001Good evening, everybody. It's four forty five. We're going to wait a couple more minutes. Dr. Grant's running a little late and I want to get started with that. So please wait two minutes. Thank you so much, Dr. Duran for joining us. Well, good evening, everybody. Welcome to our school board special meeting tonight. Our work session is around a really, really important topic. It's talking about our budget. So with that, can I please have a roll call? Dr. Alvarez? Yeah. Dr. Espinosa? Yeah. Dr. Tidholm? Present. Dr. Colleen? Present. President Van? Here. Well, thank you, everybody. Dr. Duran, would you like to kick off or would you like minutes? All right. Jackie, welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We're here to talk about the adoption of the twenty twenty six, twenty
002seven budget plan today. We will be talking through all of the different funds. So all five funds today. And as we always start with our students in mind, we start with our promise to know every student in Highline Public Schools by name, strength and need and graduates prepared for the future they choose. And as I sat and thought through really what this promise means to our staff, business services, you know, it makes you think of us as stewards of public funds and taxpayer dollars really feel responsibility to ensure an allocation of resources that are really aligns with our goals and our focus here at Highline. Our second focus is always to ensure fiscal transparency. And so that's what what today really is, is to give an overview of our budget, our four year plan and
003really where we're headed financially. So this presentation you're going to see today represents a year's worth of work in a short 45 minute presentation. It has been a difficult year. We have had to make difficult decisions with reductions of eight million dollars and the continual underfunding of public education. So we've had to make difficult choices and you'll see that reflected in the budget. I just wanted to take a moment and introduce the team at the table and ask that they introduce their team members that have joined us today as well. To my left is Lauren McAllister. She's the director of budget. She is responsible for the overall budget development and revenues, expenditures and really tracking the budget, sometimes on a daily basis when I ask. She also this year took the lead on our AloeVu
004implementation. And that really was a large project that is going to provide a lot more transparency into our budget. Not only did she implement it for Highline and and lead all the trainings and the development, she also became an expert within the AloeVu world. We were one of the really early adopters of AloeVu. And so they've taken a lot of the feedback that Lauren and team have provided and changed their system. So we've really kind of led the way with AloeVu this year. So thank you to Lauren. It's a lot of work. To my right is Sarah Semrock. And as of tomorrow, she will be Dr. Semrock. So congrats. She is in her second year as our director of budget strategy. Second year, right? Yeah, also. And she oversees all of our compensatory and supplemental
005funds. And so she really has done an amazing job of ensuring compliance with our grants and our our supplemental funds. And she also had two brand new team members this year. So she has taken that, taken the training of her team members and really brought them up to speed. And then last, but surely not least, Andrew Burgess, our controller, and he has been primarily responsible for accounting and procurement and payroll, but also a lot of our bond and levy information that you're going to see both tonight during CFAC and in this presentation, tax rates, working with our fiscal advisors. And very importantly, he is the lead on our audit each year. And we just received last week a clean audit. So our federal and our fiscal audit was clean. No findings, which means that we
006are now downgraded, which in their world is a great thing. So we're at a lower risk, a lower audit risk now, which means they will audit less information and it will also cost us less next year. So that's really good news. And it just shows that this team really has a focus on that those that stewardship of public funds. So I'm going to hand it over and let them introduce their team that's here. All right. You know, our team sitting up front here. First up is Carter Vann. He is our newest senior or newest analyst. And Ingrid or Sherry Sutliff, our enrollment specialist, Ingrid Chan, our senior budget analyst. And as much as Jackie shared about the budget, our team is incredible. And they have done a wonderful job. And they are the leading experts
007in all the things that we are doing right now. So I just want to give a big thank you to all of them. I will continue our introductions of our budget team in business services, introducing Edgar Lopez Nava. Edgar works very closely with all of our schools around their supplemental funds and schools in Highline Public Schools, as well as our private school partners in our region. And Edgar works alongside Max Couch, who is not with us here tonight. He's with family right now. And Max Couch joined our team and supports all of our grants outside of the categorical title and lab grants. And both of them were so glad that they are on our team and helping build systems to support our funding sources. My team works the graveyard shift, so they're all home. So
008before we begin, I would like to take a brief moment and ground us and where we are and why that matters, not just as a formality, but a reminder of our responsibility as a public education system. So I'll read our land acknowledgement. We begin by acknowledging that we are on the ancestral land stewarded since time immemorial by the Salish people of the Duwamish, green, white, cedar and upper Puyallup Rivers, many of these giving birth to the contemporary citizens of the Muckleshoot Indian tribe. We honor and give thanks that we are able to collectively engage in this conversation on their sacred homelands about the future of teaching and caring for our sacred children and youth. And so as we reflect on this acknowledgement, it's a reminder that our work, especially in public education, is about stewardship,
009as Jackie shared. And on our next slide, you will see we are grounding in our strategic plan goals and the goals you see here. They are more than individual priorities. They are interconnected commitments that shape the student experience from the moment a student walks into one of our schools to the moment that they graduate. And so culture of belonging sets our foundation. Students cannot access learning if they do not feel safe, seen and valued in their school community. And in addition, our innovative learning, bilingual and biliterate and future ready goals all culminate together to shape the experience that our students have. And our role here in business services and budget is to ensure resource alignment processes and practices are supporting the strategies and the practices that are outlined by our strategic plan goals. All right.
010So today, our objectives are to go over our high line budget proposed or proposed budget. We will review five or five funds focusing on our largest fund, the general fund, reviewing our five year outlook, revenues and expenditures and concluding with our next steps. So as we move into our discussion around budget, I want to ground everyone in our policy six thousand, the financial management for equity policy. The policy serves as a guiding principles each year during budget development and beyond. Policy 6000 guides our financial management with a focus on ensuring resource allocations reflect our strategy, our strategic plan goals and system values while working to reduce inequities for students. And I'll just pause on this slide and let you just briefly read through those before we continue. So moving on, the first thing we're really
011going to talk through is our budget development context. So what does this year and the next few years look like? So twenty five, twenty six, the current year that we're in and always when we're doing budget development and budgeting in general, we're working within at least three years at a time. So usually we're working in the past year, the current year and the future year. When we're looking at budget development, we're really looking at current year and beyond. So looking at this current year, twenty five, twenty six, we've had really steady enrollment, which is it's great news and it makes budgeting easier for us because it's more predictable. We really received minimal increases in revenue from last year's legislative agenda, unfortunately. And so we've had to adapt to that this year. Our expenditures will surpass
012our revenues this year and we will use fund balance to offset that. And we knew that was that was going to happen. That was part of the long term plan, since we had a higher than normal fund balance coming out of ESSER. And we made eight million in reductions this year. And so we'll talk about what those reductions were. But going into twenty six, twenty seven, eight million dollars was reduced from our budget overall. We are anticipating an unassigned fund balance at the end of the year of five percent. And our minimum is three percent. Looking at four to twenty six, twenty seven, again, anticipating steady enrollment, slight growth, but really under a one percent growth, expenditures again will surpass revenues. And we will we will use part of our fund balance again to offset
013those costs. We will continue to make reductions next year. Going into twenty seven, twenty eight. And we also have the potential for a tech levy to be placed on the ballot. So it's a capital technology levy. And that would allow us to collect additional dollars for technology use and for capital facilities use. And next year, we're anticipating a twenty six, twenty seven unassigned ending fund balance of the minimum three percent. And that was also by design. We knew we were going to get down to the minimum next year. And that was part of the plan. And then by twenty seven, twenty eight, we really expect to make reductions and stabilize our budget so that our expenditures and our revenues match that year. So that is the year we are planning on having a balanced budget.
014And then we also have the potential for that capital technology levy collection that year as well. The unassigned fund balance that year will also be three percent. And then we'll move forward from there and we'll see kind of the longer term in a few slides. Talking through reductions for twenty six, twenty seven. Going into this year, we knew we were going to have to make reductions because obviously our expenditures are outpacing our revenues. With that, we made a minimum of eight percent reductions per central office department. So thirty one point five centrally funded positions were reduced. Along with one point four million in nonstaffing reduction. So that came out a lot out of contracts and travel and other nonstaffing. We also have zero percent inflationary adjustment or that IPD that we always talk about for
015central office administrators, professional technicians, which is our prof tech positions and executive assistants. So our total reductions, as I said, for twenty six, twenty seven, were a total of eight million dollars. And looking at our budget development timeline, we had a really robust timeline this year. We didn't you know, when I started when Lauren and I started in business services ten years ago, almost there was a break. It seemed like the summer was a little bit slower. And then we September, October, we really were focused on enrollment and truing up the budget this year. And then probably in the past six years, there's been there's been no break. It's a year round activity now. We just go right into the next year. So this year we did the same September. We started planning. We started
016doing some projections to ensure that, you know, we were going to have to make reductions and were the amounts we were projecting correct. Looking into October through December, we really decided to make those reduction decisions early this year so that we could not only plan for that, but also communicate those reductions as early as possible to those affected. So by January, we had finalized all our reduction decisions and by February, it communicated all those reductions. We also had negotiations and continue to have some contract negotiations this year. So that began in January and continues. March, we had our resource alignment meeting. So those are our meetings that we have with each school and the budget team. And then April is when we really sit down and figure our final year end projection. So we look
017at the current year, where we think the year is going to end, do our projections and then really build the starting fund balance off those projections for the following year. And so that brings us to June, which we're here today. And we submitted our final budget, which is there's three different things we have to submit, both ESD and then OSPI later on. So it's the F-203, which is our revenue projections for one year, our F-195, which are our budget for next year. And then the F-195F, which is our four year plan. So all three of those have to be submitted to the ESD before we come and do this presentation tonight. It was submitted. We were the first to submit this year early, and it's been approved by the ESD. They had no concerns with
018any of those three documents. And so once we in July, once the budget goes to action, then those will be submitted to OSPI. And we always talk about engagement when we talk about our budget. And it's really important, especially in years where we're making very difficult decisions, that we engage with our students, our staff, our community and our families. And so we ensure that we did that this year, as we always do. We added some additional engagement this year with staff. And with families and community. So for staff, we have our superintendent advisory leadership team, our resource alignment meetings. And then this year, we also had our strategic plan refinement and budget engagement meetings. So those were the series of meetings that occurred earlier this year in the beginning of twenty twenty six. With students,
019of course, we have our SSLT team, which we talked to about budget, our ASB budgets, which Sarah will go through shortly. And a lot of feedback sessions with families, you know, very similar to our staff. And in addition, we have CFAC, which you'll hear from later tonight. We do have staff on that as well, and students and community. So so CFAC really encompasses all four of those. And then for community, we also have thought exchanges and our public hearing later this month. So we are leaving this year general fund to the end because that is the most robust fund with with a lot of the most information. So we thought we'd share the other four funds first and leave general fund to the end. So I'm going to run through capital projects fund. Our beginning
020fund balance for capital projects is one hundred and eighty point two million. That's the result of the just most recent bond sale. So they are starting with a very high fund balance, but they do anticipate spending the majority of that this year. One hundred and thirty one point two million. The majority of that is going into finishing Pacific Middle School. So Pacific Middle School is scheduled to be open in September of twenty twenty seven, so a little over a year out. We'll have students moving into that school and their budget this year is sixty five million to finish that project. We also within capital have improvements and critical needs. A lot of that are things that occur in the summer. So the larger capital projects that need to happen at schools that we don't want
021to to do while students are on site occur in the summer. So a lot of roofing projects will happen, electrical upgrades, HVAC improvements. And then some of this critical needs money is also going towards Southern Heights and the fire response. And so you'll see we'll talk about that during our CFAC presentation as well. But there's multiple different types of funds being used to rebuild that school. And I'm going to hand it over to Andrew to go over transportation vehicle fund. All right. So this is my least favorite fund. I'm just kidding. Just like my kids. I love all our funds equally. So it's a simple fund. It's buses, buying buses. So Claire Glady, this is her forte. So I can't speak to the exact specifications of all the buses. But every year we get a
022certain amount of revenue from OSPI to to get rid of our old buses and buy new ones and keep that cycle going so that we've always got operating buses to get our students to where they need to go to learn. So I'll pass it over to Sarah. Much more exciting fund, the ASB fund. Yes. So the ASB fund is unique and it stands for Associated Student Body Fund. ASB is both a financial system and it's a student leadership system. ASB is one of the few areas where students are not just participants. They're decision makers. And so as shown on this slide, what you're looking at is that we're maintaining a stable fund balance in ASB with revenues and expenditures closely aligned heading into next year. And these funds are raised by students to support extracurricular
023activities across the general student body, athletics, certain classes and student led clubs as well. Now my favorite fund. And I'm just realizing that these two funds that I'm doing, I am an introvert, I guess, and these two funds don't involve people. So the bus, the bus fund and the debt fund. So but these are connected to what Jackie shared prior with the capital projects fund, because these schools that we're completing are are from this money that we borrowed upfront to pay for those costs. And we got to pay back later. So we're trying to keep a stable tax amount and tax rate for taxpayers so they can consistently understand what we're asking, you know, in their property taxes. And so this is, again, paying for for old debt. And I'll preface what we'll be bringing
024to you at the next board meeting that we'll have another opportunity to refinance some of that debt and potentially save taxpayers in this instance, potentially millions of dollars in interest saved. So our financial advisors and and lawyers and underwriters will come and explain all that. And so that is exciting because that's what we're trying to do constantly is how can we, you know, steward these dollars best. And so looking at this opportunity to refinance this debt is critical. And so now to the general fund. Before we get into the general fund, I'll pause for a minute and see if there's any questions before we continue on any of the other funds directors. So I have a question about the critical need. So how are these dollars allocated? We hear from at the board meetings about
025leaks and other stuff happening. So are these covered by this fund? So what's the process? So some of that is covered by this fund and some of it is covered by our general fund. So there is a limit with what we can spend capital dollars on. It has to be large projects. So major construction projects like roofing or electrical upgrades. Smaller leaks would be covered by facilities operations. But if it's a roof leak and we have to replace the whole roof, then that's something that the capital fund would cover. And so every year we look at our the scores of all of our schools and identify where the most need is out of all of our schools. And then we use the critical needs money to to do those improvements over the summer and throughout
026the year. So it's based on those scores. It's based on mainly on the scores. You know, we do keep really detailed records of of things like roof replacements and and, you know, the cycles of electrical upgrades or or fire and safety equipment upgrades. So they're on a cycle. Thank you. Any other directors, questions or comments? Director Tidholm, any questions? No, I don't have any. Thank you. OK, we'll move on to our general fund. So our general fund for twenty six, twenty seven, our revenues are projected to be four hundred and forty three point eight million, expenditures four hundred and forty nine point nine million, which you can see we will as planned to be using a small amount of our fund balance again next year. And looking at our five year outlook, this should look
027similar to what we've seen in the past. Really, it hasn't changed dramatically over the past few years that we've been doing these projections. You can see our revenues are the yellow line on the screens and the purple is our expenditures. Expenditures are still higher than our revenues year over year, meaning that we're which means we're going to have to make some reductions. It is the gap is closing. So that is good news. As our enrollment is increasing, the gap is slowly closing, but not enough that we can feel comfortable where we are right now. So we will still have to make some adjustments moving forward. And you can see the gap begins next year. Well, this year was six point five million and then going into next year at six point two million. And then
028the gap slowly closes, but still needing to make some reductions, because, as I said, by twenty seven, twenty eight, we don't want to have a gap at all. We want to have a balanced budget. And just a reminder of fund balance and the different kinds of fund balance. And I'll go over this quickly. But the the we have different kinds of fund balance for different uses. Non spendable are the things that we have set aside that are legally required to be set aside that we cannot use. Restricted funds are thing are is money that's set aside either due to legislation or to law. So a lot of that is our carryover amount. So our lap carryover, if we have that year over year, goes into the restricted funds. Committed is dollars that you as the
029school board have the right to commit to a certain priority. And we did commit, as you remember, 10 million dollars to our special education about five years ago. We're in our last year of being able to use that. We'll be down to zero committed dollars after this coming year. Assigned is money that we've set aside for a particular function or reason. And usually that is things that we are anticipating costs coming up. And we want to set aside those dollars. And then, of course, unassigned is anything that's continues to be spendable. And that is where we talk about the three percent. So we have to have three percent unassigned fund balance within our budget. So looking at our ending fund balance projections, 25, 26. So this current year, like I said, we were projected to
030end around five percent. Twenty six, twenty seven. It will be within the three percent range. We when we finalized our projections for next year, it came in at three point five percent. So within three percent. And then if we were to do nothing, we would continue to reduce down year over year, but still remain within around that three percent in the next few years. So I'm going, oh, no, this is still me. We switched. Sorry. Talking through twenty six, twenty seven revenue, these should look familiar. It's the same revenue that we receive every year, just different amounts. Looking to next year, we're four hundred and forty three point eight million is the expected revenue amount. Seventy, roughly 71 percent of that comes from state funded sources. So that's our general apportionment, LAP, special education. All
031of that comes in within the state. Six or 15, close to 16 percent of that revenue comes from our operating levy. So our enrichment levy. And that is something that we collect year over year. Six percent is coming in from federal sources. So things like Title one, two, three and special education. And about six percent of our revenue comes just from other grants and donations and other funding sources. And as you know, our state funding is driven purely by enrollment and you can see here that we are anticipating slight growth throughout the next, you know, through twenty nine thirty, which is as far as our demographer projects out. So as you see the four year projections and you see that gap start to get smaller, that's because we're seeing enrollment start to increase slightly. And
032so that generates additional revenue at the state level. And when we look at state revenues, we really talk through what is what makes up that 71 percent of our budget. So a lot of that is our state apportionment. It's about two hundred and twenty two million next year. We'll come in directly through apportionment, close to 50 million in special education next year. And then we have things like LAP, our TBIB program program, transitional bilingual program, transportation and highly capable. So it's really when we talk about basic education that is state funded, that's what this is. That's what this slide is. So this is our basic education dollars. And then we talk about local revenues. And really one of the questions and one thing that we are required to now report to OSPI on a yearly
033basis is what are we spending our levy dollars on? And so this slide can really, really highlights what we are spending levy dollars on. The majority of that is staff and salaries. So it's it's and we'll go over this in the next few slides. But it's really positions that aren't funded by the state, that we are using local levy dollars to fund as well as facilities and maintenance needs, transportation, safety and security, public information and then student and family support. So those are really the big pieces that we're funding out of our levy, along with athletics. Forgot to say that as well. Within that staff and salaries, I just want to point out that thirty three point eight million that is also has a lot of our staffing at schools that is not funded by
034the state as well. Can you share what schools supports what that covers for five point two? Thank you. It's Lauren knows this so well. It is things like stipends and is it subs are in there as well? Curriculum materials and supplies. You're welcome. So looking at our state prototypical model, it's really important to understand when we say we're using our local levy for things like staffing and salaries, what that means. And so on this slide, you can see the first bar, which is kind of that turquoise bar, is what is funded by the state. So those are our state FTE dollars that we collect through apportionment. The next yellow is what we're using. Our state budget, state allocated oh one oh two budgets for. So those are our state dollars within our budget. And then
035the purple is all other funds that we are using to fund positions. So that would be like our levy dollars. It could be some special education dollars. Am I missing anything on lap and title in our supplemental funds? So you can see with we are very that the purple line is much higher than that first turquoise teal band. And so we are funding much more than we're receiving. And that's when we start talking about local dollars and supplemental funds. That's what that's what we're funding. So you can see teachers and specialists is much higher. Nurses and health services incredibly high compared to what we receive at the state level. And then on the next slide, you can see our classified staffing. And that's really where you see instructional assistance or para educators are very underfunded.
036And we are using local levy dollars and lap and title to supplement those positions. I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to talk through federal dollars. On this slide, we are highlighting the district's main federal revenue sources amounting to approximately twenty six point six million and twenty twenty six to twenty twenty seven school year. Our federal revenues come from six primary funding areas that support a variety of student programs and services across the district. So the first category that you're looking at titled other grants includes funding sources such as our Perkins Grant, which is part of supporting our career and technical education program. Our direct grants that we received from the federal government and the Indian Education Grant as well. The second category that you see here we're receiving about eight hundred thousand dollars
037from is Title Three, which is the grant intended to support English language learners. And the next category that you see is titled school improvement. And that includes Title Two and Title Three. And that program supports professional development, student support services, as well as academic enrichment for students. The fourth category you are looking at where we're receiving about five billion dollars in revenue is special education funding. Namely, that is from idea part B. And this category also includes Medicaid reimbursements. And then the next category that you are looking at is our food services. Oh, I apologize. The next one that you're looking at, learning acceleration reflects our Title One program and our school improvement grants. And that supports it. It's intended to support Tier Two and Tier Three interventions to students who may not be yet
038on track for graduation or reading or doing math at grade level. And then the last category that you're looking at for food services includes our food service revenues and the USDA commodities that we receive. And I'd like to name a point of celebration our twenty twenty five to twenty six end of year reports for Title Two and four have been approved by OSPI. And what that means is that we've been able to initiate our application for next year's grant for our title programs. And just today confirmed that we have received what is considered substantially approved status by OSPI directly. And that allows us to begin obligating funds for next school year, beginning right away on July 1st. So that is a great celebration and reflects our ongoing compliance, but also the systems that had to
039be in place for us as a district to have our budget plans and proposals ready for next year. And to conclude this section, I want to also share a thank you to Sarah Marie Artis, our Muckleshoot Tribal Partners and the board for engaging in tribal consultation earlier this spring, which is essential to our district's ability to receive and steward all federal funds. As we talk through all the different types of funds that we use here at Highline that make up our general fund, we always talk about our local levies. So as you've seen, we use our EPNO or operating levy or enrichment levy. There's many different names for our operating levy. And that is our really what supports our general fund in learning. It makes up, like I said, almost 16 percent of our general
040fund next year. And we passed with a 63 percent approval rate back in November of 2025 for a four year levy. There's also, as I mentioned, the capital technology levy that has the potential to be placed on the ballot in November. It's also called you'll hear it referred to as a technology levy really frequently, but it actually serves can serve two different purposes. It can support technology infrastructure as well as critical facility needs. So that is one that we could use capital funds with and it transfers into the general fund for those urgent critical needs at schools as well. It also passes with a simple majority. We have passed technology levies in the past. Last one that we ran and passed was back in 2020. And so this is something that you'll hear about a
041little bit later on as well. When CFAC is here and we start talking through tax rates, both the technology capital technology levy and the bond will be within those tax rates that were the proposed tax rates that we're looking at. And then the last type of levy that is available to districts to run, but that we have never run and don't foresee running in the future is the transportation levy. And that's really if you are in critical need of additional buses or infrastructure for transportation, you can run a transportation levy. I think there's only one or two in the state right now. He would. Andrew would be responsible. And I'm going to turn it over to Lauren to go over our expenditures. All right. So our twenty six, twenty seven expenditures. So in the next
042few slides, I'm going to break down what our proposed and planned twenty six, twenty seven expenditures are. So this side shows how the district plans to invest our four hundred and forty nine point nine million dollar budget for the twenty six, twenty seven year. The vast majority of our funding does go to about 80 percent dedicated to instructional activities, which includes general instructions, special education and support services that directly impact students and student learning. An additional four percent of student or of our budget goes to student nutrition and transportation covers another 16 percent or and 16 percent covers district wide services such as facilities, technology, security and central office operations. So like other districts, our district spends about 85 percent of our total budget on staff salaries and benefits, reflecting that people are one of
043our greatest investments and one of the primary drivers of student success. Special education, while we are planning on receiving about sixty one point six million dollars in revenues this year, we plan to spend eighty one point six and underfunding of about twenty million dollars. So we are spending, again, twenty million dollars above the state and federal funding for special education. Student transportation. This side highlights the cost of providing student transportation services. So we anticipate receiving nine point six million dollars in state transportation, while transportation expenditures are projected to be about twelve point one million. And again, as a result of state underfunding transportation, the district will contribute about two point five million dollars above state funding levels. Last big one is supplies, materials and operating costs. So this year, as part of the state prototypical
044model, we received dollars for materials and supplies. We anticipate bringing in about twenty eight point eight million dollars of revenue, but exceeding that, again, underfunded by sixteen point eight million dollars. And our expenditures are planned at forty five point six million dollars. Looking at next steps. So what's what's coming up next for budget development? Long term planning, you've seen the kind of long term five year plan. We're going to continue to work with legislators to try and fully fund basic education within the state of Washington. We also know that we haven't received a lot of additional revenue in the past few years, even though there is this this knowledge of the underfunding at the state level. So we're not anticipating or counting on receiving anything. We are we are going to adjust our budget as
045needed. But we will continue to advocate always for additional funding and fully funding basic education. Our long term plan will include another round of reductions next year for the twenty seven, twenty eight budget development year. We will continue to have a minimum unassigned fund balance of three percent. And we will continue with our engagement throughout the community with students, staff and families as we make these these difficult decisions. And then we also, of course, have the potential of a four year capital technology levy on the November twenty twenty six ballot. So our next steps, as you know, budget development has quite a few steps in order to be approved. Today, we have our budget work session. June 18th, you will receive the the introduction of the budget at the board meeting, and that will include
046the bar and all of the supplemental materials that go along with budget development. June 24th, we have our public hearing. So that allows the public some time to look at the budget when we after we've introduced it and really come in and ask and give us feedback. And then July 1st will be our action on the budget. So that's when we potentially will approve it and move forward with our twenty twenty six, twenty seven budget. Looking beyond that, we'll have our continue to have our monthly budget updates. We also will be posting all of our budget documents ahead of the intro on June 18th. So we're anticipating next Friday. We'll have the budget book posted, which is brand new this year. So it's been all redone thanks to Lauren and all of you in the
047team. So looked for that. We'll also have all of you will be available as well. And we will have the F one ninety five F one ninety five F and the two or three is posted as well. So that'll all be on the website beginning next Friday. So we're going to pause and it looks like we have some time for questions. Happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you so much all for that presentation. Directors, any follow up questions or comments that you would like to share as you can jump jump in any time? I just have a comment. I think there'll be maybe some more questions come after next Friday once the budget book is looked over. But it looks great from everything that you presented. So thank you for all the
048hard work and diligence. Thank you. I don't have any questions, but just a comment. I really appreciate the intention and the work that you all have done and just being good stewards of the funds that we do have, having conversations with board directors across the state and across the nation, knowing that everybody's in just not a great position financially, I appreciate that we are in a better position than a lot of these school districts are. And I just really want to recognize the work that you guys have done to make sure that that's happened and continues to happen. I just have a quick question, more of a clarification and the expenditures for the student transportation. Does that include the HUD McKinney-Vento? So last year, it's a great question. We actually are really receiving less revenue
049this year and beyond than we did last year. So there was the safety net funding for transportation, and it was for what they called special riders. But that included McKinney-Vento and special education riders. That was funded at the state level using ESSER dollars. And when they ran out of ESSER dollars, they cut that safety net transportation. So we lost close to a million dollars last coming into this year within the transportation revenue, which is why there's a larger gap now. So but and that's what I was afraid of, because I know that with the HUD McKinney-Vento, the expenditure there is great just because we have to meet where they're at. And just wondering how other districts are doing. I mean, what is everybody doing because it's not sustainable? It's not. And I will say this
050is we're not unique in this in the spending pattern we have with transportation. Most districts that are a similar size are have the same revenue to expenditure gap. You know, we do we have we do spend a few million, two to three million a year on McKinney-Vento transportation. And that's been pretty standard, I think, really, in the past, you know, 10 years or so. It's increased slightly, but it's pretty consistent. And so we were really helpful that that safety net would continue and we'd continue to receive funding for that. But unfortunately, it was it was reduced in last state budget. Well, thank you. And thank you again. And I'll just reiterate what everybody's been saying. I know this is a lot of hard work. And I think it's it's evolved to where it's I think
051for me, I'm able to understand it better. I'm able to see it. You know, the transparency is there even, you know, as we're moving through this and even with the budget cuts. So I appreciate it. I can't wait to get into all of you to see more about how that. Oh, because I think you'll be able to run kind of own reports in there and kind of see. Yeah. So thank you for all your work, for all your team. Thank you. OK, thank you. And congrats on your PhD, Sarah. Good job. It's amazing. OK, so there was a slide on the just on the distribution of the the revenue sources. I can go back. It's like a pie chart. Yes. This one. Yes. So I guess for lack of better wording, but is this where
052we want to be in terms of the distribution? Is this like best practice? Because we're relying on state and the levy funding, which is tenuous at best, perhaps. This is very typical of districts throughout the state. So state throughout, it's about 15 percent. You'll see, you know, like 14 to 17 percent is local levy dollars is pretty average for districts. And about 72 percent is 71 to about 74 is is is average for the state funding. You know, state funding is the largest amount that we receive. And the state apportionment is the largest amount that we rely on on a monthly basis. So, yes, this is pretty typical of what we would see throughout the state. OK, and so do we want to also see an increase in the reliance on grants and donations and
053philanthropy? Yes, I think we have been pursuing additional grants this year and continue to. Sarah and her team are doing a great job at looking at the different grants that we're eligible for. Sometimes grants come with restrictions that that place us in positions that we may not want to be. We have we were careful about which grants we accept, but we do look for grants. OK, and then just one more question. So there was I think it's one or two slides after this one. This no. Yeah, it's this one. So public information, it's one point two million, correct? Yes. So this is the request that come in from community. No, this is part of that. And then part of it is our communications team and all the communication we do throughout the district. OK, yes.
054And then college and career readiness. What does that entail? I'm asking because I've been visiting high school classes on civics. OK. And some of their stories that they share is just feeling prepared as they are preparing to graduate. Yeah. And I'm seeing that that's so this is like that we have. Yeah, that. Yes. And some of this is our advanced courses. It'll fund some of that. Our college and careers readiness specialists throughout our comprehensive high schools are also funded out of this. And this isn't, you know, this is a partial. But I think some of that funding also could be lumped into that staff and salaries group, which is the largest line on this chart. Those are great questions. Thank you. I do have a couple of questions, and thank you so much for coming
055and presenting this evening. What really interests me is around the timeline and the community and student family engagement. You know, I really appreciated when you guys started the RAM process a few years ago, I really piqued my interest as, you know, making sure that the building leaders and staff and families are part of what how do they want to build their community, their school. Right. So you shared with us this this didn't just happen yesterday. It started about a year ago to get us to this point. Can you share with us, as you know, that we have speakers coming tonight to talk about some positions, you know, school allocations, mitigations, where do we sit with that? How does that all come into play to ensure that our schools have what they need to fulfill their,
056you know, their priorities for their building? So it starts with the resource alignment meetings. It's a long process. Resource allocations to schools. You know, we start that work as a team, usually in September, October. And we're looking at enrollment projections. We receive the projections in December, usually. And then we start start developing the tools that we will eventually send to schools schools receive their allocations. Usually it's mid-February that they'll receive their allocations, knowing that the RAM meetings, resource alignment meetings started start in mid-March. So it gives schools, you know, roughly a month to look at those allocations. Some of those allocations are generated from contract language. So the majority of the allocations that they receive on their allocation sheets are driven by ratios within negotiated contracts. There's also things like title and title dollars, LAP
057dollars, transitional bilingual program dollars that the schools have decision making over how to use those dollars. So they're allocated directly to the schools. And then the schools decide how to best support students with those dollars within their building. So that occurs throughout that month. They're starting to plan that. And our team is meeting with them as and discussing, you know, can you use because there are there are rules around supplemental dollars. So are these allowable uses? And they develop their categorical plan throughout that month. And that's what they're really coming to talk through during the resource alignment meetings, along with their allocations. Do you want to add to that? I would just like to name that the categorical resources are supplemental resources in addition to basic education funding. And so what that means is that
058there are factors for each individual grant funding source based that dictate how we as a system are able to allocate or distribute those. So what that means is that year to year, there may be fluctuations in the dollar amount that each school qualifies for based on the student need as reflected in factors such as low income status or academic performance in areas of literacy or math. And so I just want to name part of this process that schools work through with their teams and with human resources, student learning and business services involves really critically evaluating each year the needs of their students in their school and how to best allocate the resources that are supplemental that they have. And so while we've been effectively flat funded by the federal government for some of our supplemental
059grants, we're not seeing the revenue increase in the ways that our expenditures might. So, yeah, I'll just share that one additional layer. Thank you for that. You brought something up in regards to the simple mental resources, but there's also rules around how we can spend it or where that money comes from, right? The question that I'm going to ask right now is around how we are looking at a position at one of our schools around a career technical or a career specialist where CTE funding is supported. How does that how does that work for that position? And what's going on with that? So as we develop the plans, especially at the high school, comprehensive high schools and high schools and middle schools that have CTE programs, those those FTE are allocated by usually by the
060CTE department is giving us, you know, what they anticipate at each school, along with the school leader. So they should be working together and developing what is the CTE program at that school and how it's funded. There are some also rules around CTE funding. We can only the way we claim CTE is very different than how we claim basic education. And we receive supplemental dollars for CTE that are over and above basic education. And so it gets it gets a little complicated because there are rules around what CTE can fund and what CTE can't fund and what students we can claim for CTE and what we can't claim for CTE. If I could quickly add to that, that when situations, when we're not able to follow and meet those expectations, then we're not reimbursed for
061those funds. And so it's it's not really a complicated process because it's very clear in terms of what we need to do. As a matter of fact, just recently last month, I've signed a number of new courses that are coming out of CTE and is very specific around what the expectations are, standards, alignment, assessments, all that's incorporated into that. So that's part of our overall federal funds that we have allocated for career and technical education. And I will add, if we if that's a really good point, if we don't, if we cannot claim those funds, then it comes out of general education funds. It's coming out of basic education and we haven't budgeted for that. So that's where we can see gaps develop in our budget. I think the other part I'll just add, I
062think the process that we have in place for school allocations, I mean, these conversations start way early on. I mean, we talked about the reductions we had to make for next year. We started having those conversations in October. And so we started having conversations with schools to be thinking around things to consider. So there was a long window of time for schools to be thinking about potential reductions that they may have to make or things that they have to consider for their own planning for next year. So I feel that the window and process that our team has put together, you know, it's very iterative, it's very collaborative. It's not just this team here. It's human resources is there. Our school leaders are involved. Of course, everybody's advocating, everybody wants more. Everybody wants as much
063as they can. But we're working within the constraints of the funds that we have, as well as the requirements that come from some of the certain funding sources that we have to support our students. Thank you for that clarification. I was going to ask who is our who is who is all part of those conversations and, you know, who are trying to come up with some solutions, right? If their idea was to fund this one position, were we supporting them, were we giving them ideas to how to fund it? So that's that's great to hear. You know, during our board meeting, we can't discuss it with our community. But I want to know. So keep on bringing up. We're going to remove this position from this school this next year. We're not going to fund
064it, but that's not that's not the truth. My question to you, Dr. Duran and because we have one employee is that Dr. And let's say we want to fund this position for the full year. What what impact would that do down the line? Knowing that we just cut eight million dollars, that's 31 positions. What what impact would that do? I think I'll do a couple of different ways. So one, I mean, I just put the elephant in the room. We're talking about raised back aviation. We know we're going to have some speakers come here tonight. And so one, I just want to say is that, you know, again, we have been working with the school since October. Our instructional leadership executive director and executive director, teacher and learning have been working closely with the school
065leadership team over the last two months to really look at all their schedules, allocations, staffing. And so there's possibilities there. It's really in the hands of the school right now to make decisions around what that really matters the most of them and what they want to fund. So that's going to be a school based decision. So if you I would say that to answer your question directly, that I would need the board to direct me to do that, because we've gone through a process already to, you know, fund schools, mitigate schools. And so, you know, if you wanted me to fund it, you would have to direct me to do that as a school board. And then we would have to take a look at our resources. You know, we cut eight million dollars already
066for next year. And so we would potentially have to look at another position cut somewhere or find, you know, something that we plan to spend on next year that we wouldn't be able to fund. So it would definitely have impact because we've already reduced eight million dollars in central offices, primarily impacted by that. And so we would have to have a really difficult conversation to take a look at what it would take to fund it. All right. Thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for that. Directors, any other follow up questions? Jackie, team, thank you so much for this great presentation. Directors, if there are any follow up questions or thoughts when you guys are getting ready for bed and you think up of something, send that over to Jackie and Dr.
067Duran that there would be more than happy to respond with that. That concludes our special meeting this evening. Can I please have a motion to adjourn? I make a motion we adjourn. Can I have a second? I will second. All in favor? Aye. So our regular board meeting will start at six o'clock. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, everybody.