By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The Board of Education is taking a new approach to crafting the 2014-2015 budget - the whole process will be conducted in the open.

Finance committee chairman Loren Fountaine said the group's meetings will include the full board and the public is welcome to attend.

He said he wants to keep the process as orderly as possible, so the committee will not take public comments during their sessions. But, the public can give input on the budget during the second public comment portion of the regular board meeting, which can be about anything. The first comment period is for agenda items only.

Faculty and staff should direct comments and idea to the district clerk via email, according to Fountaine.

He pointed to past budget seasons where he believes lines of communication were shattered. This year's goal, the board members agreed, is for information to flow from the faculty and staff to administration to the superintendent to the board, and vice versa.

"Those kinds of conversations working from the bottom up are what we're looking for," Fountaine said.

The finance committee will next discuss the budget on April 3 at 5 p.m., prior to the regular school board meeting.