensory autism program and the learning communities programs these are special classes and they shared um some commonalities and again the concern was these programs actually do not go beyond the sixth grade again raising concerns that the staff shared with us about the appropriateness of placements and the ability to support and appropriately accommodate these students needs when they get to the secondary level another common concern there was there seemed to be somewhat of a blurryness with regard to the criteria and eligibility for placing these students in these classes so we suggest you revisit that take a look at what is the profile of students you're

022targeting for these classes you want to make sure that you're placing students uh with regard to similarity of needs academically social emotionally and management so develop clear profiles and communicate that with the staff that will be considering placement of students in those programs at the secondary level we looked at the life skills program and we recognize that there is a vocational component to this program students in the life skills classes may be students who are not College Bound they may be alternately assessed they may be looking at when they transition into Adult Services going on to a vocational either training program or a job with maybe job coaching our understanding is now some of these students are being busted to Kingston to I think the arc program which is a distance and there they're having

023a vocational experience we would encourage you to try to develop a vocational program right here in the so goodes Community you've got a great Community here I've been to your Diner I've been to your stores I love it there's so much going on I think um uh you will find that if you Place students in in jobs within their High School experience within the community the likelihood that when they transition into adulthood that they might actually become employed there is greater because they've developed relationships then they're known to the community and they have demonstrated the work skills that they have the other uh point about this program is that typically what we saw is that they're placed with one teacher for pretty much all of their instructional day sometimes they may have the same teacher

024year after year for their High School career we would suggest trying to build more of an instructional team approach which would mirror more of a typical high school experience for these students with regard to students who are placed out of districts we didn't see clear evidence that there were routine visitations to the outer District sites um and that would afford you the ability to assess the quality of those programs and also to review the progress of the students prior to an annual review meeting or program review meeting we suggest at least annual visitations um to these programs if it all possible and then finally the extended school year program also known as the esy program or the summer program which is a 30-day program for students who require 12 month Services these are students with

025more severe disabilities who would um have demonstrate substantial regression if they did not have that service the issue is that the students who are placed here in sties in special classes or or other programs during the school year who do require a an esy program um are typically bust to bosies for those programs so this as you can imagine creates somewhat of a break in the continuity of their program their instructional program as well as Fidelity um with the curriculum that they've been using more than that teachers reported to us that attendance of their students especially the younger ones tends to be poor in the summer because parents are reluctant understandably to place their child on a bus to go to an unfamiliar program at a distance so we are suggesting that the district just

026explore the possibility of uh creating an IND District extended school youth program next category mental health support for students first let me state that um in recognition of the Mental Health crisis that has surged uh across the country in recent years to your credit SES in the recent past has added clinical St to each of the buildings that is exceptional that's great um but here's what we're seeing the structure that you have now assigns School psychologists the bulk of chairing of annual review meetings and some program and some initial reviews this means that they are not as available as they would like to be and need to be to support all students in the school with any social emotional issue issue or mental health issue we also suggest that you review the assignments of the

027clinical staff by building just to assure that they're Equitable and proportionate to the numbers of students the needs of students and the kinds of programs that may be housed in those buildings um I think that you know that's a process that's very important and I think it could go a long way and then we suggest also looking at some more proactive strategies to support social emotional health for all students some staff were asking for social emotional uh learning curriculum and feeling that they are trying to create that themselves and there are uh commercial products out there you might want to look at again I'm bringing up the dialectical behavior therapy DBT staff also expressed an interest in being trained in that not just to deal with uh students who are identified as having emotional Behavior

028issues but something that can benefit students schoolwide and also the need for and staff expresses to stress reduction mindfulness programs and resources for students so when you're looking to build Mental Health Services for students that means you also are going to have to train staff so um I I'll just jump down to the uh the last bullet there which is uh providing training for staff in those proactive stress reduction mindfulness strategies and DBT but before I go on I want to uh ex give credit to Dr gorach uh because while staff did share some concerns about professional development over the years they did make note uh and the credit the deputy superintendent's office for the positive shift and change that they have seen recently in providing more relevant professional development but it was mentioned teacher

029assistance and AIDS felt that the kinds of uh workshops and training that's been afforded to them in the past on superintendent conferences did not always meet their needs and relevant to the kind of work that they do similarly some of the professional staff with special teachers related service providers in particular we're talking about your speech providers your uh clinical staff um also felt a need for some very specific kinds of professional development department communication you've had a turnover of Administrators within the special Department we'll go into that in the next category and when that happens you tend to also have a lot of changes in health procedures and processes and that that really generates confusion so we're suggesting to reduce that confusion and incon inconsistency and how uh some of the processes procedures and expectations

030for staff are communicated that perhaps developing a procedural handbook for special Educators uh for the staff um and related service providers could be helpful there is something called a district plan for special education which is required uh in New York state regulations we didn't see evidence of that so that needs to be developed I'm so sorry Jamie that sounds like a summer vacation project will help and then the last item is something that's not easily rectified but I would be remiss if I didn't bring it up and that's simply that the physical remoteness of the special ed and pupil Personnel offices which are located at Mount Maran education center just doesn't promote a perception of disability it also puts those administrators at a slight disadvantage my words not theirs in that they don't have the

031luxury of being able to easily mix it up with staffs and students and just um more in an organic fashion just drop into a classroom they are quite a distance away and they can get caught up in meetings and all kinds of things that that that come their way and uh if there's any way around that you know certainly that that would um I think be welcome so the last area which I I say for the end because this is all about the administrative structure within the specialty department and the sustainability quite frankly we don't think it's sustainable the way it's current it's currently structured evidence of this is the fact that you have had such high turnover in that position in the past 7 to 10 years we learned that in just seven years

032you had five directors in 10 years years six we'd love to see Jamie stay until she retires which will be a long long time away um last year I think the movie that one best picture was everything everywhere all at once that to me is what special education is all about there is so much going on there are mandates there is there are timelines and deadlines there are crises Galore there are um issues with students there uh the same kinds of administrative problems that come up in buildings come up all the time in special education when the director is busy running CSC meetings and cpsc meetings the director doesn't have an opportunity to really deal with instructional support programmatic Improvement and quality and that would be my concern that all of that diverts the administrator

033from being able to really address and now that we've brought some of these items to light um you certainly would want to be able to provide your director with the time uh and energy and support to be able to focus on a corrective action plan similarly the psychologists and this is really I'm repeating myself here but they have been doing a a great volume of CSC meetings which again has diverted them from being able to provide proactive support and Crisis Intervention for students in their buildings so quite simply we feel that the current structure is really just not conducive to building and to assuring that you will have a high quality special in programs and services that you so clearly want and so clearly deserve the U next slides I'm providing here illustrate the organizational

034structure that you either have now or that we are proposing you might want to consider so at the time of the review this is what we saw there was uh director of special education no other administrator uh to assist and the five uh psychologists who are basically cheering as I said the majority of those annual review meetings and program reviews and some initials in late December um you refill the position as a cpsc cc chairperson who also focused on preschool and out of District students so we're glad to see that I'm sure that's been a wonderful help um and even still though minimally what we are suggesting is to provide an assistant director for special education because that role would assist with not only the daytoday and the CC meetings and the cpsc meetings but

035also the supervision of Staff the evaluations the observations the um assisting with budget grants all of those voluminous things that are very challenging in special education and Relentless in this model we are considering the economic um considerations that all districts are facing and if you notice the um position that you just refilled that chairperson is absent and we're saying if you had to choose we're suggesting go with an assistant director and move that position up to provide more support to the director but if you can we suggest certainly if you could keep that position that you just refilled and still add the assistant director and of course even better would be if you had the ability to provide two assistant directors one who would supervise preschool and Elementary and the outer District students at that

036level and the other who would be um focusing on the secondary and the out of District students at that level with staff coming below those positions so in a nutshell I have a two-page summary which sort of looks like this to give you I could have probably just shown you one slide that says it all it's a little hard for me to read from here so luckily I have this here and basically just to sum up the areas of focus so we just talked about the sustainability of the administrative structure we are simply recommending that you build capacity of the special ed administrative team to better support students with special needs with regard to those CSC processes and procedures in a nutshell streamline the CSC processes and procedures for greater efficiency reduce wait time for

037students to receive special education support and timelines for IEPs with regard to the special ed programs and services build a more expansive Continuum of special programs and services to meet the needs of diverse Learners grades K through 12 and in terms of mental health support for students provide greater access to Mental Health Services for students as well as stress reduction and mindfulness education for students with training for staff professional development and training ensure relevant professional development and training opportunities for staff and administrators districtwide and with regard to Department communication develop a procedural handbook for special education pupil Personnel staff and create a district plan for special education for the greater School Community see one page said it all so I thank you to the Sor school district for the privilege of conducting this review that's

038on behalf of vuchi and myself and as you can see we were on such a high after this review and meeting all of you and I truly mean that we went out we bought those socres caps and I have mine with me today so again I can thank you enough I have been so very impressed with this district with the incredible administrators the staff the students thank you so much for this opportunity and if there's any way I can continue to help and support you on this journey please know I'm there thank you and I have these two page summaries to hand out to you and any questions I have a question for you um in looking at um the uh stressful nature of special end uh was there any recommendations as far as maybe

039slowing down and accommodating more kids in general to reduce the amount of special ed students you know that is always the goal of special education students in general education that that's what we're about so building models that are less restrictive less intensive as I said bringing back things like consultant teacher resource room adding more of your targeted learning Labs your um instructional skill support that will help towards that goal absolutely great question thank you thank you any other questions as I said in the first Str have a very very Dynamic leadership team here um very for and a very impressive thank you thank you and by the way there is a rather long report very detailed as I said this really was version so that Isa Miss fail you're [Music] up good good evening welcome

040to the junior high presentation the Middle School um where we're a lot of energy and a lot of programs um as you can see I still broke it up in our district goals what we're going to be talking about tonight student achievement culture and Community Safety and Security always a lot going on um and I'm pleased to be the leader of this building and I thank you for that without further Ado I do want to bring up our Student Government president Addison puus eighth grader um our Student Government actually attended our recent BLT meeting where we were able to grab some student voice too so I was happy to have them at that as well Addison come on up good evening everyone my name is Addison poras I'm in 8th grade and I am Junior

041High student government president student government started this year with an ice cream social where anyone who was interested in student government could show up a few weeks later elections started I ran for junior high president because I knew that I can make a change to our community and help us grow together the first event that the officers of the student government helped with was the Halloween costume contest we had a good amount of students participate and plenty of Spectators we had very unbiased judges like Dr ersing and Miss Vale the judges voted on categories some being cutest scariest and most unique in November Student Government officers introduced the veterans during the Veterans Day breakfast hosted by the junior high school the rest of November was spent planning our dance and upcoming spirit week we had

042our dance and approximately 200 students attended and our choir choir teacher Mr Z djed the dance our secretary Barry made the playlist we had teachers as chapons in both the Junior and Senior High along with the junior high gym we offered yard games board games face painting dancing and pizza lots of people enjoyed dancing in the games in the gym the turnout for the dance was better this year than last year that next week we had our Junior High Spirit Week with some of the spirit days being movie character Monday T the season Tuesday and through the decades Thursday the beginning of the new year was spent planning and coming up with ideas for the upcoming months one of these being the Carnation sales for Valentine's Day the student government sold carnations the day before

043and the day of Valentine's Day the flowers were a massive hit and we sto sold out within 10 minutes on the second day this past Saturday the student government hosted their own booth at the Spring Carnival we hosted a spin art Booth which was a great hit some upcoming events for the student government would be our annual Shamrock scavenger hunt where students find rocks around the school and turn them in for small prizes this spirit week has been bump back to match with the senior high in Spring and we're trying to plan an after school ice skating event this is my first year ever doing student government and I'm really happy I joined I am happy I'm able to help make our community more united than it already is and I'm happy with the experience

044and wisdom it has given me thank you for your [Applause] time that concludes my presentation nice job brief and amazing um so I just have to shout out to miss millson and Mr Silva they've been doing the student government at my building for I think four years if not longer I was right um for four years and they really make the students have the voice they make the students plan the events they don't just say hey let's do this um they bring the ideas to them and they really are too great um it's a teamwork thing and and they work very well together so kudos to both of them I really appreciate them stepping up every year um I have to click this is it moving yeah yeah sorry Addison all right um so at

045the beginning of the year I want to say in one of our August or maybe the September admin Council meetings we were presented with our attendance data and we were given a task to make a building goal um to improve attendance my first thought when I saw 115 of 375 students having 18 or more days out for the junior high that's triple what it was before covid we were at 9% before Co and we were now at 27% um which is true across the board like it's not just a sorties thing but it was it made a deep impact on me um first of all I don't like to be in last place for product attendance um but also it just made a point that our connections are so important so that's why there isn't

046like chronic attendance will improve by 1% or 4% I just want attendance to approve overall um what we did is we took the profiles of 115 students and we looked at who they were um some of the things that came up were travel athletes so it's very easy to get to 18 days out if you have multiple tournaments um another part came up which is schooling xiety which we're really trying to address and we'll talk about that a little bit more um and also illness we were still dealing with the pandemic in a in real time they had to stay out of school multiple days um we took this to The BLT and Chelsea um facilitated a protocol um and we were able to look at some things there which are on my next slides

047um so some of the data div that I already said um the GPA was 78% um for all of the students when I took an average so they still they weren't failing um they were mostly successful being absent that much so that raised another question um that we are talking about um and then a look after second semester 16 of the 115 are no longer in our buildings um nine have moved to a different District Five pursued home homeschooling and to or in an outside placement so that left us with 99 um and they are at the Junior Senior High School 24 of them are not chronically absent at this point 17 of those are ninth graders so you ask yourself why 17 out of 24 have better attendance I think sometimes the high school

048it's credit bearing um they were able to choose their own path a little bit more and they may be being engaged in programming um that they want to be engaged in which is one of our goals for introducing them to the CTE courses um and we have added 80 students are now on our watch list um that weren't on our list last year including the seventh graders because we didn't have them in our building last year so we're still working so we've added the AP for attendance Mr Malo the athletic director also has that title so we're able to focus a little bit more when we see a student that is showing signs of struggling um it's around we went with nine days absent around Thanksgiving um we looked at those students and now we

049just do a total um and I'm running the percentages so what we have is called a Student Success meeting we ask the parent to come in we have the student sit down um they meet and there is a plan uh it's really about the student voice again we ask them why don't they think they're coming to school what can we do for them to get them in the building it can range um we can do any program that we need to do sometimes we'll do a soft in if they've been out a long time we might suggest you know come in for a half day for a few days and then go to an extended day um and this is facilitated by Anna millon our social worker and then we do check back 2 to

0503 weeks we have a meeting with the student and ask how things are going and if they need any other support okay moving on to the academics so um there's growth again this is the math I ready um and we have them take it when they get to school in September and then we just gave our second one in January and last year um we showed growth just as we did the year so in sth grade 12% of our seventh graders did improve at least one grade level um and 21% in 8th grade total and then my takeaways are there but I don't like to read the sentences um and Ela looks a little different um there was a 10% growth seventh grade and 6% of the students bumped up in 8th grade and that

051is our I ready diagnostic but I'm going to be talking about a lot of classroom practice in a little bit but I am going to turn my microphone over to missina um to talk about building goal number two which is definitely connected to building goal number one thank you hi everybody thank you um so our second building leadership goal was to adopt some new practices we're all about trying new things that the Junior High uh to enhance a feeling of belonging in our students it's really really important to us that all of our kids are connected to their peers but also to the adults in the building um so in the audit report you heard a little bit about the multi-tiered systems of supports that we used um it's a way to provide a little

052extra for students in ela and math without necessarily um putting them into a C- teach class we've also focused a lot on on transition so both the transition from 6th to 7th grade and 8th to 9th grade one of the nice things about um me getting to work with seventh through nth graders is I can really be a a big part of that transition for students in our um sixth grade visitation day that happened last month we included this year a student panel so we had seventh and eighth graders that the sixth graders could ask questions to they got to submit their questions in advance um to make sure that we really covered everything they were looking for during their tours um as a piece of our e to 9th transition my ninth grade team

053is conducting empathy interviews with ninth graders so we randomly selected a group of um 17 nth graders and just we asking them about their experience um and things that they think we could improve on um in the transition from 8th to 9th grade uh our Junior High teachers do a process called Grand rounds every two weeks and Miss Vil has implemented a new um protocol this year called minute mentions so that just ensures that during the team time the junior high teachers are talking about every student on the team at least once a week so that when we get to Grand rounds we have a really clear picture of how kids are doing um and help make sure no one is falling through the cracks um literacy and math mtss collaboration so in our master

054schedule right now we have one planning period every other day for those mtss teachers to collaborate and then finally in the student support realm our social worker Miss millon who we talked about before is doing a push in daa workshop with all seventh and eth graders to help them understand um some of the supports that we offer here a little bit better as well as our counselors are doing really targeted um reaching out this year for for parent teacher conferences to make sure all those conference slots get fulfilled um I'm going to have Miss hman come up and talk a little more about counseling good evening everyone um for those of you who don't know me my name is Jamie hman I'm one of the high school counselors um also the department chair so I'm

055happy to be here tonight to kind of highlight some things that we do at the Junior High um so kind of like what Miss steina was talking about with the tour day we have a lot to do with that we uh team up with the admin um and part of this year we did have that panel so the counselors when they went to the elementary schools um collected those questions from those sixth graders who were a little nervous so that when they came here and we were in the auditorium the questions were able to be answered without them having to raise their hand which was really awesome um we also are going to be doing a shadow day which uh last year I believe was the first time that we did it basically what happens

056is the sixth graders come up for a day and we match them up with a student either seventh or eighth grade and they follow them for half a day so they go through the classes with them and then they end with lunch and then they head back to their um Elementary School and the students are already talking about it asking how they can be a buddy um which is really awesome to see considering they've only done it for one year when we do the shadow day we do match them up as much as we can according to the programming that they will have that next year um so we we do try our best with that um we then are also going to be having an orientation day in August for our sixth graders going

057into seventh grade so that they can walk through their schedules usually the counselors are available we usually in the Halls helping them out um so that they can find their classes their lockers and just not be so scared for that first day um so I did mention that we do have a few counselors who go down to the elementary school um so we have three coun that go down uh one per elementary school once a cycle um and just some things that we touch upon is the first thing that they kind of introduce themselves what they do talk about our support staff at the junior high just to get them used to the difference once they start to come up to the junior high cuz at the elementary school it is a little bit different

058um we go over some careers seal academics Transitions and then one-on ones if needed there were some uh behavior issues that arose this year that counselors were able to meet with those small groups and kind of go over uh what was happening and maybe some ways that they could um maybe help themselves out and others um and then some eighth grade highlights that we have so we are going to have an orientation night that will happen in August we just had a uh parent night that happened in January um but we do plan to do um another one in August just to kind of help them again get acclimated to the high school they're not always coming up this way if they're not in Banner chorus they're usually down still in the Junior High um

059so we want to make sure that they they know their schedules they know their way around the school same thing like those sixth graders that are coming up just to make sure that they feel comfortable and then just some highlights that are happening right now we are in the midst of scheduling for next year um in hopes that for our admin that they can start our master schedule soon um hopefully that will be done right after Spring Break um we're also working uh with navian on Career expiration with all of our students uh we actually work on that 6 through 12 um but right now uh 9 through 12 is really highlighting that um some really cool things that we have added um that I really enjoy working with Miss Von is um we've created

060a bunch of classes in the junior high to help that 4 plus1 pathway towards graduation um so as you'll see this students that are enrolled so this was as of last year so all of these students um have went into 9th grade with some sort of high school credit and they were able to kind of pick which pathway they wanted to explore so that as they got into 9th grade they could then if let's say they uh did technology and they're like you know what not really a fan of that but maybe they like the business class they can then go on to the business track um so we're really starting to highlight at the junior high level what CTE uh programs that we offer in the high school so that they they can get

061a head start um and we're hoping that uh to maybe add a social studies one where we also can include um the Seal of Civic Readiness just to kind of uh really ramp up how students can graduate and all the different uh accolades that they can leave s's high school with um and now I'm going to turn it back over to miss defino who's going to highlight also um some of the extracurriculars that we have so just quickly some other opportunities for connection for students in our extracurricular um we have added four new extracurricular programs this year so the junior high scheme Club um after school inter murals Junior High Science Olympiad I was very excited about that one um Builders Club starting soon and then miss Vil told me today that at this weekend

062we had eight junior high students in Sawyer strength at the combine this weekend so that's super exciting um so again at the junior high we're we're really about helping kids figure out um where their place is and who their people are and here's just a short snippet of what that looks like some of our students participating in extracurriculars and clubs I love to see all those smiling faces we have time for the I click or not sorry well you can watch it um and then finally I just want to talk a little bit more about the Dao Workshop that I mentioned before so miss mson our social worker it was one of her professional goals um this year to help students understand daa better um as well as understanding all of the steps the adults

063in the building are taking when students report bullying or mean behavior for a Dasa um claim so she's pushing into all seventh grade health classes currently we're working on um figuring out where to schedule her in for the eighth graders as well she has a whole um interactive activity with the students to help them understand what Dasa is what dignity for all students is all about along with what is empathy um help students strategize with peers some actions can take when they experience bullying and then sharing with the students all of the steps um that myself Miss Vil and the entire support team are taking on the back end when um a bullying or incident report is made so that is super super important work and missil will close out the presentation thank you so

064it has been um my pleasure for the last eight years that I've been in leadership to make sure that we have a team that supports kids and that the kids know where to go I'm really grateful um that my support team is people that do want to be in the classroom and get to know the children um and it's been it's really just great I love my school you know that um so one part uh when I first presented 8 years ago there was a missing piece as far as as creating adult Learners in the building um and we are all Learners all the time and many of us can say that but I really feel like we're living that and walking that now um with the addition of the coaches to the junior high

065school Dr Jen schaber is at my school and also Kristen whan they started um working with seventh grade teams both of them um to bring student talk to the classrooms I think that that's like a common goal to have students talk about their work with each other because sometimes they take suggestion from their peers more than they take suggestions from the adults um so they've been working very hard in building student discourse giving them ideas for small group instruction and my teachers are embracing that letting go of the rains um you know I have seen it firsthand um in my APR and my observations um and it's been really great actually the thinking classrooms book there was brought by um Peter omura my seventh grade math teacher did Summer work on that um and he

066brought it to Kristen and said hey this is a lot of what you know I is talking about with discourse and she's like let's try that and she has embraced that and basically the children don't walk in and sit down in the desks they actually create a circle first rather than getting comfortable and relaxing they kind of stand and listen first and and sit down and get to work um that's one of the strategies there um it's been also in the ELA side uh Dr Jen's been talking with students about what they really like to read and investigating their attitudes their beliefs and their values around independent reading um and really getting to know the children and having teachers getting to know the children so I can't speak enough about Dr orach letting me have

067the coaches this year because it's just that next step up with professional development so I'm appreciative of that um the next slide I have to pick this up um so Innovative designs in education you'll see it as IDE that is a company that I have been working with um we first were introduced to them in admin Tanya Bosco is the woman that I've been um in discussions with but we have a full um program and we have an online learning uh it's almost it's like a tool so it's not they're not like clicking through and reading it's an interactive tool with modules um and we've been focusing on the lenses of equity um and in the learning modules uh we have been misso and I have been doing it at every faculty meeting um and

068it's about again engagement and empowerment on the parts of students but also getting the teachers more excited about being in their classroom and also empowering them to be able to be the best that they can be too so in January through March we introduced a Choose Your Own Adventure so they were able to pick there's actually seven different modules they were able to tell me um which ones they wanted to work in and the top vote Getters were executive functioning student agency and classroom management so they've been working through those modules and we had 80 minutes um our last staff development day on Friday so they were able to do that um it's great when they can talk to each other and hash out things that they've brought to the table and gain new ideas

069um it's really been wonderful also Erica is the co- te consultant um that has been working with them so she also there's familiarities in the modules from what Erica has been presenting with my co-ti teams as well so the other program program that I that the junior high is piloting torren Hampton came and talked to us at our admin retreat at new pts this summer um Dr IG Dr Orbach and myself were all in his first session and what he what he gives is a sidewalk for the children to be able to everything that we've been talking about in education picking who they want to be realizing what's important to them um and their passion and this is like a walk through and again kudos to my Educators that decided they wanted to go ahead

070and tackle a pilot that would be Steph D Silva Alan Meyer at Hasbrook and Jen zot in seventh grade we have the digital citizenship class so the seventh graders some of them are participating in that if they have Mr Meyer Miss zot and Mr Silva and Mr hasberg are doing it in their targeted learning lab so the it's okay the um things that they will be doing is a passion and talent audit so it's a self assessment and then we're going to be incorporating career research and Discovery so once they decide where their talent or their passion lies they'll be exploring different career paths so again like we have a lot of seventh and eighth graders that may want to be a professional athlete but not all of them are going to get the Yankee

071cap but there are so many Sports careers like statisticians SPN commentator um athletic trainer so they're going to be looking into the careers of what their self assessment um gives them and then we're looking to do a presentation of their what's called their passion Playbook on we're going to be planning a genius day in May or June so the 50 students will have a presentation and Torrence H Hampton's actually coming to see that so he'll be back the author of the book to do that in conclusion you've been listening to people for a very long time um in conclusion the culturally responsive sustaining um education philosophy has been something that was presented to me like three years ago and I've kind of always kept it in the back of my mind because a great school

072will have all four of those things so I've just highlighted underneath each of those four things what you heard about out today um and some of the lookies um the science of reading was just brought out by New York State education and finally the state has decided that the standards for seal should be incorporated into a document that also deals with academics so I was very excited to see the layer cake start to happen between social emotional learning and academics um IDE has has will be with us through 2025 so those modules for professional learning will be available to us to design and always those four things are not possible without parent reach outs and a community so that will be a focus for the junior high into the future thank [Applause] you thank you

073moving into public recognition any member of the public to address the board please appro cting state name residents and feel free to speak on the items on the agenda yes on Miss Mills is going to be getting ready to present just a couple highlights as she's getting set up um there will be a special board meeting on April 2nd uh the focusing on budget proposals for the upcoming School uh board uh vote uh there'll be there may be personel items as well as board action items on that agenda as well strategic planning is in full swing we've had 67 people sign up and participate in our community uh night um it was a amazing turnout once again the the facilitator kind of once again noted the commitment of the sorage community to our kiddos um

074on Monday my admin admin team worked on developing action steps based on the community's input for that we're focusing on four pillars of academic Excellence family community engagement professional culture and the student experience and more information will be coming out uh on that in the coming months um last time I did share that the governor's proposal would uh reduce our foundation a by $441,000 um I did receive word today that the Senate uh in their one housee budget uh is looking to restore though that safe harmless uh Foundation Aid Cuts they're looking to provide Amendment the 3% Foundation Aid increase they're looking to expand uh the universal School meals for all schools and increase overall and perable funding for prek and then extending the public retiring income cap waiver for an additional year uh the

075assembly had very similar things about restoring the safe harmless Foundation Aid Cuts providing a minimum of 3% increase to Foundation Aid funding Universal School meals for all schools as well as uh increasing overall and per people funding for prek uh so it appears as though some our advocation our advocacy efforts have been paying off to that regard uh so with that I will turn it over to miss Mills for presentation good evening to the board to the staff the members of the public who came tonight uh developing a budget is a Cooperative process and it is our cumulative knowledge that makes a strong and accurate budget so tonight's goal is to kind of look at where we are and where we're going we're going to look at our tax levy calculations Foundation Aid and other

076state aid miscellaneous revenue and finally our rollover budget there are quite a few slides in this deck not all require me to talk a lot some are there for your reference to have on hand if you want to look at more closely later the first one is one of those slides it's l of small print on there at the top you'll see that our total tax levy calculation comes out to 45 5,785 658 which I'll go over in a little more detail on this Slide the first number that goes into our tax L calculation is our tax B based growth growth factor there we go and we are the second highest in olster County right now as far as our tax base growth that's at 1.124 up there the second number that you'll see appear

077two times in the calculation is an economic stimulus agreement those are pilot agreements our municipalities make agreements with companies to bring in um business that will improve the economy and in trade for not paying taxes they pay a pilot so payment in L of taxes that first payment pilot up there comes out of the calculation that's what we paid last year the next number where you see the capital Levy that comes out of the calculation that's what we paid last year so it returns our Base number to the base and as the calculation continues you'll see that 2% cap that everyone talks about that is where the 2% gets rolled in um our actual rate of inflation is 4.16 at the moment the next pilot that appears up there the 2025 pilot is the amount

078of money we have coming in this year so it gets added back in and then our current capital expenses get added back in the final number on there the ER increase is because of the large increase which we'll talk about a little later in this slide deck that occurs with the state retirement system so the state uh gives us a little bit back for the expense we going to incur that is much larger this year than last year so you look at that tax levy over time slide shows that we're at a 3.62 increase in the tax levy with a 1.6 million increase this year the numbers are based on a 2021 assessment so that's not your market value that's your assessed value if we take the total property value um the current taxes in

079sties are about 20 $20.13 for per 1,000 of that assessed value and and the 1.6 million adds about 7 cents per 1,000 to that number that is the part that all of our Sawyers contribute to the school that's about 62% of our Revenue it comes from our local community so thank you to our community members for supporting our schools and student education the second largest part of our Revenue comes from Foundation a the state determines is a per pupil amount that's based on inflation and a regional cost Factor how much it costs to live in olster county and then a pupil needs number also goes into that calculation so you start out with the base the 14,000 there and this per people cost is not something the state pays it is to be shared between

080the state and the community and the state says this is the basic number to provide a basic education not an enriched education not an innovative education this is what it costs um for them to contribute to a basic education so we have two choices one in which they have a local St share and a state share if we went with that option we'd get about $2,000 per student one the sixth of the cost or we can go with the state shared ratio which they automatically give it to us because it's the larger number which comes out to $6,000 per pupil so when we look at per pup units later in this slideshow um we'll see that it's a weighted calculation it's not always going to match up exactly with our enrollment because they'll add a

081multiplying factor in there for enl students for special needs students for our poverty rates so it appears larger than our actual enrollment in some of the calculation numbers Dr just shared with us that save har will be returned to our budget number so this is the calculation of what it would have looked like should we have lost that 441,000 we would have been just below 17 million in our foundation AG the expense based AIDS our money that we spend and then it is returned to us based on various percentages in the following years so the first number up there is transportation what happens in our offices we look at the budget that was set up for this year um which is a projection of our expenses so that number under transportation once we look at

082our kind of March numbers could come down a little bit and if that is so we'll lower that number in our revenue for our final budget number uh this transportation number when we build it into a budget has to reflect the total possible cost of transporting all of our special ed students all of our regular students all of everything that happens in transportation if everyone went to school every single day um our Bose's number up there is about 2 million EXs high cost is the number that comes from um High tuition placements and other fosts for mostly special ed students we get a little $340 bonus for people tax area uh we have some building Aid so this is the money that we pay out for our Capital project gets built back in we have

083technology software Library textbooks and prek that prek number is not part of that top 8,000 or 8 million 8.9 million because it sits in its own budget as a special fund and when you look at the prek numbers um you'll see 700 700,000 762 340 there we go can't spit out my numbers tonight um but that is based on a 130 enrollment we currently have 80 students and we are full and we are not receiving High requests for additional seats so when you multiply that by the per student number uh we get to the 400 4691 132 there we go other Revenue sources are 1.7 million the first is our B's refunds so every year we purchase a number of Bose services and other Cooperative purchases through the bosis and when they recalculate because they

084are not allowed to make a profit on any services that any school purchases they figure out which amount of refund comes back to us our Health and Welfare Services our nursing and Social Work Services we provide to non-resident students and then the school reimburses us for those day tuition is um local students who may pay to to sties or some of our foster care students that we are then reimbursed for leases are uses of our building we get some Medicaid reimbursement our Pilots appear on there again interest and earning comes from investing our money wisely and reimbursement other miscellaneous revenue and the final category on there is f rate reimbursement uh which comes from our internet services and such this chart just kind of shows a comparison should we have lost our state aid you'll

085see our previous year has lots of green and this year we have some questions so if state aid were gone we would lose that 441,000 uh our miscellaneous Revenue will go down some of that is because of the indirect costs that were coming off of the covid grants they won't be available anymore there was a homeless grant that won't be available ailable anymore that also part of Co funding and then our reserves so last year we pulled 419,000 from reserves and from our fund balance and then then we have a question mark on what we'll do with that area as we continue to build the budget this year so you look at our year-over-year increase um last year's budget increased by 7.17% if we look just at the revenue that would be a 3.1 five

086increase from the previous year that's what's available to us so now we're going to look at our rollover budget this is the cost to keep all programming with the required increases so that the continued cost of our operations any increases we expect in fuel electricity the continuation of existing programs and services the continuation of any of our contractual OB obligations continuation of Staffing and benefits in accordance with our labor contracts so here is where we reach our number of total rollover so those known cost increases plus all the current costs roll over the largest number up there is our salary and benefits which is in any budget a good 75 to 80% of a budget um when you tie all the health Insurance um teacher retirement system State Retirement System any kind of benefit that

087goes to our staff retirees health insurance that's all appears in that number that large number is the number that supports our student learning the most those are our teachers to have our contact with the students every day contracts and services was about 7 million B Services is 6.7 million which is down a little bit from last year our transportation excluded the salaries that were already included above about 5 million our debt and financing that includes our Capital project um and our EPC project that's about 3 million then all supplies materials equipment throughout all the buildings both educational and operational about 1.5 million you'll see the transfer to other funds included in this number are our pre 3K cost which we'll talk a little bit more about in a moment and some funds to cover any

088little loose ends that may occur in Grants so if we um had a purchase for textbooks let's say and the price came in a little higher than we expected we just need a little bit to cover that we'd send that money over to the grant instead of moving our numbers all over we'll move it keep it where it belongs so we can track it and then pay that little bit extra from our general fund the final number up there is our capital outlay project where we pick something that needs to be done in the school in this case our ricardi flooring project and we'll do a little chunk of that upkeep each year that brings us to a total 81,1 39,2 71 for total rollover expenses of course our anticipated revenue is about 7 3.4

089million that would leave us with a funding gap of 7.7 million we now know since Dr just shared the news that we're going to have same harmless returned and we are expecting that we okay we didn't know if it was a final word or not so the hope is getting stronger that's good news and if we were to also have that 3% increase return it would reduce our Gap to 6.6 million so when we look at our spending compared across the county and across the state you'll see down at the very bottom in the yellow the state average is about 26,000 the county average is about 28,000 we round and then we have walkill Marble Marble and sties so we have been very efficient with our funds over the years in comparison to some of

090our neighbors how did we get to that $81 million contractual salary increases along with the very large number of our teachers and other employees who are reaching the top of their pay scales and nearing retirement our pre program is underfunded we can't collect that extra money from the state we can only collect the per student amount and that means our prek providers are expecting an 80,000 supplement to come from us because they also need to pay increased expenses for salaries on their end special special education cross cost across the different categories if you look at them whether it be tuition Staffing equipment contracted Services they can vary from 10 to 25% Which is higher than the increases recurring in most other parts of our budget uh reduc state aid even though we may get part

091of that return the formula that is currently used is from 2007 and it relies on those numbers and as you can imagine costs have gone up quite a bit no one anticipated Co and nearly 20 years has passed the end of our covid relating funding also is a cost driver in this budget other variables that are not yet 100% known we're waiting for a final increase we've received a projection number the final increases on our various insurance which are rising each and every year Rising Transportation costs we project this budget without knowing the price index that we'll get in the summer so we'll that price index can change each month and usually I think in July and August they select the one to apply to our transportation so we have one Transportation cont contract that

092is set we know that number and we have another piece of our transportation that is affected by this increase we use that current 4.16 to project out budget that's what our uh Consumer Price Index number is right now and that's the number that they use in our foundation Aid calculations and our TA calculations so increase the retirement system I showed on the earlier slide that we're getting a whole $6,000 back for this very large increase that is going to happen in the ERS from 13.1% to 15.2% so when you're looking at millions of dollars that's a good chunk of money in the budget that we only get $6,000 reimbursed for increase in York State teacher retirement it's going from 9.76 to 10.02 and our tax levy is below that rate of inflation so we're at

093a 3.62 increase with the tax levy but as I mentioned that Consumer Price Index is calculated a 4.16 and the year prior I think it was 7 or 8% well we can only calculate in our 2% before we include exclusions ARP funding that's the co funding that is ending and the items that need to come off of that those of Grants into our current budget are listed up here on this slide we have a multi-tiered system of support in the elementary and Junior High School that's four total staff members who provide extra support to our academically at risk students or otherwise at risk students we have a reading specialist an elementary project coordinator literacy coaches two two math coaches a credit recovery teacher uh the assistant principal in the kill Elementary School which is our

094Title One School extra Elementary section social worker an accountant teaching assistant four of them custodial worker an elementary Summer Academy and summer enrichment all have been paid through the co grants over those Co years so what will happen next we're going to continue to advocate for changes in fun funding both our board and our superintendent do that work for us incorporate new information as it becomes available so those changing rates new numbers what can we reduce what not what costs did we have this year that we won't have anymore incorporate feedback from the board the community from our staff continue reviewing our projects our budget estimates and the Assumption we use to make those projections we'll finalize our district priorities and then ultimately make a recommendation to the board about how to fund our budget

095so this next round of budget work will require lots of collaborative discussions it requires us to recalculate our numbers requires some creative thinking about how we can provide efficient services that benefit student learning requires us to examine Equity we can't always cut off the most expensive or the cheapest thing on either end we have to really look at the students at benefits and who would stand to lose those Services what impact do would have on our total Community when we look at those numbers ultimately some difficult decisions do need to be made but it is our job to work together to find efficiencies that help us to overcome these funding challenges upcoming dates our April 2nd budget Workshop we'll refine this number April 16th the board sets the budget for the vote May 14th will

096be our public budget hearing and finally on May 21st is our community budget vote questions from the board have a question um just to clarify um is this on okay um the 81 million um the 57 million in in this uh salaries and whatnot that's including all those Co so that that's assuming that we are carrying forward all of that covid um positions exactly right so all of the general fund numbers plus all of the is accounted for currently in our Co fund okay and then I just you know one of the things I just you know kind of just struck out at me is 81 million is a significant increase over last year of um almost $10 million of you know just rolling over last year's budget um and I know the covid funding

097was only a million dollars so I'm I'm interested really in seeing you know we've G been given some high level um cost drivers but sort of more detail really where is that $10 million coming from over last year's budget but also knowing that on an actual basis you know our budgets in at least the last few years have come in under what we budgeted like I mean I think right now it's like $66 million and so now we're looking at a budget that's almost $20 million higher than what we're actually spending today so that that's sort of where I'm coming from like to see more information on that sure so I can speak to that a little bit okay we start with looking at this year's budget numbers and of course we're not to the

098end of this cycle so we have to sort of project out what is left to spend and spending throughout the school year is not always even you'll have your supplies order supplies up front but then there are some other contracts that come in in chunks throughout the time and then finally wrap up everything so it's not always quite even so we have to do our best to project out what the cost will be we look at our previous year spending we do have currently about a $2.2 million balance and that will continue to fluctuate up and down as costs come in so when we look at that final budget number we project out that final budget number this could come down we have to look at what our expenses will be projected and we have

099to understand the risk in our assess in our projections there's always an element of risk so what have we spent over the past years what do we know what does it look like we know we're going to spend and what other factors what other assumptions are we accounting for increases in insurance they give us a percentage we work that in um increases in fuel what will that be we have a fuel contract expiring we don't know that Transportation yet transportation is not always fully spent but we have to prepare a budget that would fully cover all the transportation we be required for that we know of at this moment and then we also have to prepare for contingencies we can't you can't have a budget that goes to the exact amount you expect to spend

100if you have students move into the district your teaching staff needs may change you may need more teacher assistance more AIDS there are variables that occur throughout the year that we have to be prepared to address in that budget so some of those large increases again are are our aging salaries and our increases in insurance that accounts for a big chunk of that and then you'll have as you said that 1.5 which is our largest Grant right now but there's also the summer funding the extended school year funding that is coming into this Grant and our state set aside Grant fund for ARP that is also coming into to this grant or to this budget I mean but in the next round you'll see a more refined budget this is the total possible roll over

101at this moment in some sense this is the worst case scenario yes this is all in number thank you first thank you to you and your office I I know this probably daunting task you had mentioned the algorithm and that it differentiates between uh enl population and special needs population does that is that like a variable rate that changes with uh so I know the FED hasn't met yet but everybody's guesses everything's going to kind of stay the same maybe maybe the prime rate may go down um I know that's not going to affect us or our CPI but are we factoring in or not we the state um so this is more information not not anything with with sties the transportation costs of bringing kids to special placements and if there's an increase in

102that does that is that reflected in compensation from the state and form a so we project as far as the state aid return transportation is an expense based Aid and that's where we project out what we we think the CPI may be at that time or currently we're using the right now number that 4.16 and that number that we send off the state is where they return where they show that three 3 whatever it is million coming back to us in Aid as an expense based agid so if we don't spend it we don't get it back as far as the transportation as far as the multipliers that go into that Foundation aid number the formula was set in 20 2007 as I said so some of those numbers will stay the same but they

103do the formula stays the same but the numbers that will sort of shift a little are like the regional cost index they'll compare our area to every other area and determine what that multiplier will be so there are some numbers that shift in there for level of poverty Regional costs um the increase or decrease in the needs of students how many enl or how many special ed students we have so is there just a followup question on on 2007 um I believe that was the the year seven eight financial crisis that we had right before so I I don't know if it's just me thinking with common sense but shouldn't that be Revisited as far as the aid goes considering that obviously with the rate of inflation now it's a lot different I certainly agree

104and that is something that we need advocacy for at the state level yeah so both the Senate in the house do have proposals in to add money to look at the foundation a formula and how it's run and to revisit it thank you thank you m presentation appreciate it move to board member remarks I'll start off by thanking Miss Ms for that presentation I didn't have any immediate questions uh but I do appreciate the thoroughness of the work um that is involved the work that is ongoing and how many times you're going to revisit this you know as this information does you know continue to trickle out I do hope that our advocacy efforts are going to you know produce some fruit and I say our advocacy efforts I'm talking probably about every every educational

105organization professional association in the state of New York has been heard pretty extensively in in alany so um you know I'm optimistic uh as I as I think everybody else should be um that uh that we we won't have to see some of the uh perhaps dramatic Cuts Associated um with as as Dr ersc mentioned uh the initial budget is often times a worst case scenario so thank you for that I'd like to thank uh miss raor summer did I do that correctly thank you very thorough um um unfortunately I felt like I was taking a trip down memory lane with that audit um but I appreciate the thoroughness of that and I appreciate a lot of the the very important things that you highlighted um I think from that it probably be very very

106uh I don't want to say there is nothing easy uh and there's nothing easy about special education but at least identifying a path you know for some action and uh and developments you know within our special education department so I appreciate your work uh thank you very much like to congratulate our scholar athletes I can't speak any more than anyone has has spoken about uh the the work that all of our athletic teams have done um in terms of you know the success of the seasons um but but ultimately boiling it right down to the essence of what we're doing um scholar athletes is is a a tremendous tremendous achievement as as well so to have that much athletic success compounded or I I think yeah success compounded by the fact that these are also

107students that are meeting every measure of the mark in terms of what they're supposed to be doing academically is great uh I was able very fortunate with with uh my wife to attend the uh the play again as Dr IG mentioned uh just just quite extraordinary and it was uh especially satisfying as well having been in that Auditorium for you know many many many times um throughout the years to see the work of the board that that I'm on but even the board that certainly precedes me uh come through fruition in terms of the the seating and the elements of the project um the construction project that is is in that order atorium um it's definitely definitely a worthwhile trip down there if you have not seen it one final thing I'd like to just

108say Dr IG mentioned the 67 folks that showed up for our strategic planning workshop um I'm saying this independently right as an as an individual board member how much I appreciate that and I I feel compelled to say this simply because of the fact that um on a personal note one of the things that's gone on you know for us and our fames I've had the the great benefit of having my grandchildren move into our home um and uh for a brief period of time but but invariably for those of you that have worked in in schools long enough uh I promptly you understand this I promptly got pretty exceptionally ill and it lasted about 3 weeks um and everything about this strategic planning workshop is is the type of thing that in various conversations

109since my time on the board you know I have I have certainly you know intimated and oriented toward understanding this is a great a great way to go about things um to to bring all of your community members together so seeing how much success was was happening with this process and hearing about 67 people that are interested in charting our our our future um with our brand new administrative team uh as it were it was very very exciting and um I'm sorry to say um that I I I wasn't ble to be there I wish that I had been but I value all of the input and all the folks that did put that extensive amount of time in um for that work and again knowing full well that that work is ongoing so um

110those are just some comments that I'd like to share um and I appreciate uh all of you that have come here tonight thank you any else po thank you so much uh on a lighter note from after that budget I want to thank Mr Joo for doing the ski and snowboard Club again we just had the last uh session there's six of them over the winter if you guys ever want to have your kids learn how to ski or snowboard and not have to be there it's much easier as a shr to teach than it is to teach your own kids take it from me um I was not able to get my kids off the bunny slope but I this year I got four kids off the bunny slopes on to blacks so um

111send them out there they just get to take the bus up and the bus back home you don't have to worry about a thing so uh that'll be next year starting in January so thanks again to Mr Tiano and uh all the parents who helped make that happen anyone else okay uh board president remarks u m serers thank you for for your presentation uh you know I'm glad to hear that you really found our community um something special uh tell your family and friends to move in especially those with kids so we can increase our enrollment would be helpful um I want to thank Mr Pon for all the work he did to make M Rob happen if you hadn't been there uh the uh set designer was actually the person who designed the set

112for the original play in Manhattan and it was it was quite a presentation uh my family and I if you come out of musical we just sang to each other for the next couple of hours until we got the second tired of it it was a very alter reality but to think of the effort those kids put in uh for weeks months to learn not only to memorize their lines but to take a risk of seeing in public before uh uh people for three days straight I just can't imagine how exhausted they were when um Sunday evening finally shut the per production down they did great uh at the same time while I was at the play I was getting updates about the basketball game and you know our guys fought vant to to uh

113make it to almost the final four uh all of our student athletes um you know I was having a conversation today with u somebody we're really fortunate to to live here the community comes together when you see all the um horrendous things that are going out in the world um you know we have a great caring community and we really lift up our students and I'm glad to be a part of that um and we're a great destination I know Mr pson has talked about destination so is it's a great place to live our taxes are low hopefully they stay that way um and there's so many things to do and there's so many uh experiences for kids it's a it's a great place I can't say that enough um last week I went up

114to Albany with the school administrators to lobby and um you know I learned a lot about the budget process and it's crazy the governor put out this uh proposal where we were all uh going to be cut half of our school districts across New York State we're going to lose money and what happens with that is that U our business office our superintendent start cringing because you start thinking well how can we maintain programs well we can't we're going to have to lay off people well who do you lay off how do you make those decisions and it's it's kind of an um a moral dilemma because in New York state we have a Democratic governor but when I went up to lobby and I met with several of our Senators and uh assembly people

115they're all Democrats and they're saying no no that's not going to happen go through this this is like a song and dance we're going to we're going to restore and we're going to increase a little bit more so my question to them was then why put us through this anxiety I've got people that are staying up late at night wondering uh about their jobs uh there's a tremendous amount of anxiety I talk to administrators from across the state uh this process is not right so I was glad to see that uh the preliminary report for the the Senate's response to the governor's budget and the assembly's response is that they're going to ref restore those uh cuts that the governor proposed and add a little bit more the other thing that both the Senate and

116the assembly said they were going to do is donate uh earmark a million dollars to study Foundation Aid uh Foundation Aid sounds good but it's really not fair across New York State um in Westchester County and some of our wealthiest districts they can get by without state aid they bring in so much money and they have so much enrollment they don't need state aid District like sories are very dependent on state aid so when the governor makes a cut she makes a cut proposed cut to the poorest districts across New York state which impact the poor students in New York state and that needs to stop so hopefully uh I don't know who's going to do the study for a million dollars I'd certainly volunteer to do it for like half that but we need

117to have a fair system of uh funding in New York state so we don't go through these dilemmas um the other thing that the governor proposed was um for the school districts to report out on their efforts to uh put FASA uh the free uh application for federal student aid that's being generated from um John King who's the chancellor of New York State schools John King used to be the Secretary of Education uh for the federal government he could have reduced that application and made it more simple when I was driving up to Aly there's a car dealership and they mentioned that uh if you want an application for a car loan fill out a feline credit application well for those of you who fill out the FASA form it takes days of wrenching and

118going through and rebooting your computer and it's a horrible situation uh Chancellor King wants school districts to take the burden of dealing with this complicated application meet with students four times a week a year and assuming that students fill it out well if you've ever filled out a fast application your student doesn't fill it out you fill it out and it it's a cumbersome process well there's financial aid that's being left uh Uncharted uh untapped um any amount of I think $40 million left on the table for New York State students what needs to happen rather than imposing an unfunded mandate on school districts to meet with students and their families four times a year and then be held accountable for that that fcet process needs to be simplified so we're still looking to Advocate

119that rather than putting the burden on the school districts simplify that process um we also advocated for uh a salary cap waiver because there's U at times hard to find administrative position positions hard to find teaching positions and you look at your experienced retirees to bring them in um what happens in the case of an administrator in a building if they're out for some reason you can bring in a retired administrator but once they hit that $35,000 salary cap you have to bring in another one so rather than having three or four administrators or three or four teachers for a student if there's an outage you want one person in all year long so there's continuity for the students it just makes common sense so um if anything if you want to advocate for Education

120thank your assembly person thank your state senator for like coming to uh the assistance of the sovet school district and tell them to keep up the good work and if you want to talk to the governor say like what were you thinking the other thing that concerned me last week if you saw the State of the Union Address was that um President Biden mentioned and I want to raise for all teachers across uh the country and it was a tremendous amount of Applause but he didn't explain how to do that I cringe when I hear somebody advocating for for a check that they can't cash um we have our teachers do get raises they do get salary steps it's not like we're holding them back I just wanted to clarify that that sers is behind

121um you know funding teachers appropriately and by contract but what you heard on the national front may not take place uh because there's no way for the federal government to mandate salary increases across all states for all teachers so just keep that in mind and I think with that update on the new news um I'll end my remarks and we move into our next part of the agenda um I'll entertain a motion to approve personel instructional and non instructional item J1 up to item l14 so Mo move for po second second second by Mr Mooney discussion Mr W that was that 14 right yeah yes okay uh I just want to make comment and note um since these items are in here specifically uh resolution board action resolution items for uh poll workers paying a

122poll workers on budget vote trust election and the legal notice uh for uh the annual public hearing the date the election districts and everything like that uh and just make make everybody aware and be reminded that we do have three board seats that are available this school year when I say available that means that those are three seats that are that are seeking to be filled as well as you know the support of the budget so uh in the past we have put ourselves out there and I think we're going to do that again again that if people are interested in running for board seats uh really I think any board member um that you you know see here any board member that you know that existed in a in a previous life uh it's

123a good idea if you're interested in that kind of service to come speak to uh one of us several of us all of us um if that's something that you're interested in and and again just be aware that that's coming and pay attention to those those deadlines that are upcoming thank you missa yes um I just wanted to um point out to uh I think it's l K5 um when we talk about budget transfers um you know just one thing I wanted to point out and recognize that there and as also um shown by the budet presentation from Miss Mills that there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes um in supporting the school district and all the things uh good things that are going on here um and one of those definitely

124um within the budgetary process is ensuring that um there's fiscal as accuracy between the budget lines and what's being budgeted um versus what's being expensed and um you know between last board meeting and this board meeting you know we're approving about $3 million in budgetary transfers um but this is a critical part of the process in making sure that our our everything things in line um especially as we're looking at at going forward for these rollover budgets that things are in their place so that when we look to see where is the funding coming from um or being spent I should say that those things are accurate so I just want to thank um Miss Mills for diving into the detail and looking at all of that stuff because it is a big puzzle and

125um you know important work to be done and I do appreciate that that's being done as we are going through and starting the budgetary process so thank you any other discussion just comment just to remember that April 8th is a give back so pay attention to the calendar anyone else no further discussion being heard I'll call for vote alls in favor say I I committee reports uh public committee uh yes um we met on March 5th um and we went over a few things we approved the meetings of the last meeting um we talked about the internal audit um where we're still waiting from the internal audit advisory firm to provide uh the results from the risk assessment last year um and uh what what dates are going to start for this year um so

126there'll be more to come on that we looked at the uh the audit committee per performed a self assessment on uh the performance of the audit committee and overall you know we're doing well and we also looked at um the uh external auditor and um that the fact that that the current um current Auditors their contract is effectively up with the last audit that we performed um we did approve them as part of the July um uh rework meeting so we need to look at you know what that implication of that is and then we also looked at the surrounding districts um around SES um for who they who they use for their external audits um in case we need to go out for a request for proposals uh to get some names um within

127the industry to to look forward to look toward so thank you Mr pulson facilities yeah our meeting was Wednesday March 6th um there wasn't a whole lot of work being done a lot of it is on hold until the beginning of the spring break on March 25th uh the majority of the meeting was to review the building condition surveys for repair recommendations um since we were talking about the budget I just want to remind everybody watching that the uh facilities committee and these building condition surveys they are to qualify for state aid so that a significant portion of the necessary repairs will be reimbursed from the state and it's the um what we're doing is we're going to we have to prioritize everything and a lot of the things that we'd like to do get

128pushed to the five to 10 year mark and a lot of the necessary stuff is within the next three years so um as we look at that shortfall know that that is part of the um revie processes to make sure that we can get as much Reimers from the state as we can thank you thank you Mr B policy thank you uh yes we we did meet March 5th um couple of old items of business just to to keep people aware code of conduct is an ongoing process that's being reviewed uh an update was provided and uh they continue to use the code of conduct to identify infractions discuss consequences but it seems like there's really robust discussion going on about uh how we look at and how we uh how we consider um the

129approaches that we're using uh in relation to our students um in in a code of conduct so I know that a lot of conversations are taking place at this time um in the in those build in the building excuse me um beyond that you see a lot of policies that were just in this uh this particular agenda tonight that we have uh brought up for discussion and some of those items obviously were approved first reading some of them have been approved second reading um topics coming up potentially for the future we have and are continuing to talk about a board uh Charter a board policy committee Charter um very specifically so we're looking at one or two examples just to kind of codify what our specific policy committee um is going to look like and

130you know how you would replace members etc etc the composition of that team um so that's some ongoing work um we're also going to be looking at our transportation of students policy um which has a lot of ramifications across every every grade level so that is a a uh a conversation that's that's uh coming up in the the next policy meeting uh possibly even Beyond uh and then some future topics that have been mentioned uh potentially uh looking at and and really uh at least beginning to assess you know the uh the nature of artificial intelligence and that seems like a pretty broad statement but um how it impacts instruction how it impacts student learning how it impacts how students are able to engage and participate in uh knowledge Gathering uh and learning in this

131day and age so that's a topic that's going to hopefully come up with some robust conversation as well as uh taking a look at diversity equity and inclusion um which I think is is an important topic for for all of of us in education um certainly in light of listening to and paying attention to you know something like our special education onit you know when we think about things like inclusion um you know we we have to remember that we're talking about all of our students that are enl ell we're talking about special needs students we're talking about students with related service needs so it's a very big big broad topic far more broad than a lot of people sometimes give it credit for and I I think that's a topic that we tackling in

132the in the future as well uh our next meeting will be April 2nd and you can find that information on the school website as well thank you uh board operations we met uh just before the board meeting um we're in the process of developing our own um board operations manual it's kind of like an owner's manual for being a board member um when I started education I met uh one of the first school res officers uh don stuff who's a police officer in New Jersey and he said one of those things that stuck with me for the rest of my life which was never get uh never do something that you can get somebody else to do for you so uh Miss bellosa volunteered the nisba board operations manual and we refining it to take

133that manual and adapting it to Soy so we don't have to recreate something from scratch so today in an hour we got as far as page 10 of revising that and I think we have 22 pages to go if I'm not mistaken so our next next meeting will be before an hour before the next um scheduled board meeting and you're more than welcome to attend and I will entertain oh no before we go that public recognition anybody from the public wishing to approach the podium in comment feel free okay none being heard I'll entertain a motion to go with the executive s M Bosa is there a second Mr ball any discussion not being heard I'll call for a vote fa say I I thank you for coming out we're going to come out just

134toj the meeting don't anticipate come [Music] in e shut come on boss I'll entertain a motion to come out of executive session some move yes I'll second got all Mr Ball seconded by Mr Mrs kelder assisted by Mr Yi facilitated by Mr Yi none being heard I'll call for vot all in favor to say I I motion to adjourn move Mr pson second by Mr Yi discussion being heard V say I great great night thank you guys thank you guys thank you guys appr