001Good evening. Can someone make a motion for us to enter into executive session? Make a motion to go into executive session. Second? Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? We will now move into executive session. Thank you very much. And welcome to our April board meeting. We hope everyone had a restful spring break. You're looking forward to these last 5% weeks of school. There was no action taken in our executive session tonight. As we do in all of our board meetings, I will now ask Mr. Len Harris to pray. For our children, for our students, for our staff, administrators, teachers. We always want to follow in the students' questions and deal with each of them and each of them. Follow me with us tonight in the decisions that we make. We'll answer you
002with a fact of these two elementary grade students. We ask this and you're done. Amen. The minutes to the March 2nd, 2026 board meeting prior to this meeting. Are there any changes or corrections to the March board meeting minutes? Hearing no changes, the minutes are approved by acclamation. The March invoices were sent to us prior to tonight's board meeting. Are there any questions regarding the March 2026 invoices? Hearing no questions, do I have a motion to approve the March 2026 invoices? Do I have a second? I'll approve, say aye. Any objections? Hearing none, the March invoices stand approved. At this time, I'd like to turn the meeting over to our superintendent, Dr. Ken Heiser. Thank you Madam Chairman. This is the most enjoyable part of our board meetings. At this time, we're going to recognize
003some very special guests as champions for your accomplishments. So I'm going to ask John Steyer, if he would, to please step up. And Madam Chairman, he'll join me up front with some social learning visions for the students at that great conference this year. Good evening. Excited to be here tonight. I've got some more state champions to recognize. Our first one, our first group will be our dormant strength state champions. On November 8, 2025, dormant participated in the girls state strength championships at Lexington High School. The team had six different girls, finishing the top four in their weight class, including two state champions. Our first one is Michaela Moore. Michaela is unfortunately unable to be here tonight, but she performed exceptionally well in her weight class, taking home the state championship. This was her first ever
004competition, and she broke the weight class state records for squat, bench, and total weight. She didn't name them a little bit, but she squatted 280 pounds, benched 145 pounds for a total of 425. At dormant, she is by far the lightest weight athlete in the girls 600 pound club, when you include her power weight of 165 pounds, Michaela has a total, sorry, her power weight of 165 pounds, her total is 605. Our next state champion we'd like to recognize is Reggie Mayne, Reggie Crocker, Reggie Comeong, the one through the front. Reggie also won a state championship in her weight class. Her performance was highlighted by a 270 pound squat and a 135 pound bench press. Our coaching staff remarks that Reggie loves the weight room and always approaches training with great effort and intent, Reggie
005Crocker. The boys competed in March, so on March 21st, Nathan Choi, an adored boy strength team, also traveled to the boys' state strength championship. Choi not only won his weight class, but also set a new record with his 645 pound squat. Choi has established himself as one of the most dominant lifters in the program's history. He's the first athlete at dormant to achieve the 1300 pound combined total across bench, bench press, squat, and power weight. Nathan Choi. I'd also like to recognize our coaches that have worked with these athletes. Our first coach is Lily Solsky and our head strength coach Eric Hatch. Eric Hatch. That is an outstanding accomplishment. I just wanted to say thank you, Susan. I know what's happening. He was one of the best squat lifts I've ever had. But I know
006about all this. You've got to be quiet. You've got to be this one. It's a lot of reps, a lot of training. You've got to have a lot of technique. You've got to have somebody to motivate you. Y'all will play chili. It's been my favorite thing. I want to be very proud of y'all because once you've accomplished and set the records, it's not just win a state championship. Once you've set the record, I encourage you to maintain that. Keep up the rhythm. Help with the fitness. That's what it says in the book. Happy lives. Good luck to you. Thank you so much. And coaches, thank you. We'll jump in. I'm waiting for everyone. Yeah, go ahead. Get your friends pulled up here with Cody. You can let them slip a little bit. We brought our
007friends. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, folks. Thank you for the opportunity to look at all of those outstanding accomplishments. We're very proud of y'all. One more big round of applause for our friends. Also tonight, we recognize our Lady Cavalier volleyball team. They're used to being here. They got this set point. They're here to be here every year. Our Lady Cavalier volleyball team entering the season is back-to-back defending state champions. Returning an immense amount of talent, including the 2024 SC Gatorade Player of the Year, Reese Sugar. Expectations for high entering the season. As always, the girls test themselves against some of the best competition in the country. In addition to a challenging regular season schedule, they battle the best teams in the southeast and they swat at the North-South Invitational, the Louisville Invitational
008Volleyball Tournament, and the Norman Tournament of Champions. In Region 2-5A, the Lady Cavaliers dominated and finished the season with an undefeated record. Brace America, Ketsey Hang, and Maggie Healy earned all reach honors. Ramsey Larchette-Stane earned all region and all state. And Reese Sugar was named Region Player of the Year, 5A Co-Player of the Year, and South Carolina Gatorade Player of the Year. The team continued their dominant play into the postseason. After earning a bye to begin the playoffs, the Cavaliers powered past Rock Hill, Alden, and Moorland Springs to set up a matchup with River Bluff in the 5A Division I State Championship. Also on November 8th, the Girls' Strength State Championship, the Lady Cavaliers trekked to Trier High School to face the River Bluff Gators. It was a whole house with a hostile crowd from
009River Bluff that was confident they could knock off the Cavaliers. In the sauna of the Trier Gymnasium, a state championship classic unfolded. River Bluff took the opening set 28-26. Norman answered back with a 25-23 win in the second set. River Bluff took the third set 25-13 and was just one away from the tie line. Norman batted back in the fourth set to win 25-21 and set up a winner-take-all fifth set. After an early River Bluff lead, Norman took control and a spike from Maggie Helle sealed the victory for a third straight state championship. It is Norman's 17th Girls' Volleyball State Championship. At this time, we're going to introduce the players, coaches, and support staff of the 2025 Bombay State Champion Girls' Volleyball Team. Please step forward to receive your gift from Dr. Kauser and the
010school board when your name is called. Let's start with our freshmen, Nellie America, Barbara Flynn. Moving to our thought boards is Lila Davis and Sydney Fox. Our juniors, Kesley Caldwell, she was unable to be here this evening. Ashley Farley is Ashley. Ashley was also unable to join us as well as Camille Griffin. But Kenzie Hay is here to represent. Heidi Sunder was also unable to be here this evening. Grace America, these are senior class. Grandfee Mark Castain, Kenfee Mahan, Tyga Russo, and Shelton E. Zolka. Of course, Rhys Shugart could not be here this evening. She is enrolled early at college. She's at Auburn right now. Our managers, Abby Pat was unable to make it this evening, but we have Kendall Doberbank. Our coaches and support staff, Sheila Romano. I think Ms. Ames or Kristen Brown
011were able to be here. Ellen Ames and Kristen Brown were able to make it. Erin America, Natalie Boyd, and Paula Turner. Now, Coach Pierre mentioned this, 17 state championships. That means you've always got a full night. I know we talked about the season. I'll just say this, being a big state championship game, people went on. If y'all didn't have your A game to start, and something ain't started, it's how you finished. Somehow, with all the craziness and all the fans, to me, that was an integrity win. Because you found a way in the middle of the storm to say, you know what? This is our championship. This is our dynasty. This is our moment. We're not going to let you break right in front of us. And to see how y'all reacted after being down,
012come back and win that championship, says a lot about your character, your integrity, all the work that you put in. It just happened in that last 30 minutes of that competition. That happened all the time, all the training, all the time that you put in. The practice and the competition. It was absolutely remarkable to see y'all go and win that 17 state championship. And it's not just state championships. What you see from these ladies, first-class academics, character, integrity, how you carry yourself, how you support each other. What being a team is, it means that it's not just about you. It's about everybody else. And what y'all represent is a true team concept where you are there to support each other. You've got your strengths. You've got your weaknesses. But when you work together, you can
013overcome any of this. Thank y'all so much, not just for winning the state championship, but for how y'all represent Norman High School and our district. We're very proud of y'all. Very proud of the volleyball program. And congratulations to the 17-time Norman High School volleyball state champions. Great job. Great accomplishment. Thank you. All right. So did you say anything? First of all, we certainly do appreciate the opportunity to come here and be here and share in this moment. And y'all recognized me for all of their hard work. You summed it up well. They were the affinity of the team. From the youngest player to the oldest player, they were having to reach back all year long. And whether they stepped foot on the floor or not, their contribution was as much recognized and appreciated as the
014players that played all the time, all three rotations. But I do want to send you to take a step out. Three state championships in a row. As you can see, we are right there. And girls, I'm so terribly proud of you because that's hard. That's hard to do. And like you said, you had us. The women always have a card on their back anyway, but especially these last three years, it's been on your back and you have asked for it every single time. I just want you to know, I'm very proud of all of you. And they're going to miss you so very much. Coaches, would you take a step out, please? You two step in. I get all the credit. But let me tell you, it doesn't work. Those ladies down there, okay, they
015do so much behind the scenes during practice, during games, during the school day that contributes to our success. And, you know, I said, I get all the credit. Thank you all for it. I wish you really didn't have much. I appreciate it. What you girls did. And I love each and every one of you. You made them all of you. I'm so proud of you. This is what you did. And all three of them, former players, that makes it even better. That's it. We're going to have about the same program. I'm going to get you to stay up here with me. I've got to share some of the games with you. In other words, you had these switchers made that you gave out. Going back, it says what? Say what? Champions, right? Champions. A lot
016of times when we talk about champions, we talk about winning. And it is. But you know, there's a different definition of a champion. And that means that you fight for a cause. A champion, a cause. It means you've got a purpose. And let me tell you something about Paula Kirkland here that most of y'all know this. She has been at Northern High School for 45 years. And in 45 years, we have won 35 championships 35 of the 45 won the region championship. 17 times we've won safety championships. In addition to that, you're right. Phenomenal staff, phenomenal players, the nucleus starts at the top. And you've been running this program for 45 years. And along the way, she has picked up three South Carolina Athletic Coach Association Coach of the Year honors. She picked up a
017national federation of high schools, Coach of the Year honor. She's been inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame. She's been inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame. And before all that, when she just came out of high school, she was recruited to Anderson Junior College. You may not know this, but as a freshman, he'll lead her team to a national championship. This is as a player. She was a national championship, you can call her a basketball player. And she's done all that for years with humility, but Coach did that because she championed the cause. The cause was not just to win championships in the middle of the program, but to do it the right way. All these years I've worked with you, what these young ladies represent, I've seen it year after
018year, group after group, coach after coach, with everything going the right way. We've got a few examples of what a coach and a program should do. And what I like to do is just got a few pictures through the years, I'm trying to say a picture worth a picture worth a thousand words. So I've got about 30,000 words for you. First of all to you, I've certainly not been home and always had a great meal. Do you think that 900 will be on the rise here next? That's a good question. I mean, you can count that. And then when she's in the room, you count and then he knows what happened after that high. And then you have 1,153 big sacks. That's what came out of that. But I'm going to tell you what I
019do tonight, because again, you represent everything that we should be about in District 6, or in high school, and athletic programs. And that is not just winning, you certainly do, but it's simply being with young people and preparing them for life. Life is full of challenges. If you understand how to overcome challenges, you're going to be successful. There's no way to represent how much you mean to this district. At this time, I would like to recommend the Board of Trustees that we name the arena in Northern High School all of Portland Arena. What she said, she said, well, what if they say no? Well, again, of course, for us, the whole neighborhood, because there's so many thousands of young people that we just hit with. We've grown up to be men and women in this
020community, but it's not just people and teams. The people we work with are here. I know when I was pregnant, they're almost probably in this town here. So the Board of Trustees tonight, I'd like to recommend that we move forward with the name of Paula Kirkland Arena in Northern High School. If the Board approves it tonight, we will move forward with a ceremony this fall at a volleyball game to make sure that we put that official and name the arena. Madam Chair, that's my recommendation. You've heard the recommendation from administration to name the arena at Dorman High School, the Paula Kirkland Arena. Do I have a motion to approve this recommendation? Make a motion. Thank you. Do I have a second? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Say no. The recommendation is approved to
021name the arena at Dorman High School, the Paula Kirkland Arena. I'm so proud of you. And I want to ask her, her family, I want to ask her family to stand because of the sacrifice that she's gotten on a lot of y'all here tonight. Please stand. And I want to thank the whole Kirkland family for all of your support over the years. I know it's fun watching the International Championship, and I know it's fun also watching the influence she's got. So thank you to her family. Thank you, Paula. Very proud of you. If you want to say something, you can, but I look forward to going to the many more volleyball games all over the world. I want to say an Oprah thank you. You guys are a lot in my heart. Y'all win massive
022premieres in the last 20, 50 years and I appreciate it. And I'm going to be trying to check my karma because I'm doing plenty of work right now. I'm going to be so happy. I'm going to be so happy. I'm going to be so happy. I'm going to be so happy. Anyway, terribly honored. And I don't know how I will ever repay you except if you try to represent our community and our school in the right light. You mentioned my family. My family's always been supportive. Always been supportive, but I got to tell you, my Norman family's always been supportive too. And my second family. And girls, you're a part of my family for the rest of my life, so we'd like you to know that. And you'll never be forgotten. And parents, please, players,
023and y'all can be in here for years to come. We'd be here for years. But thank you. I don't know what to say. Thank you. One day when y'all come back down the road, you're down the road with your families, we'll be saying to Norman, I'll play with you later. That completes my super-general. Thank you to Hollis family for being here tonight and to the parents of these champions. They certainly are not champions without very good parents. We stand behind them. So we congratulate you as well. I don't know a better example. The D6 family. And it's sitting here in this room tonight. Paula Kirkland has been the epitome of D6 and D6 family for 45 years. Congratulations, Paula. At this time, we will transition to the business part of the meeting. We would love
024for all of you to stay. We'd love to hear about policy and instruction and finance. If you would not, then you can take a quick break and we look forward to seeing you all continue to be champions. I'm very excited. The next item on the agenda is policy. We've got a event on. Good evening, Madam Chair and Board of Trustees. I'm here tonight to present three policies that need to be mandated. In our last board meeting, we had a first reading of all three of these policies. And I will go through them individually tonight and say a little bit about the last one. The first policy, and you have this in your notebook, is Board Policy GCV, Certified Personnel Compensation Guide as their contracts. This is going to rescind Board Policy GVA. GVA was our
025formal policy, but it did not include any salary notification for a certified teacher to be part of their contract. So this policy will bring us into compliance with the Educator Assistive Act that was passed earlier last year. And specifically, I'd like to highlight in the section, Slenderman Contracts. It says, upon recommendation of the superintendent that one will notify teachers in writing of their appointed status before May 1st of each year. This includes both the issuance of employment contracts and notice of recommendations of the superintendent after the appointed contracts. The notice will include the projected salary schedule issued from the school year, and then upon completion of the state and local appropriations, teachers will be provided a final salary schedule. The teachers who are re-employed must determine the attendance of the primary practice of the superintendent
026before May 11th of each year. So that's the change there that we are making the notice of the salary that rejected the salary when we issued contracts The final salary notice will be given once the budget has been approved. If there are any questions about work policy G-C-D certified personnel compensation guidance. If there are no questions, Madam Chair, the administration can ask for approval for PCV and rescinding G-E-A. Do you defer the recommendation from the administration to adopt work policy G-C-D rescinding work policy G-E-A? Do I have a motion to approve work policy G-C-D certified personnel compensation guidance and contracts as amended? Second? All in favor? Opposed? Stands approved. Our second policy is work policy G-C-A This is rescinding work policy G-C-A Policy G-C-A that's being rescinded was originally just for non-certified personnel for staff
027compensation. The new policy G-C-A is for between both professional staff and support staff. Just quickly of the professional staff that compensation for certified professional staff is determined in accordance with work policy G-C-D, the one just approved. In addition, the support staff and compensation of all non-certified support staff will be based on salary schedules for hourly rates set by the superintendent within the operational budget approved by the court. Such compensation will be set by the superintendent according to responsibility of the position, services rendered, evaluation of performance, use of service, provisions of the district's operational budget, and any applicable state and federal laws. The effective day will change for such compensation if you read the law first. So this is basically for both of those for professional and non-certified support staff under one policy. The administration seeks
028approval if there are no questions. Are there any questions? Madam Chairman, we would like approval to award policy G-B-C-A. Do you defer the recommendation from administration to adopt board policy G-B-C-A for sending board policy G-C-A? Do I have a motion to approve board policy G-B-C-A staff compensation? I move. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? It stands approved. Thank you. The last policy we seek approval for this evening is professional staff assignments and transfers. That is policy G-C-A. This will be rescinding policies G-B-E and G-B-M. Those two formal policies, one G-B-E focused on staff assignments, second G-B-M focused on staff transfers. We are bringing those under one policy with G-C-K. Specifically, this also brings us into compliance with the Educator Assistance Act, some language that we needed to include there about staff
029assignments. Any staff assignments, teachers must have a notification within 13 days of students starting. You can buy that language in the assignment section of that policy. The superintendent will assign the structural staff on the basis of qualifications, the needs of the district and staff members' expressed desires. He or she cannot meet all of the conditions the superintendent will assign staff in his work. First, in accordance with the needs of the district and its students. Second, where the administration believes each staff member is most qualified to serve. And thirdly, at the express preference of the staff members. The superintendent will annually determine the professional staff to be assigned to each school and note that within 14 days before students are scheduled to return to school, superintendent will notify each staff member of the tentative assignment for
030the following year. In the transfer section, you will notice that there is a language there that states that we will notify in the event that a teacher has to be transferred from one school to another, that we will give them at least a five-day notice unless there is an emergency situation. You can find that in the transfer section. Are there any questions about policy GCK? Alright, Madam Chairman, the administration seeks approval of professional staff assignments and transfer policy GCK. You have heard the recommendation from the administration to adopt work policy GCK. Send the work policies GBE and GBM. I have a motion to approve work policy GCK professional staff assignments and transfers. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Opposed? It stands approved. Thank you. I can put this in our report. Thank you,
031Dr. Bollinger. Next on our agenda is Instruction with Ms. Renee Lang. Good evening, Madam Chairman, board members, and Dr. Heiser. I'm excited to be here tonight to report out on a few new programs that we have at the high school as well as we are seeking approval on some local board approved course rules. And we have one test that we need your approval on at the end. So, in your packet, you were provided a copy of our 2006-2007 course guide. That seems like a lot. We're paying $2,000 to have a senior next year, so make sure that I do this. This is also published on our website. As we go through the years, sometimes there are a few minor changes. The one on the website is always the most up-to-date copy, and then we have
032the paper copies that we provide to new students. We have a few new program highlights that I wanted to mention that the high school has been working on. Two of them are some brand new partnerships with some local colleges in our new enrollment program. The first one is a partnership with Lander University. This is the first time that we have been able to offer a new involvement course through Lander. And we are going to actually have a professor from Lander that is assigned to Norman full-time. She will be with us all day long teaching Psychology 201. We'll have about 150 students that will be able to take advantage of that course. And for all intents and purposes, even though she's a Lander professor, she is going to be part of the Norman faculty. So her
033plans are to work with Norman students, hold office hours at Norman, and everything that she does will be on campus. So this is the first partnership of this kind that we have had and we're very excited about for the fall. She has been hired by Carla Tiorella and she will be joining us in the new teacher orientation in all of us. The second partnership is with USC Upstate. We are actually offering the first course in their School of Nursing. And that is Human Anatomy and Physiology or Biology 243. So these students have met the prerequisites of either Anatomy and Physiology honors or the Evil Enrollment Biology 110. And they have actually been accepted into this course. And this is something that they can do prior to entering the School of Nursing at USC Upstate. That's
034the partnership with their dean and their president to allow us to do that. So I wanted to mention both of those because they are new but we're very excited about them. We also have a few new courses that we're going to be offering. Some of them are courses we've offered in the past that we are resurrecting and some of them are brand new. On one side you'll see the dorming courses. We are bringing back all education honors. And that is going to be paired with personal finance honors. Originally you're not allowed to have that course. It wasn't a state code that went with it. They have provided that for us. So those two courses are not those courses that are here together. And those are for our honors students. Personal finance is a graduation requirement.
035So starting in the class of 2027 every student in the state is required to have a personal finance as a graduation requirement. We also have in college this year a US History class for our multi-language learners. One of our ML teachers who is dual certified. So she is teaching US History and using some ML strategies to help our children students in that course and that really difficult US History USC that they have to take. So we will continue with that. And then we are bringing back Landship Norman, which is our student council class. And we have it moving a while. But the kids have asked for it. The kids ask for things we try to get it for. Especially when it comes to student government, which is something that is coming out of COVID. It's
036just the last few years. So we are bringing back Landship Norman. On the RDN sign and we are going to offer drone technology. That will come with the certification from the FAA for drones. They are including EMS 3. So they now have enough students who have come from Planet 2. They have to be 18 to take that class because it does come with the first certification for EMS. And that is partnered with our new general enrollment for RD is our principal management class, management 101. And then they are continuing their virtual enterprise program with the third and fourth level. So those are the new courses that have state approved course codes with them that we will be offering next year at Norman and at RDA. We have to every year seek approval to continue using
037the local board approved course codes that we have been using. So this is a listing of the courses that we currently have approved. And we need another year of approval in order to continue using these courses. All of these are courses that have been tall in the past. And they include our mixed video art, our IK high skill class, video literacy, our PES classes, and of course our STEM foundations and STEM research. In addition to these, we are seeking approval for local board course codes for three brand new courses. These have already been approved through the state. We just need to report approval in order to include them. The first one is an essentials of finance class, which would be for our occupational and provincial students. That is like personal finance, but for our students.
038The second one is a full unit creative writing course. Right now that course is happening and we would like to call it a full semester class. And the third one is our work-based learning. Right now, work-based learning is attached to a C team. We need a work-based learning course for all of the kids that are doing work-based learning that doesn't fall into one of those C team halfway umbrellas. So the state has provided those two codes, but if their work-based learning experience is not in one of the areas that they have provided us, we need to catch also that those kids can get a full Carnegie unit elected for what they are doing. That is 60 hours inside their work-based learning. So it's quite difficult to complete that course and we want to make sure
039that we have something that we can give them as an elective credit for that. Are there any questions about any of the new programs or the local board course code that you're seeking out? If not, Madam Chairman, we are requesting approval for continued use of local board approved courses, including Essentials of Finance, Creative Writing, and the Non-CTE Work-Based Learning course for the 26-27th school year. Administration is requesting more approval for continued use of local board approved courses, including Essentials of Finance, Creative Writing, and the Non-CTE Work-Based Learning course for the 2026-2027 school year. Do I have a motion to approve this recommendation? So moved. Do I have a second? Thank you. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The recommendation is approved. And one more quick one. Our AP computer science teachers would like
040to adopt a new textbook. This is actually a textbook in an online program. And it is through CodeHS, which is actually endorsed by AP and College Board and is on the state list for this course. So, we are requesting more approval for the adoption of AP computer science principles through CodeHS for Norman High School's AP Science course for the 26-27th school year. Administration is requesting more approval for the adoption of AP computer science principles, CodeHS for Norman High School's AP computer science course for the 26-27th school year. Do I have a motion to approve this recommendation? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The recommendation is approved. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Lane. Ms. Lane, just wanted to thank you and acknowledge all the work you
041did, especially with the universities. On-site enrollment, full-time teacher and office hours, psychology provides a lot of opportunities for kids. Those early nursing program classes, I know you've been in multiple meetings at USC Upstate, so those kids who started on that career pathway, the work-based learning, a non-CTE, all those are examples of you going out searching for examples and leading the way on them. I just want to thank you for your work on our secondary programs at Norman and R&D. You look phenomenal to all of that. And those are just two examples of opportunities that kids are going to have because of your commitment. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next on the agenda is science, Dr. Davis. Chair, Board of Trustees, good evening. We'll continue our budget discussion. Our last meeting, we talked about the
042state budget, the governor's budget, and the House budget. We do have a little bit more information to buy in, plus we have more information on how they impact our lives. So, first thing we'll start with is the latest projection for state revenue. And I think this is important to understand what we are as far as state revenue. This actually was a report done by the Board of Economic Advisors for the state, March 26. And one of the things that we're going to see here is if you look at February, one of the things that you see a spike is foreign revenues. And what they're saying is because of the influx of tax return. That's why that actual number went up actually increased here. But you'll also see a decline here after those or projections applied
043here once those tax returns were filed all the way down to June. And so what we're expecting there is probably what will happen since we'll get this budget and we'll see a decline in revenue. And how that impacts us, we don't know. Is there enough money to sustain what the House did? Yes. But we do expect some departments can take reduction as far as their budget. Could be Department of Education, could be roads and bridges, we don't know yet. But we are expecting a decline as far as revenue projection. The big thing is our budget is concerned is of course teacher salaries. Of course Governor's budget, House budget included $2,000 per teacher. The Senate version actually went from $2,000 per teacher all of a sudden. The cost of that for our district is $2.2 million.
044We discussed that of course with other districts of Auburn County because we have to keep our salary schedule alive. We all agree that the $2,000 is where we want to land as far as teacher salary increases next year. This is our challenge. I spoke with some existing principals for spring break and this is what I explained to them. This is what needs to be communicated to our delegation. Remember the $2.6 million teacher salary is on them. That's our increase to $2,000 which the state recommended. We're getting right now based on the cost for $2.4 million in the state-aided classroom. They actually reduce our health insurance line item by 1.9 million. So you just take those two line item figures. That's only a half million off increase to them. That's the message to our delegation about
045the public education budget. Mandating increase to $2.6 million in teacher salary. We're not talking about transports, administration, custodians, bus drivers. We're only talking to $2.6 million and we're only getting $500,000 in the vision revenue. Now what they did is okay, we know that number is low. We're going to cut our rear center budgets. We're going to give that to student districts. So they gave student districts 1.3 billion from us to answer our budget. Now our delegation now is going to have some challenges because they did cut their career technology fund. So we're still even told if you add the career technology we're only talking about $1.7 million increase in state revenue for next school year. That's a challenge for our budget. So I'm going to list the state mandated increases, things we have to do
046as far as the school district. Increase in health insurance $800,000, retirement $2.1 million, teacher salary increase $970,000, $2.2 million here for teacher salary increase, social security $580,000, total of $6.7 million we're adding to our budget. And you see what we're getting in state revenue. That is a big variance that we were dealing with. It's not just us. It's issues across Barbara County about this gap in revenue. So right now, just from the state mandated increase, we're looking at a shortfall of about $5. And I think we talked about this years ago. All this will do is compress on our local tax. That's what will happen. Or, each district will have significant cuts to their budget. One of the things that, again, going through our budget process, that we know some things that we need to
047consider is when we presented this in our last meeting. Early childhood, expanded administrators, mid-classrooms, those things are going to happen. Our numbers are going to increase so that we know some of those things that we're going to have to do. Some of the things in elementary school, you have this list of requests that we had. Little schools, high school, you said common things, special education, district office, bank notes. These are some of the things we're going to have to consider in our budget and try to figure out can we include those in our 26-27 budget. Here are some of the assumptions that we're using to start building the budget. General fund salaries, of course, are $2,000, 2.2 million. Experience increase, $9.82. Based on that, Farmer County usually, for all of their employees, give what is
048an average cheaper salary increase to other employees. That's about 3%. That's what we're looking at for all positions outside of teachers is 3.8%. Bus driver scale is $19.80, we're also extending all other scales 30 years. This is something just to be comparable to our other districts. We've been at 28 since I paid you. We are going to move those to 30 years. Most of the Farmer County districts, all their other scales are in 30 years. So that just really matches what they're doing. Now, new general fund positions. These are not necessarily new positions that expire. These are positions that we've had in federal programs that now we have to move over to our general fund because there's no revenue in February. This actually, some of this goes back to our COVID dollars. We've spent all
049our COVID dollars and now we have to move all these positions over to our general fund. We have 17 positions special education for moving over to general fund next year. That's a lot of positions. Nine positions for Title I, classroom teachers moving to general fund, and three custodians moving over to general fund. So that's a total of their 29 positions that we're moving over. These are, again, not new positions. We're just moving funding for those positions. Benefits health insurance. Again, there's no increase in health insurance, but this will be a full year at the new rate. We do have an increase in our federal 1% increase in retirement. All of that's actually included in our assumption so far. Contractual desk of the course right now we changed to ESS last year. We are tackling that
050cost to ESS. There is a slight difference that we're looking at that could be about $400 as far as the new costs for substitutes. School account adjustments, we adjust all student accounts by CBI, so we don't have structural software. That number is increasing. Cost of software is increasing, so we are including that in. Operations and maintenance. Insurance will not stop going up. Buildings and maintenance, utilities, all these things we have included in our budget adjustments. We do that a couple of ways. We look at historical trends. We'll look at requests for a particular line item. We're also looking at projected expenses based on what they're spending this year. So we'll look at a couple of things to try to determine what that new budget amount should be. Of course, we took a very clear look
051at the parking two years ago. That two-inch number will be reflected in those adjustments. Parking tells a satellite class. One of the things we're looking at too is spending contracts are causing the main shortage of building and speech teachers. We're looking at a way to how can we work ahead and contract. I can tell you, Dr. Edgar, talked about this. Some of those speech contracts are one teacher can go on to $100,000. That is, you can actually get two teachers that we hire ourselves. So we're looking at some things trying to cap when we pay for a contract. We're putting out a new RFP this week that we're going to hopefully get some response to. What happens when a company gets chartered or excuse me. One thing that we'll do is we'll drive the teachers
052that we hire to these contracts. That is one of the things we're looking at. Over time, of course, we're already looking at school resource officer security. We're adjusting that based upon what the county is actually doing for those SROs. You have in your packets the complete listing of all of our non-teacher line items. It shows the variation between last year's budget to this year's budget to have a time to miss a meeting. So if you look at it, you can see where there was any variance to it. The biggest thing here is 312, which is a structural improvement. There is an increase there primarily because we are starting to budget more. Prior to this, this was all done in special revenue funds or other programs. So we're moving that all to general fund. So you'll
053see a lot of differences as far as school budget amounts for investment development. They use this for sub to student services. Part of the student services line item, the variation is some of those speech contracts. We find those from IDEA and we use our general fund to serve some of those speech contracts. So you see some variations for speech services here, student services here. Water, utilities, and again, this is something, utilities we adjust based on usage every year. So you'll see those variations likely on the water side. We see mostly decreases as far as foot. For our 9223 is our repair and maintenance. Just highlighted some of the increases again. Our maintenance staff, they're working and again, the budget increases the more work they do. And so we're actually adjusting this based upon some of
054their requests and some of the actual work they've done for this new year. Communication, most of these are our communication system within the district and we're adjusting that based upon what we're spending there. Athletic insurance, you see that's an increase of $5,000. So again, just pointing out some of the highlighted areas are the most increases that we have in our budget. The school resource officers, this is a general problem this current year from $119,000 to $100,000 in most cases. Again, this is based upon what the county's actually billing us for. So we did adjust that down in our budget. Water maintenance, I can see here on supplies and that's based upon actual expenditures. Technology, this is something, again, no control of this, but the cost of software, Microsoft, Google, that is increasing. And so we
055did reflect that in this year's budget. Also our instructional software is increasing the cost. And so we did include that and you said that's $5,000 from a prior year. But we did have to include that in our assumptions in our budget. And again, that's how the usage can increase in our utility costs. So again, though all those things are included in our budget, an increase in line items and two salary increases, this is challenging the budget this year. I will tell you that I think that we will have to balance this budget or get close to balancing. My concern is our expenditure growth is exceeding our revenue growth. And that's the cause of what the state is doing to our budget. But our challenge as a school district will be once we start opening up
056these new schools, it's how we fund those positions. And that's something we need to start thinking about way before we open up those schools. And so that will be part of the discussion not this new year, but definitely next new year, is having a plan on how we fund those positions in those new schools. Considering that the state does not fund us opening up new schools, that funding formula does not face better fund the number of teachers that we have in the school district. So that's something we'll discuss. But as far as the summary of our budget, our last year's budget was $165 million. Right now we're looking at $12 million in the distance family. So we're looking at $168 million as far as I work. But our revenues right now is going to be
057$181 million for what we know so far. So that's what we're looking at. There are a couple of things I can say. We have not finalized the student information on Title I and Title II. We used Title I last year for class size positions. We plan to do that for the next new year. Title II used class size positions. IDM, how much of this can we step up with IDM? Carpenter tells a quick request. One of the things we talk about as a student is that a lot of these positions are sped up. Carpenter tells us we should be careful with those positions. So we're raising those questions. How much of these classrooms can we park on the table? So we're sending a lot of these students to the process of standing on a cart
058and on some of these classes also. We're looking at wellness center, food service. Can we do anything different? Our wellness center is pretty expensive to do. I mean they can be $600,000 a year for our wellness center. What can we do differently? To still provide that service, maybe that's open it up three days a week instead of five days a week, cut in hours, those kinds of things. We're having that discussion with Dr. Skinner. Food service, looking at our form. We modify and still make it something that's beneficial to our experience. So we're looking at this from this point forward. We'll be looking at all items. Trying to balance the $6.9 million. I think we can get close. I'm hoping the Senate and their wisdom understanding that you're already funding students. And we'll make that
059communication and also that first page shows you what we're getting from the state versus what our student salary is. That explains to people what's happening as far as our students. So right now the full Senate debate is expected to be the 21st and 30th Congress Committee the 12th and 14th. Again, this is what's hard with our state budget now. It used to be the House got the budget, the Senate would add money to it. It was pretty routine every year. Now the House and Senate you never know. It's really a tug of war between the two chambers about the budget. But they have to pay 14 to get the budget finalized. On the expenditure side we look at salaries and benefits still. What can we do with some of these federal programs? Look at recommendations
060from our budget meetings. What can we still include? I mean, can we use some federal programs for some of these recommendations? Force assessment collection rate. Being a little number we don't have that yet. Working under the cap. State aid classroom. Will the state actually provide more as far as state aid classroom? I think so. Once the Senate actually makes their... Hopefully we have some one-time revenue too also. I know last year's budget talked about one-time revenue. We get to use about three million dollars in one-time revenue. Hopefully we can when we get into the month eight or early day, we'll have some one-time revenue we can actually include in this budget also. That carries you of course. I know our counterparts across the state, that's what we're all in. How much one-time money we have.
061Hopefully we'll have some one-time money that we did not spend for this fiscal year. We'll have money to use for our budget for 2016. Can I ask you any questions? I'll move to the next item. The next item on your agenda is the resolution force. We did have a referendum that didn't pass at 87% and we do do a resolution for bondage. A little bit different this year because the 395 is approved in the referendum, we have to take an extra step. And that extra step is this resolution has to be filed this time. That's something we don't have to do. But because again the 395 was approved, we have to have a different step in actually doing this. So this resolution that you have in front of you actually pervading, requiring the results of
062the referendum, authorizing the issuance of the 395 million aggregate principal amount of general obligation bond and other related matters. Can we ask you any questions? This is very similar to the you've approved general obligation bond in the prior years. But this is in the resolution. The administration recommends the approval of the resolution requiring the results of the referendum, authorizing the issuance of the 395 million aggregate principal amount of general obligation bonds and other related matters. Do I have a motion to approve this recommendation? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it is approved. Madam Chair and Board of Trustees, now we have the money on this side, the next surface side. We can go ahead and start discussing our plan of student district of course, the
063resolution outlining the projects that we have and the opportunity is here to discuss those projects. So we can go ahead and start actually having some discussion on those until we move forward. 87.5 percent approval. The round is up there. Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the Board, I appreciate the opportunity to come in and share with you guys where we are exactly under this really exciting time of the district. This is a huge step and I guess we're really excited to be here. So this is new ground for me. But what I want to do is give you a big picture overview of where we are in terms of time. So the bond referendum covers nine projects, six positions, innovations, three new business. I will break my discussion. Over the last number of months, we
064have met in each of the different schools. We've talked with the end users, we've had the principals, we've had feedback, we've modified designs, we've gone back and forth. So we've got a really good start where we are right now. In terms of moving forward with the contractor, the district has an RFQ out on the street right now for more soon to respond. So that process is ongoing, I believe it's due by the end of the month. So we're working towards that. So we are making progress on each of these projects. So here we are again, we've got six, we're touching elementary schools, middle schools, Franklin and campus, a whole swath across the whole district. So let's start with Anderson Mill Elementary. Anderson Mill, we're looking at two additions. We're adding on to the K 12
065side, located here. We're adding on to the 345, which is here. Again, we've met with the principal, we've met in school, we've identified the number of classrooms that we've provided, and we've identified additional resource spaces, state classrooms, and all of that. So that's all represented in these areas. At the same time, when we're adding additional student capacity, we've got to add additional staffing capacity. So in some fashion, we will also be adding on our part right here for students to go on top. This also means that we've got to look at relocating playgrounds. So the playgrounds here are very important to come to school. These additions are kind of approaching all that, so we've made a work room exactly where you would relocate to. So I think we've agreed on an area here, an area
066here, and new auditor space for students. So we're still working through that, exactly where we need to go. We know that that's a hot topic that agencies want to make sure that people address all of it. Alright, so in terms of the look of these additions, what we're trying to do is match the look of each building. We want to match the color of the roof. We want to match the roof with the colors, all of these things, but we want at the end of the day, the additions to look uniform in my proposal. So this is an example of the current 4th and 10th grade building right inside of the building. We're picking up on the same look of materials and everything that everyone has to do. We're working through the freshman campus. There's
067a lot going on in front. A lot of needs of this school have not been touched or added on to since about 20 plus years ago. So what we're looking at, we're looking at some related art spaces here. So these are two art students. We're looking at a large classroom. So we've got, in addition to general purpose classrooms, we've got lab spaces. We've also got some of these remnant spaces. We're looking at adding on to the cafeteria. So the cafeteria in order to accommodate additional students needs additional space. Here's another classroom. So here we're adding more complex lab spaces that will give this school the opportunity to have different types of instruction in these spaces. And then finally we come around over a year to the athletic side. We're looking at a new waiting room
068and a new practice room. So once this is completed, we can go back and repurpose the old waiting room into being some other type of space. In addition to the building conditions, we're also coming in if we are painting a complete circle right in front of it. A quick way in, a quick way out. An additional parking here. And then finally an additional parking line back here. Again, keeping in mind we wanted to be sensitive to the existing design and look at the actual bridge here, etc. So this is the these are the two art studios with a park patio outside of the projects. And then this is the practice studio in the background. The waiting room here. Let's move over to Fairfax Middle. Fairfax Middle is pretty straight forward. We're looking at a two
069story 16 classroom addition. And as we are all familiar, the site is pretty tight. We used all of them to build schools. So we found a spot that works very well for this addition to support this area. Again, it's we're painting up on the same materials. Still get a grid with the panels, sunshades, heat or ground. So this this should blend right in with the actual area. Gable Middle. So Gable Middle School, we've been through three or four different iterations of this design. And here's where we're going. So we all know that one of the big issues in Gable Middle School is the security issue moving from this wing to the sixth wing. We've got the canopy to the side wall. What we've done is we've come up with what we're calling a top. That's
070this square over here. We're proposing this large space, very large space for kids to move through. We basically are re-endowed and it connects all of the different pieces of the building. So we have sixth grade connecting to the commons, then eighth grade, seventh grade to the cap tier. So once the kids are entered into the school, they can move freely, point to different wings without having to run back and forth. We're also looking at a full classroom addition here to the end of the sixth grade wing. And then finally a two-story classroom wing here for the seventh grade. This area that's hatched represents renovation. So we're going into the existing kitchen and some of these related art spaces in this area. There's the feed for kids, dishes, toilets and things like that. So we'll get
071to take care of all that. And then finally there's a need for a small concession slash toilet building for the public. So we've got an opportunity for that. And then fortunately it's two years ago we did all of this work with the bus and car and parking so we kind of already taken care of those things. So this is an idea of what this main college space is. So if you can imagine during the day sixth grade is here, seventh grade is here. So you can imagine that students moving across this space will come across to the cafeteria. So this will be a very vibrant place. It incorporates built-in seating and really makes it a flexible space that they can access. On England Springs here we're looking at, this is similar to the Anderson Middle
072project that we're adding on to table two, three, four, five. So we've got two classroom additions here in addition we're doing extensions to the cafeteria. So this is exactly what this kitchen, I mean the cafeteria extensions can look like we're adding on from roughly this point out here. The lights, this is similar to Gable that we've been through a number of different iterations here as well. We finally made it all the plan's location for the school. We're looking at a large addition here. This is located here in order to preserve this playground. So there's a playground here that's actively built here so this really was the best location to preserve this space. We're also looking at a piece that connects the existing school to the gym. We call this about four feet of ventilation change,
073this building, this building. So within this yellow roof space we've got an interior internal ramps that ramp down here to here so we can get a secure transition to this building. And then finally we have a small addition at the front. So here is the classroom wing. This is looking out of the playground. The existing building is here. This is the playground. So the building comes around and kind of wraps around it's almost a four-year-old playground. We've been advancing security and some practice in the closest. So those were the three additions slash renovations. So you might have a few questions or comments on those. So we'll get into it pretty soon. The difference in elevation of buildings and ramps is that a straight ramp kind of like a CDC? A straight ramp, a straight line
074ramp, where you're changing that slope. Well, the way we have it laid out now we've got a blind, we've got a painted blind. Okay, so let's move on to the CDC slash interface. This is located on the property of North White Star. This is the current CDC as it sits on a fairly small piece of property. So the challenge is to after we build a new CDC facility and develop inter-exclusive service experience. So the first tricky is that we can't displace any of these people until we have some improvement. So this becomes a phase right. So phase one we come in and build a CDC room and then we build all of the common or shared spaces that will be shared. We come in and build separate drives. We have a car drive all just
075for CDC. Then we come in and we build our bus pickup factory. Once that is complete, we can come in and tear down the existing CDC. Now we build our new two-story classroom ignition gear. Take one to the first floor, three to the second. We can tear apart one in the entire area. So this is how we're closing to solve this problem. CDC and Anderson. We're still working through programming on this. I know we talked today that are still nailing down this is our current and then we put together a couple of different elevations going on. So we've got to get that loaded. So just look at anything. So this would represent the main entry to the elevator. The elevator area would be on the left. The media center would be on the right. So
076we've got some planters. We've got kind of a rake across with a flat roof. So that's one way to think. Here's another way to think. Again, we've still got administration here. We've got media center. We're looking at sustaining the scene. Rooms here, some pitch gable, some additional clear story lights here. We've got animals. So there are different ways to think about this and we're trying to just kind of put some things out there. Comments and calls. Right direction, wrong direction. So those are the two options. Double options to look at here. If we move over to Dalton's now. Alright, so we're all aware Dalton's is going to be built on a piece of property behind currently a snow site. The elevator is right here. So we've also ended up with a couple of plant chains
077for calls. Based on feedback from the user groups. We've come up with, we had a plan for that has kind of a courtyard. There were concerns about students traveling, visits, all these sorts of things. So we said, okay, let's move up to a different speed. So what we've got here is one of the amazing things. So we're proposing to bring all of our traffic car drive, we were in the football field and then somewhere in this area we're going to have a car ride. Over here we have our bus drive which is shared by personnel as well as health students. We've had some areas that represent parking that would need more parking. These are just placeholders at this point. The big picture here is that we can get all of our staff to be on
078the road and get our bus driving here and our footprint fits on it. So if we take a little deeper look into the footprint. At the front of the building we have our miniseries and our guidance areas here. We can take this on Main Street and it's fine. We have 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade wings. These reach two storey wings. We have a related arts wing here. Then we have our athletics with our gym, locker rooms, etc. in the cafeteria, kitchen, back here. We move up to the second floor and these are 6th, 7th, 8th grade rooms. We're proposing a media center in this area and we've got some additional breakout related large time spaces. So in terms of what things look like, we've got a couple of options here. So here we're looking
079at kind of a large gaming space here. We've got a glass front door. We've got some wings with some different materials. We've got some grid. Another panel is around here. We've got another. So here we're looking at something lower in this space here. So we've got a darker brick here, brighter brick here at these windows. And then a lead covering the front of the door. Newbell Elementary School on Blackstock Road. So once the development project is completed, then the current development school will be formed down to work mainly with committers. So we're looking at a two story compact design located right here, kind of right in the center where the current middle school is located. This bus drive located here, this is actually the same purpose as where the current drive is. It's coming around
080at the back for a drop off. We've got a car drive coming back here. Two lanes, those that are at Ken Gordon, and two here, and five, and then here, in the cafeteria located back. So again, a couple of different ways to think about how this facility can flow. So here we have the two storey with the standing scene. We've got bricks getting built to cover their colors. We have some metal panels, some covers that extend out with front doors. We've got one that's a little more traditional. So here on each end you've got a gable with some columns, some regular pattern that's a very old entry cover that's in here. It keeps the cost of the elevation. And then when it's a little different, so here we're using maybe a white grid, some other
081panels here, some sort of pop of color. It doesn't have green. But it's just a different way to think about it. We still have a prominent entry here located in front, balanced elevation, and so on. So that is kind of quick. I'm sure we've got some branches coming soon. Thank you for all of the work. That is a lot of work on these projects, isn't it? We're just getting started. Yeah. Jenny, we've had issues here on the side of the past week, in spite of the new dollars on the chair at our summit about elevation. Your layout has been up here. We have an elevation issue. Will we have any challenge? Yes. So, what we have done, and it's difficult to see these funds alike. If you can make out condors, I'm sure you can
082see that. For the most part, the building footprint is located generally on the easel, the area that's created out in front. Now, we will have some challenges with the drives by the bus. We will come off Old Georgia, we'll go downhill, across uphill, so there will be some, a lot of transition moving around here. In this particular scheme, we're proposing for the field to be low, build bleachers into banks, very similar to what you see at all of us now, getting more and even better walks. More than likely, there will be some retaining walls here, if you haven't gotten them yet. The topography will play a part in the design, but we intend the efforts to try to put as much of it on the great and nice property. If there are no more questions,
083that's even better. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you all for your presentations tonight. Oliver's hard work, as we were still here. We also want to welcome our visitor from USC Aiken. This was a long meeting, and we thank you for staying with us throughout this meeting. Are there any additional questions or business to consider tonight? Hearing none, this meeting is adjourned.