001Good evening, everybody. Welcome to our special meeting tonight. It's around, our work session around budget. With that, can I please have roll call? Director Holien? Present. Director Alvarez? Here. Director Espinosa? Here. President Villan? Here. And to my left is Dr. Duran. And I'm going to kick it off to you, Jackie. If we can go around the table here real quick so we can do a quick introduction. So people on, if they know who's here. Okay. Thank you. Jackie Bryan, Chief Financial Officer. And I'll pass it over to Sarah. Sarah Sumrack, Director of Budget Strategy. Andrew Burgess, Controller. And Lauren McAllister couldn't be here today. She has a family illness. She's a sick kiddo she's taking care of. So we'll be reviewing her slides today. So welcome to the board work session, number two for budget
002development of 2026-27. This is the second in a series of three. So our final work session will be in June right before we do intro introduction for the budget. I am going to hand it over to Andrew to review our first few slides. Yes. I get to do both the promise and the land acknowledgement. And I've shared when I've had this opportunity before that I try to look at it with fresh eyes. So I looked at them both and tried to connect them both. And the word future is used in both the promise and the land acknowledgement. And I wrote stuff down and it's not very much but I made a connection and I just wanted to share it real quick. And so I was watching the Oscars, half paying attention to it. And one
003of the best picture movies was based on a recent novel about the most famous poet of the English language his wife, Anne and the death of their son during a pandemic about the year 1600. So back then in that society, children weren't valued in the same way as we value them now here in the year 1600. And in that place, children were essentially property. They were physical assets. They were not allowed to choose their future. Their futures were chosen for them. And that book in the movie is about grief. Yes, but also about refusing to accept the limitations placed on the futures of our children. So I contrast that time and place back then to now 400 years later than that of the events of that film in the far corner of a country, thousands
004of miles away in a different land is a school district whose promises that every student, every child is known by name, strength and need and graduates prepared for the future they choose. Emphasis on the future they choose. And so here today, we're gonna have a conversation, a financial conversation. And these kinds of conversations include terms and phrases that could almost make it sound like children again, are property or physical assets, headcount, FTE, balances, rates, percentages, dollars. Now to the land acknowledgement, 400 years later than the events of that film in the far corner of a country, thousands of miles away is a school district that is on the ancestral land of the Salish people of the Duwamish green, white, cedar and upper Puyallup rivers, a land and a place and a district that values children
005differently. So we'll have this financial conversation, but before doing so, we had Highline first acknowledge that this conversation has taken place on their land, the sacred land of the Salish people about the future of our sacred children, a future they will choose. So let's begin this conversation about our sacred children and their futures. Now I'll pass it on to Sarah. Yeah, thank you. I am very excited to join you all this evening and help ground in our strategic plan as we take a look here at our board work session focused around how we as a system are aligning our resources, specifically looking at our budget to support our strategic plan goals here in Highline, looking at a culture of belonging where all are welcome, valued and safe, looking at the ways that our schools and
006programs are leveraging innovative learning strategies and practices, how we are grounding in our goals around biliteracy and multilingualism and ultimately supporting all of our students so that they graduate prepared for the futures that they choose and are future ready. And we'll speak a little bit more to this later, but have had the pleasure this month and this week and today meeting with all of our schools to hear about how they are using their resources to make this strategic plan goals come alive in their schools. As a system and as a business services team, we always want to ground our work in policy and policy 6000 financial management for equity serves for us as our guiding principles for how we are developing our budget each year and beyond and looking for how we are living our
007equity policy and determining equitable fiscal practices for our system. And so, as we look at the full policy here that is outlined, what I want to emphasize here is the way that we're focusing on how our resource allocation and alignment practices reflect our strategic plan goals and values as a system, ultimately reducing inequities for students. And so, I want to emphasize how we're working as a system to operationalize policy 6000 through our resource allocation and budgeting practices. Today, in our conversation, our objectives, what we will spend some time on is reviewing 2026 and 2027 and beyond enrollment projections. We will share that with you all and we will spend time understanding our initial 2025 to 2026 year end projections. We will look at our initial 2026 to 2027 projections and long-term fiscal plan for Highline
008Public Schools and review the impact of a possible capital technology levy. So, in reviewing our 2025-2026 budget, we have a few things. We are going to go over a current enrollment update and then review our fund balance projection for year end this year. Again, it's still fairly early in the year, so we're using current projections. When we look at February enrollment, you saw this at the prior board meeting during my update, but these are our February numbers. We're 103 FTE currently over projection. We have seen a little bit of fluctuation this year, so we're projecting to end the year around this as well. So, about 100 over FTE over projection. As far as year end fund balance projections, just a reminder that policy 6022 is our minimum fund balance policy. It requires a minimum unassigned
009fund balance of 3% of expenditures within basic education, special education, CTE, skill center, support services and transportation at fiscal year end. So, as you see our board reports that come to you on a monthly basis, you'll see this fluctuate throughout the year. That's really cash flow. Our levy comes in, our levy funding comes in specifically at two times during the year. Apportionment varies depending on the state revenues at the time, so we see our cash flow and our fund balance fluctuate throughout the year. What really is important is where we will end at year end, and the minimum policy fund balance is 3% at year end. Right now for 25, 26, we're projecting an unassigned ending fund balance at 5%. Just as reference, 3% of our unassigned fund balance is roughly 11.1 million. 5% is
01018.5 million. That is less than 30 days operating cash. So, our expenditures on a monthly basis are roughly 35 million. It varies as well, but it fluctuates throughout the year. But I would say on average, a 35 million is our monthly expenditures. I'm gonna pause there. That was just some updates about 25, 26 year end. As I come to the board every month and present updates, so this should look familiar. It should be familiar enrollment projections, familiar fund balance projections, but I'm happy to answer any questions before we move into 26, 27. So next we're gonna cover 26, 27 enrollment projections. And as I mentioned, Lauren McAllister is the expert in enrollment projections, but she is unable to be here. So I'm gonna try and do as good of a job as she would do.
011Enrollment in the Puget Sound area declined by over 3,700 students over the past year. So that was the largest decline since 2020. We are very fortunate here in Highline that we have not experienced that same level of decline. Enrollment declined in three out of the four counties in the Puget Sound area. So King, Kitsap and Snohomish counties all experienced a decline in enrollment. Pierce County had a very slight increase, but very minimal compared to what we've seen in the past. Home-based instruction is lower today than it was during the pandemic. And private school enrollment also declined in all four counties between 23 and 24. So a lot of the questions we get around enrollment projections and why are we experiencing decline, sometimes it's, is it a home school? Is it private school enrollment? We're not
012seeing that because those are declining as well. So it really is lower birth rates moving out of the area due to prices and things that we've recognized in the past few years. Population growth is lower than before the pandemic with more job losses and less hiring between 2012 and 2019. So as I said, population growth is just not at the same rate as it was. Birth rates, some good news, increased slightly last year for the first time in seven years. So that, of course, will take some time for us to see that enrollment, but that is good news that birth rates have increased slightly. And just as a point of reference, all of these numbers that you're about to see, including these have come directly from our demographer. So he does this analysis for us
013each year and sends these to us. So our annual average FTE, we always have a medium, a high medium and low projection. Here, you're just seeing the medium and low projection. When we build our budget and our five-year plan, we always use the medium projections. That is what's recommended by the demographer and he's adjusting that yearly. So he's accounting for changes in enrollment. We always also like to show the low enrollment projection because it is kind of our guardrail. What could we possibly be looking at if enrollment does decrease? So you can see at 25, 26 to 26, 27, we have a very small increase. We're actually pretty much exactly steady. And then we start growing slightly in 27, 28 and on. So we're on a enrollment projection trajectory of minimal growth, but not decline.
014So that is different than what we've seen in the past few years. Looking at average annual head count, this really shows you the different grade levels. So K-5 is that top row, nine through 12 is that middle row and six through eight is the lowest. And you can see what I like to point out when we show this is as bubbles of enrollment roll through, you can see that in the patterns of the enrollment. So we had lower enrollment come through at elementary in the past few years. And now we're seeing that at middle school and it's gonna roll up to our high schools, nine through 12 in the next few years. Really the growth that we're anticipating is at our elementary. So with those birth rates starting to increase a little bit, we foresee
015potential growth in enrollment. And our enrollment projections, just a comparison of our February numbers that we just saw a few slides go to what our projections are. As I said, we are really, really just holding steady. A 0.5% change in FTE, a 0.1% change in head count. So not any growth for next year, but also not projecting a loss in enrollment. Any questions about enrollment before we move on? So 2026-27 budget development. We're gonna talk about a few different things. Our context, our long-term plan, our budget development assumptions as we go into budget for 2026-27, and then some very initial projections for what next year and beyond could possibly look like. So our budget development context, this is just kind of captures the last few years where we've been and where we're going. So 25,
01626, we have steady enrollment, minimal increase in revenue from legislation that was passed last year. Expenditures are gonna surpass our revenues this year. We knew that was gonna happen. We've been planning for it for years. We had fund balance set aside so we could gradually make reductions and come to a balanced budget. We have made $8 million in reductions going into 2026-27, and we'll talk about that in a minute, but our unassigned ending fund balance this year is projected to be at 5%. Looking ahead to 26-27, again, steady enrollment. Our expenditures again are projected to surpass our revenues, even with the reduction of 8 million in expenditures. We're gonna continue to make reductions as necessary to get to a balanced budget. And we have a potential of a capital technology levy. If we decide, if
017the board decides to place that on the ballot for November, the first collection for that would be in April of 2027. And next year, we're going to have an unassigned ending fund balance of 3%. So we are projecting to hit our minimum next year and then plan from there for 27-28. So 27-28, we are projecting steady enrollment. By 2027-28, our goal is to have a balanced budget, so have our revenues and our expenditures equal that year. If we need to make additional reductions, if there's some unforeseen expenditures, we'll make those as well. And the potential technology levy collection would be a full year that year. So that would be November 2027 and April 2028. And the unassigned ending fund balance for that year would be a minimum of 3%. Of course, we would never go
018lower than that. It really depends on the amount of reductions we make in the next few years and if the decision is to put the technology levy on the ballot. It's a quick question. I think we heard today that we need a 60 day instead of a 30 day. So what are we doing? So you're referencing our audit entrance conference we had about an hour ago. The state auditors have a new tool that they have rolled out. Today was the first day we saw it and the recommendation on that tool is a 60 day minimum for fund balance. That's the first time we've heard that. There's a multiple tools out there that the different state agencies have put forth and they all have different minimums. So we're working right now, we're working under the board
019policy of a minimum on 3% unassigned, but there are different tools that have us with different health indicators. Our PSESD tool, Puget Sound Educational Service District, thank you, has us at a healthy fund balance. So no concern there. And then today we saw a concerned fund balance. So there's just, I think there's still a lot of discussion within the state of what fund balance should be used for and how high it should be. Even when the question was asked, it seemed like there was some certainty, like I think it's our record. And so I'm like, okay, well, then I'm sure we'll dig into that and figure out, because I know that there's different tools, but we wanna make sure if the auditor is recommending something that we don't wanna get or have a finding because
020their tool is not the one we've been using. So I think aligning those. Yeah, we'll definitely be following up with them. And to quickly add, I think if we look at fund balances across the state, you probably see a real variety in terms of what people are holding onto right now. But I think most importantly, that's why we're really working to stay above the 3%, on the fund balance, because we know that the districts that are dealing with binding conditions right now, they continually have tapped into that fund balance and literally there's no fund balance left and they're actually in the negative number by the end of the year. That's definitely not the direction we're going. We're really working to ensure that we have a healthy fiscal outlook for the future. And we're gonna talk
021about legislation that was introduced this year, but one thing that was introduced and not passed was a minimum fund balance percentage. And a lot of that was, there was a lot of discussion around how you even measure it. Do you use revenues and have a percentage off that? Is it expenditures? Is it just state money funds? Is it state and federal funds? So there's still a lot of discussion and questions throughout the state. Welcome. So looking at our budget development timeline, we've had a year where we did not break from budget development this year. We went straight from last summer of finalizing and in September finalizing staffing allocations for this current year. We went right into budget development for 2026, 2027. Back in October, we worked, leaders began working with teams to identify reductions. As
022I said, we knew that these reductions were gonna be needed years ago. We've been planning for it. We, last year, were hopeful that the legislature would come through with additional funding and unfortunately it didn't happen. So this was the year that we knew we had to take reduction. So we started planning that very, very early this year. We worked October through December with teams to identify those reductions. And we also really did a lot of work identifying potential system-wide adjustments that we could be making long-term. So those efficiencies that we're always talking about, where are those and how do we plan for that long-term? Looking into January, we finalized the reductions and we also started some contract negotiations. So we have multiple contracts being negotiated this year. We have our Teamsters III contract, which is
023our paraeducators and our classified staff in schools and in office. We have our Teamsters IV, which is a lot of our professional staff in this building. And then we have our HEA contract as well. So that started back in January with Teamsters III. February was the month that we communicated all those reductions to impacted staff. And we'll talk about exactly how much staff that was in a few minutes, but we knew that we wanted to communicate those reductions early and not wait. The fiscal year runs through the end of August. And so this felt like if we had to make these really difficult decisions, at least we have a lot of time and notice for our staff. And we also implemented our communication plan. So we had been communicating throughout the year. We've done a
024lot of communication, at least on a monthly basis in the insider with highlights and an overview of where we are. March, so this month, as Sarah mentioned, we're in the resource alignment meetings. So we're in RAM meetings and contract negotiation with HEA actually starts next week. So Monday's our first day. But I'm gonna ask Sarah to give us a little bit of insight into RAMS and how they've been going this year. RAMS Resource Alignment Meeting Series is kind of that acronym that you'll hear and see. And as Jackie shared, our budget development process from last year into this year never really ended. But with school leaders, we started meeting in January with school teams to support a long process around aligning resources, evaluating schools needs and looking at our plans for moving into next school
025year and also long-term planning for our schools and programs. In the month of February, we met with schools. And when I say we, there is a central team that consists of folks from our business services team, our student learning program leads, our human resources teams. And we've been working across the system to meet with schools and host a number of different meetings within the RAMS series. So one of those weeks in February is involved of deep dive technical focus on our new budgeting tool, AlloView that you've heard us speak to in the past. So this is our first year planning in AlloView for our next school year. So we provided a number of hours of technical trainings and invited all of our schools to join. And we had a celebration last, in March a couple
026of weeks ago, 100% of our schools submitted their budget proposals on time ahead of our resource alignment technical meeting. So really big shout out to our school teams and the entire system for really supporting that work. It is absolutely not just living in budget. We are talking about really our people. 86% of our budget supports staffing. And so it's definitely a partnership process and has been learning process as well. So thank you to our school teams, especially for that work. And I've been with alongside our central student learning project leads and HR teams meeting with school leaders since last Thursday. So in our resource alignment technical meetings where we essentially review what the budget proposals are for schools moving into next year and are supporting schools one-on-one with those meetings. So as of today, we've
027completed our rams for all of our elementary schools and today wrapped up with our middle schools. And tomorrow we'll kind of, we'll meet with all of our comprehensive high schools and our choice and alternative schools as well. And so that's a really big celebration. It's a really big lift from all of our school teams and our system to do that. And so I'm very excited to continue that work tomorrow. Thank you for that Sarah. Just a quick question in regards to the ram meetings. That's a lot to go through and to work through with our building leaders. How have they been, have they been receptive? What's your take on what we're getting back from our building leaders? Yeah, so far I would say we've been really grateful for them riding the ride of our new
028budgeting tool with AlloView. And we had a really great turnout at the technical training meetings. And really our processes around allocations and staffing haven't changed. So we've worked to kind of emphasize that. And we've heard from school leaders how much support they've received from our budget analysts around navigating the technical tool and acknowledging sort of the shift in thinking that instead of referring to multiple spreadsheets to reflect their plans and having slower updates in Excel, we've been able to have allocations be updated as needed very quickly and accurately in AlloView. And there's great transparency when you're in the planning process. So our central teams can have access to view the current status of a school's plan based on what is drafted in AlloView. And so we've been hearing some thank yous for the tools our
029team rolled out a supplemental calculator tool that has been heavily used as we're looking at state FTE when we're planning for our classified position. So we're learning with schools what's working and working to be extremely responsive and adaptive with them. So I would say so far I've preferred working in AlloView than toggling through spreadsheets. And I think it will improve our data practices around budgeting and allocations and allowing us to prepare models as well. Yeah, thank you, Sarah. One thing I'll say is I think this is our eighth year of the resource alignment meeting process. Is it eight years? I think so, yeah. And we've gone through a lot of different iterations of tools. So we started out with very, very basic spreadsheets and Word documents way back in eight years ago. And we've progressed
030every year with different spreadsheets and different tools. And I just wanna recognize that school leaders have been so gracious as we've tried to refine this process over the years. And I'm so grateful that we have a tool now that we can use moving forward that won't change. It's not a spreadsheet anymore. It's not multiple spreadsheets anymore. It's a database that we can rely on and it provides a lot of transparency into how we allocate our resources. So big thank you to everybody who worked on AlloView. I know it was a lot of work from business services and human resources and to Sean's team as well. So big thank you. Moving forward, so looking forward to April, this is really when we start digging into year-end expenditures and revenue projections. So we hope to have them
031finalize those year-end projections by the end of April. May is when we're developing the final budget for next year and we're still negotiating contracts all the way through this timeline. And then in June, we have our budget public hearing and work session as well as submitting our final budget to OSPI. Contract negotiations are scheduled to continue through June if needed. We don't negotiate usually in July. So if we have to, we'll come back in August. And part of our budget development always is engagement from staff, students, families, and communities. So each year we have a really robust engagement process. This year was no different, especially in a year where we knew we were making reductions. We wanted to make sure we were communicating frequently and early. And so that's really what we've been trying to
032do all year. For staff, we have our superintendent advisory leadership team, so SALT that meets throughout the year. We have resource alignment meetings that Sarah just talked about. We also had strategic plan refinement and budget engagement meetings. So that was different this year. That was something that we hadn't done in the past. That occurred back in January and part of through February. Leadership forum and foundational leadership meetings. So we provide a lot of updates in those meetings and then thought exchanges as well for staff. Students, very similar. We went to our SSLT meeting this year, talked about budget, received some feedback from students. We also have some feedback sessions planned with students later and thought exchange. We also have ASB, which is a different fund source, but that is a funding source that belongs to
033students and is developed by students and managed by students. So we work with them each year on that as well. Families, we have our family action committee and a budget subcommittee within that team. And again, our strategic plan refinement meetings. We also have CFAC, which is our capital facilities advisory committee that meets throughout the year. And we have one more meeting this year with them before they bring a recommendation to you on a potential bond for November. And then we have our thought exchange and public hearings. And then the community is very similar. We have our capital oversight committee, which is made up of people within the industry, construction and finance overseeing how we use our capital bond dollars. And then we also have thought exchanges and public hearing. So these are engagement opportunities that
034happen every time the budget is created or these are because there are reductions? So these are done each year. We always have this engagement. The only one that was unique this year was the strategic plan refinement and budget engagement meetings. And that's because we're going through two processes at the same time we're doing our strategic plan refinement as we do budget development and reductions. So it was important that we were coordinating that and doing it in parallel. So those meetings were combined this year. So then the decisions for reductions are informed by these? Yes, yes. That's a perfect segue into my next one. I just quickly add on the community that we also have been spending time out in the community meeting with some of our local cities. We just recently had a meeting with
035Burien to talk around potentials and impact of the bonds and trying to get them on board. We've been having some great conversations with city of Des Moines. And then recently the King County, there's a part of their agency that represents the unincorporated part of King County, which for us would be White Center. And they operate literally as a small city. And so we've got some really good resources and ideas from them. So we're trying to keep everybody informed of both our budget, additional supports we need in the community and then potential for these upcoming things and other things that we're trying to work on. So as I mentioned, we've been working since October on identifying reductions. We made a decision to have a minimum of $8 million in reductions going into 2026, 27. We knew
036that we wanted to, when you look back at policy 6000, really keeping students in mind and keeping those reductions as far away from the classroom and impacting students as possible. And so we really looked at central office allocations primarily this year when we were looking at reductions. So those reductions, the 8 million included a minimum of 8% reduction per each central department. What that ended up coming to was 31.5 FTE. So 31.5 positions reduced that are centrally funded. Many of those positions are within this building and central office positions. We also made the decision to do a 0% inflationary adjustment which is our IPD for central office administrators, professional technician positions and executive assistants. And so those positions all also are in this building. IPD is inflationary or inflationary adjustment and we receive dollars each
037year from the state for those IPD adjustments to salary. One of the things I think that is misunderstood about IPD is it's not fully funding every position for that IPD adjustment. So there's two different factors that go into that. The first one is the state is basing their IPD percentage which is 2.6% this year off of the state salaries not off our salaries. So that creates a gap. That's our first gap in IPD. The second gap is that 2.6% are only for state funded positions. So any other position that we're funding outside the prototypical model, we're not receiving inflationary adjustments on. So that creates an additional gap in funding. That gap can range anywhere from three to 5 million a year and so that is other dollars that we have to find each year within
038our budget to minimize that gap as we do IPD. So the idea that IPD is an automatic pass through to all positions is not true. We don't receive it for categorical funding except for our learning assistance program, LAP, we do. But all of our federal dollars, Title I, all of our title grants, we don't receive it for. So we're always trying to backfill that IPD with other dollars. The other reduction we made was 1.4 million within non-staffing within central office, centrally funded departments. So things like travel has been greatly reduced contracts, outside vendors, we looked through every contract that we have and reduce those as much as possible. And anything else non-staffing within centrally allocated departments. So long-term planning for our budget, we're gonna continue to work with legislature to fully fund basic education. We'll
039keep saying that forever until it actually happens. But at the same time, we also realize that that may not ever happen and we need to make adjustments within our own budget and not rely on the state to fully fund education. Our long-term plan may include additional reductions for 20, 27, 28 and beyond. So we've identified those reductions for 2026 to 2027. That's what we just talked about. But we may need to make additional reductions to get to a balanced budget. Our minimum unassigned fund balance will always remain at or above 3%. We have the potential of a four-year capital technology levy on our November 2026 ballot. So that is a levy that can be, we'll talk about it in a minute, but it could be used for both technology and facilities needs. And the projection
040right now would be $12 million per calendar year for four years. Along with that, we're going to continue to solicit feedback from our students, staff, families and community. One thing I wanted to touch on, and I think I put this at the end of the presentation, so I'll probably say it twice, but the legislature this year did not provide any additional funding to K-12. There was some relief in a sales tax that was put through last year, unintended. And so they've repealed that now, so we don't have to pay sales tax on our contracts anymore, like our staffing contracts. That was a big, when you look at our $5 million contract in special education, 10% sales tax is a high number. So that's changed, but they also made some cuts, which is really unfortunate. So
041we'll talk about that in a few minutes, but the cuts are things to transitional kindergarten. So our ready K was reduced. We don't know by how much yet. We're waiting to find out from the state. And they made some reductions in transportation, which is shocking since that's one of our main areas of focus for underfunding. As we talk about levies, I just wanted to do an overview of really what do levies fund and why would we potentially want to run a capital technology levy. So the first levy we have are EP&O levies. Those are our levies that we run each four years. We passed our levy back in November with a 63%. That really supports our general fund learning and operations. So it makes up roughly 15 to 16% of our general levy, or sorry,
042general fund each year. So that is very, it's a substantial amount and it passes with a simple majority. So 50% plus one. And as I said, we passed our last EP&O levy in November of 2025. So just this past November with a 63%. So that's great. In addition to that, there's other levies that K-12 has access to run. One of them is the capital technology levy. It's also can be referred to as a tech levy, technology levy. There's many different names for it, but that supports both technology infrastructure and critical facilities needs. So it supplements both of those. It is actually deposited into our capital fund. So it doesn't go it directly into our general fund like our other levy does, our operating levy. And then we transfer that money into the general fund as
043we need to backfill. It passes also with a simple majority. The last time we passed a tech levy was back in 2020 during the pandemic. We knew there was a heightened need for technology and one-to-one devices at that time. So the technology levy was passed. It really does support things like one-to-one devices, but it also can support things like professional learning around technology for our staff. It can support things like HVAC work at our schools, things that we haven't been able to fund in the past because the state just doesn't fund at the level we need to maintain some of our buildings. And it also would fund all of our technology infrastructure including cybersecurity needs. So it's really critical needs that this would fund. The last type of levy is a transportation levy. We've never
044run that in Highline. Very few districts run transportation levies. It also passes with a simple majority and it's really for new buses. So that is actually the funding that was reduced this year. So we may see it a little more often, but not right now. So I just wanted to give a quick preview of what the February elections look like throughout the state. So 49 capital technology levies were on the ballot throughout the state, 46 of those passed. So 94% of the capital technology levies throughout the state passed. 121 out of 126 EP&O levies passed. Those are the operational levies. So that's 96% and one transportation levy passed out of one. Essaquah ran a transportation levy and passed that. And so there is evidence of very, very strong support for levy passage throughout the state.
045I think people are very well aware of the underfunding at the state level and the need for local funds to supplement those state funds. And I just wanted to also preview that what our recent elections. And so Auburn and Renton were both back in November when we were also on the ballot and the rest of these are from February. You can see many districts throughout the area had EP&O levies. Those are run every four years by every district. They're just on different schedules. You can see there were quite a few capital technology levies. Those are for really large amounts compared to what we're proposing, a $48 million levy over four years, versus you can see Bellevue has passed a $274 million capital tech levy. There were some bonds that passed as well. If you look
046at North Shore, they had an EP&O levy, a very large bond and a capital technology levy all pass back in February. So again, there just shows really strong alignment with our communities in support of K-12 funding. So I'm going to, I only have one more slide and then we have lots of time for questions. Again, 2026, 27 budget development, this is all as of March. So as you know, things changed as we go through budget development, but we'll have that ending fund balance for 26, 27 at 3%. Many unknowns as we go through contract negotiations, our IPD is set at 2.6% from the state. I mentioned all those unfunded positions already with IPD. Our legislative session ended March 12th. So just a few days ago with really no new revenue except for that state tax
047change and additional reductions to programs. So again, I think the biggest reduction from the state is around the Ready K program that we have here, transition to kindergarten. And OSPI is now putting into place a funding tool that they're going to come out with by the end of March. So March 31st, they have a webinar that anybody who has these programs is to attend and they'll roll out then how they're going to allocate that resources. So they're actually changing how these are allocated as well. And we're going to continue to be guided by policy 6000. Next step's pretty much the same. We're going to continue to provide monthly updates to the board during our regularly scheduled board meetings and we'll continue to bring updates as we can until June. And in June, we will bring
048and present the 2026-27 budget along with our four-year plan which is due to OSPI in July. So that concludes our presentation. Happy to answer questions or thoughts about any additional information you may need or that would be helpful as we move towards June in budget development. Thank you so much for that. Directors, any follow-up questions or comments? Thank you, Jackie and Sarah and Andrew. For the general public's knowledge, can you go into a little bit more detail on allocations towards schools and how that works? That's probably a very long-winded question. I'll try and keep it short. So I'll start out with it depends. So the way there's many different funding sources that are allocated towards schools. So the first one is our basic education allocation or BEA funds. Those are allocated mostly through ratios that
049are negotiated through our contracts. Right now, the majority of our staffing ratios through BEA are under what the contract minimum is. So we're actually staffing smaller class sizes than what is mandated in our contract. Part of that is because we have kindergarten through three funding and that ratio is 17 to one. So we have to ensure we're meeting that minimum. So really basic education is not simple, but it is the most simple of all our funding sources because it's ratio driven mainly. Then we have our categorical funds. I'll let Sarah talk through those and then I'll jump back in after. Yes, so in addition to basic education funding and then program specific funding, for example, special education funding or career and technical education funding, you've heard me speak about our categorical or supplemental resources. And
050so that includes state funding like learning assistance program or LAP and LAP-HIPAP. And those funds are generated based on student enrollment and the way that they are allocated is through a process of determining school need based on specific factors around school, student needs at different schools, particularly in literacy and math in alignment with the program guidance. And then that also includes and categorical resources allocated to schools title one funding. And so as a system we receive from the federal government currently title one allocation. And that is allocated to schools in some part through essentially funded positions that support our important work. For example, we fund family liaison positions that support our work at schools through our title one funding. And also schools that qualify for title one funding receive what we call school directed categorical
051resources. And so that's the work I do with school leaders and teams along with our budget team to determine how schools are going to leverage those school directed categorical resources to support additional intervention positions or positions or supplemental materials or needs to support the school's work around tier two and three interventions. And so that's in addition to what Jackie shared for our basic education funding that is very much based on student FTE and revenue from the state. And when we talk about CTE that's actually a separate funding source as well. So BEA is when we think about school funding we have basic education, CTE at our middle and high schools categorical supplemental funds. And then there's individual school budgets that are operational that they receive each year as well. That was perfectly explained in a
052very succinct way. So thank you very much. So I have a question for 2027, 2028. It says that our revenues and our spending will match. So I'm not seeing how that's possible seeing the context where we're not getting state funding and everything else that's happening. So can you explain a little bit more? So our goal by 2027, 2028 is to have a balanced budget. And so what that means is either we're gonna have to make continue to make reductions to have that happen because we're underfunded. And so we'll have to continue the process of reductions in the next few years. And also if the decision is to put the capital technology levy on the ballot that would also supplement some of these dollars that we would otherwise need to reduce. Any other questions? Well, I
053do have one in regards to the capital technology levy that is potential. In regards to, do we have anything earmarked for that right now based off of projections as 12 million per year? What do we have planned for the 12 million? I know technology, last time we ran it was in 20s. So I know our laptops are getting outdated, things like that. So can you help us understand where those dollars are coming from? Knowing that we just went through a levy in November, there's a possible bond happening this coming year. I just wanna make sure that we don't keep on going to the pot of gold, our community and keep on asking. In addition to that, I'm curious on what our communities, our cities, if they're gonna go out for increases in taxes, cause that's
054gonna impact our residents as well. So a lot of questions. The first one around the cities and the county elections, we are in communication with them. They still are working on it as well. So they don't have any final decisions yet, but I will make sure I bring that to the board updates as I find out. The second or the first question around the 12 million per year, we do have the need for technology refreshes each year now because we did heavily invest as every other district did throughout the country in technology. And as we go through that life cycle of those devices, we need to refresh those devices. So that is part of it. We're developing really two budgets right now for next year with and without and working through what that looks like,
055really prioritizing what could be on that capital technology levy. The reason that our levy is so much less than other districts around us is because we're trying to minimize the impact to taxes as much as possible. We have potentially as well a bond. And so we're trying to balance increases to tax rates along with assessed value swings that are happening within Highline. And so when we looked at what could we potentially put on the ballot, 12 million really equalizes some of the bond dollars that are coming off our debt right now and keeps us steady within our tax rate for next year. Now, if we decide to run a capital tech levy and a bond, there may be some increases there. Thank you. Directors, any other follow-up questions for Jackie? No question, I think this
056is the final thing. We saw at the end of the legislative session that one of the school districts, Lake Washington, has hired Pacifica Law and is basically going back to the McCleary lawsuit that was put in place previously. And they are keen in specifically on the state's underfunding to special education. And I think the example that Jackie and the team shared around the levies and just the sheer number that's out there, it's a very clear indicator that the state continues to grossly underfund us. And so we're really grateful that Lake Washington is taking the lead on this. And I think it's gonna be a little bit different now because there's already rulings and Supreme Court involved in this. So we'll be watching that really closely over the next few months to see what comes of
057that. But really hopeful that the state will really do their duty to fully fund education as their paramount duty and prioritize it, because we're not seeing it right now. So it's gonna take continued advocating, not only from the district, but from our community, from our educators, from all of our staff to really keep pushing our legislators to do the right thing. Thank you so much for that, Dr. Grant. If there are no other questions or comments, I would like to have a motion to adjourn. I will motion to adjourn this meeting. I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing seen none, I'll see everybody at the board meeting in 19 minutes.