001Miss Hen, would you open us with prayer, please? >> Heavenly Father, we thank you for this beautiful day that you have given us. Heavenly Father, this evening we ask that you dwell among us. We invoke your presence, Lord. We lift high your name. Heavenly Father, this evening we have special blessing for those around this table, for those who are in the building with us and for those who are listening through social media. Lord, continue to bless and keep them. Lord, for those is even who do not feel well, for those who are sick and shut in. For those who do not have food on their table or roof over their head, ask them continue to look from the hills with cometh our help because all of our help come from you. Heavenly Father, this evening
002we ask that you go to war torn lands everywhere and speak a word of peace and there will be peace. We ask Lord that you continue to dwell with us and Lord not for a long prayer Lord but for the uttermost parts of our hearts. We just want to say thank you for your goodness, your mercy and your grace that you replenish for us each and every day. And it's in the master's name of Jesus we pray. And it's in the master's name of Jesus we count it all done. Amen. >> Call the Kersaw County School Board of Trustees meeting to order. Is there a motion to adopt a [music] proposed agenda? Proper motion by Miss Furnus, second by coach Blackman. All those in favor had been known by saying I. >> I. >> A
003correction that was second by Mr. Reeds. Those that oppose and that's unanimous. Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda? >> Proper motion by Coach Blackman, second by Miss Furnace. All those in favor, let it be known by saying I. >> I. Post and test mand thankful for everyone that have gathered here this evening. That takes us to our next item recognition and celebration. Dr. Goodwin, Dr. Smith, members of the board as Mr. Matthews comes forward. Got a number of recognitions and they hit sort of on all the levels tonight. So, uh this time if you don't mind coming up with me. >> Dr. Smith, Dr. Uh, good one board. We'll start our recognitions tonight by recognizing several outstanding students. First, we would like to recognize a student in our adult education program. Will
004Jonathan Goodwin please come forward. Jonathan was named the South Carolina Office of Adult Education Outstanding Learner of the Year. His journey to earning his high school equivalency diploma is a powerful testament to the perseverance and lifelong learning. Jonathan refused to let past academic labels and challenges define him. Over this over several years while working two jobs, he steadily pursued his HSED through Kershaw County adult education, never allowing hardships to derail his determination. His success has inspired both peers and staff culminating in his selection as the commit commencement speaker earlier this year where he encouraged his classmates to keep learning and have confident confidence in yourself. Jonathan is now enrolled in SC works and is pursu pursuing his commercial driver's license continuing his journey. Please join me in congratulating Jonathan. [applause] WOULD y'all like No. Congratulations.
005We will continue with the adult education awards by inviting director of Kershaw County adult education Byron Johnson and Anne Huff to come forward. Kershaw County Adult Education received recently received multiple state honors at the South Carolina Office of Adult Education's 2025 fall training institute and awards lunchon. The KCSD program was recognized for its excellence in advancing student learning and workforce development across Kershaw County by earning the workplace literacy award through its partnership with Cany Foundations. This partnership established a course designed to advance their onboarding and advancement process for new employees. They were also recognized for having the highest percentage of participants in the work work ready credentials program. Both of these major accomplishments reflect Kershaw County Adult Education's continued commitment to preparing adult learners for success in today's workforce. In addition, Kershaw County Adult Education
006received the certificate of adult education emerging industry partner for establishing a new workpace literacy program for dig digital literacy in partnership with the Kershaw County Council on Aging. This innovative initiative expands access to essential technology training for current and potential employees of the Council on Aging strength seeking to strengthen digital skills critical for employment and lifelong learning. These recognitions underscore Kershaw County Adult Education's ongoing dedication to empowering adults through education, workforce preparation, and community partnerships. Please join me in congratulating Byron and HIS TEAM. >> [applause] >> OUR NEXT RECOGNITION GOES to Lugof Elgen Middle School 7th grade English teacher Christine Adams. Please come forward. Miss Adams was awarded the 2025 elate James Moffett Memorial Award for Bridging Voices Across Oceans, a global digital story exchange and literacy partnership. English Language Art Teacher Educators, Elate, is
007a constituent organization within the National Council of Teachers of English. Elate offers this thousand grant to support teacher research projects that further the spirit and scholarship of James Moffett. Moffett, a great champion of the voices of K12 teachers, focused on such ideas as the necessity of student- centered curriculum, writing across the curriculum, alternatives to standard standardized education, and spiritual growth in education and life. Miss Adams proudly represents her roots as an international teacher from the Philippines and is the first international teacher and the first from Kershaw County to receive this recognition. Christine's journey in education is a testament to resilience and passion, proving that her dedication and heart transcends transcends borders and makes a lasting impact in education. Miss Adams will be announced as the recipient of the Elate MafI award on Friday, November 21st
008at the 2025 NCTTE annual convention. Please join me in congratulating Miss Adams. [applause] Come on, Miss Shackleton. >> Absolutely. Come on, Mr. Cameron. Come on, Mr. Cameron. Amen. [applause] >> Dad, you're good to go. >> Oh, you got to go back. Yes. >> Congratulations. Our final recognition tonight goes to Kershaw County School District board member, Miss Rebecca Runlet. Please come forward. Miss Runlet is one of 18 local elected leaders across South Carolina selected for the inaugural South Carolina Hunt State Policy Fellows Program. This is a bipartisan initiative designed to strengthen education policy from early childhood through workforce development. The program brings Hunt Institute's proven fellowship model to the Palmetto State after proven success in North Carolina and Virginia. The group made up of mayors, county, and city council members and school board trustees will examine
009South Carolina's education center system, connect with experts and practitioners, and develop strategies to improve educational outcomes in their communities. We are happy to have Miss Runlet's expertise as part of this collaborative work with South Carolina's education experts. Please join me in congratulating Miss Runlet. We do not have anyone sign up for the public forum. Our next item on our agenda is our old do business audit report. Members of the board, we're glad to have Larry Finny with us here tonight. uh he's pinch hitting for his fellow auditor Andrew Coleman who had to do one of those parental things of go to a concert tonight. So uh we're glad to have Larry. I think he's a familiar face to everybody here. So welcome. >> Thank you Dr. Goodwin, Chairman Smith, board members. Appreciate the opportunity to
010be here. Nice to see some familiar faces and a couple new ones too. So, um I I will apologize upfront because I've got to bring up the government shutdown for just a minute and I know we're all tired of talking about it. Um but this is kind of an unusual year. So, normally by this time when we come to the board meeting, the financial statements are complete. Everything's done and and we can issue them all. But um the school district receives a significant amount of federal funds every year. And the the office of management and budget at the federal government issues every year what's called a compliance supplement. And basically what that does is that supplement says, "Hey, this is what the auditors need to test with different programs at the school district level." Normally
011that supplement comes out usually in the summertime, um, early fall at the latest. Um, we still don't have it yet this year. Um, it didn't come out before the shutdown occurred. Those people working on it were considered essential employees. And so, um, we still don't know when we're going to get it. So in discussions with state department of education, what they basically said is [clears throat] if you will at least send a good final draft by the December 1st deadline and then once the supplement comes out um within 30 days, we can make sure that if there's any more work we need to do, whatever needs to happen, then we can issue the final financial statements. So whenever that happens, you'll you'll get the final financial statements, but we're all kind of on hold at
012this point in time, but um the numbers are good and so that's why we can still come present uh as far as um the audit is concerned. So [snorts] um next slide please. So when it comes to the audit um when when we perform our work we also typically prepare the financial statements but um they're still the the financial statements themselves and all the information that's in them is still the responsibility of the school district and obviously you have great staff to take care of all that. Um, the other part of it though that I always like to mention, especially since I hadn't been here for two or three years, um, that's just as important from from my perspective is in order for all that information that's in the financial statements and in the in
013the ledger at the school district to be good and accurate and complete, there need to be some really good internal controls, processes, and procedures in place. um that there is no perfect system, but a good system will really minimize the risk of of error and fraud. So that's why I like to mention it because that's so important. And so if you go to the next slide, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but when you do when it does come to the risk of fraud, you'll see there's one item there that's underlined called opportunity. And that's the one place when it comes to the risk of fraud that the school district plays an important role. [clears throat] Excuse me. I can be thinking about committing fraud all day long, but if
014there's not a good opportunity because you've got really good internal controls, processes, and procedures in place, nothing's probably going to happen. So, um, and it is something we at least when we're doing the audit, we go through the pro process of gaining an understanding of all those controls, processes, and procedures ourselves, make recommendations um, when necessary, but we feel good about what Kershaw County School District has in place. [snorts] Next slide. So, with that, when it comes to the audit, then what what we actually do is we perform our work. The end result of our work is the opinion that we issue. Um, and there's a number of things that that go into that. You know, I always like to remind everybody we perform a lot of work. We look at all the the what
015we call material transactions. Um, we do a lot of sampling. We do a a lot of analytical review. We obviously aren't looking at everything because um it would take a lot longer to do that, but we're able to issue that opinion based upon the work we do. And I am glad to tell you that for this this year end, June 30th, 25, the district is going to receive an unmodified opinion. And yes, that's the look I usually get. That doesn't mean anything to anybody, but that's the best opinion that you can receive. Because in essence, what it means is if we had to modify our opinion, then something's wrong, but we didn't have to. And so the district's receiving that good opinion that that you want to receive. Next slide. So with that, let me
016just kind of touch briefly as far as where the district uh was at financially after finishing the audit. And we always like to focus on general fund because that's the that's the one fund that that handles all the general operations. Um, and even if you talk to somebody that's kind of in the bond financial world, when it comes to looking at at school district operations, the one thing they're going to want to ask is how healthy is your unassigned fund balance? And we'll talk about that in just a minute. So, you can see the overall general fund fund balance was a little over 21 million. um it increased about $880,000, but that is after you have made the transfers to capital projects that you make. So um that's on top of of what you did
017with the transfers. So out of that fund balance, 2.9 million um was assigned to be used in your 26 thou 2026 budget that you adopted. So, what that leaves is an unassigned fund balance that's about $18.7 million. And the [clears throat] way the way we like to look at it is not not in terms of a dollar amount, but in terms of a percentage because that percentage is what's really important. So, I'm going to skip down to that bullet that says GFOA recommends a minimum of the 16.67%. So, the GFOA is the Government Finance Officers Association. It's a national organization that helps and makes all kinds of recommendations to um local, state, and federal governments. They come out with a recommendation every year, and it hasn't actually changed in a while, but their recommendation is
018a minimum fund balance of two months. The state department of education also comes out and says we want to make sure that every school district has at least one month fund balance or about 8.3%. So as far as Kershaw is concerned that's kind of that minimum level that 8.3%. So you actually have a board policy of a minimum of 12%. um which is a month month and a half but you can see your unassigned fund balance of 18.7 million is actually almost 15%. So you're almost 3% above your policy and what a little over 6% above what the SDE um requirement is. So good results there. So, if you go to the next slide, what I do like to remind you about why that fund balance is so important, though. Um, I know there's a
019lot of information on that slide, but I just want to touch on two things. One is that, um, we're measuring this fund balance at June 30th. The district is basically going to go until, I don't know, mid to late December before you're going to receive any more significant property tax revenue. Um, and so that fund balance is really critical from a cash flow standpoint to help carry you through and until that happens. The second thing I want to mention is because it's we're seeing it more and more is even though it sounds like inflation has has moderated some from where it used to be, there's still a lot of costs that are running significantly higher than inflation when it comes to the cost increases. And so it's just important to keep that in mind when
020when you're working on your budgets and and looking ahead because technology, health benefits, uh property and liability insurance, we're seeing really really significant increases in those areas. Next slide. Um so how did we get there as far as general fund? So general fund revenues you can see u were not only ahead of last year but about 10 million more than what you budgeted for 25. It was almost all due to property tax revenue being quite a bit higher than um what you'd budgeted and also the interest investment income being significantly higher. Um, when you get the final financial statements, um, I always like to point this out and I for Kershaw, beginning on page 68 in the financial statements, there's a about four or five pages of detail that shows revenue and expenditures, budget to
021actual, and what the differences were. I think that's one of the best things that y'all can look at to to get a good feel for for how how things went during the year. Next slide. On the expenditure side, you'll see that um you were about a little over four million over what you had budgeted for the year. Um and it came from a couple different areas. You had some expenses that expenditures that were being paid in the ESSER program that went away and so some of that maintenance um was transferred to general fund. Also the operation uh the plant operation of plant maintenance was also higher than budget for the year. And again you can look at all that detail when when you get that final report. Next slide. So the next two or three
022slides I'm going to go through pretty quick. They're just kind of giving you a real high level perspective of some of the other funds. So, the special revenue funds, the two special projects, which is mostly federal, some state, um, and then the EIA, which is a state program. Both of those funds, all the revenues that you receive in those programs are restricted in terms of how they can be used. So, essentially, the federal and state government is saying, "This is what we want you to use it for." So, they can't be used for general operations. Next slide. Um, your food service fund. um continues to be very healthy and and do very well. You can see there was about a $2 million increase in fund balance this year. The fund balance is sitting at almost
02312 million. Um and so um just so you know, the the state department of education basically says we want your fund balance to be 30% or less. Kershaw has been over that for quite a while. So, um, your your team gets to send something to the state department of education that basically says here here's how we're going to plan to to lower it. Next slide. Um, then you [clears throat] have your debt service and capital projects funds. Both are doing well. Both have have good healthy fund balances in them. Next slide. And so I've got one slide just kind of highlighting capital assets because it's such a significant part of of what the district does. And when we talk about capital assets, we're talking about land, buildings, furniture and equipment, vehicles, all that good stuff.
024Um, so just the quick highlights, your additions were a little over four million and and depreciation about 14 million on that. And then next slide is your long-term debt. Um, and really things kind of continuing. You continue to make those payments to pay down your debt. Um, and that that will continue. You did have one small short-term issue um to help with the bond the debt service payments as well. Next slide. Um, I mentioned earlier that um, the district receives a significant amount of federal funds. So every year the federal government asked us to select a program or two and look and make sure that the district's doing all the things you're supposed to do comply with all those federal requirements. So this year we looked at USDA and Title One. Um no compliance issues.
025Districts doing a great job in terms of what they need to be doing with those funds, how they're spending them, etc. if we did have any issues that we would have some findings. We did have one finding this year related to a prior period adjustment we had to make s for some errors that occurred um going back to 2020. Basically, in essence, what it was is um some cash got transferred between capital projects and debt service, but the transfer did not take place. So, it's kind of an accounting issue with that. It all got fixed. Um, and so the balances, the fund balances that you saw earlier in the report are what the what the correct balances are with that. And then the other document that you will get from us is what's called a
026management letter. And just a reminder so everybody knows what that is, our formal contractual relationship is with the board. And so there are some um required communications that we have with the board. We always talk, it's been Ron and now Mr. Smith. We always talk with them every year in the process of doing the audit. Um, but this letter is some additional required communication. If there were any issues, I would tell you about those. There weren't. Um, so the only thing we have in the management letter as far as recommendations is one that, um, for those of you that have been on the board have seen in the past. we have it every year and it's the same comment that we have with all the school districts that we work with and it is simply
027that when you look at your schools um it's just not feasible to have enough staff at the schools to really set up the internal controls process and procedures ideally the way they should be. So there's always just a little more risk that there could be errors or something could go wrong there. So what what Kershaw does and a lot of other school districts is implement basically some compensating controls which really involves some of the staff at the district level monitoring what's going on and and looking at things pretty closely and reviewing it and that works fine. That's really what should be happening um what makes the most sense. So um last slide. So, just kind of review, the district is going to receive that unmodified opinion, the the one that you want to have as
028a result of the audit. Your financial condition is good and always like to uh to be able to tell you um how much we appreciate the good finance staff that you have. Um Brad and Patty and and the rest of the crew do a do a really good job. Um always makes our job a little bit easier. [snorts] Um, and we will get those financial statements to you just as soon as we can after we hear from from the federal government and get what we need. So, with that, I'll be glad to answer any questions if anybody has any. >> Thank you for your efforts. It's always good to see you and and again, kudos to Brad and our our Department of Finance for the fine job they do. kind of a non-incidental question, but
029just out of complete curiosity, if you go back to capital assets. >> Yep. >> How how do we value our assets? Is that a a value we put on it or is that from the county records or >> No, it's come in and tell us. >> Yeah. You know, it's actually the cost based upon what you paid to build it or to buy it. Or in some cases, you might have some donated assets and those when they're donated are just put at fair market value. And then from then what your team does is they put an estimated useful life to those so they can start depreciating them. Thank you. Great to see everybody. Appreciate it. When they have shared with us the date for the South Carolina School Board Association annual convention in February and
030if you plan on attending, would you please respond as soon as you can? Also, and if you're unable to attend, I want to encourage you to ride down on Sunday morning. uh Davia Middle School choir would be performing. So we want to support them. Dr. Mr. Chair, as as um Mr. Matthews is coming up um [clears throat] to talk to you about the U course for elective credit. I just want to mention that y'all have probably heard that it's National Education Week and we want to take just a minute to recognize that, you know, our team of professionals that make our student success possible. Uh I get the privilege of working with these folks every day up close and personal and it doesn't matter what their job role is. It's important and they contribute and
031do do a great job for us. It it's it's inspiring to see the dedication that that our folks have to kids and not just to their job but the job in general is what they try to do. you know, whether they're taking care of bringing them here on a bus and getting them back home safely on a bus or preparing a nourishing meal and it's been Thanksgiving week in our cafeterias and that's always a big week or just taking care of having a welcoming environment or of course the most important thing delivering, you know, lessons that really transform lives. But, you know, it's evident in our schools every day and I hope that you'll take time to uh thank folks that you come in contact with. Of course, we do big celebrations for different groups
032of of employees all during the year, but I just wanted to pause uh on National Education Week and mention those things. And Matthews, I'm sorry to hold you up. >> You're all right. Uh just very briefly, this is course guide time. So, beginning over fall break, I met with the principles and lead guidance counselors at the high [clears throat] schools to determine what courses we were going to offer our high school students for next year. Uh, one of those, most of those are in the South Carolina course catalog. There are some that we get requests from principles to add elective credit to. We had such a request from North Central High School. As you know, Dr. Thomas Perry is very uh engaged with the model UN and uh has developed quite a program out at
033North Central High School. Uh we currently have uh several uh courses that y'all have approved in the past uh for current events and uh he would like to extend that to uh a level a level four. Uh so we're asking for you to approve a locally board approved course and we have submitted the application to the state department ready to hear back from them as well. Do you need a motion, Mr. Chair? >> I'll make I'll make the motion we approve this as submitted. >> Thank you. Appreciate Is there a motion to go into executive session to discuss resolution, retirement of certified and classified personnel, employment of certified and classified personnel and assignment changes and transfer of certified and classified personnel? Proper motion by Mr. Reeves, second by coach Blackman. All those in favor that
034know me by saying I. All right, >> those Motion to reconvene the open session. >> Proper motion by Miss Furnace, second by >> second. >> Miss Ronlet. All those in favor that be known by saying I >> I was opposed. And it's done. In executive session, we discuss resignation, retirement of certified and classified personnel, employment of certified and classified personnel, assignment changes and transfer of certified and classified personnel. Is there a motion to accept administration recommendation concerning employment matters properly motion by Mr. Cameron, second by Mr. Reeves. All those in favor, let it be known by raise your right hand. That's unanimous. Is there a motion to adjourn and close for prayer? >> All in favor, let there be nobody by saying I. Proper motion by Dr. King, second by Miss Furnus. All those in
035favor, let no by saying I. >> I. >> And that's unanimous. >> Thank you. >> Heavenly Father, thank you for abiding with us this evening. We leave this building, Lord, but never from your divine presence. We ask that you lead us safely back home and dispatch your angels to keep all harm and danger from coming to us and help us find all his way when we get there. and we'll give you all the honor and glory that is through you. And it's in the matchless name of Jesus we pray and we count it done. Amen. >> Amen.