001All right, it's 6 o'clock. Let's go and call this meeting to order. Uh can I with a reminder, please silence your electronics devices. And also reminder that this meeting is both audio and video recorded. Um Mr. Lauria, can we get a roll call, please? >> Yes, chairman. Mr. Paul Alexander, >> here. >> Dr. Shante Jones, >> here. >> Miss Ellen Slabadnik, >> here. >> Mr. Zack Graham, >> here. >> Miss Jen Moyers >> here. >> All right. Uh, Miss Graham, would you mind leading us to chairman of the pledge of allegiance, please? I pledge allegiance 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. >> Thank you, sir. All right. Uh, do we have any additions
002or corrections to the agenda? >> No, chairman. >> Uh, can I get a motion and second for approval of the agenda, please? >> Motion to approve the agenda. >> Second. >> Motion and second. All in favor? >> I >> All right. like to move on to the public hearing 20 fc year 27 superintendent proposed budget. >> Uh do we need to open Can I get a motion to open the public hearing on 27 superintendent budget? >> Motion to open the hearing. >> Second. Motion a second. All in favor? >> I. >> Okay. Um, do we have anyone? >> No, chairman. >> All right. Can I get a motion and second to close the super the public hearing for the fiscal year 27 superintendent proposed budget? >> Motion to close. >> Second. >> Motion to second.
003All in favor? >> I. >> Okay. Moving on to consent agenda. There is nothing in the consent agenda. Uh, so now fisc new new business finance fiscal year 27 through 31 capital improvement plans. Good evening, Chairman Han, members of the board. Uh this evening, I'm here to present our five year CP plan. Um as you've seen this in our work sessions, >> good evening, chairman Alexander, members of the board. Uh this evening, I'm here to present our 5-year CIP plan uh CIP capital improvement plan FY27 through FY31. Uh we have seen this in our previous work sessions uh in our committee meetings. Uh but tonight I am presenting it here. Um I'm going to focus in on FY27. Um right now we do project carrying some funds over from this current year. Uh and plan
004on an allocation from the city of about $1.6 million. Uh I just highlight some of the big projects down below. um as we do every year, we have a bus replacement uh re refresh cycle about $250,000. Uh we have a $900,000 um outdoor air unit replacement on top of the middle school. That's the second installment. The first installment 900,000 was FY26. That project will start in June of this year and carry over into the next fiscal year for FY27 for a total of about 1.8 million. We have, excuse me, we have um another $100,000 uh addition to staff badge reader additions. Um as we continue to um upgrade our security in our in our buildings, we are adding uh door re RF readers, our badge readers to more doors and eliminating uh the metal keys
005and have greater control of access. Um we're also have a generator replacement uh 340,000 that was a new addition to our plan at the last minute. We received a state grant from the Department of Emergency Management. Um that will pay for 69% of that cost. So that's why we moved our generators up to FY27 instead of the original plan which is was to uh um disperse them out over the next four years. Next big project down below is the ADA upgrades of $100,000. Um the state general assembly uh passed a new law last year requiring that we put a plan in place to ensure all of our buildings and playgrounds have ADA accessible um entrances and egress but also playground equipment uh for to ensure children um of all abilities can enjoy the playground uh
006storage heads and then um we have to re replace a a wall petition at the high school on the stage for a total about $2.1 million for our first year in the out years. I'm just going to highlight FY28. Uh in our previous CIP plans, we had a $35 million project that we always kept out at the outyear uh for the high school CTE pathway edition. Uh working with the fire department, they asked if we could do a collaboration with them on our cap plan uh and turn that into um part a partial fire department training facility. And we're looking at using the practice field that's not utilized down below the high school. a few acres. Uh we feel we could do that. Uh of course that project will depend all on the city's funding
007sources for their their projects too. Uh but other than that you can see the other projects um as they fall out in uh the out years. That that concludes the presentation for CIP. >> Any questions? >> I have one. Can um getting for the generator? Can you explain? >> I just want to understand. I know that this was associated to having to designate the schools as a >> emergency. >> Yeah. Good. >> The Virginia Department Emergency Management um put out a grant to pay for a majority of the cost to replace um emergency generators and emergency shelters um for each for localities. uh our four schools are utilized are identified as emergency shelters for our community in the event uh we need to have you know services during emergency um moments. Uh so this grant
008provided us funding for 69% of that cost otherwise we would have to shoulder all that cost and our generators are at the end of life all of them. They're all original equipment. Uh the high school generator was dead. Um we just now got that replaced. It's that one's online. uh came in early, so we were able to do that now. But yes, it was a great opportunity and we didn't want to pass it up. >> Okay. I wasn't sure if we were already had the distinctions of them being emergency centers and or did we have to kind of reclass them in order to qualify for them? >> The city already had reclassed them. >> Okay. >> Uh in their plan, they just they had a very global um reference to our schools. They said schools
009or our emergency shelters as needed. Originally, I think it was just a middle school. Okay. Uh but somewhere along the line the city and the emergency management um you know eligibility criteria they somehow all became qualified before I applied for the grant >> to my best of knowledge. >> Thank you sir. >> You bet. >> All right. Thank you Mr. L. >> You bet. Thank you. Anyone else? Sorry. >> Okay. Moving on to fiscal year 27 medical rates. Oh no, I got to click the wrong thing. Sorry, that's right on the present button. Hit the There's an X, I think. >> Do you see? It won't let me. >> To the right of the Acrobat. >> It will not. Let me hit the X. >> You guys are dueling mice cuz there's one hanging off
010the screen. >> I know. What is this? >> There we go. >> Okay. >> All right. Good evening, Chair Alexander, members of the board. Tonight I am here to present the insurance rates for 2026 2027. So this is just kind of a magnified version of the document that you all have. It's a one-page sheet. Um and typically what we do when we talk about insurance rates yeartoear, so last year when we presented these rates, we talked about the increases um and just how that changed for the employer share and the employee share. So this year is a little bit different. Um, you'll notice when you look at our plan offerings that we do have different plan offerings for this year. So, I'm here tonight to talk about kind of the why behind that and then
011share what those rates look like um and how we'll be sharing that out with staff in the coming days. So, what you can see here is we have uh the Key Advantage 500 and the Key Advantage 1000 and then the Kaiser HMO that we've always had. So what happened is around um you know February or so we get our rates from what's called the local choice. So we participate in the local choice. They go out and they negotiate our rates with our insurance vendors and come back and tell us what our rates are. It's very standard that every year the rates go up. We know that the rates are going to go up and we project a certain amount of money to cover um that increase. This year the rates came back and it was
012um the highest increase we've ever seen. it was approximately 25%. Which in some cases is double um what we would have been expecting or that we've seen in the past. So uh we really started to look at that because even covering the majority of the share of the premium, it was still going to pass on a very significant cost to our employees. Um so we started looking at the the different plans and how can we compare these different plans? What are we putting out in premium? What are we getting back in services? Um, and so going through that process, we determined that, you know, our highest plan, which is our most expensive plan both for the employer and for our employees, is the Key Advantage 250. So in this um presentation, what you'll see is
013we've eliminated the offering of the Key Advantage 250 plan and added the offering of the Key Advantage 1000. So last year we offered the 250 and the 500 and this year our rates are going to be based on the 500 and the,000. So just to give you kind of a practical example of that. So if we look at let's just take for example the key advantage 500 comprehensive plan and we look at what the uh family plan. So if you look at that and you look at the employee monthly premium because one of the things we always talk about and it's really important to me is how are we affecting our employees paychecks right like we know our insurance rates are going to go up a little bit but how much is that coming out
014based on in the budget what kind of a raise or cost of living am I getting so if you look at the key advantage 500 comprehensive the family is 771 and that is per month so that's split up between two paychecks um if you if we were to have kept the 250 comprehensive ensive for family. Um that would have gone up to well over $900 in premium per month. If you look at some of our surrounding school divisions, some of them are charging their employees upwards of $1,200 a month for that family plan. So you're looking at of a difference, let's just say of $200 a month. So $200 a month is a difference in the premium. The deductible goes up with the 500 plan for family from $500 to $1,000. So, I have a
015$500 higher deductible and I have a few co-pays that are $5 to $10 more. I'm going to make up that difference in the cost of my premium in less than 3 months in the difference of the deductible. So, if I run my deductible, I'm still doing better than the cost of the premium. And if I don't, I'm doing much better than the cost of the premium. So, that's kind of the difference there. If you look at the coverage after you meet that deductible, it's comparable amongst all the plans. the main difference is the deductible and a few of the co-pays. So, in looking at that, we really thought, well, okay, you know, that's we're going to either pass on that cost in a deductible or we're going to pass on that cost in a premium.
016So, we chose to offer the 500 and the,000 instead. The thousand is a lower premium, but it does have a higher deductible as well, but it gives our employees that option to say, how much do I want to be putting out every month versus how much do I want to be putting out when I need that that point of care. One thing we also continue to offer and we have more and more employees taking advantage of it is an FSA, a flexible spending account, and that is every year our employees can put away pre-tax dollars. Um, and the way the company that we use is great. They literally give you what looks like an American Express card and you go on into the doctor and you can use that for your deductibles, for your medical
017expenses, um, anything that you need that for. So that's basically the overview in the plan. So if you look at so last year we did offer the key advantage 500 the comprehensive and the preventative those numbers did go up a little bit there is an increase we did continue to cover the majority of the share of the full premium and pass on less of that to our employee so the advantage 500 plans are a little bit more than they were last year but it is not as much as looking at the 250 which was a very significant increase. uh what we plan to do with this information because we do we looked at the number of employees that we have on all of these plans and it was split fairly evenly amongst the 250 and
018the 500. I think we had a few less on the 250. We do plan to follow up in our staff meetings. Um I will send an email later this week and we do have open enrollment coming up. They scribbled it down here. Uh May 1st through May 15th and I think you remember last year I mentioned that we have now partnered with Pierce Benefits Group. One of the things that they've offered to us are benefit counselors. So, they come in person. It's not even virtual. It used to be virtual. They come in person. They do group and individual meetings with our employees. And they'll be able to sit down and say, "This is what you need for your family." Cuz one of the things that we heard through Superintendent's advisory committee last year was they
019wanted more education around benefits. You know, I don't even know what I get with my plan. I just think the most expensive one, it's got to be the best one, right? And we heard that from a lot of our employ I thought that at one point as well. Um and so just increasing that education and the transparency and the awareness around the benefits will continue to be a push of um the human resources department. We did add um Kip Tuttle this year as our coordinator of benefits and she's been doing a lot of one-on-one meetings with our employees and we've gotten really good feedback on that that they really understand for the first time their benefits, their retirement, their plans for the future. So we want to continue to build on that. And then I
020did also just want to note if you look at these plans and how much we are covering on the employer end and how much we are charging our employees on their end, we are still very competitive amongst um school districts in Northern Virginia because the other districts did see this increase as well. It wasn't just an increase for us. It was an increase across the board. So, that's a very quick summary of our medical insurance rates for next year. As I mentioned, I do have an email ready to go to staff tomorrow, and then we're going to do follow-up meetings in person with them throughout the rest of the month before open enrollment. I can take any questions. >> Anybody got a question? >> I have a question, actually. Um, have we ever looked at
021high deductible plans and how much those would cost and if anyone would be interested in doing a high deductible plan and and saving through an HSA type of plan to help kind of save some of that money on the on the front end. >> Yeah. So, when we um met with Pierce last, they did speak with us a lot about that because when you look at kind of trends in the insurance industry, a lot of things are going toward high deductible health plans. for this coming year, we chose to continue with Kaiser um because that high deductible health plan would be our other option um there. So, we are looking at that as a possibility for the future. Um we right now I mentioned we offer an FSA which is a flexible spending account, an
022HSA, which is a health savings account, is a little bit different. Um and it's very beneficial if you do have a high deductible health plan. So, I think we're going to continue to explore that and educate ourselves a little further. Um but it could be something we look at for the future. Excellent. >> Thank you. Anyone else? Do we have I've got two. Do we have um related with I know understand with FSAs we've got the medical but do we do we offer dependent or is that an option? When the other thing I was going to ask about there because they're kind of related is I know we've had discussions about um like benefits like uh use B like Verizon discounts like and like are there are those things coming to fruition to where okay
023yeah you know but we can save you $50 here on your cell phone bill to offset some of those things like are those things coming into fruition? >> Yeah. So we still will offer a whole host of supplemental benefits. We typically just present to you all the, you know, the larger umbrella benefits, but we'll continue to offer our things like um, you know, our, >> uh, hospitalization insurance and all those extra things. Those rates remain pretty competitive, and they're all pretty low compared to these. Um, we do we are looking at continuing our pet insurance program. Um, we did just add homeowners insurance and car insurance discounts through farmers and we're still working on some of those partnerships for things like cell phones and um, you know, the community center memberships and things like that.
024>> I'm just thinking of ways that could offset some of additional expenses. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Anybody else? >> Chairman, could I ask Dr. Rates just to talk about we do have limits on the number of plans that we are able to offer. So if you could just highlight that it kind of meets the question I think around uh the high deductible plan that we would how we would have to do that. So if you could just highlight that please. This came up last year when we I mentioned that we uh met with the superintendent's advisory around benefits. So that was our focus of the superintendent's advisory group last year and one of the things that came up was that key advantage thousand plan because you can see that that really is a low premium
025plan. So, we did have some of our employees saying, "We'd really like that because we'd like something with a lower premium. Maybe I'm a younger, newer teacher and I don't really go to the doctor often. I'd like something with the lowest premium." So, what we wanted to do last year was try to offer all three, the 250, the 500,000. Now, due to our employee size, due to how many eligible employees we have for insurance, we can only carry two key advantage plans. And then we can carry one kind of they call regional plan. And that would either be Kaiser or the high deductible plan. you can only carry one of those. So for an organization of our size, we can only carry the three, the two key Anthem plans and then the one regional plan.
026Um, so that's why we kind of landed where we landed. If you look at some of the bigger counties, if you go out to Prince William or Fairfax, you're going to see that they offer five, six plans and they can do that because of their size of eligible employees. >> What is that threshold of that size that would allow us to offer more plans? I'm curious. It's significantly above where I want to say it's about a thousand employees. Yeah. >> Any other questions? >> All right. Thanks. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Moving on to action agenda. The fiscical year 27 superintendent proposed budget. >> Good evening board members. I think we finally made it here from a few uh delays, some weather delays. So, the sun is
027shining, so it's time to work through the process of of approving the uh superintendent's proposed budget. I'm just here this evening uh to ask for your approval of this budget. Just want to remind you or remind uh all of us that we have gone through this presentation. Um this particular budget is uh set at about 60 about a little under $63 million um with a request from the city uh the the reserve fund from the governing body. Um we've talked a lot about student enrollment and that funding consideration within that um and the uh the the decrease in student enrollment that we are currently experiencing. Um this uh presentation does include our benefits information uh that was uh presented as far as our salary schedules and scales. Talked with you a little bit about um
028staffing and um the the need for us to kind of retract in our staffing due to our our declining enrollment. And so this does have our projections uh for our proposed staffing for FY27 and our class sizes as well. I'm going to jump to our city. Uh we're requesting about a little over 900,000 from the governing body from our reserve line item to um create the the balance budget primarily for meeting those needs of salaries and increases within those. Uh Mr. Lion has shared with you all uh a lot of the charts. I'm not going to go through them all again with you. Um but they are available to you. We have had uh several um work sessions. We've talked about the uh the budget during a work session. Uh y'all had very uh uh
029very specific questions about the uh the budget and we spent some time on each of those. The question and answer document is available as well um that each board member sent forward uh to uh to review that. So at this time um I'm here to ask for approval of the superintendent's FY27 proposed budget. All right. Can I get a motion and a second? And this will be a roll call vote, please. >> Motion to vote on the approval of the budget. >> A second. >> Motion a second. More. >> Mr. Paul Alexander. >> Yes. >> Dr. Shante Jones. >> Yes. >> Miss Ellen Slabnik. >> Yes. >> Mr. Zack Graham. >> Yes. >> Miss Jen Moyers. >> Yes. The vote passes 5-0. >> Thank you, Bill. >> Thank you. And uh tomorrow night uh we
030will we'll do this again. Uh we will be back in front of uh the governing body to present what what is now the school board's um approved budget uh to the governing body tomorrow evening in their uh in their session. So I look forward to seeing you all there and and answering their questions as well as we move forward in this process. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, moving on to board member comments. Anyone have any comments? All right. Uh, upcoming meetings, we have the, as Dr. Saunders just mentioned, tomorrow night in the same second floor board chambers, uh, the superintendent presentation, uh, to the governing body, and then we have a regular schoolboard meeting Monday, 13th at 6 p.m. Second floor board chambers as well. Uh, seeing no more actions, can I
031get a motion and a second for adjournment? >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> Motion and a second. All in favor? I >> This meeting is adjourned. Thank you all. See you tomorrow.