001call to order this meeting of the Stoen Area School District Board of Education. Miss Darl, will you call the role? Mr. Tim Buban is excused. Miss Mia Croyle here. Mr. Jim Moser here. Miss Don Garcia here. Mr. Zach Masa Myers here. Miss Lisa Pew here. Miss Allison Sorg here. Dr. Sharon Milin Bartlett here. Student Rep. Michaela Becker here. And President Joe Patterson here. All right. Uh, first item on the agenda after roll call is public comment. Hi. Um, it's always nervous to have to do this. Um, seems so formal. Welcome. I Thank you. We like to I'm Bob Klug and um my three kids have all graduated from here, so I'm past that age of parenting. Uh, but in any case, um, I do listen to the news a lot and particularly public radio. And
002I I'm going to start by asking you if um uh you've heard about Alabama um and I was really surprised it was Alabama is the state that has recovered a reading program better than any other state in union. Are you aware of that? Anybody? Well, anyway, that's what they said. Uh so that perked up my my interest a little bit uh because uh I think um especially my sister who was a school nurse in Madison, she's really upset right now. She's retired also, but she's really saying, "Gee, you know, our our reading program is is really bad and and that's so fundamental to to education and learning." And so anyway, it perked up my interest to listen to this this news as to how they did it. And it was a lot of small group
003reading where the students were required to read out loud and pronounce the words and actually do it. And uh so it sounded like it was actually a lot of one-on-one, but maybe even groups of three um really small groups and it it did so well and that the rest of the state picked up this program. Um now the you guys are probably thinking, okay, we got a tight budget. How are we going to do this? And I would venture a suggestion here to consider tutors. Uh there's a lot of retired teachers. There's a lot of parents that can read very well. Um and I'm going to go back about 15 years at least. Maybe it's even a little more than that. Time seems to go by quickly. Um, I'm I myself I'm an engineer with
004a master's in in structural engineering. Uh, so I'm not a good reader. Uh, but I I tried to volunteer uh to help students with math in the in the middle school or upper grades. Uh so I went to the uh principal in in the middle school and uh offered my services and they said, "Yeah, we'll get back to you. That's great." You know, uh didn't hear anything. Another year later, I went back again and and uh offered my services and they says, "Yeah, I'll share that with our math teachers and have one of them get contact you." All I got was the phone number uh of a of a student, his home phone number. I thought I this ain't going to work. I mean, I I got to meet this person in school or in
005the library or you got to set up some kind of appointment when I can come in. I'll take a time off. I can flex in the at work and and and help out. And it never went anywhere. Well, I saw the ad in the Madison newspaper. another time. And what they did uh to to kick their program off in Madison, and this is many years ago, remember, um was they'd have an evening when they'd invite all their parent all their volunteer tutors to a u to one of their schools. So I decided to go and I told them upfront, you know, I'm not from Madison. I'm not going to be tutoring here. I'm from Stoton. And they said, "Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, come on. Come on in and and have a have a cookie." And
006whatever. They had they had bars and cookies there and treats and coffee or whatever for the volunteers that showed up. And they had several rooms uh especially for reading. They had, you know, I don't know how many rooms, but but I think there was only like one or two rooms for math. Uh, and uh, so I I went into into the room and yeah, they they talked about how they're teaching the math, what their curriculum is, and you know, if you're still interested and and to work with you. And I thought, wow, you know, this would be great. Um, this is something that that Stoton ought to have. Uh, so I guess for whatever it's worth, um, you know, that's that's my story. If you got any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Um,
007but, um, thank you. Yeah. Uh there also was very recently uh within a month or so another uh news report on public radio uh that there is a school in Wisconsin and I was only half listening when this thing came on so I didn't catch the name of the town unfortunately which could help you a lot that has exceeded all other community schools in their math. And uh so I would sure you could research that one through the state and find some information out on what they're doing and if you could apply it here as well, but there is a school in Wisconsin that's excelling in math. And I'd be happy to volunt be a tutor still if if my services are are desired. Thank you, Bob. You bet. Thanks. Thanks for having questions. No,
008we we're not allowed to engage with the public commenters. Sorry. Well, I can leave you my number or something. You can call me later. Yeah. Uh, did you put it on the sign-in sheet? I I will. Okay. I I think I don't think it asked for my number. You can add it if you'd like. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Uh let's move on then to item 2B, the legislative update. Uh just a few things here. Uh the Department of Public Instruction announced last week that the federal government is ending two state grants. Uh one which is focused specifically on personnel development and that the state has uh invested in helping to develop um new special education professionals. Unfortunately, Wisconsin was one of only five states that saw these grants canled by the federal government. As you
009know, we have a a shortage in the area of special education. Only 46% of new special education teachers in Wisconsin remain in the field after seven years. Um, so Wisconsin has had some pretty successful programs funded through this grant to help retain special ed instructors. I did ask Dan whether or not we had specifically through Stoton participated in the script and he said he we didn't think so but just something that the school boards association wants schoolboard members to be aware of that they are they will be advocating with members of Congress to reinstate the funding for those um very important grants for Wisconsin. Uh the office of school safety has new race resources on their website uh around social media graphics and messages to promote the speak up speak out program which has been
010really helpful for our district. They also have some new training opportunities on their website uh with reminders on important mental health and safety resources. You can find those at the Wisconsin Department of Justice website on their office of school safety page and you can find the Department of Justice site at www. wisdog.gov. That's wisd.gov. Um the Wisconsin retirey bill that we've talked about before is now stalled in the legislature. That is um Assembly Bill 196 specifically is legislation that would allow Wisconsin retirement system retirees to return to work without suspending their annuity. um that companion bill for as you can remember in order for a bill to become law to pass in both the state assembly and the state senate. It is kind of either moving slowly or seems to be stalled in both of
011those chambers. They think there's some behind the scenes push back from Republican lawmakers. Uh that bill would be very helpful to school districts because certainly there are staffing shortages in schools um that are really uh urgent and legislation would allow um retirees to come back into the school particularly in hard fill positions like special education, computer science, math, physics, and music. Um the school boards association is asking people to contact their state legisl legislators in both the assembly and the senate to ask them to support passage of that bill. So, it's moving in the committee, but it um um is is currently stalled. And there's it would be helpful to have some action advocacy on that. Um last week in the Assembly and um Assembly Republicans and legislative Democrats announced their education priorities that they'd
012like to move before the end of the year, before the end of the 2025 26 legislative session. Uh we'll probably be talking about a lot of new bills here that will be introduced shortly. On the Republican side, they've laid out a series of proposals that would center on u proposed changes to the math curriculum and testing for math in the state, incentives for school consolidation and shared services, and a teacher bill of rights that will focus on student discipline. None of those proposals have been introduced yet. It was kind of a press conference that was just sharing the overview. On the Democratic side, they outlined bills that they plan to introduce in coming weeks, focusing on increasing general school aids equal to inflationary increases, providing healthy school meals for every student at no cost, and
013creating a line on the tax bill for private choice and independent charter school funding. Um, you might have finally, you might have seen the notice that the schoolboard association has their fall legislative conference. Registration is open. That's taking place November 8th in Stevens Point. And that's an event um that offers um schoolboard members an opportunity to gain insight on current public education issues and hear from experts. And that's it. You're okay. Does anyone have any questions for Lisa? Yeah. Let me go ahead. Yeah. Are any of those things you mentioned bipartisan at all co-sponsors or does it seem like they're all one-sided one way or the other? Proposals that they're talking about the fall. I think it's too early to say if any of the proposals will, you know, be seeking bipartisan support because the
014press conference were just it was really here's our agenda for the fall and the press conferences happened at the same time. So in the media they were called dueling press conferences. So um for instance I would say the math curriculum and testing. You know, we saw the legislature in the last session focus on literacy curriculum and literacy testing and changing and I think that did have some bipartisan support, but you know, until you see the bill, as you know, you don't know if it's geared toward bipartisan agreement or not. And the ones like the retiree one, was that at all? That's bipartisan. That was Yeah. And so I think that they're just hoping to Yeah. I um what I from what I understand Republican concerns are that um educators would be double dipping sure and
015also that the Wisconsin retirement system would be put at risk by um allowing people to be drawing on their retirement while they're going back into the school system and earning. So I think it's just diffusing some of those concerns and um WASBY has a bunch of talking points on their website about it. So thanks Alison. Did you have a question? Yes. Thank you. All right. Uh, moving on then to item 2 C, workg groupoup reports. Uh, the first work group that met was outreach. That you? Yeah, I have some notes and then I'd be happy if other people would chime in. Um, we had a meeting on September 3rd and we were focused on the upcoming community conversations. Just as a reminder, our first community conversation is coming up on Saturday, October 11th. It'll be
016focused um at the elementary level by elementary uh level uh family members. Um we did update our second meeting date. It will be on January 10th, Saturday, January 10th. We had to change it from December 13th. So, please change that on your calendars. Take off the December 13th date and change it to January 10th. Um and then that would be a middle school level family invite for that one. And then the third one is on February 21st and that would be at the high school level. Our general times will be 9:00 a.m. to 12 to noon on those days. Um on October for the October 11th date, Dan worked with building principles to come up with a diverse invite list for families that will attend that October 11th uh community conversation. And then last week,
017Rachel sent out 62 invites. um the work group, we talked about priorities for that particular discussion. Um looking back at the questions we asked at the community conversation in the spring, a couple of things we talked about is wanting to make sure that community and families understand the role of the board, the school board versus the role of administration and provide some background to promote understanding also of our three main goals around literacy, math and belonging. uh we talked about sharing those goals in a way that's easier for parents a little less around the data and more storytelling and kind of where how we got to this point why we're focusing in these areas. Um we talked about Dan kind of doing that as a part of an introduction to the event but also that
018there'll be some information going out to our um RSVP guest um prior to the to the event. Um, we are looking for feedback from board members on exactly how and where to prioritize for that first community conversation. Our general ideas are to just find out the degree to which families believe our three goals around literacy, math, and belonging are the right goals in the district after they've um understood kind of how we got to this place. Also to learn what parents value in our schools. Uh asking them for instance, what do you look for in a school? what do you value about your child's school? Uh we'd also like to perhaps elicit some idea ideas from parents for other future um Stone Area School District goals and also give parents an opportunity to get ideas
019from each other on how they as parents can better support their children's academic proficiency and their feelings of belonging. So, um, we just we will also want to kind of steer clear of questions that, um, promote adding to the workload of our teachers or principles and school administrators to not be kind of creating a laundry list of things that need that other people need to do, but to kind of had a have a shared vision and understanding of how we can work toward these things together. And also that part about the role of the board versus administration. We don't want to mislead people on, you know, kind of what the board has control. We think it's an opportunity to educate in that. So again, we really want to look for some feedback and then I
020know Dan is going to be working with Lynn to kind of fine-tune our questions. We have the same general agenda for community conversation. So if anybody has any feedback or thoughts, um, we are open to that. I don't know. Did you have anything you want to add? I think you did a good job. Yeah. Any questions for the work? Go ahead. Where was that October 11th one? Was it located? Sand Hill Elementary. Okay. Any other questions for the work group? Go ahead. What was the third meeting focused on the high school? Yes, that date is uh February 21st. Thank you. All right. Did you have questions? All right. Seeing no other hands, I'm going to move. Oh, go ahead. Um, have you sent out do we have holds on our calendar on those days? Yes.
021For for those three. Okay. Thank you. If it doesn't get on my calendar, it doesn't happen. Yeah. Okay. Uh, the other work group that met was governance. Uh, we talked about district administrator evaluation and we'll talk more about that in close session. All right. So, that takes us to item 2D, the student representative report, which is my favorite part of the evening. Sorry, I'm getting over a cold right now, but I'll try my best. Um, so work. Oh, there we go. Okay, so lots of things going on. So, um, next week the seventh and eighth graders will be participating in a reality maze. Um, and if you don't know, that's been happening at the high school level for all the freshmen for a while, but they're now introducing it at the middle school level. Um,
022and the Stone High School pool has reopened to the public. That's very nice. I already went in yesterday. Um, and then that picture up there is from one of Bluff's first assemblies of the year in their new fieldhouse. And then we also had um the go orange for hunger which was districtwide. So lots of students and teachers dressed up in orange. And then athletics, lots of things going on. Um boys soccer beat Reedsburg one to zero at home last week. And then girls swimming one over Portage. And then the boys cross country team placed sixth at the Verona Invitational and also had some personal records for some of their runners. Um football won 49 to 33 against Kiwas at home. Um and then this week Friday they're at home again versus Mount Horeb. And then
023soccer will be playing at home this Thursday against Cambridge. And then tennis swept portage seven to zero next week as well. Um, and then for arts, these aren't for a while yet, but these are the closest things they have going on. The, uh, high school choir concert will be on October 13th, and then the marching band will be performing a home show on October 5th. So, that's basically their um, show that they'll be competing with. Um, and then Chicago, which is the musical this year, those auditions were held on September 3rd. And then the performances will be um November 6th through 8th. And then other the orchestra and band concerts will be later this fall. Um I think that's everything I have. Yeah. Oh, wait. I forgot to mention um and the activities, but um
024future educators was brought back as a class this year at the high school. I'm currently taking it and I'm very excited. We're going into elementary schools starting next week. So, we'll be going to all three of the elementary schools, one a different one each day. So, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Are there any questions for Michaela? Lisa, future educators, how is it is it for upper classmen and how many how many students in that group? Well, right now be they right now there's only six students in the class, but previously it was a much like larger class, but um we hadn't had it for the last two years, so they're trying to bring that back. Any other questions for Michaela? All right, seeing none, then we are on to item three, district administrators of report. Okay. And
025I promise this the public comment was not planned for the um save the dates. But uh just a couple of things to note on calendars. Um this Friday is our third Friday count. This um becomes extremely important for a whole host of reasons. um one we want to make sure that we have an accurate count of how many students we're we are um supporting and educating, but it also feeds into a lot of other s systems including our um budget which is our second save the date. Our district um annual meeting will be Monday, October 20th. Um it will be in this room. Uh 6 o'clock will be the start time. And again, this is the time where we have our it will be a busy night. We'll have a lot happening that night because
026we'll have an event right before the annual meeting with our buildings around our continuous improvement plans. And then after the annual meeting, we'll go right into our operational board meeting um which will um combine um the annual meeting and the event before the meeting. and my thing isn't working. There we go. Thank you. Um, couple of other uh things to note. Um, our board meeting calendar. I've linked in in there. It's on our website, but here's a quot quick link to to that. We have our school improvement plans meeting. Um so that's again where we have our um world cafe opportunity for board members to hear what are the first 100 days looking like for each of our schools. Um and that will dovetail into the operational board meeting where we'll actually have our first
027report out around our academic goals and in interim measures. Um all of that will be taking place on um October 20th and we are uh scheduling that continuous improvement plan to be right before um the annual meeting in November. We have our school report cards that DPI puts out. It's always a little bit tentative based on um where DPI is. Um and that's when we'll update after those report cards are publicly released. we will update our board of education dashboard. In our dashboard, it is no um no surprise that if we help support our students in reading and mathematics, they will be able to to um participate and excel in a whole host of other areas and happy that we are starting to see some trends that are heading in the right direction. I think
028of all the things that we could focus on at the board table, I think the three goals that we have are the mo most important three goals um and look forward to continuing that conversation and helping um to bolster that um that uh direction with our community conversations. Also in November um while tonight we'll have a preliminary um budget in preparation for October in November we are already starting to talk about what does the following year look like. So setting up our staffing plans with a budget forecast um and then in December we go into winter break with um any staffing assumptions. So, all of these things um tie together in one way, shape, or form. Without questions, there's a lot on the dock. Any questions for Dan? No. All right, we are on to
029item four, the consent agenda. Move approval of the consent agenda as presented. Second. Seconded by Croy. Any discussion? Don, I have a question. Um, for the resations, Alexandra Brown, we just approved her, I think, at the last meeting or the meeting before. Did something not work out and she didn't start or No. Um she started she um sent a a letter to Miss Conrad um saying that it was not a Oh, I'm sorry. I should have just scrolled down further. I apologize. How is that vacancy being handled in this early part of the school year? Must have been kind of a shock to the lose a person so early. Yeah, they they've uh been posting and and reaching out and doing some screeners right away. Any other questions or discussion regarding the consent agenda? Being
030none, I'll call the question. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Any abstension? Consent agenda is approved and we are on to item five. All right. As Erica comes up, um one of the things that wanted to um help the board in preparation for the um next month's annual meeting was to give kind of a primer. And so this is an opportunity for Erica to highlight a few things um for the board's perspective as well as as um she shared in the board docs a couple of documents that are going to look a little bit different for everyone. Hi there. So um I know there's been a lot of not a lot there's been some um definite news coverage around um tax impacts. I know Lisa, you mentioned earlier in your legislative update, one of the
031um proposed um agenda items for some of our legislators is to look at um a state aid increase to help offset the the inflationary costs that are baked into the revenue limits. So, I just wanted an opportunity to to talk about it a little bit so that way when we get to the annual not a surprise as far as of what we might be expecting. I also want to just mention all this is still estimated. Um here we are in September. Our fiscal year starts July one, but there's a lot of unknowns still and that's just kind of the nature of the game in schools. Um Dan mentioned that we have our third Friday coming up this week. That really um that number really impacts our total revenue limit and the total resources we have
032coming into our district. October 15th is when we get our final state aid certification. So those pieces really impact um what our final tax levy will look like. Um I don't know if everyone had a chance to read some of the stuff I put in the board docs uh the the public area. Um one of them was just an article written by by one of my professional organizations just kind of talking about the impact of the state budget. And then the other one is just really um it's an email that I sent out to our administrative team um when this all happened just trying to explain in simple terms um how the revenue limit works and then that inverse relationship between state aid and property tax levy. So essentially um like I mentioned in some
033of that information our revenue limit really drives how much money we get and it in its simplest terms a revenue limit is taking our total number of kids and we multiply it by the amount we receive per student and that basically says here's how much you can have in the form of state aid and taxes. Once we determine that number, the state says here's how much you're going to get in aid. You subtract your total. you subtract your eight from your total and that's how you figure out what your levy is going to be. So when you have a situation where um you have let's just say you have the same total revenue limit that if you receive less in aid than you did in the prior year your tax levy is going up even
034though you don't necessarily have additional spendable resources. So for us um in looking at what our tax levy impact could look like because in the most recent state budget, we did receive a $325 increase per student in our revenue limit, but there was no increase in the total state aid allocation. So we are looking at the potential of having that full $325 increase funded through tax levy instead of state aid resources. Um, we also know that here locally we did um we were fortunate to have our community um approve a an operating referendum. The the big chunk of that happened in the 2425 fiscal year, but if you recall, it also had an additional step up of $600,000 for the three years following 2425. So, that was a that was an uh a tax impact
035that we knew about. And then when we received our July 1st aid estimate, um that did indicate that we would be receiving about $1.9 million less this year than we received last year. And there's a lot of reasons why that can happen. Um it really depends on what what every other district throughout the state is doing in terms of how much money they're spending. And then we are in a situation where we're negatively aided. So again, it's it's there's a lot of complicated pieces that go into that, but simply put, if we are our property value per student is above the state average. So essentially, that is how the state determines our wealth. So because we're above the average, we're perceived to be a wealthier district. And that means they essentially reallocate some of the
036aid that we would receive to those who are poorer in that state aid formula. Um so unfortunately the more we spend the less aid we receive and when you have a year where you increase your spending with that operational referendum that um that is resulting in in that aid decrease. Now if you recall we talked last I think it was June or July where the board did assign a portion of fund balance because we knew some of our costs that we were incurring we we didn't receive everything in time. that might actually help us a little bit because that it pushes the spending into the 2526 fiscal year. But again, we won't know that until October 15 because every district submits all of their information to the state. They put all of that into the
037state aid formula to determine what reimbursement goes where. So, um, but those things are all impacts that will potentially increase our total tax levy for 2526. And I think I'll just pause there because I do like talking a lot. Does anybody have any questions so far? Lisa, go ahead. When you say $1.9 million uh state aid decrease, that's like all state money or it's only like the equalization aid. Okay. So, it's not counting special ed or those other buckets. That's a great clarification. Yes. So, when I'm saying state aid right now, it's it's purely our equalization aid, which is part of that total, you know, revenue limit minus equalization aid equals property tax levy. That's a good point. So, thank you. Um this just this is a slide that I just pulled right out of
038our um annual meeting presentation. Um not the prettiest slide, but it just kind of gives you a little bit of context. And as you recall, starting in that 21-22 school year, we had a three-year period of time where we weren't receiving any increases in how much we were we got per student in our revenue limit. And we basically were using federal esser or COVID relief funds to kind of plug that gap. So the tax levy looks like it's going down. We weren't necessarily spending less. It's just that where that money was coming from source. And then when we went to referendum, we basically plugged that hole that was left from using those federal dollars. Oh, are you clicking too? I Okay. Um, I know this is really busy and I hate a lot of stuff
039on a slide, but I also hate creating 20 slides for a three minute discussion, too. So, really just wanting to look at here are all the different funds in which we levy tax. Um, our general fund is our main operational fund. That referendum approved debt. That's all that's our debt payments on um the most recent capital referendum that we approved back in 2022. Um the other ones are just our our capital expansion fund also falls within our revenue limit. And then we have a small amount for our community service fund. But essentially the the sum of those pieces equal our total tax levy and rate. So again we look at 2324 compared to 2425. the vast majority of that was um was the referendum that we that we had approved by our community. And then
040when you look at our current estimated levy for 2526 and you compare that to 2425, um it it looks like we're going to be increasing just under $3 million. And again, there's a lot of things that go into that. Um but but that certainly is is a sizable increase. We were expecting some of that, but definitely weren't expecting that the $325 per student increase in our revenue limit would have no offsetting equalization aid to help with the tax impact of that. Um, so again, when you look at that over time, it it's pretty sizable. So, and then this is really just looking at it from a percentage standpoint. So just wanted to be very transparent and make people aware so that way when this when we have our presentation in October um it's it's not
041a complete shot feel like that was really crummy news. Mia, go ahead. I'm sorry. Can you like bottom line it for us? So if these numbers that you're presenting come to be the truth, right? Let's just say your assumptions all play out and they're all accurate, which I've seen nothing to show me that yeah, you're to that I should believe anything other than that your assumptions tend to be pretty on the nose. Um what's the like what does that mean? Are we in a deficit for our budget? Are we gonna have to make cuts? Like what is what's the bottom? So I would say no, we do not have to make cuts. Um this is under the assumption that we will levy to the full amount we are allowed to levy which that's that is
042what we've that's generally what we've always done in order to be able to balance our budget. So that would so so no, we will not have to make to balance our budget. Um, again, this is making the assumption that we do levy the full amount available to us, but what is the impact? I mean, I think the impact will be seen when people get their property tax bill in December. Um, and again, it's not that all of it was unexpected. We knew that we would that we would be potentially seeing a tax increase um when we went to referendum and and so we did communicate that. And what we always say anytime we are educating our community about the impacts of a referendum is that this is what we know at the time, but you
043know, I I I would not have necessarily estimated that we would see a two-year freeze in that's pretty unprecedented. Yeah. So, it'll be important to make sure that we clearly communicate the reason that your tax bill is going up is not necessarily because the referendum was approved, but it's going up because we're not getting funding from the state that we typically count on. So, I would say that of that that estimated increase, we know $600,000 of it is what was approved in that operational referend, right? That's that one's easy to pull out. Um the rest is Yeah, I think that's a that's a fair easy way to say it. That that when the state approved their their two-year budget, they did not increase any aid allocations outside of special education aid schools. Okay. Thank you,
044Sharon. Are levies and referendum the same thing? Um, so the referendum essentially the the approval of the referendum allows us to increase our tax levy, but the we would have a tax levy regardless of the referendum. Essentially, that's just providing authority to tax more. That make sense? We just had a referendum that went to the voters. How often does it go directly to a voter? So a refer So a referendum question is determined on the board determines whether or not we're going to ask a referendum question. So you statutoily we could ask two every year. Um but it I would say in this district um we had an operational referendum in 2024. We had a debt referendum in 2022 and prior to that the last referendum was in 2014 and that was also an operational
045referendum. So again it's it's based on need. Um our debt referendum was timed at the point in which we had existing debt um being paid off. So there was some strategy in that. that we had been working for a number of years on facility planning, but by timing the new debt at the same time old debt was paid off, it minimized the tax impact. Um, but as far as asking the voters, that's any kind of referendum question has to be approved by the board first and then that's when it, you know, we go through the process to get that on a ballot. The annual meeting happens every year and that's where the community has the opportunity to hear about the budget and they do vote on the tax levy at that point in time. I'm
046going to go with Lisa and then Jim. Um I'm assuming in October that's when you'll be sharing $200,000 homes in Stoton. So can you explain to me the 31.2% Does that mean is that the impact on somebody's property tax bill? So, I actually thought you were going to ask why 19.1 and 10.1 don't add up to 30. Oh, no. But because I looked at I looked at I'm not that person. That's really just looking at So, if you look at the two-year impact, so what what 25 26 looks like compared to 23 24. So, over the last two years. Okay. Um for this year, it'd be about a 10% increase. 10% increase in somebody's property tax bill. Okay. So that's what people will be seeing in at the end of the year probably. Just to
047clarify that's 10% increase from the school district, not necessarily all the other things that go into that is correct. People's property taxes. Yes. And I I think it's important to we we found this last year. Again, you put all the asterisks that you want when you're talking to people, but the city of Stoton may not be the exact same impact as Dunkirk or Dunn or Christian. Like we have 11 municipalities, so um we determine our total levy and then it is distributed to all the municipalities based on their property values. So how much one we ran into this last year, one municipality's equalized property value went up a much higher percentage than the rest. So their share of our total levy was became higher and impacted those residents in a different way. Jim, um I
048know you're you're holding the good news in suspense, I'm sure. Um but let me just ask this. Um this is this is I mean it is a very complex system that that is unfathomable unless you spend a lot of time in it. Um are what are any variables other than the student count? Are there any other variables that are going to make this go one way or the other very much in between now and yeah? I mean I assume this is pretty accurate. I I think it I really do think our aid may not go down quite as much as the July one estimate. Um so I I think this is probably a worst case scenario, but again that that final aid allocation is really based on what every district in the state spends. Yeah.
049And I think many districts are experiencing a decrease because if you recall, Milwaukee passed a pretty sizable operational referendum um like hundreds of millions of dollars of spending. So then when you think about how it impacts the way that pot is distributed, I think that that's having an impact not just for us but for everyone. Um the other thing that we don't know until October 15th is those private school vouchers. So I know that again there's some advocacy to be creating a little more transparent what happens there but um essentially that those voucher payments will reduce our aid and then we can levy to make up for it. So that you know and we don't know we don't even know what we don't know who they are how many kids that you know impact us
050until October 15th. Um that but again in the grand scheme like in terms of percentage that's for us. That's pretty small. Um, but it's mostly the student count. What that final aid allocation looks like is is what will we'll change these numbers and I I don't foresee it being tremendous. Let me go again just because there was a discussion I think last time and or prior discussion and you mentioned it briefly the sort of increase in special special education services funding but it's also some certain versus sufficient and a percentage and so it's hard to predict what that will turn out to be as well in the end. Yeah. When does that actually acrue to the district? We that will be um well we we get an estimate and then well we won't know the
051final amount until the end of the year. Okay. Most I I did that's one of I meet with my peers on a every two weeks and when because it and that aid did end up being a some certain increase. We did talk about that. Most districts are estimating because I think it was 43% or something like that or 41% the first year. Most of us are estimating between two and a half and 3% less than that. Um because that's kind of where it's been. It's this uh last year's allocation ended up being about 3% less than what they predicted. So we hate to plan. It's easier to plan for less and get more than the other way around. Okay. Any other questions for Erica? But just one more quick since we have a bannual budget.
052So this when you're when you're thinking about this and Dan alluded to it earlier, but you really almost have to start thinking about the next year. Yep. As well as we're doing things. Is there is that I assume sort of in your head all the time as well or will be shortly. Well, I have lots of things in my head. Yeah. Yeah. I think really right now though my focus is let's let's get the annual meeting wrapped up and then as soon as we get done with that literally almost the next day we um we send our our final budget to uh populate our updated beard model which is what we use to kind of project out and run assumptions for the next five years. So So yeah, we'll we'll be working on that right
053away as soon as we finish up this. No rest for No, it's all good. I kind of a nerd. I like that kind of stuff, but You don't want to see it. Yeah. Okay. Can I do the last real quick? So, um I don't know, Rachel, if you want to pull, you can exit out of this and pull up um in board docs. I attached the Oh, the document says publication. Yes. last. So, um, DPI has been updating a lot of their reporting portals and tools that we use to submit information. Um, they have had this is this is very similar to the the way that we have approved our budget for I don't know since before I've even been here. Um, the one we've used is formatted a little bit differently so we can
054fit it on one page. But for many years, DPI has had a more detailed spreadsheet that's used for actual budget adoption. That format or that level of detail is what we now sub are going to be submitting to the state through one of their newer portals. And in talking to a lot of my peers in other area districts, they've been using sort of the more detailed format, which is actually on the other one. Rachel, if you want to pull up the other document. So um just to to streamline um just to streamline how we submit our information and whatever um we are going to transition to this format for adoption. It's really again just another level of detail that provides more information. So that's always a good thing. Um but for those of you that
055have been doing this for a while just know that it's going to look a little bit different. the information we provide at the annual meeting um it will include this but our slides will still be the same which I think is good just because um when you start looking at just lots and lots of pages of numbers it's not always super helpful so um we'll still keep our our um information booklet and slide deck the same that we've been using u but when it actually comes to the board for uh final approval it'll look like this any further questions about Thank you. That was my great news. For it'll be easier to submit to DPI. Thank you, Erica. So, appreciate having the update and um as as was mentioned, there's a there's a lot of
056pieces that feed into this and it's nice that we have Erica be able to synthesize it so that it's easy to understand. Um because the minute you think you understand it, they throw a little curveball at you. Okay. Uh we are now on to item six, which is the recap of action items. And I didn't write action items other than contact your legislators regarding several of the things that Lisa mentioned. We want to make sure everybody has Oh, that's the bill. That's the bill. Um AB uh AB 196. Let me just double check. Yes, AB 196, Assembly Bill 196. It does have a Senate companion bill, but I don't have that number on here. But I think if you call like Melissa Rick, but about AB 196 or she could tell me what else they'll
057they'll know. And that's the one again, that's the bill that allows retirees to come back and work for without Sorry. No, that's okay. Um, and then future meetings, we have a regular board meeting on October 6th. We have a community conversation at Sand Hill Elementary on October 11th and we have our annual meeting on October 20th. Is there a board meeting in between there? On October 20th. Oh, so same. Okay. So 6 to the 20th. Okay. At the the round table, I call it the round table. The round robin. The world cafe. World cafe. Yes, cafe also that night. It's a busy night on the um then for the folks listening at home, we are going to now um contemplate a close session and we will adjourn after the close session. So I would entertain
058a motion for the contemplated close session. I move that we convene to an executive session of the of the board of education in accordance with the exemption with stat 19.2 sub1 19.85 85 sub one subb sub C sub E F and G and 118.125 to discuss the district administrator evaluation was seconded by Garcia. All right. Any discussion? All the question this roll call. Miss Croy. Yes. Mr. Masamayers. Yes. Miss Garcia, yes. Miss Sorg, yes. Miss Pew, yes. Mr. Moser, yes. Dr. Milin Bartlett, yes. President Patterson, yes. All right.