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I taught other districts in Connecticut and I jumped at the opportunity when Canton was hiring this past summer. Um, so my first year teaching here, I also want to thank you for what you have created in terms of supporting me as a development teacher here in town. Um, I'm going through my team mentor process. In other school districts, I was typically just one-on-one with my mentor. Um, here I have access to veteran teachers from all across the district as I consider to home as I continue to hone my craft. here. Um, the work of the department has been outstanding, even to Miss McCarthy coming in my room this morning as we discussed better ways to talk about the tensions leading to the Civil War as she's presenting me with lesson plans and she's talking about different resources available. Um, I've been so supported since my first day here and I have been um, just my continued education was exactly what I was looking for.
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You know some of them we've talked about here and there like sometimes it is capacity sometimes it is cost um not that is not always the case but sometime when it is and so we can be thinking about how to do the solutions around it. Um, and the last kind of thing that has worked well with it is it's kind of um it's opened the door for conversations and collaboration with some different developers here and there. Um, you know, we've had times um where, you know, something's come forward. We've put forth our suggestions and they have reached out and being like, I you know, I I I know what this is, but I don't really know what this is. Can we have a conversation? Um, and we've been able to talk with them, you know, figure things out, see if there's something that works. again it doesn't always work but it you know sometimes it has and it has progressed um you know towards what we want to see um and so it's it's been helpful from that area again it's not every time but it is sometimes and it you know ideally that that helps change the market from from that perspective um in terms of the you know again room for improvement on it I think you know first and foremost like I said this is not a uh mandatory part of the process um they do not have to do anything that's part of it.
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But here's who I really feel bad for. This was Clifton. And this is only 2013. We could go back to 2008. The maroon is the state aid we got. That's the allegedly the difference between the adequacy budget and the local fair share. This number is the number that we were shortch changed every year starting only going back to 2013. 64 million 63 million 64 million. If you added all that up it's a half a billion dollars. 2018 comes along, S2 comes. S2 says, "We're going to take money from those overfunded districts and we're going to give it to the people who should have had it." So, you'll see it starts to happen. We start to get more state aid, more state aid, more state aid, more state aid, more state aid. And as of last year, we are fully funded under the state aid formula.
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Any questions or comments from the board? Mr. Dearcy, Dr. Smith. Um, do you have any insight as far as how the state of New Jersey deems what is adequate as far as the local fair share or how much property taxes residents should be paying in quotation marks. So, I'll if I can address that question in two parts. So, um I would say that in their definition of adequacy, they're not they're leaving it up to local communities to determine how much tax le they want to take, if that makes sense. So, the states the state's not saying I believe they're saying the solution only lies with you at the local level, but I I there's nothing in that information that says they're saying how much we should take. Though I would say um adequacy embedded in that word is an educational recommendation when it comes to say class size.
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uh she has completed over 101 activities this month and she's a uh kind student and a good friend to all of her friends. So I want to congratulate uh Angelicia Flores for student of the month for March for the uh Indian Oasis Middle School Accelerated Campus. Thumbs up. If I may ask uh if you all will just indulge with us for the next item which is our HID award which will recognize our Special Olympics uh athletes. So please hang out for just a second cook. Mook superintendent. Good afternoon. My name is Ruben Diaz and I am the proud superintendent for Bubble Unified School District. May I please have our director of um exceptional services uh Valerie Valdez and also our um Dr. Marcus, please join me so we can give out this special award. I'm going to be reading a letter and all of my uh Special Olympics students, please stand up and please come to the front so you can hear the letter um honoring your support in participating in the Special Olympics.
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The next item on the agenda is u a presentation of our district spending report by Miss Doug Dale. Yeah. Let me turn my mic on. Okay. So, this is our district's running report. I know we have a couple new board members, so let me just kind of explain to you what this is before I start. So the auditor general's office every single year takes our annual financial report and they compare it to essentially all the school districts in Arizona. And so this report is representative of that. All right. So so uh just so you know this is just a requirement. It is an ARS statute um that they do every single year. We've been they've been monitoring it since 2001. Um so statewide school district spending reports um are about 13.1 million. So that's what the state um invests in public education in Arizona. Um there's a change.
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Everybody say I say, you say Okay, stay right here. Good job. Great. Stay right there. We are going to start with our golden horseshoe awards and it is our employee of the month.
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So is it is it in the classroom? Is it supporting students? Is it in operations? That's what the function does. And so prior to um the current year which is 2025 there were no requirements regarding um the account coding for these particular buckets. So in 2023 and in 2024, school districts were asked to just do the best they can to input this data and because the requirements from the USFR, the uniform system of financial records was not mandated until the current year. And so remember this is 2024 data. So this is last year. So before we get into the actual data, I wanted to make sure that that was clear to all of you. So if we look at 2023 again, this was the first year that that grid I just showed you was on the annual financial report on the AFR. You can see that Gilbert, we reported an average teacher salary of 67,000, but the Auditor General calculated 63,000.
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Oh. Oh, excuse me. That's okay. So, um this was just a an item that was brought up on board policy 760 on residency. And I guess um I even included a few things in here. Um I guess there was a question that was brought up from uh one of our board members to have us maybe take a look at that. And the question was really looking at are we interested is the board interested in changing the board policy to allow uh employees to um have their children attend the school district tuition free and so there are a few districts out there that do allow that. Are we going to ask questions? Yes, of course. What was the impetus behind this question? just because we've had and let me just from my perspective um we've had a lot of questions about residency, who is a resident, how much money is going out for paying for people that are um unhoused or um a numerous other things.
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You just need to get up to 100%. And capturing different items. Just capturing right here. You're just holding this point right here. Got it. Okay. Oh, different view. I like this view better. Yep. Right now this is a view from Eli. All right. Aiden now. All right. So right now Norwell has control of the of the point. Okay. And so that's why they're up, you know, increasing 11 12% and we're and we're stuck at 28 because they are in possession of it. Yep. So we have to get that back. And again, if someone gets to 100, they win that little part of the round. So and and it's the best out of Well, there's going to be a couple different maps here. So the score up there next to it that has a zero, that means you've won zero of this. This is still Elios.
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I think we've all heard you, but the spirit of BS is going to hear now. I promise you that. Thank you. Cindy, I just want to tell you that I appreciate the conversations we had over the summer working on the contracts and everything else as we talked about earlier. So, thank you. Thank you. Uh, moving on. May I have a motion, please, to approve the consent agenda? Second, Second reason. Okay. Anyone like to discuss minutes? The warrant. All right. All in favor? Anyone against? Okay. The March 4th subcommittee minutes, the March 11th budget hearing minutes, and the March 25th open meeting minutes, and the warrant are approved. Thank you. Um, just a quick thing before we get to M. Tra Novik. Um, when we get into that conversation, I just want to remind the committee the school committee is here to basically carry out the business of the district.
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I felt that I had been figuring things out as I go amongst other districts. One minute. Thank you. Um, in other districts I had been supported by other staff, but I was worried about stagnation. Um, and just the continued support I've gotten from professional development that that makes me feel like I'm back in grad school. Um, continued support from my team mentors as we learn to gather, use data, and better inform and teach my students. I've just been very thankful at the opportunity to also then work with educators that inspired me as a student. um where I hope to continue to grow as an educator here so I can give the students of Canton um the same quality of education that I received in my youth. So I'm thankful to my parents for bringing me here. I'm thankful for still being in this town. I'm thankful this opportunity to um come up and thank you all for your continued support um throughout my time in town.
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Um, so you know, you get some people, you know, they they put back in their comments, they're like, "Yep, noted." But they're not going to do anything because it doesn't make sense for, you know, to them and what what they're designing, um, for whatever reason. So, you know, that is just an inherent limitation. Um, the other is that, um, it can sometimes be kind of tricky process-wise. Um, like I mentioned, everything else is mandatory. Um, and so, you know, when it when it comes forth to the planning commission with everything, um, there's Larry. Um, it can create some difficulties like during those discussions because, you know, people, um, you know, rightly want to include that as part of their, you know, what what they view as a requirement for putting forward in approving that plan. Um, but they can't hold up the approval of a plan for this.
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Good, right? Go back to this fake news. Anybody see this article this weekend? Fake news. Go look at the districts. Not all of them. I'm not throwing anybody under the bus. But how many of them got extra money all those years? We didn't. My kids didn't. Clifton kids didn't. Clifton teachers didn't. And we're supposed to stop everything and give loans to districts and give more aid to districts. And I'm not getting any additional aid for my kids. You know what we could have done with a half a billion dollars, guys? I explained this, but this is the technical term. It's adjustment aid. That's that extra money those districts got. It was called adjustment aid because it was supposed to be temporary. And it's just an example, a district, it was also called hold harmless because you didn't want to punish the districts in the beginning.
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No district no district wants to be in the situation that we're in where we're talking about the class sizes we're talking about. So, and I'll I'll just say that's one of the recommendations we got from the county review of the budget. But how do you solve how do you solve class size when you're 15 million under adequacy? Well, tonight tonight is how we solve So, Dr. Smith, I guess my question is what what's the logic behind $15 million? Why did the state say that $15 million should be our figure as opposed to any financial figure? Yeah, I'm gonna let Mr. Yates tackle. Yeah. So, the state has a calculation for determining adequacy for school districts in New Jersey. So, through that calculation and then determine where we're at with our levy, the difference is our what we're short on adequacy. Now, how they their exact calculation on what they determine for us is based on like cost per pupil and student needs and a whole bunch of factors that I'm not an expert on.
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Please u go to the front and stand up. [Applause] Um, President Mia, members of the board, members of the community, it's a great great honor. Uh, may I please have the letter on the screen, Mr. Aaron Bates. Um, and if not, I'll go ahead and and get started. Um, dear members of the BSD um, governing board, as we continue to uphold the mission of Babok Unified School District, which is to create healthy, inspiring, motivating, developing, achieving graduates, it is my pleasure to bring to your attention the remarkable achievements of our Special Olympics team. On behalf of the governing board, BUSD staff and the community, we want to congratulate our students, teachers, and staff for preparing our students and making sure their educational experience is also enriched above and beyond academic learning. On behalf of our students, staff, board, and community, I would like to extend our sincere appreciation, recognition to our special Olympics team for the time they also spend training u and for being brave, bold, and being busd.
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It's up five uh 519 million um from the two years that they compared which when you have talk about such big numbers that's really not a lot. It seems like a lot but not. Okay. So on the top of the district spending report, which you all should have got a copy, um you'll see demographic data. I just wanted to show you the state data so that um you could kind of compare. Um some things to look at is um one of the things that's happening in Blige, you can see that um for our 5-year change in student attending, we're down 20%. That's because Blige is a declining enrollment school district. Um and and I just wanted you to see the data from the state. So state overall is 5%. I predict that that's going to be a higher number statewide um next year or for this next time for this school year that we're currently in, but ours will be lower because we're not declining as fast as we were, but the state is declining faster um overall.
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So again, we were pretty good about how we input the data because the 67,000 on our reporting included stipens and we we did that to make sure that everyone was aware how much our teachers could earn on an average basis. But if you look at Chandler, they reported 65,000, but the district spending report resulted in 71,000. So from a logic standpoint, um if it were me, I wouldn't under report on the AFR if my actual data would reflect a 71,000 average teacher salary. So we believe that because there was no requirement on the um the accounting for these particular categories that the data is not accurate and we don't believe it will be accurate until the current year. So when we're here a year from now, we'll be able to share with you what we believe to be more accurate because every single school district in the state was now required to adopt the account code structure so that all the data would be really looking at apples to apples.
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And then we're talking about working in a working on tightening budget constraints. So my I guess my question is what's the impetus to to bring in like like where did this come from? I guess you want me to Yes, please do. This is your idea. the IHSA IHSA states that if you have a um a staff member who has a student and they so basically we've always I think we've always had it where you where your kid can come to school in the district um from and a lot of places have that your kid if you work in a district your kid can come to school because you're paid per pupil um so IHSA says if you have a because kids schools will get in trouble for having kids come and parents want their kid to come to school with them and play at the school that they are at and the coaches and the came together and said hey what if our kid we lived outside the district but coached in the district we need to have a rule where our kid can come to school to the school we're at and the IHSA said that's fine as long as you have a policy.
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The first Got it. The first they they surpassed us on the percent possession. So we'd like to get that back. We got a little teamwork. Let's get that back. Yep. And Aiden, right now they're show who's playing character called Reaper. At the bottom of the screen, you see that thing that's like hit that's highlighted in blue. That's your ultimate ability. So, as you do damage or heal, you gain points towards your ultimate ability. And then once your ultimate ability is full, you can do something cool like he's doing right there. Okay. However, Norwell dropped that ice wall that Okay. So, he's got possession of it back, right? Yeah. Our guy just did his ultimate, but he accidentally fell off the ledge, which was not ideal. Okay. I love the names we have too. Yeah. Up there. Exploded fish. Lazy soul. I like that. Raven, Blue Jay.
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