June 23, 2025 School Board Meeting

001Yeah. It is 5:30, so I'm going to call the June 23rd meeting to order. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? Make a motion to approve the agenda. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? All opposed? And the motion carries um 7 to zero. May I get a motion to enter into executive session? Make a motion to enter executive session to consider the following selected employment items. Exhibit A for action. Selected employment items exhibit B information only. Contractual matter regarding Hermo High School phase 2 exhibit C legal advice relating to a data security incident and evaluation of superintendent for 24 2024 and 2025 exhibit D. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? All opposed. And the motion carries seven to zero. We are going to adjourn to executive session

002until 7 p.m. It is 7:34 and I'm going to call to order the public hearing on the 2526 general fund budget. Miss Tucker. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. All right. So, today is our public hearing and third and final reading for our general fund uh budget. All right. So, for our FY2526 budget calendar, we started this process back in March of 25 2025 with our budget board workshops where the budget board identified it as budget priorities. Um we have worked through um three iterations of um our budget discussion and today we are here for our third and final um budget reading. Um some updates on the legislative process, some of the things that happened this year. Proviso 1.3. Um this is some of the it sounds very echoey. Sorry. Um um proviso

0031.3 adjusted the add-on waiting for virtual charter schools. This was something that was changed during the budget process but something that will be looked at as we move forward into next budgets year. Um proviso 108.6 was the state health plan employer premium increase um starting in the 2026 plan year. Um some bills of note H3196 educator assistance act. Um this bill modifies teacher certification requirements for lifetime teaching certificate. Um S78 credit for work experience for teachers. This is something that we will um actually look as this goes through um goes into effect this year but will be effective for the next um budget year. So teachers will get their additional work credit this year through the department of education and then we will see that go into effect in our budget for next year. Um

004our 135th day average membership for K12. You can see that those numbers there from FI22 through 25 and our weighted pupil units for the same time period. Um some of the things that we looked at as far as state level um minimum salary increases for bachelor uh year zero um the same in the house and the senate version to 49,000 funding for state aid the classroom employer health insurance were all the same in the house and senate versions um and bus driver salary increased to 2%. So budget considerations at the district level, we looked at raising the minimum teacher salary schedule uh bachelor's year zero from 475 to 50,992. Um we looked at two different options to raise $1,500 per cell or $1,000 per cell um to to raise our teacher salary. This also looked

005at removing the bachelor's plus 18 paycale lane, which is something the state department of education is doing. Um and this was the highest priority in all of our uh stakeholder meetings for our budget. This was our number one priority as we moved into our budget discussions. Um other budget considerations at the district level, uh total requested positions was 2.5 million um this year. Obviously, that's something that we were not able to fund all of those positions, but some of the ones that did make it into the budget, um we had originally taken out the clinical counselors and after discussion with the board, um the six clinical counselors were included in the 2526 budget request. This will make them permanent general funded FTEES. If you remember, these are ESSER positions that were 1/4 of the fiscal

006year last year funded with ESSER funds and threequarters of the fiscal year last year funded with general funds. Um, and then we moved the cost of the NER program to fund balance for next year. So, a savings of just under $900,000. Some additional increases this year, we had to add in sled checks. That's something that we will have to pay for next year. Um, magic school AI and then other instructional technologies that have been previously funded by the state for a total of $400,000 added. And then potential salary and benefit increases. Um that the teacher salary raise of $1,000 per cell um is just under $8 million. Support staff 2% increase plus adding year 23 to the salary schedule is just under $6 million. And the bus driver 2% increase is 386,000. So for a

007total of 13.9 million in salary and benefits. Additional salary considerations. These are some additional positions um for this year to APIs and to change the intermediate schools to middle schools. So this is just um how those models look at um the administration structure in the schools. So since we have two intermediate schools that will be moved to traditional middle schools even though this doesn't take place next year um these need to be in place is to help those schools work through the transition scheduling changes planning for that next year. So, it's imperative that they be in this year's budgets to help those two schools make those transitions for the 26 27 school year. Um, increasing contract days for behavioral specialists, which is a small increase. Um, 2 PM maintenance custodial teams. Um, these are for

008a total of uh six positions. So, two teams of um of uh three positions each. These are essentially additional custodial teams that will help our custodial staff um work on maintaining our schools, maintaining our facilities, doing some of those um paintings and additional cleanings, but also be there in the in the instance of any um emergencies, whether it be flooding or anything that that might need to be taken care of. Um two positions in HR and onboarding and offboarding coordinator for one certified and one classified. Um we also added in ESS substitute pay increases. We looked at this across all school districts around us and um landed on $186,000 increase. And then Dam supplements for our 13 um elementary athletic leads and our athletic leads as well as some additional band supplements for a total

009of $1.1 million. So, how does that break down for all of our additions? Um, if you add up all of the things that we're doing, you can see our budget really only goes up $10 million from 240 to 250 for next year. But if you add in all the things that we have added to the budget, that's $15 million. So, we were able to find savings. We were able to find some efficiencies. we were able to look at truly what do we have this year um that we won't have next year as far as costs and things like that to to truly look at um how can we do all of the things we want to do within the constraints that we have. And so for looking at just the salaries and benefits um 51%

010of our salary and benefit increase for next year is the new teacher salary schedule. So that's over half of our um increase for next year. Support staff 2%. So a lot of these are in the classroom support staff. These are non not our certified teachers but any support staff. So that's almost 40% of our increase. And then you can see those other positions, the two coordinators in HR or 2%, 2 PM maintenance custodian teams are 3.3%, the two APIs are 2% and the bus driver increase is another 2%. So the majority of our salary and benefit requests for next budget year, um 51% plus the 38% is the majority of our salary and benefits request for next year. So, our fund balance assignments, um, we asked for an additional assignment of $3 million for $1,000

011permanent employee during American Education Week for next year. We, uh, asked to move the NER payments um, into our fund balance assignment, approximately $400,000 set aside for Ner payments for next year. 3.5 million set aside for capital and equipment expenditures um operational equipment maintenance and upgrades school buses um anything in operations and then six FTEES for critical needs that would require board approval if we were to use that. So looking at our fund balance for next year where we are right where we ended last fiscal year 630 2024 where we project to be at the end of this year we just had a change in our fund balance policy that looks now at a range of 17 to 20%. And so there are ranges based on our FY2025 budgeted expenditures of $240 million and where

012we would be in our proposed budget of $250 million for next year with our percent of unassigned fund balance. Right. So, how do we get there? Local revenues. Um, you can see our local revenue makes up about 37% um 38% of our, uh, projected budget for next year. Our state revenues is 62%. Um, those are slightly shifted from last year. So, our local revenue, um, is increasing because our state revenue is decreasing. Um, how does our budget break down for next year? Salaries and fringe. Um, the increase is $9.8 million. Our budget as approved this year to our preliminary budget for next year. Um our contractual and services and other operating is an increase of 800,000. Um supplies and materials we were able to take some savings there. And then equipment you can see that.

013So overall salaries and fringe of our total budget for next year is just under 88% with supplies, services and equipment is 12% which is in line with what our budget has been for the last year. Um state fund estimates for next year again you see our state aid the classroom. This is something that has been a big discussion at the state house this year. um the different weights and how um how these weights are allocated to all the different um public school districts across the state. I think this is something that we will continue discussing as we move into next next year's budget as well. Um how state level appropriations work. So we look at the overall students across the state divided by the state student teacher ratio that the state sets 11.2. Um then

014you look at kind of a midpoint of salaries. Um the state looks at a master's plus 12 years experience. So an average salary of 77,000 to get the statewide allocation. So that's how the state comes up with their total appropriation um for all the state. And so then how does that break down for us? So we have an allocation of 700,000 to retire insurance, 1.9 to state aid to classroom based on our 45day count, um $720,000 uh for EIA, and then some 600,000 for um health insurance and $385,000 for state workers. So this is based on the house original house projections, not house two, which would have given us an additional about $300,000. Um this is a conservative estimate. This budget was based on um really being very lean. Essentially, there is not a lot

015of margin in this budget. So we were trying to take a very conservative estimate as far as what money we're going to get. This is truly the max of what we'll see from the state. These are based on our enrollment numbers from this year. And so this will change based on 10 days in next year. So those those counts. So we kind of know that the highest number and we're we're again just being conservative on our state estimates. Miss Tucker, can I ask you a question? Um back on the last slide just um so I know that bus drivers get salary increases as state workers, but that doesn't apply to like staff in the in those offices. So, um, what kind of scale are they on and when do they when do we look at

016raises for those that personnel? So, those personnel would fall under our support staff and so they would get the 2% from our support staff raises. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Are they also on a step? Um, they would get a step and so they would get a step based. Um, the average step is uh about a percent. Um, so depending on whether it's teacher sale or support sale, um, but they typically see, so if the teachers get, um, a 2% or the sport staff gets a 2%, they might get another percent or half a percent. So about about Yeah, I know we talked in the past about the um the increase in health benefit costs in the second year. next year teachers will be carrying that weight or right now I know at one time we talked

017about the teachers because we're looking at that the increase in pay and how much they would have to take off of that for that um what what will that look I mean this year I mean this coming year obviously that it's employer based we have to pick that up as a district is that will how it will continue or will they be asked to pick that up um so in the past it has kind of fluctuated from what the has put on the employees versus the employers. Um there will be an increase um and it takes effect in the 2026 year. So starting in January of next year, um employees will see a slight increase, but our the the teacher the increase in the teacher salary scale will offset that. So they will not not

018as much. Um, but I will say that um I want to say it's was it a couple hundred dollars what they would the average u benefit would be the average cost increase would be on the on the health insurance side um but won't take effect till January of next year. So any other questions? Um again state aid to classroom. This is just how the state looks at dividing this out. So the state looks at weighted pupil units and this is kind of how this formula is really complicated looking at this from the state perspective because we don't see the statewide weighted pupil units. So we are missing a piece of the formula when we're trying to figure out what our part of that pie looks like. Um so the state looks at the total weighted

019pupil units for each district based on the proviso funding. Um determines your state uh proportion based on your WPUs per district. Then there's the uh index of taxpaying ability based on what your district can pay um and its ability to raise your local taxes that factors into um into your ability to raise your local piece holdless and then the the rest of the state funding is split across all remaining districts. So how does that impact our local revenue? So we have our operations mill and our debt service millage. Our operations millage um all of our 4% or our primary residence is exempt based on act 388. So our operations millage only affects our 6% property. So rental properties, businesses. Um this is what provides FTEEs to the district. Our debt service millage is on your

0204% property. So it is on your primary home. Um it provides for construction. It provides for all of our construction and renovations. Um also on our 6% properties. So what does a Lexon County tax bill look like? So this portion of your tax bill on your primary residence um looks like the school gets 72% of that, but that's not true if you if this is your primary residence. So the school is really getting a much smaller portion of that. This would be true for vehicles and for uh for rental properties, but not for your primary um not for your primary residence because in that small line up there, it says not including any applicable exemptions or credits. Um so for this year for our 25 26 proposed um calculations the total value of a mill

021um total estimated assessed value um on non-owner occupied um properties $366 million. We did an estimated collection rate which is increased from last year. Last year it was budgeted at 95%. Um this year we increased that to 97% looking back historically over the past 10 years of what Lexon and Richland County has collected. Um so our adjusted estimated assessed value is 355 million for an estimated value of a mill is $355,629. So using that value of a mill, our projected local revenue would be $84.7 million. Um calculating our roll back this year because Lexon County has gone through its reassessment this year, Richland County went through last year. Um because we are a school district that is split between two counties, we wait till the second county in our district has gone through a reassessment

022before we do our roll back calculation. Um we're unique in that um perspective. So we do um the operating mill increase looks at consumer price index which is set by the state um 2.95%. Our population growth which is given to us by fiscal affairs was 2.4%. So our allowable percentage increase this year is 4.99%. So that basically means that we can we do our roll back calculation and that this is what our allowable increases to essentially kind of hold us at the same level we were for for last year. So our 2425 operating millage was 266 mills. Our roll back millage is 243.2 mills and our millage cap this year would be 12.1. So that's how much we were allowed to go up this year based on the millage cap. We also have allowable previous

023previously not used look back millage. So over the last three years we could have increased our millillage by 39.7 mills for a total allowable increase of 51.8. So those are last three years. Again you can see the collection rate for the last two years prior to 2526 use the 95% collection rate. So just taking into account that that change in collection rate percentage um for this year. So the district's uh administration's recommendation is looking at where do we need to be based on what revenue we're going to get from the state and the priorities that has been um set by looking at the priorities of the board. We looked at needing an additional revenue of $8 million. So that actually allows us to take our millage from 266 to 261. Um we would use 5.7

024of the look back mills um using the value of a mill at 355 for a total projected revenue of 92.8 million. Um and so our administration's recommendation it recommends the third and final reading approval of the FY2526 general fund budget in the amount of $250,580,20 with the operating millage rate reduced to 261 and the approval of fund balance assignment totaling 7.4 $7,455,197 comprised of the following um employee retention incentive of $3 million, nary payments of 400,000, capital equipment expenditures of 3.5 million and 555,000 for six FTEEs for critical needs. Any questions? Do we have any questions for Mucker? Miss um I have two questions. Um if you can go back to the slide and I know it's pretty early but the one with the pie chart of not that one the one with the um

025the salary benefits increases. Yeah. Um so the the blue side the new teacher salary schedule that's the increase correct and that includes the amount we have to increase it because um the state increased step and the thousand dollars. So those are the same. Those would be one of the same. So we we would have to go up to the state's minimum, which the state's minimum would be the the thousand or $1,500 up to the state's minimum. And so we did $1,000 per sale, but we also moved we got rid of the bachelor's plus 18 lane. So our bachelor's lane really increased more because we were moving them over to that bachelor's plus 18 lane. So this isn't they're not I understand too different. So related question. So, and I realize all the sales are different,

026but if you just look at the bachelor's and zero, um, how much were we paying above the bachelor zero? Are we this year? Are we this year? So, this year our bachelor's zero is, um, 475 plus the 2500 NR. And so we were essentially with our ner payments we were um 2500 2500 above. So we're phasing out ner and we're phasing out we would like to essentially phase out n we have that in the budget for next year. Um but as we're moving that bachelor zero up we're seeing less teachers come in with that because they're getting the experience. Okay. The other question I had is um so the projection is that we will have 7.4 4 million, a little bit more left over after the end of this fiscal year. Um, and I know

027you weren't here, but prior years we've had many millions left over. I think it's every year since I've been on the board, we've had millions left over. Why? And why will this coming year be different? So I do think that looking at the I think the calculation of the um the value of a mill at 97% versus 95% will make a difference. Um when I really dug into looking at um the revenue collected of Lexon and Richland counties over the last 10 years and trying to look at um some changes and some trends, there was one year I'm going to say it was two to three years ago where the revenue the tax projections were so much higher than what was anticipated and trying to look at trends and why that was because it had

028been very historically kind of growing by just a small amount and two to two to three years ago it it jumped exponentially and so I think increasing that um collection rate to 97% in the in the current year will make a difference. We do typically see even higher than 97% but you see that over a three-year period as houses go into foreclosure and then sell and the taxes are paid. Um so I think that will help um reduce that fund balance and keep it in that 17 um to 20% range. I think that's going to be a big part of it. Um I do think that changes at the state when we start looking at what are they going to do with um with voting taxes and and some other changes I think we may

029see that the taxes fluctuate again. So, just trying to keep a breast of what changes and how that's going to impact because just the the tax on the um the watercraft could have a huge impact us if that if that passes next year because that's not something that we see just in January. We see those taxes come in on the operating and the debt service every month um for a couple hundred,000. So, that would greatly impact our cash flow. And so, I think having that strong fund balance knowing the uncertainty that we we know, but I do think changing the rate to 97% will make a difference on on seeing those funds reduced. Anybody else? Thank you. At this time, we'll turn it over to public participation. Miss Taylor. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dina Marlo

030is here to speak about raising taxes on Richland County residents. Yeah, I wanted to come here and um to the board, although I feel like it's almost a new subject. Y'all do whatever you want to do and that's how I feel about the board. That's how it is. Um my my my taxes went up last year, so I don't know where she got her information from as Heather because Richmond County taxes went up almost $250. Y'all want to raise the taxes again? Richland County is going to raise the taxes. Not everyone has the money to pay for all these taxes that y'all are trying to get and do to the Richland County residents. And a lot of you don't live in Richland County, so it's not going to affect you. So, that's pretty crappy of

031y'all. I'm sorry, but it is to do that to someone that you don't even live in that residence um that county. So, um, Lexon County is not raising their millillage, but y'all want to raise the millillage because the I'm sorry, but the things that Miss Heather came up here and said was I I found a lot of false statements in. So, and not everyone gets a raise every year, okay? I never get a raise. We're pretty much topped out. I'm in the medical field. We don't get raises pretty much when we come in. That's it. Um, it's how it is. So, y'all want us to pay for people to get raises and have health insurance when I don't even have health insurance. I have no health insurance. Pretty much lived all my life without it.

032Can't afford it because what you want to charge me for health insurance based on my salary when I don't go to the doctor, do anything. But you want to raise all of my taxes and I don't understand how you can do that to the residents of Richland County when and and and this tax bill is going to be on our taxes for 20 years. That's extreme, you know, and you know, I don't understand how y'all can vote on that without listening to, you know, on one on one bill, like one one meeting. That's it. I I don't understand this. I I I don't I don't get how what you're doing, how it's legal. I really like I don't understand any of the how the board works. I don't like the board. The board is to

033me corrupt. Every one of you, sorry, but I'm not being ugly. I'm being honest. I think it is corrupt and it's very corrupt for Richland County and I can't speak for Lexon County. I don't live in Lexon County so I don't can't speak on that um subject but everything I've heard here tonight with that little budget that she went through is like that's crazy. That's it. The teachers do they deserve a raise? Yeah, they deserve a raise to some some degree. Yes. But for our taxes to go up like that to for everyone else to suffer for them. No, I'm sorry. No, it doesn't. No, that doesn't that's not the betterment of the whole the whole of the people of everything. Sorry, but it's not. So, my taxes in my car, I paid them this

034year. They keep going up. It's three years old. Keep going up. I thought they went down every year. No, guess not. So, you and 400 something dollars of my taxes were my my cart was for the school. I don't even have children go to school. That's ridiculous. It's I'm sorry, but that is what you're doing is wrong. And I'm going to try to do everything I can to fight y'all on every aspect of it in any way. I don't know. See, it seems like we need doge in here because a lot of frivolous spending in this budget that we have. So, I'm going to do everything I can to fight every one of y'all even if you pass it. I just want you to know that. We will now adjourn from the public hearing on

035the general fund budget. It is 8:00 and I'm going to call to order and convene the regular scheduled um board meeting. In lie of my welcoming remarks um today I am going to read a scripture um from Matthew chapter 5. It is lengthy so I will not read the entire thing. And seeing the multitudes he went up on a mountain and when he was seated his disciples came to him. Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are

036the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is in the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they rival and persecute you and take all kinds of evil things against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for they so persecuted the prophets who were before you. At this time, I'd like um Trusty Bum to give us the invocation followed by the pledge of allegiance. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the opportunity to come together and discuss the business of school district 5. We pray for a spirit of understanding, transparency, and camaraderie. As we make important decisions tonight, may we keep in

037mind the best interest of all students and members of this community. Please protect the vulnerable during the extreme heat we face this week. Continue to keep everyone safe this summer. In your name we pray, amen to the which stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Dr. Ross, I'd like to turn it over to you for the superintendence report. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, as always, we start out with our our mantra of we are a system guided by three critical questions. Why do we do this work? Our vision, how do we accomplish that vision? Our mission and then what are our outcomes? Our vision is that we love and grow our students. uh I'm sorry, 989 of our employees coming together with one united voice. That we are here for

038two reasons. We love our students and we want to see them grow. How do we make that happen? Well, we do that by being focused on the academic, social, emotional growth and development of our students. This umbrella represents the whole child continuum of all those things necessary to have those academic outcomes to ensure that our students are ready for their futures which are different from our past. And we measure that. That is measurable that every student feels loved in our schools with our 12 performance goals on school climate and teacher administrative quality. And that every student grows in our schools that they see that academic growth in our schools with 12 strategies uh that look at student achievement and gifted and talented strategies. All told together of 166 action steps that our district is taking

039to ensure that every student feels loved in our schools and that future where every student has demonstrated academic growth in our schools. In your packets for the trustees and the board is our year review uh just put together of just some of the things from the administration's standpoint of the things that we're doing uh to get those results. We know there's always opportunity for improvement, but as this board states in this policy, the number one position of the district is the educational futures of of the students and I'm really behind that and support that and I thankful that we can come together for that aim of our students and their futures. And so uh with that uh I won't read the entire report for your but it is available for your review. Uh but this

040won't be possible without all of the things that have to come together to make us operate and that's the engine of the district and that is our district operations staff. Uh these are the unsung heroes but there are educators behind the scenes to ensure uh that we can accomplish the work and so I'm going to ask our chief of operations Dr. Gary to come forth uh to do the operations report. Dr. Madam Chair, it's my pleasure to do our um quarterly operations report. We're going to start off with facilities. Our director of facilities, Mr. Alan KN, will talk about facilities. I'm going to do a broad overview of our student nutrition program, followed by Shauna Kato, our coordinator of school facilities and transportation by director, Mr. Harold Williams. Good evening, Madame Chair, Dr. Ross, and

041members of the board. I'm excited tonight to bring you all a construction update of all the many projects that we have going on through the district. So, the the first one I want to take a look at is the new Rich Lex facility. Um, as in our last meeting or in our last update, we showed what the um history wall could look like within the school. Uh this is something that we were meeting with local members in the community to make sure that we were getting the right um historical elements within the history wall. Um one of the biggest things that we had to go through I guess over spring break was the facility review. So as a part of this review um they went to a geospatial um diagram which I'll see here in

042a minute. It's like a Google Google Streets for the school, which is pretty neat. Here we have the overall timeline of the um of the of the current site. And you know, initially it started off back in 1918 as a Rosen Wall School and inh 2028 we look to have 110 years of continuous education at this site. So, this is the geospatial uh technology that's going to be incorporated into the school uh as we remodel, revamp it. This shows us the actual layout of the front lobby of the school. And then you'll kind of see me drive around um the overall facility. This gives us a 3D view of of the school. And then as we go through to do to do plumbing work or whatever else it may be, we can actually pull layers

043of of walls off. We can kind of see what's behind the walls. It's pretty neat technology. We can kind of like zoom down the halls. So, what this will do is actually give us some before and after views of the school. This is um just one technology. It's really not even emerging technology that we're we're using with one of our projects um for the bomb referendum. So, our next project that we're working on is a Dutch work elementary school. Um, where we're still working uh really hard to go through the u the site design. I know we had to go back and forth with DOT looking at the entrances and everything else and the the actual distance between um the bus loop and the car rider loop. Um, I'm happy to say that that has

044been completed and we got the the official letter from DOT that we are good to go. There was a couple things that OSF wanted before they checked the box that was completed last week. So, we are now preparing um, you know, to bring that back to the board and then a closing date. These are just some conceptual views of what the school could look like. This is the interior of the school. On to Chapen Elementary. So, here we have a site plan to your to your left of what the new classrooms will look like. And then over to the right, you will see the the overlay of the school where the new building will be and then also where the relocation um where we are going to relocate the um the six portables. So, we've

045actually started this process. The down. There's no power on the portables and they're actually in process of being moved. Um, you know, as we go through this right here, um, and then we wrap up the the portable that we're going to move over the over Lake Murray, we should, um, think have something to the board, I think, at our July meeting for a contract, um, so we can start breaking ground. Here's some renderings of the interior of the school. Um, not a lot with the color or anything yet because it's just kind of it's pretty vanilla, but that'll change as uh we dive deeper into getting our our district colors into the into this. Here's the site um site layout for Lake Murray Elementary. As you can see, the portables have been removed, and we

046have our twotory uh wing extension. And this is just the same as before, just a a view of what the rooms could look like on the interior. Honda Irma High School. This this is the latest view of um of the new extension, the new wing. Um pleased to say that it is moving along uh fairly well. I'm out there several times a week and then we walk through with the architect and the and the um general contractor every other week. So, we are making a tremendous amount of progress. Here we see the interior view. This is just I just took a snapshot one day and sent it to Dr. This is the media center. Um I I know we had an opportunity to walk through with a couple board members several months ago, but it

047is it is definitely progressing. I think last time we were here, there's a bunch of duct work and stuff like that on the floor on the deck and um you know, all that's up in the ceiling now. So, um I'm I'm pleased with the progress with the with the expansion. Now, we're going to cover phase two, which is the student center for high school. Here is a conceptual view where I've worked with our architects to help us um you know design something that that mimics some of the elements of the current uh cafeteria area at the school. Then to include some student center areas um you know in um what what is actually the there's like a gravel park in line behind the um the existing or the the new wing. If you look at

048the the red area, those are that's the actual dining area or the the kitchen area. The yellow is dining and the blue is the students in the area. Uh to your left, you'll see the there's some some there's going to be some outdoor seating areas there that will actually overlook the softball field. To the right, that is the um I think it's like it's like a second story little balcony area. It's like a senior area. That's currently what Armo has. And that was Dr. Hampton asked for us to replicate something very similar to that. So, as you can see right here with the the new wing and then the back part that gravel parking lot area. So, that will actually encompass the new student center. Here we have a 3D model of what it could

049look like. Um we went through several little iterations of of um you know having like an attached bridge per se from the second third floor and then also the entrance if somebody was um coming from the back of the building and they wanted to enter. So we have we'll have a little secure vestable area there on the side facing WCOT. So this is the Westcot view and this right here is the view from the courtyard in the athletic fields. So you you'll see that there's going to be plenty of space for some outdoor seating, stuff like that. And um and then also have a lot of um natural daylight into the building so students can, you know, have that natural daylight and then also so they can actually see out and what's going on with

050the athletic fields and the new courtyard area. Now, we're going to cover um just some of the change orders happened over the last quarter. Um, we did have to add some additional security and access controls which was a um was an increase but I do want everyone to to kind of focus on the the two decreases. So, as we were going through the unsuitable soils and the trash laden soils, you know, we we had an estimate number. We didn't know exactly what that number was going to be. So, we were able to tally up those tickets and make sure we had all the numbers right. So, um, we're getting a credit back, um, for those two. For, uh, change order 21 and 22, we're actually getting a credit back. Um, change order number 23, um,

051we're having, we had some, um, some issues with the soil, I guess, where the parking lot area was at, the front of the building when they proof rolled it where you take a big old dump truck, you load it up with a bunch of dirt, you start driving it, it's like the truck was on a water bed. So, we we had to um do to mitigate that. Um so that that's what that um I guess the basis of that change order. Any questions? Yes, ma'am. Um so what was the original estimated completion date of hero and what is it now? I would have to get that information. I don't have that readily available. And then I was also wondering on all these new construction projects, is there an opportunity to install solar either on the

052roofs or on the some of the parking like we did at Dutch Fork Elementary, the current Dutch Fork Elementary? There there is opportunity to do that um with with the layout of of certain buildings. We're trying to make sure that it is um you know that the roofs could be accessed, you know, if we're having to go get equipment or whatever else, but also would allow us if we chose to to to add some panels. Um and who knows, maybe at some point in time we decide to put a little small solar farm somewhere. I mean, so there's there there's options. Are there things that are actively being looked at or just could be looked at? right now as things that could be two quick questions. When we were out there that gravel lot, so

053that was going to be parking. Are we going to have sufficient parking? I guess we own that little house, so they're going to tear that down. We're going to use that for So that the house really doesn't impact parking for um for the students in a cafeteria area. So to answer your question, that back lot area will get used as parking too because we also have to bring food trucks and stuff like that in the big 18 wheelers. So we based off our design, we feel confident that we have enough space to get everybody in there. And the other one was um the excess portables once they're no longer in use, do we maintain those? Do we sell them off surplus? What do we do with those? So some of them they need to be

054torn down. I mean they're just not very good shape. and the ones that we can remodel and upfit, we want to keep those. Um I know there's been a request to um you know throughout the district, you people saying, "Hey, you know, we'd like to have something just to store stuff in or whatever it may be." So we we you know, we don't if we have a good asset, we just don't want to toss it aside. We want to make sure that we can keep it and get maximize the life out of it. Yeah. Ellen, can you go back to the chape I hate to go that far back to Chapen Elementary School? No problem. I There you go. The lay. Well, there you go. The And I'm I can't see it from here, but

055the the addition that's going to go if I was facing the school, is it to the right, to the left? Is behind the school. Behind the school. And and and that's good. Well, that's good. But that helps my question. Um I know that that probably that school probably with ICRC they share facilities. It's been a ongoing process and it's full of kids and parents and constantly while the with the ball fields and all back there. Um will that do you think that's going to be an issue for us or do you think I don't just with safety and and access? So one of the requirements in any construction project is we have to have access control. We just can't have kids on to the site. Very similar to um very sim similar to um the

056Armo site and even Chapen High School. Um we want to make sure the secure we have the fencing and everything else. Um we it may depending on how it's set up, it may take you know um I think there's a a road um where there's like I think a field like a little access drive or something like that. So it may encroach on that some it's but I don't foresee it impacting the the use of the fields at all. Okay. Yes sir. Anything else? Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Alan. Yes, ma'am. Good evening, madame chair and board members and Dr. Ross. I'm Shauna Kato. I am the coordinator of student nutrition, not facilities. Gave me a whole new title. Don't want that one. I'm happy to be before you tonight just to give

057you just an overview of what student nutrition is and what we do. So, we currently oversee programs the breakfast, lunch, after school snack, supper, and summer meals for the district. So, we are 365 days. Seems like we're non-stop. Of course, I'm Shauna Kato. As stated, I have 27 years of experience in school nutrition. So, I've been doing this a long time. For some, it's a lifetime. Our mission is to provide nutritious meals for all students that will enhance their growth and well-being while supporting their learning experience. The USDA requires us to do administrative reviews. They can the state department is the liaison between the USDA and us. And so based on our performance, they decide whether we're going to do a three-year review or a fiveyear review. So currently we're at five years. So that

058means we're doing a good job. All right. When it comes to our finances, the majority of our funding comes from the reimbursement from meals that we serve during the school day, after school, summer, and through CACF, which is our supper um program. They they they oversee that program. So, that's where most of our funding comes. majority of our funding comes from um and along with paying our salaries um fringe benefits, portion, indirect cost, all those things. Um we're currently working um on upgrading our cafeterias and dining rooms. So that's one of the things we started working on. I started working on it last year and so we're working on that chopping at the block to get those things done. How do we secure our vendors? We do that by this the district procurement guidelines. Um,

059that is also another thing that the state department comes in and checks to make sure we're following the state rules and what the district says. So, we are under gun on every side to do the right thing and we we secure those bids one year and we have up to five years um to renew them. So we follow same same protocol and we also do our best to secure with our produce the most the freshest locally grown produce that we can and um we work with vendors to do that each year. We we also have to do something called by American um that's a part of our contracts especially when we are doing our fruits and vegetables in the state department we'll come in and check our coolers and freezers when it comes to our

060food quality nutritional value of our food again that is another thing that we are regulated over all menus have to be analyzed through a nutritional analysis each month to make sure we hit those points that the USDA says that we have to do sodium, sugar, all those things. We have to put it into this table or into software to make sure that we're hitting those points that everything is in the green. If not, we have to go back and re-evaluate it. One of the key things that we make sure that we do each each day, and I push this all the time, is we we serve fresh fruits and vegetables daily. Students are allowed to get as many fresh fruits and vegetables that they want. They don't have to get an entree. They can get

061fresh fruits and vegetables if they want to. um or any fruits and vegetables that we offer each day. Um this school year, we work with our nurses, nursing staff to develop a process so that we can take care of our students that have special dietary needs. Um and so now the nurses and my staff and I we work together to make sure that we take care of those special dietary needs in schools. um so that we can feed not the students that not only the students that can eat normal meals we'll say but also special dietary meals. So that you know that's that's a whole another pocket of things that we do but we work really hard to get that done and make sure that we're doing it properly and we can take care of

062those students. Um one other thing that we do with our students we have to have student engagement. So a part of student engagement is I will develop times where we can taste test products. I choose schools on different levels to based on the food that we're trying. And so we go in with my vendors, brokers or whatever. They come in, they say, "We got something we want you to to eat you try." They'll bring it to me. I say, "Hey, we got to take it into the schools. If I like it, if it's a good product, then we set up taste testings. I work with the schools. We get about 100 students together and we do those taste testings. And we do those at different grade levels based off of the food that we're trying

063to provide. At the beginning of every school year, my staff comes together and we train. We train on food safety, food prepar food preparation, and line presentation. My staff will tell you is my biggest pet peeve because we all eat with our eyes. And so we also have to go over nutrition standards. So when they change, like we got some new ones rolling out this school year, we go over those things, too, so that they know and understand that they're not just feeding kids what they're doing, why they're doing it, because that's important for them to do their job because as I told Dr. Ross, the cafeteria is an extension of the classroom because students are learning how to eat when they come see us. Currently, we participated in farm to school grants. I think

064it's been an ongoing thing and we still do that. This year, we had four schools to participate as well as we uh participate in fresh fruit and vegetable program. That program is only done in elementary schools where they get a snack of a fresh fruit and vegetable at least three times a week. They also get nutritional education and it's something that's incorporated into their school day. So we work with the schools so that the teachers can help us and they train with it. They can take an apple, cut it, you know, do in fractions, something to incorporate into the school day, but they eat it in the classroom. They cannot eat those fresh fruits and vegetables um while they're with us. Do we have any questions? Do we have any questions, Mr. Bayum? So, some

065positive feedback and then a question. So, love the trying the new things our daughter and heard from a lot of students. That's a really neat opportunity for them to kind of taste test and feel like they have impact into the menu. So, thank you for that. And then when I get to visit schools, I try to stop by and speak with the cafeteria staff and you know what's working, what's not. Um, and I ask them, you know, are they seeing, you know, something that the kids are liking or disliking? So that was going to be my question. Do you see with some of the new, you know, menu guidelines and dietary restrictions, are there is there more waste of a certain type of product or or food item or are we kind of about the

066same as years past? So, we haven't seen much waste. And I'll talk about sugar because that's one of the things that's changing that started changing last school year. So what the food developers do they they've started working manufacturers they've started working on that stuff before it hits and say we have to do it. So it's done in a way that students now because I live during the last time and I don't want to live through where kids throw food in the trash. I'll tell you that it's heartbreaking because I know how many kids are hungry. But they've worked on developing products that are palatable for our students because when you make drastic changes, we don't want to eat it. So, I don't want to serve anything. I don't serve anything to students that I don't

067want to eat. Um, I have an advantage, though. I have a 10-year-old that I let test some things sometimes, you know, because they're the ones eating it, not us. I think you had another question. Sorry. I just really wanted to compliment you. I I used to and your staff um I used to mentor in another school district. I won't say which one. They did not cook their own food. It was all shipped in and there was just an incredible amount of waste. And when I go visit the schools, I actually tried to eat in the cafeteria. Not only is the food good, but the people who work there are just so friendly and they know the students and it's just a very welcoming environment. So, just thank you for and your staff for everything y'all

068are doing. Thank you. Uh, Miss Kato, you and I recently had a very good conversation. I appreciate you. Um, I am a little disappointed though the board gets invited to a lot of things. I've never been invited to a taste test. So, so I will tell you this. I know I'm not going to make it nice because one of the things about my program is we are here for the students. And so my audience, my customers are the students. And my fellow staff will tell you that too, that my focus is is always the students to make sure that eat. Now, there's some other areas where I might help you out, but it's going to be outside of the school district. Um, but I I appreciate you guys for giving me this opportunity to come

069before you if there are no more questions and just give you an overview of of what we do. Thank you, Miss Ker. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Dr. Ross, and distinguished board members, and everybody. Thank you'all for giving me the opportunity to come speak. Uh, transportation bus on the wheels going to round. And I would tell you that, um, I'm going on about 19 years now over here in the district. And I tell you, every time that we try and do anything, we have great support. And I appreciate what the board does and everybody does. And especially my principles out there if y'all listening. All right. Um the buses that we operate with, we have 102 buses that the uh Department of Education provides for us 10 and we have additional 10

070spares. Election Richmond 5 has 33 buses. Those are activity buses. Total miles that we drive per day just the bus is 7,914. If we was to look at that, that would be a trip from Columbia, South Carolina to Los Angeles, California, round trip, and then back to California in a day. Uh total activity and field trips that performed last year, 1,495. So, our students are out, they're in the communities, they're going to games, they're going to field trips. So, I'm proud of the people also that's getting up to do those things. Drivers, they're responsible for doing inspections. All drivers are required to do inspections. We do a pre-trip, during trip, and a post-trip inspection. The inspections are done each time the bus is placed in operation. If that bus has been sitting for an hour

071or more, we must perform a pre-trip on it. Our maintenance program, South Carolina Department of Education, their mechanics perform all maintenance requests on our buses. When our drivers go out and do a pre-trip in the mornings or anytime they get ready to roll the buses, they see anything that's wrong with it, they do that on a document, on the tablet, that's electronic document that we can keep a record of and it get passed on to the South Carolina Department of Education mechanics. They'll do all the maintenance or if it's something that deadlines that bus If it's one of the lights out, all buses must have at least 100% of the lights. If one light is out on the stop one, the bus is considered inoperable. At that time, they'll take a spare. Uh they'll do

072annual inspections on all their buses. Two type of service they do is called a a service where they're pretty much doing like the filters and the oil changes and then they have a e service. That's where they do all the brakes and do the whole uh maintenance on that bus. Lex 5 activity buses. We do two annual inspections and those uh inspections are outsourced by WW Williams. We do the federal standard and we also follow South Carolina Department of Education standard. So we're making sure that the buses are safe and that when our students get on them that they are get our students to and where they need to go. I think that's pretty much ends it for me up to your questions. Do we have any questions? Miss Huddle and Miss Okay. Um, so

073two questions and they're related. Do the bus drivers have to have a CDL? Yes, ma'am. All bus drivers are required to have a CDL and all our drivers have a CDL and a state department of education certificate. It's called a A certificate. What that A certificate does, it allows them to drive those buses that are chrome deals and those you can get a B certificate, but that would be something if it was an activity driver where they're just taking students from school to a trip. But all of our drivers to include our activity drivers have the a certificate. So that goes into my second question. So for the activity buses, are those all driven by regular bus drivers or to coaches also drive them? How does that work? Yes, ma'am. Regular drivers do them, but

074then we have like a substitute base of drivers. A lot of them are retired people that are out doing uh some other jobs and they'll come in to drive our students to games, but they go to the same training standards as well. Some of them were former bus drivers and decide to become activity drivers. And our coaches, they also do the same thing. They have the a certificate which teaches them and train them to have that as well. Do they do the coaches have to drive the bus? Is that is that like you know a tennis team or whatever coach? Do they have to or if they don't want to drive the bus, do you all provide a bus driver? Yes, we can provide a drive for them. You know, a lot of times just

075say, "Hey, look, I'm just driving my team, Miss Barnhart. We can provide a driver for them." Um, not so much of a question, but just to commend you for everything that you do. My kids have ridden the bus for years, and um, you got I know you got a lot of bus drivers that have been on the same bus for decades. Um, so thank you for all you do to get our kids to and from school safely. All right. Well, thank all of y'all. I really appreciate it. And Mr. Bal, so feedback on from your drivers. I know our neighbor had an issue and we leaned on our elected um representative to the state house and some county council members, the culacs and a lot of the neighborhoods. Are you hearing feedback that there's issue

076because some of the asphalt conditions I know is not great on those tires. So just wondering if there's is that a wide issue or Yes sir. I do get some uh calls regarding to the culdeacs and what I do is try and go out and take evaluation of it. A lot of things that take place with it is if the community is deemed a gated community or if the contractor that built that community have not released it yet then the community and the contract are responsible. And so if it's not then the county would take care of it. But uh most in one one area I did check out the the uh builder had not transferred the entire community over. So that was the issue and of course they asked me what could I do.

077So of course we try and support them. Sometimes we'll move to a different cult we can pick the students up safely and do things that because we don't want to tear that concrete up. Anybody else? All right. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you all. That concludes the operations report. I would like to make a brief statement regarding the data security incident and to our community. Uh the investigation regarding the data security incident has revealed that some data was taken from the district network. We're still working with third party experts to determine the scope and nature of the impacted data. If any sensitive data was impacted, the district will follow the expert forensic and legal recommendations to address this issue. As the investigation progresses, we'll keep the community and a board informed of any

078of these concerns. At this time, we have no reason to believe that any sensitive data is being misused. Uh we'll continue with the investigation and when more data comes available, we'll make that available to the public. That concludes report and I stand for any questions. Do we have any additional questions for the superintendent's report? At this time, can I get a motion to approve the minutes from the June 9th board meeting? Make a motion to approve the minutes of the June 9th, 2025 board meeting. Second. All in favor? Opposed? And the motion carries 7 to zero. I believe we have anybody signed up for public participation. So that takes us to the action agenda. First is actions necessary or appropriate on matters discussed in executive session. Make a motion to approve selected employment items uh

079as shown in exhibit A for action. A second. All in favor? I have an amendment. I I move to amend the motion to defer the hiring of the position line item three. Second. Uh there's a amendment on the floor that's been properly second. All those in favor of the amendment opposed. And the uh motion fails 4 to3. We have an original motion on the floor um to approve it. Uh your motion exhibit A opponent item selected. Exhibit A. My apologies. All those in favor opposed. And the motion carries seven to zero. Um, I guess the next one is Okay. After reviewing Dr. Ross's evaluation and considering the board members comments regarding Dr. Ross' performance, I move that we conclude as a board that Dr. Ross receive an overall satisfactory evaluation for the 2024 and 2025

080school year. Have a second. All those in favor comments. No discussion. Right. We have a motion that's been properly section second. Um, Mr. Scotty said he wanted to make a comment before we voted. Okay. Um, yeah, I just wanted to go through a couple of make a couple of notes regarding uh Dr. Ross' performance. Um, this year we've saw an increase in college and career readiness from 80.4% to 82%. Increase in graduation rate from 87.7% to 89.4%. Increase in SC ready ELA from 50.8% to 59.9%. Increase in SC ready math from 46 to 47.6%. Increase in algebra 1 passage rate from 72.2% to 81.1%. Increase in English 2 passage rate from 88.3% to 94%. And we also recognize that under his leadership the district has uh uh Dr. Ross has created further achievements uh throughout

081his tenure, including the first jobs program to meet labor shortage issues, the new teacher retention initiative to address teacher shortages, created community support services for high need highne communities such as uh the Harvest Gardens project. Broke ground on uh several facilities including Hermo High School and uh Chapen High School Stadium. increased mental health services and student behavior supports, expanded security staff and weapon detection screening, and incorporated new programs such as zero eyes. created the shop local campaign to sol support the local economy and received the highest Cogna accreditation index score of 360 and passed the highest bond referendum passage rate in the history of the district uh by winning a vast majority of votes, yes votes in the district for a $240 million bond referendum. If we don't have any more comments or discussion as

082it relates to Dr. Ross's review, I'll call for the vote. Um, all those in favor? All opposed? Madam Chair, I further move that as a result of Dr. for Ross' overall satisfactory evaluation. We extend his contract by one year through June 30th, 2029. All those in fa that's a second. I'm sorry. All those in favor? All those opposed. And motion carries four to three. Madam Chair, I make a motion to approve the contractual matter regarding Hermo High School phase 2 as shown in exhibit C. Second. All those in favor? All those opposed? And the motion carries seven to zero. That takes us to the approval of the district attorney listing for 2526. Make a motion to approve the district's attorney listing for 25 2025 and 2026 as shown in exhibit E. Do I have a

083second? All those in favor? Oppose. And the motion carries seven to zero. That moves us to F the procurement review panel. Make a motion to approve the establishment uh approval of establishing procurement review panel as it shown in exhibit F. Have a second. All in favor? Madam chair. Yes. I was just going to let you know if the board so desires throwing my name in the hat for a board representative. I the motion to um make Mr. Bain the board's representative on the review panel. I second. Am I supposed to take other votes right now? Because right now I thought we were just You can discuss or vote people. So what's in the what's in the um the current procurement review panel were the members from last year. So the board would just need to

084elect the chair for next year and then the other um the other members were nominated. Yes. What I was getting clarification on was whether or not we were voting first to establish the panel and then taking nominations or is it one and the same procurement review panel is part of our policy. So this is just to have the members to establish the the members on that panel. Got it. Okay. All right. So, we have a motion on the floor to establish um Trusty Boehner as the chair of the procurement review panel. All those in favor? All those opposed. And then does it just automatically go back to Kevin if I think you would need to elect. We would still need to take a vote. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Okay. So, somebody would

085still have to be else would have to be nominated if Mr. Bainum didn't get the vote. Okay, great. I'll make a motion to nominate Mr. Skully for the chair of the procurement review panel. And what if we tie on both ends and don't decide today? Does it come back at the next meeting? I've already had a long night, so I'm not sure that I'm making a vote today. Everybody's been missing. But anyway, do I have a second? Second. All in favor? All oppose. Can we talk about it again at the next meeting, Miss um Tucker? Thank you. All right. And then that takes us to third and final reading of the general fund budget. Make a motion to approve the third and final reading of the FY20252026 general fund budget in the amount of $250

086million 580,20 with the operating millage rate reduced to 20 261.0 0 MS and the debt service millage rate remaining at 69.5 mills and approval of fund balance assignments totaling 7,455,197 comprised of the following employee retention incentive 3 million NR payments 400,000 capital equity capital equipment expenditures 3.5 million six full-time employees for critical needs 555,000 Second. Madam chair, I move to divide the question into two questions. One for the operating budget and millillage and the other for the um assignment of the fund balance. A second. I have a question. Okay. Um are we supposed to appro number one, are we supposed to approve the debt service millage? Isn't that the auditor's job? Number two, what not already said? The debt service millage. The debt service millage. Um, so right now we have it at 69.5%. Um,

087based on the bond referendum, we said we would not change that. Um, talk with the auditor. We will get updated numbers, but that that number would cover our debt service for next year. So, but your understanding is that we are supposed to vote on it. Yes. Okay. I amend Mr. Bam's motion to divide the question into three parts. the operating budget and millage rate, the debt service millage rate and the third part would be the allocation of the excess fund balance. Second, can I explain please? Um, I think these are three very big decisions there. There are three very different things and so I think each one the votes may end up the same but I think each one is worthy of its own discussion and vote which is why I would divide the question.

088Can we not have the discussion even if they're not divided? You can but you're going to get one vote on all three. So if a person for example was fine with the operating budget, fine with the um debt service but not fine with the fund balance allocation or use of fund balance, then they have a dilemma. How do they vote? Because you've put three things into one vote. So that's why I would I am making the motion to divide the question so that people have an opportunity to vote independently for each of those items. And if we were voting on them individually and something failed, where does that leave us on our budget, Miss Tucker? It depends on what what fails. We would have to come back because the board would have to approve the

089budget and set the military. So, we would have to come back for discussion before a certain date before July 1st for the budget. Okay. And for the operating village. Okay. I just wanted to ask all those questions. One point of clarification, the budget, the board has the opportunity, let's say the millage rate vote failed, the board would have the opportunity tonight to vote on a different mill rate. It would not have to wait. Correct. Correct. Okay. Or any of those items. Dr. Ros, were you trying to say something? If if the millage rates change, doesn't that change the budget? If the millage rates change, that changes our revenue. So, you could not with confidence change the mill rate at this moment and then tell you that that budget works. Correct. Correct. Okay. All right. We

090have an amendment. Oh, go ahead, S. Phil, just for clarity for myself and everybody else in the room. So, if we if we vote to divide it up into three questions, then like you were saying, we have to deal with each individual issue. If we if we vote against dividing into three questions, we go back with the original motion, which was to Right. Okay. So we have an a three motions on the floor. We have an amendment to the amendment which is to divide the vote into three parts. Um all those in favor all opposed. All right. That motion fails for to three. Then we have Mr. Boehner's motion on the floor which is to divide the motion into two parts. All those in favor? All those opposed. Okay, that motion fails. Four to three.

091Now we have the original motion on the floor, which is to approve the budget in totality. All of those. Um I have an amendment to that. Um, so I move to use $900,000 of the amounts that were um indicated for additional salary and benefits. That would be everything except the increase in the contract days for the behavioral specialist and the ESS substitute increases. So, take the balance of those proposed increases, which is $900,000, and use that money instead for programs for reading and math recovery. A second. Who would we be taking this money from? If you go to the slide that has the I think it's a $1.1 million. Okay. Yeah. So that $1.1 million, it would be taking basically the all of the bullets which are except the additional contract days for the behavior

092specialist that would stay and the ESS substitute pay would stay. Um the balance of that is $900,000. And so my motion is to use that $900,000 for meeting and math recovery programs, reading and math recovery programs. So, it would not change the total budget. It would not change the millage rate. It would just use $900,000 of that money for reading and math recovery instead of all these administrative things. Oh, I'm sorry. Thanks, M. Do you have recommendations of what we would do with that money? I think that would be up to the administration as to what to do. I I just I mean I'm just going to say our our our student body in our number of students is decreasing and we're adding principles. We're adding maintenance maintenance individuals even though our student body is

093decreasing. We're adding two more HR people. We're adding D team supplements for athletics and um um and the band supplements is not a problem, but I do think and we ought to discuss supplements as a whole and not just pull out one one piece of it. So, I'm just recommending that we look at the the core mission of our district, which is to educate children, and we have significant gains that need to be made in reading and math. So, Dr. Ross or um Miss McCascal, do you have programs that you would spend that $900,000 on? I would want to hear some very specific things we would spend that $900,000 on. We we uh we just heard this tonight. We don't have a budget. We've made our recommendation in this budget. I think too um I

094don't want us to feel like there's no money for interventions. We have a budget that includes academic interventions. In fact, it's the lion share of our budget. Um, we we would, you know, we could always use more money for for training. We're going to be watching what the title funds do and we can come back in amendment to do that. Uh, but when it comes time to hire these people, uh, we're asking for folks to help us get those in, to them and off them, to support them when they get in. And so I feel that the budget we presented is one that we have been working since October to get to that is comfortable to help us meet our goals. Um and I know that Miss Huddle's brought up in the past about more

095kind of like tutoring people to help the kids and I think that's a great idea. I mentioned earlier in a meeting that I would like to have those extra teachers too. So I I'm interested in that. I don't think we should be taking away from something for that. I think that that is thinking for forward thinking or thinking forward. Uh the the athletic supplements that's minimal. That's that's nothing. I mean the in the in the scheme of what our uh budget is looking at and um I got a sneaky feeling hopefully that will progress and lead to the hiring of more people and get more kids involved which will then maybe they could couple that with the tutoring after school programs and things like that that you would like to see. I'd like to see

096some of that too. So, I know that I understand where you're coming from with that, but I don't think it especially at uh the 12:00 hour, it's a good time to sort of start thinking about taking things away and then and and adding more things. So, but I do agree with you on them adding with the tutoring. Um I have a two-part sort of um comment slash uh request. So, um I don't disagree about wanting to see us do more around reading and math. I have a daughter that could benefit from that. Um but I do support the recommendation, you know, from the district mainly because I mean, Miss um Tucker can tell you I called her. I have called her a lot. She probably regrets that I have her number now, but to say,

097you know, what do you think? are, you know, are we making the right choice, you know, because I want to be sure that I'm making good decisions for the district, but not to dismiss the fact that I also think the math and rated intervention pieces are important. And so, Dr. Ross just made the comment that, make no mistake, that there are funds in place for us to be able to do that. And so if I vote um for the budget as y'all are presenting it, I am publicly asking um that um in the next couple of meetings that maybe Miss McCascal we could look at what are some of these reading and math interventions that we could do since we're being told there's money in the budget for them so that we can um um

098meet that need and maybe feel like we're being more effective um in that regard and not just um adding admin positions because whether or not we need them or not for me is not the debate. Um but I can tell you as a parent and then as a person with friends you know who have other who have kids in the district that is something that people have a concern about you know their kids have these concerns and they feel like we are putting money everywhere but those places doesn't matter if it's true you know how that says and so I think it would be nice to be able to have an open conversation about what those resources could look like and how soon could we you know get the get the all move it on

099that. So, I'm asking publicly if you all would be able to do that for us. So, I do plan to do that on July the 21st. That's already planned. Okay. A part of that. Um I have things I could say tonight, but it would not really give you all the details on July 21th. We want to meet if that's amunable. Miss, I know that that doesn't satisfy exactly what you're asking, but um I find myself in a conundrum because in some cases, two things can be true. And so I can support this and also think that what Motto is saying is valid in terms of but I would to um Scott's point like to hear what that would look like and and and get a good path for it. I just also like to say

100that in last uh the last meeting scams presented the workplace climate survey and the second most uh meaningful thing to teachers was administrative support and the second most meaningful area for growth was behavior. Those are two big parts of this and administrators are the ones that do those. So I think this is is very reasonable and in line. So we have an amendment um on the miss I'm sorry. Um, well, first of all, I'd like to say I have been stating since we first saw this slide that I felt like this was way too much administrative. So, this is not the ninth hour. I've been saying this, go back if you don't remember and watch the meetings. This is not new. Um, the other thing, we've got $36,500 in there for fees for athletic supplements.

101How about academic supplements? How about taking this $900,000 because this is ongoing money and hiring teachers and making smaller class sizes for first and second graders so they have a better opportunity to learn to read and do math. If they don't read on grade level by third grade, they're in a lot of trouble. And I just my heart breaks and I can't explain this to people how we're going to increase their taxes. And this is the slide we're going to show them on how we're spending it. And I don't want to banter with Miss I understand everybody's got their own opinions and their passions and their feelings. I understand that. Um my guess is the two administrative positions and Dr. Ross has pointed out those are APIs and when we go to this complete change

102on our feeder system and so that we get back to a true feeder which will be so helpful to all our students it'll be helpful to our teachers and to our students when those middle schools they will require when we add those middle schools they will require those API positions so they they they're not they're not really getting additional uh administrative report uh support excuse me or expenses. Those are those are requirements that an API in a school in a middle school or a high school. That's all they do. They don't help with kids that are being knuckleheads or they don't help with something that happened on the bus or something like that. They are immersed in doing exactly what a lot of us have voiced that we would like to see more of and

103that is more interventions with curriculum. And that's what they try to do. They evaluate teachers. They evaluate all the instruction. they look for opportunities to mix classes or move students. So, it really will be beneficial. So, it's it's not really a waste of money. Just just so you know that. Yeah. I just want to correct the record to point out that we are not increasing taxes. We're not increasing tax rates. If nominal tax dollars increase as a result, it's not because of the school district. It's because of the asset. the value of the asset underlying the the tax is what increased. It's not the school district raising taxes. I'll just be brief. I think what's important is the entire picture. That last slide represented a portion of what we're presenting. This represents the whole. This

104is what you're voting on. uh in terms of the increase, we're being asked to take that small sliver and add it more to the blue. We're not that's not the majority of the budget. That's what's being increased. I think it's important for the public to understand too when we talk about money that we get from the state, what percent of the teacher increase money do we receive out of 100% that we're supposed to get, what actually arrives in school district 5? Maybe 64% you would say. So, we have to make up the difference. Plus, so again, that's the full picture of what we're voting on tonight. That's what the administration pulls. On the 21st of July, we will talk about all that's in that blue that we do, all that's in that red that we

105do to support the reading and math. I don't want the public or anyone to feel that we would put together a budget that does not take care of the academic and needs of our students. But as we sit in the mission, as I said every day, academic, social, emotional needs of our students. We need that small sliver to support those other parts of the mandate. And I will say that with principles, the two principles at chap current shape middle that will be spring middle or whatever the name will be and crossroads. This was their number one budget request was an API to support their transition to the new model. So those are directly from schools. Right. Thank you. Um I appreciate everyone's feedback. So, we have an amendment um to the motion from from Miss

106Huddle. All those in favor? All those opposed? And the motion fails 4 to three. And then um I call a question. And then back to the original motion that's on the floor. Um, back to the original motion that was on the floor um to approve the third and final reading of the budget. All those in favor? Miss, we need to have discussion on that. Oh, go ahead. Okay. Um, we are increasing taxes. Okay. the the state law says you don't get a windfall just because assessments go up 15% which they did for the vast majority of people and businesses you don't get a windfall so you are required to roll your tax rate back and to what it would otherwise be to equalize that Lexington County did that okay so our entire county or h

107you know our school district splits both. But Lexian County did that. What we're asking the public for is to take that roll back, which we were required to do, take 100% of the population growth and the CPI, add it to that, and then take part of what's called look back of something that we could have done for the last three years. And people's taxes will go up. If you own a business, your school taxes will go up. You can say the millage rate's not going up, but the whole point of roll back is that you're supposed to roll them back. So, I just think we need to be transparent with the public. Maybe the rates not going up, but people's taxes will go up. Stay here. I'd also like to point out that we were

108passed down unfunded mandates from the state to raise teacher salaries to increase part of the health care and pay bus drivers. They are giving us less money and asking us to pay more money in those. I don't know how you do both. Miss Tucker, do you have anything you want to add before I call for the vote? Okay, great. All right. So, all of those in favor of the original motion to approve the third and final reading of the budget. All those opposed and the motion carries 4 to three. That moves us to the discussion agenda, the discussion of the procurement examination. Madam Chair, Dr. Ross and members of the board, I would like to welcome Blue Vickory and Will Meredith. They are here from Manley Garvin to present our procurement audit uh for the

109year that ended June 30th, 2024. So to Thank you, Heather and members of the board. Uh again, my name is Luke Vickery. I'm your external uh CPA uh with the firm Manley Garvin. Uh we specialize in school districts, charter schools uh throughout South Carolina. Uh and so in addition to your financial statement audit uh which we issued for June 30, 2024 and have begun planning for the uh June 30, 2025 year uh because of your size, we're required uh to come in and test procurement specifically according to the uh state fiscal authority uh guidelines. They designed these procedures. They asked us to come in and uh give our report or findings on whether things were followed as they should or should not be uh for the year. So again, this is June 1, 2023 through

110June 30, 2024 uh report. Um and so this I will not for the sake of time, I will not read all the procedures that were covered here. Um it is is available online and I believe you have a copy, but it covers things like uh the procurement PE cards and whether the procedures according to the state and internal patrols were followed as they should be. sole source and emergency procurement construction. And so this is an additional testing required outside of the external audit that we conducted for the year in June June 30, 2024. It also has an additional um test that is required by the board where we uh take a list of all your vendors that you paid over $50,000 and take samples of those and test those specifically. So an additional test to

111the additional state fiscal authority testing uh guidelines. Uh and so I will go over some of the exceptions that we found. Uh there were a few um but the first one was that we noted that the Samuel annual semianual plan uh for the minority business enterprise filings it's required to be filed in the 30 days. It was filed on 50 days. So that is an exception to that ruling. Um it was filed but it was filed uh 20 days late there. Uh, additionally, um, there was a few findings related to, uh, the surplus, uh, property. So, disposal of properties. And so, some of the, uh, forms for lost or, uh, disposal property were not on file, uh, just to note that this asset was missing. Um, and so we noted two of those examples and

112one asset where it was replaced, but no disposal form was filled out. Um, so those were technically three findings among surplus property. uh during our uh testing we discussed with Heather and so we think uh because of some transitions and staffing occurred to those uh uh exceptions and that they have procedures in place to prevent that going forward. Um that said, you know, we certainly noted those findings here. Uh we issued our report uh obviously it's a little bit late since June 30, 2024. We issued our report on March uh I believe 25th, 2025. Uh I do apologize that I'm late in uh presenting this uh due to scheduling conflicts. I wasn't able to get here. So, I appreciate your patience. Um, but that said, are there any questions over the procurement audit for the

113year in June 30, 2024 that I can answer at this time? Again, thank you to Heather. Thank you to the board. We appreciate the opportunity to work with district 5 uh and and her team is is absolutely excellent. So, we really appreciate Thank you. I will just say um I will take full responsibility for not getting the minority business report out. That was six days after I started, I thought I need to present it to the board. So, got that for next year. And we have addressed um with our uh our um inventory for this year, we've addressed how to get those forms um completed. So, we won't have any of that moving forward. So, we're doing that currently. So, thank you. That moves us to number 21, discussion of the adoption of updated educational

114structure and redistricting plan for 2026 and 2027. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. We bring this just for discussion. Again, this is the updated educational restructuring and redistricting plan as we discuss with our our community that our parents are driving uh the school choice and we live in a in a different environment now where zoning doesn't matter where determine where students go. Our parent advisory told us it's the experiences the positive educational experiences uh in which our student our parent advisory says is super important to them. We listen to our parent advisory because they give us on the ground information about where we need to move for our students and you can see there's a very different amount of items that our parents want for their children. We don't find where most of parents want the

115same thing. they want want something different, but what they all do want is an experience that meets their child's needs. And uh we're trying to personalize that. When you look at our strategic plan and our vision, um we can map these two. We can actually place these in place of quality experiences identified by our our love strategies and then the quality education identified by the growth strategies. We want all of our schools in school district 5 to be in that high love and high growth. What we're finding is if you map these by the parent feedback as outlined in our strategic plan as well as our academic growth targets in our strategic plan at our middle levels, those are the areas that we need to target. It's the intermediate and middle schools that we target.

116Passing the budget tonight with administrative supports to help us in that transition. It's huge because this is the model that we currently exist in where our middle and intermediate structures are not allowing us to give those parental experiences that that that they're asking for. So moving to a a model that was approved in the referendum, this allows us to pick up a lot of efficiencies uh in terms of training supports making sure that when we do interventions, those interventions are are consistent and able to be supported across the the district. Uh as we started to uh discuss the programs that will go into these middle schools, we to look at ways that uh we could address the splits because uh in a true feeder system you want to eliminate the splits. Right now we have

117two uh at Valentine Elementary School and Crossroads Intermediate or Crossroads Middle. It's our our goal uh where none of the schools are split. So we tried to move H corley into D for middle school to eliminate the crossroad splitting into two different areas. When doing that the size of Dutch for middle school became too large to operate that that school with with that amount of middle school over a thousand. Death for middle school has some complications in terms of expanding that site. If you add a wing, you also have to do core spaces like hallways and cafeterias, restrooms, gyms, and so uh that left us to go back to the original plan where crossroad splits between Dutch Fork and Armo. However, looking at Valentine, preliminary estimates show that uh we can eliminate the splitting of

118Valentine into Ducks Fork and Spring Hill Middle. We have been asked about some data. Uh we'll bring that in terms of what this looks like. Data shows that it works, but we want to show this across all schools. So, we'll have that July 21st meeting but our proposal is to move to this model where only one of the schools split which will be crossroads and Valentine Elementary School would not split. By doing this uh we can create the the programmatic whether it's athletics, arts, academics. This allows those middle schools to reach down into those elementary schools and meet the needs of the students that they have there to for planning. So, we like this with none of the elementary school split, but in this uh resoning that we did, we uh the lines, it's kind

119of like a master schedule for a high school. You can run it as many times, but you're going to have conflicts. And we feel like we have 98% of this correct when we redraw the lines for for this this flow. However, there's one community uh that this really does not or has not worked well with and we've met with them. That's the Salem Church Road area. That area essentially has been reszoned twice. They've been resed out of Valentine Elementary and Middle. If we res the lines, we'll end up having more conflicts that don't work. Uh so with our student services and planning department um and looked at the data and again we'll have more numerical data on the July 21st meeting. Uh but what we want to talk about then we want to give you

120heads up with is two options. Uh one that fits for anyone who is resone which is called preferred choice. choice allows essentially that those parents and guardians to they provide transportation pending the room is available to go back to the school that they were resoneed for. However, in considerations for that s road that has been reszoned twice. I believe that's kind of the line share for that one. Um we through the work of his team has been able to create a program called preferred pathways and this is uh what we would like your approval of. Again, we'll bring back more of the data, but we're chunking this and this is allow not just one school to go back to both of them in the room. So, if they were resoneed out of Valentine and Dut

121Elementary, they can pick their pathway back to both schools with expanding the size of Chapen Elementary and Lake Mary Elementary. We picked up room in Valentine with and so this also allows by not putting Hley all into death for middle school we would have room in middle so this could give those families that were reason so again today is not for for action but just for discussion uh we plan to bring back those detailed numbers for for our next meeting but wanted to before discussion. Are there any questions? Miss Huddle and then Miss Barnhard. Um, you said reszone twice. Have they actually been reszoned or they thought they were, you know what I'm saying? Like those kids are actually still where they were before. Right. So, to clarify, they were uh in their initial resoning

122method here. If you look at this, this shows structure, but it doesn't show lines. So, we're looking at the structure, but let's think about it in lines. The children who were at Valentine in this uh in our current zoning map, they go to C uh they go to Valentine Crossroads and then back to Fort. If we look at it in the new map, they are they're not even in Valentine anymore. Majority of them are in Dutch for River Springs, Old Point and Hart. Now those who are at Dutch Fork, River Springs, and Oak Point, they'll end up going to Dutch Fork. So that's where they initially were going to go for seventh and eighth grade. However, if you look at the ones that were taken out of Valentine and they were resonated to go to

123they were going to spend one year one year in crossroads in the remaining middle school years as I say reszone twice I This plan took them from moving changing one of their original schools to changing two of their original schools. And in followup, are you hearing like from parents who moved especially because of a plan and now they're upset or kind of what are you hearing the concerns that people have? I will uh share what I'm hearing and I'll I'll talk to Dr. Harris to see if there's anything in detail that I've missed, but initially as soon as this this model was uh put in the referendum. We heard right off the bat from four four areas. Uh it was the ferry twin gates and the Valentine arena. Marina Road, AJ, Twin Gates, Twin Gates,

124and and then Salem Church. Those are the four areas we heard from immediately. We were able to resolve with the referendum to to engage Marina Road in and we were not able to resolve the four which was Church Road. And so those are the families we heard from. We always said that Valentine Elementary was the most impacted because we're moving them out of out of a zone. This allowed us to to address those needs of those parents. But that's what I've heard without Harris. Let me give you the floor le I I think you described it well. Uh initially we did hear from all of those neighborhoods and uh once we continue to kind of tweak and um uh this this particular plan then of course reduced it down to the one area which now

125is Salem Church Road where we believe we have an option at least a plan that will allow them to to uh feel far more comfortable with with with the option that's on the table. But I say the second greatest thing to all of that, this is just personal p personal opinion of mine, uh is that it gives this plan gives us a cleaner feeder lines as well as uh a closer to a a balanced enrollment in all of our schools. And I think that's very important for us as a district. That's the only thing I'd add. Just on the transportation um aspect, is that just because it's so few um children that would be maybe taking advantage of this or and if there are quite a few would we be able to provide transportation? It's

126a good question. One one of the things we we would look at is norm in our normal operations of the trans uh transportation Mr. Herald who does transportation is going to run the buses by zone. We operate choice and magnet schools and in our choice and magnet school language it's parents provide transportation just because of the distances that we would run. Um and we would not h have that funding with the state to to their residents to those areas of choice. Um and so like to see if that that works um in our traditional choice and and magnet structure uh due to the location of Salem Church Road and I can't promise this. I know Gary said don't promise too much but um we would like to see if that transportation works before we investigate

127the show. If that does happen I think that's not off the table. So Salem Church Road in the new would go to Hley H Corley. Okay. So with these pathways, if a parent at Salem Church Road wanted their child to go to Valentine because that's where they were, right? They could use this and it would be subject to availability and all that. when they But that only gets them through fifth grade, right? So, what happens after fifth grade? If they go to Valentine, would they then go to Dutch Fork Middle or would they go to Spring Hill Middle? The pathway puts them back to where they were taken out of. So, if they were Valentine and Dutch Folk originally, then that pathway puts them back to where they were origin. So they could stay all

128the way through high school. Right. Okay. Because it doesn't I'm just suggesting a little clarity on the wording. I think it'll get them through if I understand your question, it'll get them through middle school, right? Uh high school may differ though. Okay. just just a suggestion on however it's worded and also I don't know like do parents have to sign something when they do this? Do they have to like when they do magnet or choice, do they sign anything that says, "I understand d." Okay. Because I've had multiple parents call me and say, "I choiced into blank elementary school and then my child didn't get into the middle school." And I don't ever say it, but I think, well, didn't you think about that? But just I just want to make sure that people understand

129if they do this and then they don't come back and get upset because now they can't continue into the high school because it's it it does matter. Their kids have made friends, you know. So yeah, they there and through the magnet and we'll be fairly consistent with with this plan if it is that parents do sign and agree in terms of what they have uh what's been selected. So that is part of that process. Anybody else? All right. Thank you. And that takes us to the discussion of solicitation for supplements. Uh no exhibit or presentation for this matter. Uh we did hear at the budget uh workshop the request to look at our supplements deeply. U we have been working on supplements for over 10 years trying to get this right. Um there are multiple

130areas that we need to look at special duties uh which are your uh co-curricular uh programs and just sometimes just interest like knitting club you know crochet club and then you have athletics you have arts and so we would like professional help we did a salary study a few years back like to do one of supplements um to look to see what other districts are doing where we compare I think it should be done a cycle of five years to be honest with you. Uh so that we can look at this parity but also when it comes to special duties uh our principles have recommended through HR a a model of looking at it by the essential job functions. Um and so and I don't want to pick on a specific club but club A

131at this high school might not be doing exactly at this high school is doing. Um, and so to get par, we would like to have give the principles the ability to have class label supplements based on the job description. So this principal at the middle school can get maybe four class A supplements. So those very high high numbers of students are involved. You're meeting alone time. You're meeting three, four times a week. That supplement should be higher. what the name is then a class B they may only meet twice a month and a class C that doesn't meet as much or doesn't have as many students so we would like to do it by class versus by name and I think we can get a lot more utilities of some new uh clubs uh some

132new opportunities students interests are changing very dynamically and we want to make sure that our schools are in position to take advantage of those interests so uh we'll bring back uh approval, but that's what you would be approving in the solicitation. Do we have any questions initially? M um since we just approved two new HR positions. Is that something that one of those people could do instead of hiring someone else to do this? I think that they're looking at the the current workload that we have uh with with hiring, managing uh the supporting uh I don't know if those two people can manage that or not to be honest with you. There's just so much um that are we're going to talk about whole child, but we really need to start talking about whole staff.

133Our teachers need a lot of support, especially our younger teachers, a lot of mental health, a lot of work issues. We don't public because those records are confidential, but our staff is going through a lot. Um, I would love to have some some extra help so that we can get this right without taking those duties away from our current staff and to get clarification at some point. You're going to ask us for permission to solicit and then it would have to come back before we can correct. Yeah. Your approval to solicit uh make sure you know that the solicitation goes out. Uh, we would bring back respondance to those and make a recommendation for who we would like and that would be subject to more. And how would that be paid for? Where does that

134money come from? So that would come from uh purchase services. Anybody else? I'd like to make a motion to adjurnn. All in favor? Motion carries. Seven to zero.