001Wood, who I believe is joining us um via Zoom. And so at this point, I'll turn the presentation over to Mr. Celli. >> Very good. Um thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Um tonight, as Dr. Newton mentioned, um we're going to kind of tag team this a little bit. I'm going to talk a little bit about the history of our trust funds kind of from a procedural and um uh fund management perspective. And Mr. Paul Wood um who some of our audit committee members might recall during our audit um season and presentations is going to talk a little bit about our trust from an actuary point of view. And uh with that I think what I'll do is just kind of jump in and um try to keep it fairly high level and Mr. Paul we'll
002jump in kind of at the end and finish up. So um to maybe talk a little bit about the the many hats you wear as board members. Uh this is another one of those um instances where um once a year at least uh we like to um come together and talk about our trust funds that were established by uh LCSD1 board in May of 20120. Uh this was to help finance very specific employee benefit programs. Um and uh these trusts were created very exclusively to hold and invest and disperse assets for um two particular programs that I'll talk about here in a moment. Um and you as the governing board oversee the investment and uh the trust assets, ensure those funds are used for those intended purposes. Um to maybe put it another way, um
003this trust board oversees the assets and funding structure. It doesn't determine how um employees are eligible for those benefits or guarantee of future benefits in any way. Um tonight is kind of moreformational um as opposed to procedural. Um we we hope to maybe talk a little bit about how um your support impacts our future planning, but we won't have any um action requested from this board at least tonight. Um so just as a quick um programs refresher, um these particular trust funds cover um two separate distinct employee benefit programs. Uh the first is the health incentive and u madam vice chair I won't get overly detailed into this since we've had some conversations on these programs uh in the recent past. Uh the second is our uh retention incentive uh employee benefit program. And as
004I've kind of outlaid here we have the health incentive. This is that early retirement subsidy um that has a criteria for eligibility based on years of service and age. Um and of course formal LCSD1 board action. Uh just a couple of uh quick notes. Uh that policy from the board side was amended in 2021 which essentially closed the plan for new participants. Um there was one year where the plan was suspended that was in and then um we have seen some subsidy increases over time to reflect rising health care costs on those particular programs. And then the other one that we don't talk as much about is the retention incentive. Um this is a in a a financial incentive for staff or continued service. Uh this provides a lump sum payment um at the end
005of an employes uh service with the district that's uh qualified after 10 years of continuous service and reflects 1% uh of their final salary based on those those years of services. And similar to the other plan uh this program was also closed to new participants um in 2021. Now, um, we talked a little bit about, um, the district's compensation program as a whole. Um, you've heard me talk about in the past how important these are to our overall compensation plan. And they're they're fairly large, uh, programs within our district's um, financial operations. Uh, and take us a little bit back. Um before 2020 when this these trust funds were established, we had a uh pay as you go approach which essentially meant that each year we would project out how many people might participate in
006these programs or might retire with the district and we would try to budget um to be able to uh cover those at least current costs um for those employees and then hope in years down the road that for example if an employee took that early retirement incentive that we would have the resources for year two, three, four, whatever it might take um for that that employee to fully benefit from the plan. Now um what we did was develop trust funds which move that district our district towards preunding um which is the main goal right is um for us to address those long-term liabilities not just that annual cash flow and day-to-day basis. When we developed those trust funds, we um created three very specific funding objectives. Um and this ties to our actual um distributed
007funding policies. Uh the first is that we wanted to achieve long-term full funding um of the the costs that those benefits provide. Um and as you've heard me talk about in the past, those represent a very large long-term liability for the district. So, in a sense, we started to save towards that long-term debt. Um we also wanted to make sure that we had a reasonable and equitable allocation of the cost of those programs over time. Um and then minimize that volatility. So as you can imagine on years where we had um more separations that meant that we had to kind of work within that vacuum of a single year budget and address those um and it created kind of spikes and valleys when it came to uh the financial planning around these particular programs. A
008couple of uh other important notes as we talk about these trust funds is that um these objectives were intended to guide our contributions. Uh they weren't mandates. Um actual funding of these programs still remains a decision of the board as a whole. Um so it's not a guarantee of future benefits. Um this is really about the resources that we have available to meet those ongoing needs. Um, and that ties in again with that overall actuarial funding plan and then our year-to-year budget process that I work with um you as the the board on each year. Now um from time to time we do have some administrative changes. Um one example is u after we created the trust in 2020 um we identified a need to u establish a standalone investment policy for these trust funds.
009Um so that meant that we had a separate policy for the trust funds um compared to the investment policies that the school district has for their other resources. And this really did two things. Um it allowed us to differentiate uh to different investment vehicles based on um long-term and short-term needs. Um, and I'll talk a little bit about that here um, on the next page, but really the idea was to be able to overlap funds for different investment opportunities that currently the school district's investment policies didn't allow. >> I'd make a note there, however, that they still conform with all the statutory requirements for public investing. Um, we have not, um, as we kind of work through this um, expanded our portfolio into um, equities and those type of things and stocks. Um but certainly
010that's an option um as we look forward. We just haven't felt the a compelling need to to move in that direction at least at this point. Now a little bit more on that core portfolio and longer dur duration portfolio. Um I won't go um into the weeds on our um investment strategies here. Um but really there's this first part, this core portfolio that's really intended to address liquidity um and our predictable cash flow. So, um, if you think about those employees that have, um, up to a 10-year benefit on that early, um, retirement health incentive, um, what we're looking at is making sure that we have the resources available to pay those those current liabilities within a year. So, um, what we do as a team is we take, um, every one of our members
011who are drawing that benefit and we make sure that we have sufficient cash flow liquidity to cover those costs in the near term. Then when we look at the longer duration, um we want to find something that has a higher return potential. Um and so we have a longer duration and a longer term investment horizon. And these are things where when we made that amendment in 2021, we were able to um uh look at longer term investments fixed um term with our investment portfolios. So it ties that money up a little bit longer, but the return is better because we know we don't need those immediate needs um and are able to buy down that cost of the program. um into the future. So um I debated on kind of how to approach this. Um
012you'll see that we have um some information on interest earnings because I'm approaching this from what we amended in 2021. Um but you already see the trust fund balances on every month as part of your treasury report. So I'm not going to walk you through all those numbers, but I'll make a couple references to them. So those balances represent assets the board has already earmarked for those programs. So in a sense they are locked into these legal trusts. Um they can't be u moved elsewhere. We can't divert those resources to another area. Um they are restricted legally restricted for these programs. Um and they extend well beyond that the the current fiscal year like I explained. Uh I think that the important takeaway here is that it isn't the size of the balance in any
013particular one year. It's more about how the trust is structured to meet those obligations into the future. And so as we start to build a fund balance and we invest those funds, every dollar that we earn here, it will help us limit what we have to transfer in from our our normal general operating expenses and the normal budget that we approve um each year, which is where I'm going to start talking a little bit and and transition um to the actuarial side. But um where the actuarial value valuation kind of plugs into this is where it puts those those balances into context um showing how they relate to projected benefit cost that uh Mr. Wood and his team put together. Um and that's what the next portion of our presentation is going to really focus
014on is kind of that funded status and those trends over uh time rather than just the cash balances. And yes, >> are there and is there any chance that those funds could be vulnerable to the legislative takeback? >> Um, Trusty Hingle, that's a great question. Um, my answer would be no as it's currently drafted. Um, these are separate outside of the normal operating funds, so they wouldn't be subject to that um interest rate recapture. >> Jen, well, before you turn off the slide, I was curious. you you definitely have a dip a significant difference between the FY2425 and the 2026. Is there a reason and will that be covered later? >> U Madam Vice Chair, a great question. Um you're right that there are variations in um the the interest earnings that we receive. I
015would tell you that the difference between 24.5 and 2526 is um I've only profiled year to date what we've earned. We still have about four months left in the fiscal year for investment earnings. But um the the other times that you see kind of lows in those interest rates like 2021 uh 22 was when the federal interest rate was really bottomed out. Um and we really came to the other swing of that when we had the highest interest rates that we'd ever seen. Um and you can kind of see that reflected in those higher returns on um some of these these in in particular these interest earnings years. Um, I would point out that they're not going to be even based on um, the fund balance that we're carrying for each of those programs. We
016know that um, the retention incentive is going to have a different long-term liability. Um, and we're kind of moving closer and closer to that full funded status. Uh, but really the fluctuation you see is really um, in what we're getting through our investment. So um, madam vice chair, at this point I'm going to hand it over to to Mr. Paul Wood and he's going to walk through you through the most recent actuarial valuation included that that I mentioned that funded status and those trends over time. Um again um no formal action requested by uh the board tonight but a neat opportunity for Mr. Wood to come and address the the full board and and talk a little bit about the actuarial side. So I am going to have Kyle swap us over to Mr. Wood.
017Well, thank you very much, Jen. Can everyone hear me? Okay. >> Yeah. >> All right. Wonderful. I'm gonna find the uh the correct Of course, I haven't used Zoom in a while, so it's just being uh a little festy here, but we'll get there in one second. Jen already got to cover all of the um sort of the fun stuff, the funding and um sorry, one more thing. Okay. So, you covered all the fun stuff like how your plan is funded and he touched on um you know, as a I think first and foremost I'm a I'm a pension actuary so I love pension plans. I love funding pension plans. And he touched on just the value of preunding these pension plans. And I just took a look, you know, for your bonus retention plan.
018Um it's so amazing that now you can spin off that, you know, $350 $400,000 of investment earnings and instead of having to come up with a full benefit payment of $600 or $700,000, you can use that $400,000 to pay, you know, almost 70% of those benefit payments. So that's that's a pretty amazing thing. And that's the whole purpose of of preunding these benefits so that um you know you don't have to be liquidating assets to pay off um to be paying benefit payments. You can spin off that investment earnings and it just it makes such a big difference in the long run. So just you know kudos to the to the to the board and to the district for um you know for preunding these benefits because frankly we don't see this quite a bit
019in the um uh in the OPED space. So, as Jed said, I'm going to talk for a moment. Can everyone see the screen now? >> Yes. >> All right, we got everything squared away. So, I'm going to talk about the most recent valuation. And what's interesting about the most recent valuation is that it's it wasn't a full valuation, if you will. So, we only perform a full valuation every other year. And so, this was a year that we use what's called a roll forward. And so we take the valuation that we performed in the prior year and we use our actuarial magic to roll it forward to uh the measurement date um which was in this case the 712025 measurement date. And as part of this um little presentation, I'm going to touch on the
020bonus retention plan or the retention bonus plan and then um the explicit early retirement health insurance plan. And then I'm also going to talk for a moment about the implicit uh health insurance plan just to give you a flavor of what the full liability is looking like for uh those uh health insurance plans. So again, this is a roll forward valuation. And so in a role forward valuation, we're not going to assume any actuarial gains or losses. And the reason for that is we don't collect the data by individual in these off years. And so we rely on that prior year valuation and we just assume that everything happened as expected. This is a very common practice for these for these types of valuations where you don't need to really go through that that process
021of calculating or collecting all the data for every single year. This roll forward technique works out really well. It also saves the district some money in terms of what they pay in terms of actuarial fees because you don't have to go through that rigorous process every single year of data collection. So we're going to start with the retention bonus plan and this falls under what we call gazsby 67 and 68. And so these are the standards that apply to uh pension plans. This is considered a type of a pension plan. And you know, Jed already talked about the the benefits there, so won't belabor that point, but this is what we value uh as part of the valuation. The liabilities are attributable to this bonus amount that's paid as 1% per year applied to salary
022at the time of separation. There's some underlying assumptions that we use uh on the demographic side. Uh we use assumptions that are are similar that are the same as the Wyoming retirement system uh demographic assumptions. your members uh participate in the Wyoming retirement system. We're the actuarist for the Wyoming retirement system. We feel it's a pretty good uh set of assumptions to use. But one of the major assumptions that's used every single year is what we call the discount rate or the rate at which we discount all those future cash flows into today's dollars and figure out what that liability is going to be. And in order to set this particular discount rate, uh the Gazsby has a very specific type of rate that it wants you to use. And so it wants us to
023look at these 20-year taxexempt general obligation municipal bonds with an average rating of double A or higher. And so we use a what's called the bond buyer index. And so that tells us what the rate is. And we look at the rate on the measurement date. And you can see you I think you know Jed alluded to it earlier about rates and all that. You can see how you know in 2021 that rate went down to 2% and then it started climbing since then and is now up to 5.2%. And so whenever you see these rates, one of the things that I just love to have everyone keep in their minds is that as the rates go up, the liabilities go down. And as those rates go down, the liabilities go up. And so what
024we've seen here in the last few years is this downward pressure on those liabilities because the rates are going up. And so it's now at about 5.2%. So when I show you the numbers here in a moment, uh the most recent numbers will be based on the 5.2% 2% and then you can see the prior years are going to be based on those various discount rates there. And so this is a a big ugly chart of numbers that actuaries love. And this just shows you the entire pretty much the entire history of this uh bonus retention plan going back to 2016. And you can see the top block there, that's the liability uh section of things. And you can see that the liabilities are made up of a few different pieces. The first is the
025service cost. We know that each year members are acrewing benefits. So those that are, you know, that are still members of the plan, they're acrewing those benefits each year. And so that's the cost of acrewing one year's worth of benefits. So just under $400,000 in the most recent year. We also calculate the interest on that total liability. And so that's going to be based upon the prior year's uh discount rate, which I believe was 3.97. And then we look at um assumption changes. So each year the that discount rate is going to change. So that's going to uh impact the results. And as I mentioned earlier, as the discount rates go up, the liabilities go down. So we saw almost a million dollar reduction in the liability as a result of that rate change from
026roughly 4% to a little over 5%. You see that benefit payments in this prior year were just under $700,000. And then we add, you know, the beginning of the year to all those other numbers and we come up with our liability about $9.95 million as of 71 2025. And so that's the first half of the story. The second half of the story is the assets. And you can see going back to 2016, 17, 18, and 19, there weren't any assets available to pay off these uh these liabilities. funding began in 2020 with a very strong contribution of that $3.3 million. Some of that was used to pay those $633,000 of benefits. And you can see that we move through time that the the district has made very robust contributions to this particular plan. So, a
027couple years of three or $4 million, $2 million, and then you got right back on right on track with what we call the actuarily determined contribution, which was that 539746. And so, again, what's happening here is that we're accumulating these assets to cover those liabilities. And so, now we're sitting at about 95% funded. And so, um, you know, we're comparing the asset figure to those liability figures. and we have about 95% of our assets covered or our liabilities covered by our assets. So that's incredible progress over just a short six-year period uh to get to that point. When this plan becomes fully funded or even a little bit over fully funded, the only contribution that would be necessary uh for the district to make is that service cost contribution. So, as we acrew benefits, the
028district would just want to pay contributions equal to that service cost to keep up with those acrruels. But again, hats off to um to the district for making this decision to preund because you can see that, you know, this funding policy has played out in real life and go from 0% funded to 95% funded in six years is pretty incredible. I had mentioned that you we calculate what's called the actuarily determined contribution and that number last year which again you saw being contributed here was that 539746 and this actuarily determined contribution is made up of two pieces. So the first again is that normal cost or service cost piece uh which is the cost of just acrewing benefits. So if you were 100% funded again that's the contribution you would make and then there's a
029plan to pay off any unfunded liability. And so right now we have a little bit of unfunded liability. It's down there at the bottom 491913. So what is our plan to pay that off? The plan is was originally to pay it off over a 20-year period beginning with the very first valuation that funding was used. So we're down to 15 years. And so we take that that unfunded amount and we advertise it over a 15-year period as a level dollar amount. So think of it as a 15-year mortgage, if you will. And that number is just over $49,000. And so if we were to make that $49,000 plus any acrruels that happened and theoretically you'd be 100% funded in 15 years. So we add those two together 381 036. So a little bit lower than
030it was uh in the prior year. And again mainly that's because of the the change in that discount rate. So all those numbers are coming down a little bit as a result of the change in assumption. And so that means the the district's contribution doesn't need to be quite as high as it was predicted in the prior year. Also, as part of this accounting valuation, we calculate what's called inflows and outflows of resources. And this simply means uh how are our liabilities or our assets changing? And then there's an accounting procedure that we go through to say how do we recognize those changes in the assets and the liabilities. And so the first is a difference in actuarial experience and as I mentioned earlier this is a roll forward valuation. So there is no change
031in the experience. So this is just zero for this particular valuation. Then we have the assumption changes which was that million dollar number uh that I referenced earlier. And the way that this is recognized on an accounting basis is over what's called the average remaining service lifetime of the population. And so that's a calculation that we have to perform where we say on average how long is our membership expected to remain in active service and that number right now is just over 10 years of service or 10 years uh from the valuation date. If there were any benefit changes which we're going to see in a moment when we talk about the uh explicit subsidy plan any benefit changes will be recognized immediately. Um, and then we look at the investment earnings. And the Gazsby
032says you can recognize investment earnings over a 5-year period. We also calculate what's called the pension expense. So, this is the expense that's attributable to the benefits that are provided in this retention bonus plan. And you can see a lot of these components uh, you know, make up uh, a lot of the components of the pension expense. We already saw earlier when we rolled forward those liabilities. So service cost, the interest piece, and then a projected earnings amount. So how much are we expected to earn on our investments, and then I mentioned we have those deferred inflows and outflows of resources that are being recognized over those set schedules. And so when we add all this up, the expense this year is just over $101,000. This just shows a runout of those deferred inflows and
033outflows. We won't talk about this too much, but this is the schedule that's set up that's going to affect that pension expense as we move through time. The other item that that we do calculate as part of the valuation is what we call the it's really a duration calculation. So, how sensitive is the uh net pension liability or that unfunded amount to changes in the discount rate? And as I mentioned earlier, if we lower the discount rate, liabilities are going to go up. And so we can see that, you know, if we lower to 4.2%, our liability, our unfunded liability would go to roughly $1.16 million. And then if we were to increase that uh by 1% up to 6.2%, the liabilities would come down and we would be overfunded at that point. And so
034just a a general rule here. Um and if you know, I've made this joke. I'm sure the audit committee is sick of hearing my jokes, but um if you're ever your actal cocktail party and someone said, you know, what if we lower the discount rate by 1%? The general rule is that would increase the liabilities by by roughly 10%. And so that's kind of a nice relationship to think about and we see that bearing itself out here. >> So any questions on the the actuial side of the retention bonus plan? No, I think we are ready for the next part. >> All right. Wonderful. So, the next part um this is uh the healthc care side of things and you report your accounting um reporting is under a different set of standards. So, it's under
035standard 74 and 75. They're very very similar to 67 and 68, but these apply to what are called OPEDs or other postmployment benefits. And we know that there's two OPEDs that are subsidized by the district. One one is very easy to to figure out the cost and that's the direct subsidy. So how much in a dollar amount are we offering our retirees to cover premium payments? But then the second one is what we call an implicit subsidy. And I've got um that may not be terribly relevant for for this the the trust board, but I think it's important to at least understand that other side of the equation there. We're funding right now the direct subsidies and not funding those implicit subsidies. And so we do have two distinct OPED plans that are valued as
036part of the report. The first is the early retirement health insurance plan. That's the explicit subsidies. So again, what how much money do our retirees receive to cover premium payments. And then the second piece is the implicit rate subsidy uh health insurance plan. And this is where the implicit subsidies lie. So just to drill down a little bit on the implicit subsidies, the reason that they may be hidden is because you know if everyone is saying paying the exact same premium, our active members and our retired members, it may look like there's not this cross subsidy happening, but there is actually a pretty big cross subsidy. And one of the goals of the Gazsby was to say, okay, let's pull out what that subsidy is for our retirees and figure out what that means. And
037so this subsidy exists because everyone is paying the same premium whether you're active or you're retired. But what we know is that active members tend to generate claims that are lower than the claims that are generated by retired members. And it's just a a simple intuitive thought of the the younger folks tend to be more healthy. the older folks who are retirees tend to uh be less healthier or need more health care uh when they reach retirement. And so what happens is because everyone's paying the same premium, you have lower claims on this side for our active members, higher claims over here. And we need to figure out how much higher are those claims than what the premium rates that our retirees are using. And I've got this neat little graph here that I think
038is pretty helpful. And the the red line there would be the premium amount that is is being paid. It's flat across all ages. But then we look at this claims curve which is the blue line. And these are the expected claims that are expected to be generated by age. And you can see that there's a crossover point right around 46 or 47 there where the claims begin to be higher than what the premium that is being paid is. And so that area between the blue and the red line is that implicit subsidy that we're trying to pull out. So basically, it's the folks that are under that 46 or 47 that are uh generating enough premium income to subsidize those retirees. Uh similar story on the discount rate here. Gazsby 74 and 75. It's the
039same discount rate approach that 67 and 68 uses. So again, we're now at a a discount rate of 5.2% that's used to to calculate the liabilities. We did have some benefit changes that were incorporated into the most recent valuation and this where the explicit subsidy increased from $565 to $789. So it means our retirees are receiving more money towards those those premiums provided by uh the district. So this is something that um is only going to impact the liability on the explicit side. And then again when we look at the expense, it's going to be recognized immediately in the OPED expense. So here's that similar table. Uh and if we just focus on the 2025 column, you can see that our total OPED liability at the end of the year was $10.4 million. But if
040we go up a few lines here, you can see the change in benefit terms. So this is the change from the 565 to 789 added roughly $3.4 million in liability. And so if that change wasn't made, we would have expected to see the liabilities actually go down from where they were at the beginning of the year. We look at the asset side. Uh we received a nice contribution of $1.3 million and at the end of the year that asset was at 8.1 uh million. And so the difference between the liability of 10.4 4 and the um asset figure of 8.1 leaves us with an unfunded amount of $2.3 million. And so you can see that if again if that benefit wasn't changed and this plan would be sitting above 100%. So I don't want you
041to look at the that funded ratio where it says 77.72 and say we lost ground. You didn't really lose ground. you provided a a much healthier benefit for your retirees and that's what resulted in the that's that's how the funded ratio resulted in going down a little bit from that 89.3% at the beginning of the year to 77.7 at the end of the year. The other piece the implicit piece this is the much larger piece and there's no assets backing this again. So we have roughly you can see right in the middle there 20.067 million in liabilities. So again, that's the value of that implicit subsidy that's being provided to just our retirees. So the active members are effectively subsidizing at a level of about $20 million. >> You can see that it's not funded
042at all. So there's no funding percentage there, 0%. But we do track this as a percent of the uh covered employee payroll. So this gives us a sense of how big this liability is relative to the size of the district or the payroll of the district. And you can see that that number has been coming down a little bit. So it's the liabilities been staying relatively stable while the payroll has been uh growing a little bit over the last few years. We put the two pieces together and overall we're sitting at about uh just under 27% funded and again we see improvement on that that total the net oped liability of these combined plans as a percent of employee payroll is just over 20%. So again uh that's a good metric to follow each year.
043We also calculate the same same type of actuarily determined contribution for the explicit only plan and again it's made of the same two pieces. So the the cost of recurring benefits about $175,000 and then our plan for paying off any unfunded liability. So that roughly $2.3 million. We've set up a schedule to pay it off over a 15-year period. And the first payment is that 200 roughly $233,000. So, we add those two numbers together to come up with that $47,000 actuarily determined contribution. It's up from where it was in the prior year, but again, the main reason for that is the increase in those benefits and those explicit benefits that are being provided to the retirees. similar story uh on the deferred inflows and outflows. Um the only really key distinction here between um the
044pension benefits and the retention plan and these OPED benefits is that average remaining service life is a little bit lower because this these benefits consider the retired members whereas the bonus retention plan just considers active members. So that's why the active member only plan has a little bit longer recognition period relative to this uh to this plan. We have our OPED expenses that we've calculated for each of the uh the two plans. And then in total and you can see that the current period benefit payments or current period benefit changes at $3.4 million. Again, that's being recognized immediately in the pension expense. So that's why our pension expense is so much higher this year than we've seen in the past. Uh but that will fall away. uh next year uh when this calculation is performed.
045Again, here's the plan for the runout of those deferred inflows and outflows. And this is how things are going to be recognized over the next five years and then the combined years after that. So, another almost four years of recognition after that. Um you know, so we have an idea of where the pension expense is is headed over the next few years. We perform a similar calculation of that plus or minus 1% on the discount rate, but then we also take it one step further and we look at plus or minus 1% on the healthcare trend rates. And so the healthcare trend rates, what that means is that we have an assumption in the valuation that says basically our premiums are going to increase by some percentage each year going forward. And the way that
046it's laid out for this particular valuation is you start out with a higher increase rate somewhere around 7% and then that ultimately grades down to something that's uh about a percent or so a little over a percent higher than what general inflation uh is where our expectation of that is. So, one of the neat things that uh we can see on a chart like this is that um if you kind of draw um a little bit of a diagonal between the very lower right hand corner, that $22.8 million unfunded amount to the upper left, the 21967. You can see that those numbers are pretty similar. So, what this tells us is that for the implicit plan, the impact of lowering the discount rate to 4.2 two has about the same impact of increasing the trend
047rate by 1%. >> And the the similar uh similar relationship holds going the other way. You will notice that the trend rates on the explicit piece there, all those numbers are the exact same. There aren't any trend rates that are being used in the explicit valuation and explicit subsidy valuation. We assume that that 789 is going to stay at 789 uh for the life of the plan. So that's why you're not seeing any differences on the healthcare trend side for that. So that's all I have. You know, again, the progress that's been made over the last six years is incredible. It's it's so great to see uh plan sponsors step up and fund these OPED plans because it's not it's not common. Um frankly, I would say maybe 15 to 20% of our OPED clients
048actually fund their benefits. Everyone else just pays them as they go. So again, you know, just a great policy and uh you know, hats off to the district and the board here for for implementing it. Happy to take any questions. >> Does anyone want to test his knowledge? >> We can even talk WRS if you want. I I don't know if this is for you uh Mr. Wood or for Jed, but I assume I mean obviously we stopped the the dates that people could qualify for this. So at some point these will become moot and we won't need them anymore. And are all these numbers assuming a certain lifespan and then they'll just be gone? like will have used all of that um that all that asset. >> Uh that that's correct. So the liability
049figure is just members that are eligible for the benefit today. Um you'd be surprised though it has a pretty long run out. Um you know you think about it was closed in what 21ish somewhere around there. So maybe someone hired in 2020 you know they may work for another 25 years and then retire and collect that benefit until they die. So the runout's pretty long. And then when you think about the whole relationship between that liability figure and the asset figure, you know, once you're 100% funded, so long as you keep up with with current acrals, at some point everyone will have recruited all the benefits where we'll just have a population of retirees and then you theoretically if you're 100% funded at that point would never have to make another contribution and then that
050asset figure would run down as the liability figure runs down over time. >> Okay, two more. Mr. Wood, thank you for uh presenting for us this evening. And Jed, you as well, Madam Vice Chair, that is um all the topics that we have for this evening's work session. >> Right. Thank you, Mr. Wood, for being with us tonight. Thank you, Mr. Cigarelli, as well for all your good hard work on this these two topics, uh these two accounts, I should say. All right. Well, we'll end the work session with that then and we'll resume our regular meeting at 6 o'clock. >> Okay. >> Thank you everyone. Good evening everyone. My name is Christy Clawson and I am the vice chair of our board of trustees. Welcome tonight to our meeting for the Laramie County School
051District number one board of trustees. Chair Alicia Smith has unable to be here today due to a personal uh event that occurred and so she'll be I think joining us online if she's not already online. But we'd like to start our meeting out by saying the pledge of allegiance. So would you please all join us in standing for the pledge of allegiance. My name is Mrs. Sanchez. I am a second grade teacher at Davis Elementary and this is my class reciting the pledge to the flag of the United States of America to the stand indiv. All right. >> Uh, are there any adjustments to the agenda tonight? >> Madame Vice Chair, there are no adjustments to this evening's agenda. >> Do we have a motion to adopt the agenda then? >> Yes, madame vice chair.
052I move to adopt the agenda. >> A second. >> Second. >> All right. All those in favor of adopting the agenda, please say I. I >> and those opposed. No one opposed. I don't think so. We'll go ahead and adopt the agenda as written. Uh we always like to start our night out with recognition of staff and students for their outstanding achievements. We're going to start out with um Trent Risel from East High School. Um he is the student of the week for February 2nd and a 12th grader. And we we would ask Principal Kersner and his favorite teacher, Mr. Hayes, to come up with Trent. >> Good evening, trustees. I'm Mark Kersner, and it's my pleasure to introduce Trent. He's a senior at East High School. Barb Wolf, the counselor in the spirit office
053at East High School, refers to Trent as the mayor of East High School because no matter who you are, where you're from, and what your background is, Trent can find common ground with you, and he can strike up a great conversation. Trent uh single-handedly raises the positivity at East High School. We love having him around. We love having his influence at East High School. and uh he's working really hard on some academically rigorous classes, balances a job, does a little bit of golf. So Trent's a well-rounded individual, and we're just really lucky to have him. So I'll let Trent say a few words and then introduce his favorite teacher. Uh first off, I'd like to say one thing about me is I love sports. I used to play them all. However, when I got into
054high school, my main focus was golf. I've played golf at East for seven seasons. Given that we have two seasons in a year, uh this spring season I decided to focus on my job and save up since I will be attending South Dakota School of Minds in the fall. I just got accepted or in early October and just officially committed a few days ago. I will be participating in their 5-year accelerated masters program for electrical engineering. Given that I'm going to a STEM university, I bet you can guess my favorite subject is math. Now, circling back to my job, I work at an antenna antenna manufacturing company. We make antennas for NASA, CIA, and all kinds of people. I've managed to balance a job and and school since sophomore year. So, one point of pride
055I have in my high school career is my GPA. I've managed to stay above a 3.5 GPA all my high school career. Now, I want to take a moment and thank everyone that's helped me and pushed me along the way. This includes my parents, brothers, faculty, and friends. Finally, another person being Mr. H. I chose him as my favorite teacher because even though I did not sign up for his class by choice, I was welcomed and held the whole way. After about two weeks, I loved the class. I ended up taking all four years of his class in just three. His class and his teaching abilities was that last push I needed to further my career in engineering. Thank you, Mr. Hayes, and thank you mom and dad. >> Hi guys, my name is Mr.
056Hayes. I uh teach the CAD and the engineering programs up to DARE and uh it's always great to get recognized, but this young man has a ton of drive and he's ambitious and uh when you have him in class, he's a he's a true pleasure. So, uh big things on the horizon for Trent. He's going to be doing electrical engineering up in Rapid and uh I look forward to see what he can do here in the next four or five years. He's going to be uh somebody to be reckoned with. So, everybody give him a big round of applause. He did a good job. And I know Trent's got his fan club in the back of the room. So, if we could have everybody here in attendance to support Trent, uh, please stand so that
057we can recognize you. >> All right. Congratulations, Trent and Mr. Hayes. Thank you for all your work. Uh, our student of the week for February 9th is um I'm gonna I hope I say this right. Itel Sodto Dominguez from Johnson Junior High. She's a seventh grader or he's a se I'm not sure. And uh would Mr. or would Principal Moon come up if in attendance? And their favorite teacher is Karen Perez Sapion. All right. Good evening, trustees. Dr. Newton. My name is Aaron Moon. I'm the principal at Johnson Junior High. It is my pleasure and privilege to introduce Adel Sto Dominguez as our student of the week. Um, she was selected for this award because she's active in student council, a student leader, and works hard in the classroom. She's always kind, empathetic, and thoughtful.
058She's identified Miss Perez as her favorite teacher. Uh, she likes how Miss Perez teaches, says that she's fun, and the Miss Perez is patient and kind. I worked really hard to try to find Zel in our building. However, it took me three separate times because she's so busy. She was one day showing our sixth graders around as we introduced them into our new building. Then she was setting up for the student council dance. It wasn't until after she the dance was over at 7:00 while we were waiting for her ride that was actually able to touch base with her. So, she's a wonderful young lady. We're glad to have her here at Johnson. She leaned over at me and said, "Do I have to talk?" Um, I nominated it for this. Um, mostly because she's
059just as Mr. Moon, she's like hard to find and she flies under the radar a little bit, but she is so dedicated. She's extremely kind and she has extremely high standards for everyone. Even this last Friday, she was setting up for the dance and she watched a group of boys set up, didn't say anything to them, and then afterwards came in and said like, "Oh, they were doing it all wrong and I had to redo it." Um, so she's one of those members that I can just count on to not only meet my expectations, but high expectations of everyone else around her. So, give a round of applause. And also if Adele's family is attended, will you please stand? >> Congratulations, Adel. And Miss Perez sen. Well, now we're going to call up our Western
060Vista representative from the Federal Credit Union, and they're so gracious to give our awardees gift cards. So, I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself and talk about that, >> Madam Trustee. Thank you. Um, hello. My name is Scott Sutherland. I'm the senior vice president of credit and lending at Western Vista Federal Credit Union and we are honored to support the school district student of the week program once again this year. Each week, we are delighted to learn about these amazing kids that we have in Laramie County. In recognition of the efforts put forth by the student of the week, we are proud to present a certificate of achievement and a visa gift card to the recipient. And we would also like to present a certificate of appreciation and Western Vista gift card to the
061recipient's nominee for favorite teacher. We congratulate you on this honor and wish you nothing but success in the future. We're just doing Yes. If everyone would come and start down there and we'll we'd like to congratulate you. >> Congratulations. Thanks, sir. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you, sir. Congratulations. Thank you. >> All right. Now, we're going to move on to our best of show at the science fair. So, I ask district science coordinator Julie Fulin to come up and take over, please. Good evening, Superintendent Newton, Vice Chairperson Clawson, and members of the board of trustees. My name is Julie Caulkins, and I serve as the science and computer science coordinator for Laram County School District 1. This evening, I am pleased to recognize several students for their outstanding achievement in science. These students were selected for
062best of show at the Laram County Science Fair held at Story Gym on Saturday, January 24th. Each was recognized for exceptional work within their grade level. So, if I could please have uh for grade four best of show, Coulter Pearlman, would you come on down, please? Then in our junior division, we had a tie. Um, my dad was one of the judges and he and and his partner judge, they could not decide what they were absolutely even in every way. I even tried to delve in. Uh-uh. So, we have two best of shows in the junior division. Uh, would Felicity Cox please come down? And then would the dynamic duo of Hattie Burningham and Ivy Olsen please come down so we can recognize you this evening. And I thought I know you always want to
063hear how their projects were and what they did. So they've prepared a little something to tell you about their projects. Cter, you want to go ahead? >> You hold the mic. There you go. >> My project was about like chocolate and what melts the fastest. So Oh, I did different types of chocolate like dark chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate. And the I thought the milk chocolate would melt the fastest, but the wait but the the milk chocolate melt to the fastest. >> Thank you, Coulter. Um, and then Felicity, would you tell us about your project? >> My project was an example of the decoy effect, which is a marketing strategy that businesses use to influence what customers buy. And in my experiment, I had four different bake sales. I sold three different sized brownies and
064I found that the decoy, which was the large size brownie, had an influence on what customers bought. >> All right. Thank you, Felicity. And Ivy and um I'm drawing a blank. Tell me your name. Addie. Thank you, Hattie. Who wants to tell about your project or you going to tag team it? >> Okay, tag team. Okay. So, our project was titled Lyrical or Logical, and we tested to see if you focused best when listening to lyrical music, instrumental music, or no music at all. Um, what we concluded was that it entirely depends on the person and that our study, our hypothesis was incorrect and that it entirely depends on the person and you can find what works best for you. Thank you, ladies. Haddie and Ivy. At this time, I'd like to invite each um
065I'd like I'd like to invite the parents of these students to stand and be recognized for their support and encouragement. >> Thank you. >> I would als I would also like to recognize Mr. Hart, Miss Esh, and Mr. Washenfelder for their dedication and guidance to that played a critical role in fostering curiosity, discipline and a passion for science among our students. Would you please stand? >> Miss Ash. Thank you. >> And finally, I invite the principles, Miss B Mingham and Mr. Lewis of these students schools to stand in recognition of their leadership in creating environments that support academic excellent. >> Thank you. Thank you all for your commit your continued commitment to our students and their success. Thank you. >> Congratulations. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Oh, I remember the days of science fair. Thank
066you so much, Miss Caulkins, for uh introducing our winners and congratulations again to the to those amazing young students. All right, it's now time for our employee spotlight, which is a lot of fun for us to give as well. Um, I'd like to recognize or we'd like to recognize Madison Mark Mar um at Kerry Junior High School and we'd ask that principal Matt Schleel and CTEA representative Will Barnes come up to present this recognition. That's a tough act to follow with some credible wellspoken scientists. So, we'll do our best here. Uh, good evening, Madam Chair, trustees, and Dr. Newton. My name is Matt Schlegel. Um, proudly the principal at Kerry Junior High, and it's my privilege to introduce Madison Mark Kair, an eighth grade social studies teacher at Kerry Junior High School. He was selected
067for this award because of his because of his energy, enthusiasm, and kindness that he brings to Kerry Junior High. In addition to his incredible teaching, Madison also sponsors our unified sports club, which is an incredibly fast growing club uh that fills up every night. Uh Madison's the first to volunteer when help is needed and approaches each day with a contagious can do attitude. I have to tell you, if you're ever having a bad day, stop by his classroom and just say good morning to him and he will he'll just lighten your day and he's so sincere and he's he's it's just wonderful to talk to him. Um he makes everyone in his class feel valued. A few weeks ago, I had a student who I had to switch an advisement class for. Um, and adisement
068classes are a little high this year. And so, I was a little nervous to ask to have one more student in a classroom. And I went to Mr. Mark Karen and I said, "Hey, can you take one more?" And he just looked at me and he said, "Everybody's welcome in my class." Um, and and that simple response stuck with me and captured, I think, his desire and his ability to make everyone um feel welcome inside of the learning community that he strives to build. Uh trustees, you may remember that at the start of the school year, uh Madison was here after being selected by a student as their favorite teacher for student of the week. You know, when I learned about this award, I felt that it was pretty special to be recognized first by
069a student and finally by his peers for his outstanding accomplishments. Kerry Junior High is lucky to have an educator with his skills and talents. And on a personal note, I've known Madison since he was about 11 years old when he was a sixth grader in my class at Jessup Elementary School. and all of those things that he does now just gives me goosebumps um and and kind of brings tears to my eyes almost because you could tell when he was 11 just what an amazing human he would be and I couldn't be more proud of you Madison thank you for being a car um this is an unbelievable honor thank you all so much for having me thank you to Mr. Schlgel and Mr. Barnes and um everyone. I really think that at Carrie with
070our motto being collaborating to inspire lifelong learning, it's just so easy to fit in. Um everybody that I work with is genuinely so passionate and wonderful that it's so easy to go to work every day, you know. Um just being uh I guess kind and um happy is really easy when you work in such a great environment with such wonderful students. Um, I can also be so happy because I have such a wonderful support system at home with my wife and my son and my parents and my in-laws. So, I really just can't say enough great stuff about this community, this school, and the people I work with. Thank you all so much for this honor. I appreciate it. >> And I would be a miss I I would be sad if I didn't uh
071ask for a round of applause for his parents that are in the back there, Mr. Mr. Mr. and Mrs. Mark. And yeah, go ahead. >> We'll do it. Yeah, >> you sir. Congratulations. >> All right. I would like to uh introduce Western Vista Credit Federal Credit Union, our representative, one more time because we would like to honor Madison. On behalf of Western Vista Credit Union, we'd like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to you on being selected for the employee spotlight of the month. Your dedication and willingness have made a lasting impact, and we truly admire your commitment to always lending a hand whenever it's needed. Thank you for your hard work and outstanding service. We wish you continued success in everything you do. Thank you so much, Madison, and thank you, Mr. Sigel, for that
072introduction. All right, uh we'll move on to information and reports. I just checked and it doesn't look like we have anyone signed up for public comments concerning our agenda items tonight. Um so we'll move down to upcoming meetings. We have um the WSBA legislative forum at Little America on February 22nd between 2 and 6 PM. On February 24th between at noon, the trustees meeting with the superintendent and I don't know that the chair has taken any volunteers yet for that meeting. So, would would anyone be interested in attending that meeting with the chair on the 24th? Uh, Trusty Cook. Okay. >> Can you do >> Okay. Oh, >> I I heard a little more complicated. >> Yeah, if it's at noon, I can do it. >> Okay. It looks like it's at noon. So, we'll
073put Trusty Ninkle and Trusty Cook down >> with Trustee um Humphrey as a backup. >> All right. Thank you. On March 2nd, there's a work session prior to our regularly scheduled board meeting at 5:00 PM. And on March 4th at 6:30 is the parent advisory committee meeting here in the boardroom. Are there any board individual board communications and reports tonight? Okay. Uh reports from the super superintendent and staff are next. Dr. Newton. >> Thank you, Madame Vice Chair. Just a couple of um items to mention this evening. To begin, I'd like to call Mr. nap forward to explain a couple of motions regarding some construction projects we have coming up. >> Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Um on the agenda tonight, we have a couple of projects on there. Uh one's a
074consent agenda item and that's for our contract to renew with our flooring contractor and supplier um for doing miscellaneous flooring jobs during the year in the district. And then we have a roofing uh award in there. Uh and that's to do three roofs this summer. Um replacing the roof on the admin building uh transportation building and part of Central High School. And that we had three biders on that. Um it was awarded to Advanced Roofing Technologies. Uh they were the low bidder on that project. That's all I have on there for tonight. >> Does anyone have any questions? Uh, Trusty Hinkle, >> Mr. Chairman, uh, are those insurance claims? Is that what the construction is for or is that just roof replacement because of time? >> Madam Chair, Trusty Hankle, that those are just roof
075replacements. Um, time for the central one and transportation and the admin building was torn off by the wind over the winter. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Nassle. >> Madame Vice Chair, I would also like to uh remind our community that the budget session at the legislature got kicked off in full swing today with many bills being introduced and referred to committee. There are about 17 bills that we're following. Some of them are mirror bills on both the House and the Senate side. So, probably a few uh less than that that are distinct bills uh ranging from school discipline, literacy, uh school funding, of course, to uh halfway scholarships and and even um the facilities bill that um will do a number of things for some of our schools, including the
076demolition of the old ARP. So, um we're watching very closely. um we would invite all of our stakeholders to get involved and um I think the voice of the citizens in this process is very important and it's going to be fast and furious with just a short budget session. Um and the last thing uh I'd like to to share in my reports uh before we meet again, we will be celebrating school board appreciation week um on February uh 23rd through the 27th. So on behalf of the entire district, I want to thank all of our board members. Um we we sometimes hear u on social media that the community members say things like how much are they getting paid anyway? And um and we all know, you all very well know, um this is completely
077volunteer work and it's not easy work and it's thankless work most times and um uh but at the at the same time it's some of the most important work in my estimation that's happening in our community. And uh so on behalf of of all of our employees, I just want to say thank you. And so madam vice chair with that that is the end of my reports for the evening. There any questions for Dr. Newton? Dr. Newton, thank you for your nice comments. Um, it is a there's a lot to this job um that you don't get paid for, but it is rewarding in its ways, too, and certainly appreciate working with the district staff. Um, all right, moving on to the consent agenda. Do we have an a motion for the consent agenda tonight?
078Do you want to read? >> Am I supposed to read? >> I don't know. >> Thank you. All right. Thank you, Trusty Humphrey, for helping me out here. Oh, it's on my um all agenda items on the consent agenda are listed with the designation of CAR and and are considered to be routine items by the governing body and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion on these items. Any item removed from the consent agenda will be considered in its normal sequence on the agenda. Does any board members have uh or would motion to remove anything from the consent agenda? Okay. >> Madame vice chair, I move to approve all motions listed as consent agenda. >> I'll second. >> Okay. We have a motion and a second to approve all the
079agenda items on the consent agenda. Uh all those in favor please say I. >> Those opposed no. >> I is passed. Moving on to old business. Um I'm sorry. Moving on to new business. Boy, I'm a little rusty. Forgive me guys. Moving on to new business. Madame vice chair, I move to approve a leave of absence for the attached list for the remainder of the 2025 2026 contract. Do we have a second? >> I'll second. >> Okay, we have a motion and a second to approve the leave of absence for the attached list of the remainder of the 2025 2026 contract. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Those opposed. All right, that motion's passed. Do we have another motion? Madame vice chair, I move to approve the fee proposal with Advanced
080Roofing Technologies in the amount of $693,340, including a 10% contingency for associated governmental fees and requirements for the purchase and installation of roofing replacements at various sites. >> We have a second. >> I'll second. >> All right. We have a motion and a second to uh move forward with a proposal with advanced roofing technologies for roofing replacements. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Those opposed. >> All right, that motion's passed. Madame vice chair, I move to approve a 45day review period for public comment for public review and comments on board policy chapter 9 section 5, use of district property. Do we have a second? >> I'll second. >> All right. We have a motion and a second to approve a 45day review period for public review and comments on board policy
081chapter 9 section 5 um regarding our use of district property. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> Those opposed say no. All right, that motion has passed. >> Sorry, lost lost my thing. There we go. >> Madam Chair, I move to approve the Deming Elementary School boundaries as recommended. >> Do I have a second? >> I'll second. >> All right, we have a motion to approve the Deming Elementary School boundaries and a second. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Those opposed, no. >> All right, that motion's passed. The next regular board meeting will be held on Monday, March 2nd at 6 PM and a work session will preced it at 5:00 p.m. The business of the district is is done. Do we have a motion to go
082into executive session? Madame vice chair, I move to go into executive session at this time prior to adjournment for the purpose of possible long-term suspensions, expulsions, personnel litigation update, and legal advice. >> I'll second. >> Okay, we have a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of uh long-term suspensions, expulsions, personnel litigation, and legal advice. We have a second. All those in favor, please say I. I. And those say no. >> All right, that motion has passed as well. Thank you everyone for attending tonight and we will um come back into regular