001[Music] [Applause] [Music] Good evening everybody and welcome to the West Sonic Central School District Tuesday May 6, 2025 budget hearing. If uh we can begin with the pledge. I would like to have the kids from Clinton Street Elementary lead us. [Applause] Just want to take a moment to mention we'll be doing roll call at the beginning of our regular meeting. Okay. I pledge aliance 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. Great job. Better than we'll move on to our school spotlight. Ironically enough, it's also Clinton Clinton Elementary. You guys get to come up again. Um, [Applause] [Music] good evening everyone and thank you so much for inviting us to share with you
002a little bit about Clinton Chronicle School newspaper written with all of our school newspaper reporters that we have brought here today. Um, my name is Alyssa Thornton. and I teach fourth grade at Clinton Street Elementary and myself and Miss Bone decided to make a school newspaper about a year ago to foster a love of writing and creativity and to also encourage our students to read throughout our entire school district. Um, our newspaper is really special to us. It gives a little bit of an insight to the amazing things that are happening at Clinton Street Elementary and being able to share it with not just students but families and faculty and staff. Our newspaper um not only highlights our club and our school but also things that are happening in the West Senica community. We are
003very proud of this newspaper club and we love the hard work, the dedication and the passion that our young reporters put into our publications every single time. Our reporters are in grades three through five and they must submit an application to be considered for the club. They then learn about the different parts of a newspaper and are responsible for setting up their own interviews with staff and community members. They work very hard and we are very excited to have several members of our newspaper club here today to tell you more about their experience. Hello. Thank you for inviting us here today to share about the Chronicle newspaper. My name is Ricky and this is my second year with school newspaper. [Applause] My name is Lily and my favorite part of being a reporter for the
004Clinton Chronicle is being able to share my articles with my friends and family. My name is Mason and my favorite article I've written this year is Gradevil News because I got to interview my teachers. Thanks. My name is Ryan and my favorite article I've written this year is a recap of the Buffalo Bills season. Part of the Bills mafia loved writing about the Bills. My name is Chloe and my favorite part of being a reporter for the Clayton Chronicle is being able to write and report on what's happening at Clinton. My name is Kendall and my favorite part of being a reporter for the Clinton Chronicle is being able to share my thoughts. My name is Carol and my favorite article I have written as a reporter is my how-to section of pull apart bread.
005I love sharing this with my with Clinton and making it with my family. My name is Eli and my favorite part of being a reporter for the Clinton Chronicle is being able to get to school early and spend time with my [Applause] friends. Being a reporter for the Clinton Chronicle is hard work but very rewarding. [Applause] Some of the sections that we take turns reporting on are staff interview, six pillars of character, monthly award winners, Clinton events, sports, howto, jokes, grade level news, and special area news. Our process for publishing is to first discuss our weekly agenda. Next, select our reporter roles. then conduct interviews with faculty and staff, draft our articles, edit, revise, and then finally publish. We publish once per month throughout the spring. The entire student body gets a copy to take
006home. This school year, we even have a digital copy copy of the newspaper where we read our articles and upload it into an app called Book Creator. Let's take a look at my recent interview with our superintendent, Dr. Krueger. This is Kendall Erns. And I'm here with Dr. Krueger, our new West End superintendent. She's an amazing superintendent to have and she works with our hardware school district. Welcome to Clinton Elementary. Dr. Cougar, my first question is, do you have any children? If so, how old are they? Well, first of all, thank you for having me and interviewing me, Kendall. I do have two children. and I have two girls and they're uh ages 9 and 11 years old. That's cute. Do you have any pets? CL Elementary alumni and my friends from the newspaper club
007last year, Mikey Patson interviewed Ta Thompson. He was able to trinity by submitting some of his writing he did with us at the Clinton Chronicle. I'm a part of the Glen Chronicle and today Hello, my name is Chloe Peters and I'm a part of the Glen Chronicle and today I'll be reading my article respect. This month of April is the month of respect here at Tree Elementary. [Applause] [Music] How many important donuts do you think you can use today? What are the sizes of them? How big are they like a normal size don? Are they huge? They're a little bigger than a normal size. A hockey puck? Maybe like two hockey pucks. Two hockey pucks. I might be able to get close to 10. I got a lot of room to score. Who was your
008favorite saber playing during your childhood? I always loved Tim. Mike was a very talented and dedicated reporter, so we were excited to share how his contributions to the Clinton Chronicle helped him in his personal life. Thank you so much for inviting us here today to speak about the Clinton Chronicle. The students work very hard and we were very excited to share this with you. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Mr. Beant, I would just like to take a minute to recognize the amazing students of Clinton Elementary who are here tonight. Thank you for being with us tonight. Um, by all means, we would not find it disrespectful if if you and your families decide to leave. I'm going to be talking about the budget next, which I know sounds really exciting. I know it sounds really
009exciting, but if you and your families if you Okay, great. All right. Well, this is Mr. The You may have a a position as an adult as a business official in a school district if you like the budget. Um, but by all means, families, um, if you if you want to duck out the side door, it's completely fine. We would not find that disrespectful. But if you want to learn about the budget, you're welcome to stay. Or you can watch it later. Watch it on YouTube. Yeah, we'll watch it. Thank you again for being here tonight. You did a great job. Thank you. [Applause] Okay. All right. Good evening. Thank you. We are holding our annual budget hearing. Uh I will be sharing some slides and information regarding our upcoming school budget and school budget
010vote which will be on May 20th. Um there is really no new information that will be presented tonight, but rather this is uh a necessary and required by the state public hearing so that we can allow our community and our voters to be informed on the budget process, the development process that we took to create this year's budget and then the propositions that you will be able to engage in uh as a community on May 20th. So if we could pull up please the budget hearing presentation. Thank you. So, a few things that I'd like to highlight that led to us building this year's budget and ultimately getting to this point where at our April meeting, the board of education adopted the 2526 budget that our community will be voting on on May 20th. This
011fall, to increase communication and transparency, we launched a budget advisory committee. So, stakeholders from our bargaining units and community were part of that budget advisory committee. In addition, we sought feedback early on in the budget development process through a thought exchange which allowed the community to give us feedback on their budget priorities. And one of the budget priorities which I think is very timely for our redistricting conversation is that overwhelmingly a priority that was shared is class size. And that class size is something that the community wanted us to be mindful of during the budget development process. On March 7th, uh we had a superintendent's conference day and in my state of the district address for all faculty and staff, we shared information regarding our budget development process. And then at every board meeting since
012December, we have had updates on different components and pieces of our budget that ultimately led to the comprehensive uh budget that's being presented to our community. So on May 20th, there will be three propositions that our voters will engage in. The first is the 2526 school budget for the upcoming school year. Second is a proposition regarding our replacement buses that is aligned with our replacement bus cycle and schedule. Third, an auditorium infrastructure project. And then last is the election of two school school board trustees. So proposition one which is our annual budget uh the 2526 proposed budget is million495482. Uh this represents a 4.15% increase from this current year school budget and there's a visual breakdown of where the money goes and we will be uh describing that in further detail on subsequent slides. So
013some of our budget and expenditures are regarding general support to our program. These are things like our instructional materials, instructional equipment that we use within our schools for our programs on a day-to-day basis. The largest portion is our program component. This is comprised of our instructional staff, transportation. It's all of our personnel expenses. The greatest portion of any school district's budget is their personnel. um because people are are key to a school. Capital is the next portion of our school district budget and this is our operating expenses, things that it takes to run the facilities that we run from keeping our lights on to heating our buildings to snowplow removal. It's those operating expenses that we have. Uh in addition to those plant operations, employee benefits are also included in this component of our budget.
014The next series of slides uh reviews where the money comes from. These are our revenue sources that are the money that comes in to help fund our budget. And you see the breakdown here in various uh percentages which are discussed in greater detail in subsequent slides. Uh but you can see the breakdown of the local property tax versus state aid, sales tax, and other sources of revenue that we receive. This slide outlines um how our local tax levy uh calculation is reflected for the upcoming school year. We have a very detailed calculation that we need to go through that then uh allows us to write derive at what our property tax cap limit is and the budget that we are presenting to voters is below that allowable tax levy cap. The next sources of revenue
015which are listed on this slide are sources of our state aid. State aid, transportation aid are revenue sources that we receive not from our local taxpayers but through other statewide sources of [Applause] revenue. Regarding our tax rate, uh the tax rate that our our residents experience is reflective of a calculation that in involves three things. the tax levy, the assessed property value of our individual residents and businesses properties, and then lastly, the equalization rate. And that equalization rate um is outlined in the graph below. In addition to the other forms of aid and revenue that I re uh overviewed for you, we also receive foundation aid and things that are referred to as expensdriven aid. So for example, if our expenditures in special education increase, there is state aid that we receive back for those
016uh increased expenses. Boseies is another example where we receive state aid back based on the expenses that we have within our Bosey's budget. Next, what is built into our budget is a capital outlay project. A capital outlay project allows a school district to have a $100,000 improvement and investment into our facilities uh that receives 76% aid 76% state aid back on that particular project. So, the $100,000 project that we have earmarked as the the most needed priority is at Northwood Elementary School where we anticipate replacing exterior doors using this capital outlay project. Um, which allows us to get 70 76% state aid back on that expense to replace our exterior doors at Northwood Elementary School. Something that's important uh for our residents and voters to be aware of is if our budget is not passed
017by the community and if we are forced to go to a contingent budget, we have the opportunity to go out to voters on May 20th, if our vote was not successful, we are able to go out for a second opportunity. There's a second bite at the apple that school districts can have um for our community to again uh vote in support or not of a school district budget. If we are forced to go to a contingent budget, it's important for the community to understand what that means. It would reflect a reduction of nearly $2 million in appropriations. So, we would need to cut from our budget uh the amount of $1,922,000. So, nearly $2 million from our budget would need to be reduced. And we anticipate those reductions would be reductions in staff positions in
018administration and instruction uh which is reflected here at nearly $1.2 million. And then equipment we would have to suspend and postpone equipment that we anticipated purchasing and that would be approximately $742,000. [Applause] So that is proposition one, an overview of our school budget of both our revenue and expenditures that are expected for the upcoming school year. Proposition two is our bus proposal where we have strategically over time t been taking our entire fleet of buses and each year replacing our buses that are most outdated most uh mileage most in repairs that are needed and replacing those buses by purchasing new buses. So below you'll see that we are proposing to utilize our bus reserves. So, this is a special savings account that the school district has created for the purchase of replacement buses, but it
019does require the community to authorize us to pull money out of that reserve account to buy school buses. So, we would be um outlining as has followed on this slide, the total proposed uh amount of $1,116,439 for the purchase of replacement school buses under Proposition 2. Proposition three is our auditorium infrastructure project. Uh this particular project would target our four secondary school auditoriums. So both at East and West Middle School and East and West High School to make the needed repairs that we have in sound, lighting, and rigging in our four elementary schools. Uh the total cost of the project is $8.5 million. there would be no additional tax uh impact to our community because the local share that is not covered by state aid would actually come out of a capital reserve account that
020we have in the district. So again, utilizing the savings that a district has to make long-term improvements and long-term investment in our facilities. The community would be authorizing us to pull out the $2.1 million out of that capital reserve, authorize us to enter into that improvement project for $8.5 million, and then we would realize 76% back of state aid on that entire project. Um, as you'll see in the bullets, uh, listed at the bottom of the screen, our auditoriums, as I I think many of the parents in the audience know, they are used daily as instructional spaces for our students, whether it is coral rehearsal, orchestra practice, band rehearsal. They are used for assemblies on a regular basis during our school day. In addition, they're a hub of our community. In addition to being a
021place where we house our amazing school musicals and concerts, our auditoriums are regularly used by the community for community events, for dance recital. Uh we have community use of our auditoriums on a regular basis. So this would be something that not only is an investment to support our students in their instructional program, but really something that's a benefit to the entire community. For additional details, I have linked here and we have made available on both our website and promoted through social media. We have a overview in a video, a short video that's a auditorium infrastructure project video where you can learn more about that auditorium infrastructure project. And then lastly, I did want to spend some time talking about the election of our two board trustees this year because we have a unique situation uh
022that is not common in school districts. We have one individual who submitted all of the required uh elements to appear on our ballot on May 20th and that is Edmund Beant who is an incumbent to uh run again for our school board. Ed submitted all of the required paperwork and petition to appear on the ballot. The other um or how the vote will be decided rather will be by popular vote and we will be reviewing write in ballots uh to determine who our school board trustees will be. It will be the top two vote getters that will be the next uh members of our school board. So we may see a grassroots effort by individuals uh who want to be part of our school board and might start on social media or through lawn signs
023promoting that they would like to be on the school board. They would be eligible through write in vote, but their name would not appear on the ballot because that deadline has already passed. To help with the uniqueness of this um and to explain to the community what this all means, we have developed a frequently asked questions document that I've linked in tonight's presentation. It can be found on our school district website that gives additional information. But I think what's also important to share is what this means. After the polls close on May 20th, generally when the polls close on May 20th, we are able to get the print out from our voting machines and we announce what the results of our votes are that night. We will be able to do that for the number
024of votes uh that we have both in support of or not support of for propositions 1, 2, and three. And we will announce those numbers. We will also be able to announce the number of votes that were received by traditional ballot by filling in that bubble for Edient. But what we won't be able to determine that night is the write in ballots that we have for how many candidates, the number of candidates. We won't be able to determine that on the night of May 20th. Our poll inspectors and those working the vote arrive at 6:30 in the morning. Polls open at 7 in the morning. Polls close at 9:30. So for us to at 9:00 p.m. and we review by 9:30. For us to start reviewing the handwritten um writein votes at 9:30 at night
025after individuals have worked a 15-hour day is is not a practice that I would recommend. We are going to resume at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, May 21st to review the writein ballots. And that process will go as long as necessary on May 21st. We will do that in the library at East Senior. That is something that is allowable to be viewed by the public. And so if any member of the public wants to experience and see us as we review the write in votes, uh you are welcome to do so on May 21st in East Senior's Library. We anticipate being able to give an update at 400 p.m. on May 21st. If we are not through reviewing all of the ballots, we will start that process again on Thursday the 22nd at 9:00 am. So,
026it simply is going to be I I guess determined by the number of writein votes that we get and how long it takes us to review those. So, all of that information um is outlined for you here. This will be made available following tonight's meeting, but due to the uniqueness of this, we wanted to make sure that that was um you know, fully transparent to our community. So, to recap, Tuesday, May 20th is our school budget vote from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the East Senior High School gymnasium. Our three propositions are outlined here for you. And then lastly, the election of two board of education trustees that I just discussed in detail. So, thank you for that. Um, a few other things that I just wanted to share with you, um, which will
027actually be in my superintendence report. So, I think we'll pause at this point and just see now that we're closing our public hearing on the budget presentation. I want to ask first if there's any questions or comments from the board of ed. And then because this is a public hearing, we will pause and see if there's any public comment regarding I know there's public comment tonight um about a different topic but specifically related to the budget if there's any questions or comments related to the budget during this public hearing. So first to the board of education any questions for me or our business official will the great going over it being part of the committee? Anyone else? Marlo, anything? Nope. Thank you. Thank you. And then I'd like to invite if there's anyone in the
028public that has questions, comments, or feedback specifically related to the budget or any of our proposals. This is your opportunity to have those questions uh heard or any feedback heard. If you could please come to the microphone if you have any public feedback regarding the budget. There's no budget here at all. Thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you. Hearing none, we will close our public hearing for the school budget. Excellent. May I have a motion to adjourn the budget hearing? I'll make the motion to adjurnn. I have a second. I'll second it. Discussion. All in favor? I. Anyone opposed? Pass 70. Thank you.