Um, this is called Blessed Are the Cub Scouts. It's accredited to the National Capital Area Cub Scouting Council. Blessed are the Cub Scouts who are taught to see beauty in all things around them. For their world will be a place of grace and wonder. Blessed are the Cub Scouts who are led with patience and understanding. For they will learn the strength of endurance and gift of tolerance. Blessed are the Cub Scouts who are provided a home where family members dwell in harmony and close communion. For they shall become the peacemakers of the world. Blessed are the Cub Scouts who are taught the value and power of truth. for they shall search for knowledge and use it with wisdom and discernment. Blessed are the Cub Scouts who are guided by those with faith in their fellow man, for they will know the value and strength in the community of others.
So I know where it was in the beginning. So when you see all that testing happening, don't get nervous, okay? We need benchmarks. We want to see where we're at. And obviously, if any of the levels are high, you know, we're going to take care of that. There's also CO2 levels, believe it or not. Everybody's about carbon monoxide, but CO2 is not good for uh for headaches and stuff, too. There's ways of fixing that. A lot of schools don't really uh recognize that stuff. um preventive maintenance like we talked about continue environmental test um environmental testing I I just said the lighting upgrades on the outside some of the gym upgrades the dedication to coach Dawson uh which is underway right now for the new gym it's going to be looks spect spectacular um just a lot of perception things as me walking around the district I spend a lot of time outside of my office I don't know why that's a big thing for people but you know superintendent should not be sitting in their office they should be seeing what's going on especially if you're new um as I go around some of these places you all deserve just like in your houses, right?
He's not bite trained, uh, but he's trained in many other aspects of the job. And he is just a humongous asset. And so, if I could leave you with a story before I turn this over to Daniel. Um, the police chief over there at Decatur, he's a friend, a personal friend of mine, his name is, uh, Kevin Gerber. And much like my wife who has taught in this system, as many of you guys know, for for 28 years, and it seems like I hear these stories on a regular basis, uh, from her and and also my neighbor Carrie Neil, I asked her to stay because I told her she was going to like this a lot. Um, we took a tour that day at Belmont High School with the with the school resource officer and that dog. Now, I want to I want to share with you guys one thing.
Blessed are the Cub Scouts who are loved and know that they are loved. For they shall show they shall sew seeds of love in the world and reap joy for themselves and others. So at this time we are going to transition to the second half of the evening. we will all have a meal together. Um so uh give us a moment and in a moment we will start to dismiss table table by table just to keep some level of organization. Um what I will ask everyone to do when you go in line to get some food is to go out that back door to the hall. Go in the hall and loop around to this front door and then come join the line at the table here. Um there we can get food on both sides of the table so we could try to move the line quickly.
That's why you mow your grass. That's why you paint your fence and all that other stuff so it looks nice. People look up to go in your house. I'm like, "Wow, this person takes care of their place." Should be the same thing with us, right? People come from other towns, they come into they come into the gym and they're like, "Oh, this is Garfield." Well, that all stops with this budget. Um, shared service agreements continually to try to meet with the township mayor and council to talk about some of these things. Hopefully hopefully that kind of breaks through at some point. Uh there's a lot of ideas that I have, but again um it's going to take a little time. I think the main one is this and I'll bring it up again. I brought up a few times now. I'll make it very clear.
These are not therapy dogs, so to speak. Um, because they won't have that therapy dog accreditation. They're a police canine that'll have other certifications, but the truth of the matter is these dogs break down walls. And this particular situation when we get to the elementary end of the building, um Kevin Gerber, the chief of police for Decar, his wife comes up to us and he introduces us to her and she shares with us a story where she got to use that dog that very, very day. So, a young elementary age special needs student gets off the bus and he's having a bad day and he hits the ground and starts throwing a tantrum and he absolutely refuses to go to class. Obviously, Mrs. Mrs. Gerber, like all of our teachers, they don't want to put hands on children, right? That's not what we're trained to do.
Um everyone please go through help yourself. Um stuff is labeled. There is some stuff for folks who are gluten-free. There is some stuff for folks who are vegetarian and there is stuff for folks who eat other stuff too. Um so uh hope everyone enjoys what's over there. Um enjoy have some food together. We're going to have a slideshow showing of uh some of our scouts who are here as Arrow of Lights through the years. Um and uh partway through dinner, we will pause. We will have some recognitions uh for some folks involved with the pack. Um and then we will eventually have some cake. And who doesn't love cake? Um so I think that's everything that I wanted to say. Yes. Um, families, uh, stay up here for a second. We're going to take some pictures of of of scouts by the bridge with their other and other adults of AOLs.
We need help when school 5 gets built. I know everybody's talking about oh school 5. I I'm telling you that building is going to go up quicker than you could imagine. The biggest problem is the site work and it's almost done. Having it go up is not going to be an issue. It's slated to open up September of 27. Seems like it's a far time away, but it's not. We'll probably We'll probably get the keys probably like January 27, right? Maybe start filtering people in. I don't know. You're talking about 125 staff members, 700 some odd students. Okay. Um I don't know what the configuration is. I know what the original idea was, but maybe that's changed. We have to meet with the board and discuss that as a stakeholder group. If anybody would be interested in that, I'll be putting out for parents to sit on that committee.
We're there to educate. She calls the school resource officer who brings the dog down. As soon as that young man sees the dog, his mindset changes. He looks at the dog, he becomes more focused. He forgets about his bad day. The resource officer makes a deal with him. Hey, if you do what Mrs. Gerber wants you to do and you go to class, I'll let you walk the dog. The officer holds on to the end of the leash, the young boy grabs the middle of the leash, he goes off the class, and now his day is off on the right start. Right? Those are the kinds of things that these programs can bring to us. And this is what we're excited to offer you. I'm going to talk a little bit more about fundraising here in just a minute. But I'm going to turn this over to uh school resource officer Daniel Loe's because I will share with you jumping ahead.
Um, however, you know, we we need some property because parking and traffic is going to be crazy there. So, have an idea to share a service with the uh with the the township where the board picks up the bill, but I just need them to help me bond. But we we need to talk about that. I think that shared service is imperative or you will never be able to go down out order lane in the morning, okay? Or in the afternoon, okay? Um so so that's coming hopefully on the horizon. The administrative costs and all this other stuff that you're going to see these are all projections and all things that are done by the state department. This is not us in a room making up these numbers. It's done for us. It's a through formulaic um probabilities etc. We we spend 364 less than the regional limit.
The reason I asked Mr. Baker to be here this evening is we've already sat down with him and his administration out at Riverview. This dog we hope with your approval will be assigned to Riverview Middle School in the care of officer Daniel Loe's. And uh we're just looking forward to it. So I'm going to turn this over to Daniel. He'll talk a little bit more specifics about the program. All right. Well, thank you for sitting here and listening to us speak. Like Chief Boxel said, um part of what moved me to to come to him with this proposal was meeting officer Elwell at the from the Decator Police Department and listening to him speak about the amazing things that K9 Kota has done in their building. I think that the school board and the corporation as a whole has shown a great investment um in school safety by the addition of you know three resource officers alongside officer Whitman who served in that role by himself for so long.
Okay, that's not uncommon because when you see the last slide I think it's going to be interesting. Can I get the next slide? So when we had the 5.5% increase obviously the revenue is higher right so this is the revenue that we were looking to project this is prior to this meeting all right you see some extraordinary aid helps us the tax levy was going to be 37 million um and then other things that you see there which is unrestricted aid which is called semi which is which is information sorry is money you get back for things that you do for special education students etc. Okay. All I want to point out on this right here is where 52% of the revenue sources come from. That's called equalization aid. Okay. That's money you get from the state to basically stay afloat. Last year, you got a lot of money and aid here before I got here, which was incredible.
And I see this as an opportunity for us to invest back into you guys to provide a tool so we can properly show you, you know, and work together with you for a school safety collaboration effort um between the department police department as well as the school. Um, so you know, something that stuck with me over my short time in the school with this being my first year is, you know, frequent sitdowns with Chuck and our school safety meetings. And, you know, he always says that whatever it is, we can't we can't get it wrong. And so, I think it is imperative to provide ourselves and you guys with the tools to make sure that we don't get it wrong. So, we are doing everything in our power because I'd be remiss to know that we didn't do something to stop something that could happen.
Um, unfortunately, you had to lose projects that you had planned. Hopefully, we get some of those back. Um, however, that big bubble on the bottom of the pie or that big pie cut over there is very important to understand that the state doesn't want to fund that. They don't. They want the local taxpayer to fund that. Okay? So, if you hear anything ever someone talk about an S2 district, right, districts that have a higher tax levy, what the state does is that that equalization aid is a lot less for them. Okay? At some point, at some point, that half of the pie is going to get a lot smaller here. I don't know when it's going to happen. I have an idea when it's going to happen. Um, after maybe a new governor comes, right? But I'm telling you, it's going to get a lot smaller.
Could you guys go to the next slide? Thank you. So, um, as Chief Boxel touched on, um, that is K9 Kota. That is is him with his previous handler. Um, he has been a huge huge resource to Belmont um, in terms of finding narcotics. He's also trained in um, firearm detection. And you know, as chief said, this is not a therapy dog, but um you know, research dictates that animal assisted intervention, you know, even with untrained, you know, untrained animals is significantly more effective in dealing with students in times of crisis. And I think that, you know, with our extensive training that we're lucky enough to be provided with, you know, through the police department and crisis intervention, adding that to to our tool bag is just another way to make sure to see all of our students succeed in their buildings. um serving at Riverview primarily, but alongside with the you know three elementaryaries um Lincoln Salomony and Horus man, it's not uncommon to see you know those those very examples of students throwing themselves on the ground not wanting to be there and if there's a a tool in our tool bag that we can add to more effectively assist you know the educators and our students then I would would love to be able to to offer that to our to our school our school system as a whole.
Okay? So, we have to start preparing for that impact. It's just reality. Has nothing to do with Garfield. Has nothing to do with anybody in this room. It's just reality. I've seen it happen before. You've all seen it happen before if you just think about it a little bit. So, that's equalization aid. Okay? And and again alto together with that revenue projections in state aid was a 6% increase overall because we got that money. Uh as you know we got 4.6% instead of losing 2% or 3% which was incredible. I was very taken back by that uh and very thankful that that happened. So where did the 4.6 $4.6 million go? Right. Oh, they got an extra $4.6 million. What happened to it? Well, first are your contractual obligations. Right now, off the bat, just people working next year, $2.1 million in increases. Okay? So, that that takes away your your aid usually when it helps you out that way.
Um, so a little bit about the school K9 program. Um, essentially the goal is to add an element of of school safety, right? These dogs are capable of a lot of things that that I myself as a human amap doing. I I can't always smell, you know, narcotics. I can't smell firearms, things like that. These are capabilities that are outside of, you know, my my abilities as a human. And these dogs can be trained in a litany of of skills that can be used in all sorts of positive deployments, you know, all across our school district. We already use, you know, the county's K9 for for sweeps of narcotics through our lockers, and this will provide a K9 that is available to the school, you know, on a regular basis. I'll I'll be there every day. I'll be able to be deployed in a a more quick and effective manner than having to to create a plan, you know, and able to get schedules together to make something work.
Your insurance when we we're keeping the same health insurance premiums and whatnot. So, instead of the savings that was projected, we did get some savings because people change plans, but that's becoming an issue now, too. We now have to put in $2.2 million extra. That's our projected cost healthcare rising for January. 2.2 million. Okay. With the state benefits plan, um, as you've seen, a lot of other districts are moving out of that plan, going to different plans. Uh, again, I still think it's something that we need to look at moving forward because $2.2 million on a tax tax levy to pay for um benefits is a lot of money. It's a lot of money. Okay. Charter school enrollment um we had to come up with an extra 300,000. We're only projecting 2% right now. This year, I think it's is it 10% when we finally got the numbers or something like that.
We're able to work more on the fly in conjunction with all of our schools. Um, K9 programs across the nation have been shown to be very effective in several facets, which I'll touch on on later. Um, but I have spoken at length with officer Elwell at Belmont as well as school resource officers across DAL, Adams and Allen County and they have, you know, only great things to say about the dogs that they have put into the schools, the positive impacts that they've had, you know, in terms of interacting with students, but also preventing school safety issues, um, you know, whether it be narcotics or firearms. And across the country, this is a growing trend. This is becoming much more common for schools to to implement K9's alongside of their school resource officers. Um, so in the terms of where this dog will come from, um, we'll make a selection for a dog.