Saugerties Board of Education Meeting 5/10/2022

001um mcclary here timothy wells father chat susan gates james mooney president dr katie emerson haas that would be me christa barringer here please rise for the pledge we have some special guests to help us tonight i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty thank you any discussions also say hi hi hi um uh presentations and honors mr um thank you good evening everyone my name is scott wickham i'm the business department chair uh here at saugerties high school this year it's been a distinct pleasure and honor for us to provide the video feed the live stream for you you know our our bosses and without these two individuals that i'm going to speak about it would

002be nearly impossible these two individuals jumped in at first um not afraid to you know be put on the spot doing a live stream that's not the easiest thing to do we do do it every every morning with the morning announcements throughout the building but it's a whole different feel when you when it's put up immediately on youtube um the first honoree is here the second honoree is not she has attracted me tonight and she'll be here later if uh at all possible though when she does show up if we could whatever business you guys are in um just to give her um her credit as well just to let us give us a signal or something um anna drayer come on over here she is a junior here at sony's high school she is

003an integral part of the morning announcements is when we go live in the morning we have a as you are aware we have a tricaster setup where we can do up to eight cameras at one time during uh during the um morning she is the the go-to person it's been an honor for for us to have her back next year in broadcast journalism which is uh fantastic she's gonna she's gonna lead the drive there for sure but she she controls everything it's almost like i don't i don't even have to be there which is exactly what an educator should do is teach them what they need to know and then have them go about the daily includes so if you guys wouldn't mind giving her a round of applause is um she's a senior this

004year she's going to go on and do great things i think she's going to elmira um i'm not it's between a couple right now i'm not sure which one pays yeah that's right i'm sorry um she's going to pace university in westchester um so she's she's moving on to other things not that this isn't big here but i've been doing it for 30 years um but thank you very much for your time and if we could just at some point in time we should get here thank you very much right back to work [Music] thank you very much uh for that that was awesome uh one other uh honor i'd like to discover tonight is 95 of our students in spring sports um had over a 90 gpa so that's wonderful um you know we

005love our sports here we also love our scholar athletes so that's very impressive i know mr ursuch has put the name up so i want to congratulate all of our athletes and all of our coaches for having such a high regard for the academics and the rigor that we know our students need so congratulations to all of them next i have the engine is public recognition any member of the public uh we should speak um because the missouri social visit the birth of the podium state name presidents and this part of the public comment session is limited to items that are on the agenda the second public count of the session will be uh for anything and everything uh good evening i'm christine residing at 1606 old king's highway in saugerties i am a school

006board candidate last night at the candidate forum we were asked as individuals if we would support the school budget my response was that i was unable to make that determination without first attending the public hearing on the budget understanding there is time allotted for after the presentation for public recognition on the public hearings i wanted to provide my comments in the first public recognition in hopes that they will be addressed in the presentation tonight i would like to thank the district and the business office the budget is a complex process with constantly moving parts i have spoken many times about financial projections and the importance of transparency on how actual results may differ from differ from those projections last year's budget projected a deficit what stands out is that the most recent financial results provided

007today indicate the school district will turn a profit i think it is important to explain what is driving a change for example with these one-time anomalies or changes that will have a future impact while the board may not be prepared at this time to address the specific implication of a contingency budget should the budget vote fail i think it is important to explain in practical terms the long-term implications of failed budget vote specifically beyond the age-old cutting of sports programs what would a failed budget vote mean for the upcoming school year and how would this impact the budget in future years thank you and i look forward to the presentation this evening anyone else thank you very much uh first up is saint umar on the budget presentation hello okay it's so nice out try

008to keep this great maybe got 24 pages here okay um so um i'm going to go through a bunch of the slides or the same presentation from last time but they're important so we've included them again so we start out with a property tax levy cap calculation so um this is an eight step formula that started back um from the loss of 2011. so somebody pointed out recently we've been doing this for 10 years crazy okay so um the start of the calculation is the tax levy for the current fiscal year which was about 41 and a half million dollars and then we increased that by the tax-based growth factor which comes from the state that brings us up to 41.7 and then after that we add in the pilots that are receivable for the

009current year and pilots are payment in lieu of taxes there are currently three of those four of them excuse me and next year there'll be three which brings us to just over 42 million and then we subtract the capital tax levy which is the local share of our capital expenditures for the current year of just under a million dollars brings back down to 41 million and then we take that 41 million and multiply it by the allowable levy growth factor which is held to two percent so when you hear two percent tax cap that's the two percent they're talking about so we can only use uh we normally use the cpi the consumer price index or two percent whichever is less so now it's less uh so we're only using two percent and uh the

010last time i looked at the new york state controller's office website the consumer price index was about 5.72 that was about a month ago and it's definitely up from last year as uh last year's cpi was 1.23 so it's pretty drastic increase over a year and then that brings us up to 41.8 million and then we subtract the pilots receivable for next year it's projected about 250 000 um which there are three of them so that's brings us to total tax levy limit before exclusions of 41.6 and the next page we have total exclusions just in the capital tax levy area of about 885 this is a decrease over last year then on the following page explains the numbers that go into them so on the expenditure side we have our estimated principal and interest

011payment on bond anticipation notes for our 22 million capital project of 755 000 then we have our energy performance contract principal and interest payment on that lease which is um which we were expected to be higher than that but the rates came in great last this past december so the payment's only 235 puberta going forward the next one we have capital outlay this is project which we do every year we look around to see what project and what in throughout the district that's about a hundred thousand dollars um that's something that needs to be done right away and with this capital outlay project we outland 100 000 in one year and we receive all of the state aid that were due on that project in the following year there was talk about increasing it up

012to 250 000 which didn't get through uh the new york state budget process which 100 000 these days doesn't really go that far anymore so the 250 would be nice and then the last item there is the boces capital expenditures projected for next year at 120 000 which brings up the expense side to 1.2 million and then the revenue side the state building aid associated with the previous capital project is about 305 and the state occ for that part of the capital expenditures above is about 19 so the difference between the two of those is a local share of capital expenditures of that 885. then we have the exclusion in to the tax living limit the forex solutions bringing us to the maximum allowable levy uh 42 million 503 847 which is an increase over

013the current year of 981 517 so under a million and that is a 2.36 percent with the simple maturity vote and again as i said earlier 2.36 is what hours comes out to be and the cpi is more than double that right now next we have the state gate projections and bringing it all together the estimated amount to receive next year is 22 million 171 617 which is a decrease of over 1.3 million or 5 5.8 percent decrease and this is mostly due to the drought in building aid there's also a corresponding drop in the debt surface on the expand side of the budget related and then breaking that down into the different categories you see the first category is foundation aid is where we received a big increase as promised thankfully and that is

014the increase in that category is of the full phase-in amount that's due to us so next year we're assuming to get the additional fifty percent but that full felt basic amount changes each year and for us that's been reducing over the past couple of years it previously was about 18 and now it's just about just a little over 17 for the total and it's due to varying factors going into that calculation including increase in wealth for the district and a decrease in enrollment and a decrease in people needs as and those put together increase the expected minimum local contribution per pupil so therefore they decrease the money because they expect the taxpayers to to come up with a difference and then you can see the large drop in the building aid down there as i

015mentioned so the putting the revenues all together with the state aid that decrease and the increase in the tax levy of 2.36 and then we have other sources that have increased over last year's estimates um our non-resident tuition amounts health and welfare services our vote sees refund and facility rentals along with medicaid so total revenues there including the use of reserves and fund balance of 138 069 which brings us the total revenue side up to match the expense side of 66 426 7716 and that's the number you're going to see on the budget proposition and then just a little chart um the two big biggest categories uh by percentage is the state aid and the property tax um and state aid is down it's horizontal percentage from 35 to about 33 percent of the total

016and the property tax is up to 64 of the total from 62. so our total expenditure projections adopted by the board at the april 19th meeting is the 66 million 426 716 and that's a decrease in the total budget over the current year of 110 249 or minus 0.17 and again a large part of the decrease in the budget is that debt service category of over 1.5 million dollars and also reductions related to expenses uh in the reconfiguration next i throw some real charts make it exciting so this is the three-part budget there the three parts are administration capital and program and there was a slight shift from the capital component which includes that debt service piece and it shifted into programs so programs up to 83 percent of the total and that administration's date

017is at nine percent and here's on the breakdown of those three components so first we have the administrative which is for general support management activities including district office business personnel legal public information and insurance and a few other little things in there so we have some increases and decreases so first we have a bit of increase in the board because we have some new board members coming on and a new district clerk that will require some training in business personnel legal we have legal increasing gatsby 75 actuarial services increasing physical inventory that needs to be done we included an accounting position in this which is offset by those federal funds which i spoke about at the previous meetings and also printing costs the whole paper shortage and toner and all of that is increasing those

018costs and there's a lot of those included in there see security and central services and central services we have a retirement so there's a salary savings within that category uh special items is the boces administrative and capital um district share and it also includes the liability insurance in that category and so the boces administration cost and capital costs have decreased but the insurance has gone up but still overall that shows a decrease in that category and supervision of schools this is where all of the and directors and their secretaries are included in that so we have reduction in the principle through retirement and we've also shifted the curriculum director and some of the pd expenses to those federal funds that we have available to us and so overall there's a degree decrease in this administrative

019component of 0.17 or just over 10 000. the next part is the program component and this is where all the instruction and educational support services for students are included and also transportation is complicated so first category we've shifted those legal services uh because that can be broken up into the different components and we move more into the administrative component so there's a decrease here but it's basically a shift um the next one is the teaching there is an increase in special education services required and cost of alternative schools as well as an increase in the number of students that should be attending alternative school next year next is instructional media this includes library and computer services now that we're moving to full-time librarians of the elementary buildings and there's new and replacement of technology hardware

020that make up that increase people services increase in that category is the additional psychologist and athletic trainer although those were added during this school year they weren't included in the original budget so that's why there's a big difference between this current year and next year's budget budget to budget and then in transportation there's an increase in the fuel costs as well as contracts that go up every year based on cpi and that category the expenses can actually you can actually change a lab with just one student like up or down um depending on where their out of district placements are and what their needs are as well as how many bus drivers we can get and if we have to combine bus runs it can be less unprotected next change is a transfer to school

021lunch there definitely is an increase in food food cost and the delivery of the food for the students and next year we should be going back to where not every we don't get reimbursed for everyone as if they were all free students we go back to our reduced populations that we get more reimbursement for and then our paid students so we expect that that will need some help from the general fund so there's an increase in the component program component of 2.84 or about 1.5 million and the last component is capital um we have basically the operations for our plant which is all the building and grounds and maintenance of plants which is our maintenance so those categories are seen pretty much the same and then as you work your way down to the middle

022we have the debt service for the serial bonds and those are what are being paid off this year next month actually those will be done and then the estimated amount i spoke about for the bond anticipation notes is that 755 000 and followed up by the debt service for the energy performance contract so we had estimated about that 300 000 number but the interest rate came in better so the payments going forward or around 235 but since we have budgeted that 296 thousand dollar number uh when we closed out on the lease agreement we made the first payment as 295 000 since we had already asked the taxpayers for that money um so we paid 295 so that the rest of the payments going forward would be less and the last one to transfer the

023capital is that that's where that capital outlay is and we are either going to be finishing some replacement flooring at the party or we may be able to do some work at cahill we're still waiting for estimates on that next is the budget breakdown which was included in the last couple of presentations that i just put back in here but it's a different way to show the budget so within this whole set of expenses it covers all of those components that i just went through it's just another way to show it and then next uh just the boces budget a slight increase in that overall budget with student placement within those alternative programs that i spoke about earlier and then putting it all together so you can see what's included in this budget with a

0242.36 property tax levy for that simple majority it includes full-time librarians at each elementary school we're moving from halftime to full-time within each there's a replacement for scales and microscopes at the senior high and robotics kits at the junior high we're adding a reading specialist at the elementary level with general funds we're also adding one at an additional reading specialist at the elementary level with some of the federal funds we have three additional teachers in here for the junior senior high for let's see one is language other than english one is business one is technology and there was also a teaching assistant at the secondary level to help with some transitioning students right in the special education department and then the next one we have we keep staffing levels at the elementary to allow for

025continued average class size of 20 students for next year which is right on par with where it is right now and the for the computer facilities equipment district-wide that's um us staying under replacement schedules for the computers equipment and furniture throughout the district and that transfer to school lunch fund is needed to balance the school budget on budget and then that last one against the capital project appropriations for harvey or k health next we have on the district reserves and estimated fund balance which i did speak about this um the last time as well and i just had a couple of other things to point out that that debt service reserve is actually in a completely different fund than the general fund all of these other items are included in the general fund that was

026a little bit separate and these are all separate items that don't total up within this right here and the increase in that debt service reserve is actually just interest that we expect and also a lot of this um i will be updating this um fund balance projection for you for the june meeting along with the the increase in the decrease in that column that'll be the recommendations moving forward with what amounts to take out of the reserves or what amounts to put in the reserves depending on where the estimated fund balance is at that time and there is one other fund balance item that's not included on this it's a little bit different but it is technically included as fund balance it's non-spendable on balance which is our prepaid items which includes our workers compensation

027about a half year payment for that because we go through the county they're on a calendar year and we're not on the same calendar a year so we're basically prepay for the second half of the year so that's included in that and our health insurance is due the july's payment is actually due in june so we always pay that ahead so we have about a million in in that non-spendable account so if you see that that's what that is next we move to property tax impact i just want to say this is totally an estimate using tentative assessed values and tentative equalization rates and although the voters aren't voting are voting on the total budget they usually like to hear some information about their taxes so attentive tentative assessed values were provided by the ulster

028coming real property tax services department last week um and i've used them to estimate the tax rates for next year so i have the actual tax rates for 20 21 and 22 year up there and then estimated for next year and the equalization rates uh decreased for the towns of ulster and woodstock but remained at 100 for socrates and this is basically set by the new york state uh real property tax services um and there was a there's a shift in the percentage of the tax levy that is paid by the town of sovereigns from they're going from about paid 90 of the total tax levy to 89 of it and ulster is moving from about 4.32 of the total to 4.23 and then woodstock is increasing from 5.29 of the total to 5.82 so

029you can see in the in the rates socrates is going down whereas um an ulcer or going down the woodstock is increasing and uh the next slide i have shows an example of a town of socrates home so my understanding that the town of sargeras residents received a letter giving them notice that there was an increase in their assessed value based on how the market was trending so i wanted to give an example of how that plays out into their actual tax bill and again it's using the tentative assessed values so if everything stays the same which i know it won't but this just gives you a basic idea of of how it works so i have that the estimated 2223 and as compared to the actual so the assessed value in for this particular

030home last year was three hundred and seventy two thousand five hundred dollars it increased to four hundred thirty six thousand five hundred which is a change of sixty four thousand or seventeen point two percent and then since the equalization rates are still at 100 that brings those numbers down to the true value then from there we take the portion of the tax levy associated with the town of saugerties to come up with a tax rate of 15.6 15.63 and then multiply that by the true value to come up with the tax bill of 6823 and as compared to last year the tax rate being 18.27 um which is a decrease in the tax rate of 14.4 for 2.64 and then the tax bill last year was um six thousand eight hundred and four dollars for

031a change of less than 20 bucks for the whole bill for an increase of 0.29 so and that is before star so star is going to stay about the same 592 for basic so again that's just based on tentative assessed values um right now which they do change a little you can get the finals in july but they usually don't change too much i say that right but anyhow it gives you kind of an idea that just because your assessed value is changing by 17 it doesn't necessarily mean your tax bill will change that drastically because everyone's moving up it it just raises the bar up so which reduces the tax rate which in theory isn't the same amount same percentage change and that's always a difficult topic so if you have any questions next

032we move to budget and tax levy changes this just goes back to my type of 2013-14 year to next year 22-23 just going over the budget increases which now have turned into a decrease for this year coming up and the tax levy and the change in the tax levy so again the tax increase is 2.3 percent 36 in the cpi is much higher than that so and i just want to point out that the increase or decrease in the budget is never the same as the increase or decrease in the tax levy those two things don't usually go at the same rates um because there's other things involved in that right that state aid was a is another huge factor in that along with other revenues and the budget depends on the expenditures that are

033projected for the following year so those don't always go through the revenues so you know the average tax like increase over these years is still less than two percent um then we want to move on to the long range there's something that's really standing out for me in this in this slide and i don't know if you can touch on it um it appears that starting in the year 20 we stopped relying on the fund balance to balance our budget which is extremely different than what my prior experience on the board was and that every year the budget came it was just let's let's use our one balance and it appears that you've kept our expenses within the budget itself and not in our savings which is required and i just want is there something

034you can well highlight that we've all worked together on that um and i think there's a couple pieces that go into that so doing a better job of estimating which the more years we have here i have here will get closer and closer each year we've worked on a number of things to become more efficient and you know reconfiguring helped us in that um but for the past few years we have come up with surpluses and not deficits within our budget and cobit is a big part of that this the current year we're in was that was like throwing you know a dark a blindfold on how how close to get that budget what was going to happen what were we going to need what we were going to not spend our money on where

035we going to be in school we're not going to be in school so the past couple have been all over the place but we want to get to a better spot there's still more ways that we can be efficient we just it takes time to get there and come up with plans and put processes into place that will save us more money hopefully so on the long range plan i have the actuals here from 2020 and 2021 which right there in that middle is that surplus that i just talked about um and then my estimated surplus for this year is just over nine hundred thousand um and then projected for next year is that uh small gap of that 138 138 000 um going forward um it looks like we'd be a little ahead of

036course we're way far out and like i said last year when i was given this presentation the cpi was 1.23 and you know it's at whatever five or more right now so i don't know what it's going to look like but based on um you know all the contracts that we have in place and the information i have available now that's what i'm going with like what i have right now how does the federal funds figure these days because they end up in 2023 right so most of our federal funds are spent on additional items there are some things that are within that that we'd like to incorporate back within the general fund where we find savings elsewhere hopefully we can move those back in there we also have other grants that we get on

037a yearly basis so our regular title funds and idea grants so there's places where we can ship things around to pay for the things that we want to keep going forward but most of the federal funds we try to just put out for one-time things and to get kids caught up and those sort of items i don't have anything to add to that like jane said so we used a lot of our federal funds for non-reoccurring costs extending school day extended school year um so technology uh the additional rgi teachers the expectation within the 24 36 months so students will be caught up um and if not like you know like they said hopefully we keep going in the direction we are with our budget and our reserves you know whether does everybody reevaluate how

038those programs are working and if they are working more to maintain them you know the students are where we want but there's an expectation that a lot of those positions will go away and the people in those positions are aware of that right as well as reconfiguring so now we have three elementaries to support we're keeping those people in those positions to catch those kids up and then hopefully when this runs out they'll be up to speed and then we can move forward with you know a different number of staff within those buildings and also i know for in my own building so i have that accounting position there's a lot of work right now so we have a capital project and we have all of this extra federal money but i know that for

039at least four of the um in my office are eligible to retire so that for you know what sort of tasks can that accountant pick up and maybe i don't have to backfill the full-time employee i can backfill with half or maybe not at all if i can shift it around and get everybody trained up ahead of time getting ready for so i'm trying to think long term like you know when this ends what am i going to do so we constantly think out yes why is 2025 so well one of the main reasons is i don't have any more increase in state aid within that so foundation aid so we're supposed to get like about another 500 000 next year in 23 24 and then after that i didn't know what to include they

040haven't said what's going to happen to us after that so i don't have anything else in that and then going forward so some of what's included right now gets a percentage added to it so right now we're really high on energy costs right and fuel and plus contracts and whatever so if if that's you know i have my two or three percent or whatever for for those categories going forward but if that suddenly goes back down to a normal amount then the two or three percent is less than that so that 1.7 going out might not be there hopefully it won't be there with some of those things changing we'll get more state aid and some of our energy still possible go down that's too far out to project that there's too many there's too

041many variables that are just nuts right now right i mean with the grocery store i mean last year one day during combat we were you know with our gas we were doing great right we're open right we're using energy and now this year yeah you know it's completely different so you're here right that's why i said the past couple it's just been really hard to read so gene i have a question for you i noticed the impressive diesel today the quick check was 619 and that equates to over like a thousand dollars to fill up a tractor trailer so everybody's gonna get hit with it any kind of consumable goods that we have in school food that type of stuff and there's there's no um kind of insight you know if you listen to the

042news they say inflation's about 12 but it looks like prices have gone way up more than 12 percent from those things so like what do we do um when we haven't budgeted for that uh tremendous increase that we're seeing in things how does that work do we tap into the reserves or cry for help to the senator all of the above so what i do is if people ask me for stuff at the beginning of school year i say we don't have the money and then when we get to a spot where i think we'll have funds available then then we can we can get items that they didn't tell me that they needed right but if we get to a spot where i do the fun balance projection and i'm like hang on we're

043no go then it's basically we only get the things we really need that are required for you know special education or some of the must-haves and then we because we have to stick within this budget but if there's something that is i don't know suddenly out of our control and way above and there's nothing we can hold back then that's when we would go to our reserves and we would appropriate whatever amount we needed to make that work yeah just to finish with this slide um yeah we just talked about the savings from the code in years reconfiguring and foundation aid increases the last few years have helped carre salon but projected forward as i talked about our energy and other supply clock costs if they remain high which hopefully they won't um there's also

044a couple other savings ideas like small savings ideas i have going forward and then we're working with d hick our health care consortium on some ways to save some money through retiring prescriptions we're working on blowing that out so uh but that's more of like it may or may not happen depending on how many people opt in so they projected a really high number of everybody opposite but we're not sure how many so we should know in january how much we're going to be saving there going forward we just have the board candidates listed here we have six candidates for three three-year terms and this is the order that they're going to appear on the ballot and final page just to a child budget vote and board elections are may 17th from 6 to 9.

045and absentee ballots are due at 5 00 pm so the newsletters should be going out this week and included in the newsletter is the required budget notice which talks about the budget and there's a little work down at the bottom that speaks about the contingency budget and it just breaks up the budget into those components that i just talked about i think what else yeah about it on there not much i think it goes over uh where the voting sites are and the time of the elections and such and also as required we do have i think a couple copies in the back here but it's on our website and it's available in any office is the budget statement which includes a more detailed list of the component parts the revenue detail property tax report

046card the school's report card the fiscal accountability transparency report and the administrative compensation information and the exemption impact report could you go over what the budget would look like if this budget was voted dead so the board has two options then they can either um well three options i think you could either put the same budget back out to vote in june which would require us to re redo you know what we're doing so good and there's a close association right we're spending additional funds and resources to make that happen again where they can do that and reduce the budget or they can move directly to contingency budget and what would that be that would we would not be allowed to increase the tax levy over the previous year so that is right at the

047beginning of this and that is just under a million dollars nine hundred and eighty one thousand five hundred and seventeen uh we wouldn't be able to raise that um and then in addition um we wouldn't be able to purchase any equipment that we talked about the replacement computers and all of those items and we would not be able to do the capital outlay project and every employee that does not isn't part of a parking unit or has a contract uh we would not be allowed to give them any raises so some of our lowest paid employees wouldn't get a raise and then going forward we would have basically a million we would be behind a million dollars on the property tax levy so then next year when i do the calculation i would be starting

048back at that 41.5 million dollars working our way up so kind of put us farther behind thanks is there something in sports so basically a contingency budget is what the board believes contingency items are or not but just to clarify there's a way to do a contingency right um we are taking things out that are billable so now we have to cover oh i forgot the the biggest one yeah which is always kind of a kicker is that we will no longer be able to offer our buildings and grounds for free to all of our youth groups and anyone who we allow to use it and they're used all the time we would either have to just not allow them the use of it or we would have to charge them for for everything including

049those higher energy rates so you would have to spend more money on their school the boys and girls everybody well the boys and girls club does pay us something but we have to take a look at it to see if it's something bad without a million dollars from your budget is what you're saying pretty much and then do we still have control over those remaining dollars or are there other restrictions so you say we can't buy it right unless it's um necessary for if a special education student requires something that we would buy it and we are still allowed to buy the equipment money that we get state aid on but it's it's like 35 000 worth of technology hardware we're still allowed to spend this is a little picky but that's also like new

050uniforms for a team it depends on where we take the money out of so we have to reduce the whole budget where we take those additional quantities from i don't know if you can answer this but um you talked about the all the hikes the electricity the transportation the gas the shortage of supplies that's hitting everybody across the nation you might not be able and this might be a question for kirk had we not done the reimagine and reassignment of our district resources would the budget be able to have covered the additional costs affecting everybody right now but we have been able to do what we're doing right now and keeping this as low had we not done what we did the budget so we know what our revenues are right our revenues equal 66

051million so whatever we wanted in the appropriation side would just be up to that 66 because we don't have anywhere else to get the money so and we said this we were saving about 1.8 or give or take right with the reconfiguration so what what would we not have in place of that so something's got something would be there something else wouldn't be there a lot of something yeah so christian what's your question um if we kept all the schools open building uh have that impact on us well i'll be presenting a couple of minutes but everything we added right the reading teachers the librarian everybody the additional social work the the additional programming and that was the goal right that was told about a year ago from the board to come up with a

052way to be historically responsible not not keeping the indoor fun balance maintain and programming um and that's what we did so i feel i feel really good about what we were able to accomplish right we wouldn't have that additional programming and we'd have to still cover all of those increasing costs so this way it was like cost avoidance in one area and we were able to reallocate it in another that's basically what we do right because the whole budget didn't go up it went down a little you just what do you want to spend it on because there's only so much to go around what's important do you know um do you have an estimated value of what the you know whatever the median value of the house is for a carrot it's 250 300

053000 like how much a month people's taxes go up if this passed well in that in that example i don't know which i haven't lived here long enough but i was like over 400 thousand dollars i mean i didn't know i was looking at buying a book all right that'll be my fun project to find out what the average is although it's you know like when you when you're voting on the budget important is the impact that it's going to have on your monthly expenses right so i don't know if this is the average home bus it's paying because that didn't look like much so that's why that's why i wanted to make sure that we want that out right but that's just for um yeah so can you do something for me like 300

054000 or something okay this is also a public hearing on the budget we have a public comment session and remember the public wanting to comment make remarks regarding the budget hearing that we had if today done being heard i'll turn over mr ryan for uh mr rhino for reimagining education the dsm good evening and uh thank you jane for an excellent job on that i just want to update the board um that's going forward with our restructure where we're at so once again anytime we have a meeting or anything we start everything with the redistricting goals every decision we make is based on student achievement culture climate community and safety and security so once again i want to make sure we revisit the starting times as you know a lot of our decisions did come

055around based on the transportation study so the junior senior high will stay as first here ricardi grantee morris will be our second tier and cahill will be our third tier schools our governance committee transformed into a reimagining education in saudi central school district we meet the third wednesday of the month and those meetings are at five o'clock we've done a lot of work on the field days and school visits they'll be starting soon ms conte will have that on the website soon i believe morse is the 26th we have some exciting things that are happening we now have the final list done so they've gone to carroll petrol as far as running the buses during the day we've had multiple meetings on our proposed 5-6 schedule as you know we wanted we want to work

056on a school within a school we've had multiple conversations about what's the expectation of a kindergartner and what's the expectation for a sixth grader and philosophy i do not believe they should be the same um we're talking about community events and then obviously what events we'd like to have this summer so one of the schedules that has come out of our our five six scheduling meetings we're looking for an opportunity for more opportunities for enrichment as well as starting to model more of a seventh and eighth grade schedule as you know the sixth to seventh grade transition is very challenging especially now coming out of covingt so this is just one example i believe a schedule tells a lot about the values of a district so right here as you're seeing the students will have

057an additional every other day reading and mathematics right that is the foundation we know that leads to all other successes as you know one of our district goals that all students are honored above grade level when they leave grade three so that would be alternating we are looking for an additional uh special for our fifth and sixth graders so one opportunity would be 10 weeks of library literacy 10 weeks of stream 10 weeks of google suites and 10 weeks of a social emotional learning component and we know that's very important coming out of covet then we're looking at uh two 40-minute blocks so that could be joined together as humanities or they can do social studies in ela then we're looking for an opportunity to increase our instrumental so we would like a block during

058the middle of the day where we could have instrumental we could have rti but we could also while some students are having rti other students could have an enrichment component and then once again by law we have to feed them and then a stem block in the afternoon which would be once again two 40-minute blocks and then their traditional special the three the alternating 3pe art music and we also would like to increase the advisory the feedback on our guide our guidance counselors did an amazing job this year of going down to our elementary schools we'd actually like to increase that into the schedule but the feedback has been outstanding so we would like to keep that going and actually build that in the schedule so this is one example of what we're trying to

059look at with our school within our school for fifth and sixth grade next year so really excited about that programming as you know we are looking at we are now increasing our librarians from a half of a library in the building to a librarian building every single day as you saw one of our specials would be like the library literacy which we know we're going to do a component of that in seventh and eighth grade we're increasing our social worker we want a social worker in the building every single day we know it's important as well as that stl period we'd like to build in as well as the needs of our students um we do want to add two reading specialists like i've said before i was shocked when i came here and found

060that we had no reading specialists all in the elementary so one of the reading specialists will come out of our federal funding and the other one we've built into our general fund as you know right now we have one rti map and one rti at every building so we are going to definitely keep the three but we want to use our federal funding and keep that at four map rti and for ell rti for the next two years as well to help our students with learning loss we also want to maintain our literacy and our math coaches you know a lot of what came out of the governance meeting was obviously the consistency between our elementary or all students entering second grade the exact same skill the exact same standards with the exact same expectations

061and we do want to maintain our six guidance counselors which allows the ability for them to go down to the elementary schools for that five six advisory period there's been a lot of talk about class size so i wanted to share this with everybody um as of when i made this chart our average class size this year was 19.04 based on the projections that i have in front of me right now we're looking at about 19.7 so we're still under 20 which is extremely low and this is with all of our certified daycare included now this chart will change one of our goals and one of the things that came out from the governance is as you know morse this year the sixth grade sections were i believe were at 28 29 or 29 and

06229 so i did ask jane to put into the general fund one additional elementary teacher so we would like to if at all possible if that happens this year um to add a section so for instance if you look at grade six at cahill right now it looks like possibly there could be 56 by contract that would be two sections of 28 but i would like the ability to make that three sections if you can once again that's going to depend on enrollment over the spring and over the summer right now our kindergarten enrollment is kind of low but we do have you know we will have that staffing available we still have about 30 non-certified special permissions out there but most of those help us um i i think people need to realize that

063a lot of the special permissions are only if it does not cost the district money a lot of the special permissions that are out there will actually help us um and also you know we do have a lot of families where both people need to work so we can help if we can help families i don't know why we wouldn't um but this is where our numbers stand right now so that if we started school today our class size next year would be under 20. updates on the repurposing of um excuse me the repurposing of mount marion as you know we're going to have our five sections of universal pre-k over there our our contract right now with ulcer bow season i apologize for the typo on this uh they'd say mary st joseph that

064contract is also in the middle of being looked at by by the attorneys so right now ulster boces is looking at taking over the entire west side of mount marion and renting that we hope to have that contract on the june board so we're really excited about that and saint mary's st joseph's is looking at running a wraparound every day for our pre-k from 2 30 to 6 p.m so we're hoping to have both those contracts to the board soon so we're really excited about that also as you know it's not going to be an administrative building it's only going to just be dr kepler and miss buck so it's part of our team so and our coaches are over there now so that that's outstanding and obviously we want to maintain um you know

065gym space and fields are always a premium um we know that our basketball teams and then use the gyms in the field so we'll be able to maintain um the building for um have after school activities and like i said both those contracts are in negotiations right now and we'll have those done prior to july one so that's really exciting go ahead mrs barringer so um on the class sizes um and again i'm not a math major but when i add all the numbers up it looks like um what it shows is like 17 classrooms in morse 15 in cahill and 20 and mccarty and i believe and i just want to clarify and verify that also is in line with the build our building sizes exactly we have to really push people around to

066where the buildings fit yeah one of the things that we looked at you know one of the advantages of ricardi is there's 24 general education rooms and they're all pretty much the same size um so it gives us a lot of flexibility um miss keller will be the principal there next year and you know she's been working on that but that is one of the advantages of that building is that every classroom is the exact same size so if they have to fluctuate between two and three sections of a grade level they can still stay together in that part of the building that is one of the huge advantages of that morris is a little smaller once again it has large rooms morris will have pretty much between 14 and 15 sections in our three

067learning communities are self-contained and then as you know our rcpc and our autism students will be at ko but you're right sorry about where we thought about 14 15 sections of morse um between 16 and 18 sections of cahill and then at any time between 20 and 24 sections and then just to be clear that it's the special ed administration no especially i mean one of our goal is to increase mainstreaming and not decrease measuring so it'll just be the offices um i know miss broadway doesn't want to hear but where her offices are make excellent sweets for our social workers and our psychologists at kale so it's what's best for the team give me some natural light i just have to find a window for it right yeah and not something that you that

068lisa picked up or painted for you anyway i just know that that was yeah yeah the students will all i mean one of the things about the restructuring everything we had a lot of students that were out of their home we're looking at you know more ways of more students having more opportunities for mainstreaming and we're also really helping with that fifth and sixth grade school within the school we'll even have more opportunities for that right and maybe bring more of the pre-k kids yeah you had a question mr moon i did the uh wraparound program um i'm assuming that if a medical professional is necessary to be on site for that that that would be i don't know because that's it won't be us that would be st various things running back possible if

069you're still working out possibly to make that a sovereign unit we're doing everything we can i know like for instance if i'm wrong jane will correct me like for instance part of the agreement with ulster bosses is going to be our maintenance people and they're going to reimburse us for the cost of that square footage of that side of mount meridian so right we're going to keep two two maintenance people and they'll pay a portion of their salaries based on the square footage that they're using over there same with the food service workers so yeah so they're getting the space we're gonna try to keep as many of our employees in-house as possible perfect and we're also keeping the fourth nurse next year for that purpose as well thank you did you say the autism

070program was moving to k health yes and what is the reason for that um first of all um the advantage of recording ricardo is almost populated against this area right now so we wanted the ability we had to go to three sections of every grade level um all the rooms are the same and the autism um as you know k hill has more classrooms than that also has some smaller classrooms so the state regulations for square footage for students with disabilities is different than a general education room so some of the smaller rooms at cahill will allow us to be a self-contained room where it may not have that same facility somewhere else questions thank you mr reinhardt uh we'll move to board member remarks um so it was a pleasure to go to the

071candidates for last night very informative um very um intrigued on a lot of questions that were coming from the audience um definitely questions that as you can tell we don't get here so it was definitely great to have that opportunity to hear from people because they don't come here um but one of the things that i i think i was writing my tongue on was just wanting to stand up and pronounce from the rooftops that how this district has been able to handle the rising cost and the estimated inflation cost of 8 to 12 and still bring in a budget that is status quo when it comes to the tax levy with is nothing short of magic on the part of our district administration in particular our budget staff the fact that some in our

072community are advocating for to make a message somehow to us by voting against the budget without ever having attended one of these budget workshops or even listening to the financial cliffs this district has been facing and discussing for the last six years that i can recall is extremely frustrating to me this is not a new concern we've been discussing the loss of students in this district and the inability to maintain a long-term stable financial future for a long time i joined the board and immediately asked for a five or ten year long-range financial plan is every year but first we started to talk and discuss the long-term financial future of this district occurred with the hiring of this administration and showed up on these slides what we're seeing what we're i'm truly excited to see

073moving into the future is a district that really is going to be long-term financially solvent and strong and not be looking at our savings every year to save us and actually look at ways that we can improve our programming and improve our education and not continually just as was the experience just get by so i i want to commend um our budget individuals our administration all the leaders of the buildings for what they brought forth coming into the new year and i want to advocate from my seat here for everybody to vote yes for this budget to support our students our teachers our administrators moving forward next year and in future years thank you um first off i would like to thank mrs hayes and mr wickham for bringing these young ladies to us and

074uh miss dreyer and miss mills thank you for your efforts i i think it's awesome that you guys are are part of this and um it's nice to see that you're actually able to see whether it's something you like before you dive into it and spend i guess anywhere from twenty thousand dollars a year to you know whatever whatever the college choose costs i also wanted to say a couple things uh we're getting near the end of the year i think next week is the five week mark halfway point for the fourth marking period i know they just finished all the ap exams um and and honestly i i didn't hear anything i think it was flawless seamless i think it was stress-free so i would like to thank everybody that was involved with the

075implementation of those exams to our sta members thank you for all your efforts this year we know it's been a very trying year i just want to remind you if your birthday falls in may please update your certification on the state website and i would lastly like to commend and thank everybody for their presentations tonight i think most people don't realize the amount of time and energy goes into creating presentations along with actually facilitating those presentations so we see we acknowledge your work and we thank you elena i would like to say thanks to mrs hayes and mr wickham as well hayes and wickham are an awesome team i'm not sure if everybody knows that but i know it firsthand they've made a huge impact on both of my children's lives and i think they're

076fantastic and they don't get enough accolades and i think it's wonderful that they're recognizing students because that's exactly how they are because they're not going to take any credit but you know this is my second to the last meeting so i'm just gonna put it out there and say thank you to them because i'm really excited and um you know i think i think that it being teacher recognition week or month or whatever that it's really important that we recognize all the educators that are in this building because they really make a huge impact on the lives of all of our children and you know it's not to say that they haven't gone through immense change over the past couple years as well so i think it's nice to acknowledge them and especially when you

077have a group of people that you know really care about kids and you know have the ability to actually lift them up and make them feel better about things and doing different things and learning different things and i don't think that we should lose sight of that um so thank you and uh i also was a little bit um you know i wish there was more than six people here um because i feel like there's a lot of chatter on social media that people are talking about as christa said about the budget and you know the possibility of voting no because people are upset at you know what's been going on and i really feel like that's it's almost it's a shame that that's happening because i feel like if we went to an austerity

078budget it would be so devastating and i just don't i don't want to leave thinking that that could possibly that could be a possibility um i you know not running again um i i've chosen to stay quiet about it you know for for reasons that are my own but i i just hope that people understand that you know there's a there's a human aspect to this position it's it's got to be the worst non-paid job ever i think i really think that too i'm not even choking um you know uh the time and the effort and the energy that it takes to put into this job is it's great and and i sit amongst a wonderful group of people here and i'm very humbled to be amongst their knowledge and expertise i think that you

079know we've all put up with a tremendous amount especially this year let alone in the past two years with cobin and i hope that people will reach out that's you know i appreciate people that actually come here and ask questions i appreciate people that send emails and they want to know more because it's easy to take to a computer and put anything you want out there but it's not really easy to ask a question and get the answer sometimes the answer isn't what you want to hear which is probably why people don't ask the question but um you know we we all really do have the best interests of the district at heart and that was at the core of the decisions that we made this year i really do believe that so i just

080hope that people can take a second to come up with some kind of understanding whether they ask someone that works here you know people that are knowledgeable people that have information on the budget people that work in jane's office people that work in the superintendent's office the business office that you know the administration if they ask them they can get the information i've never met more approachable people you know kirk has an open door policy that's borderline ridiculous because you can always reach him you know we text him on the weekends and he is right back with an answer and nine out of ten times i'm looking at my phone thinking please i hope you have a like please just the answer always comes so um the people are very knowledgeable the the work that

081gets done on the board and by the administration is it's very admirable i am very appreciative for this past six years and i hope that people will just take the time to learn the right answers before they make a decision that could potentially have you know devastating impacts so um the six people that are out there i hope you're listening and spread the word to other people because anybody would be able to answer your questions right now or more than willing to talk about it everyone is you know everyone is trying to move ahead in the most positive way for the children all of the children that aren't in this district and i really do believe that so i just wanted to say thank you to all of my colleagues here at the table and

082the administrators that i've dealt with over the past six years because it's been great um i do still have a child in school so i may i still see that but um you know i i want people to understand that all of these decisions we made here have not been made lately they've all been made with a tremendous amount of thought and knowledge and data that have been provided to us i completely agree with chris as well um from the day we walked on the board we were all right show us the numbers where are the numbers where's the data where's the information and the day that kirk walked on the board was the first day that we actually ever received concrete answers so i'm very happy for that and i hope that everyone can

083come to a general consensus without you know trying to voice your opinion in a way that can actually hurt the districts uh i'm doing a lot of travel for work i don't have to explain why i'm wearing a mouse but i'm just doing a lot of travel for work and we've had cold in our family so i'm just trying to protect everybody else um i just want to say bob hey that's a nice haircut yeah i heard your movie i just want to just point out right because i people have talked a lot about the budget vote and there are two things you're doing next tuesday and if you're not going to be here next tuesday get your absentee ballot they're very nice and friendly over at the office they'll give it to you you

084fill out a little form and they give you your absentee ballot and you can drop it off um there are two things that we're doing one is we're voting on the budget and the second thing is we're voting for board members we've been discussing the budget for months i mean people may have very real reasons why they don't want to vote for the budget but at this point not voting for the budget is doing nothing but hurting the school it's not going to help anybody and there have been a lot of opportunities and there are still opportunities to talk and ask about details of the budget but from what i gathered from the presentation we've lowered our administration costs we've increased our program costs and we've lowered our capital costs and we're in the capital

085project so um i'm just going to say that i feel like the budget is really sound and if you are dissatisfied with the direction the district is going run for the board and vote for people you want to have on the board to move that vision forward those are the two things we're doing we're voting on a budget i encourage everyone to vote yes on that budget because that is what is going to help move us forward and then make a decision about the candidates that are running for the board and if you feel like there's a candidate that's going to help move the district in a different or other direction or more of a way that you want to go vote for them those are two things that we're doing next week and i

086don't think it's useful to conflate them so if you're unhappy with the people who are on the board well none of us are running um so you can pick somebody else and i have to say at the candidates forum last night i was really pleased to hear it was such an interesting and diverse mix of answers and people and i really feel confident that the district is in a good place and so i just encourage you to think carefully about those two things you're doing next week that they're not the same and that yes in fact of no vote will affect salaries and programming there's word out on the street or at least the social media street that somehow that's not what a no vote is but that's exactly what a no vote is um

087and don't believe that it's not and i want to thank nurses because it's some nurse appreciation even if it isn't nurses are amazing some of my best friends are nurses and i don't i think i feel like i'd just be filled with infection and my child would be dead if they had not been in my life and i could call them up and say so anyway i just want to thank all the nurses out there and um that's it thank that sounds like a production company you know to do it for that in the future with all the activity we have here in sororities you go behind big lots you know there's so much opportunity for people like you that are interested in the industry so best of luck to you and like jim's i

088think it's a great on-the-job interview let's see if you like it and then i hold the previous comments from the board i appreciate all the candidates that came out last night i couldn't make it i couldn't be anywhere last night but um appreciate the effort and the answers i did get to watch it and um again to echo the other members of the board with the budget prep in my time since i've been on the board this has been the most clear presentation that we've seen the most programming and you know despite the challenges that have been faced um i for one would love to say my household budget went down this year a little help over here but again congratulations you know i know it's a huge effort and a huge appreciation goes out

089and along with the other comments about the budget vote you know to vote your candidates you know that's a great place to voice your opinion but with all the information that's out there the vote know isn't really helping the students that we're all here to help um i understand it feels good to sometimes type something on the keyboard but you know votes a little more serious than that has an impact and i always encourage people to come you know voice your concerns but like you know said previously there's a lot of answers here just have to seek them out so um i i couldn't be more proud of the work that's been done over the last several years and to see the numbers where they are again i think it's a huge feat and congratulations

090and thank you for all the work well you know everything that's been said i hate to be repetitious but ditto to everything love these ladies here it's nice that every meeting we have there's somebody here recording the meetings we're not questioning and somebody's showing up or not thank you and hannah she does show up so that we can um thank her um two other things um you know last thing they talk about social media the questions and um you know a lot of social media is used for such negative things but the social media that i saw last week for teacher appreciation um all the kids being interviewed about their favorite teachers and the things that they said and i just love that and i would love to see more of that not just during

091teacher appreciation week it was really nice and positive and um to the group that was here earlier the kids that are taking um the asl sign language uh working with ms schmidt and miss gavner it was in the newsletter that came out i was all excited i circled it i brought it tonight and i'm like this needs to be in our district so i spoke to them um it's just a after school group now they're going to talk to administration about getting it as an english elective because they need more english electives and they are both working on what they need to do to make this a choice and foreign language and kudos yes kudos to them because i know there were so many of my students when i was director special ed that could

092not get through a foreign language and this is such a different type of foreign language that offering this to all our students would be so beneficial not just for our special ed kids but for our general and kids to be able to talk to the deaf population in our community we do have a number of students in our district unless they've graduated that are deaf or hearing impaired and i'm sure there are others in the community so i really hope that this is something that administration can work on with them and bring to the board as a possible approval um in the near future for programming and thank you to them again for coming tonight and doing the pledge with us save me for last i see how it is um so first sorry i'm

093late i had i was coaching the kids out front here and uh that's always a lot of fun so i have come in with them as well so i want to make sure it's there um i didn't have the opportunity to see your presentation but i did look through it before so thank you for all your hard work on that and it is uh you know i'm just going to echo what these guys have said it's exciting to see like that we're kind of lowering like maintaining it's not like all horrible news as usual so it's kind of like it's kind of nice to see that we're doing that you know last night the candidates last night i actually was there i thought it was great it's awesome to see six people sitting up there

094because for the last when i ran and i was unopposed um last year they all ran unopposed so it's nice to see some new faces and here's some different perspectives i wish you all the best i know we have two candidates here today so i wish you both the best and the rest of the candidates as well so that's exciting although i will miss uh these lovely ladies down here in paul i have grown quite the affection for them um but i'm excited i'm excited that uh you know where this board is at i'm excited where we're headed um i think that uh katie and um and elena have done a great job in their time here so i'm excited to see what we can do and wrong with that with new eyes um and

095i heard some really great thoughts last night that uh it was nice to hear and kind of like echoing what katie said and her and i actually had a discussion after the fact um it's nice to see like different opinions it's nice to kind of have that open dialogue and i welcome that you know so i'm looking forward to that unfortunately i kind of came a little bit late so i apologize for that but thanks again well what the president's remarks this is a tough act to follow um i want to thank jane and her staff for bringing i think it's the first time since the voters rejected the budget way back when when we didn't have sports art music that a budget was presented to the board that came in less than the previous

096year's budget and that's a true miracle i've worked in education for over 30 years i've never seen a budget presented that came in less for the following year that represents a lot of hard work a lot of struggle um i might be the oldest person in the room uh depending on how old sewers but i i've been involved in education all my life from my mom reading to me my dad reading to me going to kindergarten elementary school high school college graduate school and then somewhere along the line i decided let me work in the school system so i began to work with school system somewhere along the line i thought it might be a good idea to be on the board of education so i i have a lot of experience in trenton education

097uh one of the big moments of my life was in 1990 when i got married and got my first job as a administrator and i remember that first day going into this school thinking like how do i wrap my head around building the students parents special needs the budget all this stuff and i came up with the analogy of an ocean voyage um if you think of kirk as captain stewing on the low boat the captain can't take that ocean liner and pilot that ocean lighter and equipment and take care of all the needs of the staff to get through going from let's say new york to london it's impossible for one person to do that so you need a crew part of that cruise over here the passengers come out and they don't realize

098how all the work that's being done to make that ship leave the dock and to have a pleasant voyage our passengers are our students who come in september some of our students stay for extended voyage through the summer some staying later in the day but they're who we are serving and the parents and if you think about that there has to be cooperation on every level what happens if the students all decided would not go to school one day and they didn't show up those students make an implicit bargain to show up the parents make an implicit bargain to support the efforts of the teachers and help out to make sure that those students get an education our custodians during covet came in and really worked extra hard to keep everybody safe in the building

099spotless or health professionals all those behind the scenes things that people don't realize and i was troubled this week when i started to see posts on facebook you know it's been a tough if we look at the voyage this year it's been tough we had some rough seas with kovid with um our meetings about uh the community's reaction to uh repurposing the building but um unfortunately this label was closing the building and that there was some friction i remember uh getting a couple emails i think there was one gentleman here who yelled at me saying i pay your salary um you know i didn't say that you'd be cheating me on that but you know we weren't and i realized when emotions rise with um repurposing a building or the perception of the building closing

100people act off their emotions they forget that learning that they made to help the district move along and to reach our students so there there was a lot of things on social media this week about you know oh you know you're not hurting any teachers you're not american students just vocal on the budget to express your displeasure about a school being closed well school wasn't being closed when i attended the candidates for last night it was it was nice to see the last candidates forum uh prior to that uh was a few years ago when mr mooney myself and mike were running against people that were on the board that candidate's forum ended in a screaming match um mike was screamed at mike's wife was screamed at by current board men that were sitting board

101members if i thought the police were going to have to come in there was so much animosity and hatred in that candidate's forum so you don't realize if you were involved with this district back then what a blessing it was to see people approaching each other shaking hands uh greeting each other and just talking about different things that's how far it's come when i look at the list that mr reinhard presented about the changes in the elementary school and who can believe if you've worked in any other school district that we didn't have reading teachers in an elementary building we're going to have librarians in each building we're going to have social work service we're going to have guidance services for elementary schools and all to prepare for to raise that level to make that

102a more enjoyable voyage for our kids one of the things i my pet peeves about special education is if let's say our population runs about 15 20 special ed that's part of our total student population if it was an assembly line if one or two of every cars coming down the assembly line couldn't make it to be successful that industry would stop and look at itself these pieces are being put into the elementary school to help kids so they don't end up as special needs kids and those special needs kids who are classified are going to get more attention and better services we looked at elementary schedule that mr reinhart proposed it's heavy academically based but it's also arts based the introduction of sign language as a foreign language there are more opportunities for students

103than wherever before i was talking with my son on mother's day and we were looking when he came through sorry's high school he took some college um readiness classes and he actually saved me twenty thousand dollars in his final year because he didn't have to go to a second semester at sienna he was able to graduate three and a half years now with mr reinhard and his team's leadership a student could come into sauris high school and get enough classes to save on a year of college time wise that in cases if students going to santa would represent a savings of 40 to 45 000 for that family that's a tremendous thing that doesn't necessarily show up in the budget but it helps our families especially voters struggling with the cost of inflation i am

104very very pleased to see this budget what it includes for our students there is a certain status about seeing mount marion shut down as an elementary school and board members are not happy with that aspect but change is often difficult and to get these changes for our elementary students and to see that mount marion is not going to just go by the wayside it's not going to be a vacant place where you see i remember when tillson closed in kingston the weeds were growing through the building there's graffiti on the side of the building it was vandalism too it's going to be an active center for learning there are going to be students there they're going to be families from boces coming into our area to be part of soviets so those families might even

105decide to buy houses and bring your other kids in one of the reasons that um the district's in a little bit of trouble is that enrollment's declined over the years um we need to cooperate and partner with our town and military officials to see what we can do to get more families in i believe discoveries is a well-kept secret uh when i moved here about 20 years ago i read the state report and i wanted my kids to come here because i thought this is a great place to go to school this is an even better place to go to school for a student now for those young families that are looking for a great place to raise their kids we have everything we have inclusivity we have diversity we have equity for our students

106we respect all and we are going to get three board members which i look forward to working with and to help raise that boat again so like that uh now jay have an ocean voyage uh we're gonna have some new crew coming on we're gonna have some crew leaving we're gonna have a list of passengers next month that are going to go at the football field depart that voyage and maybe somebody will come back to work for us and be part of that ship's crew and so again i don't know if my announcement made any sense to anyone but that's my view of how i look at it and i know that i'm going to guess on the budget but whether you vote yes or no please don't vote out of bitterness or anger vote

107because you believe that your vote is the best thing possible for the students and the families of this district and with that i will conclude my remarks um if it's all right we're going to skip the break and move on you've got a curriculum presentation for us nice to see you all originally i was just going to speak for mr reinhardt's request but at the last minute i wanted to create a visual for everything that was talked about tonight so the majority is pictures of our students so every decision this year has been student-based and i too want to thank jane for creating a budget so that we can move forward with our mission and vision of students first and our budget really is a statement of values we value students we value learning and

108we're going to go through i'm going to review most of the highlights there were so many incredible things that happened this year so right off the bat as soon as i was hired it came to me that we were going to be implementing two new literacy programs so k through two was literacy footprints and three through six was into reading so the first thing we had to do was really get clear that we are teaching children we are not teaching a program and as public educators we need to be standard space and get clear about what the new york state standards are saying most importantly a common belief is literacy is human rights it's not a privilege it's something we need to provide for every single student in sovereignties and ensure that they are reading

109on grade level by the third grade so moving forward in the next couple of years due to all the hard work mr reinhart jane and marlene and dr kepler we are going to flood the primary to ensure we have reading on grade level flood them with our rti or mtss as we move forward specialists flood them with our reading specialists for students who will need intense supports and literacy so to do this with way back in october we articulated our goals very succinctly and clearly of what we were expecting to see so for example in an intermediate uh an old way of teaching literacy or ela might have just been novel study after novel study reading charlotte's red web and then you read trumpeter of the swan there's so many things that are missing and

110it's not aligned with the standards so we clearly articulated there needs to be whole group instruction with accountable talk a read aloud there needs to be a small group instruction or guided reading by skill strategy or interest there needs to be explicit and direct phonics independent reading with conferring and hopefully some choice sometimes for the students and also writing as a process not just an assignment and with math this is our third year with the i ready math program but when you consider the past two years of the pandemic this really was a full implementation year and i'm so proud of where we are now due to the help of our math coaches so we wanted to really encourage differentiated math centers with our i-ready program so to do that many educators and i'm married

111to one they're not big fans of superintendent's conferences because the whole experience some sort of sweaty gym somebody talking and there's too many people in the gym so incomes in sovereignty prior to me the hiring of math coaches and literacy coaches in september i trained them they are a very tight expert group who are on fire for children and all of everything that just goes into the best pedagogy for math and literacy instruction so the benefit of our coaches is instead of cramming everybody twice a year into a gym they all of our teachers teachers have access to them weekly at grade level meetings here you can see amanda and kristen modeling so they're modeling for the teachers how to do small groups amanda's modeling a read-aloud kristen's modeling using math strategies for the small

112center there and here you can see our one of our rt uh rti teachers excuse me amy hoff pushing into cahill in a kindergarten classroom and that small intimate instruction is happening this is what we want to see and this is what we're going to promote and continue to train our teachers for with providing lots of support the next picture is a ricardi second grade classroom this is uh ms frutzman's class she's doing literacy footprints since second grade uh and so she had trained her students the biggest question for many teachers is how can i possibly do a small group when there's 25 other kids right that's the first question we always hear so you have to train the kids the kids will do it so she had trained the kids those were their groups

113up on the smart board there was one group she was working with there was an independent group and then there were kids walking around with clipboards and they were on this uh sort of scavenger hunt for their uh their word work that applied to phdonix and it was excellent i was so happy i was there that day and there's so many great lessons like that that are happening here in saugerties oh this so here is mount marion um i was asked to um go visit a first grade class where they were doing poetry and as soon as i walked in they don't know my name i mean why would they know the curriculum and instruction directors they knew my name that would i don't know but it was hey lady can i read my poem

114to you and it wasn't disrespectful it was endearing and it was they were so enthusiastic so here they are they had all written their poems and they were so proud and it was great to see them going through the process of revising their thinking and revising their writing so our first pd as i've shared with all of you i in november we worked on global literacy and the reason there are so many reasons why our kindergartners are graduating in 2034 so remember if we think about that yeah i'm gonna say it so in 2044 they'll be 28 most likely right so what is the world's going to be like so with our committees here we have some great committees we have a technology committee ela committee math committee with all of the committees i showed

115them three articles from forbes magazines all about future work and what do what are they futuring that will be needed and the futureing of what companies want is not a master's degree in engineering it's not um you know a degree in ancient civilization from vassar what they want is empathy interpersonal skills they want self-motivation um the ability to work in ambiguity is what they said hence the last two years of our life right um and obviously being optimistic and having imagination and curiosity so being globally literate so many things that's why we spent some time in november doing that work with dr javon hunter and also getting literate with the cultural uh responsive sustaining framework and i'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes so there's some of our

116work there with dr hunter and also work at the elementary they were learning math centers and dr schleber one of our literacy coaches was training everybody as a group of inter reading as well i shared this with you i'm just a healthy reminder the committee that did work on this philosophy of literacy they are still coming to me saying how proud they are of this work so i shared this today uh sequina and i were presenting today at the mid hudson leadership institute i'll talk a little bit more of that but i shared that we created this and it's our hope and intention that we can create a belief statement for our dei work as well so a huge highlight this year and there were so many is the student activism and that's what we

117want that's global global literacy that's global confidence that's civic action and we want to give back to saugerties and it doesn't matter whether you are six or nine years old so at cahill elementary the students really did a lot of civic action this year um you can go to the next photo so they can see what it looks like and who those kids are thanks so they donated to the animal shelter they wrote letters and petitions to create a handicap brand for people with disabilities at the donlan auditorium so senator michelle hinchey is going to be working with them uh and that's scheduled in two days on may 12th to request funding and repairs that is amazing in fourth grade you're nine and they did that as last time our students who attended the steam

118conference for girls and that's really important we don't have enough females in the steam fields and i am it is remarkable that saugerties does do a lot of outreach to pull girls in because if you don't pull them in early they won't have access to it so with our diversity equity and inclusion work this was ongoing work it began several years ago and there's been a lot of work this year in december we shifted to what new york state uh is asking all the districts to do which is really moving and embracing diver diversity equity and inclusion we set norms we level set the language and definitions of everything but most importantly we provided opportunities for everybody to get their hands and minds on the document and jigsawed it out what was really cool is

119that you can go to the next slide so this was early this morning it's been a long day sakina and i and andrea and denise and ginger and shannon were all part of the subgroup uh and we have been involved in this series with dr javon hunter in a regional professional learning on making culturally responsive instruction real it's been really positive it's wonderful to hear what other districts were saying so we presented our work we went first and what was validating to me was each district that stood up after us said we're not as far along as saugerties but so that was really wonderful and refreshing to hear moving into secondary there has been a lot of student student activism as well and a lot more clubs that have been initiated because of students if

120ginger were here she would say that they are working so hard to ensure that every single student in the junior high has a place their own place so their pbis committee has created this whole after school workshops where it's teachers staff and or community members you can see that travis there officer travis was teaching a cooking class after school it was on social media as well we as you saw tonight we have the american sign language happening we also have all these really cool qr codes going on throughout the high school so you can click on it and see what the activity is our gsa um has really been active this year doing a lot of great work you know when you walk in prior to this position i in my former position i was

121in a lot of schools working with many schools and sometimes i would go in to do an audit sometimes i was working with teachers or administrators and the first thing i would always do is just walk the halls because they'll always tell the story and if you start walking our hallways this year our story is changing we are embracing cultures we are embracing the idea that every child has inherent dignity and worth no matter their culture race gender or creed another super exciting thing i was able i was invited to was the seal of bi-literacy so this is caroline who you all know she's a student rep she gave her bilingual in spanish presentation the entire presentation is in spanish but what is super impressive is after the presentation her teachers who are assessing her

122performance it's a performance assessment then ask her questions on the spot and she has to answer in spanish so we in saugerties have two students who are going to receive the seal of by literacy on their diploma that's awesome the other student her native language is spanish so she did her presentation in english and then answered all the questions in english and that's super awesome as well we continue all of our experiential learning and traditions of creating maple syrup and as you all know you approve the 15 additional courses these were teacher driven and it's welcomed with our high school administration yes you can come to me with an idea yes you can come to me and pitch something um so we are offering 15 additional courses please pave and blaze paths to graduation for

123some of our students and jane and mr reinhardt spoke about this we are building programs to support students and to support learning so we need library media specialists in all the buildings you know a librarian media specialist is not just reading a book to the children on the rug they are teaching them research skills they are teaching them digital citizenship they are teaching them how to be a lifelong learner and reader and globally literate our reading specialist that's going to be amy's amazing personally my son sees a reading specialist every single day for his iep so i could not imagine his life without without that teacher we're maintaining all of our rti teachers and social workers in the building so yep just another little plug for the library and one of the important things about

124having a library within the building is that they are also a resource for all those teachers right and that's what's so amazing and that can really have a huge impact but it's not just you know so i look forward to hearing how the library specialists are part of planning and really acting as a resource because they know how to find all those things so i should be able to be a teacher and say oh my gosh we are going to be doing this unit on colorado what do you know what do i find out who's written books there and so i think that that's when we think about special teachers i mean they offer kids themselves great things but they are also a resource in the school for those grown-ups and that just sort of

125increases the impact so yes absolutely ditto andrea viviani shared today at the conference we were presenting at that her daughter wasn't seeing herself in some of the books her daughter is arabic and she shared how the librarian found a whole series of books for her they asked me books and she was so happy to see herself represented and that's really important too so what's next a lot we're going to do a lot of work and it's going to be super exciting and we're going to continue to build programs and opportunities for not just students but for our staff last week i did turnkey training for our secondary principals they will be facilitating the work on may 17th with our secondary teachers we have summer enrichment programs we have the 5-6 scheduling uh committee that's going

126to continue this summer we have a lot going on we have our enrichment we have our k-6 summer academy our 7-12 summer academy our title three summer academy that dr kepler oversees on may 17th we're going to we're due for some training on running records that's how you administer and level a student in reading and their comprehension levels and we haven't had it since 2016. so we are due and that we need to do that as we're moving forward with building our capacity for teaching literacy next year what's on the horizon is creating some common assessments so we have another data point other than state tests curricular mapping all the things that i geek out on more work in dei and just more positive opportunities for students and kids and continuing the great work so

127that was a quick review and i know i missed a lot but those are some really incredible highlights of our students and teachers and community members thank you i'm going to move on to personnel uh i'd like to obtain a motion to include vitamins j one two three and items i'll entertain a motion for business office recommendations l one two three four five six seven and eight any discussion uh i'd like to then uh thank jen carson for the donation of the walking sled for the football team any other discussion number call for votes in favor say hi hi business office recommendations um sorry for that um what action discussion items i'll entertain emotion of items in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 i just want to thank the policy committee only because we

128were in the audit committee just very recently with the auditor talking about um the need to increase the petty cash from the 250 and immediately it's there i just want to thank you that was um for item number two i know that it says that it's 20 part-time teaching assistant positions but i was reading in the back up some of those are absorbed through attrition and then we have some retirements i don't know if we're allowed to talk about that but do we know what the actual number is in the end seventeen [Music] there is also uh so there's also uh we have several full-time retirees those seven full-time retirees will be replaced so that has the potential of having some of those part-time individuals step uh i have not all four photos in favor

129say aye aye and item end with a discussion on that i just i was hoping the board had a chance to read the bot uh the backup document um the state came out with a provision to extend the virtual board meetings um it's not 100 percent virtual homes from this person can correct me a lot on this you still have to have five people in person um and you have to have a reason why you're not there but it's something that is it you know you have to decide by then by june 9th we have to decide if you want to go with this contingency but once again you still have to have five people in person um and the people not there still have to notify why they're not there it has to be

130a reason but i know that the board wanted to discuss this i'm kind of confused because prior to coping we have a policy that talks about video conferencing and it talks about and so prior to this it was allowed so why are they restricting it now yeah it's different and they're not restricting it no it's interesting it's better than it was no before you could at any time no i have to publish that i was in a hotel in tampa so the addition of any other significant or unexpected data so they're they're saying that we can add that to um they call it the above mentioned catch-all which i think we definitely need to consider yeah because we you know we do have people missing that don't fit into disability illness or caregiving responsibilities and

131i'm one of those correct i really think we need that yeah that's right yeah i think if we can fine-tune this um especially with newport news coming on as much flexibility as we can afford members uh because i think before this mask was one thing possible is one you have to have form of physical location you know and and it's only extenuating circumstances when you can't video confidence and granted you don't need to give your but i believe the board has to agree to it first off before it's even allowed and it has to be in a public hearing and i'm just curious if the public hearing can be video conferencing i know it sounds really ridiculous but with when you're you're in i don't know are we facing another pandemic with these fans or

132whatever and people not wanting to come to a public meeting how does that play out so i i think this is a great start to revision on it but i i think there's got to be more information coming and i think that's why it's still in a discussion phase and i believe the governor's office just kind of put this out saying if you want to do this you have to agree to these terms or you have to make your own threats that's that's how i understood this when i read it so the um right now the executive order is still in effect we can still have meetings you know virtually this this thing would take place of that because after june 8th you have to pass this by julie and then they're saying after that

133you're not able to do that after that we so what we have to do is make a decision to either pass the resolution like they say in the memo or we have to do what kate said and go do the old thing which is if someone can't attend and they want to attend virtually we have to announce the location where that person is the reality is nobody's going to show up in florida at your hotel to watch the board meeting with you but you have that's part of the law that's the way it's written and a lot of the laws are integrated but that you have to follow them the issue that i have with this and that it's not going to affect me but the issue i have that i need you guys to

134consider is that if you do pass this resolution and you give someone the ability to attend board meetings from an undisclosed location that person has to have the ability like the people up here and i apologize before i said there was only six people there's like 30 people out there but we can only see six so with these six people here have the ability to talk to us back and forth okay if we pass this resolution we also have to give that ability to the public which means there would be 36. squares on the pretty bush right now and all of those people would have the ability to speak and that becomes very very confusing from my standpoint having to run these meetings in the other district where i work it's really hard because you

135have people talking in the background about what they're having for dinner and they forget to turn their sound off or you have someone you know having a conversation with someone because they don't know their sound is on but everyone can hear them so it becomes very problematic um from the standpoint of just trying to run an efficient meeting so that's something that i just want you to take into consideration that this format isn't gonna you're gonna have to change the format it'll have to become more of like a um an interactive zoom or something like that well zoom is so much better so it means it drives me wild you know so that's the issue now you can always just keep it the way that it is and just say it's gonna attend from florida

136this is a location and just do it like that and then you're you're not bound by any of these new um you know provisions that you have to follow so just you know this this memo is it's four pages long for an attorney to write something four pages long you know that it's got a lot of changes to it so so you're saying telling people yes there will have to be [Music] meetings with hundreds thousands of people on them and but they can't all talk to you can they they we don't let people just walk up to the podium here right we have rules about how it works and we would need training and i think that the consequences i mean i think it's always important when you're putting a policy or rule in place

137to think about well what are those consequences so i think that's important i would be thrilled if there were 36 squares up on that screen and we could say okay now it's public comment time please put your name and your address in chat and we're going to unmute you and these fabulous teens we have over here are going to be new masters um so i think i understand the challenge um but i can i mean again it won't affect me except that i'll be able to join all the time um [Music] i just think it's i think it's i understand it has some ramifications and i think women to but i just think anything we can do to increase public participation in these meetings would be a good thing can i ask you a question

138i don't know when to ask you the the meetings that are recorded now according to this they have to be archived for five years yes so the meetings that we have now are archived as well well they're on our district youtube channels okay so youtube would be a place where we could archive it or do we got to archive it on our server if that's the case if we're taking space on our server that's a lot of data and that slows down everything right yeah i mean we want to make them available available on youtube so that would be something to see whether or not an archival goes fine any other discussion can we move on to uh committee reports uh [Music] okay uh facilities mr mooney we met and um it was a pretty

139heavy conversation we're trying to figure out a plan to move forward we're going to meet again on the 18th and try to prioritize a direction and then after that our next meeting will be up on june 1st both meetings are at 4 30 and reports i positive we have moved so i believe one of the priorities was discussed and then we were talking about low flow valves or flush valves and we're looking to reconfigure some of the proposals because of the dramatic increase in quest materials right but also we're looking at the for the sprinkler systems right so that was discussed and mr ritz was looking into that's uh yup we met we brought you all these wonderful policies you voted on tonight and we have another meeting on the june what's that date oh

140we're still having another segment that's next week yeah that's the vote and i'm going to be in california okay so the next one would be drive i'm one of the candidates for the board um i just want to say thank you to the board tonight for addressing um some of my concerns that i had with the budget you did a great job today one of my concerns that actually that was brought up was the federal funding and you know kirk expressed that it's kind of a shifting in the next couple years so that definitely addressed one of my concerns with the budget and then also bringing up the point that the mount marion school is going to have boces in there with the contract and then having uh was it saint joe's or it's called

141saint mary's saying yes and then having that in there you know to give some revenue into the into the community i think going forward saying that you know the positions that are coming in on that federal funding um you know in two years with all that dries up where is it going to go but we are having an increase of revenue from using the mount marion school and that gave a lot of clarification and i really appreciate that so thank you anyone else no one else i will entertain a motion for the board to move into executive session uh we're gonna go into executive session whenever you are bob [Music] i will entertain a motion to come out of executive session move by mr wallace's second second seconded by mr mcclary any discussion on me

142here i'll call for a vote holds unfair to say aye mr wills any discussion let me hear a call from god you