CCSD School Board Meeting Work Session

001There are no objections. We'll approve the agenda by consent. Okay. Uh we'll now have a moment of silence and we'll follow that up with the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. At this time, I'll turn it over to Dr. Ballinger for his superintendent report and budget presentation. >> Thank you, Mr. Tim, vice chair. Um, and tonight I want to welcome everybody that's joining us live and those that'll watch us later for uh taking your interest into uh Chesterfield County Public Schools and and our budget process. Um, I do want to thank my team that is sitting out here in front of us tonight. Uh, we're set up in

002this um, setting because today we were talking about that, hey, I may call you at some point in time to talk budget because this needs to be an open discussion with you as a board and with us as as we work through this u uh, budget to prepare for next school year. And so I do appreciate the hard work and effort that that each of them have put into this. Uh, it's been uh, I've asked a lot of them. uh there's there's been a hard a lot of work behind the scenes that has been completed not just by this group but other people within the district to make this happen tonight. So I do want to say thank thank you to them as well and they will be here for us to um you know

003as part of our presentation and to answer any questions as we uh move forward. So I'm just going to get on into the um presentation. And so this is a proposed budget and it I know it says FY26 but that and I'm sorry I didn't catch that but that should be FY27 because we're going into next school year. So that's my bad. So the mission of Chesterville County School District is to prepare all students produ uh to be productive citizens in a changing society by continuously improving and implementing educational processes uh with ongoing community support. Um, we wanted to mention facilities here because, you know, the board of trustees with a commitment made by our community, uh, on November 20 in November 2024, uh, there was a bond referendum, penny sales tax passed to to

004address a lot of building projects, safety and security, uh, just a lot of different upgrades throughout our school system. So, I did want to make sure that we made note of that. Also, I wanted to pro provide a little history on um Chesterfield County Public Schools. And it it's really a narrative of consolidation and growth evolving from a collection of small localized school systems into unified countywide organizations. So, in the early 19th and early 20th centuries, um yeah, there was Chesterfield was really localized and at times there were probably as many as over 50 school districts across this county. um because they were all very small and individualized. And then then you roll into the academy area and um 1827 and 1778 uh you had the uh uh the private or semi-private Chesterfield Academy was

005incorporated in this uh St. David Society and Shal uh the seminary of learning as far back as 1778. Uh infrastructure schools were often simple woodframe buildings. Um Chesterfield School completed in 1908 was a landmark for the area. Eventually housing grades 1 through 11 until 12th grade was added in 1948. And then a path to consolidation in 1968, the most significant turning point in our district's history. U in 1968, the six districts were consolidated into a single unified Chesterfield County School District. Uh this move intended to streamline administration, equalized funding across the county, uh varied demographics, a unitary uh status of 7071, the school year. The county achieved unitary status. This involved closing several older uh segregated facilities and consolidating students into the modern system of high schools we see today, which Central, Shira, Chesterfield, and

006Macki. Today, you guys are aware of our makeup. We have 16 schools. uh one non-traditional serving around 6,300 students currently. And many of our historic school buildings are have been repurposed. For example, the 1934 public school gymnasium in Chesterfield was rehabilitated as a community center. Um and the 1954 separate but equal elementary school was renovated for the use of YMCA. So, our buildings and facilities are still in use across the community. and some of our buildings probably stretch back um that we're currently um using in our schools as u to some of those dates and times. So, and that's why we have the bond bond referendum so that we can address those. Just so everybody kind of knows their schools and their school system, wanted to just give some interesting facts here. Again, there's 16

007schools, one non-traditional educational program. Uh current number as of um our 135th day, we were just right at just shy of 6,300 students. We'll get into student count number a little later. We have over 1,000 staff. We have 612 teaching professionals, 583 certified staff, and 29 certified staff in district positions. When you look at our d our educational, we have 86 dual enrollment courses, 42 career and technical or CTE, 465 CTE completers, 45 art completers, 16 band completers, one chorus completer, 15 associates degrees um degree earned by our students, 29 adult ed graduates, six high school diplomas, and 23 GEDs. And we do have a graduation rate of 81.65%. Uh when you look at our our buses and transportation department, we run 166 morning, midday, and afternoon routes. And yearly we travel over 855,000 miles.

008That's that's a lot of road. That's a lot of dirt road. Um you guys, a lot of you run up and down these O dirt roads. So uh you know that that that's a lot of mileage and to get those kids to school. As far as our child nutrition, on average we serve over 4,100 breakfast meals daily. We average over 4,600 student meals at lunch served daily. Uh during the summer school of 2025, we served over 111 or 112,000 breakfast. We served over 114,000 lunches. And then as far as during our e-learning, winter break, things that you know when we have bad weather and we prepare meals and we send that home to our children. Uh we've served over 15,000 meals prepared for e-learning, winter break, etc. And just remember, this is our why. This

009is why we do what we do. This is these are our students across our district. Um we every decision we make should be in their best interest and they are the main reason that we are all here sitting in this room today getting into the budget development process. Um you know we kind of have two processes going on at the same time. You have the South Carolina legislative budget schedule which you can see on the left and then you have the Chesterfield County School District uh budget which you see on the right. And then you can I'll just let everybody read what um the state's process is and we're still going through the state's process right now. But uh as far as the Chesterfield, we start in November and we bring in our schools and

010our departments to go through their budgets for requests. Uh we also started finance committee meetings uh to meet and discuss about school budgets uh the finance and just initiatives and things of that nature. Then in March on March 12th, we received the House Ways and Means revenue budget projections and that helped us to get the the ball rolling. Late April, uh we received the finance revenue projections from the state. April 27th, that's today. We're going over um a proposed budget which there's still some questions out there and we we'll talk about those as we get into this uh presentation as a lot of this process is not even complete yet from the state side and we're still waiting on some local things. Um but we are planning to have on May 11th the first reading.

011Uh May 14th 15th um the budget be advertised and then on June 8th we hope to have the second and final reading of our budget. When we look at our budget development process, there are things that we do take into consideration. Um you know every decision should be made to what is in the best interest of our students. And so we do look at our strategic plan and our district priorities and addressing our students with disabilities. We look at our gifted and talented students. Um academic, we look at well also our school climate and then we look at what our academic or student achievement goals are across the the district to make sure that we are aligning those goals with our budget. because if we are not focusing on achieving our strategic plan, then we're

012just spinning our wheels if we're trying to get out here in the weeds and try to put money towards something that's really not um addressing a goal that we have as a district. And so you can see just with student achievement, you know, that covers everything from K12. And then we go into also looking at teacher and administrator quality um within um as we we determine what our needs are to help drive our budget discussions and where we're at. Other things that we look at with our budget development process, uh we take in some historical data, uh current millage rates. You can see that's one thing that we look at. Um you can see that the district receives two two different millages. One for school operations, one for debt service. Um on this sheet here

013you can see that the debt service millage has is remained constant 34.75. Uh if you look at the uh operations millage um you can see that in 17 it was 176.4 and 18 is 178.4. Then in 19 it jumped to 180.4. 4. Uh it stayed 180.4 all the way until this last year and it went we uh moved it to 183.4. So I think that's about a 7 mil increase there uh from 2017 through 2025 over that time frame. The other thing that we look at throughout the development process is the uh student numbers. And you can see if you look at the ADM for the 45th day during the 21-22 school year, you can see there were 6,600 students. Uh actually 6,644.9. On the 135th, 6611. Then in 2223, you can see that there's

014a little bit of growth. Uh that jumped back up to 6,735. But since that time of the uh 45th day ADM and 2223, it's been a gradual decline year-over-year to where you see on the left there, our current rate, our current numbers for uh average daily membership of 6286.3 as of um our 135th day this year. So you can see that that's that's that's quite a number of students from time to here. Um you know what's causing some of that. We've kind of looked at um I did get some information um from Miss Dixon this uh today. I asked her u some information. I'll share that real quick. One thing that we I wanted to look at was did we what was the uh number of students over the past couple years that had a

015had a uh with exit code that was homeschool or charter school. And so she did provide me some information in 2425. There were 56 students with an exit code W35 of homeschool or charter school. In the 2526 school year, as of today, we had 137 with the same exit code of homeschool or charter school. >> What was the first one? What was the first number again? >> Uh the first number was 56. >> Okay. And then currently this year we're at 137. >> And that's still a small number compared to this decline that we kind of looking at. Wouldn't you think so? So that's about 200 students, right? Um, you know, that would get us back up to around that 6,500, but you're still Yes, you are right, Dr. Coleman. That's still a little bit

016lower. >> 137. >> Uh, this year so far is 137. >> How you get 200, >> huh? >> How do you get 200? >> Well, if you count last year, last year and this year, it's right at about 200 over the last two years. >> Okay. >> Mhm. So, early graduation, that's another thing that that we take a hit on this year. Um, I did not have her pull that number, Mr. Casy, or um, have you looked to see how many early graduates across the district, would you say? >> That made up early grad, maybe just shy of half of that. So are we saying early graduation hurt our numbers? >> So that takes out the early graduation. >> Yeah. >> But now aren't we experiencing growth in the MAC B and the central area?

017>> We're not seeing that in our schools. >> That's interesting. What about charter school? >> Charter school would be a big play in this, I would think. >> I mean chart and private school. So that would be, you know, of course I think there's only one private school in this area. I think most of them would probably be that that charter or something of that nature that you'd probably see a lot of people going to. >> Um, so those are something that we talked about today um in cabinet. What can we do from our from the district's perspective concerning offering a virtual option to where we can we can educate and keep our students within our district. uh you know, if we've lost almost 200 students over the last 2 years to go to home

018school or charter school, we need to find out why. We need to find out what we're doing, uh what we're not doing, um and and make sure that we're bringing our students in. You know, I'm I'm all about choice. And I think we should be the best choice. >> And I think we need to find out what we're doing and make sure that we are the best choice in our community for our families. And um sometimes it's going to be hard conversation and sometimes it's going to be some hard there's going to be some hard decisions that we have to make as a school district to make sure that we are the number one choice for the families and in our community. >> Are you talking about our number one choice being in school andor

019virtual too >> just that Chesterfield County Schools is the best choice. >> Okay. Of course, >> I was just making sure that when we were talking about number one choice that it was including a possibility of getting back into the virtual realm because that's not going away. I think we all know that homeschool virtual schools going to be here and I think Chesterfield County School District ought to be in the game because the numbers show 200 people have left for something and we're not getting any part of that. I guess my concern is is that we sold this referendum because we thought that this this school district was going to be busting out of the scene and we're going to add on classrooms and um and so uh Paselin and Jefferson and the Magne area

020that 151 corridor was going to be uh really exploding here over the next few years. And this is why we got to do this. And I, you know, the numbers are are really going down. I mean, >> well, and Mr. Sweeney, it's not to say that the housing is not there. Um, it's just, you know, is the market right for the housing as well. There's a lot of different things that play into um, you know, people moving into the area, people choosing to live in Chesterfield County. I also know we've lost quite a few businesses here recently within um certain areas. I know Dr. King was talking about some of those earlier today when we were in cabinet. Uh you know, as those businesses close down, you know, those families have to move and they

021leave. Dr. King, is there anything you'd like to add to that? >> Just speaking on what you said, I mean just MB alone. I mean, Marmarmac just shut down one of its plants and they laid off, you know, majority of their workers and so you're gonna have to find work. And I remember I never forget when Carol closed down in Jefferson, >> that was huge and and it wasn't replaced. So, people going to move where the jobs are. And so, that that contributes to >> people moving out and going where the jobs are. And if nothing is coming in, it's hard to attract those folks back into the school district. And they're they're moving with the businesses. Like I said, when a lot of it, you know, when we hit that that slump where they

022were moving businesses Mexico and moving them out of of the states, I mean, the people went with the jobs. So, that played a huge role in the overall trend downward to our kids leaving. So, >> well, the county is growing. I mean, this having more construction than they've ever had before. We're just not getting apparently we there must be a different audience that's coming in and don't have children, you know. had to be mature parents. So, >> well, and also you've got to remember the birth rate may not be as high as it was, you know, many moons ago. Um, you know, when families used to be, you know, three, four, five children, now you see more families with one or two children. And so, you know, there they may be there, but, you know,

023that's just three or four less children coming in from that one family as well. when when you look at birth rates um you know and people are waiting to have children later in life and things of that nature. And so you know there's a lot of different factors that play into it. But you know the main thing for us is we we look at those numbers and that helps in building our budget when we're looking at our numbers with staffing and ratios and things of that nature across the district. So, >> so, so with the 200 students, I'm sure they're across the district, but have you been able to pinpoint the majority of where they might be at in the location? >> Ask the same question. I was going to say, can we get a

024a breakdown of where they what schools they left from? >> Well, it's on the home school. >> It's it's right here on that sheet. If you look, uh, you can see, um, PPS, if you look, >> I'm thinking more of the home school line. Like this is this would be everybody that moved. >> Home school line. Is there one school in particular that >> Yeah, we could probably find that. Um, find out what specific school that they're they're transferring out to. Okay, I got you. Transfer the climate of that particular school. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. >> And I asked that because we say central has gone down till 1A in terms of high school and then MAC B not B, but all of them. So >> obviously it'll be interesting to know exactly. >>

025Yeah. Well, now Central, I will say, is still a 2A size school. They just requested it be reclassified as a 1A. >> I got you. >> So, athletic. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But it would be just good to know kind of where the majority of those 200 students have gone. >> Yeah. >> And I guess my question along that line, let's just say we lost those 200. Don't the state actually track the number of students that that graduate that receive a diploma or a GED across the state? >> Um, well, I'm sure that there was probably some state data on that because we'd have to report how many of our students graduate with a diploma, how many of our students receive a GED or or high school equivalency. I'm sure there's some type of report

026that at some point in time that we have to submit to the state. So, I'm sure there is some type of state data statewide that they that that there is collected. I have to to look and and see if we can find that. >> Be interesting to know out of that 200 students if they graduated, where do they graduate from so we know who all competition is and how do we need to restrategize to maybe draw those students back in or to increase that student population. >> Yeah. Now, I will say uh Dr. Chapman, you know, with our data, we don't submit individual student information. We just would would um aggregate that data together and send it as one lump sum. You know, it may say uh most of the reports, and this would just

027be an example, may say how many 12th graders did you have transfer out with a W, what was it 35 code or whatever that code was. Um and we would just put a numerical value in there when we looked it up said three. um you know and how many 11th graders? Four. How many 10th graders? And so that would give where we get our numbers from. We just go through there and just list that numerical value for that that grade. We don't list, you know, so there's really not a way for us to track unless we get some type of request on our side that says I'm going to this school. Then we would have a request for records that are showing from us where we're sending those records to. >> And I guess I'm

028just kind of thinking, let's say you have 200 kids or students. Of those 200 students, you had 10 to drop out for whatever reason. Well, then that means some other competitor should have had 10 increase. >> Correct. >> To balance out your numbers. So I I guess what I'm looking at is all right, if we're losing them that 10 or 20 or whatever their mind is, where is the audience that is has gained those 10 kids? >> Well, and I think you see that in a lot of virtual and I think Mr. Casky has some numbers on that. I know I probably can find some, too. We we've been to a lot of different meetings to show the numbers between public and and the charter schools um and showing the growth. So I'm I'm sure

029we can readily find kind of show that discrepancy between charter schools and public schools. Yeah. Well well I'm I'm thinking one of our big reasons is that students where they're at the high school level do make that early choice sometime either because of family need or whatever situation they get into the employment market a little earlier. They drop out altogether. they turn 17, they may say, "I'm going to take a early infobic in the military." But it there has to be some way that we can say, "All right, of those that we lost, here is the audience that attracted them." >> Yeah. And that's what we kind of really discussed today. What what can we do? Especially even for like our early graduates. Um, you know, a lot of times a student may get to

030their senior year and they may only need two or three classes. um you know, how do we keep those students engaged with us? Because even though they graduate early in December, uh you know, we still have to pay that teacher in the spring. Um you know, they may not be in that classroom, but you know, that teacher was utilized to educate that student in the fall, but then we lose that funding in the spring because of early graduation. So, what can we do as a district to attract them to stay with us? Um maybe it is more of um finding opportunities for CTE cooperations with other businesses to get students out um in in the workforce and and to do some various things. Um, you know, we talked a little bit about 3 to five

031programs and things of that nature to where those students that maybe they need to work or, you know, how can we do an alternative program to where those students can come um to school at a different time and and do some um not just be in person from from uh you know, like 3:00 to 5:00 uh but also at that same time, how can we utilize that with our virtual option um to pair to where we're we're doing a hybrid model with our students um offering them a solution. So, we had a a pretty in-depth conversation today talking about, you know, what can we do as a district and how can we look at attacking um and providing services? >> So, the state budget does not give you credit for a child graduating early at

032the 135 day number. Correct. >> No, we lose that number. So that student drops off our ROS because they're no longer enrolled in school. And so that student is then deducted from our ADM. >> That's tough. That is a tough peel for the district like you said. I mean cuz we did and the student did what they did wanted to do. They got to graduation whether it was in December or May. >> Tough people. >> Yep. All right. Um, so continuing on here with our budget process, um, we also look at when we're going through our budget development, we look at the, uh, fund balance history. And so, we just went back to to FY16 to kind of look at that. We gave you a bar graph. We also or a line graph and then

033we gave you the the numbers down there in Excel format so that you can see those as well. um you know and we drew a median line there and that's really when the new state funding formula play came into effect. So you see that vertical line uh that's the FY22 that's when South Carolina decided to to fund schools in a different manner. And so you can kind of see also during that time you have to remember from really I would say all of your ESSER funds, you know, your COVID relief funds, those started rolling in you typically around FY21, you probably carried those on your books all the way up and through probably last year in some cases. Um, you know, expending those those funds. So you can see that that bump in I would

034say in FY23 uh was probably related to your your CO funds that that you really you received as a district. But then you can see where we're at u the big the big difference uh from FY24 to FY25 right there on the uh fund balance. So um and you can see the trend line for what we're required to have which is 8% of the fund balance of the operational budget. Uh that continues on a steady incline. Um as funding increases um you know it doesn't matter what our fund balance is doing that thing's going to kick kick on up there. So, uh, for me, I would say a comfortable spot for this district would be somewhere in that that 12 to$13 million range, um, with a fund balance because you you have to have that

035rainy day fund available. Um, and in case of catastrophic events, um, I will tell you from my time as a superintendent during the ' 0809 housing crisis, uh, you know, that carried, uh, a couple years. Now, when I was in Oklahoma, I utilize my fund balance to get me through that. U so, you know, there there's a lot of things that that that fund balance helps with and helps you as a school district. So, uh just looking at your fund balance there, that's another tool that we look at when we're going through our budget development. We also look at our staffing allocation guides. Uh this is something that we created this year to make sure that we are funding and are staffing our schools equitably across the district. looking at studenttoteer ratios, um how many

036office staff, how many administrators, how many cafeteria staff. I mean, we we were looking at everything um at a school and and putting values to that. This helps us this will help us in the future and we actually used it this year. But this this really takes your budgeting time down and allocation of resources because you have it set in stone uh kind of what you're doing. Uh so for instance on there you can see um you know we put I'm looking over here at the high school uh receptionist you know if it's 500 or more if it's less than 500 or more you get one. If you're over 500 or if you're a high need school or something of that nature we can we can give you one. Um, you know, there are some

037schools such as, um, you know, specifically I'll just like New Heights Middle School. Um, you know, we do have on there, you can see assistant principal, it says any, you know, is it greater than two, you know, 200 to 499. Um, you know, you're going to get get one. Anything over 500, you're going, well, they're under that, but we have two over there because that was an area of need that the district has has identified. And so it's okay to to identify and say we have a need here. We're going to put this person over here to address and help those needs. So we looked at our staffing ratios uh our staffing guidelines um throughout. Also, this is new this year as well. This is a staffing sheet that we uh work through to complete

038with schools uh so that we could be able to track and find and make sure we have people where they're supposed to be um and identifying roles, responsibilities uh throughout the district. This is the second half of this sheet that we developed this year um so that we know again this just helps us through the budgeting process so that we can track. Um, >> all right. Uh, one question for you. >> Yes, sir. >> When you talk about the student teacher ratios, >> Mhm. >> is that across the board or let's just say I'm teaching a core subject like science, engineering, a very challenging course. Is my ratio going to be the same as say a P teacher or some type of of a >> so your core classes we we set them at 24

039to1 that we didn't want to go any higher than 24 to1 in our core classes. Now your special classes can be a little higher. You're going to see probably more numbers in physical education. You may see more numbers in in art and music and things of that nature. But with the core we we were trying to stay at 20. We're trying to stay 24 to 1. >> Um, and then when you look at kindergarten, preK, you know, those are 20 to one or actually it's 10 to one because you have an assistant in there. So, it becomes 20 to2 uh because you have you have a teacher and an assistant um in your kindergarten and pre-K classrooms. And so, uh just looking to make sure that we balance that out equitably. And that's when we

040get into these numbers a little later on, you're going to find there's some schools that we cut staffing and when we looked at our staffing ratios, um, you know, we had some schools that were staffed at 30 students to one teacher and then we had a couple other schools that were, you know, another school that may have been staffed 12 to one or in some cases we saw 10 to one. And so you for me as a superintendent I look at that and say yeah I mean I I want to have small class sizes that's research those small class sizes do well but also as a superintendent I cannot sit here and say it's okay for this teacher to have 30 students in the class and be teaching a subject but this teacher over here

041teaching the same subject have 10. um in a different school. And so that's why I look at it to make sure that we we we make it equitable across the district to where we're we're treating everybody the same and we're setting our expectations the same for everybody. All right, I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Casy U and he's going to try to make this as interesting as possible as he talks about the state revenue and the funding formula. So you guys, if you need a cup of coffee, uh maybe we can find a cup because I know uh when when we start getting into funding formulas, this really gets boring. But I think it's it's important that you hear it. It's important that the public hears it and that so that we understand

042how this works. Mr. Casky. >> Yeah, I agree. And it's something that that that most of you have seen before, but I do think it's important that we kind of go over it just to get some reminders exactly how our funding is calculated, where it's coming from, and you know, what what impacts it's going to have on our on our fund balance. So, I just kind of wanted to go through it's it's really a sevenstep process that they use to calculate what what they refer to as our state aid to classrooms funding. When you hear me talk about the new funding formula, it that's the state aid to classrooms formula. That's how they do our general allocations. So that first step is going to be to calculate the estimated number of teachers or what they're

043going to call the funded number of teachers. And the way that they're going to do that is they're going to take the estimated number of students in the state. For instance, right now that projection is about 771,000 students. And then the uh proviso 1.3 actually identifies what their target student teacher ratio is uh for each year for for every year since they've implemented the formula. that ratio has been 11.2 students per teacher. So what they what they're going to do, they're going to take that 771,000 students, they're going to divide it by 11.2, and they're going to get about 68 69,000 teachers. That's how many they're planning on funding this year with that state aid classrooms funding. All right, so that's step one, getting the number of teachers. Step two is actually calculating the full

044amount. So they're going to take that number of teachers and they're going to multiply it by the cost of each one of those teachers. And this year that cost is just north of $80,000. And what they use to calculate that is a master's degree teacher with 12 years of experience plus their benefits and things like that. So that cost just north of $80,000. Multiply it by that 68 69,000 teachers. And this year you get about $5.5 billion is what goes into that total funding pot for all K12. That's p all public that's public charter and K12 public education like us. That's what everybody gets that one pot of money. So that's that's your step two. So next slide, step three is actually determining the proportionate share. I know you guys have heard me say that

045that word a million times and you'll hear it a million more. Uh but that's what this new model is based off of is that proportionate share. So we're going to divide the proportionate share by taking the statewide weighted student count. And you know you guys are all familiar with the weights. One student may be weighted heavier if they are an exceptional education student or if they're a career in tech student. They get additional weights for that. But they're going to take the total statewide weighted pupil units and they're going to take Chesterfield County School District's portion of that, our weighted pupil units, and divide it in to get our weighted pupil unit or our proportionate share. Uh this year our proportion we have about 10,400 weighted pupil units to the state's 1.2 million and that

046puts us at about 84%. So 0.84% for FY27 is Chesterfield County School District's proportionate share of that $5.5 billion. And if you look at step four, that actually is the next step is to multiply the five the big number that big $5.5 billion by our small proportionate share. And that's how you get our total district entitlement. And for this year, I think it's about $46 million in total. Now, the problem is people will stop there and they'll say, "Okay, well, 46 million is how much Chesterfield gets." But this next step is vitally important. That's our local match. So, just because they calculate that $5.5 billion that they're going to fund doesn't mean they're actually handing that money out. That's the total number, but they're also going to reduce that number by 25%. that 25% which

047comes out to what is it 1.3 little over 1.3 mill 1.3 billion of 1.375 billion of the 5.5 has got to be matched by local school districts like us. So what they're going to do is they're going to say all right we're going to take 25% of that off the top and we're going to tell all the local school districts how much they have to come up with to come up with this $ 1.375 billion and the way that they do that is based on our index of taxpaying ability. It's similar to the proportionate share formula from the prior step, but instead of using student count, they use our taxing ability, how wealthy our county is. So, the wealthier counties are going to have to match more and the the not so wealthy counties like

048ours are going to have are going to have to match a little less, but on average, all the districts will match 25% of that $5.5 billion. Let >> Let me ask a question. So, the $46 million that we get, >> we need to come up with 25% of that. >> No, not quite. On average, all the districts will have to, but since we have a lower index of taxpaying ability, we we come up with slightly less than that 25%. >> So, what is our percentage? >> I'd have to look that up to see exactly what it is. I think our number is it's somewhere in the just just north of 80% that we get funded. So, it just less than 20% that we would have to to come up with. Now, what I will say

049is that's how the formula is supposed to work. That's an ideal scenario where the formula is working as intended. I do not believe that it is currently working as intended. And we'll get into that a little bit later as to what is being funded as to what should be funded. Um, but that goes into some of the errors that they were trying to fix this year with with some of the the charter school waitings uh and just some of that procedural things that they were looking at with RFA. Um, but no, I I think we would be having to come up with just south of or just Yeah, sorry. Just south of 20% of that of our 46 million if it was working as it was intended. >> So, what what caused it not to

050work? >> There is some mathematical inconsistencies in that formula that need to be ironed out that have not been >> on the state level. >> Yes, sir. So, so long as they have some inconsistent at the state levels, we're benefiting. >> Oh, we're getting hurt by that. >> Oh, okay. >> Uh, and then uh the last few steps are are the hold harmless and additional proportionate share. That hold harmless. It was set uh at the 2223 year. Essentially, that means that you can't receive less money than you did in 2223. They've updated that this year to be uh the 2526 year. So, uh, you can't receive less money than you did in 2526 going forward and unless they reset that year again. Um, and then the proportionate share piece of that step is just if

051there's any money left over, if the state identifies additional revenue that's available after they come up with that 5.5 billion, then it's just allocated by the proportionate share again, anything that's left over. And then step seven is pretty simple. they take that total entitlement subtract out your local match and that's what they actually distribute. So uh I I think it's important that we understand especially if you're talking with anybody uh at state level uh and they talk about how many teachers how many teaching positions they have funded for us or how much their funded amount is anytime they're talking about the funded amount or the number of funded teachers they're talking about that full 100%. They're not taking out that that 20 or 25% that is the match. uh they're they're going to be talking

052about the the full thing, which is not the amount of money we actually receive as a district. So, I just wanted to make sure everybody gets a refresher on that. I know that's a lot and I don't expect everybody to understand it completely because I have to refresh myself on this every single time I talk about it. >> So, what what you're calling a match >> Yeah. >> is not a match. We're that's our part of putting in. Is that correct? >> That's our skin in the game. >> Yeah. But to me, a match is >> they give us this and we put the same amount with it. It's >> Yeah. They they call they call it the local match, local proportion. Um but yeah, you're right. So they they give us 75, we come

053up with 25 as I'm speaking as as a school district on average in the state like I said. Um a school district with a lower index of tax paying ability like ours is a little less than 25%. I think this you look at districts like Charleston, those that have huge index of tax paying ability, they may be receiving they may matching more than 50% of what they receive. So that's that that's just how it how it works when you when you look at all the different districts across the state. >> Any questions on the >> well >> the funding formula? >> This is a heck of a workshop because you're telling me now that every year that we come here that we almost looking to in order to do our match our share. We either

054going to have to raise milllets uh and the superintendent just told us a few minutes ago that uh uh fund balance is low and we need to raise that. So we really um and we just went through reassessment. So we really still talking about raise I know it's a workshop but it's really still talking about to do what the state is asking us to do. They putting a burden on us to say you got to raise millage to do that. >> And that and that's been the that's been the theme since the inception of it. They they they haven't been uh you know they haven't been hiding that fact. That's that's what their intent was. You know, we're going to put some b some of the burden onto those uh local school districts to to

055match. Uh the problem has been that and that's not a new idea. That's something that has happened before. The problem has been over the last four years that the governor's incentive or the governor's initiative to get teacher salaries from where they started at when I got here about 38,000 and now they're going to be looking at 50,000 plus. >> When you talk about that huge of an expenditure increase for, you know, half of our employees are teachers. Half of our employees that we of our thousand plus employees are getting these raises. And when you talk about increasing half of your employees staff by or half of your employees salary by 10 15 20%. That's a big expenditure that they're asking us to match 20% of. >> Do we know the uh ballpark sugar how much

056that'll cost us? >> But as far as the the match the match I mean the teacher we're going to get to that. Okay. We're coming. >> Any other questions on the funding formula before I move into the actual projections? >> All right. So, now we're going to get into revenue projections. That way you can see exactly what we're expecting or what we're thinking we're going to get from the state and we're going to we're laying this out. You're going to see the state, then you're going to see the local, you'll see federal, uh we've got facilities. Uh so, you know, you will get to see all of our revenue, and then we will jump into uh some initiatives and what's changed. Then we get into our expenditures. So, uh Mr. Casky. >> All right. Just

057just to as a preliminary, this is going to be different than what a lot of you have seen in the past. Before we've done a presentation, we only talked about general fund. Uh this is all of our state revenue, including any of our restricted grants, anything like that. It's it's not just what's going into general fund because we're looking at our total operating budget uh as a whole. During this presentation, we will talk about the general fund and what's actually coming out of general fund balance and the same things we normally do. But for this piece of information right here, this is not just general fund state revenue that we normally talk about. If you look up there about halfway down where you see other state revenue and handicap bus routes, that's that's pretty much

058the divide right there. Anything above that line is what we would typically be looking at for general fund. Anything below that line, those are restricted state funds. Uh for example, if you you see down about 3/4 of the way down, you see our sir debt revenue. Uh that's our full day 4k. That's how much money we get from the state to fund those full day 4K classrooms, but they can that money can only be spent in that area. Same thing with all of those other grants below there. Those are restricted and they can't be used for just whatever we want to do. With that being said, uh the full budget for uh that we that we did last year, the the budget that we're currently working under is uh about 62,62,285,000. And then the budget

059that we're projecting for next year is uh 64,188,000. That's an increase, excuse me, increase of about 1.9 million. And some of those uh there's a lot of there's a lot of ups and downs. If you look at the the top three lines, those the new education funding, state aid classrooms, the EIA portion, the health insurance revenue, those are those are pieces from the formula that we just talked about. And you see those numbers are pretty much going down. And uh I just want to bring up the fact that it's going down in comparison to our prior year budget. So that's taken into account that 200 student reduction that we saw at the 45th day. So uh if we look at the FY26 projection, that second column is actually what we're projecting to receive this year,

060which is about like we we talked about uh that's about a million dollars less on that first line than what we originally budgeted for. that was that was in response to that 200 student lost. So if you look at the budget compared to the FY27 budget projection, then we're losing money. But if you look at the FY26 projection for what we'll actually receive, we're gaining a little bit on that state revenue. So it just depends on which you which number you use as your starting amount as to what that variance is going to look like in there. But typically when we have that discussion, we're looking at last year's budget versus this year's budget. So that's why I have it presented that way. >> And Mr. Cassie, correct me if I'm wrong here, but when

061you look at that budget variance as he was talking about those top three numbers, if you look at the health insurance revenue, it shows that there's a deficit of one over a million dollars. >> Well, what they're doing is they took that money and I think they put that in the new state aid funding formula up at the top. >> Okay. So, they moved that to line one. So, they took it from line three, moved it to line one. So, it shows a reduction. But then also what they did, they took out of line one, they took 8 6 27,000 to move down to career tech, which is down there towards the middle at 627,000. >> Mhm. >> So they took money out of one one almost 1.1 million out of health insurance revenue. They

062put it in the new educational funding, but then they took 627,000 out of that and put down in CTE. >> So, we going to be burying the bulk of our insurance costs for what I'm looking at. >> Well, they're they're tying they're wanting to tie it all in, but when they put it up in that new funding and then they're like, "Oh, let's move CTE down here." So, they're moving that piece down there. It doesn't look like it's it's dollar for dollar. A lot of times what you see when you see things money start to shift from category to cate there's usually you're going to lose somewhere you're going to lose and you know it just doesn't seem to work out in our favor. So I did want to point that out because I know

063some people are like why are we getting a million less in health insurance. >> Well I wanted to explain where they put it and then then you're like well how come that's only $536,000 increase? Well, because they took six 620 and put it down in CTE. So, Mr. Casky, is there anything else you want to share about that? >> Yeah, I just wanted to bring up the the health insurance revenue they actually split it into two pieces. >> Okay. >> So, the piece that they moved into what you were talking about moved into that top line is everything that they have given us previously. So, all of the old money got moved up. That 125 is just the increase in health insurance revenue that we saw this year. Gosh. for I don't know why they

064chose to do it that way, but that's the way they chose to do it. So, that's why you still see a little bit of money on that line. They didn't move the whole thing. That's the new money. >> I have one question and uh what was their um point in moving the 627 down to career technology? >> That's a wonderful question. Um the the point of that started with the like what I was talking about earlier the RFA uh analysis into that funding formula. One of the things they did is they sent out a survey. They sent out a survey. I think some of you actually filled out the survey and and sent it in u of some of the things that we were concerned with. For what I know about with public school districts

065that submitted that survey, the only thing that was talked about other than charter school waitings was CTE. That was one of the items that we put on there as underfunded. They used to get a 1.2 is it 1.27 1.29 waiting. It got reduced to 1.2 several years back. Uh and with the rising costs of CTE equipment, certifications, things like that. The 0.2 waiting was not cutting it. And so that was something that we we asked for. Well, rather than increasing the waiting, what they decided to do was really overanalyze it and say, "Okay, we're going to uh take that money completely out cuz they say, well, this is meant just for teacher salaries, not for CTE equipment is what we're really funding by with this. So, we're going to pull that money out and we're

066going to put it down here in this is fund 329 for for career and tech education." Uh, and they put that money down there instead. But my my argument with that would be that they still took the money out of the pot that we're paying teachers with and just moved it down. So it it it's a it's a net zero one way or the other. Now, we thought it was going to be worse than that because typically we hadn't spent any money out of 329 or that CTE fund for salaries, but they're going to allow us to do that. Um so really it's just shifting. You shifted the revenue down from general fund to career and tech. We're going to shift the expenditures down from general fund to career and tech and nobody's better off

067for it. >> Well, I do have a question that relates to the state report >> and that was kind of my reason or my thought in why the big amount was moved down to CTE. Uh somewhere I I heard someone say that um the CTE program and all of the things that go towards uh credit for the state report card, they make up a bigger piece and the overall uh performance of how we doing on the state report card than even your academic uh courses like your u end of school year reports all those things that are required academically to go on the the state report card. >> Mhm. >> I said I I I wasn't aware of that. I don't know how they calculate the state report card. That's not up my alley. Uh

068but that is interesting and that that could be that could be part of the motivation there behind I will say I wanted to commend our CTE folks. I I dug further into uh this as we were looking all these different funding changes and I dug into uh the percentages because I'm looking at the number of of CTE units that we or CTE students that we have and obviously you can't compare student to student but if you look at percentage of students percentage of students versus the total that are in career and tech I think we're in the top 10 in the state top 10 districts so they're they're doing a great job especially coding those um that's been a big area of emphasis over the last few years to make sure we are getting the

069funding for those. So, they're they're doing a great job and we had a good CTE program to hope we can expand. >> Any questions on the state revenue projections as they are there? >> That one line um says man, I guess some type of depreciation reimbursement. So, that is one that is uh it's not necessarily increasing the amount of money that we're going to receive. That's one that uh not last year, but I believe the year before it increased rather dramatically. Uh that 1 point I can't I can't even find the number up there right now. That 1.862, that's approximately what we would receive every year for that. Uh and then I think there was some legislation change or something that I wasn't even aware of when it happened and it came started coming in

070at about 2.9 million. Well, now we're deciding to go ahead and budget that full. I think this year it's coming in about 3.2. So, we're going to go ahead and budget that full amount, but because it changed so drastically in that one year, I was I was uncomfortable budgeting up that high just in case it came back down. But we feel pretty good after the last couple of years that it's going to maintain that level. So, uh that that's why you see that there. But we have been receiving >> what is that? >> That's our manufacturer depreciation reimbursement. So, that's related to it's it's similar to our fee in lie of taxes. It's uh instead of companies paying um I think it's it has something to do with the depreciation that they pay on the

071equipment that they that they use in their manufacturing process um they pay a piece a fee instead of having to pay property taxes. It's it's it's like a fee in l agreement but we get a piece of that back to the state. All right. So, this is what I was going to get into about the uh the state revenue projections when we're talking about how much it was going to cost for our teacher increase. So, this is something that was put together by the OEC and in in conjunction with SCASA. And if you look, you see the different school districts that are on. We have Chester, Chesterfield, basically all of the OEC districts that came together for that legislative meeting. And what they did is they compared what the teacher pay increase would cost their

072district versus what they were going to actually see in that state income increase. And as you specifically on the state aid classrooms line. So if you look at all of those, you see that none of them are filling up the whole the whole bar there. And a lot of them like ours are only about 50% or less. So >> definitely not hitting the 75%. >> Definitely not. If you if you notice, I don't think there's a single one that's hitting 75%. >> Wow. >> Not at all. >> On there. >> Now, I will say the teacher pay increase that we see right there, that 1.65, that's something they calculated and they calculated it based off 11.2 teachers per students per teacher, just like the um the funding formula requires. So, we do not employ in

073our school district 11.2 teach or 11.2 students per teacher. We don't have that many teachers. That is an that is an overly conservative number that they use to kind of pad that a little bit. But I will say it should be a greater percentage than 48.1 if they're trying to get us to that 80% funded level. Uh but but they have not. And that's just a representation of that. And you can see that it's not just a Chesterfield County School District issue. And some districts are in worse shape than we are. Uh but everybody is is fighting the same battle right now. And you see that as you look across across the state with people uh cutting positions or raising millillage districts that haven't raised millage in a long long time. Uh and but but

074you're starting to see a lot more of that now. All right. Any other questions on that? All right. So, we'll move on to the local revenue projections. Uh if we look right here, we have the same setup. We got our prior year budget and then what we actually project to receive this year and then our FY27 budget. you'll see that that projection versus budget especially on that ad valorum line is pretty significant. Uh and what that what that represents is us essentially budgeting at 100%. Uh so what we see on this FY27 budget projection is 100% of what we received or are projected to receive this year. Typically what we're going to want to do is budget that down to you know 95 to 97 98% just because you want to have that bit of

075conservatism. somebody doesn't pay their taxes or somebody's late paying things like that can affect uh that advalorum tax revenue that comes in. So, uh it's it's not ideal to have to budget that at 100% but based on where we are with with the fund balance and everything, it it's something that we were kind of required to do this year, but that's that's what we're looking like we're going to receive uh as far as advalorum revenue for this year and then we're budgeting 100% of that next year. >> And I think that also allows you to understand the you know where we're at as a district. if we're having to to count on every single person paying their taxes next year at the budget of 100%. Um to with our budget, that's that's not a good

076situation to be in because uh you know, as Mr. Casky mentioned, you really want to have that leeway for those delinquent taxes, people not paying, things of that nature. If you're budgeting 100%, you're planning on 100% of people paying. Um, so there are times that I've done that. Uh, when you start looking at historical how your taxes are coming in, Mr. Casky and I sat down. I looked at I think what the last few years that we looked at. I felt comfortable at this point in time doing 100%. But you have to realize there is no cushion when it comes to your your local revenue. You are fully expended. Now, there are a couple things we're waiting on. Um, you know, we're waiting to see will there be any additional revenues. We still have a

077few months left that we could receive uh local revenue from Adalorum, but we're not expecting that to be probably what 100 $200,000 maybe at most. >> Yeah. >> So, you know, you're not you're not looking at a lot there um as far as what we're kind of projecting. So typically we typically I would set a budget at about 90 to 95% of that number but we're in a position we have to put 100%. >> What? >> Well when we get back to the next when we get to the last page cuz we're we're short on our on balancing out. >> We we're projecting 100% but we may not get 100%. So our historical data has showed us that we will get probably right at 99 to 101%. >> Okay, >> that is what our historical

078data, but it's always still best to probably do that at 95%. >> Because you never know what's going to happen. We could have another housing crisis. We could have something else happen. You could have a recession and >> businesses decide, you know, there's a lot of different things that >> there's a lot of things >> that that can cause people not to pay into their taxes. So, anything else on the local? Any other questions on the local taxes? All right. And then we come to our federal. Like I said, uh the only line on here that you would have seen in the past on the general fund side would be that first one, that federal forestry, and that's gone down just a little bit. We received less than our $90,000 budget last year. So, we're

079projecting to receive about that $82,000 number. Not a huge difference, but uh that is something that will be in general fund. The rest of that is going to be your restricted federal grants. That' be your titles, title 1 2 3 4 5 uh your exceptional ed, IDEIDA grants and preschool grants, Perkins, uh all of those things as well as your uh child nutrition department. All that is going to be federally reimburseable. It's not technically a grant, but that's that's what we're projecting there. Uh the then we come to our building and facilities revenue. So, this is the uh the bond revenue that you all approve every summer. Usually in June, we'll have that coming up uh to where we approve to issue deferred maintenance bonds to help pay for acquisition of fixed assets or the

080repair of our buildings or or equipment, things of that effect. Uh if you look right here, you'll see that back in 2425, the number was hovering between 3 and 4 million. Last year we issued a a large amount, but what that was for was to have some upfront cash to pay for some of those uh bond referendum projects just to have some cash in the bank so we wouldn't have to issue that $und00 million of bonds and start paying interest on that immediately. So that's what you're seeing there. Uh what I've looked at last few years, and you'll see this a little bit later, we've been hovering around, you know, that 2 to3 million expenditure uh over the last few years for actual deferred maintenance. what that what that money is used for. With the

081money sitting in the bank right now from that last issuance, I can project that we we'd be a little bit lower of a project of a issuance than we have had in prior years at 24 and 25. So I think 2500 or $2.5 million for next year would probably be adequate for us for for another deferred maintenance bond. >> That's what we'll be borrowing too. >> It is right and that's that's repaid with debt service revenue. >> Any other question? I understand that some districts I understand that some district use their and maybe we don't use it but use their fund balance uh besides borrowing and paying interest they use the fund balance and then you don't pay the interest uh but it comes right back to you anyway. Well, uh, there there's pros and

082cons to that that you don't you don't pay the interest on it, but you also fund balance is only going to be your general fund collections throughout the year, your operational stuff. You wouldn't be able to use any of your debt service revenue for that. >> So, debt service revenue can only go towards repaying debt. That's which is why some of that uh some of that bond uh some of those bonds are issued. >> All right. Sales tax revenue. Uh, I just based this I went back to 2020. You can see the the progressive increase right there. I went based on the last three years that a running average uh to get a projection of uh FY27. So looking like we're going to receive just above that $5.5 million receipt that we projected for this

083year. So uh increase it by another 3.67% looking at more like 5.78 uh for FY27. That's just that that'll go towards those bond referendum projects. >> All right. Right. And now moving into some of our initiatives. Um so of course we want to add $2,000 increase to all sales on the teacher salary scale. Looking at a 1% cost of living increase for all employees at the top of their salary scale. Uh when those employees that do reach the top, what has been happening is that there's never a pay raise for them. Um although inflation continues to rise and cost of goods continue to rise, their salary doesn't change. So, their purchasing power actually reduces. And so, if you've got a a 30-year teacher that's, you know, working for us and they've been topped out at

084the the top of the scale for 2 years, they haven't received pay rates. Uh, so I, you know, what probably inflation has been a little bit higher than typically it's about 3%. So, I'm sure we're probably pushing 7 8% over the last couple years. So, their purchasing power has does not uh coincide with that. Uh 50 50 cent hour pay rate increase for all classified G-cales. We were trying to get a dollar um but we had to to back down on that a little bit. Um and then a 2% pay rate increase for bus drivers and as Mr. Casky told me that's on the state scales um not our scales. Is that correct? Is that an easy way to put it? what's currently projected. It technically we are required to give the same dollar amount

085increase as what a 2% increase to the state minimum would be which long story short that means we got to give a little less than 2%. But what we've currently budgeted for is the full 2%. >> How many G scales do we have? When you say Gcales how many G scales? >> So it it's scales we have technically we have G1 through G11. We no longer use G1 2 or 11. So we use G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G3 through 10. C >> Can you give me a copy of the G scale showing me the uh the uh classified in each one of those are like cook a what have you >> and we're working on we're working on a

086more palatable presentation of those scales. What what comes out of the system is not pretty. Uh it's one of the reasons why we haven't advertised all of our skills in the past is just because it's not easy to read and it confuses more people than it helps. But >> so we can I can I can send you the copy I have. Um but as Mr. Casky mentioned, we will be posting all of our salary scales on our website. So we want to get it in a presentation where people can understand it and read it because even I get confused on that thing at times. I've had to go back and forth and I've calculated wrong and then Mr. says, "Oh, you got to remember on this scale it's this." I'm like, "So, we're we're going

087to try to get those corrected um so it's easy for everybody to read and it's there for everybody to see everybody's scale." Um so, they will all be posted. Uh my goal is that we do bring those uh salary scales to the board. I feel that that's part of the budget that salary scales are approved um when the budget is being approved because that helps go through that pay. So that'll be a part of our next um presentation, but you'll get an opportunity to look at all the salary scales as we hopefully we can have them all cleaned up and ready to present at that time. Um yep. So that's all that right there. Then as far as position enhancements, um these are additions that we we were looking at because of our staffing standards.

088So, the history teacher um at Central, a math interventionist at Central, but that's going to be covered uh by title funding. I think we're going to call that a a math coach. Um then we have special education teacher, middle school science teacher, middle school social studies, uh four BCBAs, uh alignment of job titles, responsibilities. If you look over here at that blue um box, there is one that I really want to move over to the orange box and that would be the school counselor at Chesterfield High School. Um right now that is not add added as an addition. If you look at our staffing standards, uh Chesterfield High School has over 500 students. We were saying for every 250 students, we need a guidance counselor. So, that would mean that we really need to add

089that 84,600 to that 886,280. Right now, it's currently not added in there. Uh, but the other things, the halftime at Central, the halftime at New Heights, um, you know, right now, we could we could probably push those a little bit. and then the special education teachers um to to help implement um co-eing model. We can we can push that on down the road just a little bit um as we work on some other solutions through. But really I think that if you look in that blue box of adduh additional needs to consider that school counselor Chesterfield High School really needs to be over in the additions box. Then other things that we've done across our district uh as far as staffing recommendations and changes as far as certified staff reductions. Uh there are four positions

090at Jefferson Elementary School, two positions at Mackie Elementary School, one position at Plain View Elementary School, one position at Petersburg Elementary School, six positions at Long Middle School, and one position at Sher Intermediate School. Uh those positions equaled about a 1.07 uh 07 million uh in savings. Uh also when you look at our our non-certified reductions, five librarian assistants or instructional assistant positions, two office uh positions at Sher High School, one office position at Ruby Operations, one office position at Central um office. Now, we also have added additional support here as far as uh savings because as we we're looking every day at what we can what we can do, how we can repurpose. Um we've had a couple of retirements or resignations just within the last few days um in the district. And so

091we are actually combining those positions and we have I think is it three more positions at central office that we're not um which includes PLC or central office that we are not actually um going to rehire. We're going to combine them in another role. Dr. Von >> five total. So when you take the ruby ops the central then there's three more uh recently that we are going to be absorbing um to for for some additional savings. Um now that number is not represented there and I'll talk about that. That's on another sheet that I gave you a little earlier. Uh when you look at repurposed positions again u we're repurposing uh Dr. Hell's position to a chief of sped since she's going to be leaving us at the end of the year uh due to

092retirement. And so we will rehire somebody to come back in as the chief of special education. Um administrative assistant to power school administrator, administrative assistant to safety specialist. Uh we're looking at lead teachers. We had two lead teachers, one in at um Edwards and one at um Shraw, no Petersburg. Sorry. Petersburg. Um and so one of those we are moving to a reading interventionist at at uh Pageland Elementary School and the other one we are moving to a district level instructional coach because of the instructional coaching needs that we have across the district. Um then we have high school athletic directors will be moved to full-time and then a STEM position at uh Chesterfield Ruby will be turned into a physical education teacher. they were needing a physical education teacher um there as well and

093so talked to Mr. Morgan and he was wanting to go ahead and make that move for that physical education teacher. Uh then >> the full-time athletic director is moving from how many days to how many days? >> So they're still fulltime. So they're they're they're full year round. They're 240. You said moving to full-time. What were they? >> So they were I think they were >> they were technically they were they were on teacher contracts with additional days added in for being the athletic director that got them to 240. So they already working the 240. It was just a teacher contract plus some days. Now they'll be 240day contract. >> So with their teaching contract and with their supplement that they was getting it was equal to what you're talking about here now. Yes. >>

094Okay. >> They're just being removed from the classroom to do to do and what we we met with the athletic directors to talk to them about how they can help the middle school because I know our middle school, they do have three courses that uh or three classes if they're on a block schedule. So, we talked to the high school athletic directors about them being able to consolidate some of the services such as paying for officials, helping to prepare transportation, things of that nature that would also benefit the middle school. So, it's more of kind of like an area support there as well. >> All of the certified uh reduction um been placed in the repurposed position. All of these certified that we're looking at over here. >> So, all the Yeah. All the certified

095I do believe they we did get everybody replaced into a another job. Is that correct, Dr. Vaughn? >> Yes. And the uh STEM position uh moving over to phys education, would that person still be certified to teach uh phys education? >> That's a retirement. That person is retiring and leaving. Okay. >> So that that is actually a vacancy. Um and Chesterfield Ruby was the only school to have that. They were also the only school to have one PE teacher. And so when just looking at instead of trying to add another position, can we repurpose? And that's what we've been looking at to try to repurpose to utilize current FTE that we have um to to create that position to meet a need that they have within that school. >> Non-certified position would be fall up

096under the same thing as certified. All those have been able to be repurposed in another area. >> We're still working on those this place over a little later, but I have a place for everybody but one and we're in conversations about where that person's going to be too. So, we have worked on that. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. Bone. That five savings you talking about, where's that five savings going to help us at? It's going to help us out of the red at the end. You talking about you said five that's come up in the last day or two or something. We're not gonna be adding, right? >> No. So, we're not adding. So, that Yeah. Yeah. We're going to add actually it's on this on this sheet. I think it's at 222. Is that

097right, Mr. Casy? On this sheet you gave me. >> Uh th those the additional three is actually going to be about 180. It's the other. >> Okay. So, on this one, it's right up here at the top. It says additional position changes after budget 180. So, that number Yeah. So you add that number and that's when we get into uh you know continuing on kind of with the held positions you know we we are trying to look at positions that we can hold uh that we don't need to fill. So had conversations with um uh you know Mr. Burr um Mr. Maguire and and finance just looking at what other things we can do. Uh, so we are holding four positions which equates to $288,000 um of H holds that we would have for next

098year. And then on this sheet that we did provide to you guys, uh, this kind of gives a total. Mr. Casky, you want to run this down the sheet with the board real quick. Um, on the total there. Yeah. So, uh, some of the numbers you see up on the screen right now, the first three numbers are one that's on there. The certified positions, the non-certified positions, and the held. That's the that's the three numbers you see on the screen currently. Uh the next one that we have identified was the holiday bonus elimination. That's $540,000 to eliminate that. Uh then we have the new teacher bonus elimination which is $99,000. Uh reallocation of some maintenance expenses to the project fund. Uh that was about 213. Uh that's essentially just identifying some operational or general fund

099expenditures that we could shift over to the capital project fund to be paid with some with some of that deferred maintenance money. Uh then we have the additional position changes after budget finalization. That's what I what Dr. Ballinger just mentioned those extra positions that have just come available at the district office. And the last one is the uh elimination of that new heights middle school bonus that we initiated a couple of years back. Those are $500 per employee at new heights. >> Question. When it come to the uh elimination of like your new teacher sign on bonuses, I mean, how effective has that been in the past and how is that going to affect us when it comes to recruiting uh new teachers as we move forward? >> It's something it's it's something that I

100I think is is we don't have a lot of great data on just because we have not implemented it the way it should have been implemented a few years back. uh it it was the same dollar amount, but there was no um there was no skin in the game on the teacher side until last year. Last year was the first year that we actually put a service requirement attached to it. So, uh if you don't stay with us for three years, you have to pay back a prrated portion of that 1,500. Before that, we had some folks that were jumping back and forth between us and Marbor or Darlington and getting $1,500 bonus, but each district every time they did that. So, uh, as far as the recruitment of it, I think we should have

101some good data starting this past year and going forward to see if we can retain some some newer teachers doing that. Uh, seeing if how many teachers are actually having to pay back some of that bonus that they got this got last year if they leave within three. Um, so I think we'll have some some good numbers there. Dr. V, do you want you want to add anything to it? >> I don't have any data on that. I will say that it's um not a very competitive bonus if we're going to look at bonuses to attract people. It's great and it's more like a moving bonus for our people who do decide to come here. But when we think about this, we need to think about um areas like Fairfield that have industrial bonuses and

102they get like $5,000 signing bonuses. Other places in the state get 10,000. So, I don't know that it's helping us on the recruitment side. It is a nice It has been a nice thing for our people who are moving here to help them. But as far as a good recruitment tool, I'm going to say it's probably limited. >> Okay. So, with us eliminating it, we won't be able to offer anything basically. Is that >> that? Yeah. I mean, that's that's, you know, and again, we're just trying to close the the the funding gap that we have with balancing our budget. So, we were just looking at a lot of things. Um, this was just something that we identified. And I would say that really when you start looking at most of your your uh bonuses,

103your your hiring bonuses or recruitment bonuses, they start they were started because there was a staffing shortage. Well, now you're not seeing a staffing shortage as much. When you start looking at what are a lot of school districts having to do, they're having to do what we're doing. Um they're having to cut staff. Those staff are going to have to go somewhere. those staff are going to they're they're going back into the the the talent pool to to apply for jobs and and so I know you're also starting to see from colleges and universities more students because I know just a few years ago you'd call a college or university and they say I have one student graduating that would be ready to to come in. Now, I think we're starting to see that number

104tick up um with uh students uh people that are going into teacher prep programs at the university. So, you're starting to see those fill up and those people start to come out more and you're starting to see just more people applying just because of budget shortfalls at other districts as well. So, um, but I hear your, you know, your qu your your your concern. And listen, I don't I don't like taking anybody any money off the table, but I think, you know, we're to the point now we have to have hard conversations. Um, and and I'm just presenting this data. Ultimately, this is the school board's budget. I'm giving I'm giving just information here for the board to digest and ultimately we will go in the direction that the board wants to go. And so,

105you know, if there's anything on here that has been presented, anything on here that you say, "Hey, we want to leave that on, but we want to take this off." That's what we'll do. I'm just providing information and trying to get us to a point that is manageable. Uh, when when looking at where we were at with this budget, I mean, on that sheet Mr. casky just gave you, you can see we we have cut out $2.75 million and we're still $1.7 million short. >> You're doing your due diligence. I mean, I >> So, I mean, we we have to have hard conversations here, but ultimately, listen, I will listen. We're going to follow what you what this board wants to do. And so, as we get through the discussion, ultimately, it's your responsibility to

106make sure that we also have a balanced budget as well. and and have we looked at everything as it relates to I mean when I think about uh the new teacher incentives I mean we always trying to you know recruit and to entice people to come to us and then of course my next concern would be the holiday bonus especially when we're looking at uh employees who have not received raises because they are at that cap that you talked about and then you're proposing that.5% increase on the scale, but uh what's what's the uh the common of the school district? Because you do get persons inquiring about where we get a school bonus this year. And it's a hard conversation, but my thing is when we've been doing it for the past few years and

107uh we're doing it in terms of balancing the budget. I get that. But have we gazed the overall climate of the school district as it relates to these as something like the bonus? >> Right. Um, you know, I I mentioned at teacher forum, you know, I want them to hear it from me first. So, you know, I sat right down there and told them that I wanted to hear it from me instead of at the budget meeting tonight. Uh, so I did inform teacher forum, you know, kind of what we were what what I'd be talking about tonight. Um, you know, and and you know, I talked to some and they were like, "Well, I guess I'd rather have my $2,000 sale raise than get my $500 Christmas bonus." So, I mean, we we we've

108got to we've got to balance because another option on the table is as we get into cuts, you know, do we not go to $2,000 per step and we just because we have some sales that are already above. So, some teachers if we back off of that, yeah, it'll save us $300,000, but those people won't get a raise. And so, you know, that is the question. Do we which one is a trade-off for them? >> Well, I mean, I'm thinking in terms of like a a staff person may not get that step increase like a teaching as it relates to that >> bonus that they might get for Christmas that could help a little bit. I'm just thinking in terms of our whole intent for doing the bonus were to kind of boost morale. >>

109And I love I I'll be honest with you, I love to do a Christmas bonus. I I always have. Um and when when we had money to do it, I would always do it. But when we didn't have funds to do it, I would have to take it off the table. >> I understand. I'm just I'm just questioning because when we vote on it, it's like where the school board yanked it from us and said we're not going to give it anymore. And it's always kind of that bad perception. >> Well, I'm the one making the recommendation. So, um >> Yes, sir. Do we know with our new teachers that's coming in the percentage that we actually uh that's actually staying here with the bonus are they staying here one two three years because I

110noticed some districts now are providing housing allowance for the first month uh you know just to make sure that they okay uh put the money up front so they can take care of the light bill the water bill a month rent what have you. Do we know the percentage of teachers that's uh new teachers that's coming in >> that's staying the three years? >> They're staying for those now. No, since we got the three years. >> Well, technically >> last year was just the first year. >> This would have been the first year. I do know that we've had a a few maybe one or two that have had to pay back some already. >> U but I don't think it's very many at all. >> Okay. So, what do you say? >> Well, I

111mean once you sign that you you put you put them up under contract. Exactly. >> I'm talking about before the contract. We don't know the percentage, do we? >> I don't know that off the top of my head. >> Okay. All right. Because I I I just always thought the teacher bonus was a a great way to draw them into a rural area and then say, "Yes, sir. >> Uh, hey, we want you here." >> Mhm. Yeah. No, I I understand. I I agree. So, um, so here on this next slide, we did look at our, as we've been discussing the Christmas bonus, the new teacher bonus. Um I did put on there to to review um other positions which we've been doing that on a continuous basis. So um if you give me just

112one more second to finish this slide before we get into the revenue. We can take a break if that's all right Mr. Sims. Oh yeah. Um uh so then we so that 150 to 200,000 we do we've been doing that as I said we were working on that today to get that extra 180,000 as we work through some additional um resignations that have just came through. And then the other thing that we've been trying to do to help out our operations is we allocated allowable operational expenditures from the general fund to the capital project funds in the amount of $213. So we moved it from operations to the capital that were allow allowable for us to do that. So that is a reduction on the operations side. So we're trying to be creative, do things

113that we can to to make this happen. Um and again when we look at it, the total where we're at about 2.75 million uh that that we we've cut. And so that puts us still about 1.7 short. And now we are ready to go then to the expenditure side, Mr. Sims. So, would you like to take a break, sir? >> Yeah, let's take a short break. Um, I said we get back in at 6:35. >> I have I have one question before we go. >> Uh, when we I'm sorry and I'll be I'll be >> I'm sorry. >> Well, I tell you what I'm doing. >> Yeah. Well, and looking at uh student teacher ratios with with the reductions in certified positions, are we still balanced across student teacher ratio? >> Yes, there we are

114balanced across with all of our student. Now, there are some of our smaller schools that they have one class that they may be at 25, but you cannot add another teacher to drop them down to 12 and a half students. So there are some schools that are going to be above, you know, maybe 25. Um, I don't think we would have any outside of 25. Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, Mr. Vice Chair, if it's all right, I would like to go ahead and ask Mr. Casky to start on our expenditure budget now side. And so, we looked at all of our revenue of what we're going to bring in. Now, we got to look about look at what's being sent out. So, Mr. Casky. All right. We want to go to the next slide

115here. Okay. So, uh, this is this is just the general fund piece that we're looking at right here. And I've got it divided. It looks similar to how we post it on our on our website. The proviso 1.3 requires us to break it down by general instruction, uh, uh, instructional expenditures, support versus actual classroom. So, the way that's broken down, if we look at that first section up there, uh, that's our general instruction category. So, that is classroom teachers, you know, instructional aids that are in the classroom. And if you look at that, you got the salary and the benefits and you have some purchase services and supplies ends up being about $43 million uh allocated to that category, which is about 52% of our overall $82.7 million budget. So over half of that whole

116budget is just classroom teachers and aids. U then we move down into our exceptional education. And like I said, that that's not even including special ed or exceptional education. So exceptional ed that ends up being about almost $6 million 5.888 million for that category. Uh which is about 8% of our overall budget. And then down there below that we have what we have allocated for summer school. That's just the general port general fund portion of summer school and alternative programs. The majority of summer school is paid uh with our 357 uh summer reading camp money that we get from the state. It's about $250,000 this year. Then we move over into the support services. This is everything outside the classroom. So we have two two categories there. We have our school level support. That's going

117to be all of your principles, your APS, your office staff, those support services that are in our schools. That makes up uh just north of $14 million or about 17% of our overall budget. And then we have our district level supports. That's all of us sitting here. uh it's everybody office staff the administrators and that makes up about $19 or about 23% of our overall budget and that's not just the salary and fringe for that those employees that's all of our maintenance that's utilities that's everything else that goes into uh running the school district any questions on the general fund side and we'll move on into the restricted state program funds. So, like I talked about before, we we're presenting the whole the whole picture this time. So, uh as we look towards the restricted

118state program funding, it's they're going to mirror what the revenues are because that's kind of how we're we're required to do that from a state and federal standpoint. We're going to only budget what they're going to give us because we can't there is no fund balance to dip into with the with with the exception of some small carryovers that we may have from year to year. But that that state restricted re uh expenditure budget is going to be just north of $4 million. Any questions on that? All right. Finally, uh we come to our uh restricted federal programs. Uh that's like I said before, title IDEIDA all the way down to our food services about $7.6 million and that comes to just shy of 15 million. Uh when it comes to our federal program expenditure

119budgets, any questions on those? >> The only thing that we need to worry about with the federal program is that we don't have no flexibility in terms of that money, right? >> Yes, sir. That that those are very very strict on what we can spend that money on and that we have to turn in programs uh some plans for the title uh title grants. Each one of them has an individual plan that specifies exactly what we're going to spend that money on before we spend it. Now, there is more more flexibility with regard to our food services. That's federally reimbured, but it's technically not a grant, but we are pretty regulated on what we can spend in that that realm as well. >> Oh, go ahead. Sorry. >> We we do get money back for

120school space and that type of thing from the federal program, right? >> Electricity, uh, utilities cost, and that that type of thing. Um yes and no. Uh each one of those grant or a lot of those grants have something worked in called indirect cost and that's where you see that money coming into the general fund. Any of those uh overarching costs those overhead things like accounting HR uh those those functions that we provide to those grants like if you have a teacher that is um a teacher that's paid by federal funds but somebody's got to write a paycheck, somebody's got to cut the lights on. All of those things are paid by a percentage of that grant that they refer to as indirect cost. This year that percentage is 4.17%. So all of those grants

121you could take 4.17% of and transfer that money over to general fund to help pay for some of that overhead type stuff. >> So the food service budget that we have there now percentage-wise, how much did that go to the food? 80%. >> You know, I'm I'm not 100% sure. um as far as the actual food the cost >> and what do we get out of indirect cost? I guess that's my question. >> The indirect cost piece of it uh is actually higher than that. That's the one piece that we can charge a higher percentage of. In the past, we've held it at 11% 11.2% 2% of what their allowable cost would be, but uh we can charge up to 19% which we're looking at increasing that amount this year uh in order to bolster

122some of that general fund uh dollars. >> So that 19% would go where? >> It would go into that general fund pot to be spent on everything else that we're talking about to fill some of that gap that we're still looking at. >> So is that included in this year budget presentation? the the increase to 19% is not. No, sir. >> It's s is still budgeted at that 11. So, we could and that that would represent maybe an additional $100,000. >> That's all. >> Yes, sir. It's not 19 19% of that number. It's 19%. You're you're not allowed to charge indirect cost on food and because those things are federally reimbured. So, it's just the the salary and the fringe and some of the purchase services that you're allowed to charge that percentage against. So

123on that total federal budget piece, what percentage would the district benefit, you have an idea >> what percentage would the district >> Yeah, you just said that we could probably get a hundred and something,000 out of the food service out of that whole thing. What percentage would the district uh probably get another couple hundred thousand maybe out of this or more? >> I don't know that I'm following >> from from the indirect cost. >> Yeah. No, I mean if you're looking at, you know, if you I think what what Mr. Sweeny's asking is what how much more would we get and correct me if I'm wrong from what we're budgeting currently at 11% to what we would get if we get to 19%. >> No, I am saying what we've currently budgeted is 11% and

124then he's saying 19%. So, if we're going to get 19% from food service, uh portion of that food service out of everything up there that's listed, what will be our percentage? That's >> okay. He's he's asking what the IDC rate is for all federal programs. >> So, if you look at title one, you're talking title one, IDA, >> we have all of those. is you're one and each of them will probably have a little bit different number tied to them to what we can pull out um according to the to the program whether it's title one or sped some are higher some are lower >> I I would think so >> yeah so I think what what he's asking is what is the total that we could utilize out of IDC from all federal programs

125>> and that if you remember uh looking at my presentation my financial presentation each month that's remember that $490,000 that's not growing at all because we hadn't received it yet that federal part that wheel that we look at every month. That that is that piece of money. So we got about that $90,000 is federal forestry. The other $400,000 is indirect cost. That's what's currently budgeted for this year for indirect cost total. That's food service. That's all of these grants right here is about 400,000. I think we could get to 500 next year if we up it to 19%. So, will that go to the fund balance or will the the the percentage that we get out of that indirect cost, will that be added on to our fund balance or what? >> It would it

126would take that $1.7 million number we were looking at down by $100,000. >> Is that included in this cuts that we're talking about right now? >> Not yet. >> Okay. >> So, so we and I get what you're saying. We can basically try to grab $100,000 out of federal programs by utilizing the max on the IDC. Yeah. >> Well, I think Mr. Cassy's saying it's going to be about $100,000 increase above what we're already getting. Is that correct? >> Yeah. The only the only way that we would increase that number past $100,000 is if we increase the total expenditure out of federal fund out of the food service program to increase that overall percent. You increase your big your your your denominator, then you're going to get more out of that. But, uh, for right

127now, if that stays like we're budgeting here, then it'll be approximately an extra 100,000. And I think you also need to be cognizant and just be aware of making sure that your um f food food service program is solvent to where it and I think you now Mr. Casky and I was just talking about this earlier today. Uh we've been running on a surplus for the year about $500,000. >> The last two years they've run on a surplus of about a half million dollars. So you don't have a big cushion when it looks at, you know, grab an IDC if you're only at $500,000 in your child nutrition program. And and again, we are requesting a a you know, there's some things that we are going to do in our child nutrition program u such

128as they're on the G scale so they get a 50 cent pay increase. We're also looking at adjusting to where we have more full-time kitchen staff so that we can um prepare more um menu oriented um I guess items. Um also to where we're offering hot breakfast for middle and high school. Dr. Hel, is there anything else that we've we've talked about um as far as like with staffing? Uh Dr. Vaughn? Um, I don't know about the staffing, but I know that um, Miss Miss uh, Reeba and I went to uh, couple locations to to, you know, get some more ideas on our options for our students. So, we should see an increase in that, >> which would raise your food, which which could raise prices, especially cuz, you know, when I first came in,

129we were offering one option at at some of our locations. Now, we're we're trying to offer multiple options for our students and >> but but we we've been in the surplus on the food side, >> right? But about $500,000 just just overall for the program. So, I would be >> So, you you $500,000 less so that you can offer more options. We want to we want to provide more food opportunities and more options and and increase the the um the hours for our cafeteria staff because right now there's some of our staffs and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think some of our cafeteria staffs may only have one or two people working working them in the morning. So, we're not able to offer hot option meals because people are driving buses and then

130they come in after the bus is driven. So there we don't have the staff there to prep meals. I need to have the staff there to prep meals so that students have options to eat um you know a good nutritional program instead of just grabbing a bag uh when they come in. And sometimes that's that's good and sometimes that's okay. I'm not saying it's bad, but I mean we need to offer you know my my goal is to offer a hot meal. >> Okay. >> So is that the case across the district or just a particular >> So that was across the district. >> It's across the district. And we have a lot of cafeteria positions that are 7.5 hours and we want to increase them to eight hours. So they're full-time employee and um

131that will reduce the number of employees that are bus drivers as well. We'll still allow people who are doing that right now who want to do that. We're not looking at cutting that out, but we've got a lot of positions that are not filled because of that requirement. So, we're looking to get more staff in there and it is across the district, all schools. >> Okay. Thank you. One question. I don't know if you have the answer to it. At uh the last conference, um we had one of the u yeah one of the representatives there. Uh they was talking about the amount of food waste uh over the average morning evening meal. And I I think he says somewhere around 60 or 70% of food is wasted. So I'm looking at this and it

132sounds like you're saying by increasing staff we can get more quality meals so we reduce waste >> where students will eat have options to eat what they want. So, for instance, at a high school, you know, you can have a, you know, and I'll just give this example. You know, as a student walks in, I could choose, okay, do I want a hamburger and a hot dog with French fries, or do I want to come over here and get, you know, a a Mexican style food with a taco and reffried beans or do I want to have uh, you know, a piece of pizza? you know, give our students the option of what they want to eat because how many times have you walked into, you know, sometimes we can't decide what we want to

133eat, but if you only go in and you only got one thing, one option, or you're limiting your options, they're they're they may not eat that meal. They may take it, >> but that meal may just sit there on their plate and then it goes in the trash. So, if we provide opportunities for our children to say, "Yeah, I want a a hamburger today, but hey, I want this lasagna on this day. Oh, hey, I want a sub sandwich instead. Uh, you know, it gives them that option to eat what they want so that their bellies are getting full so that then therefore they're not worried, you know, they're able to concentrate in class afterwards because they're not concerned about what am I going to eat when I go home later that night or I'm

134hungry right now. So, the the point is is to try to fill their their bellies. Uh, make sure that we're providing opportunities for students to make selection and to increase those offerings and and that's what Dr. Hill and and Reeba have been doing. They've been going around visiting schools, getting ideas, seeing other locations, uh seeing what their setups are like, how we can can can get that and manage that here in our district. I love the idea cuz I I've tried like you can maybe see why it is a waste because the kid get it and like it. I mean I like the idea trust me. Let me ask the question. So we have two fund balance. Do we have a state fund balance where we talking about the money that that's there? And then

135we have a federal fund balance where we have this $500,000 uh more in a federal fund balance. >> So you have what you have is your operational fund balance. That's our district. So now >> the child nutrition has its own account. So it's its own account and it is not included in that 9 million. And it's a total separate balance that only for child nutrition. Your title programs on all those things, you usually expend them every year. You will typically not have any rollover. Sometimes you may have some rollover. Um, you know, sometimes you can carry those grants. I think it's for two years I think is correct. Um, you have two years to expend those grants. Uh, but you don't have that money on hand. That money stays with the state department. The only

136money we have on hand would be that child nutrition program. >> But you got two operating balance then. Let me say it that way. You got a federal operating balance and you got a state operating balance. >> You have a child nutrition. Yes. >> Well, well, what will this um what would the rest of these dollars fall up under? The Tyler grant, the ideal and the federal adult education grant. What did that fall up? That fall up on our general balance. >> So, like I said, title grants, you're not going to have any carryover on your title grant, >> but we got to keep track of them. Yeah. >> So, where did they fall? That's my question. >> So, well, I mean those are all just reimburseable. >> So, we the only time we get

137that money is when we send the money in to ask them to send it to us. Okay. >> And that's after we expended it, right? >> So, so there is no there is no balance or any place to hold those funds. Um the only one that I'm fully aware of would be the food service program. Okay. >> And part of the reason for the food service having that and where the other ones don't is one, the federal government reimburses us for greater than the cost of what a meal is. So they give us a little extra to run our food service program above and beyond what the actual food cost is. In addition to that, we do have our food service department has alle cart sales. So they sell ice cream, they'll sell snacks, they

138sell things like that in the in the in the buildings that generate some money where the other other grants operate on a net zero budget. They get a million dollars, they going to spend a million dollars that year. >> Okay, let me ask another question now. I'm going back to the restricted uh state program funding budgets. Um, and those dollars have to be spent kind of like the federal dollars, right? It's le it's less restrictive. Uh and they all all of those state with the exception of maybe one uh all of those state restricted funds will have a two-year we'll have a one-year carryover provision. So if we get a million dollars in there this year we got to spend that whole million dollars by the end of next year. >> Right. Okay. And we

139get indirect cost on those two. >> We do not get indirect cost on Steve. >> You have to spend exactly what you say for that particular thing. >> Yes sir. >> Okay. Yes sir. >> All right. Thank you. Uh-huh. >> All right, Gasky. Capital projects. >> All right, so capital project expenditures. This is kind of the mirror image of the of what we saw earlier. This is that same uh bond money, the deferred maintenance stuff. And this is why I was saying that about 2.5 million would probably be adequate for next year. Uh that's about what we're projected to spend for the for the whole in 2026. You look at 2025 and you think, oh, that's a big number. But what that also included was the cafeteria refresh. We got all the new cafeteria tables

140and decals and things that you see across the district. And that was just shy of $3 million by itself. So when you take that piece of it out, it, you know, we're we're we're not really spending $2 million a year over the last few years. Now, that number will go up a little because like uh we talked about earlier, we we reallocated some of the general fund about $213,000 that we had been spending in general fund that will now go towards the capital projects fund. Uh, but like I said, with that uh $7 million issuance last year to cover some of the cash flow needs for the bond referendum projects, we should have enough cash in there to to go back to that $2.5 million issuance rather than the 3 to 4 million that we

141have been doing over the last few years. All right, so now we're into the specific this is uh this is pieces of that general fund budget that we saw earlier. This is your non labor funding. This this is the school non- labor funding. The next slide will be the department level. Uh as you can see there, we got our propo our FY26 budget and then what the schools have requested as their FY27 and then our proposed. So if you look at the two rightmost columns there, the requested net increase would result in about $140,000 increase to our general fund. And as you can see, our proposed net increase is zero. While we would really like to make these increases uh with where we are right now with the with the budget, it's it's something that

142we are withholding at the moment unless we can figure out another way to add those in later on the budget process. But right now, we're proposing to leave those flat. And you'll see the the same situation with the departmental non- labor funding on the next slide. >> And really and truly, you know, the non- labor piece for schools need to does need to increase at some point in time. uh you know when you look at what the schools are getting to operate on uh within their within their school I mean that that that could that that's money that the school spends on on their students you know the principal is charge of that money there are things that they do to try to buy school supplies do this for students do that for students uh

143replace some uh sometimes they can replace just pieces some some have bought equipment some have bought furniture some have you know there's just various things that principles can buy um for their school for their teachers Um and so looking at that, you know, at some point we do need to increase those, but again, we just we have balanced that out. It's it's just a wash. We're just carrying it over one year to the next uh with the current budget. So that is not representative of that 140,000 in the total uh that we're still a little short right now at this point in time. So, so question. When when I'm looking at the requested amount for like high schools, I'm looking at Chesterfield. It went from 116 to 161. >> Is that because of a position

144that you want to put there? >> No. So, that's a request. No, that would be a >> non labor. And then I'm looking at uh Central Sher High 106 from 95 of this year. And then you got MAC High 131 and then Central at 116. Can you explain why the that that's from one high school just looking at Chesterfield High compared to those other high schools? Why is that so much of a big >> Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So, and I cannot recall all of the requests that that Chesterfield High School put in. But, of course, they're not getting any of that. >> They're going to be staying at the at the 116 because we did not balance that. We're not able to add that in. >> But that would be specific requests. And I

145can tell you with most your high schools since you did mention most your high schools um their request is basically is due to cost of officials increase um you know official cost has gone up so high that that we actually gave them uh we pulled some money out this year to give >> about $11,000 of school. >> We gave the schools some extra money to help with officials um because they just were not making it making ends meet. So there that means our our programs are you know they're having to sacrifice other things for our student athletes. Um and so that's one of the things when also when you look at equipment uh for upgrades um andor I I know just the uh reconditioning of football helmets um at a high school can run 15

146$20,000 in a year depending upon how many how many uh helmets that school that year has to to refurbish. So Dr. ing. Is there anything else you want to say on some of the expenditures as far as with the high schools and Kevin? >> You pretty much cut it on the head. A lot of it cuz that's why they repurpose the helmets or repurpose helmets in in spans because it cost so much. You know, they may do $6,000 worth this year, another $6,000 next year. So, but it cost to recondition those helmets. We talking about reconditioning gym floors and all those things. It it it costs. So, the upkeep, that's that's what a lot of that money went towards, upkeep of the fields, um reeding, all those things that that factors into the cost and

147that's why we were able to give them more because like I said, the officials now of course are paid based on mileage. >> Mhm. >> Um and and that that cost can go like if you got an official coming from other side of Columbia versus one coming from Kershaw, they're going to make more. And so, it's just it's a lot of cost associated with it. So, you know, just to help them out. And of course we we also did that too because the incentive that we did we kind of took away from student cost of tickets >> which allowed for more access for the kids to participate and to go to the games. So we tried to offset those costs as well. Gotcha. >> But we're not able to give those increases. >> No, I'm

148just I'm just wondering why you know those type of requests and what was driving it. >> So I'd be honest with you. What I'd really like to do Dr. Coleman is set a per pupil funding formula for each of our schools and say at elementary this is what we will give out per pupil at each elementary school and it's just based off your um last student last year's student count. And then at the high schools we do the same thing. And so I did that um my last year at the previous district and it really helped with the budgeting. Principles knew exactly what they were going to get. We had set that amount in place. they could look at their number and they were able to say, "Okay, this is what I can do this

149year." Um, and it helped me with budget because then I could just pop that number in. Um, and it and it really took out some of that give and take with with principles trying to say, "Hey, I need this." But I can just say, "Well, your numbers are telling me this, so here's some money you're going to get. You have to make it work." Makes sense. >> All right. And like I said before, this is the departmental side. Same same look at the non- labor funding. Uh the the only difference that you will see here uh probably reflected in the first reading of the budget. We will probably have some proposed net increase here. But what that will result what that would be resulting from is required increases of things like software. Like if we

150have a software increase that it, you know, is going up $10,000, you know, we can budget for it or not, we're going to have to pay it. Uh so th those things those things that are required, we may have those in the in the proposed net increase. What we're going to look at doing is trying to see where we can cut in those areas to see if we can get those to a net zero even though we you know have a net increase. Uh but there there may be situations where there's just not enough to cut to cover some of those those cost increases we may see. >> Yeah. And and for example, we have uh two notification systems. One is Bright Arrow, the other is Parent Square. Um, and we just talked to principles

151and and administrators at the last meeting uh about getting rid of one of them. Uh, there's no need for two parent notification systems when we we can use one. Um, you know, that'd be a cost savings of about $13 to $15,000 I think. Um, then I know also, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Casky, but I know uh Mr. Evans has been going through and trying to consolidate a lot of our contracts and various things across the district that would help us solidify some of those things as well. Um I know Dr. Hail early on in the year we worked through we had three video conferencing solutions. Is that correct? And now we're down to >> one. So, so we started looking at those things early um to make sure that we we are

152just utilizing what was what we need in the district. Good. >> All righty. Getting to the fun part here. >> All right. And this is really just a summary of everything that we've looked at so far. Uh as we looked at before, we looked at the the general fund revenue and expenditures. Uh, and when you look at that, the net shortfall that we're experiencing there is $1.92 million. We have our other local fund budgets that represents things like our our Medicaid reimbursement and some of the uh some some of the smaller local funds that aren't typically included in general fund, but that's that's going to represent a reduction of about $66 million or shortfall of about $66,000. And then, as I said before, when we're dealing with our state and federal budgets, they're they're going

153to spend what they what they make in their revenue. So, those are those are going to be a projected zero as far as the short surplus or shortfall. And when you add all those together, you come up with about a 1.96 1.986 million shortfall. And as you look on that sheet that Dr. Ballinger passed out. That number has been reduced uh as of this afternoon by about $222,000 more dollars, which takes you down to number >> 1.763917. >> That's the one. Yes. So that your your true look at it right now is about 1.7. Uh after we uh uh look at the food service reduction, a food service uh indirect cost, that number could change a little bit more. could get up to another $100,000 off of that as well. So, uh that that's that's

154where we are. Uh and everything that's been we kind of went over everything that's been baked into that number and now uh we can have some discussion about how we want to deal with that number. >> So, so what was that shortfall last year? Was it slightly better at a million or a little over a million? >> If I remember correctly, what we budgeted last year was I believe it was about a little over half a million almost 600,000 500 some odd thousand dollars what we budgeted. But you have also have to remember that the Esser positions were not included, >> right? >> So that was another million dollars on top. So really that number is probably about >> 1.5 >> about where we are right now. >> That came out of the fund balance

155from last year. >> Yes. >> Well, so so you just have to consider when you look at what the audit showed the board last year, it showed that you used 3.5 million 3.4 3.5 million out of your fund balance in FY24. Mhm. >> Um and so yeah, that'd be right. FY24. >> No, that'd be FY25. FY24 and FY25. >> But then you also adopted a budget that was one really $1.5 million short of balancing. And then what happened when we got our 45th day numbers, we had a reduction of over 2008 ADM or whatever it was. And that was an additional 1.1 $1.2 $2 million that we got um cut from the state. >> They're going to take take money out. So, you add the 3.5 that you use with fund balance, then you take

156in that 1.5, then you get cut 1.1 1.2 from the state, and then on our 135th day, that equated to about $150,000 more. >> We don't know for sure. Uh but that's assuming that the rest of the state stays completely flat with with no increase or decrease. our proportionate share would would warrant about another $150,000 loss. >> In uh in years past, we've had the conversation this will look better when we don't post when we show the teacher salaries that that were not filled. Is that going to change anything here or not? That's already assumed in this what we're looking at. >> So, you're talking about a lot of teacher turnover or lack >> in the past. It's been like we don't have 30 we don't have 30 positions filled. So that will actually come

157back. >> So one I I want to say that you need to always plan on every position being >> I've always said that that is thing to plan on >> because just because you have a vacancy I mean you could have 20 positions and you could have 20 people come apply and you hire them and now what are you going to do? >> Right? I've always said that's a poor way to manage it. Expecting that >> you you should you should expect that you're going to feel those. Now what you what you do see is that um you know some of the things that that we are not doing is um you know we can't you don't have that that turnover that lag pay you know like some of those repurposed positions. Uh you may

158see some some turnover there. you know, if if you have somebody that that that retired at the top of the scale, you hire somebody that's only 5 years experience, you know, there's going to be that built-in savings there. Uh but right now, you know, we're we're not seeing a lot of that. Also, with a lot of our teaching positions, you know, we had we we were staffed with uh they were contracted um and we were actually paying them a little bit more. So, we actually get people in those positions, we will see a a slight savings there. Um, and I know Mr. Cassy and I and and Dr. Vaughn, we have talked about that at length. Uh, but you're not going to I would not plan on having uh vacancies to to save a budget.

159>> I've never been a fan of I was just wondering, are we assuming any of that in these numbers or are we assuming a full house? >> No, I'm assuming every position is filled. That is her goal. That's my goal is that we fill every position. And when we just had like those 17 positions we talked about, we put them somewhere else in the district. So, we filled 17 other positions. And I know I mean we're you're working on that. Principles are working on on filling those positions on a daily basis. Um, you know, I think that yeah, there there's some there's some things that we can look at that may help us. You know, kind of like what Mr. Casky and I was talking about earlier um with our local revenue. You know, we

160need to see what the rest of that's going to be for the rest of the year. That could be an extra $200,000. But again, you got to remember we're already maxed out at 100% of what we think we're going to get. Um and and so I think when you look at at what are some of our options, there are some options out there. Um, but they're they're hard discussions and kind of since you're talking about maybe positionwise, you know, this is, you know, there are some things that we can do as far as um trying to help balance our budget. So, for instance, you know, I'll skip the first bullet there. So, we'll go into the other stuff, but the first bullet there would be, you know, you can increase your millillage by X number,

161whatever you need. And it may be that you have to do a a combination of things. you know, we're going to do this, this, this, and this to make it all come together. Uh, those salary initiatives that we started at the that we talked about at the beginning with the uh 1% cost of living, the $2,000 teacher pay raise, the 50 cents per hour on the Gcales. If you said, "Okay, we're not doing any of that." you know, you could gain five, six, $600,000, $700,000 if you didn't do any of that. Um, you know, and again, throwing options out there for the board. Um, as far as cut additional staffing or programming, I will be honest with you, I don't know if we can cut any more additional staffing um, within some of the schools

162without hurting students and without hurting some of our current staff. We we have cut and we have really poured over these numbers for the last months. And I know I went to Dr. Von and Miss Kutchen just last week said, "Hey, I want you to find me 1.9 million." And she came back in and said, "Well, we found you about 150, but I don't think you're going to like any of the options." And she was right. I didn't like any of the options because they just did not help with moving with with providing services to our students. And so that's why as people leave, we are trying to consolidate those and not fill those and repurpose those as we have these last three positions to try to make that happen. Uh you can use additional

163fund balance. I would not recommend that. Our fund balance is low where it's at. >> What is it? What's the current fund balance? >> What now? >> It's about nine and a half million. >> Nine and a half million. I I would not I would not recommend to use your fund balance because that that will get you in trouble quick. Um if you start relying on that u other options that that you can do I mean listen and and I'm going to talk about this um but I do value all of our staff but I think you also have other things that you need to consider too. um you know when you have you know you were talking about do we have that turnover or anything of that nature well one of the reasons we

164don't have a lot of turnover is because you know we have a lot of working retirees I think we have 58 58 in our district and how many of them are teachers >> 58 are teachers and about 20 are classified >> okay so we have 78 working retirees in our district. And so what this district because we have so many working retirees, what you see also at the same time is that that normal process of turnover. And I'm not I'm not saying anything bad about our working retirees. I want to get that clear. I think it's great that they can retire and that they can pull in a a check. That is a benefit. And let me tell you, if anybody deserves it, teachers do. But at the same time, it it stops that that

165automatic cycle of turnover that when you have somebody retire, they typically leave the the district or they leave the profession, they're being paid at the top of the scale and then enters somebody that is not at the top of the scale. And a lot of times what you see in districts is that is that built in that helps to when you start recycling um you know going from a higher scale to a lower scale paid employee. Uh those are some savings that we're not seeing. Um now trust I mean I love our working retirees. I mean that's great that they can do it. I'm going to support them. But I did provide you guys with a document just so that we could look at it and it's the one with the uh colors on it.

166But and again as I mentioned earlier, you know, this is the board's budget. We're just presenting option to try to close that gap. Um and so Mr. Casky, you want to kind of talk about this sheet a little bit, please? >> Sure. So as you look at the top, you see the the yellow section represents your certified teachers. The blue section is going to be the classified employees and the red section is actually our single administrative working retiree. That's only one person. Um so if as you look through the top you'll see that uh I got together all of our working retirees and determined what an average salary was. And as the average salary for our working retiree teachers was about $70,257. That's on an annual basis. So if we elected to reduce or cap

167our working retirees at a specific step, we would see certain amounts of savings as as that relates to it. So if that cap was step 25, then that average salary would go down from that 70,257 to uh $69,57 representing a reduction of about $750. Now, budgetarily, what that would do is it would save us about uh $56,000 or and and it would represent about a 1% reduction to their salary. All right? Uh as you go down steps, obviously that number grows. So, step 23, for example, if we capped it at step 23, their average salary would go down to 67 uh 619 and would be a reduction of about $2,600, 2638. we would see a budgetary savings of about $196,000. And we keep going down. You go down all the way to step 15 where

168we would see about an $880,000 budgetary savings for an average salary of $58,400. Now, what we can't do is uh reduce the same number of steps if we're talking about teachers and classified employees because those scales have different numbers of steps on them. Classified employees have 18 steps where teachers have 28. So it just it doesn't work that way. So the way I did this to to be fair as far as keeping it all equitable across the board, uh that step 25 reduction for example on the teachers represented that 1.07 reduction in their salary. So what I did is for the classified employees on that same level, I reduced that salary by 1.07%. That way the percentage decrease in salary for the working retirees across teachers and classified employees remains the same. And if you

169do that, and you see each each step, you see the green section down here at the bottom with each one of those four options reductions to step 25, 23, 18, and 15. And those represent savings that range from $66,000 up to nearly 1.3 million. So those that those are options that are on the table. We are legally we are legally allowed to negotiate salaries for working retirees. uh is they're they're not we we're not beholden to the teacher salary schedule as it relates to those employees. >> And so we just wanted to give, you know, hey, these are these are other options. Not saying that it's the best option, not saying that it's an option the board may want to do. Um, but you know, when we're looking at what are all of our options

170and things, I mean, we have stretched this thing pretty pretty far, trying to grab as much as we can to make sure that we we are balancing and that we're trying to be fair and that we're trying to identify certain things. But when you look down at the bottom in the green there, you can see if you do those reductions, you know, there's a 65,000 9, then there's a 289, there's a 807, then there's a 1.297 million. So again, that's just options that that are on the table and that's kind of where we're at to for us to hear from you, >> Dr. Vaugh um in this contract period or whatever we're doing with they're in the schools right now renegotiating or signing their contracts or agreeing to come back for next year. How many

171working retirees are saying they're leaving and we're hiring? How many new fresh out of college kids are we hiring this year? Do you have you seen a number on that? >> So, the fresh out of college people are already applying and they're applying for our other vacancies that are there and some are applying to here. the the problem is we're still in the interview period so we don't have all those number because we're taking the bringing these to the board in um May 10th 11th and also we're we're the percentage of rehiring working retirees is pretty high but since we have so many still outstanding um that because principles are interviewing when they have multiple candidates we don't have that final number yet we are still working on it and we are collecting those data

172data, but we don't we don't have enough to give you a final number. But typically and and the thing that working retirees bring a lot of experience to the table and so in a lot of cases where there's a good track record, the principles have that. Now, there are cases where working retirees are not the strongest candidate and we do know of some people that are planning to look at other candidates very strongly. But again, since the principles are still doing those interviews and all, I don't have those final numbers yet. >> So, let me let me uh piggyback on this question here because um so vacant now we are actually getting application from from out from from young folks that's graduating from college that's applying for jobs here because that's had been our issues

173in the past. We just couldn't find teachers. So, you're telling me now that whenever we have an an opening, they'll be getting plenty. Well, I'm going to say plenty, but application. >> Well, here's the thing with education that you guys know some about, but just want to put it back on the forefront because our jobs are so specific ex think of a factory and hiring for different departments and each different department has to have a specialized certification they bring to the table and we're not necessarily training them on the spot. So, we have applicants, but those applicants aren't necessarily in the areas we need. So, right now, what we're seeing coming out of colleges are a lot more elementary and early childhood. And so, I've got I know three or four elementary and early childhood

174people who can't find jobs in the district because we don't have any openings in that. So, we do have applicants there. Do I have enough CTE off um applicants? Not not at all. Do I have enough um science and math? Less so, but we don't have as much turnover in the science and math. Our turnover rate here is pretty good. And part of it is because of the working retirees, but this year we also have to remember it's the first time they've had to reapply for that job in a long time. So principles are still navigating that process and they're working through the glitches with it. So couple points. Yes, we have more teachers coming out of colleges. Winthrop meets with OEC all the time. they have more kids gra kids graduating. They're young adults,

175but they have more people graduating. It doesn't mean that we have them in the areas we need them. So, our biggest obstacles right now, CTE is is a hard one. Guidance is terrible for us. Um, and then some other areas too are harder to feel. >> Our working retirees now are basically working in what we call our core subject. Is that would that be accurate? >> Not necessarily. There are a lot of there are a few you they're across the board. We've got some ads that have been them. I don't know if they're being if they reapplied this time, but we've had ads that are working retirees. We have um we have an administrator that's a working retiree. We have um just all all subjects including exploratory classes, business ed, a variety. So, it's it's

176across the board. I would I would have to go back and look and pull that information for you. You can get that information. >> Yeah, we can do that. >> Okay. >> And we have a chart that we've already started to look at our our rehires and we can put their certifications on that. We can share that with you. >> Thank you, Mr. Cask. On the uh reduction you talking about maybe, you know, with the certified teachers. What are the uh neighboring counties? Are any of those reducting? >> Are any of those reducing the as far as capping the the working retirees >> like Yes. Uh not that I'm aware of. Uh it's something that like I said it this is something that all districts right now with with the way a lot of people

177a lot of districts are uh from a budgetary standpoint a lot of people are going to be looking at new ways that they can renegotiate their budget and and save in certain areas. I wouldn't be surprised to see this pop up across the state this year or next year. Uh but no, it is not something that's currently done to my knowledge anywhere near us. >> Right. And that's 58 teachers if we did that could really go across the line and just leave us in the blind. >> They could. >> Yes. >> Question. When we go back to your uh your option by balancing the budget when you talk about this new meal value 106,000, what is that? What's that based on? Because my my thinking is the act 388 that penny sale tax. We no

178longer exercise that at all. That's obsolete or what? Are you aware of that? >> Yes, sir. I'm I'm I'm not sure exactly what >> M you're aware what I'm talking about right is the act 388 when we had the ability to that penny sale tax and I think it was according to like was generating something like maybe a quarter of a million dollars but we wasn't doing it on a regular basis you remember that M >> I thought we was good >> so act so so act 388 was was passed and it was it essentially eliminated the ability for local school >> it was eliminated >> it no the act 388 eliminated the ability ility for local school districts to tax owner occupied property in the state. That's that 4% owner occupied that we talk

179about sometimes is essentially if you live in your house in Chesterfield, then we don't receive operational millage on your house that you pay in property taxes. Now, if you have a secondary home or a commercial property, we we receive operational millage there. And if you own your own, if you live in your house, we collect debt service millage that 34.75 uh mills that Dr. Ballinger mentioned earlier. But the operational side, the large piece of that which is now 183.4 mills, that's the piece that we don't collect and that's due to act 388. Now, we do receive some reimbursement from the state based on that. They when they passed, they essentially said, "Okay, well, we got to make the districts whole somehow >> and we receive uh some reimbursement from the state, but it's nothing compared

180to what we would collect if we actually had the ability to tax those properties." So with this uh one uh 106,000 that new meal what what type of percent you talking about a half mill percent what what is that based on? What's >> So that that mill value is based on the amount that we are projected to collect this year divided by that 183.4 mills. So that 18 I believe it's $18.3 million that we are projecting to collect in advorum tax revenue for the year. And then uh let me see I think I think we actually added in the fee in L. So the 18.3 plus the 1.4 for that $19.7 million that we're projected to collect in advorum and fee and loop income for the for our county taxes. Divide that by the 183.4

181should give you that 106 or approximately $106,000 per meal. >> Thanks. >> Yes, sir. >> One thing and I may there there may be something involved here. I've heard a lot of talk about trying to reduce force in schools and here and there. I if I didn't say this, I I wouldn't be representing my constituents. There's a lot of uh ill will think there's a lot of money wasted in in the district office in the upper level staff. What if anything has been looked at there? Has there been any options explored there as far as as cuts in the district office as opposed to school level? >> So, so we have looked at that. Um, and as I mentioned, there's five positions basically in the district office between the district office of PLC where because

182it's spread out into two positions. Um, you know, there are five positions that's been cut there as well. Um, as far as the rest of the staffing within the district, you're basically to the point that if you did take some staffing away, then you're going to start messing with the ability to function as a system. Uh, because then people will just not be able to to manage. >> We also have the those five positions that have been cut plus all four of the held positions are also district and four. >> So, it's really nine positions that we had that we paid this year that we will not be paying next year. Not just at the district level. >> I'm with Mr. Sims on that. I hear it all the time. But really, it's district office,

183district office, district office, district office we hear out there as elected officials. But it only makes up what 3% of the budget maybe. >> I think when we did that analysis last year, I believe we looked at the salaries in France of your administrators at the district level. It was 3% of the budget or something. Is that >> how much? >> About 3% like you said. only comes out of the $80 million. >> Small percentage. >> Yeah, that's right. I think we did a study on that several years ago. uh because that question has been you know been around for a while >> and uh I cannot remember the exact number but we were we were below the median uh compared to other districts outside >> and actually when you look at it I mean

184that's one thing is that you know there's there's some positions that we could add in central office to make us more efficient. >> Yeah. But I'm not adding any, >> right? >> Um, you know, actually, I'm repurposing positions. So, you know, that that's not something that we're trying to, you know, I'm cognizant of that. And I think we're running pretty efficiently where we're at. Um, and and are able to actually do the job. I've actually been in a system to where it got cut so drastic that the wheels just stopped turning. C. >> Can I Can I say this? I I think what's happening and I your your comments are valent but I think when people are making those type of comments and I'm advocating for the district office because they don't realize when you

185at a district office you just not at a school you taking uh administrative responsibilities across the district and when they don't see that I'm comparing my salary at this school as it relates to somebody who's working in the district office that's a great difference there because the level of responsibility is totally different and I think we as board members, we got to help our constituents to understand that. Does that make sense? I mean, I don't I don't say because >> so if anybody wants to come join me on a day of and be a superintendent for a day, they can come follow me. I would not have well they'll have a good time and you know and and and andor one of these one of these one of these guys and ladies sitting right down

186here you know come come follow us around for a day and see what we go through and why don't you make some decisions. I just don't think uh staff across the district understand at that level that you're not just sitting at a district office just turning the lights on and turning them off when you you are across this district at any given time you on call cuz you're salary and I don't I don't think that's something that they factor again I mean sending it from that level it's not enough money being paid for what y'all do. >> Well, and and this group can attest because one of the first things I said is we have to look at us first. >> We have to look in house. Look look here first before we go looking

187elsewhere. >> But you all run the school district. >> Correct. Correct. But but I did tell them we had that district office first. >> I get it. I understand. >> Um and we did. We we started taking a look there first. >> And you say five. Well, five plus the four hold. Plus, there was another there's another maintenance position that we didn't replace earlier in the year, right? >> Yeah. >> And then there was another technology position that when it become vacant, we didn't replace it. >> So, you're pushing 11 positions. >> And I commend you because we've never had that type of approach that I can recall brought to this board that you cooked some sal. And I think from my perspective just looking at it, uh I think y'all did an excellent job

188of looking at expenditures, looking at what can be taken away. Uh my thought is what can be added when it comes to maybe like you say the mill is I'm not proposing a mill. I'm not uh but I I I'm wondering is there any other resources that we have not assessed have we have not tapped into? That's that's what we're here to ask you guys because I mean I think I think he he was asking if there's any other resources that we haven't tapped into and and I mean I think we've kind of I mean we've been doing this thing for what three four months now looking every single day having conversations I mean we and we keep going back and then anytime we have somebody resign the first thing we do is look how

189can we combine this with another job. What can we do to absorb this position? Um that's like the last just those last three we said okay how can we do it? So we worked for the last what three four days having conversations trying to make things happen and it's going to happen. >> So we're able to to make it work to get that extra $180,000. >> Um one thing I'm thinking about I mean it's off the wall a little bit um catering meals stuff like that. I mean, sometimes we got to tighten our belt >> and we're going to have to cut out some stuff. >> Mhm. >> Um, and I think as little as it is in a budget crunch >> is huge. >> Yep. So, >> and I think every little step on

190this would help. >> Yep. >> And and actually ask for those numbers today. And we are going to look at um mileage and um you know, we need to look at uh we talked about PD. You know, do we limit travel for PD? um you know so we we have to look at those things as well but typically you're not going to gain a lot from travel for PD but we discussed looking at those today um you know those two items the one you mentioned and the travel >> one other question really out of the box what uh how many students are at PLC >> have we looked at the possibility of what it would do if we didn't have it as a school, but administrative office. >> Um, no, I'm I'm going to say

191you need that. I I'm going to say that we're looking at changing some of the programming. I think you need that support there uh for students that that do need something a little bit different. Um, I I hear what you're saying. really we have what four teachers over here at PLC, >> three certified and then you also have your adult ed over here. Um so I I think that program is >> there is value to it. Huh? >> How many students? >> Um >> it fluctuates 45day stints. So at some months we may have up to 35, some months we'll have 15. It just depends on the on the discipline >> and we are going to actually change that next year. Uh Dr. King and I talked about that early on because we have to

192submit to the state how we're going to utilize it and we utilize this as disciplinary, but we're actually going to check the other box that we're going to be not just utilizing it for discipline. We're actually going to be utilizing it for other means uh to help support students that may need something just not not the traditional classroom. You >> talk about adult ed, how many students are we serving in adult and how many position we using? >> Um I'd have to refer to probably somebody down there on adult ed, but I can tell you um that all of adult ed is funded through federal programs that it and grant money. It there is not I don't think there's anyederal >> federal and state. They have federal and state grant. >> There's no operational funds.

193>> Nothing's currently coming out of general fund. That could change next year uh as we run out of some carryover money, but this for this coming up budget have any general fund expenditure. >> Well, I do have one other question. Um and it goes back to looking externally. Okay. If everything we're doing here is about the quality of life for young students and giving them the best experience for education and and professional growth. Uh what the military did in some way to reduce budget is is they closed down one day a week just because of the savings it amount to just their physical cost. I'm not saying we're going to do it, but I'm I'm saying that is kind of looking upstream at what else is available. um when we say, "Well, um does it

194really require five days a week if we on if we're on a a budget issue?" When we know closing down one day and going uh virtual would save us >> $75,000 ground figures because you you cut down on all your physical responsibilities, your light bills, etc. Maybe it's worth at least investigating as a way to to reduce. Let's say that um you look at uh the military for example. We also do uh the JRTC program is a call sharing program. Uh Clemson extension which is your um FFA uh if I'm not mistaken that is a cost sharing program. uh is there other opportunities that we can maybe partner with local colleges or even colleges in general to expand in what we can do as opposed to looking at ways to cut services, add services but

195also reduce cost at the same time. >> To that same comment, operationally that's what NEC did. They voted to go to a full 4 day work week and operationally that was a cost savings. >> So So I've moved the school district to a 4 day school week. Um, and what you typically see, now I'm going to before I get into that deep dive into it, I will say that you you will typically see a a one to to 2% savings um, from my research into it and what I actually experienced. But the the the hiccup you're going to have with public education in South Carolina is that the state law mandates you to go >> a certain number of days. Now, for instance, like where I was in Virginia and Oklahoma, you could either go

196days or they had a provision in there to go hours. So, we chose to go hours. So therefore, I went hours longer hours during four days and we got a Friday off. >> That's what we >> But I met the requirements by hours. South Carolina, you cannot do that. Um >> 180 days. >> You have to do the days. >> Is that right? I'm not sure. >> And and and I know Dr. Hail has to send that report in, I think, on the number of days. And I've seen some emails where she was battling trying to >> save some days or get some days counted and they just were they were not having it. Now that was prior me. I think that was last year, the year before. >> Um but they were just not

197having it. Uh so u you know here unless you're going to extend that out into June and I I don't know if that would be something that our our staff but so I've done that. I've experienced but I think you have to have the flexibility. So if you want to talk to the legislators about saying, "Hey, you either do >> or doing a thousand or doing a thousand." Yeah. Yeah. You're not you're not saving the money there. Now, if you go to ours, then you can shave some time off. But um you know, so so I've looked at those and I think that, >> you know, I I feel we have, you know, we are trying to be proactive to to look at things and and um and I was talking to somebody the other

198day. We're going to have to find more grant money. What else can we get out there that'll get us some some grant funding to try to help close some gaps on some things? But again, it's just that you have to apply. You may not get it. Also, how else to close the funding gap? What if we get 200 more students back next year? You know, if you get 200 more students, that's going to pop us up $1.1 million. But you can't hang your hat on with the trend line that you're going to get 200 students next year. Um, so you have to plan right now for the reality that we're in, which is that we have seen a reduction over the past 5 years in students that the fund balance is going down. That we

199are, you know, that we've cut $2.7 million and we still need to cut 1.7 million more to balance our budget. My goal was, you know, tonight was one to present where we're at, get feedback from this board as to kind of what direction you guys think we need to go and just to give you options as we have. We put some up there. I gave you another sheet that we talked about today as we found an additional 220,000 by not hiring some additional positions to get that down to 1.7. Mr. Sweeny talking tonight about the IDC rate. So that could take it down to 1.6. Um, you know, if we got that, uh, Mr. Casky, you know, if we look at our local revenue, say we get an additional 200,000, sure, pop it in there,

200but that's at 100%. So now that's now you're set at 1.4. So every little bit that you can grab helps. And also it's it's just we need to make the decisions for the county now and we don't need to wait and we don't want to get into other situations like some school districts to where the state comes in and tells us how to do it. You know, we need to keep control ourselves >> and and so sometimes these hard decisions, they're hard to make. Trust me, I know. I don't like making any of these things and I actually want to add more to it. But to be to get us where we need to be, we we have to look at this. I can't I can't necessarily speak on behalf of the board, but I

201knowing the the crowd in the room, I I think it's safe to say we really appreciate the effort that effort is seen here. There's been a lot of >> there's been a lot of work that's gone into this. Everybody sitting in front of us. So, I just want to make sure that is known that we see that. We appreciate that. Um, and it's a welcome it's a welcome look. I think we we appreciate what what has been done here and it sounds like what is still the wheels are still turning and we we appreciate that as well. I would say definitely I mean with this type of approach >> it's a little bit more transparency you really get to look at what's happening in terms of so yeah and like you said this this it

202a comfortable conversation to have with anybody when you start talking about >> cutting positions and cutting budgets and I think everybody here needs to be commended. Y'all done a fantastic job in in flipping rocks and leaves and looking everywhere. We appreciate that. >> I just echo the statement. Uh this is really in depth. I have uh being an oldtime I've learned a couple things tonight. So thank you for the work you've done. Uh and I and I know that you know these tough times that tough decisions have to be made and just like back in ' 0809 you know I think back then you guys were making decisions you know do you furlow people or do you um cut cut salaries by 10% you know when when you have to I think you know you're

203in that position because where we're sitting we're not being conservative as far as what our revenue venue numbers are. We're pretty much just giving everything 100% in there. Actually, we are giving everything 100% in there. Uh we're not pulling back 95, you know, 5% to make sure we have a buffer. That's not that's not happening in this budget. That's not happening. That did not happen in these numbers that were presented to you. So, the thing I would like at some point, I don't know if the Mr. Sims, if you want to do this tonight or if you, you know, you guys just want to call me and talk to me about your thoughts later on because I know we're pressing upon a pretty long >> I can learn to understand. You must >> u we're

204we're pressing upon a long meeting here. >> Yes. >> Um you know, >> I really want to go back and digest this. >> Okay. And I respect that. And uh uh we may have to have another workshop before we pass it. But but I still want to go back and digest this information. >> Well, I see several scenarios that we can go through. My goal would be if you guys look at it and then you guys give me a call individually if you want say hey I think I like this idea or I think that way I can bounce it off of this group out here and that when we come to the 11th you know if we're if I feel comfortable that I can say hey I'm going to present this on the 11th

205as the first reading then I can bring it because I know you know we start getting into these timelines with things um you know we're we're running out of things, but we can we can work through this and u just reach out, give me a call, let me know your thoughts and ideas. I've given you some information. If there's any other additional information you want, please reach out to me, Mr. Casky, or if you want to come have a conversation with us and talk it, come up to our office. Come up to the office. We'll go in my office or Mr. Cassy's office or even go down to Dr. Von's office or whoever's office we we need to have the conversation with and we'll have the conversation and so that you're informed. I mean I

206appreciate you guys listening to us and you know I do look forward to hearing your feedback because we are to the point now I was like I I don't know what else. I've never not been able to balance the budget when I cut $2.7 million. That's the one thing. Well, I hope that some of the ideas we did throw at y'all can start turning the wheels again and get us to where we're closer and we'll keep trucking away. Like I said, I appreciate you coming tonight and taking care of this cuz it's a it's a bad sight. Yes. But it's something, you know, we just got to tackle. >> We do. >> Any other questions, comments from anybody? All right. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So move second. Second. >>

207All right. No.