Board of Education, Regular Meeting

1. 3:03All right. Thank you all for being here. I'd like to call the meeting to order and ask everybody to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. >> [clears throat] >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh Leslie, roll call, please. Mark de Pace Here. Amanda Grubler Kiersten Gustavson Diana Howard Here. Matthew Maccar Here. Maureen Sheridan Here. Mike Sabella Here. I'd like to make a motion to accept the agenda as presented. Second. All in favor. And we will get right into it. Our budget presentation number five. Hello, everybody.
2. 4:16We have unquestionably traveled a long journey. Um looking at the budget lines for oops, virtually uh every one of our expended expenditures for next year. Uh the last one that we'll show you today is the Board of Education line. And really the focus of today's meeting is to fine-tune and hone in on what we want to commit to as far as allocation of money and assigned fund balance and or from our reserves and what tax levy we're interested in going out at. So, we'll see again the combination of what happens when we do different factors to try and get to a desired level of revenue for the district. Uh and then it will be on us to figure out how we match revenue to our expected expenditures or vice versa, I really should say, to match our expenditures to our expected revenue.
3. 5:25So, as I mentioned, we'll talk about the Board of Education lines today, tax levy impact on our taxpayers based on a $200,000 home, budget planning around all of the factors that I mentioned, the gap that we foresee right now based on the 63.1 million. Looking at potential retirements and vacancies and of course uh areas of potential reduced expenditures that um we will need to discuss and consider. Can you hear me? Is this on or something or on to me? I can hear you. Okay. So, I'll begin Oh, there we go. Thank you. Okay. Um so, we're going to start this evening with looking at the preliminary budget for 1010 Board of Education. And so, this is pretty consistent from the previous year. You will notice um the
4. 6:30current appropriation is um quite higher than our initial appropriation. This is due to um the New York State School Board Association um some uh membership opportunities for new board members and also um the superintendent search is expensed out of this line. Um but projecting for next year, just that slight increase, which is similar to the initial appropriation. We also have our um district clerk um which is very similar to the previous year. And the last is 1060, our district meeting line for our preliminary preliminary budget. And um if you notice 106400 um also had an increase in the current appropriation um due to poll workers. News- newspaper ads or printing materials that cost more than we had um expected for this year. But overall um
5. 7:33for the 2026-2027 preliminary budget, expecting something very similar. Those additional costs were due to the uh JLE uh proposition. For 106400, yes. So, those additional poll worker um newspaper ads or yes. So, as part of this budget um presentation this evening, we're going to see some estimated tax impact across three different potential um percentage increases. Here, you'll see um annual and monthly differences. Um these are based on current published rates per 200 uh $200,000 home value. And so, obviously, if your home was more um had a value that was higher than that, then that would um be increased by that number.
6. 8:35So, this is a 2% increase if that was our um tax at this rate. It's also important to note that the towns won't actually establish their rate until after our budget vote. Yeah, like April or May. And so, these are all projections and this is typically um what what we would be looking at this time. Excuse me, I have a question. Where did you come up with the $200,000 value of a home? Actually, traditionally, my most districts do 100,000, not because they presume that that's the value of someone's home, but because if I had a $4,000 home, I can multiply four times. If it's a $500,000 home, I can multiply five times. This was a a little bit of a at least a a gentle rise to 200,000, knowing the math is more complicated for people at a glance, but at least it's uh more realistic. I think the average home value uh in the district or at least in Hudson is around 460,000.
7. 9:38But that means that there are outliers outliers all the way down to 100,000 and those that are millions and millions that are affecting our average. We know that. All right, cuz it's trying to find a home under 200 almost impossible in Columbia County. Yeah, that's not the presumption. We're not presuming the home costs that. It's just to try and make it easier for math, cuz if we said 460,000 or 500,000, if your home was less than that, then you really got a math problem. Not that that's a bad thing. But, it would require a little bit more finesse. But, you're basing all your numbers off of the 200,000. Yeah, so people can >> to if your home costs 400,000 you're going to double what you see there. >> But, you're right. It doesn't approach what the mean or the average is right now in any of our townships. >> Okay. And So, this is the estimated tax impact with a 3.44% increase. Which, um, as you can see for annual difference and monthly difference, obviously, that is an increase and and, um, an impact. And again, with the 5.8% increase.
8. 10:52I wanted to take another look at our reserves. Um, these balances reflect the district's audited reserves at the year end of 2024-2025 and provide a snapshot of total reserve levels by their category. Um, it is important to note that approximately 900,000 dollars was allocated to support and balance the current year's budget, which is not a sustainable solution. But, this is another area to look at in terms of, um, balancing the budget. It's And it has been used previously. And so, I want to make you aware and, um, really have a sense of the numbers. The amounts that were used this year are the asterisk little asterisk numbers >> [clears throat] >> on the left-hand side next to the titles. So, these reserves are established for long-term purposes, such as stabilizing pension costs or covering employee benefit obligations, addressing workers' compensation and unemployment claims, funding unexpected repairs, and helping
9. 11:55offset future tax increases. So, as a result, using reserves for ongoing operations, um, like has that we've been doing is a one-time solution and reduces the district's ability to manage these costs and risks over, um, a sustainable long-term time. Well, I have a question on the slide. The bottom? Um, on the previous slide. Mhm. Is there a reason why, like, the employee retirement contribution is so low compared to last year's or it's because we've not We're not done with the year yet? So, the each year, the from '23, '24, and '25, that money has been used. So, it's been expensed as a part to balance the budget in those categories. So, that's why they're you're seeing every year it's going down a little bit. And employee retirement contributions are one of those factors that have continued to go up rapidly. Um, they usually announce sometime
10. 12:58between January and and March what the expected next year's rate will be. It did go down just a hair this year, but it's still eight about 8%. It's been as high as 12 some years, 12% and, of course, you know, um, you know, a district our size, um, that's every employee has this district contributing to retirement. So, when it goes up 12%, that's a significant amount of money and that's what the reserve is able to help us mitigate sometimes. So, here's the work. Um, Yeah. It's trying to figure out what the best fit is for the district, um, to try and bridge the gap between our anticipated expenditures and our proposed revenues. As we talked about, uh, she showed the 2%, 3.44, and the 5.8. And you know, as Hudson, like many
11. 14:03districts, hasn't really benefited from foundation aid this year. There actually was a slight reduction of about $58,000 in our BOCES aid without explanation. Uh, other than that, it's remained relatively flat. So, all the accelerating costs that we've described in the previous budget meetings, health insurance, um, retirement benefits, the, um, people's salaries, those have continued to go up, but foundation aid has remained flat. That's about half of our income. So, since that income has remained flat, that means the other half the taxpayers are responsible for needs to accelerate to make up for the gap left by no no raise in in foundation aid. We're able to find about another 175,000 dollars in revenue, uh, miscellaneous revenue, um, between last meeting and now. So, when you look at, um, all the revenues down here, this number's gone up from the last meeting that we had. And, you know, we're we
12. 15:06continue to brainstorm both with our, um, friends at Questar, um, people in the district, colleagues who are doing this work to try and figure out if there is any other revenue that we could anticipate, um, as we move forward. So, uh, the 0% tax levy is if we went out 0%, we would generate 26,362,000 and change. All the way up to the 5.8, which is up here, 27 million. 892. Did I view that right? Yeah. Uh, and you can see >> [clears throat] >> really the difference between two and 5.8, we're generating about an additional million dollars. We talked before, um, you know, that in general, one percentage point on the tax levy is about 300,000. So, you the math, you know, comes into make sense as it comes together. Uh, and there is some different allocations for unassigned fund balance.
13. 16:10We can use zero up to all of it if that was our choice. But, we recognize that there would be no room next year. We There would be nothing that we could do. Either we would have to have a tax levy that was double digit to try and bridge the gap of our expenditures and revenues. Um, or we'd have to significantly reduce workforce to try and meet that, uh, that gap. The idea is to try and figure out the best combination of ways to achieve what we need to do to close the gap between revenues and expenditures. Uh, and I mean, we keep putting 3.7 million down here as an example. That leaves 4% in our unassigned fund balance, which is about 2.7 million. Um, I I don't I mean, truly is the will of the board to do that, knowing that next year there's that 3.7 million is gone and we'd only have the 2.7 million dollars
14. 17:12to work with to do whatever we needed to do, insurance, transportation, special ed costs, whatever. So, it's a it's a dangerous balance. It can be a dangerous balance trying to figure out where the right middle ground is. Um, we give a recommendation of half this value as well, so you can see what that would look like if we didn't take the whole 3.7 million, instead taking 1.8 and the revenue that's generated in the end. >> [clears throat] >> We estimated 63.1 million in expenditures for next year based on everything that we anticipated that was in the budget this year and was not in the budget this year, but we did it anyway. You know, and that for all kinds of reasons. We've talked about those reasons. Uh, including summer school, including including some additional staff, including some additional programming that was just it was not budgeted. We did it and we expended that money. And as we come into the end of this year, we'll our, um, treasurer is estimating that
15. 18:15we're going to be pretty close to spending what we allocated. So, why they're not anticipating at this time 500,000 or million dollars left over at the end of the year. It That would be very difficult to do with our revenue and expenditure plan for this year because it didn't represent everything that was being spent. So, this is the hard talk, like I said. Where does the board's comfort and, um, where are we comfortable for our taxpayers? How much money are we comfortable expending from our unassigned or our reserves? Uh, just like this year, we took 900,000 from our reserves to ensure that we were stable in what the expenditure proposal was. No easy answers. Well, I guess I'll start [clears throat] it out if you're waiting for a comment. I'm not comfortable at all raising the taxes. I I had said last time we met that all
16. 19:18the assessments went up. My taxes doubled. I pay 586 dollars and 93 cents a month in in school taxes. Just for school taxes. So, I'm uncomfortable with any of those increases. What do you think about making up the shortfall, then? Um, I'm just in panic mode right now, just to tell you the truth. Uh, I'd like to talk about, um, other ways that we can look at Uh, well, I I prepared to present an idea that I don't know if anybody thought of. Uh, has anyone uh, thought about changing the uh, bed assignment for junior and senior high school and make it one and then reduce the administration costs in the junior senior high school and maybe open up the health insurance to different vendors so that we can have some competition.
17. 20:22Again, panic mode because again retired people don't have a lot of money and I'm here representing those people. Um, >> [clears throat] >> I guess in terms of holistically looking at this table which is examples. Um, go all the way to the right column. If we raise taxes 6% and we use up all of our excess unassigned fund balance. Uh, I know what the next slide says but we're still going to have to cut millions of dollars. So, the situation we're in is a function of not having access to the money to pay for everything. If we did that and still cut to your point, the excess fund balance would be gone at the end of the year next year. So, all we'd have left is that 4% cushion
18. 21:26which on a straight line of doing that would be would mean a million dollars in cuts next year because we just wouldn't have the money to do it and we'd spend our account to zero essentially. So, in year three we'd be looking at just another devastating dollar amount. So, in my opinion, I'd like to use the unassigned fund balance row that's there in a measured way to give us time to adjust in a meaningful sense to that disastrous cliff. I think there's more conversation we're going to have around this but I'm more inclined to aim for a million eight of unassigned fund balance for next year because it gives us roughly a four-year ramp to use the fund balance as a cushion to try and get things right. So. It's a matter of extending the mitigation. It's not a matter of
19. 22:29eliminating it. Yeah. There's not going to be a magic new revenue that's coming in. Our expenditures are expenditures. So, it's a matter of as you're describing is it now? How deep is now? Is it two years from now? How deep is two years from now? And and um, and all the other unknowns that that we encounter. Yeah, and I to your point about the state aid, I mean, state aid is half of our uh, budget. It's half of our revenue sources. This state aid number is less than what we got this year. Yeah. It's right. >> actually are seeing a slight decline in our state aid. If half of our revenue is flat or going down the tax [clears throat] is the only number that we can control. So, you know, if expenses go up 2%, tax have to go 4%. You know, that's the the math of the situation here. So, um, I think we need to I think those are the two variables we're talking about basically is the tax
20. 23:30rate and how much unassigned fund balance. I think we need to try to smooth out the unassigned fund balance over the next few years. Um, I don't I know there were some other tax rates that were put up in uh, previous meetings. I don't know that we can pass anything above 5% in my opinion. [cough] Yeah, and I should have further explained that. I I think based on our discussion from last time, um, our our desire was to push off the EPC $400,000 interest expense into 2027-28 which the highest possible percentage we could go out this year is 5.8. So, that if we made that decision to push it off because we'd said if we decided to pay it next year, we'd have to allocate 400,000 and the tax rate could be 7.33. But, we thought better to push it off into the future because then also uh, we'll begin to get aid on it. So, it won't just be 400,000, we'll get the return on it the following year. There's a benefit to it. Um, two questions just about revenue.
21. 24:37Uh, how how does our um, federal aid which is also questionable, how does that factor into this uh, these formulas? Is that stuff that none of that stuff is in our general fund? Um, No. So, it doesn't affect the number. >> our foundation aid, the formula we see from the state. Um, and you're right. Initially, the the governor or the state was giving every district the consolation prize of 1% on foundation aid and I think that that in the latest run has disappeared. Uh, there are some districts that are getting a lot more money and we're not getting that. Um, the other thing is I mentioned before we're hold harmless districts meaning that if they decided to rerun the formula and which is based on student enrollment, we would suffer a consequence for that as well. They're using old numbers as a basis for this for most schools in New York State and most schools have had a reduction in student enrollment. Um, so I don't I don't consider any of
22. 25:40it a blessing but it's another [clears throat] ticking in the background. If they decided to make that adjustment, it would immediately harm hundreds of school districts in New York State. I think to Diane's point that there are structural things we need to look at. We can't fix all of them right now. Health insurance is a big one. I don't know that I don't know what's going to happen with that. It seems like the state has got to step in. It's it's a cascading issue for all the districts. Um, but we can't really control that I think right now. I don't know that there's the ability at this moment to to seek another option. We're um, working with a consortium in an effort to try and mitigate that and and so that means all of us. I mean, uh, there's a lot of Questar schools in the same consortium. It is the the discussion among superintendents is whatever are we going to do? I I made that statement last time I think that I I left a group of superintendents and someone said the only program we're
23. 26:42going to have left is insurance. Nothing else. That's all we're going to be able to afford to pay for. Uh, and it is affecting every industry. Uh, every industry can charge more for their products. We cannot. I mean, we can to some extent but it's not as simple as extending our issue onto our customers. It's not as simple as that obviously. Well, and just to add to that sort of sentiment, even for this meeting I was just doing a quick search online and you can find districts across the state that have 4 million 5 million, 12 million, 15 million, 100 million dollar deficits that they're trying to deal with right now. So, we're it's not really a unique situation that we're in unfortunately. Um, but you want us to give you an answer before you move off this slide.
24. 27:45>> [laughter] >> Um, you know what? I I have about we return to it um, because to Diane's point, let's talk a little bit more through expenditures. See see what we're talking about but I will tell you that there is there there are no small things that we would be able to eliminate that would close a gap of this magnitude. But, let's talk through the rest of it. Go back to this because I think there are a lot of consequences and we need to fully understand all of them in order to engage in a better dialogue. So, this was um, do do Yeah. >> If you go back to the whole beds code to make the junior senior high school as one you could share staff, you could share counseling, you could share administration. >> we should probably hold off on talking about personnel here because it's it's a public forum and and easily identifiable who we're speaking about. Yeah, it is a good idea though. We will definitely talk about it. >> we can certainly talk about it. >> Yeah.
25. 28:51So, um, as we had stated here are some of the budget gaps. So, it's basically taking the previous slide and addressing it within 63.1 million. So, you can see along the bottom the gap that we would need to close in expenditures. In other words, we'd have to lower our expenditures to arrive at these numbers. Uh, even with the highest possible uh, proposal there uh, is a significant uh, gap in what we need to do. And as I talk about any of these positions, just because their retirements are on the screen does not mean that they're not being filled again. Okay, cuz there are you know, there are some unique positions that you just you can't simply cannot do without them. So, I'm just as a point of of note, we don't have a lot of retirees. Retirees
26. 29:54are great because when you rehire, it creates breakage. The amount of money of the new employee is almost always less than the outgoing employee. Um so, districts frequently save by by breakage alone. So, without insurance, those positions sum total is worth about 500,000. We have two social aid that retired this year and we've already filled them or are about to fill them. And one clerical that still remains unfilled. Well, I have a question. HTA means like teachers, right? Say it again, the button. HTA means teachers? Yeah, teachers association. Thank you. And then it encompasses a lot. It's psychologists and social workers and a lot of different people. Uh so, out of this list here, uh these are vacancies or retired retirees that are currently in the 63.1 million. So, you can see those five teaching positions are still in there, superintendent, assistant director for sorry, executive director, you can read the rest there. Um
27. 30:56some of the people have left recently and we're actively seeking to fill them right now. Some of them may not have left yet and but they're budgeted for next year with the anticipation that they will be filled. Is the current transportation supervisor leaving? He's a consultant right now, Mike. So, we just wanted to point out that he may or may not be here. He's you know, it'd be his decision, our decision. Okay. But that that is in there for next year. But when you put them in the new budget, do you have like already an expected salary you're giving them? Yeah. In addition to staff, we know that staff salaries are by far our most overwhelmingly large part of the budget. Uh but some other areas that we're thinking about trying to reduce our expenditures is efficiencies around transportation. When I come back to the table, I want to talk
28. 31:58to the board about their awareness or their sensibility around the way that we're transporting our kiddos in district right now. Um software, Cheryl's been doing a review, meeting with principals and us to say, "What are things that we haven't been using enough?" Uh because we have software that tells us if we're using software uh to tell us you know, what's frequency of usage is. Some of them are quite expensive for the limited use that they're getting right now. So, we know that there's going to be some savings there. We've already identified about $50,000 in software that we could probably do without going in next year. Every building has equipment lines as well as our departments. They have supply lines. We have field trips and and contracts with BOCES for various things. Uh and then instructional coaches and things like that. Summer instructional programming, um we did high school uh a 6-week credit recovery high school program last year. We did extended school year for our students with disabilities. We did
29. 33:01elementary well, everybody. We did a junior summer program in basically all the buildings, but in considering like what is sensible for us moving forward from a budgetary standpoint, uh extracurricular activities, I much to my disappointment, I'm I'm watching what's having to happen in neighboring school districts and they are making hard decisions around extracurriculars and athletics as well, which we know some of these things are the reason that some of our kids come to the rest of the day at school is to get through to those things that they love so much. Um but I did notice in some local proposals in an effort to bridge the gap, they eliminated freshman sports or they eliminated modified, they eliminated something in order to try and close the gap so they could keep people in school during the day. This this the level of choice that we're talking about. Is preserving our program and the people that work here to the greatest extent possible. Um
30. 34:06so, we are very fortunate to participate in CTE, New Visions, STEM, Tech Valley and um BARD. And we've been very good at uh contributing our students and our money's to those programs in order to allow opportunities for our kids that are beyond the walls of these buildings. >> [clears throat] >> Last year and the year before, we had a very large increase in our students who are attending CTE. Uh you see this year's count 37, last year's count was 35, before that 29, 29, 27, 28. They're remained pretty level. The interesting thing about BOCES and about all these programs is that they actually average over 5 years. So, we could send 100 students next year, but we wouldn't be paying for all 63. They would average over the last 5 years and we'd only pay whatever that average is.
31. 35:09So, if you had like Don't make me do the hard math. You had 4 years of 10 and then in that last year you decided to send 20, you'd only be paying for 12.5. Think that's about right. Nobody's checking. Okay, give me two. It's two. The answer is two. Cuz it's No, it's not two. Uh I'll come back to it, but you get the idea. So, listen, by making these reductions uh we currently have three juniors and three seniors enrolled. Our intent would be to allow the juniors to become seniors. We wouldn't be removing anybody from a program that is I mean that that's sacred ground to me. Um same thing with in CTE, we have about 20 juniors or ungraded students who will be moving to their senior year. They would continue. The proposal is just that we send less new ones going in the next year. Uh New Visions is only seniors. So, those are four seniors in New Visions. We
32. 36:12would consider sending three next year. Special Ed is they're just that special programming. >> [clears throat] >> STEM, you can see we have five there now. We have a senior graduating. We wanted to send four next year. So, the kids who are there would stay there. Same thing with Tech Valley. Tech Valley is interesting in that you enroll in ninth grade. STEM might be too. I I don't have any experience with So, you now enroll in ninth grade and you're there for your four years. It's a 4-year program. So, again, we don't want to disrupt the kids who are there. Um but for Tech Valley, sending one new student instead of two, which we have sometimes in the past. So, here's the thing about -14. Next year, because because within the last 5 years, we were sending a lot of students to BARD. Somehow, as the program started up, they were given Hudson the gold deal where we were paying 1 to $2,000 per student. That's not the actual cost. Every other district I think might have
33. 37:15been paying the full boat. It's about 12 to 13,000. They are now charging us the full boat. But we are still averaged with the 10, 8 and 7 that we did 5 years ago. So, the good news is BARD's coming down drastically. That's probably the largest savings of all of ours if we don't send any additional students next year. But next year, >> [clears throat] >> we're looking about a $30,000 savings by doing this because it takes time to get our average down. And in the following year, it'll be another 10,000 and in the following year it'll be another 15 to 20 and 4 years from now it'll be a $100,000 savings. So, it'll flow down, but it takes time to get to that full savings. The only other caveat I will mention is we are aided back for all of this. So, if we spent $1 million this year, we would get $360,000 back next year. Is that interesting aid calculation or consequence of you need to spend 10 in
34. 38:19order to get 360 back. So, Can I ask a question? >> Sure. The >> [clears throat] >> does reduce in terms of we transport students to some of these programs. Do we pay that by the run or do we pay that by students? By reducing students, does that reduce transportation or not? I was keeping all that secret because that's the next thing that's heartbreaking. Called a segue. Sorry. Anything that doesn't go directly over to the CTE center over here, which BARD is thankfully at the CTE center along with CTE students, any of the rest of them, assume that it's plus $80,000. So, bring kids over to New Visions, $80,000 to bring students to STEM high school, $80,000 in transport. Regardless of the number. Uh it it's an unavoidable. We don't own our own fleet. We have to but there is a it won't save in transportation as we continue to send students there. So, it's we won't see any saving savings in that.
35. 39:20The only thing that I will say is you know, I've asked a lot of hard questions about how we're transporting. That's why I say in like transportation savings, if we are transporting kids from their door or from this school all the way up around all of Albany over to SUNY Albany, the campus where that looks like a ship, we cross how many school districts? I a lot. So, I mean my preference would be even though it's not convenient necessarily for kids in the program, but the we need to generate money savings. We the days of the door-to-door is it can't happen. We we just can't support it. It's it's going to have an effect a continuing effect on people who are here in the building day-to-day. Um so, we are looking for efficiencies around that. Is it possible to work with other school districts? That's what he's saying. That's what he's >> Okay, that's where you're going with that. So, if we bring from here to Ichabod, Ichabod will take them from there to >> saying transport. We would pick up kids. Our buses would pick up Okay.
36. 40:22>> We just go as far as them and then they like a shuttle. We go we go to one >> From here to Ichabod, Ichabod from up farther than in Okay. That's not to say that we don't have anything going on [clears throat] like that. Bill talked about some of those things when he presented transportation. And they are thinking about them all the time and and we've been very fortunate to make some partnerships with other districts to try and lessen the impact transportation impact. Does it change if it no longer goes door-to-door if it's pick up at the school? I would imagine it would change slightly, yes. I think for us because of our later start time, I think it becomes a an issue. The reason why we've been doing door-to-door is if their start time is 8:00, we wouldn't be there until We have to pay a staff person to be here to ensure safety. >> get an early start in order to get there, but you know, as you know, Mike's conjecture is if if we drive to Chatham or we drive to Ichabod, we've just taken the first 10 minutes of the trip and their kids need to be there on time. So, I'm just I'm using those as examples, but that's where we want to aim. Well, could that be one of the requirements?
37. 41:25If you're in that program, you need to be here earlier. Yeah, they do. Okay. Oh, I see what you're saying. Oh, it's always about equity, too. And and I'm surprised that >> [clears throat] >> you know, I've I've mentioned to the board before like around field trips and some other things that we do that we don't fully fund. We're putting onus on our families. We're about 66% poverty rate. There are unquestionably families that are that's a lot of impact. So, [clears throat] we would be really conscious about anything that would require students to like self-transport here. Uh but similarly, because it might exclude kids who they wouldn't have an opportunity because they can't, you know, get here on time. Okay. And we have no public transportation, which is sad, too. That would help in some respects, but we don't have that. So, I basically I could just do this, but I want to ask I mean I want to have a dialogue around it because again, we have a lot of students who want to go, quite frankly. I think we might have had a record number of students want to go to CTE
38. 42:28this year. It would [clears throat] mean that some students would stay in programs here. They wouldn't have access to it in their junior year. They could do something else in their senior year. They could go to Bard or maybe to um to New Visions, but uh this limits opportunities of some of our kids. And um 29 is where we were 3 years ago. And our student enrollment continues to go go down. So, I mean I I see the last 2 years as an anomaly this year and last year. We were very fortunate to send more students. But it wasn't our normal um Mhm. And and again, that was another budgetary expense that wasn't accounted for. You send eight more students, that's $100,000. That's you we paid for that right now without uh any anticipation of having to pay it. So, we did get a little aid back on last year's, but only 36%. So, do you do you know are there students this year who are
39. 43:30Professionally. want to go to Bard or want to go to STEM or Tech Valley and will be able to? We would be having to tell them they couldn't go. I would say some of those I think Tech Valley has probably already done their drawing for [clears throat] the coming year. So, there are students who are anticipating going. Well, I do know that Tech Valley and STEM, I think only six kids went to the info sessions. Oh, really? Yeah, so there wasn't a huge turnout. I don't know how many actually applied. Um my hesitancy with this taking this route is you know, one of the things we really need to prioritize as a district is having a cohesive curriculum from K all the way through 12 and there hasn't been a whole lot of discussion about what that looks like and what opportunities our students really want to have um and so I don't I personally don't feel like we have a lot of
40. 44:31uh data to base this off of especially given that that in the next year it would only save us $30,000. Um so, you know, there's an option to punt this until next year when we can have multiple conversations about it. I would I would personally prefer that, but might not be an option. Yeah, um to tag along with that, I mean coming into this meeting, my thinking was that this anything that directly connects to the students should be our you know, we should try to be our last resort to to cut and and take away from. Obviously, every every part of our district is going to be touched by this cuz it's a lot of money. It's a huge deficit that we have to make up, but but I I'd like to talk about some you know, some other
41. 45:32ways that we can cut back. I mean, I'm not against this, but I wouldn't prioritize it, I guess, is what I'm saying. Yeah, it's you're exactly right. It directly affects students. The only reason we haven't proposed it is Well, you have to. >> Our human beings that work here also affect students. Yes. That's the hard That's the hard decision. Yes. Do all the schools pay the same price for these programs? Yes. Okay. Now. >> [laughter] >> And they do range they range right now between 12 and 14. They're not all exactly the same price. And they'll probably escalate somewhat. They usually do going from year to year. Can he do any negotiations with them to say No. No, okay. Unfortunately. The 5-year averaging they did really was
42. 46:36intended to soften the blow for districts who were inspired to send 10 more students, but they knew they couldn't afford 10 in the first year. Um so, Edward does work both ways, right? It's to their advantage when we're trying to bring it back down and it's our advantage when we're trying to bring it up. So, I I appreciate uh sensibilities around it. So, are you saying that you'd like us to try and maintain the same numbers of enrollment going into next year? I I'm just putting it out there that you know, I mean we we have to look at everything and and I think you know, I'm okay with making cuts here. I mean, it's you didn't eliminate it completely, you know. Um I think it makes sense. I just in generally generally speaking, you know, um if we can avoid it completely, I I think that would be awesome. You're first. Would like limiting the amount of students who could go into each program
43. 47:38affect it or like help the budget in any way or is it It would help our budget. It would affect their budget, but not by very much. Like I said, this is Look at the breadth of of all the programs. The fact that it would only affect them $30,000 is not very much. So, as I said, like the averaging is great for them cuz they can better predict and transmit into the future. Uh like if we decided to send three less students, there you know, could be a class of 14 kids. They could do it with 11 and it's not going to have that big an impact on them or be able to still run it. Um but I the good news is they now have the ability to mitigate a loss of students by still having our income. But our transportation expenses are still the same regardless if it's one or Thomas. Yeah. But it doesn't go down by reducing the number of students. >> Yeah, that's Yes. Yeah. I value the the consideration of not removing students who are in four-year for your
44. 48:41programs. I [clears throat] think that is extraordinarily disruptive uh to their experience. So, I think that that's a it making the best of a tough situation um as a possibility. I mean, that being said, I these programs are incredibly valuable to the students that go to them um and you know, provide a reason to be in school. So, anything is tough to cut. I'm not saying yes or no. I want to see all the options. >> [clears throat] >> Oh, wait. I have another question. Yeah. Um like is there a huge difference between having a bus and having a van specifically? Like if you limit the number of students who can go and have them go in like a tiny van instead of a I couldn't hear you, Lavana. >> Oh, sorry. Does it change like is there a huge change if you limit the number of students and have them go in like a van compared to like a big bus. Uh
45. 49:42Uh that is a good question. Uh from a transportation standpoint, I don't know how we're transporting them, quite frankly. Um and I it would always be a less cost if you could put four kids in a van, no question. Yeah, the expenses go down precipitously. Um and that those are questions that we ask. Like I know um I I know I've seen students getting into vans early in the morning. I don't know which direction they're going. Uh but um we can certainly talk about it, Mr. Murrayhead, and find out what's real and what's imagined. Yeah. I was just going to show the next slide, which is just simply the calculation. I was averaging about 13,000 per student enrollment, and you can see this is only CTE, okay? It doesn't include Bard or Tech Valley or the other ones, but CTE is the easiest one to grasp. So, you can see the enrollment numbers I was talking about. So, we had a 35 and a 32 here. So, the average is very slow to go down. Until you get down here with 13 about
46. 50:45$13,000 per child. >> [clears throat] >> So, it takes that long to get from 413,000 to 356 in reductions. Uh and again, the other programs aren't reflected on here and our return on reducing numbers in the other ones is a lot faster because the numbers are smaller. If you're have six and you're reducing by three, immediately you you can see the reduction in expenditure. So, like I said, we estimated about $100,000 in the fourth year. But I I agree that these programs they change lives. They change trajectory for kids. They give them opportunities and skills that they can't necessarily get here. Um it's just a consideration for how we mitigate and close the gap. Now, I'm going to go back
47. 51:47to that slide that we don't want to look at anymore. >> Can we go back to just the slide 12 that has the list of other things that we could Sure. Next one. Next one. Yeah. Um So, I mean, transportation is obviously a a a a big one. If we said we want to cut a million dollars from transportation, how realistic is that of a of a goal? Um do we know yet if we can get by with less runs than we currently have? Like how would that affect That's a conversation now. So, uh transportation has gone up about a million dollars over the last 2 years. Some of it not accounted for in the budget, which is again why you are at this balloon stage. We are accounting for it. This is what's real. This is the work that Mr. Murrayhead has been doing is making sure those contracts were approved by the board. They become aidable only at that time cuz they're real. And then we get state aid back in
48. 52:51our foundation aid, that big run that comes from New York State. Apparently, and I'm I'm new here, so I'm just kind of trying to talk from what people have been describing to me. Apparently, we still have bus runs that were modeled when we had a whole bunch of different schools open, not just the two buildings. We have individual bus runs going out and picking up just kids K2. We have buses going into the same area and picking up kids 3-6 or 3-5. And then we have 6-12 buses going in on top of those two buses. They're crossing each other's paths and driving by each other every single day. Because at one time, they weren't going all to the same building. And I know that like sixth grade has moved back and forth between intermediate school and the junior high. So, there were probably discussions around when is it right for my second grade child to be on a bus with a sixth grader or my second grader
49. 53:53with a 12th grader. I want to grab the list of routes so that I'm not able to more accurately describe. Here. >> [laughter] >> Um 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 21. 21 bus routes in district. That does not include if we have special education transportation that may be is specialized for students who live here and go to school here. Doesn't include the bus runs out of district, the ones that are for CTE and the other programs or for our specialized students that are housed other where other way other places. Um we have a bus that takes just 6-8 kids. We have a bus that takes K5 and then picks up 4-5 students. We have a K3.
50. 54:55You see the chaos, right? The discussion I wanted to have is where is our sensibility to say all the buses that go to Greenport will pick up which kids? They're going down A road in Greenport. Are they picking up the kids that are on that road or are they only picking up kids who are in sixth through 12th grade? We make that decision and take this 21 down to 18 or 15? Every time a bus leaves the station, it's $80,000, about. That's a really fast way to try and regain some of our funding. But before we messed with what this might be 25 years old system is we really want to talk about what what can we do that looks like every other school district? Any any smaller school, a one building school, they're sending one bus and picking every single one of their children up on that one bus. It isn't necessarily typical for us to
51. 55:58have two buildings with the same start time. It's not uncommon to have two routes. We don't want to do that. But I mean, this is common for because a district who owns their transportation would have 12 buses and they'd send them out twice. Because you already own the bus. You already have the driver. You're probably paying them for a block of 3 to 4 hours anyway. They can do the run twice. We don't have that. >> [clears throat] >> Every time they leave, they cost us that amount of money. What are your thoughts around it? Who rides the bus at any given time? I like if you can put them all on one bus, it's going to save money. Especially with diesel six bucks a gallon right now. Um hopefully it comes down, but that's going to probably affect some of the run costs. Uh you're saying 80,000. Is that per year? Yeah. Per run? Per per each run, it's about that. 80,000 per per run per year. And it's volatile, too, because we need [clears throat] people to bid on whatever we post.
52. 56:59And they may or may not. And and bids that are left to no competition or bids that no one bids on, we've got to we have to fill them. I don't think that that's happened very much in our daily runs, our regular runs, but it has happened when we have a special run, McKinney-Vento run, a special ed run. Like I said last time, cost between 112 and 550 a day just because we needed someone to do it. I thought there was three main bus companies that service the district, but it seems like there's a lot more. In the area, you mean? >> No, for for Hudson City School District. I thought there was just three main ones, but I saw there was other companies in there, also. Uh well, we have some specialized [clears throat] transportation from Med-A. That's a white van, you know, they do medical transportation. Um I only see three on the list here, but there might be you would know. Casaki has a few. For our specialized transportation? The specialized ones that would likely be like Iwana stated, a small van or a
53. 58:02small bus. There might be other companies that So, so the the other ones are specialized >> [clears throat] >> But there are just three doing our day-to-day runs. Um Brian, [clears throat] I don't know if this is a good time to ask about it. It is a transportation question. Um what about like the ASP buses and combining the sports like practice, the late bus that we have at the secondary level, and coordinating all of that, and that's one thing, and also ASP um I mean, that's a huge grant that comes from MHA. Would they be willing to take on cuz I think we pay for that. Yes, we pay for transportation for There are layers of irony here because they don't pay for the transportation for their kids, we do. Uh there's unquestionably an opportunity for efficiency in the afternoon. It does to some extent come down to the same thing we're asking about with daily
54. 59:04transportation. It's going to be early learners and adult and adults, but older students on the same bus. Yeah. I think that has been part of the philosophy, too, is like how how would how do we keep them together or keep them apart? Um and I I do not positive about the times cuz there's really three things that go on after school every day, maybe four, uh including athletics. So, that is that's another thing that we're going We're going at more and see if there's an efficiency there. And and would is it possible that MHA could take over the ASP costs? We're going to talk to them about a few things. >> Uh-huh. Yeah. There are other expenses, too, that the district pays for that aren't paid for in their grant to run that program. Right. >> Our students benefit, so there's a lot of mutual benefit there. >> Sure. Absolutely. I'm not trying to, you know, but just a thought. Of course. And we do have neighboring schools who you're saying that that have their K through 12 going to the same building and riding on the same bus. It's not
55. 1:00:07like it's not done. Right. And some of the runs, my daughter's run has high school students on it. She's in third grade. So, some of the runs do are mixed. Every one is different. It's really weird to look at. Do you have any solid numbers on how many students rely on transportation? Bill's actually doing an audit right now. >> Okay, cuz it seems like there's a lot more apparent drop-offs than there has been in the past. >> This is agreed. Yeah, look at closer road and then see how many people are dropping their children off. I think um and now is a good time to do it. Really, two heartbeat moments are in the first weeks of school and now, cuz people would have gotten into a groove and you would know like what is the sustainable uh level. You know, again I say in the districts that have their own transportation, they might do a in-flight adjustment three or four times over the course of a year. They would say, you know, what? It look It turns out that there used to be 35 kids on this bus, but now there's only 12 riding every day. Let's adjust the route a little bit. Let's eliminate a
56. 1:01:10route by That flexibility is a little harder, you know, with the work that we're doing. Not that they're inflexible, because I know that you've seen the contracts. You We've made adjustments as we've gone along. It's just not as easy. Uh is it in the district's long-term plan to own its own transportation at some point? There isn't right now. The There are a lot of complexities, obviously. I think the most natural thing would be to try and partner with a district who owns a fleet and build on that. That's what um like you can see over on the other side of the river some school districts have actually who had their own fleets have come together, so they create those efficiencies like Dana's talking about, where they have the same dispatcher, they have the same supervisor, they can use the same mechanics in the same place. So, I think it's easier to actually join someone else than it would be to start from scratch with new buses, which only cost about $150 to $375,000 apiece,
57. 1:02:11uh having your own staff to drive, having a maintenance building, having the maintenance staff, um a a transportation supervisor, dispatcher, name a thing. So, it's it's like that's why it's so much easier to just say, "Hey, neighbor, what do you think about us having a couple buses in your parking lot?" I would like for us to entertain Mike's idea about buying a van, cuz he did bring that up and I I I think that's a good idea for smaller runs or athletic events. >> it's a little more than a seven-passenger van if we had somebody on staff that had their CDL. That's the magic. I mean, it's just a driving test, really. It is drive test. I mean, there's CDL requirements. Um but that might save some cost overall after the initial expense of the van. And somebody might want to get a CDL. >> Yes. Yeah, um our current status is we can do itinerant driving, cuz we don't have someone with that licensure. Um the hard thing is finding someone who has it. We can always train uh and it's a special qualification of
58. 1:03:15CDL. Or take one of the current company's bus drivers and give them a Turn Mike's mic off. >> [laughter] >> No, I mean, we have all the bus drivers are part-time drivers. So, maybe they would do a subcontract with the school, drive the school school bus. Right. The um so, there are that is 100% one of the things that we've thought about and uh Complicator is you can't just have one driver. You need to have two. True. And but that's okay. Uh but we have thought about how to do that. And It's the expense of personnel and the I um From what I've seen, the majority of the bus drivers are retired people that are driving buses. >> Cuz it's a couple hours in the morning, couple hours in the afternoon. Um I mean, to me that seems more like a long-term savings plan. Like I think we'd need to balance how much we're we'd be spending this year versus how much we'd be saving. Um so I think trying to make
59. 1:04:16>> It's 100% the path you should go down. Yeah. Because then you become in control of these bizarre and escalating things and and uh you would It creates autonomy that you don't currently have. Yeah. Um well, it sounds like we're all pretty much on the same page that we're okay with efficiencies in transportation, even if it means picking up all of the students and not having separate buses for elementary and high school. Does anybody >> Correct. Yeah, all the kids are brothers and sisters and cousins anyway. I believe both of most of buses have aids on them now, too, correct? >> Yeah. I think so. To help the driver, so. I don't know if [clears throat] they all do, Mike. Okay. Um may I think if there's anything that can be done this year to get efficiencies for next budget year, I think we should explore all of them. Uh I mean, I think structurally this is another one of those big-ticket items that the ideas that are being said here aren't going to happen tomorrow, but you know, maybe we need to uh keep transportation on the
60. 1:05:19forefront of the board's mind and see what we can do to reduce it overall um as a part of the budget, because it's been escalating uh so much in recent years. Um another issue that I know exists, uh you talk about contracts getting approved by the board, Building Your Head is going through doing a lot as a consultant to clean up old contracts. The routes is a different thing, but um I think we haven't been getting as much aid as we could have been eligible for, as well. So, we're seeing a revenue hit for how the program's been managed, as well. Um which I'm under the assumption it's going to is getting cleaned up and not going to happen going forward. One of the contracts too for the >> [clears throat] >> bus companies, is it beginning of the year? Is it January 1st? It's almost like a rolling. There There is When do they bid for September? Soon. In In June is when we're looking at doing our bids. Okay. What we really
61. 1:06:22need to get the bids approved by State Ed and that's how we're getting our um our aid back on on the cost. So, without approved contracts is why we've kind of struggled a little bit the last couple of years, because when they're when those are um brought up to um State Ed to get the reimbursement, they don't have approved contract numbers. And so, that's part of the work is that there's been runs that we have been doing for several years, but they never went to State Ed for approval. And if they're not approved, then they won't um reimburse us for the for that amount. Okay. So, but if we go in and say, "Hey, we want to cut or we want you to combine runs for next school year, will that be affected in this coming budget? Or is that something we're going to be looking at? >> No, the hope absolutely, our hope would be that we are we are actively working on this now and that so we could see something for next year. I mean, this is a critical time. It does take time, though. So, we wanted to talk to you this evening about
62. 1:07:24combination of um the students in in conjunction with what we have now and that that would be a change, um but now that we've kind of had this discussion, we can move forward with making some adjustments. And then you would do a new bid based on the routes that we feel like we would need, which would be different than the ones we currently have. So, I base it on who like within three to four months we got to have this the bus squared away, so they can put it to bid and have it ready to go. Okay. That's why Within a month. Joe, yeah, within a month. Yeah, realistically. Knowing now that we can rethink how those runs are done is going to be very influential in what happens next. Okay. Um the other thing to Matt's point, um transportation long-term transportation thoughts, long-term reserve plans. Reserve should be a five-year planning. Uh as you're for the Now is not a great time to have conversations about reserves, because we are all hands on deck trying to just make things run. But uh reserves are critical part of a
63. 1:08:28healthy school district and to be able to project out a number of years is a huge benefit. So, that means that we're saving accordingly or you are saving accordingly in preparation for a rainy day or for something you know that's happening. Like as for instance, there are uh a number of uh units that there is a um a payout at retirement. It is not in any of the reserves. It has to come out of the general fund. That's not good practice, especially when you can predict years in advance. Some of the units allow you to predict years in advance. That money should be saved for specifically for that. And if you tried if we tried a little bit, you could predict how many people in '27, '28, and '29 might be retiring and better prepare. That's that's where the magic happens, cuz then it's not reactionary. It's just executing the the plan. Um and you know, you you see that um we brought up the reserves three or four times throughout the budget season. And um the finance committee that's their their
64. 1:09:31job would be also to monitor the health of those reserves and considerations of impacts that might come in the future. Um so I mean that's great. Finance committee this year is new committee. It's an opportunity for the board to start talking about these long-term things. You get to the end of a school year, you yield some savings, you invest that money in one of your reserves. Um it it'll you know, snowball effect. It's it's good uh good investment practices. And to be clear, if you want to put the reserves back up, of the 4.7 million, there's only about 800 that's really accessible. Um I mean the bottom four reserves are all specific allocations, I think, that we can't Yeah, those the 4.7 are in those categories. What I'm saying, the bottom four reserves are all like there's virtually no discretion, right? If there's unemployment, it can come out of there, repair. We know we spend retirement every year. Right. We have that we can allocate, I believe. [clears throat]
65. 1:10:33Right. But that's there for you know. Difficult decision times, I guess, is my point. Right. Um of the things in your list, the other one I was curious about was the the summer instructional programming. Um obviously important, but I think with a lot of these things like how how what's the utilization rate? How many students are in each classroom? Are there ways to make it more efficient? Do we know any anything about that? The secondary summer school last year cost about $200,000. Uh and there's $90,000 in this current budget. The 63.1 million has 90,000 in it. It's not [clears throat] enough to do what we did last year, but we we know that we have students who desperately need credit recovery, so having a discussion around how we mitigate that cost um it is important. I I don't know what
66. 1:11:36other programs exist in the community. Uh I was at Guilderland for many years running the summer school, and people from all around would send their kids to Guilderland to take summer classes, 6 weeks of summer classes. Um I've also uh been in districts where they they don't do the strict 6 weeks, they do other kinds of credit recovery, in-person instruction combined with online, you know, a marriage of a bunch of different things. But uh I feel like the 40 30 to 40 was the number that was enrolled. Do you remember in high school? 40? Um and we did other things, too. Like I said, we did other programs in other buildings. I think for the summer, we really that is a thing where we should start from zero and then add to what do we think is going to be crucially essentially important for the success of our kids that will still allow us to keep the employees that we have the rest of the year.
67. 1:12:38So like just the absolute essentials for what we do in summer programming. Are we required to have a program for the sped kids? We are. We could be in district or we could send them out of district. My recommendation would be to continue the program in district. It's better for So we have to make sure that's in the budget. Um but even that being said the New York state controls those programs. It's very prescriptive. The hours of the day are prescriptive. The duration of it is prescriptive. We didn't do that last year. We did our own thing that was completely over what is the requirement of the state. Uh we need to be as focused and accurate and conservative as we possibly can, and that's really what we're aiming to do as we're considering which one of those numbers that you're you're considering as part of the budget. That'll tell us how focused we have to be. Is there a Is there a difference between like online instruction um versus in-person in terms of cost, and could you like have the younger kids
68. 1:13:41do in-person and for the older kids like have more of a mix between online and in-person? I think all of us would argue in-person is always more impactful. There are There are some students who thrive never having any human contact. Uh there are some adults like that, too. But um it is we know instruction is almost always more effective in-person. So and I've seen, like I said, all in-person, a marriage of the two, or just online. And some of the kids are successful, just not all of them in each of those. And I think when you're talking about credit recovery, students who had a a challenging time in the classroom the demands of online or remote learning um can be much greater. And there's students who have already indicated that they may need additional support. Right. Do we provide transportation for the summer, also? We have been for the same equity reason I mentioned before. >> Okay. Um we never did in Guilderland. Every single one of those 500 kids,
69. 1:14:44their parents drove them to school, and if they missed more than 3 days, they were out. >> Okay. Uh it's different place, different situation, and different time. So we provide it. How about joining forces with other schools to combine summer school programs? Don't other schools come here for theirs? >> [clears throat] >> We have done that before. To help offset the cost? Yes. Yeah, you just tuition if you send them somewhere else. It wouldn't mitigate transportation. Um you know, there's value, like I said, with extended school year for our students with disabilities. For kids being in their own district with their own teachers, sometimes there's value to that. Uh it comes down to what's practical with our cost. And if we don't have credit recovery you know, in the summer, what does what happens to our graduation rate? Yeah. You know, how do those kids recover? Yeah. Over the course of their 4 years or 3 years or what? And I'm going to drop the ball right in front of you and say
70. 1:15:46every dollar that you spend coming up in this following school year, you need to ask what did it do? What were the results? If we continue to do that if you continue to do that, then you will realize efficiencies like never before. We We know that we've invested money that didn't deliver on a return, and we did it maybe more than once. Uh and it's not by any necessarily any part of the fault of the people who are in the machine, but we should only be doing things in schools that yield benefits for children and we can see the results. And if we can't, we need to change direction. All of us, we you know, would easily admit to that. What are some of the BOCES contracts that are you have on there? Well, the only one that came to mind like right off uh right off the top of my head, Mike, is we contract for instructional coaches a certain number of days per year. Um you know, it's probably 30 to 45,000 dollars. That's aidable. We get 36% back
71. 1:16:51in the following year. >> Okay. And it And again, what did I don't know what the value is that it's yielded. That's the question that we need to ask. And I That's just an easy thing to call out. So I'm I'm not again, I'm not saying it's not been effective. I'm just saying it's there. You know, are there other ways for us to do that? We have department chairs, you know, we have other people that maybe have knowledge that can help. I don't know. So it's more like professional development type classes or >> Yeah, they step into classrooms. Uh they uh teachers might invite them in and say, "I'm working on the standard. Can you help me figure out how to help the students better learn something?" Um they might be working on curriculum development. The standards have It's like a ever-grinding machine. The standards have changed so much in the last 10 years, again, as well as the assessments. So they can come in and help say, "Oh, here's what the state's been doing, and here's the help with the language around that, or here's a common assessment you should be developing." And are And are they helping? Saving my cost. Are they helping? Are we getting results by having them in? Let's find out.
72. 1:17:53Okay. Yeah. Well, I'll just chime in with Mike uh just uh from my experience, when we changed our our standards in science, we had people come in to talk to us about the new standards and the new test. Uh they also do the um trainings for chemical hygiene and that sort of thing. So there's a whole plethora of stuff that's in that little sentence right there. Okay. So it's it's a lot of things. You can't really simply answer it with simply saying >> Okay. Okay. I mean, not being in this industry, I mean, that's what I'm wondering. Oh, no, for sure. What are What are the programs, and are there any that can come out, some that have to stay? And is there a benefit to have them here? >> great question. I just I I just wanted to help you out and >> Okay. understand that a little bit. Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> Brian. Um what what input have you gotten from the building leaders and um
73. 1:18:53>> That's a good question. the teachers' associa- the different um union leaders and in terms of ideas of where to trim and where to pull or what to do. This is very hard. It is very hard. >> For people. Not not just because we're talking about people. This is very hard because this is not something that All right. I don't even know that they conceptualized last year. I don't think that they were involved last year in some of the decisions or many of the decisions that were made. This is very hard because they see it as real and tangible. And um this is the the worst thing that I have to say. That's there is no choice. There's not a choice to say I think this is important and I don't want to get rid of it. This is a very difficult, awkward place where there
74. 1:19:56isn't a choice. So, it's which is the least harmful choice. Uh I have to say I have to say >> So, you talked to them about it? It's been very difficult for the leaders to contemplate any of this. I think where our job is is to try and help them see some of the rocks under the water or the things that by doing this one thing it's going to cause a ripple effect of harm somewhere else. Like you were talking about CTE programs. That's some kids in seventh grade have been dreaming about going to be an auto mechanic and by changing that trajectory you have you've changed their life forever. But if we cut a certain program or support at the elementary school will that child ever you know, get to their reading capacity? Will they meet their social emotional need? Will they know about science? I mean, we're trying to help them
75. 1:21:02look at this from a it's not just this one thing. What are the three things around it or what are the five things that come next? But it is very, very, very hard for every single person that is having this conversation. And as I mentioned before, when it comes down to having to really be definitive before we talk about things out in in here we all have to have discussions with everybody that that might affect. And even when we do that, that's not definitive. We have to have a hard conversation with someone that does not mean that what we're talking about is going to happen. It just means that it's going to be talked about and that's a possibility. Um but it is emotional all the way around. Every single person, even if they're a 35-year employee here, is emotional all the way around for every single person. Um As a
76. 1:22:04reminder for the calendar so, we're going to meet again for a budget workshop on the 14th. You said 14th now? The 14th, yeah. We're we're meeting on the 21st, our regular meeting, in which we're uh scheduled to approve a budget. Um so, I guess for the 14th um thinking back to the slide that has the 63 million on top uh what I'd like to see myself is a um I guess plans for cutting between 2 and 1/2 and 4 and 1/2 million dollars. I mean, so we know what the options are. Um we can make decisions. It can be presented. People will have an opportunity uh you know, to digest it and you know, understand what kind of decisions we're going to make on the 21st. We have to give you a menu of choices.
77. 1:23:11Um and I I use that in as a limited a capacity as possible because as I said there is not going to be a choice. It's going to be impactful. The the things that we're going to have to try and do are going to be impactful. Um it just navigating between what is the lesser of the bad choice or hard choice. So, on the 14th you'll have numbers. Yeah, we'll we'll be talking about real things. Yeah. And I mean, the hope is that we, you know, in that those two short meetings that we come to some kind of conclusion. And we know that we have until the 24th, which is that Friday to get the work done. Not that we want to do it on the last day cuz that's when our homework is due to the state. Uh but we're meeting on the 21st. That's when we'd like to approve it. It has to be done by Friday. I would say by Thursday to make sure that we can submit it to the state.
78. 1:24:15I just want to clarify by numbers I meant money money numbers. >> [laughter] >> No, I know. Yeah. >> [snorts] >> Numbers in a lot of ways, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um but we still need some feedback right now on tax cap and reserves. Um which while this is up, I would I would point out that if we went all the way on to the left and did the 2% increase um and only spent the 1.8 million of our fund balance, that total revenue and budget figures actually less than our budget this year. Mhm. Um so, I don't think I think if that's an option >> Yeah, well, I think if you want to do the math on that, too, the the reserves, we spent $900,000 this year and we allocated $2 million of um fund balance on that left column,
79. 1:25:17million eight. >> [clears throat] >> This year we used 3 million basically for that box. Yeah. Yeah, that's why. Um see, last year was 58 million 544,000. So, even 3.44% and the 1.8 is still less than that. Um so, with that I if I look at that, it it seems to me that it's be very, very difficult to not go out with a 5% uh tax levy. That that's >> [clears throat and cough] >> I guess that's why I think 2 and 1/2 to 4 and 1/2 million puts us in that right column and we know what decisions we're making. Um you know, I think that uh we'll have to decide. I
80. 1:26:19What I would tell you is I don't know that we can make a decision tonight on the unsigned fund balance just because I think those are those decision-making units, right? If something is 250,000 and we, you know, the case is made that we need it. I I think that's where we have play to to make those decisions. Mhm. Uh what was the budget last year? 58 million 544,000. And as Matt was just saying Mhm. 3 million of it was from our bank account. So, we recognize you can only do that so many times until your bank account's empty. I just had another thought or idea I'm going to throw out. Um so, the um it's in the teachers' contract there's a um MOA that there's a there's an incentive for retirement incentive. Um that is um you know, 3-year, 2-year,
81. 1:27:231-year kind of thing. What about offering a retirement incentive now? Like in in addition to that. Or if somebody was had the time in, had the, you know, had the years, whatever, wasn't really planning but maybe, you know, it might give someone a little push or, you know, encouragement to retire earlier than they anticipated. Would that be how helpful would that be in the scheme of things? It's interesting. There is a cost expenditure Sure. for doing that as well. Not just >> put money out, too, you know, [clears throat] to But you'd be hiring for half the price. Say it again, Diane. >> You'd be hiring for half the price or not rehiring. Right. So, And the savings continue in the following year. We would actualize breakage, which means the difference between the new and the old former staff member. I didn't say old. And >> [laughter] >> and hiring the new person or we would not fill it at all. Um there's four people slated in the teacher unit, which is our largest unit. There's four people
82. 1:28:25right now slated to retire next year and one in the following year. That doesn't mean that there aren't more that are age eligible. Just they're the ones because they, 3 years ahead of time, can transmit their wishes. Yeah. Um so, it's a small number at this juncture, but we uh we will look into it. I will say that or have been looking into it, but I from my experience, I was always told that it was um it became more cost onerous on the district. Um but it really it I mean, look at all the factors. Insurance, the cost of the initial salary and whether you rehire or not. That changes the game. It's different than it was just 10 years ago. Those costs are all so different than just 10 years ago. So, the rules around it may have changed. Do we have the final insurance numbers from RCG for next year? That that that is reflected. Okay. And that of course we could get hit with a bill middle of the year anyway, right? Yeah, but you know, the prescription
83. 1:29:28for the prescription drug um true up, which is a 2-month reserve that we have to maintain. Yeah. Um so just really broadly does everybody feel okay about saying that we're trying to hit a number in the high 59s? 59 range, yeah. Somewhere in those uh not the right most column but the the two to the left of that is what you're suggesting? >> of be somewhere in between there. And then and then we, you know, finesse the percentage number and finesse the unassigned fund balance number and figure out the right uh right balance of each. So somewhere in here? Yeah.
84. 1:30:34>> [laughter] >> Broad sweep. It's like Jeopardy. We'll continue to look for revenue as well. Um we've been talking about aid that somehow or acts that might come up or something else that we discover. Yeah, that would be d- it just keep in mind last year too we had we came very close to spending our budget but had a lot of excess revenue. So it would it would be really unfortunate if we made a bunch of cuts and then come October, November find out we have an excess of two three million dollars in the revenue so we would really like to avoid that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, any else have any other questions? I'm pretty sure I was pretty clear about what I wanted to do. I'm good. I just think overall if if there are
85. 1:31:39numbers that have to be reduced we'll look throughout the whole school not just certain areas. >> Yeah, yeah, being a good will for sure. Um but yeah, that is our next step. We will be going into um executive session right now to talk about some specific positions um and just out of respect for everybody that works here don't want to do that publicly until we know um how the whole board feels and you know, what what different uh priorities we're weighing. Um but that would be uh and you know, Dr. Bailey has said multiple times that any of those conversations will be had with staff and unit leaders before anybody hears anything uh publicly as well. So that is very very important to us um that everybody knows that. Um but just to um piggyback on what Max said Matt said, uh important dates are April 13th, we have the code of conduct subcommittee meeting at 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
86. 1:32:42Tuesday we have a policy committee meeting from 5:00 to 7:00 in the high school library and then we're going to hold the next board uh budget workshop immediately following that so it'll be a 7:00 p.m. start time. Um and yeah, hopefully at that meeting we can we'll make decisions about uh real concrete numbers and real things. Um to prepare ourselves for the meeting on Tuesday the 21st at 6:00 p.m. which will be in the high school library. That is the meeting where we need to uh ideally approve the budget that we're going out with. Um Thursday the 23rd is voter registration day from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Um and then uh also if we pushed off our um vote on the 21st that would be the day that we would have a special meeting just to do that, which we did last year. Um and then Wednesday, April 29th nominating petitions are due by 5:00 p.m. in the district office for anybody running for one of two open uh board seats and then Tuesday, May 5th is
87. 1:33:46the budget hearing at uh 6:00 p.m. in the high school auditorium. Uh and then the vote would be later on in May. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Um yeah, so we thank you all for being here. At this time we do have a need for a second executive session uh to discuss the employment history of particular persons or persons. There'll be no further business after executive session. Uh make a motion to enter at 7:03 p.m. Second. All in favor?

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