We also offer the emergency medical responder. Um we are continuing a partnership with Dupo school district next year for the junior ROC. In addition to that, they're offering an electrician program. And Dr. Grody and I got to go and visit Dupo School District and we got to walk into the electrician classroom and see where our students would be at. There are 21 Colombia students that are interested in going and taking part in this electricity um pathway that Dupo is offering. So, a lot of really good things going on there. Um, moving forward the next year, we hope to add two more pathways to um, Colombia. One being in Agg and one being in business. This is what I'm also super excited about. And you have a copy of this in your packet um, at your seat. I was working really hard with the Peoria workbased learning um, director.
And that is being done because when we worked through the approval of the budget for the 2526 school year which was reduced the uh discussions we had including with the board and the town council was that if we could carry uh money from this year's budget as a surplus put it into a an account for uh use next year that that's what we would do. So, this report reflects our first um pass at how we'll arrive at that $250,000 balance. Um, and with that, I I will say that the overall the budget year has been fairly straightforward in that we have had no major surprises. You know, the um expenditures that you see reflected on the report are consistent with our budget. And in order to be able to end the year with $250,000 remaining, we will manage to that by reducing the expenditures we normally make at the end of the year, whether it's summer purchases or summer maintenance projects.
Yeah, I I don't you're probably right that that however this was passed eons ago. They did what they did to make it My understanding was when the housing code first came in in 1978, all of these old buildings had to go through a series of variances to come as close to compliance at that time. So, there's a bunch of things that don't meet code but have been allowed to be non-conforming uses. And when we go through the housing code inspections, these sorts of things come up. Um yeah, so um just yeah, I mean the housing code we would be at my door there is not fire technically fire with a label, but it had glass in there. So it may stop smoke from moving, but it was not going to stop fire, right? So it's chicken wire glass. So, at one time it may have been allowed uh and it now it's only a small proportion that's allowed for a fire rated door, but then you've got access.
Okay I'd be interested in seeing if you could come up with just one just well I have my empirical re research but that might not be considered valid by others. It's just interesting that some that the the girls don't have as many problems. That's normal. Yeah. And I'm just wanting to make sure that we're treating people fairly. Absolutely. We want to be sure we are uh consistent in how we deal with things and and and that kind of thing. Um uh since you asked, I mean just in the biggest general sense, um uh girls tend to use words. Yeah, boys tend to use bodies and and um uh you get in a lot more trouble using your bodies than you do using your words. That's just a big general statement. That's true. I think that's true. True. Okay. Even Fred not even Fred nodded when I said that.
she came down and uh paid a visit to myself and Mr. Reeves. And again, I've been meeting throughout the year with the high school school counselors and with Mr. Reeves, kind of sharing the vision for bringing the vocational trades to the high school. And this menu was something that Poria School District offered. And I said, "This would be a really great way to like communicate it to our students, get it out there. What are we offering? What could they get from it? How can they move forward with it?" And so I met, like I said, it's been all year, but when I met this last time with the school counselors and Mr. Reeves, I said, "This is where I want to head. This is an example. I would like for you to put together where we're at and how we're going to continue to move forward." And they exceeded my expectations.
As the board knows, throughout the year, we do not allow expenditures to be fully made against budget accounts. We've held the line at 70% for most of the last portion of the school year. So, we are um looking good, I would say, to be able to close out our books on June 30th, which is the last board of directors uh board of education meeting. Um and you know, we will provide at that date the final transfers to be made to end with 250,000. Again, in this report, just because the way the numbers worked, it's 250465. So, it is in the right ballpark.
Yeah. But I mean, if you're doing all this war, you still don't have any bathrooms down there. Um, one other thing with these with the questions about fire ratings and required stairways. Um, when you prepare your plan, if you could just address that so we know what we're looking at when you with whatever you resubmit. just give us the layout of what's required so that um we know that too for review. Um and to to it'll clear up some additional questions that have been brought up. Um I have one request if you're going to table this and represent. Can you come up with an occupancy load for the lower floor? Okay. Proposed whatever proposed occupancy level. Maybe you should be less than 49 or 49 or less is because of the number of exits you have. But yes, that would be because that could affect Okay, it's reasonable to look into that.
Um what was the other one that I had? Uh, I'd like to bring up the work ticket, please. Okay. We had a 409 carryovers and at the end, Caroline, we still had 402 open. How come we have so many open still? Um, I think there are a lot of factors, Barb. So it depends on if we have if we have something that's serious that needs to be be taken care of um then that takes a lot of time and then there's less time to address the less serious ones. That's one thing. A second thing that I will tell you about March uh uh in and it's March 31st. That's the closest I could get the system to give me a date. Uh in April, particularly early April, we pulled uh all of our landscapers, all three of our landscapers to help us empty some of our ConX boxes to move things down here for our yard sale.
I mean, this not only is it appealing to the eye, I think um it just shows the work that we put together this year and what we're going to offer our students. So, I'm really excited. The QR code is not functional, so don't get excited and try the QR code. And I was okay with that. They're working on that. It's under construction with a construction pathway on there. But, um, we are super excited about about what we're doing. Um, Mr. Dugan, I'm sure, is excited about this. Coming up, we have, um, our admin will be busy this summer. As I talked about a couple months ago, we have our first and hopefully annual leadership retreat happening June 9th through June 12th. Um, and this just kind of talks to you about what we're focusing on. It's going to be on our leadership, ourselves, our team, and what is going to be our plan moving forward.
I will stop there to see if there are any questions before I move to medical benefits. Okay, medical benefits report. I I will start with the um benle reserve balance is 2,15,741. That's 1.7 months claims. Um we didn't have at the last board meeting, we didn't have the March report. And so when you look at the March claims, you'll see that they were 660,000, which is well below what we've been averaging. And you'll see that the April claims are $1.8 million, well above what we have typically averaged, which is about 1.2 million per month this year. The reason for that very simply is that in the month of March there was a large claim over $400,000 that was reversed and so it showed that our claims were were artificially lower and then that claim was reprocessed in April. So those two months really have an offset to each other and if you do the math they average in at about 1 uh 25 million per month.
Okay. Um, also, I mean, I would just say double check fire routes and door swings and stuff like that. That was in the version whatever how many times ago that was originally submitted, I believe. What? And that showed the fire the stair rating or that basement being fire rated. Is that right? Yeah, it showed the pads the the paths of egress and the all that. And did that fire rating go through the the stairway on the back of the house? Is that go through the pairs of doors and all the way to the outside? Did that rating you're talking about for the stairway include that extension all the way to the outside? I don't know which one you mean. The kitchen stairs. Did that ring also wrap around you know all that? No. No. Right. Stop here. This this one and this is the difference.
And we have in fact emptied everything right now except for um uh facilities, materials that they need to store. We've emptied from uh the Lee Street uh storage unit, and that's that building. So, three big classrooms full of things that we've brought down and either sold or ended up um uh because they didn't sell or they were too damaged to sell. Um so, when we pull those people off of those work tickets to do some big task like that, then it you know, then they have to come back and address them. So, I think those two factors probably for this month. Okay. Thank you. And you can see from the chart below, you know, some days we have lots of lots of new work tickets. Um, and then you see, for instance, on it looks like it was probably March 31st um that we didn't close anything that day.
Um, and that is how we've structured the four days working together. Um, I'm excited. I think we'll come out even stronger than we are now. Something else I'm super excited about and wanted to share, um, we have been talking about collaboration all year as, um, district leadership, building leadership. Um, I know at one point you had early dismissals, now we do the half days. How do you structure that collaboration time? How do you make it meaningful for your staff members? How do your leaders do the the collaboration work? So, we have since partnered with Solution Tree and we're going to as leaders come together and learn how to help structure collaboration to be meaningful and effective for our staff. Um, and the kickoff for that is August 4th and 5th. That's going to be district and building administration. And in addition to that, we're also going to partner with Sparta School District and Chester uh school district.
So it didn't have uh any large impact on our medical benefits reserve balance. Um there is some reconciliation that our carrier Sigma is doing with the reprocessing of of that one large claim. Um and on a year-to-ate basis you know our claims have been averaging 1.28 million per month versus our expected of 1.18 million. Um, so it's a little bit above where we expect it to be, but again, the the goal for this year was to end with a reserve balance near where we started. We started at 2.3 million. We're currently at a little over 2 million. Um, and I expect we'll end above the $2 million mark. So, we'll see how claims work the last two months.
Those are the required got this floor. You know you were reading this. Did that reading all that stairway? Where did your part the um using that stair this stair for the basement? Okay. because there's the two that go directly one that goes directly right outside and then the other one. So you're communicating stair basically. Um we were just looking at the other stairs over there. Does this stair have the rising one code? Nope. No. Is that like in a future plan too? Nope. Yeah, there's no way that one can work. Okay, it's there's not enough room. Um, so again, we're like we're not trying to be difficult. We're just trying to help you guys get to that point. Um, if you guys want to table it for another 60 days, it would be Juneth and then July meeting unless you guys have a special request for a meeting on the This would mean that we can't build it this summer.
So, they were addressing all kinds of things that were already in the list and there were uh six or seven new items that day. So, I always I always uh find it interesting when I look at these charts to see, you know, okay, did we actually get to any work tickets today or were we working we might have been working on one as a whole team? Yeah. Speaking of work tickets, did we have any damage from the rain? The only damage we had from the rain was uh that it was there was so much water that came off the roof of the office uh the main building at Fox Creek and that doorway and that entry is down in a hole. Oh yeah. And uh and even though we've got a French drain out there, it couldn't keep up. Um so we did have water come in under the doors in the lobby area of Fox Creek and then over in the little entry into the c the counselor's area.
Their leadership teams will be coming to our campus to do both of these days as well. Um and Dr. Grody is super excited. We're going to start a superintendent book study. Good things are on the horizon here. Good things. And then of course there's summer. Summer is coming.
Any questions for Mr. Massiano? Mr. White. Yeah, sorry. I'm not sure if I missed it. Could you give a status update on the performance contract? I can if you'd like. Yeah, if you could. I mean, just so you understand where I'm coming from. I'm thinking it's entirely possible it ends up being like a five or 10 million contract for the town. I think it could be useful just because this the potential size of it is why it typically has. Okay. Thank you. Well, if there's no questions on medical, I'll do that very quickly now. Okay. So, the energy performance contract the this week actually the town council uh heard a presentation from Justin Benois uh and Alan Librio from Johnson Controls. The working group that includes uh Tim White, you know, had been meeting. We interviewed three different firms as I had explained in prior meetings of the board and Johnson Controls was the firm that was recommended to take this initiative forward and so the town council did vote in favor of the recommendation from the working group.
Nice to know that this I understand. But given other timing and other unless magic with the owners to come up with a code compliant plan, I don't you can always request a special meeting. I think that's we did the last the first meeting was the April meeting was or the first meeting we had was a special meeting. Um I had heard initially that you wanted to take work for 60 days. So that would be well that July anyways. But if we need to put together a meeting for if we need to put together a meeting for June, we the initial plan was to cancel the June meeting, but if you think you can be ready, we can uh just reschedule it for a different day that month. It'll probably be in the third week. The the other thing here is that Sorry, way too close.
Um and uh we probably had half an inch of standing water in there. Um so as quickly as they could, they got up there with fans and you know and squeegees and did whatever. We are in fact removing uh the carpet from those two areas and we'll be replacing them with tile. Um uh first of all, the carpet's damaged, you know, and now it's all wavy and smelly and all of those things. But the other thing is, you know, at this point it it's just safer to to remove it. So, first thing in June, uh, our facilities people, uh, will be up there replacing replacing those floors. But that that really was it. We were really really fortunate. Yeah, there's a lot of rain. [Music] Um, we're down about a hundred students from last year. And that's been true the whole year. Yeah, we have been very stable for the last uh several months.