NTCSD BOE Policy Meeting 3/17/21

001Did you get an invite for that? Yes. Did you send it? I will make sure that you are there right now. I got my bags and I gave you a gift. Oh, yeah? Exactly. I love that. You like it? Yeah. It's a little different. From April 10th to this Monday. The purpose is the end of the year. Can we jump there or is it a big jump? Yeah. Well, they opened them one and an hour before. And then they quit after an hour and a half. I think it works. Yeah. By the time they do face the problem, we can find a sample. Can I say it? In the back. No, I know. I told them that. About to take a look now. Would it come to my email? Yep. Yep, here it is. That's

002good. There we go. Let me just try and turn it on. Where is that? Do you want to click on that? Yeah. You can wait until it's time. Otherwise, you'll be on there right this second. I know we shared it on the record. So I'm trying to put it on Erica. Or I have to move it. How many I do it? How come we do it? You mean and have them come a third time. What did we have before? Can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you guys. Krista, if you want to, I don't know if you have it today or next meeting, the donation for the plate, then you can take it. They're all set. I told them this month, we would be meeting them either this week or the next month. Thank

003you. That's good. Yeah, it's about my 20. So I'm glad the next week is OK. I got you. I know where you work. Even before I left, I said I knew She's all doing something that's going to take me good with it. No, I don't. But you're going to do that, too. Uh-huh. I'll be there. You can get it. In June, there is going to be a safety meeting. OK. Do we think it's going to be around 2 o'clock after 10 a.m. or what? Yeah. I don't think we're going to meet anyone until closer to the end of the year, though. I think the next one or two, we were still going to do during the day. Why is that June? Oh, in June. We didn't decide on a time. Yeah. Are you really interested

004to sit down? Yeah, we'll do whatever. During the day, we can make words or something. That's what I thought. So we'll start with you, and if not, then we'll get someone else. I guess we can get Roman. I don't know where they're from. I went over and gave them five minutes ago. Oh, they're still in. Oh, that's why. They're with Tony. They've been out of power. That's why. Why do you say I keep this in the black? They're awesome. That's why. I love it so much. Yeah. I love that. Is that a vote? Should have came in the first place. What's the name of the vote? Should have came in the first place. Should have came in the first place. Is there anything interesting lately? No. All right. Just need a motion to open our

005workshop meeting at 6.04. All right. I'll say Eric. Second? Second. Colleen, all in favor? Aye. Motion carries. We'll stand for the pledge to the flag. Aye. To the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. So tonight we've got a presentation and program update special. So I was going to start with special education with Mike and Elizabeth. And I know that we've been kind of dabbling on the changes that are coming and what we've been doing. But they'll kind of walk you through actually, they can't walk you through everything because you would need two nights, but they're going to try and walk you through the highlights of everything. And then they'll probably be back again as we move

006forward. That is going to be followed up by Mike Tambroni and Megan. So she is, if you remember, a family resource person. And they're going to share with you the work that that program has been doing as well as some things coming that we have planned for the future. And then we have the ever riveting budget presentation by Mr. Mundt. So I'll get out of the way and I'll turn it over to Elizabeth and Mike. Good evening. So thanks, Greg, for inviting us. I know last time we talked, we were able to kind of get over here and share our thousand-foot view at year's end of some of the big things that we're working on. Today we're going to focus in a little bit on the secondary level. And as I talked to Greg, there

007are a lot of updates we want to provide you in a more comprehensive manner, but we're going to wait until we get later in the school year as we work through annual review. But today's really exciting for us because it is about post-secondary outcomes. And as Beth and I work with students, really that's what it's all about. Our K-12 program is about getting kids across the stage. We're going to make some shifts we're going to make into next year to improve programming in the high school. So I'm going to give Beth a second to get on the power point. So not to belabor, but there's a lot of accountability measures in special education, especially as we report to the state. And it just so happens this year we're up for two big ones, indicator 13

008and indicator 14. We're also under review for what's called NICE eligibility. Indicator 13 is about making sure we prepare our students to transition successfully after high school. So what the state does is they audit us to make sure our IEPs are in compliance and that the kids transition goals, their goals for life after high school, are mirrored in all the programs we make. All the choices we make, whether we put them in special class, or we put them in this elective, whether we put them in BOCES or work-based learning experience, which should really drive programming once students are 15 years old and they participate in their own CSE meetings are what they want to accomplish after high school. Alright, so we're under review for that. That's every district every six years, indicator 13 and indicator

00914 are married. Indicator 14 is a survey goes out to our graduates or exiters and it asks them where are you? And that's really about just getting in touch with kids. That one typically we don't have as much control over because we send letters out or we hand letters to kids and we hand them that annual review. That's a little tougher now because we're doing a lot of them virtually but we hand them and then Potsdam, the University of Potsdam who's working with the state, call and interview the kids. And that's really getting the sense of our kids engaged in those post-secondary outcomes. So let's get reported to the state. This year we're up for review for 90 to 1%. So in short, what the state expects every school district to have is 1% or

010less of your kids should be determined as alternately assessed. That's kind of complicated, the criteria that goes into that and we don't need to go over that unless you have specific questions because we'd be happy to walk you through that. But an alternate assessment really is for students with substantial intellectual disabilities. So to qualify, that's the starting place. You have to have a severe academic disability, intellectual disability and you have to meet a number of other criteria. So it's pretty strict criteria and in short, every other kid, all 99 other kids should be exiting with a local diploma and or a C-DOS credential, preferably a local diploma with a C-DOS credential. And we'll explain to you a little bit today what the C-DOS credential is about. So from where we sit, we were historically finding

011too many kids eligible for the alternate assessment for a plethora of reasons that we're aware of and we're working with the staff to train them now as part of our improvement plan to train them in their understanding of what does it mean to be alternately assessed. And decisions that happen as early as kindergarten, first, second and third grade impact pathways we put kids on. So it's about all the way down to the bottom understanding your kids need to go in high school for us to make the right decisions moving off the grade level. And you know, like Greg, like Patrick, like Mike and like all of you, we want our students to leave high school with the highest credential possible. So when we think about how do we get our kids to the highest level

012of credential, one thing that we learned from working district wide and participating in some of these state performance plan indicators is that a lot of our staff didn't understand the different pathways to graduation. And this is especially a focus on special education students. So our highest level and actually I almost needed to update this after some CSE meetings that I just chaired this week, you know, we always thought of the regents diploma as being the highest level, but I actually, we actually have a few kids at the high school who are going to graduate with an advanced regents diploma. So, you know, a certain group of kids, high intellect, other needs, are graduating with even a higher level. So one of the things it's most important to understand are these pathways. So we always want

013to set that bar as high as possible and give every student an opportunity to earn a diploma. And also the second credential that we've been focusing on, but not and we'll talk more about, is what we call a career development and occupational study credential that's paired with that diploma. So like Mike said, our lowest level of students where we have been working are those students who are alternatively assessed and those students exit high schools we call skills and achievement credential. It is not a diploma, it cannot get them a job, it cannot get them into the military, it is just a credential. So when we talk about that participation rate in NISA, we need to be careful how many students are doing that because then they're exiting here with something that's not going to further

014their post-secondary outcomes with a job. So that would be the lowest level and you know, so if they don't get the regents diploma, they fit into that local diploma, which means they sit for the regents, they attempt it, but they must also have that CDOS. And then that other area is where we have kids who do sit and they attempt the regents aren't successful, have the credit and then we go to Mr. Waitila and we ask for a superintendent determination so that they still can be awarded a diploma. And that's not something from my understanding we've done a lot of in the past, but we are our students are changing and we want to make sure we offer them all of those pathways. And really quick, you know, for our students with disabilities, the local

015diploma has the same outcomes for them as a regents diploma. They qualify because they have an IEP, they still need their 22 and a half credits, they still need to sit for their four exams, there's a bunch of trade-off safety nets for the kids with disabilities. They can get 55s on all four exams, they can get a 65 and a 45 and trade those points to equal the 45. They can appeal exams from 62 to 65, they can do a bunch of different things and when they've exhausted those and they have all their course credits, they can apply to the CSE chair, the principal could apply to the family, even could apply to the superintendent for a superintendent's appeal. And with that superintendent's appeal, they get to exit with a local diploma. Importantly, a local

016diploma allows them to apply to two or four-year colleges, it allows them to go to work training programs and it allows them access to the military. Without it, you don't have really any of those opportunities. The CEDAWS credential is nice because it gives them work skills, but it's not a weighty credential that allows them access into many post-secondary outcomes. And so ways back ago when we were introduced to the CEDAWS, we lost that IEP diploma for really forever. And there was a moment where it was kind of hanging where we didn't have much and the state realized that fault in that and introduced this local diploma. So when you guys used to hear about RCTs, the region's competency test, those are gone now, but now there's these safety nets for kids so they can still

017get that local diploma. And that really should be the goal for 99 percent of our students. So I think what the question became is how do we make sure that all of our students are exiting North Tana Wanda with that highest level of credentials? So for our students with IEPs, it's really about writing effective transition plans. And that was what we're under review for right now. So we really had to get very deep into that. And what we realized through this process and we're not done. We're really the review will be this summer. But what we realized is that for us, we're going to have to invest more time next year into professional learning for our teachers to help them better understand what it really means to write an effective transition plan for some of

018our neediest students. And that's really because effective transition planning it includes so many people. Obviously the student is the most important person in that process. But having the family, the special education teaching team, any general education teachers, including career and technical education. A lot of our students for most needy have service coordinators through outside agencies, work-based learning supports, job coaches. So there's a lot of collaboration that's needed in order to really write an effective plan that's going to make sure we exit kids and have that we call post-secondary goal. So when we realize what that involved, what we worked towards this next year having one of our special education teachers help to do what we call transition coordination. So I won't go through everything that's on here, but through my time working at the high

019school and going through indicator 13, I was able to start to put together what I thought were things that I personally needed support on that I can't do in this role. So this person will help to make sure that the cohort of students needed the most gets that effective writing done into the IEP. And really quick, just interject, because you're going to see that we're kind of planning with sections and staffing. These are things that we're staffing with our current staff. So we're just repurposing to meet the kids' needs. So when we looked at the whole process of projections, programming, making sure that as we put kids in programs, we're following closer the guidance to keep kids in the least restrictive environment. And there are some pretty strict quotients that the state gives you in

020putting kids in special class. So making sure we're starting to educate our teachers on that guidance, making sure ourselves to follow that guidance, and then kind of stepping back and saying, how can we use the staff we have right now to meet these needs that aren't being met? So when you see these things, that's really what it is. It'll be current staffing, but we're giving them a new directive and a new opportunity to meet these kids' needs. So really what we talked about those diplomas, and those haven't changed too much over the years, but the piece of this that we really wanted to focus on tonight is getting those credits as just one part of that credential and exiting successfully. The next part is this whole idea of the career development and occupational studies credential

021and what that entails. So those requirements, they involve a multi-layer of things, a career plan, and what I really wanted to focus on is this 216 hours of career technical education. And of those 216 hours, what that kind of equates to of the students staying in the high school is it would be like three half year courses taught by one of our certified CTE teachers, which we already have in the high school. We have the courses. But 54 of those hours need to be done if we call it work-based learning. So that was the piece while we had the classes, we didn't have the opportunities for students who remained in the high school to get those. So that's kind of where this work-based learning piece comes in and really the focus of this and what

022the research said about the importance of work-based learning, which is that hands-on piece to education, is that with students with disabilities, you know, we have found over the years that students who exit with more severe disabilities, it has an impact on their quality of life when they leave. And if we can get them doing some of those things while they're still in high school, I mean, we're trying to do it with our general education students as well, but it puts them at least a little steps ahead of getting into that employment world if we can make that part of our curriculum. And so it's kind of taking a look at how can we offer that in the high school itself. Now some of our kids can go and do that in a BOCES program and

023many of them do. But some of our kids do not know what they want to do at BOCES, right? So you have to pick a focus, you have to pick a field. Some of our kids have a hard time accessing even some of the academic components of those BOCES programs now because the rigor has been risen over the year. So we have kids that, one, don't know what they want to do and can't make that type of commitment and two, they're struggling with access to even that hands-on vocational training. So we certainly have the opportunity to tailor those experiences for a wider net of kids and probably a more specific, more specific net of kids in our high school. Yeah, so that's basically what we found is to be like the barrier is that there

024is two pathways, one of them being BOCES and then the other one being the high school. And due to the work we're doing with these restrictive environment, trying to get more students into our school buildings, they have more severe disabilities, which prevents them from accessing the BOCES CTE programs. So that's really what we needed to focus on is how can we make sure that they can obtain and meet these requirements, the CDOS requirements, here in our high school. And so I've spent, I'm almost, I'm coming towards the end of CSC at the high school and what I worked really hard to do and these numbers still aren't great is try to figure out, well, how many kids am I really talking about when I say we need to program for CDOS? Again, I mean, right

025now we have almost 200 students with IEPs at the high school. I know it's going to be a little bit lower when we're all set and done with CSC. But just kind of, the next two bullets are very hard. This year has been very tricky to project for next year based on the pandemic and what the outcomes of the kids are going to be at the end of the year. So I'm still working on that 2023 cohort. But for the seniors, the current juniors, I estimated we have about 20 students entering their senior year who are not currently programmed to obtain a CDOS at the high school. Meaning that all of this that we're talking about I'm making part of CSC is getting that plan together. And right now for the 21, 22 school year,

026I've estimated about 15 students of those 20 and those would be kids who we know, there's kids who are definitely going to college and I feel pretty secure about their next step. Those 15 kids are either going right to the workforce or they're kids who a lot of kids on the spectrum disorder who have the academics but are lacking still some social emotional skills who want to go to college but still need some help with what it means to navigate that. And a big picture thing that we're going to be working on every year really and I think it's a paradigm shift from past practices. In the past we would run programs and try to fit the kids into the programs we run and Beth and I are trying to look at the kids and

027run the programs based on their needs. And that's hard and it takes a lot of preparation but until you do that there's always going to be that bottom falling out. This is what we have you don't fit here so you need to go somewhere else and what we're finding is we work with our BOCES partnerships or students and agencies a lot of these kids we can manage them if we start to think about them a little bit different. What are their needs? What do we have at our disposal? And how can we program for them in North Tahuanta? Because that's the goal not only to get them across stage but to keep them as close to their family friends and neighbors as possible. So again we have the curriculum with the high school. I mean

028the high school leadership has built the CTE we have a really rich course offering which are wonderful and I think that was kind of for me being new kind of saying well why aren't kids sitting in these classes and using these to work towards this credential. I think a lot of it came down to the work based learning piece so that's where as Mike said we're reallocating we're taking a certified special ed teacher who also has a work based learning certification to now act as a work based learning coordinator and they're really going to have two levels of responsibility one is a district level which is really providing support to our special ed team to our special ed department to the career and technical education teachers at the high school overseeing some program aids to

029support that so that teacher will and then teachers also going to work hands on with the kids in the building so that would be the first level of this person we work on. And then the next thing I think is very important is the responsibilities in the community. So this person will be asking to one of the big parts of work based learning is getting kids out into the community into businesses and organizations to obtain real life experience. That's one form. So we're going to have this person get out there and start to make those contacts and those relationships and build internship agreements for kids who do that. And they have some experience. This person has experience because they did it with some of our other groups of kids and then really do some of

030the work that I'm doing right now which is coordinating with state grants and agencies that provide job coaching and support and employment opportunities and then be a representative for North Tana Wanda sitting in on regional meetings with other school districts and work based learning coordinators to kind of always keep in contact with what's going on in the community. So I kind of alluded to this and when we talk about work based learning there's really three types three types of way to get those hours and one of them is what I was just kind of referring to is those community internships. So whenever we can getting kids out in the community is the best form of an internship and the most realistic. But some of our students won't go down that path. So we're really trying

031to open it up to meet the needs of many students. So that's one form of work based learning and then the other one is what we're referring to is district based internships. So that would be things we already have available here in the school district working with building and maintenance. I have a kiddo who wants to do the gardening in the spring and work with the team to lay mulch and go a lot of them work in the kitchen. Some kids work under air marks in the kitchen with our custodial staff go into a classroom in Spruce and volunteer. So that would be kind of like district level internships. And then the area that we were really lacking in was this idea of a school based enterprise. We have a couple of the high school,

032the school store we have the credit union. They tend to appeal more towards that academy kid, the general education students. So I identified that kind of as a need when I got in there and the beauty of that is a school based enterprise is, you know, it's like it's a field experience. It's a lab. It's a hands on learning environment. It's designed to be entrepreneurial and the purpose of it is to identify create or sell goods or services to a market. So it wasn't something that we really had that I thought our special education kids could really fit into. So I saw that as a need last year and really the purpose of it is kind of like what I said is to offer a realistic work environment and fill a need in the marketplace.

033So it's not just something we just create for kids to kind of pretend and get some experience with money and working with others. The importance is really trying to make it have a kind of purpose. So we are going to, Patrick's going to show a quick video that is about a idea for a school based enterprise that we are hoping to launch in the fall. Education in the Family Resource Center makes me think about family experiencing a house fire. They need they potentially lost everything and they need resources immediately to fit their basic needs. They need food, clothing, assistance, financial assistance. Our goal is to have one physical space to house these resources. Have our students involved with organizing resources, preparing them for families where myself as the coordinator I can distribute quickly. So anyone

034who knows me knows I don't tend to keep things simple and the initial idea for the school based enterprise at the high school was to continue with this idea of a clothes closet that was I guess somewhat started and that would be like a pop up event for high school students to come and shop for generally used clothing. And I learned through research with other high schools that sometimes that could be a little challenging because you really have to rebrand and try to take the stigma away from wanting to go to shop in front of your peers. So as I worked side by side with Megan at district office as we share the joining offices I started to kind of think and see that this might be what she's doing something that students could help

035with and I thought what a bigger better idea and bigger purpose than to just serve the high school students is to have them working to serve a larger purpose which would be our community. So that's what kind of came into this idea of working together. It's actually also being used as an idea for our kids. So this would be something that they could do as part of this enterprise and we kind of started sketching out curriculum is putting together a commercial every month for different things. So I know so Megan and you know we've been talking it was something we thought about over the summer with the pandemic things were just a little you know crazy this year but our goal is to have this hub at the high school where a lot of the

036things that she was trying to do out of the office here and to talk a little bit more we would get our kids support with and I think the beauty of it was the purpose you know having the kids feel like they had a sense of purpose to what they were doing and just have a bigger value and I think that's the purpose of a school based enterprise. And just in terms of concrete we imagine students being scheduled into that you know we have periods five and six we're playing around with now that could change depending on how we flesh out the scheduling but that work based learning coordinator would be there to facilitate these kids and it has like a wide range of where kids can access. So you know some kids that may

037be in more integrative co-settings that are working on this they can be doing marketing projects they could be making videos they could be coordinating deliveries they could be making phone calls to your kids that have life skills curriculum and are working in our life skills program but we still want that work based learning they could be organizing they could be tagging things they could be making sure you know that people know how to enter they can do some more of that foundational skill work but all kind of come together and be integrated to support this work based hub we don't have a name for it yet so they're working on that but really make this part of the school experience for these kids to increase their potentiality but also improve the connections to the community

038and the family resource there. And Jim Fisher and I know Josh is here too they've been wonderful they really help me you know to allocate space this is something that Jim really wanted to do you know several years ago when the credentials changed so he's very it's been incredibly supportive and helping me kind of make sure we had all the resources that we needed in the space to make this happen so we're going to be kind of moving some classrooms around next year at the high school to make sure logistically you know all of this works and I'm dedicated to you know being over there and making sure that we get this off the ground so we're excited you know we're going to do some summer work to pull it all together like a curriculum

039project to you know get everything in place so there are still question marks but the ideas launched the staffing is there the space is there and now it's just it's just growing it yeah and I think just to summarize the essentiality of this is once you have that seat off and you've sat and you've earned your credits you pretty much have your ticket out the door because now even if you've sat for your exam and you struggle because of academic gaps or issues you may have with learning we can still get you across the stage with the superintendent's determination so this should give all of our kids access to the stage hopefully over time you know right now it's going to be that cohort that Beth showed you we're going to focus in because it's

040start small but certainly there's an opportunity to grow this and extend it even to general education students who may not go to bonuses and who would benefit from the seat off credential questions sounds good yeah well I got a statement though I'm like a puddle of much over here right now so thank you so much for everything that you're putting with us I'm so excited about it I have a feeling Gabby is probably excited too yes I think it's a fantastic idea as a business owner I'm so looking forward to actually seeing it boots on the ground and my question I guess is are you looking a couple of years forward to prepare for the FTE that you're going to need when this does become set well you know it kind of goes into that

041long term comprehensive planning I think that right now we're healthfully staffed in district we've kind of showed you over the past year we have opportunities sometimes when we really look at our kids and get really focused on what we need for them that there's already been some of those lateral handoffs it's not to say that we won't need more staff but I feel like if we continue to use our staff as wisely as possible there are a lot of opportunities you know when we get into that year end presentation we're repurposing some of our middle school staff to meet more of those alternative style needs and it just goes back into you know Beth and I are committed to make sure that you know kids that we classify are deserving of that classification when kids

042are ready to be independents our job to promote that independence and you know what we're finding is we should see and I'm not making any promises today we should see our classification rate go down our classification rate has been pretty high these past few years for a plethora of reasons so we should see our classification rate go down but it should also allow us to really focus in on these kids with these needs because these needs are not getting smaller they're getting wider because these kids are coming compounded with the academic deficits because of their disability but a lot of them also have social emotional deficits because of their upbringing so we will continue to have that analysis of how can we best deploy our staff to support our kids needs and get them the

043highest potential credentials so down the road we may have needs right now I think we're going to continue to study how we deploy our staff and if we have an opportunity to rethink repurpose, reuse that's step one and then if things grow do we need to add and we'll look at that as well what models are we following locally? So last year we launched this a little bit with Greg because we were hopeful that we can get a little taste of this and it didn't work out that way with CSE outcomes this is real tricky in special education because you're trying to project your programs but you're dependent on the CSE decision at the same time so Beth and I have been more up front in those conversations because the irony of special ed is

044their individualized education plans but you're required by federal and state law to group kids by similar needs so if you don't have conversations about your kids, your cohorts, who they are, their needs and you just go into CSE you make a lot of individual decisions but then you end up grouping kids with very different needs and that is kind of been what's been going on so we have had pre-planning conversations like Beth and I met with each grade level for a few hours each this year in preparation for CSE to study our kids, study their deficits, talk about their similarities, project them into programs so then we can step back and look at staffing and determine how do we staff these programs appropriately it's different than Jenna though because it's like a live grenade you

045can go into CSE to sit meeting and a parent or teacher or committee member can throw that off a little bit so you're kind of going back and forth but I think if we continue the practice of looking at our kids, looking at their needs continuing to see where our deficits and where our strengths are and project them as best as possible, we'll continue to put ourselves in strong footing I definitely think it's a great idea for the community, there was just a big fire in Tonawanda yesterday and the day before they had to pull out the whole building so this was already running that would be great for the family that was in that building I think it's great because look at all these positions you have to fill for it there would never

046be a volunteer group strong enough in the city to put this together and sustain it and I just think it's a good idea Chad Rieselman from Lumber City he does something kind of similar with the Lumber City Outfitters it's like a different process and it's not for people engaged from a fire but he could be a good resource and so that will be Megan's role, our special education teacher will be very focused on getting the kids into these realistic opportunities but Megan's role will be what the hub is actually doing and the linkages so she's kind of setting the stage for what the work is and then the work based learning coordinator will be getting the kids into the right places to get the work done so she'll talk to like that will be Megan's

047role to kind of continue to make those contacts and say I think we should do this as simple as non-perishable foods like we even talked about in September every month having a theme and you know September is back to school and we put out a commercial or an ad that says you know we're collecting school supplies for kids and then our students would get those ready, Megan would let them know like these are the families who need it or the buildings but they would get all the work done because in her role she can't, there's not time to do all that so she would kind of help set the stage for what the needs of the community are the work based learning focuses on getting the kids in the right places to do the work

048if that makes sense that's a perfect segue no other questions can I share a real quick going off of Beth was saying we have good resources in the community, we have food pantries, we have lumber city, we have many churches I have been able to make a lot of connections to be able to get things there but this is more like okay let's have like a little stockpile or something for the immediate needs I don't have to call up five different people and pull from here to there and then after we have that immediate need and distribution then I'm going to be connecting families with the local food pantries this is where it is, this is what you need when you go there just really involving our students and I know Beth said talking about

049letting them know what families are going to need something, not sharing family names or anything, that's where I'll come in but I'm going to say I need this set of clothing this box of food so yeah I mean I can always answer more questions after I present a little bit and that's it it caught me too Beth considering there's going to be enough work where it's like when people know when it's out there planning these things but also good things like say it's a family they want to make clothes so they can send everything over to the high school, they can put all this together, make the copies and we need them by December 10th so that gives the teacher time it gives the kids time to get everything put together so it really will

050be nice that a in-house that can help the community and their health and we've seen in other places that it works really well and once you get it up and running it's hard to stop because the people want to give them more and more I think it's just going to take off so that's a good time for that especially after COVID if people need help and support I think that there's I've seen a backpack not that this is it's just something I've seen that has been successful organically they'll stock backpacks for the weekends and they're assigned numbers they're put in these lockers and they get the codes so you don't know who's there's really great potential I agree completely alright well thank you guys so much for allowing me to be here to share some

051updates so I'm glad to get started so I want to just talk about my position overall very quickly and after this I will really focus on the family resource center so I am .5 the coordinator for the family resource center and then I'm also .5 school counselor at Drake Elementary very quickly this is kind of what my role entails so at the family resource center I'm taking referrals from mostly the school counselors and social workers and those referrals are based on when the needs of a student or family goes beyond the school supports and then I'm also involved in many community partnerships and coalitions I spend a lot of my time researching just what is out in the community in Niagara County in general not just NT because there are a lot of services nearby

052and I'm working on updating our school districts website with family resource center page so I can kind of get information out there electronically and say hey this is a support group that's going on this is an event that's going on that may benefit your family and Mr. and Mr. and I worked on starting a like a resource line so it's a phone extension of my phone number and it's really just a phone number of families can reach out to really with whatever needs and I can either direct them to someone in our school district that can help them or I can connect them with a community resource or work with them in the referral process and then over at Drake very traditional school counselor approach and position I just wanted to point out there are

053you know roughly 260 to 270 students there and I would say in my case load is around 50 students it's not I'm not necessarily seeing 50 students every single day that I'm there it's you know maybe certain kids are I see once a week maybe certain kids I see every other week or it's just a check in but I've got to know a lot of the kids and families over there too I also do social emotional learning lessons in all of the classrooms so that way I can reach all of our students and they can know that there's access to a school counselor or social worker in our building and this year I've done a lot of crisis support mostly with our kids entering the school building just because it's scary you know the routines

054are not consistent enough for them and they struggle with entering school and being there but you know we get them in we help them feel comfortable and excited to learn and they are successful and then we also have two 811 classrooms over at Drake that I do occasionally support when needed our school social worker Ms. Lowery is great over there she sees the kids and both of those classrooms more often than myself but I'm there as a help alright now let's switch into the family resource center a little bit more about what some updates so I'm part of the North Town of Wanda community hub coalition so it's a lot of stakeholders in the community that want to make proactive changes and recently I got to do a quick little event with them during our

055school lunch pick up so it was just one day we were able to hand out resources kind of if you can look at this list here mostly just informational resources so you know blue cross blue shield chant I won't leave the list but just a lot of informational resources about what's available in our community especially during like the pandemic times and Catholic Charities is really an amazing resource that is there set up for families for food or financial assistance help with housing and so in this event we just did it during the lunch pick up we were at Spruce in the high school so 3 hours we were able to reach like roughly 75 families so not everyone not every family in our whole district but a good opportunity to try something and let them

056know a little bit more about the family resource and what that involves here's some numbers I was worried that it might get cut off by the zoom so here are some numbers this is from a study the numbers and needs study that was done in February 2020 and it's not just NT it's the twin cities so I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with this it's really cool they the mobile safety net team they partner so they can understand what needs are in our communities and what there is I wanted to share these numbers because it shows a lot about how families are experiencing poverty or what their income looks like and you know if they own a home or if they rent and so 74% of them are renters which is something

057that I realize a lot of our families in our district do rent and I wanted to share maybe a little case study on how those numbers come into play so this was a referral that I received and through the family resource center about a family that would be needing within two days of their lease ending and so the referral comes up they're like it's the 28th they'll be out in two days they were needing to leave not because they were evicted but because housing was being sold and so they needed to find housing so immediately I have to gain some information from them I have to understand what their finances are like how many family members there are do they have pets all these housing needs and so that helps me understand can they afford

058housing what are their max limits so this family was struggling they had very bad credit they did not have any money really to put down for a security deposit or rent and they didn't have any family to stay with because it's one of my biggest questions do you have family to stay with right now before you are homeless or you need to stay in a hotel and they didn't so that time crunch was like alright let's get this going so I start my own housing search and I kind of give the family a couple things for them to do as well and my housing search sometimes it's interesting I have to look at my notes because it's all over the place sometimes so I literally drove around empty looking for rent signs and that was

059actually in the end what helped me that's how I was able to secure an apartment for rent I do have a couple private landlords that I've gotten to know over the last year or so just looking for housing so that's pretty cool to have some community members that I know hey I can call hey do you have something or do you know somebody that has something and I've never even met these people maybe like one I know but other people I just word them out it's interesting right but they've helped me out so after that after we find an actual place for them to rent I have to figure out how are they going to pay for this so I contact the department of social services I contact Catholic charities and the end Catholic charities

060was able to help and get the security deposit for the family $900 I feel like amazing like I can't imagine and it's great to know that these programs exist so getting the security deposit gives that family a little extra time to come up with the finances for her rent and stuff like that so overall it took me like nine days to find this this housing for a family so they did have to go into a hotel and luckily they were able to fund that themselves but there are I did provide information through department of social services how to access shelter options and funding for that but the family chose to find some funds from friends and family and go their own route to finish this kind of really it took about two weeks overall and

061I'm still continuing to work with the family because most times a lot of needs overlap so the family didn't have any money because they weren't able to work and so I'm working on helping them find employment and it opens up a lot of doors you know why what barriers are in the way for employment so that looks into you know a lot of other areas you know proper paperwork and you know so I I was very happy that this worked out in the end but you had mentioned like there was there was just a house fire the other day and you know now and these things happen like I'm already working with someone else that needs housing it's a very real need right now and I feel that it's going to become bigger because there's

062a lot of things in place right now where people you know are not making enough money or able to pay their rent and then once once those kind of holds end I'm worried that some of our families will be looking for housing so I'm preparing myself to come before the storm in a way and I hope that's not the case but I'm here to help our families so a little longer than I expected to go on but I was feeling passionate about that and that's you know really you know we think about two years ago probably two years ago to the date we sat in front of you and proposed this concept we talked about our mission and vision and really what we wanted to accomplish for our community because a lot of times it

063just can't happen in the four walls of our buildings and we know you know as a police officer and many of you as you get out into the community you know that you know problems are very real and we live in a we really do live in as tight knit as North Carolina is Greg a lot of times likens it to Mayberry and everybody knows everybody but there's a lot of diversity here and by diversity there's a lot of needs our poverty rate is relatively high it's a lot higher than the average that was shown in the last slide and we know with poverty comes a lot of struggle and that certainly trickles down to our kids that we hope do come in each and every day and as we'd love to say you know

064leave the trauma leave the issues at the door that's pretty impossible it's hard for adults it's really challenging for a kid so when we think about the far reaching struggles that a lot of our families are going through it really has been a breath of fresh air to have a Megan and all the individuals who help support her in her collaboration and her efforts to not only promote awareness to what our family resource center serves to provide but also to create the partnerships as you see they're very lengthy which is really valuable obviously we're only as strong as our neighbors and certainly in those partnerships she's been able to reach a lot of families and provide those essential resources not to mention we've been amidst a pandemic which just compounds the problems as an individual

065and I know in the student service office as well as Patrick every day when we deal with families every day we have a lot of transient families a lot of families that move from apartment to apartment it's not by choice obviously everybody would love to wake up in the morning and know where they're going to be at the end of the night and that their bills are going to be paying and that their heat is going to be on and all those things that really are just essential sometimes we take that for granted but we have a lot of families that can answer those questions so it really is wonderful to have Megan and a family resource center that you guys provided and supported and it's great to see it grow it's great to see

066the end product so far even though it's still only a year and a half in and we've been weathering the storm of a pandemic but at the same time it's been really great and you'll see some of the numbers now as far as really what are those referrals but as Megan alluded to it's more than just a piece of paper that comes across from a counselor or social worker or anyone referring a family because we know there's a lot of layers there's more than just one problem maybe the source of why a referral comes in but for Megan it turns into weeks and months and like any other problem that we have or any other issues when you provide those layers of support it becomes a commitment it's a new partnership that she's formed with

067a mother, with a father a lot of single parent households and sometimes the extended family it really is more than just it takes a village cliche it is a lot of work a lot of blood sweat and tears when you hear the stories and you see the effort that she puts forward to provide the basic essential needs of these families that they need to get the kids to come to school each and every day and for them to have a home so let's get into some of the numbers so November 2019 is when I kind of started to slowly take in some referrals so I have about 24 referrals until February 2020 when the pandemic kind of first started I didn't really get a ton of referrals a lot of just conversations between people back

068and forth and I think a lot of people were just like we don't really know what to do and do we prefer doing that we're just all kind of trying our best here which was really great to see our teachers and our staff be able to do that people were going out of their way to do stuff and it was really nice so moving forward February 2020 I have additional 44 referrals so that makes me a total of referrals of 68 overall and like I was saying before a lot of times these referrals come in and it's not just like this family doesn't have any food okay they don't have any food, they are having mental health problems in the home because they don't have a job they all overlap so in my chart here

069the numbers are kind of higher, they're going to total up higher because of how much they overlap and then I'll explain each category a bit more because they're very broad and basic because when I started this new referral process for the counselors and social workers to do I created a forms document through Microsoft and just an easy electronic way to click a few buttons and really just to keep myself organized so to go through some of these categories student concerns can be based on academics whatever progress at school, what that looks like and extra areas for support at school family concerns overall what does the household need I'm going to check that box if it just involves the whole family and the housing food, clothing, those are those material aid, physical things that I can

070grab here or there and just basic needs as well school attendance or avoidance so this is what I kind of was talking about before students during the building struggling to do that poor attendance and staying in school and mental health or counseling referral so that's that outside counselor connection connection with the MST program supports in that area or crisis needs regarding mental health and then the other category really just everything in between whatever else they want to add and let me know what the family is experiencing whether it's domestic violence or substance abuse and just all extra areas since they overlap so much and to close just a few things, future plans that I have I'm working on developing a comprehensive first list that's accessible on one drive for all our counselors and social workers

071but also resources on our school district website so people can see those things, families can find those things themselves really under having the position understand well by the school district employees and our community I don't think I have done this well enough at this point just because I'm in the initial phase of opening and sharing. I think that counselors and social workers have a really good understanding of what I do and when to make a referral and how I can support but it needs to be overall understood like I need to go into a third grade classroom and they need to know oh the family resource center yep okay you can help me with that so but I think that is anytime can happen and our work based learning program I'm very excited and I

072want to just say like right now I am the coordinator for the family resource center the work based learning program will be that center it will be the center right now I'm a coordinator and I need that center in a way and I have a couple just parent events that I'd like to work on setting up in the future so thank you guys so much I was a little nervous but thank you for listening when you started and you know like you'd be at the open houses and you can go to the events but none of that is happening and so but next Wednesday you may come up to Facebook Live with the face up there and we also have the program with some guests so we'll continue to grow it just a couple comments

073one I like that the community hub program went to the lunch pick up last year pre-COVID we were even talking about like doing some announcements and stuff at the events that the school puts on because it's hard to reach the parents it really is that was a good idea you met them where they were at instead of having them take an extra step to get the resources so I like that and then I love that you're using Microsoft forms and OneDrive I think it will really expedite the process it is good to have a packet of information of course but resources change so frequently you can update it right you know immediately and if someone has the link every time they click in there it's all updated on resources and I think that's a good

074idea it's one of the projects I have my future principals from Niagara class do is to find out their resources in the area because I said that you don't realize that the building administrator a teacher, superintendent a resource center, counselor is that everything comes here you know I had a fight this morning with my spouse I had no gas in the car to get here and you can't just say oh that's too bad get to your room or you know what I mean you have to know at least where to send them or how to help them or get them out of it or so it doesn't spiral into a pattern so people don't realize that part of school they think it's just you know open the door to sit down and teach but there's

075a lot of that that's going back 25-30 years of this building and that's when I can tell you stories that would curl your hair with what came in here but it hasn't changed but that's the sad part is that that's just been multiplied over the years and drew a pandemic you know what I mean it didn't go away it doesn't stop I know that from being out on the streets too so we all have to work together so I appreciate all the work thank you very much you'll never get clammed yes next up Mr. Montaro the man without a clam I think you're going to get a night out yes please thanks thank you these are all I'm good how are you good yeah right I did bring my friend I returned thank you thank

076you I know right how many years I do believe I've got another one I think Patrick did give me another one thank you what was the extra yes yes it's been an interesting budget year really even though it's not a lot of changes still I know so we're in a good spot I know I know I would say a barn I didn't hear that earlier I thought this was like a music festival a couple openers tonight these festivals are all day events well you're the opener for the superintendent so we're about to do well okay before we get started just to keep you updated on some of the expense items that we continue to try to control specifically I like to come back to the energy performance project because that was obviously a very large

077undertaking and you know we have made some promises and if you take a look at this and I have the green highlighting but if you go to the far left and the percent difference what we really want to focus on is the kilowatt hours usage that is the first column if you take a look at where we're at in February in terms of total conversion over to LED and energy efficient devices and on more building controls monitoring those systems we had a 40% reduction in kilowatt hour usage pretty significant if you look at the total savings we're projecting right now that's the next column over under budget difference we're projecting about 120,000 in savings now that's looking at much smaller decreases so if we keep on that path 40% throughout the year we could have

078a good 30% reduction in overall utilities it's definitely working out quite well in terms of the EPC along with less maintenance and we don't have to ever but for many years we won't have to change any of those bulbs it's working out very well I think that energy performance project is working out very well so in terms of other handouts that you have again this is going to be a little more of a give and take but I do want to give you some of the documents in here in terms of history and financial comparisons with our cohort districts in Niagara County this item here the school tax rate history so we wanted some history on where we're at in comparison to other districts within the county and then what was our history in particular

079I'll have charts that show us visually for a couple districts that we feel we align with the best but this gives you the full tax history and then I will also focus more on our specific history of the presentation I think it's important to spend a second here so if you look to the last column which is the 2020-2021 and you go to North Carolina you see it's 2263 basically per thousand now when you go down to Niagara Wheatfield you say why is there so many but you see people don't you can't always do apples and oranges so Niagara Wheatfield Cambria Homestead and then Lewiston Homestead there's a Niagara Non-Homestead Wheatfield Homestead there are areas within the area and they have a different tax rate because of how that Wheatfield came together over the years

080it wasn't a city that was always there it kind of grew and absorbed these other ones that were smaller ones and they kept their tax rate the same thing with Starpoint you can see here's a piece of Wheatfield Royalton Pendleton Lockport and Cambria all make up Starpoint and they all have a different tax rate so you can't just say oh Starpoint's tax rate is $19 why is it cheaper than North Carolina when you look at the Wheatfield part and they're at $33 so you have to average to add it up and end it up so lots of times one of our favorite board members our campus used to say people want to compare but they only look at one piece this is bigger this is smaller you have more you have less but when you

081get into the detail it's really you know kind of explains it out for people a little bit more so this is a great sheet especially if you're running for office and you want people want to ask about taxes we're very comparable I don't know that you know if you want to live out in Parker I was just going to say I think that's comparable though no city to city and you want to be you want to look at Lockport we put the falls on there but the falls is its own sort of world so they've been at zero tax increases forever because of all the extra stimulus and stuff that they get in grants and stuff so we put it on there just because of people ask about it but even at that they're almost

082at $20 so and I think I thought it was a great sheet I thought it was well done thank you so it's and part of this is the taxing jurisdictions right so there are different towns different assessors so you almost kind of look at this as we have one pizzeria here and one pizza pie that we're cutting up these other places got multiple pizzerias and so on I don't know I guess I got you just went to pizza pie it's not for me so the other sheet you have in here is this one in particular again this is comparing us to other not least specific districts that we felt were aligned with the best so that was Lockport and Niagara-Weed Field and Starport so what this gives you is a couple different charts in the

083history going back to 2016 in terms of where was their tax levy limit what did they actually propose as a levy what was the difference between those two and that'll make much more of a statement as we get along when you take a look at these decisions that are made to leave potential levies on the table and to go out lower than the actual levy limit and then it's showing the actual tax levy increase because sometimes the levy that they go out at isn't what is actually implemented over the summer because there's some changes that go along again assessments change things change so that gives you a better idea of where we stand with those districts in particular and then at the bottom I have an analysis that I'll go into more as to you

084know the impacts and the what ifs if you know we make certain decisions and I am doing a look back as to well I mean different decisions in 2016 what would it look like today I'm looking forward so not only am I playing this long range they're going back so is there Dr. Who the guy who goes in the time machine okay I'll go on I got the way so all right so let's get started so today really is about the levy and financial considerations are you done with this one Dr. Who or do you want to talk about more because we'll get back to it if you're going to get back to it because I think that's another piece in the public that they need to understand so you're getting back to it we're

085on our time travel trip and we'll zip I'm not going to put the step on it okay so tonight really the goals are to identify potential levy options we're looking at historical data to help us with those decisions and then really come down to it and hone in on what we're going to use in the revenue structure for our budget same budget goals as always the main one being staying within the tax cap so I'll just focus on that one for now here well at least you have the handout so coming back to this in some respects so specifically off the school tax rate history for North Pondawanda if you take a look really over the past several years not much movement at all fairly flat and you'll see that in some of the graphs

086especially over the last three years very marginal increases if you look at the proposed levies in terms of us compared to the other districts we see steady increases and as we get through to 2021 in comparison to the other districts we're the lowest in terms of total levy now again Lockport and Niagara-Weirfield, Starpoint their levy is split up amongst all those different hamlets and towns and villages and things of that nature also but overall total levy throughout the district we are at the lowest and these are similarly sized districts now the demographics of each of these districts will be quite different though you know we might have a little more industry they might have a little more residential so again a lot of different factors but we are the lowest in comparison if you look

087in terms of their increases over time again we are the most flat in terms of levy increase you're saying if we average this right here then we get this so if we average all the numbers for Niagara-Weirfield Central then we get this number that's on the slide 34 well the tax rate is how it's applied per thousand dollars of assessed value so again how this levy is applied over all the assessed value in each of the towns again there's many different ways to kind of slice that up so it's not that simple of an analysis it is much more complicated so actually it's kind of easy it's the one thing that's easier but I don't have to worry about multiple levies with multiple taxing districts so we're much more straightforward you could say that for

088us but the other ones again I didn't drill down as much to look at the percentages it could be lower Gaby it could be higher but that's a good average rate there and I didn't look to see how much of a taxing district took up the entire the percentage of that levy in particular but you can compare on total levy so total levy of everyone within their district so if you look at the actual tax levy increase as a percentage over time again the districts that we compare to you know fairly consistent in terms of their getting right up to their cap you'll see that on this sheet that some are going to the cap every year we were negative in 2016 the reason we were negative was because you know the projection was at

089a certain assessment final roll over the summer when it's increased you actually get a tax decrease, a tax cut so there's been two years already that there's been a tax cut it's very marginal but nonetheless there wasn't an increase so we've been pretty close around 1% in 2019 that was the high water mark at 1.96% but still below all the other districts now you look in our green field and say well you know they went out at zero well they hadn't gone at zero because they had a negative tax cap that year, they actually had to get a majority vote so to be at zero so why didn't they just increase the taxes anyway to be quite honest you gotta get 60% so they went out at zero, I don't know if that was a

090public relations thing but that to me shows that they're really not well I shouldn't criticize other districts but their tax cap is very volatile if you end up with a negative levy that's not a good thing so that's the reason for the zero there .68, I don't know what the thinking was another district, another set of situations but for the most part you see people are pretty consistent around the tax cap going to it, so if you go back to my sheet now let me just make sure I do the bigger next slide, no I don't, okay so let's go back to the sheet and Mr. Wartella if you have observations you want to chime in at this point this might be a good time so we are going back so if you take a

091look at the second table here where it says difference between tax levy limit and proposed levy if you take a look at the first group and I know it's not up on my screen until I make so many of these slides or put it out there but Lockport they have zeros all the way across the top and one year where there's a slight difference that means Lockport is going to the cap every year so if their cap was four they're going four now your Wheatfield they were going through the cap every year then they had their negative cap so there really wasn't a cap to go to there should be a negative there and then in 2019 for whatever reason they decided to go much lower than the cap so they left some money on

092the table 2020 they got close and then 2021 they left some money on the table again if you look at their actual if you go to the total tax levy limit as a percentage yeah for whatever reason they made a choice in those years although in those years they were getting close to two percent so they left some money on the table but their tax cap must have been closer to like four like their limit and I think I have that yeah four so they got some weird funky things going on with their cap it's all over the place and that's we don't want to look that way and that's how I planned it going forward that we're going to be steady enemy okay so us in particular in North Carolina if you look every

093year we've left money on the table so we have not gone to the cap some years going out at negative Starpoint interestingly enough they don't go to the cap also but they try to stay pretty steady I really like Starpoint's strategy they're steady so if you look at the two tables below it the total tax levy limit that's like what they could have gone to if you look below that that's what they actually went to so Starpoint that first year they could have went up to almost four percent but then it said to go to 2.59 right so they're doing probably some measure of you know budgetary cuts you know the tax relief in some respect but also understand that the tax levy is an important component of their revenue structure and we'll get into

094revenue structure in a little bit in the next couple slides and those are better financial years as we all know I think 16-17 you know things started to improve and then as things started to not improve if you look at Starpoint they're going to the cap they started to change that strategy a bit and say hey listen we're losing state aid we know that's coming down we're going to have to start to increase that levy because we're going to need more of that local share to build up our base but I think in general their strategy has been to not necessarily go to the cap but stay pretty consistent okay although they were pretty high the last couple years almost three percent and they're another one that has all the different little pieces that they

095get off Blackport and I go with film the next box with the color is the important one how much we haven't raised okay yeah so we'll get those are definitely on the slides because those are the important pieces so just some interesting observations of strategies with other districts kind of wondering what they're trying to do I think Starpoint probably is the most coherent in terms of adjustments over time Blackport we're just going to the cap and Starpoint again it's somewhat erratic okay so tax rate history going back to this sheet I'm not necessarily going to go to it go through this in detail but if you look visually you know where do we stand we're about in the middle of the pack in terms of where the levies are or right on car I would

096say if we were to average it out right around that 25 per thousand assessed value and if you look some of the districts again here in the Niagara Wheatfield area are quite high almost up to 40 40 dollars per thousand assessed value so if you look we're very much I feel in a reasonable parameter compared to the other districts so historical data our historical data so focusing in on North Tondawanda again steady increase but if you look you know we've definitely leveled off the last three years if you look at our tax rate it does look a little erratic too when you're looking at it in a small sample right so we got this kind of climb and then all of a sudden we just drop okay so I think I talked about this maybe

097two years ago in terms of like what do you want to see like what do you want to have and I'm big on staying within parameters because then that gives you the area which we're going to work in it gives you targets and it's much easier to have the conversations like we had earlier which were outstanding thank you so at any rate this is really you know the parameter that we want to work within you know I feel like that's the range we want to be just above one just below one and a half I feel like if we smooth this out we're going to have stability sustainability and predictability and that's really what you want and budget you're forecasting out and it's very hard to forecast when your numbers are just all over the

098place okay any questions no videos though okay so what is the most effective tax levy strategy so you know strategy is a big component of the budgeting process in my thinking and you're thinking of short term and long term considerations so obviously this year we want to close the gap but we don't want to burden taxpayers we want to think about the impact on the taxpayer but we also don't want to take away some outstanding programs that we have for our students obviously we want to support them also with the things that aren't mandated that we saw tonight long term we want to make sure that we secure revenue streams they're going to support the types of budgets that we're structuring and the one thing that I do want to point out here and I'll

099point out a couple more times you know to have stability and sustainability you can't rely on the state to be quite honest the state's all over the place, unreliable they haven't really followed their own formulas but I can't take the state formula and run with that 10 years because who knows what that's going to we might be the same aid level we were at two years ago because right now we got a 20% reduction probably once the federal funds are gone we might be at a negative aid in two or three years so again thinking of the taxpayer do we lighten the load now to only lay the boom down on people down the road and I don't think that's very fair either and then the impact on students we have these great programs now

100but three years from now we have to say what do we cut because we've got to cut a $4 million deficit okay so tax cap so what I've tried to do also in all the projections I want to take control of the tax cap so I can make it reliable I can make it predictable so I budget with that unfortunately the state aid part messes me all up but in terms of pilots and growth factors those are hard to project because things can't change but the pilot agreements I got all of them I laid them all out projected them out for as long as I could so that is a pretty solid number with the exception of three pilots that are run through the city I'm still trying to figure out what's going on with

101those I got some sketchy they weren't even spreadsheets they were kind of hand written notes so I'm trying to figure out and make sense of what those are and how much money we're going to get from those but I have a pretty good idea of what's going on from the pilot agreements we have IOUs what's that? IOUs I'm not quite sure why they're with the city but I'm trying to get the pilot agreements so I can at least say this is what I'm getting but it's a small portion so I feel pretty good about the numbers I've projected out because I have the actual agreements I have the actual amount the growth factors the growth factor that applies to our levy is really kind of inconsequential it picks up a couple percentage points but it's

102not going to change the calculation much what changes the calculation a whole lot is the capital exclusion that's the piece that we can manage and that's the leveling of debt that I talked about keeping projects going, keeping the debt level having debt to then apply to this a particular calculation and smoothing out the levy so this is how you smooth out the levy so a district that knows how to do this they don't have to have tax caps to go up to 6 and go down to 1 you can level it out the long term projection with this capital exclusion gives us the stability that we're looking for and then within this plan we'll be using reserves not using reserves reserves is another mechanism to change that calculation and you can actually see that in

103the calculations that it projects out so these all go out a number of years so when you do look at this though the pilots I think are pretty darn solid because I use the actual agreements aside from what the city has and then as far as the growth factor, I just use the same growth factor this year and went out because it's not going to change much, it's not going to impact as much the exclusions is where I put all the work with the capital project, planning that out getting the reserves, having the reserve to go to to then adjust that levy to keep it within the parameter that I want to keep it within, one and a half to one percent okay, any questions? so tax cap and argument of consideration so in terms

104of revenue we got two big ones, we got the local tax levy, which is about half the budget, right? and then we got the state aid, which is about half the budget local levy, just explain that we can plan that out, that we can plan we know where we're going with this one, okay? looks like the star thing went away, right? if the star thing went away, then yes, I feel much more confident if they're starting to take money from the star then that would totally blow everything up and I wouldn't have any predictability anymore yeah, thank you alright, so state aid, unpredictable right? little or no control at the local level so, and this is about half so we've got to make it up on the local side, otherwise we're going to start falling

105behind in terms of escalation of expenses I'm trying to keep the budgets, that parameter I have every year 2%, you know, 1-2% if we're not getting the aid from the state though, I've got to make it up somewhere and you've got to make it up on the local side it just, you can't have a 2% increase and then only get 1% from this side increasing and then this, nothing, or negative it works, right? it's got to balance out somewhere and the long range miles I developed are now going to now not only give you a look back these are the decisions you made this is the ramifications, but look forward like, this is what we can expect okay? so this is what I added now he's getting nervous so I put this on here because

106so by not increasing the levy the district becomes more we're relying on state aid, right? as a percentage if we're staying flat, the state aid is going to become a bigger component of what we do and if we're going to rely on that then we're relying on unpredictable budgets going forward and I just thought the mirror thing I don't know the cuts are closer in the mirror than they appear or something like that okay, so on to the models so zero percent that we're going to take a look at so this is if we went to a zero percent levy, and if you look through this, I do have an extra little component on here which is the analysis piece the kind of what if type of scenario so if we go out one percent

107you see the future levies going out into 2026 the potential future levies so as you work through this get to the bottom half yeah, so this will be broken out in a slide later on so I gave you the full piece here so up here is the calculation and then below is the analysis so you want to look for the one that says zero percent at the top everybody got that one? so these are all the components that the star one the circle one I gotta recruit her for the next one she has a video narrated okay, go ahead don't let me stop you so these are all the components that we talked about earlier so I figured out where the capital levy needs to be I know what the pilots are all those components

108are set on the top where you're really going to see the changes are down here the current year proposed levy in this one if you notice all the way across it doesn't change because if we're going to say every year we're going out of zero now, what I do know is this will actually change because we get prorated taxes and as people come off of star that might change some of this because the exemption will change so there will be some slight increases if you take a look at the next one again, this next line underneath this might be a better area to focus on we have what the proposed levy is okay what the proposed levy is in terms of percentage and then what the tax levy limit is so if you look here

109this will be the same on each one 1.62, that's this year and they should be pretty close because I smoothed it out 1.54, 1.52 so I try to keep it right at the 1.52 so the very last line the last two lines, the difference between the levy limit, the proposed, that goes back to the other chart I had with all the districts so if there's a number in that first row, the difference between, that means that's money we left on a table if there's a amount in there if it's zero, that means we went right to cash and then the year over year change in the levy that is if we levy some taxes and that's the increase in the levy for that year so in some of these models you'll have numbers in both

110of them in this model where you're going to zero you're going to have numbers just in what we're leaving on the table and zero is at the change in the model where I go full it's going to be the flip and then you're going to have models that are hybrid if you look at the current year see we went to the negative and the reason we went to the negative is because of the prorated taxes that come in so there's a whole other layer of this but again I'm trying to keep it fairly something really? okay you don't see the stack on my desk but I took it out of them but this so once you learn one then you can just go through zero, one right right right so focus on one and then

111say apply to the rest very good so this is the hybrid one so now we're looking at the bottom lines and you can see that there's an amount that we left on the table and then there's an amount that we're levy the last two lines and that's the one percent at the top it says one percent and I want one and a quarter again another hybrid we leave some money on the table but then we also do levy some money and then if you look at the last one one point six two zero is across the top because we're going right to the levy so whatever we can levy we're increasing the tax line so those are the four that I focused on obviously in between zero and full there's a whole gamut of numbers

112into it so I just picked some fairly round numbers so now into strategy I still don't you're coming to it a long time coming I went back to this I went back I went to the future then I went back you guys can take this outside down the road I just want to again talk about we have short term considerations and we have long term considerations right we want to balance impact on taxpayers impact on students that's the name of the game here so I love this visual so much I had to use it again I can't leave this one on the table it's like the levy I can't leave it on the table so budget development it's not a sprint it's a marathon a very long one that never ends we just keep doing

113this every year until school we're no longer with them so I think the best thing just like a long distance runner though is to have a rhythm to have a pace we want to have a pace to this because we don't want to sprint to the beginning and then lose all types of gas in between and then we're trying to catch up and we're throwing Gatorade down and it's just it's not good so we're looking back we're going to look forward so we're going to look back at the what if so what if back in what is the impact of non-increasing levy so what if back in 2016 we said we're going to increase right to the tax cap right so here's our differences from before remember this from the slide with all the different

114districts right we left about half million on the table then we left close to half million again then this year only 40 and over here about 600,000 so on and so forth right so what's the impact over time so over time if you look at the levy it compounds and it builds a structure over time the levy has a base and each year we add to the base that obviously has much beneficial impacts down the road but if you don't add to the base you really are going to have some negative impacts and they're going to compound over time so if you look at these revenue streams that 2016 revenue stream that we decided not to apply to the base we're losing that revenue stream every year thereafter 2017 what we left on the table

115we're losing every year thereafter you see how this builds over time so in 2016 it's a half million dollar impact 2017 it turns into a million dollar impact in 2018 because we kind of actually went with the levy it stayed about a million dollar impact this amount down here is revenue lost so the levy would have been a million dollars higher in that year had we raised the levy back in 2016 that might have cut that budget gap but I think we've been maintaining expenses so long story short at the end let me just bring it home hold on at the very end we're talking about eight million dollars from those decisions left on the table and not add to the base eight million dollars over that period of time and then I will show

116you what they would look like also okay go ahead yes take a lesson so had we gone to the tax cap every year our budget actually would have been almost eight million dollars higher which is more revenues more program or even with staying steady there's a give back here if you could say we are going to go negative one year because we've got this and we feel comfortable that our revenue that our fund balance everything's great so you know you save a little bit now but you lose a ton in the future and then when you say well why aren't you a start point in our women's roller clearance it's because they're going to the limit and they have eight million dollars more you can do a lot with eight million dollars so that's the

117whole presentation but more numbers so the what they got to see the numbers you got to prove it out it's math right you got to have your proof so in the end if you look at what the levy would have been this is the what if okay this is where the what if plays in you would have had this type of tax increase over the years now I probably wouldn't have advocated four percent yeah but you're probably going to stay close to two right this is if you went right to the cap I would say you probably would have been somewhere in between but right now if you look in 2021 we would be basically on par we still wouldn't even be the highest we'd be on par with start point essentially we still would

118not be the highest in total overall levy we still would be on par and right now we would be talking about because I plugged that in to where we currently stand we'd be talking about maybe adding to the half million dollars right or adding something else and keeping pace with that idea of doing a levy every year or maybe you do levy or and you have some surplus of the end now you have a way to no no I'm putting it into like terms that you got to tell the public when you're out there and you're asking questions like have we done this we could have had a school resource officer in every school two years ago or we could have you know when you hear these crazy schools down in five cities polo and

119they're doing all these other things or why don't you have you know a new girls softball field and all this stuff because we save you five cents every year I mean that that's the conversation you got to have with the community yes we're going to save you five ten cents fifty cents twenty cents this year but twenty years from now we're going to be behind the other school districts that said with this and I'm not saying I'm just writing it because that's something we've really been trying to add and it's been kicked out you know I just gave it as a recent one but it could be anything it could be more manpower you know I mean it could be anything now we probably wouldn't I wouldn't recommend going to the cap first of all

120because we have the prorated taxes so there's some things that we got to keep in mind end up getting the prorated taxes you probably got a super majority and there's some other things you got to factor in but you know we would have stayed around one percent now we wouldn't have been at thirty about nine but we'd probably be around thirty and we'd probably be pretty close to closing this budget and maybe adding some things so what I do say and advocate is you want to strengthen the balance between tax relief and cutting every year so even if we rate I'm still going to try to cut like even mid-year because if I can cut then I can add to my you know positive balance at the end of the year and then I can

121put that in a reserve so just because we raise the levy doesn't mean I'm not going to try to become more efficient or help others become more efficient or reallocate resources you got to do both yes you do have to do that every year you have to break time right you have to do those things you're not going to have to plan by the time you're twelve you don't want that but you're going to you want to improve efficiency results right so another visual kind of start closing this up in terms of the discussion so the gap 1.5 million currently so we got our revenues our expenses don't match we've squeezed that down with some reductions some additional revenue we have a remaining gap of about 350 thousand so we got the option one which

122is further reduction okay we got the option two this is a mix we have the option three which is increasing the tax levy to just take care of this particular gap because we know we can do that at this point right with the reductions and the additional revenues the only thing I want to know about the additional revenues keep in mind that is a one time that's from the energy performance rebates so that goes away so next year there's going to be another gap that's going to be that's going to be part of it already because that's going away okay so at the bottom of each one of these situations that we started out with the zero percent now we're looking at what are going forward so we know going back we knew what the

123impact was we lost about eight million over the years our budget would be about two million higher right going forward if we go it's going to be the same thing we're going to lose about another eight million right and our budget is going to have to stay within that one percent or maybe less or maybe negative given the fact that we know we're going to lose state aid at some point when the federal money runs out at one percent the mix so it's a one percent increase over time flat keep it consistent for the community so they know what to expect total loss revenue is about 3.1 million okay so that's pretty good right let's add kind of in half not more so that's striking a balance and over time the budget will have to

124stay within now this is just on the level the local levy side stay within a million dollar increase okay so that other million dollars has got to come from state aid so that's the only part I don't know about right I don't know if my state aid is going to keep pace and then we add the 1.25 we lose about 2 million over time so in your mind you can kind of say a quarter percent is about a million dollars okay and then if we go to the cap this year and every year thereafter based upon how I smoothed it out so it's pretty close to 1.5 percent every year this one is the highest of all those years projecting out and things can change but the idea here is to keep it around 1.5

125we still have lost revenue of about 700,000 because in the budget last year we went at zero so we're going to lose that into perpetuity on our base so one thing I wouldn't recommend every year is going to the cap because again we got about 20 to 50k in prorated taxes that come back and if we go all around the prorated taxes then in I don't even know how you do it in arrears we kind of have to say oh we should have went to a super majority because we said we were only going to go to 28 million but we got prorated taxes back of 100,000 I'm just using odd numbers and then you actually went over the cap so you got to be careful when you do go to the cap to make

126sure because there does seem to be a significant level of prorated taxes in North Carolina that might not be the case in other districts but I would say you want to stay below about 50k if you were to choose this option over time so in summary I think the idea again stability, efficiency talked about these things many times the world which I work looking at the economic factors the planned use of reserves but I think this one right here the levy target that's a big one, I can count on you can count on, you can count on one percent every year or about one and a quarter every year I kind of know going into this discussion what our target is, so now we can figure out how do we get everything back into balance

127given what's happening on the state side so cuts might be more attached to hey state aid just isn't good I think we would have to live with that and that might be the future what if we can add the reserves now people might say you shouldn't increase taxes because you don't need to well you might need it three years from now so that's kind of the idea of long range planning so that was the planning for the moment and book dates which I think everybody knows about that at home, if you don't know, these are the dates so next steps identify the expense side so we'll come back full budget and I'm going to structure that based on the levy that we set I don't know if it will necessarily be I'll turn it back

128over to you I have a discussion now so we know what we're going into April 14th so there is some unknowns still coming from Albany as far as final numbers and how we can use that the next year or two I do think I got a feel that we were looking at possibly one or something in that range for this current year and with what I've been talking with administrators and principals about what I propose to not replacing staff and the other places we've said we've cut the paper and things like that, right here we've cut but I think we can make the budget work so just again, put it in when you're out on the street nobody wants to hear the tax rates going up, right? But something people do understand is like the

129state changes minimum wage, we have no choice people are in unions, they have contracts they have oated raises those things happen every year so if the state is taking money away and we're going at zero eventually it's going to mean less programs or less services however you want to say it, you don't have to threaten them with programs you can just say it's going to mean less services so we try to fill the balance just like in your household like if you decide to go on a balanced budget for your gas and electric bill there's a chance that I want to know heat bill in the summer and I'll have the money in the winter when I have it because it's next to nothing and I like that having a gas bill in the summer

130so those are the things that I just kind of tell people how to talk to people now every once in a while you're going to get someone who is a Tony and you direct them to Tony and he in the middle and within 45 minutes the way is over and they'll be supportive for the general people that you're going to see nobody wants to hear higher taxes and I get it in board members 90% of board members get elected to keep taxes and I don't know that I think it was a great presentation in a lot of aspects that we showed you what the neighboring school districts are doing we also showed you that we're a pretty decent rate for houses and tax rates compared to those around us and I think we have great

131programs well what do we do we have retirement we try to keep projects save on energy bills we try to make cuts we don't replace we're never growing certain things we're lucky like with Michael Elizabeth all these things they want to do in special ed I want to support them and we're just lucky that because of kids graduating and not as many being in the firm I did have some staff where I didn't say we need more staff to run these programs but at some point you're going to need someone with a certification we don't have so you're going to have you know what I mean so I just thought it was great and so long as we're at one or a little higher I'm not worried about adopting a budget on the 14 so

132you can kind of go around and give us your thought on that if you want to be under one I'll give you some more ideas for cuts which well it's not drastic but it's not going to cut a program we did build in the SRO and the possible GT we did get another retirement late so that helped so you know everything kind of ebbs and flows there's no you know something that happens today can change tomorrow because you don't know what's going to walk in the door so Zach who are you thinking somewhere between the one and a 1.5 range personally we see it start getting closer to that 1.5 anyway they start building it up with one time money plus starting out next year with at least $400,000 deficit is from the energy rebate

133that we're using to balance this year's budget it's one time money it's not good money I think we need to start moving towards that plan this year I've always said it I'm definitely 1 to 1.5 I also think it was a great presentation I wish everybody in the community would watch it and I'm also okay with between 1 to 1.5 I'm a little more conservative I'd like to see around 1.25 and I'd like to talk to more people within the community to see how they feel before I make a firm decision but my gut is telling me between 1 and 1.5 interesting great presentation I agree with much of your perspective on it I'm a little bit like I think it's important to say when we say money on the table when you look for

134money left on the table it's not really to me that doesn't paint a picture of what we get by not going to the maximum because the money wasn't left on the table the money was left on the taxpayers that's what money left on the table is and you know it was difficult last year to say 0% because we knew that it might handcuff the district or import because we did leave some things on the table but at the same time we're looking at trying to look out for the residents as well so I know what you're saying as it compiles there's millions of dollars that we could have had but there's also millions of dollars that we didn't have because we never were zero either so at the end of the day I support I

135think it's obvious at this point as they did we should support a 1-1.5% tax increase 1.5% to 1.62 so yeah I would support it I'd like to see exactly what it would entail as far as services gain which you're outstanding at so I know you will alright thank you all first I think great presentation as always I think really that when it comes down to it I think we get lumped in with some of the city's shenanigans sometimes and they just look at their tax rate and they say okay I pay you know whatever this crazy amount of taxes are and they don't look at okay this is the this is the city this is the county this is the school and what in the library yesterday I think but today so vote in the

136library and I don't think they see the value a lot of times in some of those different line items so I think one we need to do a better job I think last year we did a really good job of selling the budget the process I think these are huge all these documents if we could get this posted online I think people this could be a good thing we could say hey look at this see where we are by comparison the services that we provide versus some other districts I think that this is that's huge selling the fact that we had two tax cuts in a six year time frame I think that's a good thing that we could sell as well but I agree I'm in the one to one point five range as

137far as the levy goes and this I'm not going to go here but I have some faith in the in the state budget I really do think that they have a good group in the legislator to say we need to spend more on education the needs are higher than ever I think you're going to see a push pull from the legislator to say what does that local share look like versus the state share I think just from watching some things that Senator Merritt said that she really wants to pull away from that local share and shift it more to the state so what that looks like how they do that I don't know I know there's a lot of things coming down the line from the state but I have some faith that we're going

138to see increasing state budgets so knock on wood what's today's date March 17th, 2021 Patrick State dear lord I'm folding and the last thing to put this on the website so I think overall well done I think we're in a good spot and you know we got a little ways to go still all right we do have a couple of deeper policies to look at tonight and hopefully adopt I don't know if I'm going to take a five minute break and people don't have to stay for that I mean I know it's getting kind of late compared to our usual but you need to stretch your legs for the day after and then Katie and I will walk you through our plan for these Title IX and sexual harassment type of things walk or run

139well Katie and then me right have been going through all these updates and the district was behind on ours and in the time it took us to get this ready for adoption tonight this week there's been some updates so we looked at them and a lot of them are those ones I bring to you like must instead of shall and little things so I said rather than confuse everybody let's walk them through what we know is an adoption because it'll bring us from it'll bring us up what five or six years maybe more and then I said because if it's not we have April 14 if someone has a question and then it's May and we get a complaint we're working over policies so we gotta get up to 2011 from 11 to 21 where

140we're trying to go so Katie will walk you through we went through this already once if you remember the very detailed presentation from Katie always another good one and we had some questions and Kristen brought a couple of things I think Erica said something as well we went back we got some feedback from Wayne we sat down again we made our suggestion to you we feel it's good the way it is and anything that comes up in the next couple of months will most likely be buried so as you were told we adopted policy 3421 which is a brand new policy which was Title IX in sex discrimination outlining Title IX as a whole big umbrella as well as the grievance process for any formal complaint relevant to sexual harassment and the definition of sexual

141harassment under Title IX so that was that lengthy 19 page policy that you adopted because of the adoption of that policy and changes to Title IX it then tipped the domino into other policies relevant so as Greg just said we did just receive a policy called update from Area 1 outlining the addition of some policies that you're not seeing tonight as well as for three of the specific policies that you are seeing tonight some additional changes that are now being recommended as of this week so in talking with Greg again I think updating to make it as current as we can be and then we may be updating again in future months so the first one is a pretty simplistic update it's our general code of conduct for all school districts personnel you'll see there's

142two very simple recommended updates one referring to that new policy 3421 which falls on page one and again that policy 3421 outlines the specific definition for sexual harassment so if you want to refer to the summary as we did last time and then your policy should be in the order that we'll refer to them tonight so it's referencing that policy specifically for detailed information and then on page three a word change from it to any right now we don't have any accompanying regulations for this specific policy because this policy outbranches to all of our anti-harassment anti-discrimination policies and so we abide by the regulations and apply both procedures within either those policies or the regulations that have been developed for them the second policy 3420 non-discrimination and anti-harassment so this is due with all protected

143classes along with sexual harassment and anything that is discriminatory policy services has notified us that we can anticipate other 2021 updates so I anticipate that this will resurface again for another policy update but again I do think and Greg definitely thinks that we should update it at least current reflection of 3421 because all school districts just got those updates this week yeah so on within this specific policy if you look at page two because of the addition within policy 3421 really outlining what constitutes a formal complaint it's referring the initiation of the district's Title IX grievance process and the reference to that policy specifically because if you recall if there's a formal complaint using the formal complaint form that is what that initiates the very specific time frame and scope and sequence of that specific

144grievance policy in reference to sexual harassment and the other recommended update at this point is the references to policy 3421 which again is a newly adopted policy as well in the reference to DASA, Dignity for All Students Act which that refers over and over and over again to maintaining a climate that is safe comfortable conducive to learning and being free from harassment or discrimination. Again though the policy glass that we received earlier this week is probably going to be some additional changes but we at least want to have a reference that we do need to refer to 3421 for the formal complaint of sexual harassment in that process because that is required now by law the third policy is a simple reference to the newly adopted policy policy 3421 so staff and student relations or

145fraternization recommendation that we refer to 3421 as well as an existing policy which is also going to be undergoing some recommended updates the specific policy within the student section of the policy in the annual sexual harassment of students. Any questions on those first three keeping in mind they're all it's like a rabbit hole the next policy is 7551 sexual harassment of students. Now within that first paragraph there's the reference to the newly adopted policy and then it should be read in conjunction with this policy on page two then we're going to apologize for instead of it saying Title IX officers it should say coordinators so in the past this policy referred to civil rights officer as a broad general scope but with the addition of the new policy Title IX the district is to have

146two minimum of two Title IX coordinators at all times so we do want that language to reflect Title IX coordinator so I apologize for that typo it has since been corrected so on page two in that third paragraph the reports then go to who the district is designated as those Title IX coordinators which right now would either be myself or Great Burgess keeping the language of course that we recommend them to be in writing but any complaint would be promptly investigated within terms of this policy as well as policy 3421 which is the new policy and then if I was the alleged offender clearly I would not be the Title IX coordinator in investigating this and so it would either be the other Title IX coordinator or anyone who would designate to then step into

147a similar role. Another addition on that page is again the outline that the formal complaints initiate that grievance process which is brand new. There's another addition of Title IX coordinator lastly is the note to refer to policy 3421 this particular policy isn't on the policy pulse last yet as needing any other future updates but it could be any questions on that one? Next one 6121 is sexual harassment of district personnel this is the second policy that we were notified will have additional updates that are will be forthcoming. So the additional updates to this one specifically Erie 1 and the attorney they're looking to add to the overview and the scope and application that this policy reaches to as well as moving through fine-tuning the reporting of the allegation section within notifications and the references state

148human rights laws so I don't have any of those updates yet those are the things that they're working on but until then to make sure that this is reading in alignment with the new policy we are recommending the following changes so on page 1 again under what constitutes sexual harassment we do need to specifically state that the district policy 3421 defines under Title IX what constitutes sexual harassment and we should be reading that policy in tandem with this one. On page 4 there are a couple of recommended changes the changing of the addition of district's Title IX coordinator so making sure that that involvement in that title is specifically named within this policy which it hadn't been in the past. Again under the reporting sexual harassment section I'm seeing on page 4 district Title IX

149coordinator and then at the bottom under supervisory responsibilities district Title IX coordinator so again it was a civil rights compliance officer that was a named administrator or person prior to the adoption of 3421 and now anything with sexual harassment is automatically on page 5 under the subheading investigating complaint if a form so it talks about investigations are going to be conducted in a timely manner and we've had a lot of conversations around that if a formal complaint is filed under Title IX the grievance process and policy 3421 is initiated and when that's initiated there are even smaller time frames that are embedded within the steps down below speak to overall investigations whether it's a formal complaint or verbal someone observed something whatever the case may be anything that anytime the district has knowledge of a

150concern regarding sexual harassment of course we investigate and begin that process immediately. So the language here was actually taken from 3421 for that not for the full fledged grievance process but the outline of what an investigation would look like. So you can see in letter A if I were to receive a complaint I review it taking any interim actions and I thought we should add the language including the provision of supportive measures so before the investigation itself even begins it's the complainant finding out what is needed in that moment so that safety is ensured while an investigation takes place. There's changes in language again district Title IX coordinator and then back half of B all the way down through F is taken right from policy 3421 so that they rebate them because they should. Now

151whether in BOCES next policy update whether they make any changes to that or shorten it and we'll see at least now we know that these updates is the last page which is the reference to policy 3420 so again this is one where we might see some significant recommended updates coming forthcoming and then the last policy dignity for all students this is probably the most important one that we update right now at this time even though it is the three of three as far as whether there are more forthcoming updates for because our policy that we currently have adopted is from 2012 which community for all students asked became a law in 2010 we asked we had to act on it as school districts July one of 2012 clearly we had a policy in place but

152there have been significant changes since then and so the in the fall of 2020 there were recommended changes that were pretty substantial as far as outlining the role of the dignity of coordinators in each of our school buildings as well as overall requirements outlined in law as far as the reporting of bullying or discrimination and these changes for this policy all came about because of the office of the state controller audit found incidents where school districts were not properly reporting instances of bullying, discrimination and so because of that new policy needed to be put in place that further delineated the expectation on each of our schools and then the district to the commissioner and to the state and so with that there's the addition of reporting material incidents both within the district as well as

153then to the commissioner and then there's also been a publication section added to the policy so if you look at the first page of that you'll see our commitment to creating a government that's free of harassment, bullying and discrimination you'll see that we prohibit discrimination against all, any and all protected classes and that even off of school property school sponsored events the dignity at coordinator you can see needing to be approved by the board the credentials that that individual individuals need to have the training that's all clearly delineated. Then the district's obligation to publicize who these dignity at coordinators are in their contact information and where that occurs within the code of conduct so even thinking about our calendars right now we're talking about some revisions that we could make there the time frame as

154far as if the dignity at coordinator were to vacate the position the time frame to appoint another dignity coordinator overall training and awareness for all staff members, all employees so when we think about our annual acknowledgment that we completed at the beginning of the year the dignity at DASA is part of those one part of those acknowledgments when we have Dr. Bradley in to do her presentation, not only does she touch on a lot of things, but DASA is certainly one of those topics that all of our staff members hear and then within certification for teaching personnel taking the class on DASA as part of certification requirements to even obtain a certification to be able to teach her anymore the internal reports and investigations of harassment bullying and discrimination the oral report needing to be

155within one day of it being observed or reported to a staff member and that means that oral report is made promptly to the principal dignity coordinator Mr. Wojtyla and then within two days written it outlines the investigation of that the other changes because of that audit are the reporting incidents if you look at page four reporting incidents to the superintendent at least once during the year we provide a report on the data and any trends that we're seeing within our building so that really takes place with the school safety and educational climate surveys that we complete, we complete that by building much of that information comes right from our e-school management system which is where we have administrators trapped and keep trapped and running a record by a student as well as if it's an

156offense that falls within VADER which would be the violent incident reporting or DASA which is the anti-bullying and anti-discrimination and then clearly those conversations are taking place at the building level what trends are we noticing and how are we addressing that within building-wide programming, what's the climate within the building, are there areas of the building where we're seeing these incidents become more often than others and then at the elementary level how are we equipping kids to one, understand what is bullying what's the definition of bullying and how do we create kids who are compassionate and empathetic to the world more than those who live in it so that kids are aware of how they're expected to be respectful to everybody no matter what then the material incident report goes to the Commissioner of Ed which

157goes through our state system so it's based off of our e-school data and the input of any of these incidents. We have those conversations with Mr. Waitella and then between Mr. Cambrone and Mr. Waitella they submit by school and by district all of that up to the state level for the Commissioner to review. So those are all changes that didn't sit within this policy prior. And then on the last page 505, the reference to Title IX and sex discrimination So this policy as a whole is a recommended adoption minus the addition of Title IX and sex discrimination because they're feeling it's going down the pipe in their next review of it would be an up to nine year update from what we had in place that was recommended by both of these at the end

158of 2020 due to we bought it by way so after they get done with their investigation we'll probably get a hold of them. So this probably again probably. I mean really we were joking a little bit but I mean that's really we're in a policy file case now that we'll say well we can't get them on this because it wasn't listed in a policy or you know we can't do that because of this or whatever and so that's good to recommend everybody safe. So the sexual harassment of district personnel the Dignity for All Students Act and the 3420 anti-harassment anti-discrimination policies those probably surface again and then we'll also be looking at equal employment opportunity because there's sex discrimination that's addressed within that as well as equal educational opportunities and hazing of students references to

159and really their effort is to create the consistency between all of these policies so they read in tandem with one another. But I do feel confident that at least even though some of these still may surface again or as we are in alignment with Policy 3. Any questions? We're going to take a motion to approve those. Does everyone go with that? It is recommended the Board of Education approves the changes to the Title IX policies as presented. Just need a motion. Colleen in second. Crystal all in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So the next one is the student gender identity again as Casey was saying through URI-1 policy updates needs that are handled formally in the same case going to work with a very individual case by case right so while I'm saying maybe

160that we don't necessarily need the parent commission that doesn't need the parents' side of the community set that up and we've had probably over a handful of boards that we've talked to about passing the test for how they're identifying and what that would mean and if things are missing but again he said it's a very one-on-one individual type of thing that's happening for why and how common where are they within a program that's modified while there are some generalities in here as far as that the key things was how recorded key terms and updating people with this and then things that we need to do within corrections and while there's general policy on it here we would definitely at this point we would recommend having something that means nothing if something comes up that doesn't

161defend or protect anybody we were kind of a limbo with Wayne Van Wieg who who guided us through all this type of stuff and then calling around with what other superintendents were doing calling the community commission comes down to respect their wishes one that I think schools do a great job usually of dealing with and explaining and talking to kids and if we're talking about the things that get done with the other policies really kind of define what is bullying what is being accepted and tolerant for everybody and then we just work out things that are not feeling like they come up yeah I think it is one that we're still developing you know and learning and it's a newer thing it's not new but it's a newer thing where it's more popular in schools

162that are getting great yeah I'll be I apologize but what I just oh you went through that I definitely went through it on some things but I want I want to answer more questions that I went into again because the biggest thing that I just wanted to say there is a stunning amount of concern for young children and others that are identifying these trends and having associated mental health issues and so I squint-shotted a bunch but I didn't want to bring anything else but parents are asking in some cases begging with all of the mental health points of value that the students can get a child a friend for as part of this I mean there's so many things involved but I just couldn't help but to look at it and say how are we

163you know a state who are how are we not looking at this as the most intense parent-student process ever in schools because I don't see how it could go well without an intense partnership of a parent and a school teacher and I understand that as far as just because we say it and just because it is about age we're in a condition where we could make sure that we're one I think we would because we've always done that even with a lot of credit cards they think it's rushed, isn't well thought out I think it concerns me to see the state push something with still so many questions out there and so we have to do what we have to do, we can't break the law but I have still a lot of the same

164concerns that you guys were talking about with me and being part of that in a big case when you talk about the mental health with pay or straight or whatever it is it couldn't just say it's great because it is that connection with the parents and the parents accepting and do all that but at the end of the day stress and problems at school and we have health there but they go home and it doesn't stop there's social media, there's outlets it all continues so I'd like to see them do a lot more of that for everybody because it's my son who had Asperger's and I mean he was different we dealt with that at home with parents it's not related to sex necessarily as any piece where everybody's going through something right when they're

165in middle school and high school and then to be dealing with a good thing because they're getting to where they should be we have to help them get well positioned, a social worker, an accountant in the general public. Yeah I think you'll see this back right there. And this might seem small but when I look at the use of pronouns and I look at the use of them within the policy itself I feel like there's a little bit of conflict so I'd like to maybe talk about that because I see like on page one we talk about gender identity and it's male, female either or both right and then a little bit further down when we talk about transition it says there and to me that's appropriate and I don't know if it gets too

166deep into semantics but I think if this is something that we want to do the right way it should be held in consideration. Further throughout the document we revert back to his or her, his or her, his or her and that runs throughout until the last page where we start to talk about dress code and we are in the plural and I am the teacher so it says students at the beginning of the sentence dress code into the uniform but I see that there again and again this is a plural sentence but I think that perhaps we should pay some attention to how we're addressing this. . . . . . . . . . Typically, this would be the one, yes, that we talk about it and adopt it. And we don't, because of

167the last one we went through and in detail, this was just adding 3421 to the policy or his or her, there wasn't a positive. And this one, while it's, we weren't making a lot of changes to it, and so that's now what we talked about, standard one, we've come back to it. So you're not gonna not have one at some point, I have here, but we could wait until we have a 14th. I will just say that we are dealing with it in a few different ways right now, and we adopt it, and we're working with parents and we're doing our best, and right now everything's happy with it. They asked us to make a couple changes recently, and we did, and I got a message from the parents saying, you can see them crying

168in tears of happiness because their children may win, so things like that. So we're working on it. By policy, we're gonna have to do it anyway. We will honor that, you know what I mean? So, and kind of following the policy, but if we did or we didn't, and then he started to bring a lot of food, the 14th, we have two weeks off, and then we're back, so don't help with that. It's something that's gonna go over itself. Yeah, but I mean, what would they... Nobody is gonna have questions about it, how it's done, and why it works. You know, there's not just one or one person that wants to go home. Well, we're all coming at it from, we know that we're living in a different era where we have to go identify

169differently and we want to help them. What is not in the policy, which is just as important, but is educating everyone. We can train everyone to go somewhere. So what does it mean when there's a transgender bathroom or a bathroom that's just as adult, or is it one person to two persons? That's another piece now of what educators have to do. And we have to teach this, and we have to educate parents as well. Fine, this is normal. This is normal for them. This is what it means if you're not comfortable with it about that, if you understand it. Identity is anything new, but it wasn't really talked about either. So I'm sure we had students who felt uncomfortable in the school, and it wasn't talked about. But this new generation, it's all about pronouns

170and feeling comfortable with yourself. So I just feel like it's probably been talked about in the school by the students frequently as well. So I think the fact that there's nothing on the record to help the student who has been confident enough to say that they feel uncomfortable, I think that's important to have something to reflect on. Well, and really the policy is to help guide adults, right? Because well-meaning, as they may be, they could, an adult could say, well, you know, nothing's gonna make me call you that. Or this is what's in my computer, and that's what I'm gonna say. And then that's what the law says. Because we should have had a policy that says it was changed from the GICCO because we were notified, and we went in and we changed it

171right from the GICCO. Error comes out of error, so vice versa. You know what I mean? Like whatever they're doing. So that's really what it's about. And then the whole rest of it is, yeah, you mean that's why it goes all the time. It is about the adults. I, full disclosure, I have a transgender cousin, and she did not feel comfortable coming out to her parents because they said things not meaning anything by it because they didn't know what she was doing with on the inside. And, you know, when you don't educate the adults on how to approach it the correct way, you know, the students internalize that, you know? Well, and there's a lot of cases, I think it's changing now, but like 10 years ago, where the students would confide in someone at

172school because they knew they weren't gonna have that judgment with their other parents. And then that was the problem is that school couldn't, or, you know, or then they got into a fight with the parent and how dare you talk to my child about that if it came about to the adults and that's the perfect feeling. So I don't know if they'll change this. I will send the, you know, say, what do you think? And they might say, well, that's a bigger review. We got to just take a look at the core things with the pronouns that we're gonna ask them about, but I think we're gonna be finding the way it is. We'll update it. That's pretty bold of them. Fox or on the line if you would consider what to say? I'm okay

173with just putting it on the books and making a change to it if they have to, but I'm okay with it. Gabby? Yeah, I'm gonna swap out. We'll put it on though, and we'll bring it back on the 14th as far as that. And any policy, any time any parent is listening or a few later, you can always talk to them about anything you're gonna do with it. But it will be on the 14th as well, whether they made the changes to the pronouns or not. Maybe the organization like GLIT found a lot of GSA advisors to provide us with all other things that may be not just related around topics and training types. Great for the district, but are you suggesting that they have to come to the board and need to be aware?

174If we have a question that they could, if they feel like they could offer us some senior board members. I'd like to start with sports, et cetera, because I'm sure they have some people on how to handle such a situation, which is with sex-saturated sports. All of these figure hats, when that post-psychologist, what are the issues of sex-saturated sports trained in? From the perspective that I would be most interested, but of course, other organizations that are in the south would also be very good at it. I guess that's honestly a lot of my hesitation. So in an example like that, our social workers are in continuing that they're not well versed on what to tell them and how to deal with it. Mike's sending them out. So if I was the athletic director, the school

175principal today, and this case came up, the first place I'm going with my guys, our social worker, to say, this person's here, how can we help them? How close are they to the team? Getting on them, going to the board's team, and that's doing it. It doesn't really start with the team. It starts with the only one right now, or that, because they have to get the green card. There are steps that they're not, you know, fun. So there's a lot of things that happened before, and there's a pre-cursors to that team. And they would be on the boys or girls team now, and not one of them, right? So they would want to say, you know, I'm courageous today, I identify this way. I want to change teams, and there would be a problem.

176There's a physical, you know, I mean, like, there's all those things that happen. So, but yes, I would contact them, and they have something that they can send us, or a clip, or a video, if they want to complete the amenity, there's about that, then, I'll see if they can do that. They were kind of updated in training. They meet here monthly. And what's nice about that is they meet eight clubs. So a lot of these cases right now are play school, but they're talking with the middle school counselors and social workers, and they're talking with the elementary as it moves down, so they're learning and they're hearing how to handle it, what do we do, you know what I mean? So, you know, that's the one thing, too, and when I had a parent

177contact me after the one, or maybe one revert, very popular, that's a team that, you know, we've got a lot of board members on there that need to be educated. So I think we're saying that, in the best way to help them make sure everybody feels comfortable, looking at a policy, we want to make sure everybody's, not just us, who are adopting it, but just because there's a policy, you're saying, how do people out there know how to do it? And, you know, that's the huge thing that has just grown out, we need to change. In their September list, there's Greg Waitilla, the first state of school, and Wallace Gracie Waitilla. You know what I mean? I'm like, well, wait a minute. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I don't think that would

178ever happen, but it could be, you know, where the name would have changed. So, those are all the things to train. I need someone who, since I don't know how to answer them, even though it's probably likely that more of it is figured out than I do, at the same time, this seems to be one where there's so many questions involved. I personally feel like I don't know anything about it. So, it just seems like people are like, yes, that probably does have, I don't know, maybe I don't even need that information to answer all of that. It just seems like this one has so many questions, so a little knowledge. So, can I ask, when, that conference that you went, you told me a little bit about it, that it was really more about

179dealing with the patient fallout, right? More than the identity. Conversation of, it's not about, like, the racing, it was about, like, how do you deal with it, right? So, like, you pass that, and then you're like, okay, this isn't something that we have to address. Yeah. The house here is supporting every single thing, two and a half hours. Well, if the parents and I hadn't handled this, it could be very difficult, right? And I think I'm like, well, you know what I mean? Well, again, it's just kind of going in a circle, and so I don't know if you know what I mean. It is scary with the no eight, but we mean, take any kind of insect out of it, it's, you know, kids can emancipate them. It has a certain name, right, but

180there is a name. So, there's a name. So, I mean, there's a difference, but the same token, you know, we've always had some way for kids to sort of get what they need or feel like they want to say, or identify how they want. So, you know, sort of the good thing about this is that it takes months every day. We're gonna learn more, we're gonna be educated more, and we are gonna stumble and fall, unless you live it. And even if you're living it, that doesn't mean you know how to change your social security hierarchy. You know, all the things that come along with when you really do things, right? I know how children begin to think of all of this when that happens. So, yeah, I think we're gonna learn a lot in

181the coming year. All right. So, I guess we'll go to 4.2 then. It is recommended the Board of Education approves the new policy 7554, student gender identity is presented. Is there any motion? I think there's a motion. Sure, and I'll make a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye, any opposed? Motion carries. The next two are just for the budget vote, Mr. Mancaro. So, I think they're boilerplates. It's recommended the legal notice for public hearing annually. And then that we're also viewing the appointment of the board. So, we've got to put this in compliance with that fee. And then setting for the Board of Registration. Anything you want to point out there on any of these different terms? The resolution here for the annual notice is not much different. A couple items added up to the

182state in the Board of Registration, just making that a bit more official. So, as a small city school district here in Hawaii. So, there'll be one day when people can come. And I was telling a couple board members before the meeting started, we have officially now have one day to do it, but people can still come that day. We absolutely would as well, but as a small city school district, we learned that we're supposed to sit here a day and sign people up if they want to. There's just another place for us to go where they could register. But as in any school board election, you can come in with your property application and see your hiring days rather than people. So, we'll go to 5.1. As recommended, the Board of Education approves the legal

183notice of the public hearing, budget vote, and elective resolution as presented. In motion? Eric, in a second? Yes. Crystal, all in favor? Aye. Aye, motion carries. And then we'll go to 5.2. Upon the recommendation of the Superintendent of School, the Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services, upon the motion being duly made by, we'll make that a second, and seconded by the Board of Education of the City School District of North Carolina, your vice-president and adoptee, that's titled the resolution as presented, and that's here to the motion. Colleen, I'll make the second. All in favor? Aye. Aye, motion carries. 5.3. Upon the recommendation of the Superintendent of Schools and the Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services, and upon the motion being duly made by, and seconded by the Board of Education of the City School District of North

184Carolina, your vice-president and adopte, attached to the resolution in the form presented, and that's here to the motion. So moved. Colleen, I'll make the second. Second. All right, Gabby, all in favor? Aye. Aye, motion carries. Anything else before we adjourn? I've got quick stuff. Sure. Okay. Youth Board, really cool stuff coming on, Easter egg hunt on 4-3, it's going to be split into three parts, Greenwoods and during the clinic, Barron Park. There'll also be a sensory Easter egg hunt on 4-3 later in the afternoon. There's also going to be a senior scavenger hunt on June 12th, from nine to five, and that's a study report, so stay tuned for that. The Youth Board also just gave approval for district support for a senior driving movie, and that's on June 20th, or I'm sorry, June 30th.

185The gates will open at eight, then we will start at nine fifteen, and I believe that the students are going to be selecting that. There are a couple parameters. Where is it? In the hot spots? Mm-hmm, yep. And then chant. There are two events that are going to be coming up. There'll be a smoke-free park event. That'll be on Saturday, June, or I'm sorry, May 22nd, from 12th, four, at Mayors Park. Lots of really cool things going on with that, including the giveaways. There was mention in a way, and that rolls into the last event for chant to announce right now at the Bike Rodeo. That's June 4th, and that's going to include a QQ6 office class, and I do not have the place for that, but I believe that that's in partnership with- There's

186one of them, yeah. I think it might be the one. Is that it? Yeah. Thank you, Liz. Yeah. Okay, so that's what I've got. Just the Building Conditions Survey. The architects for- And you have the date, right? We were looking at, let me just make sure. I think it was the third day, we pulled, it was supposed to be the 15th, and I think it was the day after. Or maybe- Or maybe the 13th. So, Wednesday, so it's the day after that. It's Thursday. Can I ask if there's any more? Yeah, there's a little bit. Again? So, if there's any one, and we're looking after one o'clock. I'm starting at one o'clock, and we need, this is another five hours, another one, that the architects will come and give you a presentation. Okay, what is

187this all about, your board? Yeah, we would like to have a couple more numbers, just based on the selection. You can have up to three. April 15th, that's April 15th. April 12th. Yeah, there's four. I could do them there. Again? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Good time here. Very good. So, Eric and Nancy. Anything else? All right, not seeing anything else, just need a motion to adjourn at 9.07. Don't move. And second? All in favor? Aye. And we'll be here. Thank you very much. So, it's hard, it's like, oh, I'm starting to get sad. I don't know. I don't know. It's okay. It's not what I want to hear, though. April 5th, again. No, no, we agreed. Oh, no, we agreed? Oh, right. But I just want people to know that when they build that library, then

188all...