Those contracts and uh contractual increases across the state are running very high. I can tell you that now. We just had some updates, you know, we talked to to Tom Mooney and, you know, get the lay of the land and so we can expect a a pretty, you know, a pretty good challenge on our hands in terms of landing at a place that that is affordable for us um while still trying to remain competitive. And that's something that I think, you know, even if we slide into next year by the skin of our teeth, we will be able to stay competitive with um area salaries u and you know, considering the conditions that we have. Um, and that's that's a real concern. Recruitment and retention is a huge concern for us in this district. And so there's other factors that we're going to have to contend with besides just squeaking by uh another year.
It goes to him. [Laughter] Get too wild. We need to babysit that. Okay. So now, so now it's over. Okay. Nominations are now in order for the office of vice president. I nominate Morgan Papus. Do a second. I'll second. Just Morgan Papis is nominated. Are there any others? Are there any other further nominations for the office of vice president? Morgan Papis being the only candidate nominating for the office of vice president. The chair here declares Morgan Papis elected by acclamation and directs the recording secretary to so record in the minutes. Okay. Nominations are now in order for the office of secretary. I nominate Scott Mukvika for the office of secretary. I'll second. Scott Rebecca is now is nominated. Are there any others? Are there any further nominations for the office of secretary? Scott Rebecca being the only candidate nominated for the office of secretary. The chair hereby declares Scott elected by acclamation and directs the recording secretary to so record in the minutes.
Um, it's really about what happens to climate in the school system, what happens to conditions, and what happens to our ability to accelerate learning. Um we know that when we apply some direct focus um and have strategy and we put the right people on the job that we can make movement and growth in in terms of academics uh for a school system and we can scale that by having enough people. Um so being able to scale it you know scale results will be hampered by not having enough funds. So I can talk about that tomorrow for sure. The other thing I'll just say, you know, when we don't um fund our our early academic um um issues down at at the elementary level, um you can actually create more um special education referrals, you can create more intervention referrals down the road and to try to close gaps that are extremely difficult to close um as the years progress.
So, um, in your packet, your information is a list of the committees that have board participation. Um, the committees that are currently listed, uh, and the current and the current members that are currently on there. So, if you are interested in any of these between now and the next meeting, um, please let Ryan know and then he will work with Mandy and and Griffer I to get you on there. This will also tell you when they meet and and kind of what uh what times they're meeting. Just know that most of these meetings I think meet during the summer. So, most of them are not meeting in June, July, and August. So, just that makes a difference on anything.
So, you know, we're going to have to sit and when we get the final allocation and really determine what we're not going to do that we had in our budget and there's not a lot of room to to to cut back. Um, you know, if I add up our numbers, we've got, you know, 12 plus the four remaining of our heading into next year and then 9.1 that gives us about 25.1ish million dollars. Um, we asked for 34. So, you know, we have to come we have to figure out where to get that other 9 million and that will come from things that we put forth in terms of our ask on the table for next year. Um, you know, we're still determining the bus routes for Denver High School West that could be have some variables there. Um, out of district tuition, there's there's a lot of variables heading into next year, but um, you know, some of the positions that we wanted to restore and some of the positions we wanted to bring on might not happen.
Um, and if you have any questions about them or what they do, you can give, you know, anybody, you know, obviously you can give Morgan a call. Ryan has been on came to a DT meeting and he came to a CCC meeting, so he's he's now an expert uh, as well.
So in essence, yeah, we're still underfunded by we're still underfunded by x x number of dollars which we're going to need their help for. But let me ask you this, Cara. I you know I can almost see the face the people are going to ask this question in that why should we put it this way. Why should we believe you in terms of your budget when in the past couple of years you haven't spent, you know, all that that you were given? Um, is it a fair statement to say that the money was spent, but it was can we say that that money was spent, but it was spent out of the government ARPA money and and is that one of the reasons why this disaster had happened? Yeah. So, so we have um if you I don't know if you saw the post. Uh thank you for bringing that up.
So, we'll just feel free to give us a call if you have any questions about what those committees do. The next order is going to be for your school board meeting calendar, which also in your packet. And this is really the the main thing that you do for um at this meeting. This is your action item. These are the meetings that we we have generally. They are Mondays. You'll notice January and February are in Tuesdays just because we're off on the Mondays prior to that. Um these are the regular scheduled meetings and this is what's posted as regular scheduled meetings. We do often have special meetings uh that will come up. Uh clearly there's a lot of things that this board is going to be working on which number one will be hiring a new superintendent. Uh and that will have to start happening as far as getting a um deciding how you're going to do that.
I don't know if you saw the post in the newspaper recently about the 25 or 30 districts or so that had a lot of unspent ESSER funds um and that they were trying to you know that I guess they got cut off and they weren't able to spend the rest of theirs. You know, Danbury that was the one list we weren't on this year was the districts who didn't spend their Ezra funds. So, um, I was happy to, you know, I I held my breath as I clicked on that news article, um, that that we weren't on there, but I what I can tell you, but, you know, it doesn't mean that we didn't have it in another place, obviously. Um, you know, if you wanted to look at this on on the positive side, um, we did spend our ESSER money. We used it uh, you know, we did spend all of our ESSER money.
You're also going to need to be filling the two-year position that was vacated by Ryan moving into the elected into the four-year position. So those we'll talk about that a little at the end. Those are some of that are there. Um and at various times there there are often special meetings that are called um Griffer I will always call up and try to get at least we have to have a quorum here. Uh but we try to have those meetings so that we can continue the business of the of the district. So right now you can go on to meeting then. So for the approval of the school board meeting calendar, I'd request a motion and a second to approve the school board meeting calendar through school year 2026. I'll second voice. All in favor? I motion pass. So the final in your packet is filling schoolboard vacancies.
Uh, we did not send anything back to the government. Um, but we did have a surplus and that got sent back to the city. So, I guess I would rather see that happen than um you know, for as much as you know, consternation as it's causing us now, that money did go back to the city. But what I will say is that you know, the biggest it's not that we didn't need the money. We absolutely need the money. Um what what we've been dealing with in terms of climate and our staffing issues in the last couple of years have been tremendous. And so, do we do we need to spend every do we need to fill every one of those positions? Absolutely. Um and that's, you know, so that money is definitely needed moving forward. The other thing is is, you know, Mike and I, you know, it's completely unacceptable that we haven't um that we did not have accurate and timely information in the last couple of years to stay up to date to make adjustments.
As of today, we now a vacancy on on the board. So, this tells you a little bit about the process in there. This is the school the policy um that's involved with that to 70. Uh we have you have 90 you have 60 days sorry 60 days to fill that. Uh Manty will be calling the regional office tomorrow to let the them know that it exists. We have five days to do that. She'll take care of that tomorrow this week. Um we then if you after that you will see kind of pages. This is kind of an exhibit checklist for how you go about filling that. So, one of the things that we'll need to do, and again, Ryan will I will work with Ryan on communicating this out to you, is to set up some times and a process of how you want to do that.
Mike and I probably meet in the hallway 300 times a day. And I'm like, where are we? Where are we? Where are we? And we're talking about things and as we see um something coming up, we're able to adjust it in real time. as we see a grant, there's a pocket of money that's not being fully utilized and we can revise it and put um supplies in the hands of kids or get um you know new cafeteria tables for a school that has some broken tables. Um that's what we're doing right now. So we're trying to maximize every dollar, but it's because we can see in real time what's going on because we now have visibility. Um in the last couple years and quite frankly when I took over last year I had no visibility. I it was like waiting through murky water. I did not know where the bottom was.
We will need to get it posted. Um, and so with that, we'll need to know who the who the applications are going to, um, and kind of timelines if you're going to run interviews, etc., how how you're going to do that. So my suggestion kind of take a look at this stuff and then over the next week or so we we will need to get it posted hopefully by next week um that'll give us time then within that 60 days. Technically you have until the June the June board meeting to um to seat them but they would need to be seated by the June board meeting at the latest. Okay.
Alls I could do is pump the brakes and to to ensure that we didn't, you know, go, you know, land in the red uh for the end of the year because we did not know. And so that was the most responsible thing that I thought that we could do um without knowing. Um you know, I knew that there was something not something was a miss. I could not get accurate and timely information in the way that I needed it. that resulted in some staffing moves that you know that I made um you know to to take care of business and we're heading in a different direction. Um but what I can say and what I can you know confidently say is that that we are on it. I'm going to say it probably took us six months of this school year to find the bottom to be able to see our feet and where we're at.
Any questions about that? Okay. And you've got two of them for public comment now. Um PK. Good evening. Good evening. Um, uh, let me start by, uh, saying congratulations to, uh, to Micheline and Scott and Ryan and Andy, uh, for, uh, prevailing in the election. Um, I look forward to your leadership on the board and, uh, exciting things ahead. Um uh I uh I noticed that on the agenda for the special meeting uh it's omitting something that is important um now that you're sitting on the board which is uh a new business item so that you can discuss what you want to have on the agenda for the next meeting that you preside over. And uh since it's not there um in case you don't have an opportunity to actually talk about that, I thought I would just help out um by suggesting a few things um that uh you may want to consider.
And once we were able to do that, um, thanks to Mike and and really, you know, this am I saying Mike and I, he's probably so tired of me right now. Um, because I'm I'm in those finance office. I've never thought I would be in the finances financial offices as much as I have been. I've always lived in the curriculum realm of things, but uh, you have to really be on top of things to know what's going on um, to be able to adjust. It's one thing to have a surplus. We're going to have we're going to have other surpluses. We're going to have years where where we have uh high budget, high benefit costs and low benefit benefit costs. That's benefit costs. That's the um you know that's the you know kind of the es and flows of being self-insured. But being be able to react to that when you know where you are is everything.
And by the way, the district's policies do say that district residents may suggest inclusions for board meeting agendas. So I'm going to take the opportunity to do that. Um the first thing is that um uh the board has approved a set of policies in each of the three past regular meetings the past three months and um you know I spent a lot of time reading those policies uh when I uh originally thought about running for the board um when we were prepping for the Q&A we all participated in to to help people understand what we uh wanted to do uh and also So in in leadup to the board meetings to kind of um you know just read the packet be informed and I saw a bunch of places where um there are gaps. So there's a logical gap in the policy there's a logical gap with respect to one policy and a related policy.
How do we um okay we have three or four million dollars. What's the best way to utilize that money between now and the end of the school year? And then how do we take that information and make a better projection for next year? And those are the things that we have not been able to do in the last couple of years because we didn't know. But now that the, you know, the light is coming through here um and things are being cleaned up, it's it's much easier to predict. You know, we're still, you know, going to work hard to land the plane here. Like I said, I wish I had probably three or four more months of the school year. Um now that you know, things we are starting to see some things and we we started the school year with the projections that were made by previous administration coming in, right?
There's a gap between what the policy says and what we appear to be doing in the district as a practice. And then there are gaps between the policies and the underlying statutes. And so um I think one of the things that I would recommend as an agenda item is to discuss kind of how you want to tackle that. How do you want to take the entire policy book and break it down in kind of construct a process whereby there can be a substantive discussion that can't happen inside a board meeting because the public can only make three minute comments, right? Um and and it's just it's too detailed. But um you know what's the process you want to follow to kind of get into the into the weeds of that and really kind of strengthen those policies to make sure that the the law the policy the practice you know kind of all in alignment and we kind of close some of those those those those those holes.