001Madame Vice President. >> All right. >> Yeah. Step in. >> Slide over. >> All right. Call the meeting to order. Uh, everybody please stand for the pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Do you want to text real quick to see if there's an issue? >> Okay. >> I didn't bring my phone if you want to. >> All right. Sorry, I was not prepared for this. No. >> Uh, let's go ahead and I believe we start with a roll call. >> Yes, we do. I could just get that in. Pardon me. Okay. So, budget meeting so pick the right one. Okay. Woodrogen >> here. >> I not here yet.
002Stephus >> here. >> Cardin here. At Camp here, Dehan >> here. >> Anthony here. >> Excellent. As a courtesy to members of the audience and the board of education, please silence your cell phone. Public will only be able to speak during public comment if signed up. Are there any public comments? All right. Uh, next item is the approval of the agenda. >> So move support. >> All right. All in favor of approving the agenda? >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. >> Do I say any naysay? >> Okay. Sorry. Everybody does Robert's rules a little differently. >> All right. Uh item number two, uh future action item. Um our proposed budgets, I believe. >> Yeah. So, uh, Heather and John are going to review the proposed budgets for 2627. So, yeah, we'll start with what is on
003the agenda. And just a reminder, the most important part of this agenda is um complying with the Uniform Budgeting and Accounting Act. So the first thing that we will address is the um millillage levies that we're looking um to approve for the 206 27th school year. Starting with the general fund um we'll levy 18 mills. We did not receive a headley roll back this year for from a general fund standpoint. Um debt service will remain at the 5.05 05 mills for the year and um syncing fund received a small roll back of 1 to 1.3433 that's down from 1.3502 um for the current from the current year. So this again is the most important slide because it um satisfies the truth and taxation requirement um as part of this hearing. um talked a little bit
004about the Headley roll back. Um so it's when the property values are increasing at a higher rate than than CPI. Um and that comes into play um with the syncing fund a little bit differently than the general because syncing fund is only on um is on all I'm sorry is on all properties whereas the non-homestead is only on or the operating is only on non-homestead properties. So there's a little bit of a difference there and that's why sometimes you see a roll back for syncing fund but not for general fund or for general fund. Yes. So again this past November of 25 we did pass a new 10-year 1.4 million um or 1.4 mil syncing fund levy uh with an effective date of January of 2027. So, if you remember, we were we went out
005for all three at the same time, tried to consolidate them as opposed to continuously going back to the voters, which can be costly to go back at different times. Um, because we received a roll back when we are able to levy that essentially what was approved in November. So, not until January of 27. Um, we the most we'll be able to levy at this point will be 1.3929 because it bounces back to the 1.4, but the millage reduction that we received this year is now in play because we went back early. So, >> any questions on that piece? >> It was a wise move to go back early. Um, and this is our debt service history. Not a whole lot of change there. Obviously, the 2020 2022 school year is that was when um voters
006approved that latest bond issue and approved an increase in our debt mill levy. Um, here's how we rank against Kent County. We're still number four. We were number four last year. not a whole lot of change in this and that's primarily because you don't see um a lot of taxable increase um bond issues going and we still are number three in Ottawa County as well. I would like to point out um last year Grand Haven that is not a typo up there but last year Grand Haven's debt millage fell off. So, anything they do will require a tax increase from their community to be passed. It's not uh an area where I feel is a good idea to dabble in. Let's put it that way. Um debt service revenues, you can see there, we're looking
007at a 3% increase in taxable values. Um just over 13 million in revenues, $12.8 $8 million in expenditures um adding a little bit to that fund balance um for the debt fund. And again, this is their debt fund, right? It's like our mortgage paying off the debt that um that we owe. So, um and so the general fund is where I want to spend most of our time tonight. Um I want to talk about the assumptions and also um you know we are very much aware that what we're bringing you is a budget that is below has a fund balance below that 7%. Um there is there are so many moving pieces right now and it's not even just the legislative budget but it's the stuff that we are seeing in inside of our district.
008And so I appreciate um you allowing me a couple extra days because I wanted to get as granular as I could to be kind of um as close as I could in terms of what I think could happen. Um right now all of these assumptions are based on the executive's uh recommendation. We know that they're going to start negotiating behind the scenes um this next this week coming up. So, we're looking at a foundation increase of $250 per pupil. It's up from $10,50 to 103. Um, I am projecting 36 a decline of 36 students for this year. Um, and I'm still using the 9010 blend. So, those are some other things that are were in one or two of the proposals um branches proposals. Um, right now if you have declining enrollment, there's a categorical
009for that. And so the thought process is, well, maybe we get rid of the declining enrollment categorical and we say you you're using, you know, your best year or your three-year average type of deal. Um, I just left it alone right now because I think a lot of it is negotiating tools and so we'll see how they all play out, but I left it as a 9010 blend for now. Um, again, taxable value increase 3% levying the full 18 mills. You'll recall too, I forgot to mention this in the last slide, but when we went back to the voters for our um, operating millage, we went at a 19 and we have not had a Headley override since we went back. So, we still have that one extra mill in case we were to receive
010a roll back. Um the the tax the taxable revenue is is approximately $3,300 per pupil. Um they have continuation of various categoricals that are receiving a 6% increase including at risk um section 41 which is our ML multilingual um categories and the special ed is receiving an increase as well. All three branches have section 31A funds in there. So your mental health, safety and security. Um, two out of the three have um, uh, adjustments to the language pieces. Two out of three being the Senate and the House. One um, defines better um, mass casualty and the Senate version actually eliminates all of it, including the waiver of privilege. Um, additionally in this budget, there's onetime revenues approximately 1.4 4 million. If you'll remember, we had the 3% refund where the state paid us money and
011we gave it back to those employees who were contributing that additional 3%. And then we also this year had um a section called educator comp payments where the state of Michigan gave us approximately $83,000 that we had to turn around and um ne negotiate with our staff and then send out a one-time matching payment. So, so while you see the revenue disappear, you also see the um corresponding expenditure disappear. Um salaries and benefits right now we have a tenative agreement um with our our GA which was a 1% onscale plus a step with up to an additional 1% offscale payment that would be made in May of 2027. and half% of that offscale um is guaranteed. The other half percent is based on um some qualifiers. No found no proration to the foundation which is
012something that we are watching closely because the concern is they're going to quickly get a budget deal done and there's not enough money to support what everybody wants to do. but they're going to sign sign away, go home and campaign and then the new whomever's, you know, the next party in the next legislators in are going to have to deal with that. And so there's some concern that we may see um a proration that wouldn't happen until February, Marchish. When you get a new governor in place, just a reminder, budgets are usually from the governor, the executive branch, usually come out in January, but their first year when they're new into the office, they get an extra month. So, we won't see that their budget recommendation until February of 27. important because that the consensus
013revenue estimating conference and things like that um you know are going to be very that that's going to be what what we as districts are going to utilize as hey where do we think they're going to be so those become even more important during that time um the staffing levels uh we have adjusted through attrition um we have reduced various hours in our con in some of contracted service agreements. You think about our cleaning um the that those adjustments took place effective um April 1st this of 26. So another thing that we haven't seen come through yet is what difference had those invo do those invoices really look like with the reduction in those hours. Um we're also you we'll also see reduction in the summer hours for um for some of those services. So
014by this fall we should have a better idea of what those savings truly are. Um at this point I have a very conservative number budgeted in there for those savings. Um the myster's retirement contributions are decreasing um to 27.51%. That's down from 29.91 in the current year. And our average so the range for um the retirement contribution is anywhere from around 21.41 41 depending on which part of the system you're in up to that 27.51. When you look at our average, we are at 25.93. So what you're seeing is the people that are in the myth graded those are individuals who have been in the system longer and they're starting to retire. And yeah, we we we know recently. And so in new newer individuals coming out of school and coming into this they're in
015a different part of the system where they have a choice um of a 403b and and different types of things that they can choose like a smaller pension. They can also choose whether or not they u want to contribute to healthcare now or or have a basically another type of say 457 savings account for that. So, um, so we'll cons we'll continue to see our average go down. Um, employer insurance cap, um, is going to increase from, uh, by 3% for this next school year. Um, that is a true employer cost. This doesn't mean this isn't um, indicative of what the, um, premiums are going to do on the employee side. So, um we are working closely with um both Mesa and the health insurance pool um to see what we can do and get
016creative. I know three years ago we worked with the GA um and Mesa and they offered a different benefit plan that was um not as u costly for staff. So um and then we we talked about the positions and um expenditures that are no longer aligned with grant funds. So um looking at um one just over $1 million uh deficit for this year. Um you'll know I think it was a million83 I brought you in the amendment. Um, again, the some of those savings I know are not reflected in there just because we are not sure how much we're going to see from that. Um, I wanted to give you a couple different looks at fund balance. We typically look at it as a percentage of expenditures. That's how we've done it historically. Um, as
017a percentage of expenditures adjusted is where I take out um things like the unaccurred liability. That's the money that districts pay in or that um yeah they re we receive from the state and then the state turns around and sends us an invoice and we pay it back to them two weeks later. So I pull that out. I pull out the uh federal dollars which are you know money in money out for specific reasons. So when you look at the adjusted fund balance percentage based on expenditures, you're sit at 7.79. Um and then down below, uh fund balance is a percent of revenue 7.11% and then the same thing fund balance percent of revenue adjusted again is the 7.79. So um looking at 2627 you can see there is a reduction in revenues. A lot
018of that are the things I talked about. Um the there's a reduction in the UAL number from 6.1 to 5.4 million. Again it's money in money out. So it's reduced in the revenue. It's going to be reduced on the expenditure side. There was a um the elimination of the ED compounts. Um there are there's a filter first grant out there that we're going to finish um spending and drawing down this year. That's been taken out the for 2526. The amount remaining we had was around 120,000. So I know it's you're like well how can revenues swing that much? A lot of it is that one time thing, the onetime stuff that we get. So overall projected deficit of 584,000. Um, and you can see with there what it's doing to the fund balance and as
019a percentage. Um, it does drop us based on expenditures, which is what we've historically looked at to 6.5%. Um, >> and Heather, just to clarify, 31A is not in there. >> Correct. 31A is not in here. Um for us 31A projected amounts from the state for are around 830,000. So this is a structural funding issue, right? I mean that's what it is. um not putting certain parameters on funding. Um that could be a detriment to not not just the board, not just to administrators, but to staff as well depending on what type of situation you are in. Um you know, I feel like we made the right decision taking not taking that money um based on what rights we would lose. Um, but I have a hard time believing that from a legislative perspective, you
020can sell your campaign on only some only those with that are willing to fall in line here can have that money. So you have districts that I mean they did reallocate the current years to districts and there's there's deadlines and timelines on when they're supposed to spend that by. They're not going to be able to do it. I've talked to multiple the well the four people that in Kent County work at the other districts and they're they're going to end up taking that the state's going to end up pulling that back from them in September when they haven't spent it all. So, because it it acts just like a a grant fund. It's not like discretionary. There's >> there's specifics that you can use towards. Um John and I have worked tirelessly on what I'm
021going to call the dominoes right now where somebody's retiring. We are we are so tight at the high school and the middle school. We were hoping that we we would be able to absorb a position and based on schedules and how it worked out like we can't absorb that we had to post that AP psych position. >> Um actually I think it's psych psych but >> so I I don't want it to be misconstrued that it was only an AP class because that's not what it is. >> Well, we looked at we looked at the cost to do that AP class in the Michigan virtual and to run it for a full year for three sections for all nine kids was essentially the equivalent of an FTE of 0.6 for a teaching staff and then
022we still couldn't fit the 60 other kids into other sections under different electives. So, at the high school, we're really thin. At the middle school, I cut STEM and I moved the STEM teacher to science. And then 3 weeks later, I got a phone call from Ken and Tyler and Renee and said, "We don't have enough space for electives." And so then we looked at elementary PE, cut a 0.5 out of elementary PE and moved our one of our elementary PE folks who had been at the middle school before, Brad Wearingga, back into that space. So we still had the full FTE recovery of that one class but um obviously we ended up having to add a 0.5 back plate. So when I say that we are are razor thin at each one of our
023levels at the core and at the electives and specials space we're really tight there. One area of revenue that we know we're going to receive, but we're not yet sure what that number is going to be, is the number of our employees who are now running plans of care in MYIPS under C4S care for students. So, our nurses input their plans of care into MIP and they get Medicare funding for that. our coach our coaches are doing very similar work at the elementary and secondary levels and so when they put those plans of care in there they get parent permission to get all the things and then that money is going to come but we're not going to see that until the fall right and so we're at this stage where there are several places
024where we know we can go ahead and pull back staffing to get us back to a 7% fund balance question becomes then in the fall when we rece receive some funding back under Medicare. Did we eliminate something that we didn't need to eliminate? That's a a really firm support for kids, right? So, that's the place where we're at in terms of staffing. When we start thinking about where do we start to pull some of those things back, we we know places where we can pull that back. The question becomes if you pull that back and then later you get that funding, you give somebody a layoff slip now and then in October you learn that you could bring them back. Can you even bring them back? So those are some of the wonderings that we
025have. We start thinking about 41A dollars that are not a part of this. That puts us above uh our expenditure amount. We get that Medicare money that will put us above what we believe where we are. We'll be able to figure out and learn some of the savings that we have in expenses. Essentially, we're here saying this is where we know we are right now. on if if everything goes poorly, this is where we'll be planning ahead and looking at those 31A dollars, the increased revenue under Medicare and what that looks like. It'll give us an opportunity to maintain the supports that we have. We we negotiated with our teachers. They took a really small increase this year in the hope of maintaining the supports because their teachers have full class sizes, which we all
026know is true. The only next step is to pull back additionally some of those supports. We've cut 30 professional positions in the last two years from our teaching staff and and we're still in this place, right? So, it's it's not it's not that we're not in the midst of working those through, but we're at a place where we're really thin and we believe we're going to be above that 6 and a half%. because of those extra extra funds that are coming in. We just don't know enough now to be able to say, "Yep, that's going to be there and we're going to be here and we're going to get this money and that's going to be here." We want to be able to plan accordingly and make sure that we get ourselves back to that
027number. And you never know if you're going to have a fall surprise somewhere else that you're going to have to address somehow with >> y in in the enrollment number that we have with our our teacher agreement uh as well as um our our guest agreement is a number that's about 30 under our projected enrollment. Right? So 13 under our projected enrollment. So even that if we end up a little less than our projected enrollment and we don't get a pration, there's still an additional dollar a month that's going to be there. But also gives us an opportunity between now and it's scheduled to be paid May 21 of 2027. Gives us an opportunity to really dig in and figure out where do we pull those dollars between now and then. We get a better
028sense of where our revenue is. We'll have 31 potentially 31A dollars that we can take depending on the language around that. But >> and the the I I only threw in the teacher tenative agreement, but the guesta tenative agreement, which is our drivers um and maintenance, security guards, um they opted for um essentially their entire payment off schedule. So we're not adding to the scale and we so we don't have obviously the legacy costs there on that side of it. and and to understand that too when we make an offscale or off schedule offscale payment it is not um eligible for retirement that amount that the district has to pay on top of that um so it's not a true you know 1 4 like benefits like when you look at um FICA retirement FICA
029and work comp are about 40% on the dollar So for every dollar we pay somebody, we're actually paying $1.40. >> When we pay off schedule, we would not be paying the retirement costs on that. So it'll lower it. Um I mean I I'm trying to think there were some other some other areas um you know that I included in terms of increases to expenditures, fuel, all of our utilities. Um so I I built in hopefully conservative increases there um to help you know like avoid what you were saying. You just never know. And for every student above what I've projected we lost, we get, you know, that's also going to be a benefit. So, um, to John's point, I think we just wanted to be as close as we could. So, to say, hey, like
030we're bringing you this. We realize it's below that board policy where it, you know, says, hey, we we we have it below that 7%. But our hope would be is that we'll learn more this fall. We can continue to bring updates sooner than amendment updates or in addition whether it's through the board update or um so that you can see as we go. Hey, these are the things these are the variables that shook out in our in our benefit where where I was maybe um not projecting right from a conservative standpoint. So, >> another thing too, um, the the 31A and I do think they're going to change some of that. I that'd be foolish in an election year not to. And and remember, they are getting sued. It hasn't been heard at the federal
031level. And we don't know that if if that is decided in uh favor of the districts who um did not take that money if if it's there then could end up very well end up with that money back too which could be substantial. So >> um there are yeah there are a lot of variables. >> Yes. would cover all but about 100,000 of the 1 million deficit for 2526. >> Yep. >> So, um the slide is one we show all the time. Um you can see where we've been. I know I didn't go back to prior to 24 or 145, but there was a point in time where we were under five, like just under like 4.92. Um, we were able to build it back and um try and not get too far below and
032keep it right around that. I'd love to build it back to 10 and stick at 10 is where I would I would like to stay. So, um, but economically, geopolitically, that's not where we're at right now. So, um, make do with what we have. Uh, these last slides, I don't need to read them all to you. We talked a little bit about them. I just, but I do want to make sure before you adjourn that you you have this and I know you have it in your packet as well. Sinking fund. Um we're getting a lot of projects done um this year through that and we have built a nice little ending fund balance there. Again, 3% taxable growth syncing fund is around $610 per pupil. Um capital projects fund uh uh it's I'm proposing
033that next year will be the end of it. So the remaining dollars are all used for technology purchases. you've approved a majority of them. We're hoping to get some more um another project done. I don't know if it'll be phone system or not. I'm working with Walter on that for the last that last little bit there. Um food service fund. Gosh, Jeff and his crew are amazing. Um I know there's a little bit of a deficit there, but we had remember we planned for some improvements there and especially in high school kitchen, mostly mechanical freezer and and that type. Um, so there's they continue to do a great job. We have a great relationship with Granville Christian. We run their food service forum. Um, I I'd be remiss to say we also are mechanics um,
034ever since the unfortunate fire in Wyoming's transportation. Um, we're we're now their mechanics as well. So um, it's just it's it's a good relationship that seems to be going really well. Um, free meals for all is still in all three budgets. I do think that that will continue. Um, food costs I have increasing somewhere between 6 and 7%. Um, and then it food service fund continues to provide an indirect transfer transfer to the general fund around $200,000 annually. Student activities. Um, that's just our fundraising, money in, money out. you don't see a whole lot of um change there from year to year. Um yeah, so that is all I have. If you have any more questions or if you when we go into the regular workshop um have questions that you want to talk about
035the budget, we can continue to do so. >> I'll save my questions for the regular board meeting. Okay. All right. We don't have any action. Correct. Okay. All right. Uh no public comment. The next workshop meeting will occur after the budget hearing adjourns on June 1st, 2026. It will start at 7:04. All right.