This was the fourth budget meeting, held at the Library auditorium. There was an audience of about 50. All nine Board Members were present.
Superintendent of Schools Saturnelli: items for tonight include special assignment teachers, managerial/confidential, SAVE and SAC room models particularly at NFA.
Board President Fucheck: item with names is for information only, and only to be discussed in executive session.
Saturnelli: [the Board has handouts showing] approved, bubbled, not approved items on one sheet and the tax impact of these changess on another. Current year budget is $230M; proposed as current is at $227M. That would have a tax impact of %3.2. By spending some fund balance the impact could be at %1.4. Negotiations will be taking place with the NTA and CSEA. [those union contracts expire in June 2010]
Assistant Superintendent of Finance Pacella: will be presenting senior staff recommendations for review and will take consensus. Already approved are cuts totaling $4.6M.
Item 11, reduce SAVE/SAC rooms at South and Heritage.
Board Member DeMarco: have you talked to both administrators?
Saturnelli: Principal Raiti did not feel needed SRO officer. [This seemed off topic, maybe item 11 said something about SRO, audience did not receive any printed materials.]
Fucheck: last time there was confusion about who would be in the SAVE room/who would be supervising.
Vote on item 11: all yes.
Item 12, revisit recommmendation to reduce 3 SAVE rooms as single items. First Garndertown.
DeMarco: Have you talked to the administrator?
Assistant Superintendent of Student Intervention and Support Services Noriega: spoke to administrator to gather the data. Compared sizes of schools, number of instances used, instances seem to be of low duration.
Pacella: Gardnertown had only 18 removals through December. They have less referals than some other schools which don't have SAVE teacher.
DeMarco: numbers are inconsistent. TH had 250 7th/8th suspensions, MH had zero. What I'm asking is if the administrator agrees.
Fucheck: we had this conversation last year and thought maybe this had already been done. [i.e. no SAVE room at Garndertown]
Pacella: it would be a rare administrator who would say could do without an employee.
Vote on item 12: all yes.
Item 13, reduce SAVE room at MH and TH by one and replace with Teaching Assistant (to come from current staff).
Noriega: use similar model to the North High one.
Board Member McAfee: would there be two spaces? One for elementary teacher, one for 7/8 Teaching Assistant and assigned teacher?
[much confusion on this topic]
Noriega: At times you might find no students in the room.
Pacella: both of these schools are likely to have new principals next year. Some of the numbers may be based on methods of current principals.
Mcafee: need pln for what these people do when there are no children present.
Vote to reduce SAVE room at MH: 2 No: DeMarco, McAfee. 7 Yes.
Vote to reduce SAVE room at TH: 5 No: Vesely, Woodhull, McAfee, DeMarco, Bowles. 4 Yes: Giudice, Poppiti, Resch, Fucheck.
Item 14, reading specialists. [unclear what the proposal and personnel/monetary impact actually is]
DeMarco: workload of these teachers?
McAfee: are reading scores still embargoed? That would help.
Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Forgit: Temple Hill has 246 4-8 graders which require AIS, in addition to some K-3 graders.
Board Member Poppiti: what's not clear is how much time to teachers spend. 7&8 have their own AIS.
Forgit: students scoring 1 and 2 are rquired to have extra instructional time. I would need to pull assessments from TH to determine. [workload]
Poppiti: need to have some kind of guideline that indicates time to help determine utilization.
[probably Forgit]: Would be nice if it were that cut and try. Variety of needs (esp with disabilities) makes it difficult to provide such a guideline.
McAfee: recommendation seems ahead of the information that we have available.
Board Member Resch: are the three reading teachers without certification working toward it? We can't be so lenient. [as in the past]
Assistant Superintendent Human Resources Leimer: 2 do not wish to continue and want to go back to the classroom. 1 indicates some desire to get certification but will not have cert in hand.
Poppiti: Everyone has a schedule.
Forgit: That's something we'll have to collect.
Saturnelli: when we were asked to look at this we were specifically asked to look at those not appropriately certified.
Pacella: the three not certified doesn't need consensus. That is going to happen.
Item 13, Consensus on bubbling [postpone decision]: all Yes.
Items 15 through 19, analysis of currently vacant positions.
Item 15: addition of a PLR [is this Primary Language Record or something else?] teacher at Horizons. This position is in place but not budgeted for. The teacher left, leaving a vacancy, recommending to keep the position.
Vote on item 15, PLR at Horizons: 1 No: Woodhull. All others: Yes.
Item 16: Bilingual Math teacher at North.
Poppiti: what about reconfiguration?
Saturnelli: believe that the bilingual program will continue at one location next year.
Poppiti: will that be North?
Saturnelli: probably.
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Leimer: asked if bilingual math teacher at High School could fill in, but could not.
Fucheck: so bilingual program next year would be at both locations?
Saturnelli: the whole program may be at one location.
Pacella: these are new hires but existing positions. Currently being filled by subs.
Forgit: 16 students in the class at Norgh.
McAfee: wonder if Bilingual Math teacher at NFA has a full schedule.
Poppiti: so sub is teaching one class a day, do we need an extra position or is current staffing adequate?
Leimer: the sub at North works half day. He holds no certifications.
Saturnelli: we can always leave unfilled and then fill, if the budget passes.
McAfee: don't know if bilingual would be at both?
Saturnelli: don't know. Probably most effective would be to have one location.
McAfee: concerned about taking away choice for those students.
Vote on item 16, Bilingual Math at North: 1 No: McAfee. All others: Yes.
Item 17, Special Ed Science Teacher at South.
Forgit: this teacher is for the PLC, self-contained program.
Poppiti: are we expecting any luck finding someone.
Leimer: trying to fill for two years. Hard to find Science and Special Ed combination. We don't offer a probationary position without certification.
Forgit: have observed this sub and am very supportive.
Poppiti: do we have Special Ed Science at NFA?
Leimer: yes.
Vote on item 17, SE Science at South: All Yes.
Item 18: addition of ESL teacher at Temple Hill.
Leimer: had a certified teacher who left mid year. Could recruit, but oculd not pay what they wanted.
Poppiti: displaced teachers?
Pacella: we are hopeful that displaced teachers could be hired.
Vote on item 17, ESL at TH: All Yes.
Item 19: 2nd grade bilingual teacher addition [not sure which school]. All Yes.
Item 20: reduction of lunch monitors. Recommendation is to eliminate Part Time Lunch Monitor positions. There are 27. Six schools do not have any. Ten are at NFA.
DeMarco: who's going to do the work they do now?
Pacella: custodial staff.
DeMarco: do K and 1st grade kids need help. Don't think we know what they do.
Vote on item 20, reduce Lunch Monitors: 2 No: DeMarco, Bowles. All others: Yes.
Pacella: Central office, executive drive, and Stewart locations: no recommendations.
Poppiti: we've micromanaged this budget two years now. Board asked to stay away from the classroom. Cuts to Pre-K, Reading Specialists, Librarians are being considered. Not once has there been any reduction in support staff. There are 21 typists.
Pacella: there werer one or two clerical cuts last year.
Poppiti: gotta be some ability to shave. Maybe with a little more effort could pick up a little more.
DeMarco: how much will the utility tax make?
Pacella: $1.3M is factored into local revenue.
DeMarco: and the 608k dental/vision insurance item?
Pacella: we'll look at possible pooling model.
Poppiti: Heritage is losing 1/3 of its population. Not unreasonable to lose a guidance counselor. In addition South did not lose a counselor last year. Perhaps realocate. We bubbled losing one by attrition. [argues that this is an easy transition. should consider.] Attendance teachers: there are none in directory.
Leimer: there are 2 teachers at NFA in tenure area of attendence.
[Big debate about guidance counselors. Bowles and McAfee contending that Director of The Department of Counseling and Guidance Fairey should address the Board. Guidance counselor item remains bubbled.]
Bowles: guidance counselors do a lot of interventions.
Resch: feels the guidance counselors save a lot of kids.
Board Member Giudice: do social workers work with guidance counselors?
Forgit: different for each building. No set standards or consistency.
McAfee: complexity of a two campus high school will increase demand on guidance.
[Building changes from Feb 4 meeting were reviewed. These had apparently not been voted upon.]
Fucheck: equity amongst buildings. Three with no academic specialists. One submitted request with budget proposal. Is this something requiring further equity.
Resch: how do we judge need if admins did not bring forward.
Saturnelli: this is what we received.
Woodhull: school has done without for decades. Not good to create positions this year.
McAfee: did we approve an Academic Specialist at Balmville?
Pacella: that was part of the big spreadsheet.
McAfee: sees this as an extra. Can't support when cutting positions.
Vote on adding Academic Specialist position. Yes: Guidice, Poppiti, DeMarco. All others: No.
Woodhull: what is the item to add second and third grade positions at Horizons?
Saturnelli: no net change. Just a grade shift.
Pacella: The $600K dental/vision number will be changed to a reduction of $549K. Before tonight the tax impact was %1.14 to % 3.62. Have not gone through negotions [with unions]. That's happening this week. Tonight perhaps another $1M reduction.
[revisiting SAVE room topic]
Poppitti: Agreed to eliminate teacher in SAVE room at MH and keep at TH. [points out this there is an incosistency, see vote on item 13 above]
Vote to reduce SAVE room at TH: 1 No: DeMarco. All others Yes.
[revisiting Pre-K changes]
Pacella: didn't have consensus of 5. 4 of 7 approved.
McAfee: ready to change vote to support elimination of full day.
Woodhull: spent some time at Washington St. They are very much in agreement to go with 1/2 day only. The instructional time difference is not as large as he had expected.
Fucheck: next time, social workers and guidance.
Pacella: also clerical staffing [at administrative locations], utilities budget, some idea about contract negotiations.
Forgit: reading specialist caseload.
[DeMarco broght up utility tax revenue]
Pacella: expect a big check in June, but can't guage.
DeMarco: so as far as current budget?
Pacella: not included in this year's revenue.
Fucheck: next meeetings will be March 11, 18, and 25 at 5pm.