001good evening and welcome to the first board meeting of 2023 of the Rock Hill School Board local news media Outlets were notified in writing on the agenda for the meeting on Monday January 9th um if you will first please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and I would like everyone to honor that moment of silence uh for uh some of the tragic losses our district has seen over the past couple of weeks so thank you please be seated first up tonight is the approval of the meeting agenda and before we get started I should mention that we have two board members with us over uh telephone conference we have Mr news hello Mr faulkenberry Right Here so with that said I will entertain a motion
002to approve the meeting agenda I suppose that thank you Miss cold do I have a second thank you Miss Cherry I believe was first any discussion Birmingham all those in favor all right all opposed Mission carries 7-0 so first up tonight is recognition of Board of Trustees and signing of the South Carolina School Board member ethical principles yeah thank you madam chair I I just like to just talk from my heart when it comes to recognition for board school boards right now are taking the brunt of a lot of things that are happening in our world um it seems to be that we're at the political doorstep right now so it's a thankless job that you do you represent the entire District even though you're zoned some of you to represent an area you've always
003done a really good job of looking at the whole picture and that's rare I talked with my colleagues around the state and that's not how it works everywhere so from my staff to you thank you for representing the entire District but yet understanding you have constituents that voted for you as well um but the thankless part of this job hopefully you understand the decisions you make affect the child's life forever and putting that in the Forefront of your decisions and continually to do that is what we ask so thank you for doing that I've heard from each of you individually at times about what this means to serve and it is serving um it's it's a thankless job that that you do and oftentimes you do with a smile sometimes it's some difficult decisions that
004you have to make but in the end our district is better for it so thank you on behalf of that move over to the podium and read some of the things that we have on this so I started off with forgetting my reading glasses so we will see how this appears as my arms have gotten uh short but um on behalf of the board to serve as a board member is not always easy but it's always an honor and we collectively as a group sign on to the South Carolina school board members ethical principles and I'm going to read those for the public obviously as board members you've seen them before as a member of my District School Board I pledge my efforts to improve public education in my community and will solemnly try to
005represent the interests of the entire District when making decisions and to rely on available facts and our judgment rather than on individuals and special interest groups understand the proper role of the school board to set policies governing the district and to hire the chief administrator officer to carry out these policies encourage an open exchange of ideas by all board members during the decision-making process seek regular Communications between the board and students staff and all segments of the community attend all board meetings to study issues facing the board and connect policies and official actions only after full discussion of such meetings work with other board members in a conscientious and courteous manner befitting the public trust placed in the position of the school board trustee communicate concerns and public reaction to board policies and school programs
006to the superintendent and other board members in a professional manner support employment of the person's best qualified for staff positions and to ensure a regular and impartial evaluation of all staff avoid conflicts of interest and refrain from use in my board position for personal or partisan gain encourage recognition of the achievements of students and staff and of the involvement of community residents support legislation and funding which will improve the educational opportunities and environment for students and staff take no individual action which would compromise the Integrity of the board or administrate Administration and to respect the confidentiality of information that is privileged under the Freedom of Information Act study current educational issues and to participate in training programs such as those offered through the South Carolina School boards Association and in conclusion make our District's educational
007setting the best possible to encourage all students to achieve and love learning so with that I would like to ask my fellow board members uh to come on up so that we can officially sign the poster that we are given and I now recognize that this had the print on it much larger which would have been helpful for me but that's besides the point um so Mildred would you like to start that's the point place any place nope I don't know and actually Don't Escape foreign T and Pete will sign this when they feel better and are back from their military obligations so with that said I believe thank you perfect thank you foreign so that concludes our recognitions and we're going to move on to citizen participation and I believe uh that we have
008three uh requests each person will be allocated three minutes uh to speak on behalf of an agenda item uh so first up we have uh let's see here in order uh Mr Lonnie Harvey and he is addressing the Sunset Park and stakeholder uh and he is representing himself so welcome up good evening all right Miss Miller wife congratulations on your your re-election okay I didn't hear that uh of course I'll like to ask you a question is uh are you and have you been in talks with Senator West climber about consolidating districts one and three sir you're well aware of the format yes yes and and you are stating that you're talking about Sunset Park and stay close that's part of it okay but you're addressing the board and by policy we don't respond but
009I'll be happy to have that conversation with you within the purview of the policy outside of the meeting okay I guess that'll I'll take that as a uh embarrassing yes uh are you associated with moms of Liberty sir I'm going to remind you again what you signed up to speak about I am firmly asking you to please stick with the policy okay so I'll take that as a embarrassing yes as well you you had said that uh there's going to be sure okay the board has has discussed about redoing or rebuilding Sunset Park and increasing the occupancy of it uh over the last probably 10 years you have shut down five schools that feed that the children's from the south side of Rock Hill Feed into rebuilding and increasing the population the student population of
010Sunset Park is not good enough you should be looking at building at least one additional School to serve that area planning to build one at Riverwalk just won't do now there's been talk about south side of that we're next well the time is not next for South Side the time is now you have drained the opportunity of the kids to receive a proper education by putting them as much as 45 minutes drive or travel time to their schools and yet you are looking at putting them again putting them closer and closer to the more affluent sections of time so so that you have kids who are within walking distance whose parents will drive them uh and sit in their car for 15 or 20 minutes waiting to get a man to get them out so
011your time thank you I'll be back next up uh is Inga Kerry and she is representing herself and she is also speaking on the topic of Sunset Park Construction in Rock Hill School District three welcome up Miss Carrie good evening chairwoman Miller Dr schmalsey and the school board I read the feedback to the board regarding the new south or Sunset Park Elementary School um and the following items were not said and I wanted to make sure that these are put into consideration I'm very glad for the faculty staff and students at Sunset Park this is definitely an amazing opportunity and their facility is needed to be upgraded I'm also excited that this is a part of town that is up and coming and with the revitalization and I'm glad that Rock Hill is going to
012be a part of it Sullivan middle school has been deteriorating for quite some time and there's been a ton of Plumbing issues there recently that are causing major health concerns that I'm hearing from former students and parents and even friends um old Plumbing is one of the reasons why Rosewood was one of the schools that was closed down I believe that there desperately needs to be a plan in place to permanently fix those Plumbing issues but also to build a new Sullivan or something like that the building was originally built as a high school and it's not structurally compatible with modern learning teachers and classes are separated by huge wings and it's very crowded it's not big enough for the number of students and staff that are there building a new Sullivan might be better
013received by the community since it's a middle school and not an elementary school since the previous three schools were Elementary that were closed once again I am so happy for Sunset Park and the new opportunities that await thank you and as a matter of fact we have one more that is also in gagari so um last up uh you again and I believe it is School Board appreciation month and you are representing York County Education associations or ycea yes I am well good evening again um I would like to say that we would like to celebrate all your hard work we appreciate how this board conducts their meetings and how information is presented in a transparent way and we look to continue that we know this job can be stressful at times so we wanted
014to give you something sweet thank you for all you do and if there's any food allergies I'll be happy to swap out after thank you but thank you especially for that um I believe that that concludes our citizen participation is that correct Miss camels thank you oh we love you sir we're getting Bundt Cakes Pete and Brent by the way thank you yes um so um much appreciative of that that makes my heart smile so next up is our consent action agenda and we do have two items uh under consent action agenda the first one is the minutes from the November 28th business meeting followed by the personal recommendations as provided in the packet do I have a measure interpret I Believe Miss Cherry is first followed by a second from Miss Cole any discussion
015I think I had a second oh you were you were first okay we're good okay um all those in favor all right all opposed motion carries seven zero so that brings us to the action agenda and first up is the Sunset Park Elementary School Capital funding um and we do have quite a bit of stakeholder feedback that was provided in the packet and I believe that we have an additional one or two that that showed up on our desk um and before we get started I think that one of the things that I would like to clarify that that was evident in the feedback is a lot of people were under the assumption that we were building an additional School we're not we are building a school on the property where Sunset Park is so
016we are not adding inventory we are replacing an old building with a modern facility that will be great for the students and staff so for the feedback that came back you're kind of asking why we closed schools and now we're rebuilding a school well it's not about adding inventory it's about replacing buildings so with that I'll turn it over to you good evening in December Administration presented an opportunity to build a new Sunset Park Elementary School with a zero tax increase to our taxpayers this new school would be built on the existing site with a much larger student capacity the capacity of the current school is 600 students while the new proposed school would be a thousand student capacity Capital funds already available would be used to pay for this new school you received additional
017information for me regarding those funds at the beginning of December it is administration's recommendation to allocate the available Capital funds to build a new Sunset Park Elementary School Capital funds are restricted in how we can utilize those funds and we cannot use those funds to pay for normal day-to-day operations such our salaries for teachers or support staff for scholarships during our last building program we we did make renovations to Sunset Park office area and to the cafeteria these areas will not be torn down we will be exploring opportunities to use those renovated areas in a different capacity what Sunset Park is built Administration requested feedback from our stakeholders we have reviewed that feedback and that is included in your board packet tonight tonight Administration is requesting board approval to allocate the available Capital funding to
018build a new Sunset Park Elementary School on the existing site and I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have at this time there's no questions is there anything that you would like to add yeah if I may in and understand this is a rare uh the the founding fathers who decided to put Sunset Park there we're pretty smart because the the site is an amazing site it's a beautiful site um part of my life I've been building schools for the last 10 years that's one of the best sites I've seen and when you can build another school on that site without interrupting education as it's going on during the year that's even more advantageous rather than displacing students until that building is done there might be a little bit of noise
019there might be a little bit of dust that's just all part of progress but it's exciting to know that we can expand our capacity without disrupting those students in the year to come year and a half to come so that's exciting also typically in this presentation we'd be giving a number that has been allocated we deliberately stay away from that number publicly because we will be in a bid process so to speak so you don't want to tip your hand and you know our our best way to doing this is to save taxpayer money so by not giving that number uh we will be able to kind of hold the cards when it comes to negotiating but with that word as soon as the negotiation is gone obviously there will be a full transparent report
020public uh available uh so that everybody can look over the financials for sure and and I have some other comments in my my announcements that I'll be talking about as well as far as the process perfect any other comments well then I believe that I am asking for a motion to approve the Sunset Park Elementary School Capital funding as presented so I moved I believe Miss Cole with a second was that you Brent yes okay thank you any discussion I just have a quick comment and I am ecstatic that we are able to do this for the Sunset Park Community and we're able to do it in a way to where it is not going to impact any of the citizens or any of our taxpayers in the community this is going to be an
021amazing thing we are going to get our next Flagship school it's going to be the pride and joy of Rock Hill School District and to clear up any confusion there are no plans about any other school buildings currently in place the investment that this board is about to make is purely in the Sunset Park Community so anybody else have anything they would like to add nope yes ma'am appreciate everything being a person that living in the sunset power community and have had my nieces and children to attend there just attending now as well and I think this will be a great advantage and an improvement in everything and a lot of learning and activities are taking place in such and we have to look at Sunset Park their principle is either even from Sunset Park
022it's graduate and we probably should mention that said principle is in the audience uh together with a rather large crew uh coming from Sunset Park and I suspect that they're here to listen to this vote am I right about that yeah any other comments no well then folks all those in favor hi hi Ola posts motion carry 7-0 [Applause] since Sunset Park families um so next up on the uh action agenda um it's listed as Board of Trustees support for cargo threat as a Deca board member of Trustees so um one of the most amazing things that we see as board members is when we have students in our district who are uh coming in front of us as leaders and we're so incredibly proud of them uh this past week we got a letter
023from a young man in our district who approached myself and one other board member to ask for our support in him doing something really really amazing for himself but most importantly for his school communities I'm going to read what he is asking us to do uh to the Rock Hill School District 3 Board of Trustees I'm preparing to apply for a South Carolina Deca officer position to Aid my peers in pursuing business education Deca is an international organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing Finance hospitality and management in high schools and College part of the process for me to be considered is to receive support from the school board Rock Hill schools is home to only the business to the only Business Club in the district our chapter was founded last year and
024we have doubled in size for the 2022-23 Academic Year this is a wonderful accomplishment and as a student leader for our chapter I'm proud to have the opportunity to represent Rocco schools as part of the state leadership team I believe that a young chapter having student representation at the state level will convey to Association leaders the potential that students in Mark Hill has as a focused and driven student and member becoming a state officer is the next step in preparing myself as an emerging leader in the business world my history of academic success and collaborative contributions to a wide range of organizations demonstrate the commitment that I have to success in the world of business this organization is a highly impactful organ organization in the development of high school students who want to pursue careers
025at all business areas thank you for serving as board members and for your support of all the students and staff member in Rock Hill schools I appreciate your consideration in supporting me if you have any questions please reach out and so forth and he's actually here with us tonight so I'm going to ask you to come up and just say hi real quick to the board um and um yeah good evening Lord um I'm Carter I'm a right now the vice president of marketing at Rock Hill High Deca like you just heard we're the only business education Club in Rock Hill schools and I think it's a really great opportunity for me to go and take it to the next level for Rock Hill schools and represent us at state so if anybody do you
026have any questions for me about what Becca is or anything I don't have a Carter when I when I look at you I see the future taxpayer of the United States thank you well and and you know to to James Point um what we see is the future of Rock Hill that's what the school district is building uh it's hopefully you know eighteen thousand um young leaders that are going to continue to make this community even greater and I know that we happen to have some representation from our Chamber of Commerce here's your next Generation folks that are here tonight so I am super excited um to be able to support this and at this point I would like to ask for a motion to approve uh me to be able to write a letter
027in support for this young man thank you Mr Burns do I have a second Miss Terry any discussion bearing none all those in favor aye all opposed motion carry 7-0 let's give him a round of applause so I'm going to draft this you will have it by noon tomorrow morning I'll send it electronically and I will also email a hard copy to you thank you what we would love though is an update to let us know how the elections go yes I'll let you know all right awesome thank you before you leave do you have any family with you yes or my mom's here would would she please stay in as well I just want to address you too because I think uh for a student to first take the chance to represent any entity
028within its own School takes a lot of Courage my word of the year is courage but then to stretch even more and put yourself out there at a state level that's very rare so I want to give you Kudos um I don't know if you can take the credit or not but I'm giving you the credit find young man standing here I love the word entrepreneurship because that means you take the risk upon yourself and you reward or you suffer that that failure and then you get back up and do it again and that's what I see here is that stick to itness and I appreciate that and I appreciate that the development of this young man who would be an amazing leader I can tell already so thank you for that awesome thank you
029thank you [Applause] so that concludes our action agenda so next up we have communications and we have uh York County Regional Chamber of Commerce that has uh signed up and I believe that uh Mr pale is going to come up and talk a little bit to us thank you Miss Miller thank you School Board first of all I just want to thank you for your service and what you do for our students but also for our business Community um with 18 000 current students um that's a lot of future Workforce and um and I'm proud to say that um that I'm a um I'm a person that this school district produced I started my education career at Richmond Drive and then Ebenezer and went on to Sullivan Junior High at the time and then Rock
030Hill High School and um so I'm certainly appreciative of everything the school district does and I currently have a 12 year old at Saluda Trail Middle School um so um so I applaud you for your service in in that area the chamber um is very focused on Workforce talent development but we have other initiatives that we work on every year and and those work hand in hand with a lot of the work that you guys do here at the school district I've had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Mrs Miller and Mr smallsey Dr smallzy and and asked them you know how the chamber could work more closely with you guys work with this District our service area includes about 85 percent of the geographic footprint of York County um the both the Rock Hill
031Fort Mill School District York school district but we also work closely with the Clover School District as well um four areas of focus that we work on each year first and foremost is advocacy we spend a great deal of time in Colombia or I do personally in lobbying for particular issues that affect our business community and a lot of those issues also affect our school districts and education second area of focus that we have right now is diversity equity and inclusion we believe it is highly important that all people are treated fairly equally and heard and so we're striving to work with all of our businesses to understand the importance of creating a more inclusive workplace leadership development this is an area that we believe and I personally believe a great deal and it was
032exciting to hear the young man that was just up here taking such a leadership role here in the schools but um thank to thankfully to you guys um Dr Jones um you helped us a great deal this year on a partnership with the Franklin Covey program the four essential roles of leadership and um and John I think we had about 60 folks attend that and I think we had 10 School District employees go through that training and um and in your words just earlier today they came back fired up and excited and and we were excited to offer that opportunity and look forward to Future opportunities of that nature Workforce and talent development is the is the last area and I'm going to let Celeste talk about that but I would like to take just
033another minute to highlight two of our key legislative priority items this year on our 2023 business priority list first and foremost and I bet you guys have never heard about this particular act um but we're we're anxious to reform the South Carolina tax system and reduce the negative impacts of act 388 we certainly see that act 388 um is is not only punitive to our school districts in fast-growing regions but it's it's punitive to our business Community it puts you guys in the unenviable position of as you're having to raise taxes on the Lion's Share of those taxes get passed on to our businesses and it creates an unfair uncompetitive work or business environment here with us being so close to the Charlotte at Mecklenburg Union County area so we're certainly going to be working
034hard on that we've done a great deal of research we've met with members of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce I have the privilege of serving on the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce board of directors and and we're meeting with a number of legislators on how we might could continue to mitigate some of these challenges our second priority is to strive to develop attract and retain a qualified talent pool to address the state's Workforce shortages and so this is something that Celeste will talk a little bit more about lastly I think that um that you'll be excited and Tommy I haven't had a chance to share this with many but you you guys will be excited to hear this that we're actually going to actively be looking to all of our elected officials to serve
035as as leaders in this particular Quest that we have and that's to seek and expect a more civil and respectful approach to addressing challenges at the local state and federal level we believe that you can just look all the way from our local to our federal level that the discourse when it comes to dealing with issues has become a almost a gamemanship of disrespect and one-upmanship and um and that's just not getting the job done and we would like to see more and more people working together on coming up with Solutions and being respectful of one another and allowing each individual to be heard and respected when they're heard and we expect that not only out of our elected officials but we like expect that out of our citizens too so I'm going to ask
036um Miss tiller to speak to you just a little bit about our Workforce and talent development initiatives but thank you again for your service thank you so much for letting us be here so I'm Celeste tiller I'm the vice president of talent Workforce Development for the York County Regional Chamber my previous tenure was at Winthrop University and the College of Business and um it was very fortunate that I was able to come into this role having the education background and having the business as well so our goal is really to bring business education and Workforce Partners together to create a high quality sustainable Workforce for York County and our surrounding area we can't do it which is just Educators we have to do it with our business partners and we have to do it with
037our Workforce Partners throughout the state so I have the privilege of bringing us all together we've met with Dr smallzy we've met with others kind of in this room and really had those conversations and how do we do that so for us it's really looking at what a businesses need so we know what they need right now what do they need five ten years from now what does that Workforce Development look like what are the skills what are the technical needs that they have and how can I translate that for our Educators and bringing those together really looking at our Workforce as a talent Pipeline and understanding what do they need where do we go and get our talent and what does it look like going forward so we'll be doing that through a few
038different ways one will be bringing our industry Partners together I'm looking at the collaboratives and seeing what they need for each industry in York County what's kind of on what's really hot right now what what our future industry is looking like and what are they needing and so we have the privilege and the opportunity to do that and bring all those together and I'm certainly looking forward to that so thank you for what you do and I'm looking forward to our Partnerships that we could have going forward thank you so we can certainly say the same thing we are very very thankful and excited for our partnership together and ultimately it is going to lead to amazing things for our kids which is going to improve our community tremendously we've said it a million times
039if not two which is we cannot do this alone it has to be a partnership we have to come together as a community and obviously working closely with the chamber is a huge part of that so thank you for for coming the other Don Gilman yes yes it's so funny that you mentioned that so actually we are working with him and York County Economic Development and we are working on his soft skills program so we are meaning we have um so Teresa Curtis from York County Economic Development and I are going to be helping him put a program together on the 25th of January actually um for some manufacturing HR leaders he is an extremely exciting things he does he does we are very excited to be partnering with him and that's the other thing
040that we have um Dean and I were actually talking about this earlier today is just having those conversations and saying okay what do you need how can I help this is what I need how can you help and that's really where we're at now which is exciting but yes so thank you for mentioning that I forgot it that's awesome well thank you thank y'all for dinner this evening yes but first and foremost so that concludes our Communications um so next up but we have presentations uh we have a couple of items underneath here the first one is our fiscal year 2021-22 Financial audit and we have Mr Andrew Coleman here tonight from our audit for firm green Finley and Kali LLP as well as of course our trustee CFO Ms Terry Smith so I'm going
041to turn it over to you thank you madam chairman so another you guys have heard a lot of information today and I'm sure you don't want to go through this 134 page audit that we put together so we've put a little presentation together here for you uh kind of go go over the highlights of what was in your fiscal year 22 audit So within this financial statement there are only three items that are actually ours and those are the opinions and those opinions State what the district is responsible for and they State what we're responsible for so we're going to briefly here go over um what each party is responsible for so the district's responsibility so the district is responsible for maintaining effective internal controls just as a reminder there are limitations on internal controls
042and regular risk assessment is important including assessing the risk of fraud the district is also responsible for the financial statements Within These financial statements the district is responsible for the accuracy the completeness and the propriety of balances the amounts and the disclosures so what are we responsible for so we give you opinion and we give reasonable assurance that the financial statements are materially correct again kind of want to reiterate we give reasonable assurance that they're materially correct because we did not go through and look at every transaction that took place during the year we took we looked at Material transactions and then samples of others again the opinion does not address the financial condition of the organization all the opinion does it says that the numbers that are in here are correct um also the
043purpose of an audit is not to detect fraud most people think when we're coming out doing the financial audit we're only out here looking for fraud that's not exactly the case we are out here trying to make sure that the numbers that are reported here are accurate now as part of our audit process we do look at what fraud risks there are are out there and obviously as we're doing our audit work if anything were to come to our attention we would look at it so the good news for this year is we did Issue an unmodified opinion I know unmodified can count sound a little strange that is the best opinion that you can receive unmodified opinion means everything in here is is materially correct um and if you were to look at the
044format of the opinion it has changed from prior years um just became longer and went into a little more detail of what each party is doing so now let's kind of look at uh the general fund uh for the fiscal year 22. again keep keep in mind these are the balances as of June 30th when you look at your general fund the total balance of 38.8 million did decrease 1.5 million from the prior year just as a reminder the the Big Driver of that decrease was the board approved 8.1 million transfer that went to your capital projects fund well which is set aside for future capital outlay when you're looking at your general fund you have prepaids and inventory of 1 million and then when you looked at your unassigned fund balance it's 37.7 million
045which is 22 percent of your 22 actual expenditures and 21 in the prior year and 19 of your budgeted expenditures the government Finance Officers Association again they recommend a minimum of two months which is approximately 16.7 percent so you're right around that that number again major reasons to maintain a healthy fund balance again cash flow is cyclical you guys get the majority of your funds in in December and January when your tax revenues come in also we don't have this up here but one that I'm sure everyone's seeing um inflation in the past year just everything costs more all right so when we look at your revenues you had 175.2 million for fiscal year 22. uh you see the breakdown there it was 68.5 million from property taxes 105.8 million from the state and 0.9
046million from other sources you can see this is a 6 million or a four percent increase from the prior year the main drivers of that increase uh your tax revenues increase 1.9 million due to higher assessed values in state revenues increased 4.1 million primarily due to higher enrollment and a slightly higher base student costs when you compare the revenues to your budget you were 1.9 million or one percent over budget remember this is the side you want to be over budget on your taxes were 3.2 million over budget and all other items were 1.3 million under when we look at your expenditures they're 174.2 million you can see the breakdown there the bulk of it 100 100.6 million was an instruction 72.7 million in support services and 0.9 million in other it was a 0.9
047million or less than one percent increase from the prior year the instruction decreased 0.8 million in support increased 1.7 million and again the overall increase was due to a step increase that teachers received and higher benefit costs and we'll talk a little bit about your higher benefit costs here in a minute and then when you are looking at your expenditures you are 0.3 million or less than one percent under budget and again this is the side you want to be under budget on so in addition to your general fund just as a reminder you have various other special Revenue funds Title One your individuals with disabilities Education Act and through all those you had approximately 33.9 million that was expended um did have a fun balance of 4.1 million and again that four point limit
048is predominantly for your Student Activities or your pupil activity programs because again due to changes we had to make last year um implementing new accounting standards your people activities do show up in your special Revenue funds now then when we're looking at your education Improvement act it had approximately 8.1 million expended uh this is just a reminder of the various different buckets that you guys are getting money from and also a reminder that the money that you're getting through the special Revenue funds are generally for very specific purposes so you're getting it and you can only get reading coaches with it so it's not like you're getting these State funds in you can use them on whatever you want to looking at your food service fund you did have a net increase in your fund
049balance of 2.1 million again your fund balance is 4.9 million which is 56 percent of your 22 actual expenditures just as a little side note here we have seen across the board at all of our school districts throughout the state that their food service increased like this last year again if you think back for fiscal year 22 all students ate for free so you got you're getting that Federal reimbursement rate and your participation was significantly higher than it had been in Prior years looking at your debt service fund you had a net increase in your fund balance of 0.9 million you have a total fund balance of 7.3 million again you can all use that for future Debt Service looking at your capital projects fund we had a net increase in your fund balance of
05018 million we'll kind of go through the breakdown of what drove that this year you had revenues and other financing sources of 24.3 million you had short-term debt and proceeds of 14.8 million you did sell some old capital assets for 1.9 million then as we talked about the beginning the presentation you had the 8.1 million transferred in from the general fund again this was partially offset by your expenditures for Capital Improvements of approximately 6.3 million so that leaves the remaining fund balance of 44.7 million uh to be used for Planned capital projects that are part of the district's Capital facility plan just briefly want to remind you guys um as you are part of Piva we have to record your portion of the state retirement liability you can see about Midway down there your liability
051was 207.3 Million the state's not going to come asking you for a check to write to write a check for 207 million uh what they're doing is you you pay that essentially pay that down with the contributions that you guys are given to people on behalf of teachers and really the main bullet point to take from this entire slice is the last one here again people approved continuing rate increases of one percent each year through June 30th of 2024 which will result in the final employer rate of 18.56 and 21.24 for the scrs and PRS so that means for each teacher that you guys have throughout the district you're going to be contributing 18.56 towards their pension plan so again that means your benefit costs are just going to continue to rise in addition to
052being in part of the state pension plan you are also part of the state net other posts employment benefit plan or opeb or think of this as the retiree Insurance trust plan you can see about Midway down the your the liability in this plant or your portion of this liability is 249 million there have not been any rate increases yet you look at the bottom Point uh the contribution rate was 6.25 percent for fiscal year 22. and we would expect that this rate to increase in future years they look when the state a few years back looked at their Pension Plan saw it was underfunded so what did they do they increased the rates you guys are having to pay they're looking at their op-ed plan it's underfunded if history tells us anything where are
053they going to come to shore up that plan so again that's just going to increase the benefit costs that you guys are having to pay for each employee looking at your Capital assets there were 292.7 million or a decrease of 13.1 million from the prior year you can see most of the decrease was due to depreciation expense you had some disposals of 3.3 million and current irraditions of 3.9 million again you had construction and process at June 30th of 3.3 million and along with construction commitments of an additional 3.7 million when you look at your long-term obligations the amount outstanding was 164.4 Million which is decrease of 10.4 million from the prior year you can see the breakdown the 9.3 million in principal payments and 1.1 million in other decreases and when you look at
054fiscal year 23 your total debt service payments are expected to be 16 million looking towards the future um no change no significant change in auditing standards that you guys need to be aware of there is an upcoming accounting principle change that could have effect for for the district here gasway 96 is subscription-based information technology Arrangements as we all know we're since covid we are all Now using online softwares to do more things um and so as you have these agreements to use any of these online softwares essentially what your Finance staff is going to have to do is track them and we will have to record them as dead on your government-wide statements so in essence the net end result of this is just additional work for your Finance staff to do but this is
055something that they are aware of and that we'll be looking at in the current year all right so we're looking at compliance so a single audit was required again for this fiscal year just as a reminder a single audit is an additional compliance audit that we have to do if you receive more than 750 000 in federal money so the programs that we looked at for fiscal year 22 Were Your Child Nutrition cluster Title 1 and Esser and as we're going through and doing this audit we did have one finding that we had to report in your title one program this is related to time and effort reporting this is where each employee has to sign a form noting that they work for the title one program the good news is each employee that we
056went to test had a form they had signed it like they were supposed to just unfortunately the wrong end date had been put on all of them um so since that in wrong date uh had to be put on there we did have to report it and this has been corrected going forward so in addition to this financial statement we have a separate management layer that we've issued um and this was where we would put if we have any significant items for you for the board to be aware of and the only item that we have on there is just a reminder for the risks associated with pupil activities anytime cash is going between hands there's a there's an opportunity for something to go wrong so we do think that the controls and the procedures
057that the district has in place are appropriate we think the monitoring that your Finance staff is doing is appropriate there's just a reminder anytime cash is going between hands something could happen again in summary we did Issue an unmodified opinion on the financial statements I would say you're in good Financial condition as of June 30th and again the finance staff and all were great to work with again this year even though we did with all the coveted money that you guys did receive we had to pester them a whole lot more this year um so we do appreciate them pulling all the extra items that we did I request this year and they were just great to work with thank you thank you so do we have any questions for him yep I don't I
058don't have a yes we appreciate uh your hard work and everything and I know trying to budget money and everything is not an easy test because I know with two little nickels that I received is not an easy task for me to keep up with so I can imagine what it's like with you trying to keep up with millions and being sure that they are used in appropriate manner since the state has labored so much as to what could be used for this and what can be used with that it's a burden and we want you to know how much you really appreciates it and your whole team absolutely and and I can only second that and also as a board and I know that Dr Schmaltz agrees with this wholeheartedly and that is it
059is always a pleasure when you get an audit back where it specifically complements your staff because we work together as a team but we have full trust in our finance department uh and this is the reason why they keep us straight and that's a good thing so thank you look forward to seeing you next year and also um this is obviously public records so anybody could access the pilate if they would want to so next up is our Esser update and before I turn it back over to Mrs Smith I should state that the Esser funding was actually not approved by the school board it was not approved by a single board in the state or or in the country it is federal funding so the board's role is the same as any citizen in
060in this area in other words we ask for uh updates and uh we want to know where our dollars are going but as a body we had no statutory right to to either approve or voted up or down so I just kind of wanted to state that before you turn it over to you so we'll look forward to hearing it thank you Miss Miller so tonight I would like to provide you with an update on Esser our district received approximately 54 million dollars in these funds which are non-recurring These funds can only be used on activities that is related to caused by or impacted by the kova 19 pandemic the first round of funding which is known as sr1 has been fully spent we have spent approximately 86 percent of our sr2 funding and approximately
06118 percent on sr3 we anticipate that we will spend sr2 in full by the end of this fiscal year we have allocated approximately 33 percent of our total Esser sr1 sr2 and sr3 for additional Personnel so we have 85 additional positions such are such as classroom teachers interventionists crisis management assistants that are paid for with Esser funds so as you are already aware we are using non-recurring funds to pay for recurring expenditures the spending deadline for sr3 is September of 2024 so that financial cliff is coming very quickly and during this budget season we will be looking at options to begin resolving this challenge that we face for the 24-25 fiscal year a percent of our Esser is allocated for tutoring and this includes before during and after school tutoring nine percent is allocated for
062summer learning programs such as summer school and various summer camps such as Kinder camps 14 is allocated for instructional resources materials and instructional services so example of these items include instructional kits resources for restorative practices classroom Library sets and live streaming virtual teaching 20 percent is allocated for technology devices and software licenses this includes laptops for students and staff interactive panels and software programs for ELA math and science 14 is allocated for facilities maintenance which is for HVAC repairs and replacements the remaining amount which is approximately two percent is allocated for mental health services cleaning supplies water filling stations coveted response call center and Equitable Services for four of our non-public non-profit schools that are located with fan Rock Hill you have additional information in your packet that goes in a little bit further detail
063for Esser and I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have at this time nope um but thank you we appreciate the update so that concludes the answer a portion of our presentations so next up we have instructional resource adaptations science and I believe we have Miss Jen Morrison up here to talk about [Music] upcoming college books good evening tonight uh we I am presenting uh instructional resource adoptions related to science we were notified about this on April 29th and uh and we followed the process to make sure that our schools and teachers had input so District staff are requesting the board approve the instructional resource adoptions that are listed in the memo in your board packet these are all higher upper-level science classes at the high school level can I answer
064any questions no but I think for the viewing audience it may be beneficial to just briefly go over the selection process to kind of explain how we ended up here and you know basically the department of Ed releases the subject areas from materials when those lists are sent to the district office the school level representatives and do folks have an opportunity to review the different options and then it goes through whatever appropriate Specialists ends up with eventually I believe Dr Jones first and then to the superintendent to take a peek at it and then it ends up in front of the board uh for for final approval and uh then you guys submitted back to the Department of Ed correct exactly exactly and then it goes to our schools for schools to place the order
065through the state system for the selected textbooks and usually they get them to us pretty quickly but our schools generally by that point because the schools have been involved in this election process they're ready for those textbooks the teachers are ready when they're when they come in so you're right you are absolutely right on with that process thank you all right so it's easy when you have the document in front of you that wasn't good science board should be included I will certainly probably write a policy about that and uh that's awesome yes because you have here are they replacing any classes are you adding okay so I don't want to answer in such a way that um that uh like I'm speaking about something I don't actually know about I do know that uh
066four courses that oftentimes do not have textbooks the instruction department will purchase some of those textbooks and none of these courses are courses that we've purchased the instruction departments had to purchase for schools so my assumption is that these are all textbooks that are supplied by the state none of these are local board approved courses or anything like that so I these are probably Replacements and they are actually probably Replacements uh a long time in the waiting to get mm-hmm thank you Miss Douglas so that was going to be part of my question um just in generality how often does this happen because I think for the viewing audience and for some of us that you know I was in school we had chalkboards when I taught in school I used a chalkboard first and
067so that's been a long time so when we talk about resources you know I look back we had a textbook and maybe a calculator and that was that was it so just in generality what kind of resources and when's the next time science is going to be done again because typically it's not touched for X number of years so just if you could speak on that so I think that there is a general cycle of the Department of Education uses there's actually legislation and regulation that sort of um dictates what that's supposed to be I do not know the exact years for that but I can certainly produce but it's on a schedule but it's a schedule correct I will say that um the Department of Education due to a lack of funding has been
068able to meet the requirements of that schedule but they have been utilizing I'm I'm suspecting but not absolutely positive I think there have been because you've seen a flurry of textbook approvals come through this and generally speaking prior to covid we were getting one a year and now it's you know what every three months that we're having textbook approvals I think one of the things that the hap that's happening is that the state department is using some of their Esser funds to catch up on the cycle that they had gotten pretty seriously behind on mm-hmm thank you okay awesome yes ma'am these books and with others that we've been getting are they also supplying electronic generally yes so we actually work with our technology department to make sure that teachers have access to those digital
069resources that's especially important of course for a Virtual Academy but most of our teachers at this point because they are are strong users of canvas and a lot of the programs that we utilize they want to make sure that they have the electronic version which actually makes it very helpful for students but we do one of the things that we always want to make sure is that schools can provide those paper copies whenever needed and so it's really you'll get the package that has both the digital version and options related to the printed copies and schools will be placing those orders once everything's approved great all right thank you if we don't have anything else I said thank you to you Ms Morrison and this will be on the agenda in February for approval thank
070you um for our consideration rather so next up is the report of the superintendent so I'm going to turn over to you okay thank you that's dangerous giving me the mic for a while I will start with Sunset Park I I've been shopping at the bit I'm excited about this process um thank you for letting us move forward by allocating those funds The Next Step will be for us to to look at um a a architect first so we go through a procurement process to selected architect uh ultimately the board will have a say in that we have a group of 19 right now that have already been pre-approved so to speak so we'll narrow that down to two or three that will make presentations and I say that because I think it's important you
071know when when you already approve 19 parties to do something all of them have the skill set to do it it's just a matter of style or flavor that we're looking for but specifically for this project it's important because we already want a school that's been built we don't want to design one so I say that publicly because it's going to be a little different than than maybe in the past where you get a group of people together you sit in a room in design okay this is what the wall should look like this I want 10 Windows on this side that's not this process we want to expedite the process so we'll be forming a committee and we'll be using people in the community to help us with this we'll go tour the buildings
072I think that's important to get a feel for what the building looks like in operation so it's exciting because a lot of times we don't do that we think it's fun to design a building and then see it come from paper out of the ground and then a principal operates that for a year and says man why does this hallway do this I wish it would have been built this way we get the benefit of talking to these principals in these buildings and say what would you change is there any money change minor changes you would do because we get to do that and save money by doing it so the process will be select the architect and then from there we go on to developing a plan to bring in a contractor and then
073that's that's bid that way so all that will be placed on our website Lindsay will be communicating our process it's important that the community understands that because we need buy-in where the school sits there's also some activity going on near that that's going to be a lot of synergy and so we want to make sure we tie in our plans with what the city will be doing there I think it's important to note that publicly that we have a great opportunity to partner together to make a neat Community Center on this site so that would be part of those plans um a couple other quick announcements we will have early dismissal I know students love to hear that on February 17th and we will be closed on my birthday February 20th but you can send
074a card early if you'd like I will be here in my office to collect those uh no but we'll not have school on February 20th touch Hearts teach recruitment event will be held on Saturday February 4th from 9 A.M to 12 30 at South Point High School we look forward to meeting candidates who are interested in joining our caring and collaborative team of Educators a lot of energy around this event I attended a a um Cooperative governmental um just a think tank that was put on by our our chamber thank you Mr fail for for putting that together and I learned about how many teaching positions we've lost on the Eastern Seaboard um it was in the 60 thousands it was the number I can't remember exactly the number um and so this event helps
075us get a little ahead of that and hopefully attract good teachers that will stay here and want to be part of our community so once again that's February 4th from 9 A.M to 12 30. and I say that again because there's some people out there that are listening that might not even be considering teaching but this is a good opportunity to come in and get some information you might be surprised of the routes that we can take to get you into a classroom and working with our kids that you might not think of so if you're interested then to have a heart for kids we love to see you there Rock Hill schools Mental Health Resource hotline I say this every month 803-324-7464 and unfortunately we still have mental health issues and we're going to
076continue to do that but there's a lot of groups out there that are working on that but if if you're having a chance that our middle and high schools have started so please be mindful of our clear bag policy and this is for the safety of all our Spectators and our student athletes um school choice enrollment window is now open until midnight February 28th and that's a hard stop midnight February 28th for School of Choice enrollment and then our next School Board meeting is scheduled for February 14th at 6 pm and that is streamed online and you can catch it on our website Valentine's day it is I knew anything about that I'll do that maybe some Bundt Cakes that does thank you yes yes so next we have other future should have received a
077packet after desk uh and they're here for you when you feel better and when you were back in town um to collect where the information for winter graduation we're very excited to have three graduation ceremonies upcoming for our three high schools for students that are graduating early so that you should also have received your tickets if you are going to the MLK Interfaith prayer breakfast that you should have in front of you and I believe that Chris has already scheduled small groups uh for the upcoming week and that concludes what I have um anything for the better Runner group yes to take into consideration I know we've gone down to Heaven one board meeting a month but since we're going to have these upcoming projects with new school input from the community and all those
078drivers should we not have two meetings a month so it won't be so long in getting communication out to the community and keeping everyone updated on the process yeah and we'll we will have some work sessions just for that and also we'll be using other means not just board meetings to get that that information out and remember we do have some work sessions or one specifically that's scheduled at the end of this month already so when we say board meetings where we're saying business meetings but we'll still be together probably yeah that's not more if not more it's going to be a busy spring yeah uh did you have something so I have a student had the school choice fair and I wasn't able to attend but I wanted to make sure did we have
079every school in our district represented at that um because I feel like we always need to stress that choosing the school that you were zoned for is a choice we've got wonderful teachers at every one of our schools great programs and things happening and it's a great choice to choose the school that you're going to zone for right but but was every school not just ones that people can Choice into I think hang on a second just for the viewing audience if we can let Dr Dickey come up to the microphone and and uh that way everybody can hear the choice fair was designed to highlight those schools that are Choice options so only schools that can be selected for choice for the upcoming school year were represented at our choice Fair okay I just
080like because to make sure that we were we are putting out there in various ways and maybe having some type of and whether it be open house at the schools or a Gathering Place that everyone can come to to know what's happening at our schools because a lot of times you'll hear you know oh you know my child's going to the language immersion or and you I've had Parents you know approach me and they're like we have a great neighborhood school we love the school we go to but people make us feel like oh you didn't choose a school well choosing your home school is a great option I agree 100 all of our schools in Rock Hill in Rock Hill are phenomenal but the choice was designed specifically for parents to learn more about
081the options and particular learning Pathways they may want to select for their students but our principals at non-choice schools do a wonderful job of having community events school events that highlight the wonderful things that are happening there as well thank you okay yes question on February 14th could we have an update on I know I've asked this question before with the huge group of students that we know are not college-bound and the rising seniors and the current seniors have they been offered or given option of certification programs or internships or something that lead them toward the workforce I know I've asked that before but can I get an update on how we're closing that Gap or how have they reached out to those students yeah we can provide that thank you and I'm putting it
082down on my agenda and I know too that I've asked about the mentoring programs and it was offered for some groups to sign up and be vetted it was also included a big report in in hopline on that it's a whole list of who's who is six weeks right before Christmas right after you ask okay so it's in there and we keep looking at more we have other entities that reach out to us and we vet them and um yeah mentoring is interesting because there's not a one-size-fits all right so there are pockets of students that um that need mentoring that don't seek it themselves so I think it's important that we we provide that opportunity without having them have to go out to find it I was thinking on that especially with ones that
083are going into ISS or being suspended suspended that kind of thing could that not be part of their program of getting on the right track is have them partner with a mentor or mandatory going to the counselor to you know have time to talk to get to the root problem not just the surface but the root problem of behavior so they can be corrected and they can be guided to the right path could that not be an option and I think it actually is an option that's used and many of our schools have that as part of their especially in Middle School it's part of their ISS process if it's called ISS it's different different names at different schools but part of that process is not just a place to sit and take time out
084but it's a processing model where they go through mandatory counseling I don't think we can do that we can offer it but we can't mandate it as part of that educational process okay anything else nope um so that we we do have an executive session tonight we have four items listed uh that we're going to talk about it's a legal update property matters prop Personnel matters hirings and Personnel matters breach of contract um so this uh moment I would entertain a motion to adjourn the Open Session and enter executive session for the resource I just listed thank you Mr Burns do I have a second uh thank you Miss Cole and in discussion very numb all those in favor aye Brent are you with us yes hi hi uh anyone against no bearing them I
085ordered a motion carry 7-0 I'm about to double vote here we're not going to do that um okay so uh executive session uh upstairs and uh gentlemen I'm going to hang up with you and call you when I foreign good evening and welcome back uh the board has been meeting an executive session for the purpose of legal update property matters for Personnel matters and Personnel matters at this point I would entertain a motion to adjourn the executive session and reconvene the Open Session thank you Miss Cherry do I have a second thank you Miss Cole any discussion Barry not all those in favor all opposed mention Kerry 7-0 do I have any motions coming out of executive session Madam chair uh-huh I move that we accept the District administration District administration and totals recommendation to
086accept the contract offer on the purchase of the real estate acreage located tax map 599-04-03-01 from Global Ministries Outreach thank you so much do I have a second thank you uh Miss Douglas and any discussion on this bearing on all this in favor all the pets the mission Kerry 7-0 uh do I have any further motions coming out yeah thank you uh do I have a second thank you Miss Cole any discussion bearing on all those in favor allopest motion carry 7-0 does that conclude our emotions coming out of executive session at that point I will entertain a motion to adjourn thank you Mr Burns uh do I have a second I second thank you Miss Douglas any discussion Barry none all this a favor all opposed motion carries 7-0 rep it is 8 15
087and we