001At this time, I call the Chesterfield County Board of Education work session on April 28th to order. If there are no objections, we will approve the agenda by consent. Hearing none, we will uh approve the agenda. We do not have anything to cover in executive session. So, we will uh we'll just begin the general meeting as as normal. So, first of all, we'll have our moment of silence and then we'll follow that up with the pledge of allegiance. Let's stand for 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. So now we'll turn over to meeting to our chief financial officer, Mr. Kevin Casy, for our budget preview. Mr. Vice Chair, members of the board, good
002evening. Good evening. So what we're going to do tonight going to kind of go through uh the budget kind of as as a in a work session format. I believe you all have been provided with the the budget summary and and kind of the the breakdown of of the preliminary budget kind of how it looks right now, but I'm going to kind of go through everything and on the PowerPoint ahead. Are these I guess those TVs aren't on there. Can they can we get those turned on so they can see them? Um for those of you who were board members last year, you'll recognize the format of this PowerPoint. a lot of uh the the premise of it is is essentially the same um the same overarching categories. You know, employee support, student success, safety,
003and and communication are still going to be the things that we're trying to hinge around. So, each one of these things is going to fall into into one of those categories. You can go to the next slide. There we go. Okay, just kind of a brief overview where the state is right now. Uh they had their full Senate debate last week. They finished that up and they'll go to conference committee uh May 6th through the 8th. Uh so after that conference committee ends on the 8th, they'll deliver it to the to the governor and await his signature. So that's just kind of the the timeline there. There are still several education items that are up for debate in conference committee. So, there's some things that could potentially change uh after the after the Senate finalizes
004everything. So, we're going to be looks like another year where we're kind of waiting till the last minute to get all of those final answers, but hopefully they get them get them to us sooner rather than later. Go ahead, Chad. Uh, as we discussed at the last meeting, you know, we have these new mandated expenditures. We do have an increase to the minimum salary schedule for teachers and that's looks like a $1,500 increase right now based on the information that we currently have. We do have our annual step for all teachers just like we have every single year. Uh this this next one is a new one since we spoke last uh when I when I did my update at the last board meeting. Uh the the increase to health insurance costs was actually an
005employee increase and that's the information that we had at that point that it was going to be a at that point like a set dollar amount, $35 and some change increase on the employee premium side. But once the that was at the House, the Senate got a hold of that and now they've changed it around to a 4.6% increase on the employer side, removing the employee increase. So that's that's one change since the last time we talked. Uh and then also we have that 2% increase to the state minimum bus salary schedules. Mr. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So, if if that passes, then the state typically will fully fund those increases, but that hasn't been confirmed yet, so I didn't include that in this in this presentation. Mr. Casky, can you pause for a second?
006Let's see if we can get this one. Sure. For better angle. I try to go ahead and just click on through that talk about that. All right. So, the first piece of that, like we talked about before, that's that $1,500 increase. That's to every single cell of the teacher salary schedule. So, all the way from bachelor's up to doctorate, they are, as we discussed last time, removing that bachelor's plus 18 scale. So, they're not going to be presenting that as a state minimum scale anymore. Uh, but we still are trying, we're still waiting on a few answers on whether they're going to continue issuing the certifications for bachelor's plus 18. You got to assume that they're going to end that that certification process if they're not going to have a salary scale to correspond with
007it. But they haven't technically verified that yet. But that right now that's what it looks like. Every single scale cell on that on each one of the scales will increase by $1,500. Uh we al Yes sir. Uh not necessarily all of them. No sir. the the ones that I'm I'm talking about right here just the ones from the previous slide those four which would be the the state increase on the health this teacher salary increase the step for the teachers and the 2% to bus drivers as well as the the elimination of that bachelor's plus 18 scale those are the those are the state mandates that we're looking at right now everything else is local option all right and then like I said that's the annual mandated step increase for teachers and that's been the
008case for for quite a while and we're looking at a total additional general fund cost for both of those combined of about $1.35 million. Next slide. Then we have our pay increases for non-teers. Uh both of these would be local options, not mandates. Uh the step increase for essentially everybody else. Uh which is the same thing that we did last year. And then we have a cost of living adjustment of 1% to all non-teer schedules. So, basically, anybody who did not get the $1,500 increase as a teacher would be would be eligible to get that 1% cost of living adjustment except for administration. Any administrators would not receive that cost of living adjustment. And the total cost for both of those items would add about $450,000 of general fund budget. That's that's optional. That's correct.
009Yes. Both of those are local options. Uh our next one that we want to talk about is for our transportation department. Um you all got the summary document that kind of described what the plan was for the bus monitors. Uh this this is $275,000 that would go towards putting monitors on our regular bus routes. Right now, we currently have uh monitors on all of our special education routes, but we want to move towards getting those on the actual regular ed routes, and that that funding would go towards that. How many buses in total? It's approximately, I think it's between 80 and 90 routes uh right now that we would need. Uh the as far as the funding that we have here, I have to I have to look and see exactly what the number would
010be as far as the monitors go. This was just the number that we could fit into this section of the of the budget right now, but I can talk to Dr. A and see uh exactly what he's thinking from a number standpoint with that with that cost. All right. And I'm sure you don't know the it won't be all the buses, all the routes. So, will it be random or will it be assigned to a specific route all the time? uh that would have to be addressed after we have actually pass it, but it wouldn't be uh we'd have to come up with a a process for actually selecting what the moni which buses receive monitors. And those employees, would that be people that are currently employed with the district or will that be somebody
011else and then they have be another job involved as well? Uh right now I think we're keeping all options on the table. Okay. Is that paid by route or by hour? There uh the bus drivers are actually paid uh by hour. So they it's based on tack time and the monitors are paid based on the same tack time for that for the specific route of the bus that they're riding. Yes, sir. I'm just wondering whe you know they come in and maybe $20 an hour. I don't know what I think our pay now range from $1,450 up to $21. It's approximately that. All right. So, I'm just wondering if we get because we're running on a shortage of bus driver. The other thing is we're doing double routes and some kids are getting home by
0125 6:00, you know, especially down around side of the hill. So my my concern is is whether we could have a person that will actually work in the morning, do a delivery, do a delivery in the afternoon and not with the school system and we just pay them a straight salary. I know some districts are doing that. It's larger district. I won't say that they're our size. I I just wonder how we have we explored that. Yes, sir. So, uh, we do have a small handful of bus drivers that do only drive during the day. Uh, the reason why we have a lower number is because we we lack your mic. I'm sorry. The reason why we have a lower number is because we lack the midday routes to to span to to allow them
013to have something to do during the middle of the day. And when we have uh we have just a few hours in the morning, a few hours in the afternoon, then we're not allowed we don't have enough hours in the day there in in that particular employees um workload to to justify getting benefits and things like that. So that's the reason why we have a very low number. I know we had a few more several years ago and but those numbers are dwindling. Those that are just driving buses, I was thinking of no benefits. We just pay them. If they work five hours, we pay them for five hours. There wouldn't be there would be no I don't think there would be any objection on our end if that if those employees wanted to do
014that if we had employees that wanted to just drive buses and and and would be willing to forego the benefits. I'm not talking about employees. I'm talking about hiring. Yes, sir. I mean new new outside employ new hires that would do that um to fill those those bus vacancies. Um we just we're having trouble finding those people. Okay. Now um the bus and monitor bus system 275 is that coming from the general fund? Yes sir. Now why can't it come from the capital fund or the penny sales tax being and it's a safety reason? Uh the capital and the penny sales tax are both strictly related to capital improvements or repairs and maintenance have to be like for physical capital items. Since that would be funding a salary, it wouldn't be allowed. So it wouldn't
015be being a a safety issue like we voted on the uh penny sales tax. Yes, you can tax you could go towards safety items, safety upgrades for facilities and and physical capital uh items like that, fixed assets, but you couldn't pay for anything that's not a a physical asset. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. All right. Next, we have a $25,000 additional to the fine arts budget, and that will go towards things like uh travel for for events for the arts programs for equipment upgrades, uh in new instruments and supplies for arts classes. when we get in our request from um from our fans and our individual schools. This $25,000 represent what uh to our request. I'm sure the request is way up there. I'm just Oh, yes, sir. Yeah. Uh it it would not the
016requests are always going to come in at a much higher rate than what we're we're able to fund, but we want to do do something that Yes, sir. We we feel like we should do something there and and this this is what we feel like that we can afford to do this year. Do you know um it says an additional 25 somewhere back in there is their line for what they're already receiving? It's it's not just one line. So that'd be a hard question to answer. Um I can kind of get a an idea of what the supply budgets and things like that that go towards it right now. you know, it's it's a it's spread out over a variety of accounts. Whether you're talking about uh just your regular general fund curriculum allocation for
017the arts versus your GT stuff during the summer, all of this would be added to the general fund to kind of support all of those things at one time. I would say as a whole, the reason I'm asking 25,000 doesn't seem like a lot when you start talking about the arts districtwide. I guess it it's not when you when you talk about uh funding salaries and things of that things of that nature because that's 90% of our general fund budget is is salaries and fringe. But when you talk about $25,000 and relate it to things like supplies, travel that $25,000 can go further than you would think and that's distributed between the schools K through 12. Yes, I believe so. Uh, next we have uh an additional school psychologist. Right now we currently have five
018school psych school psychologists on staff and they're very very overworked and we're worried about employee retention in that area. So we think that adding another school psychologist would alleviate some of that workload on them and and probably serve our students a lot better as well in the meantime. school social workers. I am not 100% sure on that. No, we do not one more time. Click it one more time. All right. Next up, we can talk about that one. It's fine. of the uh three behavioral specialists. I know that's in the summary document that you all received. Uh and what those those employees would their main job would be to provide training to our existing staff in our elementary schools. Uh you all are not unaware of the issue as far as behavioral changes in in
019kids over the last however many years. And what we want to make sure is that our employees have the the tools in their tool belt to be able to to combat some of those behaviors. And right now, we think that if we can hire these three behavioral specialists and have them focus on that training and and al also helping out with some of the behaviors as well as they can, but the main purpose of those would be to provide training to our existing employees to help manage some of those behaviors. Do we since it's kind of open form here, uh do we still have a a contract with uh an agreement with Tri County Mental Health? Are you aware of that? I'm not sure. I can I can check I can check back and follow
020up. Okay. Well, I'll confirm that. I'll get I'll get the answer back. I mean, at one time I thought we had them in the school whenever kids have a problem that they could uh go to them and get assistance even though they were if they if they went to see them anyway, kids hard time and such. But I I'm pretty sure we had that set up. I was just when I saw these behavior specialists, I was wondering what were they doing really just try kind of me help. I can I'll check back in and get that answer for you. Question to back up to that psychiatrist was is there does Medicaid possibly fund any of that? Is there any help from from avenues such as that that could fund um right now? I don't believe
021that there is I don't I'm not saying that would be an unallowable expenditure for Medicaid, but I believe the the Medicaid funding that we're currently receiving is is is completely expended at the moment and we wouldn't be able to add anything else there. So, it would be an additional to the general fund. All right, the next one. We already discussed this. This is the 4.6% increase to the employer health cost and that estimates to about 475,000 additional dollars for the general fund. This is just a summary of kind of what we tal Well, this is not what we talked about so far. This is the revenue side of it. Um you can see up at the top that's what we had our um projected revenue last year at 74668. This year we're looking at a
022this is still based on the House projections. That's a typo as far as the Senate projections go. There's that's on House numbers. uh 1.536 million additional for the state lump sum for proviso 1.3. Then we have a increase to our tier three hold harmless revenue. That's based on our act 388 that says we're not allowed to collect taxes on 4% owner occupied property. That's the state making us hold there. Uh the the increase to that revenue is $462,000. And then we have an increase in our county tax projections based on the reassessment year of 750,000. And then at the right below that, you'll see the uh projected mill increase for if we got three mills, that would increase our revenue by $294,000 approximately each year. So bring that total to 77,711,295 for our projections for
023for our revenue for this year. Any questions on the revenue? Our operational meal is still hanging around 90 95,000. Yes, sir. that that one is projected at 98. And that number your increase on the county tax projection is that just a shot in dark or you have something concrete kind of that's based on the the reassessment numbers that I've got from the county so far. Okay. Now the proposed they're looking at a increase. Is that calculated in what you're looking at now? Oh, an increase. I'm not sure. Yes. So that you the county projecting a millage increase on the county side. Correct. So that would not that wouldn't calculate into what that what that value is. So they're there's going to be separate from ours. Okay. Any other questions on the revenue side? Now the
024uh that's okay. I got it. Okay. And then this is just this is the summary of everything that we've kind of talked about so far. Uh starting at the top, that's what our approved budget for expenditures last year was. And everything below that will be additions to that number. And uh like I said, I won't go through all of them. We've already talked about each one of those lines. And then at that bottom, you'll see the new projected number of $79,377,776. Right. Go to the next slide and you kind of see how that plays into the total as far as general fund balance. So when we have our projected revenue and then our projected expenditure budget, you'll see that we need an additional 1.666 million in order to balance this year's budget. That's fairly comparable
025to what we did last year. I believe last year's number was was right there at 1.6 1.689 689 last year is what we approved to balance last year's budget. Go to go ahead to the next slide. Uh this is just kind of you can see the how the fund balance changes. That 12 million 906 number at the top is what our general fund balance was in total at our last audit that we just got this past year. That's as of June 30th, 2024. If you add in our assignments and our fund balance usage that we approved last year, the projected general fund balance as of June of this coming year here in a couple of months will be 10 million 319. And then if we have to apply that 1.66 from the previous slide to
026this next year's budget, then we say the projected general fund balance at June 30th of next year at the end of the following school year will be 8.6 million. Any questions on that? What's in the other year prior general fund assignments? What is that? Most of that is audit adjustments at the end of the year at June 30th will have things like uh assigned for uh accounts payable that are outstanding at the end of the year for retainage for any anything that's just outstanding that hasn't been paid at the end of the year gets bundled up into that number. So that's just general fund that's technically spent but hasn't been paid out yet. I'm not a admittedly not a numbers guy, but I can look at these numbers and this is this is not a
027good look. I I don't think I mean I can't see where we continue to tap into was that give us five more years and we're out of money. I mean I don't know. I'm just I guess just talking out loud there. Well, we we lose money every year if we don't raise and that's a hard pill for a lot of folks to swallow. But every time we do not raise mill just raise one that's it keep coming every year. Uh and so uh you know we have we basically got a fund balance because we didn't fill a lot of a lot of position ls the last couple years and that that's increased our fund value but what you know the question that we have to ask is what does it do to our children and
028the program that we're trying to provide in the school system uh so somewhere along the line I agree with you uh it's as long as we take it from the fund balance uh three or four years and then we're going to run our we're going to run close to our uh in terms of having you know most of the articles I mean most of the officers come in they recommend 8 to 10% we should have right yes sir okay so uh so then we we're going to mess up our bond rating to u so we got a lot of things to consider that it's not a popular thing but we sit on the board and sometime we have to make those tough decisions was the last mileage increase was 2019 19 2019 and prior to
029that it was I believe two years prior to that if I'm not mistaken this is not a time of the year to be talking about no millillage. We just passed a penny sales tax and we got that pass applying colors. This is just not another year to talk about no millillage and throw it into people's face. And that's my opinion. Everybody's got one and I'm not for no millage increase this year or even talk about one. I I I respect your opinion. That's right. I appreciate it. You cannot say that it's not a time to talk about M. It sure ain't. It may not be a time for you, but we can bring it up and talk about it. You can talk about all you want to. Yeah, I know that. But I I respect
030your opinion and I respect uh your position, but don't tell me that I can't talk about it. I don't think we need We can have a discussion about it. Yeah, that's all we're saying. Millich not be even I understand it this year. Nobody worked as hard as I did in terms of working on I appreciate your help. I've been there. You know, appreciate your help. 20 25 visits. But don't say we just can't talk about it. Uh well, I'm glad they voted for you. Huh? I'm glad it passed because of you. No, it's not. I'm not saying it passed because of me. I'm just simply saying that we can discuss this even though we may not agree. That's true. Okay. That's a hard statement that you made. Any other questions on the fund balance change?
031That's all I have. Like I said, we we kind of went through each one of the line items. You all have the summary sheet uh that that you had beforehand that kind of describes everything in detail. We have any other questions uh about anything we've talked about so far? Yeah, I got one. These specialists, these positions. Yes, sir. Explain the situation there. It looks like we have to absorb 955 position. Yes, sir. Explain. Make that clear, please. Okay. So, uh, for those that were on the board last year, you'll remember that, um, it was voted that we should use our our existing vacancies to absorb that what what was at that point $1.1 million worth of vacancies, I'm sorry, worth of positions that had been previously funded with the ESSER grant. Uh, because the ESSER
032grant is gone and it is no more and there's no more money to fund those, but we wanted to retain those positions, we voted to allow those to stay on. They they remained employed for for this year. We did not include them in the general fund budget knowing that we had enough vacancies outstanding that they would be paid for with the savings that we saw from those vacancies. And now and but because of that, we're going to do that. We're going to have to make this decision every year to to renew that that same decision for next year because they're not currently included in the general Are we required to keep these people just because they were hired with extra money? No. Okay. Are any of these certified teachers in place today? Certified teachers? No.
033What positions do they perform? We have uh several IT professionals. We have interventionists, coaches, and ML teachers. Could we um could we request maybe Dr. H, Dr. Hazard that we get a list sent of who these however many 15 position 12 or whatever it is. Can we have that emailed? Yes, please. Thank you. It looks like we're just the money that was given during CO. It looks like there's $950,000 there that we could if we want to try to balance the budget. Do we really I mean I understand the issue with the Chromebooks and all that, but you know where they work on the Chromebooks and so forth, but could we cut that back some? you know, just try to balance the budget. Well, just keep in mind uh that that $950,000 as it says
034right there is currently not included in these numbers, right? Um so that's an extra Yes, sir. That's an extra $950,000 we would like to eat. Yes. And that 9 I mean when you're saying not included, that 950 comes off of that bottom number of general fund. Okay. So that takes it even 75 7.5 million down and then and then that would it's not that's not included in that fund balance change. So that would take our fund balance at the end of next year potentially to 7.5 million right which back to Dr. Sweeny's back Mr. Sweeny's point is that gets us in trouble because we're getting down to the 10 8 to 10% threshold for what we need in a fund balance. I'm with you. [Laughter] Any other questions? Mr. Cassie, what is a millage per
035individual? I know we've got it what it is. What would it cost? One meal cost one stakeholder roughly. Just an individual citizen. Yes, that's that's a hard question to answer because it directly depends on the property that that individual would own. So, uh, if you are an individual that owns no property but the house that you live in in the Chesville County talk about, sorry, get one. I got to lean up on this thing. Um, if you're an individual that owns nothing but the house that you live in, you know, on a car, a boat, nothing else that you you pay property tax on, then you would pay zero dollars in operational millage to the school district. So the the main asset that most citizens in in Chesterfield County and every county are going to
036own are is the home that they live in. And but anything because of act 388 the uh 4% owner occupied property to category is is exempt from from school district operational millage. So to answer your question, it depends on what you own as to how much it would increase your taxes. Obviously, the more property you own and if you own additional homes within the county that aren't the one that you live in, then you would pay a higher percentage of that of that millage increase. I do have one question and it goes back to things like other revenue income that come in from say property or real estate. Does that go in directly to the fund balance or is it distributed to different accounts? All of that uh well fee and loo is is kept
037a little bit separate. It still goes into general fund. We receive it but fee and loo is kept out of the calculation for what we call our ad valorum revenue that is collected on you know any of your personal property, business personal property, uh your your home real estate those things. All of that is considered in our adorum general fund revenue. So we we get those payments, those tax payments from the county every month and it goes directly into the general fund. I guess I'm thinking the increase that I agree with and I agree with you just got the bomb in the past. it is a good time to talk about what what options have and I'll bring up what you mentioned about the the growth if you remember the from our my revenue spreadsheet
038we had our reassessment and part of that is uh the increase that $750,000 increase in our county tax revenue that's directly related to the reassessment that we had this this this year and that that recognizes some of that growth and some of that income that we're we're going to receive but It's it's it's just it's just that it's it's only going to be about $750,000 based on current current projections right now because a lot of that revenue, like I said before, is people moving in and they're buying a house that they're living in. So, we don't get operational millage on that on that 2425 budget at 1.689 mil. Can you give us a breakdown of that of everything itemized everything there? Why we in the red there so much? In in what way? I'm not
039sure. I just want it all broke down. You can give it to us later. The 1.89 1.6 that we spent that we did last year for the budget. Yes. I want to make sure I understand what you're what you're ask. I can get which whatever it is, but I just want to make sure I understand. So itemize how as far as what we spend everywhere of it wins. So it'll be uh so again that's that's a projection from last year. So let's say that we had you know that 1.6 what we assigned based on our budget and and the budget is just that it's a projection right and at the end of the year we'll be a when it comes June 30th and we go through our audit and we'll have we'll be able to
040see okay exactly how much money revenue or expenditure over revenue that we actually experienced and see how accurate that 1.6 was. If it's exactly accurate, then we can say, okay, then we we hit the nail on the head and we reduce our general fund by 1.6. And then that estimated general fund balance of 10 million that you see up there will be will be an accurate number. Now, if that's a little bit more, a little bit less, then that'll that'll adjust there. But that's the best estimate that we had at that point. But what was added back in last year for teachers? Sorry, what was added back in last year for teachers? The shortage went to the general fund. So it's it doesn't really ever get added back in or taken out. It's it's a
041matter of u having those vacancies outstanding and not taken out or putting back in but just not spending the money that was originally budgeted. So I think that that answer your question. Yeah. What was added back in last year to the general fund from the you said if we had no vacancy you got it back. So that I can I can look I can try to get that number for you. Um it's a it's a hard number to calculate just because it's not a it's it's a very fluctuating number because you have you have people being hired and terminated all the time all throughout the year, not just at the beginning when that number is set. So it's a it's a hard number to know exactly. It's just that that's why we use that vacancy
042projection to determine okay here's a here's approximately what we think will be saved based on this number. But I can I can try to get that number for you and have a a more hard value for you next time. Okay. Thank you. One um I want to follow up um Eric question earlier. Um, in the past you all have brought in um an example saying that if you own a house that's $100,000 um rental property or whatever the case might be, your your cost with one meal is going to cost us. Yes, sir. Uh we we moved away from that. moved away from it. How from those examples that you normally bring in? I can I can I don't have them right here in front of me, but you can develop I can talk to
043Dr. Anderson see if he wants to do something like that for the next presentation. That that'll be bit helpful for me. Okay. Any other questions? That's all I have. Appreciate it. Thanks, Mr. Thank you. Only other thing we have um on your calendars, May the 12th, we have our regularly scheduled board meeting. We'll um executive session at 5 and then we'll have u this open session at 5:30. So at this point I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. You got it. Second.