001On agenda items, do we have any public comments this evening? Okay, there being no public comments, we will move on to our business agenda. We have two items for review and two items for action this evening. First item up for review is the omnivous vote agenda which we will vote on at our next meeting. The next item up for action is approving the tenative budget and setting the budget hearing date. And I will turn the floor over to Mr. Rogers for his scintillating presentation. Beautiful. All right. Thank you board of education distinguished guests in the audience. We are doing the exciting budget presentation. So this is presentations evolved over the years. The general framework of which has remained the same. I've added some new information, but I will be going over this in its entirety
002for the benefit of our new board members. But as always, I ask uh if you're interested in learning a little bit more about the budget, we should schedule a time to sit down and talk and I can go over some more of the uh more complex and substantive items. This is just going to be a higher level over view. So a budget as always is made up of our predominantly our salaries and benefits, purchase services, operations and maintenance, transportation, ma our major uh budgetary expenditures, but the Illinois schools are held to the Illinois program accounting manual and the Illinois school code. So our main funds that I'm going to be discussing today are operating funds. That's made up of our education, our operations and maintenance, transportation, IMRF, social security, and working cash. Uh our main
003three funds, education, uh funds all of our teacher salaries, purchase services, supplies. Our on andm does our general facility work. That's usually our landscaping, ground care, um uh custodial crew, and then transportation's our busing and our now one of our biggest expenditures is cab service, which I'll talk a little bit more about. The other funds are have a more of a year-to-year fluctuation, and that's our capital projects, debt service, TOR, which is um where our legal bills come out of, and our life safety fund. So, capital projects is one that you don't discuss quite as much because you may get a a large influx of revenue one year, spend it out in future years. So, you'll have a lot of surplus and deficits that occur out of those funds. So, our preliminary FY26 budget has
004a uh operating revenue of n uh 19.6 million expenditures of 20.1 and an estimated year-end fund balance of 21.2 million, which if you're looking at our expenditure to revenue, sorry, our fund balance expenditure ratio still puts us over 100% of reserves in the operating fund. But, uh sorry, I'll go back to that real quick. This does still project us at a u a preliminary $446,000 deficit. I'll talk a little bit more about my budgeting uh history here in in the future. Overall, this is just a fund summary. This is just lists our estimated and these are our unodudited July uh sorry June 30th, 2025 fund balance in each fund. Our estimated revenues, expenditures, and then just a year-end fund balance by fund. So yeah, it puts us about 105% in the operating fund and 116%
005uh fund balance for all of our funds. So when I talk about budgeting uh in my history of budgeting, it's generally it's an overly conservative revenue and overly aggressive expenditures. So I'll show you a historical graph, but I have budgeted a deficit in the future for all the years since I've been here. And I'll just show you in its historical context where we've ended up, but it's been a surplus every year. So, what this allows us to do is uh absorb a lot of unplanned expenditures and we can add in staff. Sometimes that means floating subs, sometimes it means extra uh uh curricular purchases, but really when I'm planning for grants, Peter and I do a great job working together on budgeting for items that are necessities. We don't use grants as kind of an
006additional pot of money. It's to supplement purchases we would have otherwise made. And that really acts as kind of a a budget balancer. So these are uh this is a separate attachment, but I just included three slides. These are just the five-year projections for the education fund, the O andM, and the transportation in the subsequent slides. So just highlighting our unodudited uh education fund balance um our unodudited education surplus was 1.3 million from the FY25 year. Um we've had some rather large surplus years and these are really the predominantly offset by uh the Esser 3 grant. We've still been getting uh subsequent revenue from that and the um full service community schools grant. I'll talk about that in a little bit as well. But our preliminary budget is for $135,000 deficit in the education fund.
007The ON&M fund has what I'm going to refer to as it's a planned spend down. It's planned deficit spending in that fund. So we're held by a new uh ratio. It's called the Miller ratio and it's where it looks at school districts that have over a 200% fund balance in the operating funds. So the education fund we're just at about 90% so we're not at risk of that. The O on O andM fund in FY24 has a 201% fund balance. So what I've been doing is underleving in these funds. So I could levy a little bit more, but I'm pushing more of that money into the education fund. We have a lot of flexibility in that fund. So I'm expecting we're we're projecting to have a $44,000 deficit last year and I'm projecting a $278,000
008deficit in this year. So, what that would do is bring our year-end fund balance to uh 52% dropping that ratio down to more manageable levels. And that's really uh a sweet spot. The state board of ed recommends having at least 25% fund balance in any specific fund. So, we're we're a little high in these funds based on past expenditures. Transportation as well, we're projecting about a $17,000 surplus last year and a $32,000 deficit in the future year. Uh and I am projecting some uh decent deficits in future years as well. Our transportation fund is going to be kind of the the biggest threat we have in future years. Transportation costs are rising uh at our last contract by 9% and 8% respectively. And our cab service has gone up uh substantially. So we used to
009see cab bills in the $40 $50,000 range on a high year. We were at about three or $400,000 this year. And that's really the the driver has been our increase in McKini Vento students. So what that's just going to mean in future years is we'll have to make a decision on taking tax dollars away from the ed fund and shifting it over to the transportation because uh as we sat through last week, the transportation reimbursements aren't going to be uh substantive enough to offset the costs of our transportation and the the the state payments are delayed often by months. So, we're supposed to get four general state a um four categorical payments for the uh regular and special ed transportation. We may get three some years, some years we may get five depending on when
010it's paid because we're cash basis of accounting. When it comes in in July, we book it in July. Some districts have a little different source. But that's just one of our our threats that we'll be looking at and evaluating over the next couple years. So, our historical fund balance, this is just a 10-year graph. when I was talking about the maintaining a minimum of 25%. Back in 2010, we were at about 33% and now our uh our last fiscal year, we're at about 116%. And this is just again looking at our operating funds. So, we've been able to make some good strides on uh maintaining a lot of surpluses, using that money for future years. Now, it doesn't mean that money can't go away pretty quickly when you see high transportation costs or some maybe
011some larger scale facility projects. The best thing is this gives us a lot of flexibility to do a lot of different staffing decisions or um building renovations in future years. So why a fund balance? We can justify it by just saying there's there's as proved with the government um decisions to hold some of our categorical grants back. There's going to be a lot of fluctuation year-over-year. So the fund balances helps us weather that storm. There's a lot of talk about pension shifts um where districts are going to have to pay a portion of that. We haven't realized that yet, but at least this is going to help us absorb and future plan. So, um, we've received there's been high CPI years. The CPI I'll talk about more in our tax levy uh in November, but
012that's the the primary driver of our new t our new revenue each year. So, CPI was at 7%, we're capped at five. So, that's the new money we're able to get. It went to six and a half percent, we're capped at five. This year it's at 3.4% 4% and then next year is going to be at 2.9%. It's currently trending about 2.2% for this December right now. So what that just means is we're getting a smaller portion of revenue from tax um from property taxes. Salaries though are outpacing it. So it's been a historical trend, but we've been able to kind of weather some of those higher increases of salaries when we've been seeing 5% increases in new money. So, as I talked about being aggressive on budgeting revenues and um conservative on budgeting expenditures,
013this has been our last uh seven years here of surpluses. So, the last two years have been really been one of our biggest outliers where we've had about a 1.4 and a $2.3 million surplus. So, when we have a re uh an operating budget of about 15 million, those are really high reserves. predominantly ESSER funds have helped offset a lot of those because we've used the ESSER funds to spend on future facility work that we didn't have to spend local property tax dollars on. So projecting uh I would say very conservatively deficits in future years, historical trends are saying we're still going to trend in a surplus as long as we keep our conservative budgeting. This is a graph I added a year or so ago. It's um this key performance indicator that's supposed to
014uh help evaluate trends of your two biggest um it it's supposed to plan for structural deficits in school districts as a result of salaries and benefits outpacing the growth of our two most reliable revenue sources which is property taxes and our evidence-based funding. So our uh if we have a ratio greater 111% that's when a district's more prone to accumulate fund balance. These graphs kind of show that our fund balance trends have been true to outpacing uh our salaries and benefit figures in the last future years. Uh our previous years and future years we're still looking at 136%. So that's what's helping us trend in our surpluses. Um one of the biggest metrics that the state looks at when evaluating your financial health is the financial profile score. So 4.0 is the highest you can
015get. We were at about 3 uh six in the last future uh the last uh 2018 to 2023. That's just because we've had a large amount of outstanding debt when we borrowed referendum bonds. Those uh some of those payments have been made. So our uh long-term debt increased a little bit. So now we're about a 4.8, sorry, a 3.8 out of four. So we're in very good health. our cash on hand, our percent of um short-term borrowing, expenditure, revenue ratio, they're all the highest that the state can rate us at. Revenues by source, our largest percentage about 75% is property taxes. Um the federal funds have offset and increased over the years. We're expecting that ratio to kind of drop again in future years and have relatively low federal uh revenues. So again, as far
016as assumptions go, I'm expecting us to have a lower percentage of uh title grants received this year. We did have an appropriation from Congress to receive titles one, two, three, and four. Uh we received one and four. Three and two we still have not heard from. So it was uh essentially announces it was frozen. So um we're we're expecting that money to be released. We've heard some news in the last couple days that uh we're going to be receiving that money, but I still has not hit our grant account yet. So, until we get it. Right now, I'm still budgeting zero for it. And that's some one of those things that'll change between now and when we adopt the budget in September. As far as expenditures go, it's salaries and benefits make up just under
01775% of our uh overall uh expenditures. So, as I was mentioning about our uh CPI growth, so we had a 3.4% 4% CPI with a 7% increase in salary. Next year is a 6% increase and a 2.9% CPI. We've still been able to weather these storms with uh being conservative in other areas. Still has not impacted any of the educational opportunities we've been able to provide students, but our 5-year facility plan, we're still revising that every year. Some projects have fallen off and we're going to be evaluating in probably October and adding new projects. And then the grant, as I talked about, the full service community schools grant is uh was a big offset of expenditures. We used it to fund all of summer school, all of our after school reading and math program. It
018funded a half a million dollar Marzano program that's going to drive a lot of our decisions over the next 5 years. All that came at no cost. The grant is supposed to continue for another three years after this year. And right now, we have funding to December. So, a lot of unknowns when it comes to that grant, but that offset a lot of money for us last year. And then I carry a contingency of about 120,000 in our operating funds. So, having said all that, our um tonight we would need to approve our tenative budget. What that'll allow us to do is to post it for the required 30 days. Uh and on September 16th, we'll adopt the official budget and I have to file it before the end of the month for uh to
019make us all official there. So, any questions? I know it's like drinking through a fire hose here. So, if you guys want to meet, like I said, it's easiest to do this in person. I can kind of go down a little bit more of what our uh salaries, benefits, things like that. But, we've been uh we've been weathering uh a lot of the storm over the last couple years with COVID and still maintain good financial health. So, I'm anticipating that in the future even though we have some uncertainties ahead of us. Any questions? All right. Thank you. >> It was a pleasure as always. >> Okay. So now we will look at approving the resolution to approve tenative budget and set budget hearing date. Um whereas ILSC 10557-1 directs the board to provide at least
020one public hearing prior to final action on the budget and whereas notice of the public hearing must be published in a local newspaper at least 30 days prior to the time of hearing. Therefore, be it resolved, the Diamond Lake School District Board of Education approves the 2025 2026 tenative budget as presented and sets September 16, 2025 at 7 p.m. is the date for public hearing on the 2025 2026 budget. May I have a motion to approve, please? >> Mr. Becker. >> Yes. Miss Reyes. >> Yes. >> Okay, that motion is approved. The next item up for action um is approving the substitute teacher compensation for 2025 2026. We discussed that at the last meeting. So I don't there's nothing else you want to add, right? Okay. Um so be it resolved the Diamond Lake 76
021board of education accepts and approves the updated substitute teacher compensation as presented. May I have a motion to approve, please? Mr. Beckfield. >> Yes, >> that motion is also approved. Um the next item up for a or for review is um the press policies. So, I think we briefly touched on this at the last meeting, but essentially what you're looking at is we have a um a press subscription that gives us that uh the document in the board packet that's called the memo, which kind of goes through all of the different policies and changes. Um here, I think there's probably more changes than usual because of the Title 9 information that was rewritten. Um, you can see there's a bunch of like footnote updates and then they do kind of a five-year review where they
022clean things up and make sure things are consistent, the language is consistent. Um, so typically like at this meeting if people want to have discussion or have questions, we kind of talk about it. Generally, we don't have much of that because like we mentioned the most for the most part, it's um just like usually it's just footnote changes. Occasionally there are policy um there are like questions or like you know we pick A or B in this policy or if there's a policy that we see and we feel like you know maybe we don't want to adapt this or we would like to word this differently um we have the opportunity to to do that. So generally at this meeting we take a look at what is there have discussion if needed and then at
023our next meeting we would um vote you know whether or not to approve. That makes sense. Does anyone have any questions or anything they want to discuss there? There's kind of a lot this time. I feel like >> there were a lot. >> Yeah, there's a lot of title N changes in there. Um, but I I feel like the press memo does a pretty good job of explaining like why the change was made and is relatively clear. >> Um, okay. So then at our next meeting we will um take a look at that and take action on it. And then I do have this which is not on the agenda which is just also up for review but I don't know that we need to look at it. >> Oh no what is agenda item
024>> which is okay should be okay. Okay. So that wraps up our business agenda for the evening. Um, moving on to board discussion. Do we have any items for board discussion this evening? Discussions. Super Cooper. Go ahead. We are really excited in district 76 to have a new addition to our staff. And I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Bird to introduce the newest member of staff. I'm sorry. >> Sorry. Oh, well, you got bumped up in priority because we're very excited. Thank you, Dr. Burgerer, and congratulations. And welcome, Super Cooper. We're thrilled to have you. >> That's the best board discussion item we've had in years. >> Okay. Um, freedom of information requests, we had one and that was fulfilled. uh notice of communications. We have the information from Seed Doll, I think.
025Okay, awesome. Thank you for attending that. Um public comments on petitions on non-aggenda items. Do we have any public comments or petitions on non-aggenda items this evening? Uh okay, moving on to others. Um, the only thing I would say for others is again with triple I if you are interested in having yet told Eric like myself, uh, just let him know because I don't not Eric, Hyram, sorry, Hyram. Uh, let him know so we can register because I feel like is the early registration over? It's coming up on it. >> Okay. So, we have a little time to get in for the cheaper rate. So, you're interested, let them know. Um, does anyone else have any others? Well, another quick board meeting. Okay. Then we will adjourn to executive session for the appointment, employment, compensation,
026discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees of the district or legal counsel for the district, including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee or against legal coun for the district to determine its validity. And for discussion of minutes of meetings lawfully closed, whether for purposes of approval by the body of the minutes or semianual review of the minutes as mandated by section 2.0. 06. May I have a motion to adjurnn to executive session? >> Second, >> Missfield. >> Yes. >> Okay, we are adjourned. Thank you all for joining us.