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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to asbo international's school business insider. I'm your host, john brucato. Each week on School Business Insider, I sit down with school business officials and industry experts from around the world to share their stories and explore the topics that matter most to you. Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business.
- [00:40]
B
So a little bit different of a presentation this morning, continuing in the theme of advocacy, I'm joined today by Robert Doyle. He's the school business official at East Quoag Quag.
- [00:52]
C
Yes.
- [00:54]
B
To really talk about his journey in school business and focus specifically on self advocacy. So I wanted to tell his story today and just really dovetail into what we've talked a lot about today in terms of advocacy in general. So, Robert, welcome.
- [01:07]
C
Thank you.
- [01:08]
B
To the event today. So this all kind of started in our planning process through the Regional Institute of School Business Leadership. In terms of, you wrote an article for ASBO ny and you also wrote a really nice reflective piece for the association as well as I wanna talk a little bit about that reflective piece, can you just give everyone just a little bit of a summary in terms of just your reflection on your career so far in school business?
- [01:33]
C
Sure. So, well, first of all, thank you for having me. Thank you, Dr. Ron. Thank you. PNW BOCES, ASBO, Rebecca and Amanda, who couldn't be here this morning. So last year at the Education Summit, the theme was reflection. And it happened to coincide with my third year as being a business official. So I thought after sitting back and reflecting a little bit on my first three years, I thought it was important to just write a little bit of piece about some of the people and the groups that have influenced me so far in my short career. And particularly that was some of the local groups that I'm involved in, more regional cluster and obviously ASBO New York. So I wrote a letter called Reflection or article Reflection and kind of my transformative impact on the things that have influenced me as a business official. And I submitted that and that turned into an article in the Reporter, which you could read if you want, and then subsequently into something like this.
- [02:36]
B
When you think about reflecting in terms of your first three years, what words come to mind when you look back when you first started, because we'll get into how you transition from private sector. But what, what really comes to mind in your first three years?
- [02:48]
C
It was much different than what I thought it was gonna be. You have plenty of years in private finance and thinking, well, I can use those skills to transition to public finance. But it was really learning to lean on or involve the people and the associations that are out there. Use the resources that are available to you, use the local groups, use ASBO as a resource, use the vendors, use other people as resources and just sit back and reflect on how you can use those to your advantage and learn and grow.
- [03:26]
B
I'm curious when you started. When I think back to when I had first started, I had no idea what an ASBO was because I came from the private sector too. How did you first discover that there was this vast network of support, asbo, local chapters, everything in between?
- [03:39]
C
Yeah, so again I don't want to jump ahead but you know I, I had one business official, sister school or tuition school took me kind of under the belt immediately and brought me to. He's actually one of the founding members of or he kind of runs the East End School Business Officials, our cluster group. And through there there was people that were involved in the ASBO board, the ASBO organization. So I quickly got in touch with them and they talked to me about it. The first summit I went to was the summit in November, the sbmw. And so I just got exposure from there and it grew from there.
- [04:18]
B
30 years in private finance, what made you kind of make the transition over to public sector?
- [04:23]
C
Yeah, so I started my career in New York City working for both Prudential securities for a short period of time in the investment banking area. I went to cibc, what's called CIBC Oppenheimer in the investment banking area. And then I transitioned to what they call the retail side. Being essentially a financial advisor. I grew the business to where I was managing close to $200 million in assets under management, mostly high net worth individuals institutions. But I was sitting in front of a desk from 9:30 to 4, they're trading stocks and talking on the phone and it just, it wasn't fulfilling to me. It was fulfilling I'm sure to all the people I was making a lot of money for, they were very happy with it. But just for me, after doing that for about 10 plus years, it just wasn't fulfilling for me anymore. I'm a big believer in community. I'm a 22 year volunteer firefighter, ex captain of my company. I'm involved in a lot of charitable organizations, other organizations and I just wanted to be doing something more community oriented. And I figured the school district is probably one of the biggest parts of any community out there. So I said let me take some of my hopefully private finance skills and transition to Public finance and maybe try to make a difference in the community and in the school district and find some more meaningful work.
- [05:46]
B
So when you first stepped in the school business official role, I'm curious, what did you think it was going to be and what is it?
- [05:53]
C
I wasn't really sure what it was going to be. I mean I had, I knew of a friend of a friend that was in there in the business and I kind of tried to talk to him a little bit, but it was definitely kind of a shock to my system. It definitely was completely different than private finance. I kind of was thrown into the deep end. You have public accountability, you have regulations. There's kind of a steep learning curve right away from, from even though you have all this private finance experience to dealing with budget codes and those types of things that you didn't have in the private world.
- [06:32]
B
What about your experience in the non financials? A lot of our work is centered around operations, food service, transportation, tech, you name it. How has that been going?
- [06:41]
C
Well again, I was kind of. I spent my whole life in the Wall street era in the 90s, I mean the 80s, we know excess 90s weren't that much. There were still pretty a lot of excess. I mean I didn't deal with unions. The work environment in the private sector, in the finance industry, at least in the 90s and early 2000s was much different than working for a public sector. Right. I didn't have food experience, I didn't have transportation experience. It was, it's all kind of been learning on the fly and again relying on some of the people and the networks that we're going to talk about.
- [07:21]
B
So one thing that stood out to me in your reflection as you describe yourself as quote being quietly terrified. I can relate to that. When I first started. Why was that and what was your day to day? Why was.
- [07:34]
C
Yeah, so I guess I took a little bit more of a non traditional step into becoming a business official again. Like I said, transitioning from private finance to public finance. I had no experience. Right. So I had my undergraduate degree, I had my mba, I had my sdbl, I had the first half of my internship at the time. I don't know if it's changed now. We had to do 600 hours, 300 hours on one section, 300 hours on another section. So I had my first 300 hours done and I was really trying to find a place to do the second half of my internship and get a job. And I didn't want to take the traditional route, which I probably should have is Maybe becoming an account clerk to get the experience. Every school district wanted your SDBL and five years of experience before they looked at you. Right. So if you look at my OLAS history of job applications, probably ran out of pages. I was applying to every school, you know, every upstate Nassau, Suffolk, just so I could get some experience of a job interview, but also hoping to find either like a number two at a big school or a number one at a very small school. So I ended up, you know, after a long time, getting an offer from a small school in eastern Long island where they would let me complete the second half of my internship with the assumption that I would take over for the business official. I was retiring, you know, the second half of my internship, I don't think I got as much out of it as I had hoped.
- [09:04]
B
Why not?
- [09:06]
C
Well, he, you know, look, he was already in retirement mode. He already kind of had one foot out the door. And the premise was in June, I would start officially in official capacity. So I'd have the month of June to train under him. And during the month of June, you know, he took the rest of his vacation and sick days. So I had maybe five days with him during the month of June before I took over July 1. So July 1 was a Friday. I walk in the door July 1, thank goodness we had Monday off of July 4. But July 1, I walk in the door and it's me. My name's on the door. It wasn't really more about panic. It was just the weight of the responsibility of now, I'm the business official. This is me. My name's going on the piece of paper. And so outwardly I tried to remain composed. Inwardly, I was questioning, what am I doing? What is this? And I guess that was kind of the first step towards me. What drove me to try to seek and build connections because I knew that I'm going to need help, I'm going to need some connections, I'm going to need help. And thankfully, I was able to find it, but you have to seek it in some ways.
- [10:23]
B
What was the experience with your business office staff? Can you give us kind of a landscape? Do you have a big staff? Are they veteran staff? How do they receive you as being. This is your first business official job?
- [10:34]
C
Yeah, they look, I think there was a little. A little hesitation on their part. You know, it. I came from the private sector, and again, I mean, I'm not faulting anyone, but I know that there was like, you know, there was a filing, there was paperwork that needed to be filed. Like Invoices and stuff. And it sat out there for like two weeks. And eventually I asked the county clerk. I said, what's going on? And she said, well, I'm just so busy, I don't have time to file. So I think the next day I just did it myself. Right. But I mean, and I know that, you know, I think there initially there was some hesitation on their part. They were both there for many, many years. But I think it quickly grew. I mean, look, I view you do the work, you show up, you know, you earn your respect by being there early, by communicating. And I just. I think I proved it to them over a period of time that I'm there to stay. And although I didn't stay, I just. They. It took a while, but they were receptive. It was two. Two people again, a small staff. We had a junior and a senior account clerk.
- [11:42]
B
You described your experience. Just your name's on the door like it's you. Were there ever moments where you're like, this isn't. This isn't it? Like, I made a mistake?
- [11:49]
C
No, I don't think so. I mean, it wasn't. Again, it wasn't. It was just. I knew then that every decision was going to affect people. Every decision I make was going to affect a student, was going to affect the staff, was going to affect the taxpayer. So it was more of an untraditional way. But I knew that this is what I wanted to do and I was going to make it work regardless.
- [12:11]
B
So we laid a good foundation in terms of your background, really, I'd like to dovetail into just the advocacy piece. We've spent all morning talking about the importance of advocacy, different routes to do so, maintaining a positive attitude. How would you personally define self advocacy? Because that's really what I wanted to focus on.
- [12:31]
C
So I really. I view it as taking ownership of your growth. Right. I mean, advocacy you're growing is going to be on you. It's not waiting around, it's actively going out and seeking knowledge and seeking support of others. Right. That's really what it comes down to, asking the questions that need to be asked, building relationships and really putting yourself in a position to learn. That's your advocacy, is you advocating for yourself, putting yourself in a position to learn, and knowing that you need to build those relationships right away.
- [13:10]
B
Did you find that it was a challenge to get started in terms of self advocacy? Because I think back too, to my early career. I didn't know what I didn't know. So it was challenging to even begin to ask My colleagues, what I needed help with. Where did you begin?
- [13:23]
C
Yeah, I mean, you don't know all the answers, you know, and you shouldn't have to know all the answers. This role is too complex to navigate alone and there's a steep learning curve. And like I said again, the sister school, we were K through 7, we tuitioned 8 through 12, all to an exclusive school and we were paying over a million dollars a month in tuition. Right. So there was a strong financial incentive on the sister school to. Or the incoming school to make sure I succeeded because they wanted to make sure they got their million dollar check every month. Right. So that was really kind of the first person that I leaned on and to advocate for me and to help me. I would drive over to the school if I needed to and sit down with them. Or he even came over to me and we would go through some of the things that I was questioning.
- [14:15]
B
And did you find once you kind of opened that door, it was easier to kind of broaden your network a little bit because you had kind of a trusted source?
- [14:22]
C
Yeah. And the person who I'm talking about is Sam Schneider v. Stampton. And he actually was the ASBO SPO of the year last year. So, you know, and he wanted just a lot on the merit of his. What he does for mentoring all the people on the East End and his organization of the East End school business officials. But yeah. So really, really from there, and we'll talk about it a little bit more, but expanding to East End business officials, which is our cluster monthly cluster meeting, those people really kind of then expanded it from there.
- [14:58]
B
And you talk to it a little bit. But what does self advocacy really look like?
- [15:03]
C
If.
- [15:04]
B
I mean, I think your example of reaching out to Sam and developing that relationship is certainly one aspect of it, but what else is there? Is it speaking up? Is it building those relationships with other school business officials, those in your district? Tell me a little bit more about what you did to approach that.
- [15:18]
C
Yeah, it's doing the work. It's showing people that you're committed to what you're doing. It's reaching out, it's coming into work on time, it's staying until you need to, and building the relationships with your superintendent, building the relationships with the other staff members, building the relationship with your colleagues through, whether it's through ESME business, whether it's through the education Summit, Just getting your name out there in terms of, you know, I always. And not to jump ahead, but I always would be the first one at our business officials meeting every Month. And one morning another business official came in and long story short, it ended up me transitioning to a different job just because I was there early and I had those relationships and it helped me further my career.
- [16:13]
B
You'd mentioned a couple times putting the work in, staying the hours. Our keynote speaker this morning had a really great quote where both your work and your family want the best of you, not the rest of you. At any point did you feel like one of those was sacrificing with the time you're putting in?
- [16:30]
C
No. You know, I don't have children, so I wasn't obligated to. I do have a four legged Great Dane who wants a lot of my time and I have to go home and make sure I walk him. You know, every time I come home, he's jumping up and down and excited to see me. So. But no, I mean, when I was in the private sector, I worked crazy hours. I actually worked in the city. I was commuting from eastern Long island to the city. I would leave my house at 5 in the morning and get home 8 o' clock at night. So, you know, and then transitioning to my first school in East Hampton, even though it was only like 20 miles away, would take me sometimes 2 1/2 and 3 hours to get there one way. Right. So I don't know how familiar people are with, with the Hamptons in eastern Long island, but it's one road, you know, and it could. So that was my wife and I understand the work life balance. She works catering, she works crazy hours as well. So no, she knows my work is important to me. I try to remain dedicated and we always have a good life balance. Bless you.
- [17:35]
B
So you talked a lot about self advocacy and how you approached it, but there are times where people may be hesitant to even get started. What do you feel holds individuals back from really being a self advocate?
- [17:47]
C
Yeah, so I mean, some of it is fear, right? Fear of asking the wrong. Fear of asking the wrong question or fear of asking a question. You know, how many times you say I have a stupid question, you know, but it's, you know, you can't think that way. Right. I would rather ask than do something and be wrong, you know, So I think it's more of just not worrying or looking inexperienced. I mean, you know, it's okay to ask the simple questions. I think we've all been there, right? We've all started. We've all been in a position where maybe we didn't know something or maybe we've hesitated to ask, but Mindset is it's better to ask than be wrong.
- [18:32]
B
In your reflective piece, you described your East End school business officials say ASBO and ASBO New York as really kind of a line of offense. What did you mean by that and how has that been your experience with these organizations?
- [18:44]
C
Yeah, so most people say, oh, they're my defense, they protect me. I view these organizations as offense. In helping me move forward, East End business officials gives me immediate local support. We meet once a month. There's really no agenda. We walk in and what's on your mind today? Anything, have anything to share? And we're able to talk about what's going on in our district. We're having the problem with this vendor or this. So there's no set agenda, but they're helping me move forward. Then you have Sasbo, which is our local ASBO chapter. And then they give you a countywide perspective, right. So they meet once a month on a Friday, generally in the afternoon. And so when it's over about 2 o', clock, it's sometimes very hard to go back to the office. So thankfully they do meetings at, you know, Friday afternoons. But no, they'll bring in people like Brian and they'll bring in other, other timely organizations. And then ASBO New York, ASBO now offers statewide resources. Right. So they're more big picture type of thing. So all these types of things, in my opinion are helping me move forward in my career by reaching out to them and accessing their resources they have available. And you know, it's at ASBO after the education summit and the day is over, you know, vendors will ask you to go out into a local coffee shop and you'll have coffee. At least that's what we tell our superintendent, that we're going out and we're having coffee. But you know, and you're able to connect with someone and that maybe they're telling you about a problem they're having and six months later, lo and behold, you're having that same problem. So you're able, I think it's much better when you're able to call up Joe or Susie and say, well, remember when we were having coffee and we were talking about that little problem? How did you resolve that? How did that come about? Right. So I think each layer of these different groups builds on one another. And you know, and not to steal the thunder from the education summit, but this year's theme is Better Together. Right. And I really feel like, I really feel like we are better together and having each layer help you. We're better together. We can't do this job alone, in my opinion.
- [21:04]
B
I thought I saw you drinking coffee at 2:30 in the morning. Tell me a little bit more about the School Business Management Workshop and the Education Summit. There's a lot of professional development opportunities, just even like today in the fifth Annual Regional Institute of School Business Leadership. How does this kind of mold you as a professional and help you become a better self advocate as well?
- [21:28]
C
Yeah, so I'm actually I was thankfully I'm part of the planning committee this year for the Education Summit. So we worked really hard as a group to try to bring some fresh perspective to different types of strands. But I think it's teaching me to be more, you know, to get ahead of problems. Right. These types of things. If you advocate and you learn these education systems will help you learn to maybe plan better. I mean, great examples, fiscal planning, five year planning. You don't want to wait until you have a problem, right? Maybe you try to identify the problem earlier. Maintenance of things. These types of things that I think you get from the summit, not only from the seminars but also from interacting with other people, help you in that type of capacity.
- [22:17]
B
I think an important piece of advocacy, and especially self advocacy is reflection. Can you tell me why you may think that is so critical and how that's played a vital role and where you have landed today?
- [22:30]
C
Yeah, sure. So I think reflection helps turn your experience into learning, right? If you're able to sit back and reflect on what's happened in the past, it helps you learn. That'll help you move forward. I think it also helps you respond versus react again. You want to try to respond to situations as they're happening, not react to them after they've happened. Right. It really, it helps me build self awareness, learn things that maybe I'm good at or things that I'm short at, shortcomings that I need to learn more. So when you're able to reflect, it helps you build inside your self awareness and I think it leads to better decisions. You learn to improve by reflecting and you can learn to improve yourself.
- [23:17]
B
Do you find it challenging to find the time to actually reflect? It seems a lot of our roles is just putting out one fire to the next. I mean, where do you find the time and the capacity to really reflect on what you've done or what you could be doing better to be a better self advocate to improve yourself as a business advocate?
- [23:35]
C
Well, at least in the early part of my career, at least for the first seven months, it was reflecting on my three hour drive back and forth, two miles, either cursing the traffic or reflecting? No, But I think there are times where you just have to make the time. Even though you don't have it, you have to make the time. And I think after our monthly East End business officials meeting or after the Sasbo monthly meeting, you can sit back and you can spend some time trying to reflect and learn about what's happened. And even in your day to day, we, we have. Whether you have a cabinet meeting with your superintendent and after the cabinet meeting you're able to just take a few minutes to sit back and reflect on what you've learned during that time.
- [24:20]
B
Tell me more about that. Has that taken time to build those relationships specifically with your cabinet team and more so your superintendent? Because you start in a new school district, you're learning a new culture, new traditions, new norms. How do you strike the balance of introducing your own ideas but also respecting the traditions that the district may have had for many years?
- [24:40]
C
Yeah. So I've always said that I believe that the SBO and the superintendent are the two most important relationships in the school district. Right. And when I was at my first district for seven months and then seven months in, I had the opportunity to move to another district. It was an extremely, extremely difficult decision because I had told the first district all the right things. I wanted to be there. You're giving me my shot. I'm going to stay here. But again, I wasn't seeking this. Someone came out and sought me at the meeting and they said, there's a school district they never had a business official, there's an opening. Would you at least have a conversation with the superintendent? I said, I'm seven months into my position, brand new. I can't do that. This is not right. He said, look, just have a conversation. And I said, all right, I'll have a conversation. I said, give her my number. Driving back from the meeting that we left 10 minutes later, I got a call from the superintendent. I went in. Two days later I interviewed. Two more days later I interviewed with her and the board and they gave me the position. And I started.
- [25:53]
B
Was it a challenging conversation with your existing superintendent?
- [25:57]
C
Very challenging. Because she wanted my new superintendent, who was actually the intern at this new school, wanted me to make sure I told my superintendent before. And yeah, it was, I was shunned for, for a little bit of time. I had a 60 day separation agreement, but they were so mad they just said just leave. Which was great because the new district wanted me even more to start as quickly as they Wanted me gone. But back to your point. I'm sorry, I sidelined a little bit was when I started. I started in January of that year, and that superintendent left and we hired a new one. So I was kind of brand new. The superintendent was brand new. So it was. We've kind of grown into the role together. I didn't come in with a newly established. Established superintendent who'd been there for 15 years and posing their way. He's been very flexible and very open to my suggestions on how to run things and how I've been running things for only the six months prior to him actually starting. So it's been a great relationship. He's a great person to work with. I mean, you know, I. I hear at some of these things, some of the horror stories about boards, about superintendents, and for good or bad, I can't relate to that. I, you know, I just. I don't. I can't relate to that. And. And just.
- [27:20]
B
I hope you never have to.
- [27:21]
C
Yeah, I hope so, too. So it's. But there's. Yeah. So we've grown together. He's very open. I mean, he did, for his first year, want to please everyone. He was more of a yes man, I think, in a lot of ways, to the teachers. And I was like, you can't do that. Right? You can't do that. And now I think he's finally starting to come around a little bit, you know, but it is what it is. And if he hears this at some point. Forgive me.
- [27:50]
B
So in your reflection and in your piece that you wrote, you did speak to the importance of just really being direct about how you're asking questions, who you're asking questions to, whether they feel simple or uncomfortable. Why do you feel being so direct is that important?
- [28:08]
C
Well, it's, in my opinion, the best way to get an answer right. I mean, you just need to, if there's a question, ask the question right. Don't. Don't try to give what ifs or this scenarios or that scenarios. I think you don't want to mistake having to do some of the work for taking asking the question and getting the easy answer right. But there's horror stories of things out in the district where in Long island, we might levy two different towns, and there was a school business official who overtaxed one town severely. It undertaxed another town severely, and that was a huge problem. We had another district that a couple districts this year have negative levies because they had huge bonds fall off, and now they're stuck with. So they're going to 0% to pierce the cap. Right. We had another business official who added the library debt as an exclusion and totally messed up their tax cap. I mean, there are bad stories out there, and again, it happens. Mistakes happen. But asking the questions or not being afraid to say, hey, can you double check this for me? Is something that I think is very important to do, especially when you're one year, two years, three years in.
- [29:31]
B
Well, I wanted to ask, how did you personally approach that situation? I'm sure you had more questions than answers in the first year or two. Who did you reach out to and how did you kind of approach those situations? Because, you know, being this chief business official, there's a point where you want to have the answers, I think, naturally, as a part of the position, but starting out so new, you're not going to. So how did you kind of navigate that?
- [29:53]
C
Yeah. So someone once told me, one of the ways we get by in this business is through colleagues and consultants. Right. And there's no shortage of colleagues, and there's no shortage of consultants out there. Right. So Forecast five, whatever they may be, they've changed their name a bunch of times, but, you know, they, They'll. They'll look at your tax cap, they'll look at your mou, you know, all those different types of things. You pay for it, but it's worth it, right? So, you know, Brady was very instrumental in. Early in my career, helping me when she was with Forkast.
- [30:22]
B
Big Brady fan.
- [30:23]
C
Yeah. You know, and for good or bad, we were going over it. This was when I was at first starting out, and we were, we were going over, and she's like, well, let me just do it. And she went in there and she was populating, you know, excuse me, populating everything instead of me putting it all in. But, you know, so it's through colleagues and consultants. And again, the fact that one person takes you under their wing a little bit and opens the door, and you just kind of take advantage of it, once you're in the door, you kind of just fan out from there.
- [30:50]
B
And how do you thread the needle between someone like Brady doing your tax cap analysis and then you actually doing the research? I mean, that's one example. But how do you prioritize what is more valuable in terms of your time?
- [31:00]
C
Yeah, well, I'll answer that. But it was, you know, my sister growing up was fluent Spanish, and I was. When I was taking Spanish, I would actually said, what's. What does this word mean? Or how do I say this? You do the work, you know, you do it right. So I think initially people were doing it for me just for the sake of getting it done. But now I don't rely on that. I want to do it myself and then have someone double check it. So it certainly is a. It's more of a. You want to make sure that maybe in the beginning, if someone's helping you, they're not doing you a disservice by not actually teaching you or making. Forcing you to do it.
- [31:42]
B
You also talked about really the evolution of being reactive, to strategic. We talked about surviving to thriving this morning. When did you really start to feel the shift where you were kind of in control of the narrative and your trajectory in this career?
- [31:57]
C
Still don't? No, no, it's, you know, I think, I don't know. People always say you need two or three cycles in this business to really start to feel it. I'm, you know, I'm going to be entering my fourth cycle. So I think, you know, over probably the last year my confidence has grown and I've started to, you know, get the experience and the repetition of doing a budget for the third time, doing a tax cap for for the third time, doing a cash flow analysis for the third time. So I think a lot of it is repetition and experience. And then once you're able to get that repetition in it, it leads you to be able to feel more comfortable.
- [32:41]
B
So the technicals are a huge piece of the work, but how has your leadership style and those soft skills changed over the past three to four years?
- [32:49]
C
Yeah, so I hopefully I'm more of a macro type of person. I feel I have really good people around me. I'm not in their face all the time. I'm hoping that, look, my name is on this stuff at the end of the day, so I need to make sure that I'm checking their work and I'm doing it. But I try to remain more hands off and just focus on what I need to do. So I think my leadership has been more trusting in the people that are doing the work and because now I understand a little bit more about what they're doing. In the beginning, when you don't understand, maybe you're kind of over them and trying to learn a little bit more about them and maybe they feel like you're in their face a lot because you're just trying to understand. But once you understand or if you feel you really have good people that are capable of doing the work, you can try to just focus on the things that are the Bigger picture and
- [33:40]
B
more important, you're in your fourth budget cycle. What is still challenging for you today?
- [33:46]
C
Well, trying to guess the unknowns. Right. I mean, there's so many unknowns when you're development budget. What's the health insurance going to look like? You don't want to underestimate your health insurance when you're six months of an unknown. Right. Transportation. I mean, districts are putting out RFPs for transportation on the eastern end of Long island and they're going up 30, 35%. I mean, we had Shoreham Wading River I think last year allocated I think 1.2 million or something in their transportation. Came in like 1.6 and he's like, I have one year to pay for this and then next year I don't know how I'm going to pay for it. So, you know, and the ever changing thing that maybe New York State throws at you now, universal, UPK mandated. I mean, I don't think we're going to hit that limit, but we may. And I think another challenging thing is Newsday will put out like this next year. We're allocated $300,000 for UPK. We're lucky if we use maybe 150. But they show that our state revenues are going up 20% or something. It's not. We're actually going down 6% because the UPK money, they include it, but it's not. So some of those things are challenging to understand and get around.
- [35:04]
B
What has your approach been in terms of being able to communicate those challenges and those nuances of how our budgeting process works to your community at large and to your board?
- [35:15]
C
Yeah. So again, I can't relate because we have a pretty, you know, East Quag has been very, very good and very supportive of us. You know, we do try to communicate to the board on a regular basis the impacts that some of the decisions are having in the community. But I don't want to jinx myself. But if we have two people at our board meeting, that's a lot.
- [35:42]
B
Yeah, that's good. So winding down here, when you look back at your three to four years in the role, coming from such a storied career in private sector finance, what are you most proud of?
- [35:54]
C
Well, right now, for me, even though I'm only four years in now, it's really about what's my legacy going to be. What's my legacy going to be as a business official. I want to be all the people I'm seeking advice to now. I want to be that person, whether it's five years, 10 years, or 15 years, I want people to be able to come to me. The lessons that I've learned and the relationships that I've built are going to continue to remain a source of motivation for me. And I ended the article when I wrote for the reporter was that for me, the first few years have been a story of connection, growth, and the collective pursuit of excellence. And I have many resources and people to thank for that. And I think that's what I'm going to continue to take away the relationships that we're building, the people that are willing to help me. Just one last thing. The East End, I'm sure a lot of other places, well, we have a lot of big egos, business officials with big egos, Right? And a business official may not like the school that you're at for whatever reason, because maybe they had a bad experience there. They may not even like you as a person. But I honestly believe there's not one business official on the East End that wants to see another person fail. Despite how they feel about you, despite how they feel about your school. They're gonna take your email, they're gonna take your phone call, and they're gonna help you. And that's what I wanna be, you know, five years from now or 10 years from now. I wanna continue to do this. That.
- [37:19]
B
Great. Well said, Robert. And thank you for. For joining us at the Risbo 5th Annual today.
- [37:24]
C
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
- [37:26]
A
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