001[Music] Good evening and welcome to this special June 25th AP clinic school board workshop. Um, we are, as we typically do at the end of June each year, we have a special workshop to talk about finances and the tax rates for the coming school year. But before we get to our agenda and discussion, we will start as we always do with the pledge of allegiance. [Applause] I 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. Um, so again, welcome uh to those of you who are watching us uh via YouTube. Um, check this. Okay, are we okay, Steve? At the start of each school year at our July board meeting, the school board sends the
002tax rates for the coming year to Newcastle County. They collect the property taxes. They're the ones you get the property tax bills with. Ordinarily, the board doesn't have very much discretion. Um, when it comes to the tax rates, but we do review and approve them. Um, the only tax rate we typically can I'm going to say set is the tuition tax rate, which is there are four tax rates that make up your property tax bill. There's operating expenses, that's everyday expenses, operating the schools. There's capital expenses. That's building new schools. That that rate has to be approved by referendum. Actually, increases ordinarily to operating have to be approved by referendum as well. There's what's called the match tax. Um that's a very small component of the overall bill. And what that relates to is that
003each year the general assembly will create a pot of money and then school districts that uh can match by raising what's called a match tax uh and get extra money from the state subject to certain caps. And then finally there is what's called the um tuition tax and that is the tax rate for special education. the board does have I'll say total discretion uh when it comes to the tuition tax rate uh to set it and and there's a reason for that because by law we have to provide special education services uh pursuant to individuals IEP uh plans their individual education plans um and you know those plans and those expenses are all heavily regulated um and I think it was At our March meeting, we had a presentation about uh tuition tax and special
004education. Those costs continue to only ever go up. And so, since we have to do that as a matter of federal law, um the general assembly does not require us to get a referendum to approve the tuition tax uh uh rate for for a school year. Now, this is a special year, as many people know. Um county after some 40 years reassessed everybody's properties and so we all know our property assessments went way up. Uh but that also means that the tax rate is supposed to go way down. And so that's part of what we're going to be doing at our July meeting. Um there's a thing called revenue neutrality where if you take all the revenue that was raised last year at the old tax rate based on the old assessments and now you've
005got new assessments in theory you're supposed to raise exactly the same amount of money and so that means that the tax rate has to come way down. Um school boards do have discretion whenever there's a reassessment. There hasn't been one since 1983 to increase tax rates without a referendum. They can do that uh up to 10%. So you can raise additional revenue up to 10%. That's going to be part of what we're talking about uh here tonight and talking about at our July uh meeting. Um, as I say, we do these meetings um, all the time and normally, well, all the time, every June and ordinarily the only item to really discuss is tuition tax and this is what our special education uh, expenses are expected to be. This is what the rate needs to
006be in order to pay those costs and and the rest of everything else is is set. Um, but this year is going to be a little different. And it's going to be a little different in part because um we now find ourselves in a little bit of uh a financial I'm going to say pickle. Um at our April meeting for those of you who watched the state requires a school district to have cash on hand equal to two payrolls. So, we're always supposed to have that much cash in the bank uh pursuant to state law. And we have to report to the Department of Education three times a year what's called the financial position report, which is how much money we expect to have at the end of the year and also demonstrate that we've
007got the minimum required at all times. Back on March 31st or as of March 31st, we were projecting a $7.9 million carryover, we only need roughly $4.2 million. Pretty good number. Um, we have since discovered um that that financial projection report uh contained some errors. Uh specifically, it underestimated our payroll expenses because ordinarily teachers get paid, staff gets paid every two weeks. And so you think, okay, twice a month, but that's not quite the case. It's not the first and 15th the way it perhaps should be. Instead, it's every two weeks. And that financial projection report having gone back now and dived into it uh assumed only six payrolls. Two for April, two for May, two for June and in fact there were three payrolls in May because of the way the weeks worked out.
008So there were seven payrolls we estimated or that I should say that financial position report estimated only two. And so if a payroll is approximately $2.1 million in change, um instead of 7.9, now you're going to have 2.1 less. Um that financial position report also failed to recognize that there would be uh additional uh stipen payments and uh extra pay payments for coaching and things like that. They only get made twice a year. once approximately in December or once in June and the financial report did not include that. Finally, another big item that we have discovered is that our summer school expenses $1.1 million were being reported in the wrong category uh on the budget. It was actually being shown as applied to certain federal accounts. that money can't be used for those summer school
009expenses. They have to come out of our operating expenses. And so that has caused our cash that causes our cash position to go down another $1.1 million. And then things add up here and there. Um so that it looks as though right now our estimate is we are only going to carry over $3 million rather than $7.9 million. So, that has cascading effects on future school years and future carryovers. And what do we do about that? Um, our superintendent is going to give us a presentation here in a few minutes. Um, we're going to be making some budget cuts. Um, you know, there's two components to what I just described. One, how did we get here? How did we suddenly not have $4.9 million that on March 31st we thought we were going to have?
010Um, we're getting a handle on that. And then second, and I think more importantly, and and what I think the board really needs to be focused on for the next two weeks is what are we going to do going forward so that we are fiscally sound next school year, the school year after that, etc., etc. Um, we're going to solve both these problems. We're going to get through both these problems. Um, there might be some difficult choices we have to make along the way, but that doesn't mean we're not going to solve them. It doesn't mean anybody should be panicking or worrying. I think everybody should be asking the same questions that the school board has been asking. How did we get here? Um, so that it never ever happens again. And what are we
011going to do going more importantly, what are we going to do going forward? So, I wanted to set that stage. Um, and um, Matt, there's probably more that you want to say uh, beyond what I just said, but um, oh, I guess I should say one other thing, too, before we get going um, into where we are. I mean part of the reassessment process ordinarily every school year as properties come online they get cos they get uh certificates of occupancy and people move into new houses your property gets assessed and if your property wasn't assessed as of July 1st because the house wasn't done yet you wouldn't get a tax bill as of July 1st but if it gets done in the first quarter then you'll pay taxes for three quarters of a year if
012it gets done in the second quarter you'll pay taxes for half a year. Um that has always uh been um a factor for us here in Apoquin. We never assume we're going to get that money. We never put it in our budget, but historically we've been getting about a 4% or so bump in our property tax revenue during the course of a school year because think about this year Target opened, Sprouts opened, Dashing opened, Chili's opened, Outback opened. There's a whole slew of new town homes that opened next to the Y. other town homes open behind the wall on your new 301. And ordinarily, you moved in in September, October, November, you'd be paying property taxes already. Um, and to the tune of a 4% bump in um your annual revenue, which is what's been
013happening for us historically, that would have been an extra $2 million that we should have received or ordinarily would have received during this past fiscal year. We didn't receive it. And we didn't receive it because Newcastle County and and they they told people this beforehand. Uh Newcastle County was so focused on getting the reassessments done that they did not do any supplemental assessments during this past fiscal year. So we estimate that cost us $2 million. Um, it cost all the other school districts dollars as well. It cost Newcastle County dollars as well. Um, I just say that because I'm going to say we are where we are. It would have been nice to have that money and we wouldn't our financial hole wouldn't be nearly as big if that money had if those assessments had
014continued. Um, but we find ourselves in the position that we're in now. All those properties are going to be assessed starting as of July 1. That's what we've been told by the county. Um, so we haven't been told what that total number is yet. We're supposed to get that information on Monday. Um, but uh, again, it's part of how we got here or part of why our number is bigger than we obviously wanted to be. So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Matt. Thank you, Richard. So, as we look at next year's budget, we encountered a few things that significantly impacted our budget for the year. Uh, the first one being increased utility cost. I think every family in our community um can sympathize with us on those utility costs that have gone
015up significantly. We have 24 buildings and so think about that cost 24 times of those things happening. We could have never predicted that that it would raise at that rate. It's even it's been so significant as you see that the state um and utility companies given rebates to people. We don't qualify for a rebate. The other part is the rising special education population. Back in April, our special education department gave a presentation just showing the 400% increase that we're seeing in just one area. Uh students identified with autism. We the cost of that has just continued. Our cost on that have gone up 400%. along with the rising um cost. Now we do receive money for that but it does not cover all cost and so that has impacted our budget as well as we
016look at our carryover. The other part of this is as everyone's well aware I think I talk about this at every board meeting is that we're in a national teacher crisis. I mean we've gone as far as having 100 open positions to the lowest that we've had in since co to 21 open positions. A lot of those positions that we're struggling to find teachers for in our special education programs, in particular in our what's known as our RISE program, and those are students with autism. We have worked hard to fill those openings by offering bonuses and stipens to those teachers that cover those classrooms and to the pairs that are covering those classrooms. And so that all comes with an expense as we're trying to address a national teacher crisis. We have to be competitive.
017We're very fortunate that our community supported us in being able to become more competitive with our salaries this in this school year and next school year and very appreciative of that. It appears that that the cost of those was underestimated of those well-deserved raises, stipens, and bonuses for our teachers. So that's impacting us as well. So those three things along with inflation that we're all experiencing has impacted the carryover line in our budget. So as Mr. for said we have to plan for what are we doing going forward as a board what are we doing forward as a community. So there's two things that we can do at this point. The first being and these are things that um we've already looked in and have a list of um we're going to have to look
018at cost cutting as we go into the 2526 school year. So, as we'll present tonight, um we have come with reduction in spending of $2.5 million as we go into next year. We're also going to need to look at increasing revenue. And that's the discussion that we're going to have tonight. I want to introduce uh Scott Kessle. He's here. Um he's helping us. Him and Chuck Longfell are helping us as we transition between director of finances. We're very appreciative as um as a district office and as a board for him stepping in, him and Chuck stepping in to help us as we go through this uh transition. So, at this time, I'll turn it over to Scott and I'll be jumping in periodically. Well, uh thanks for having me. Um I guess we'll just jump
019right into the presentation that that we've done. And I'm hoping this is more kind of a conversation. If if you guys run across anything that I say that that you have some comments about, we can discuss it as we go through it. So, we'll just go to the first slide here. All right. This is uh these are the things we're going to be talking about. Of course, the tax warrant, the rate components, uh the actual calculations, and I think uh we got a pretty good pres uh presentation from the president already. Some of these things are going to be a little bit repetitive. So, I'll just I'll just run through them. So, uh we have the basis for the tenative recommendations that we're going to make. You know, the the four uh tax types, operating,
020debt, service, match, and tuition. We have a little summary at the end, and then we'll talk a little bit about next steps. Oh, that's a pointer. All right. So, the tax warrant, we do this every year. Um, second Thursday uh in in July is when it has to be to the uh county. That's July 10th. We're going to be meeting on July 8th to um uh have a vote on our recommendation. Uh the calculations are based on historical and projected revenue and expenditure data, the state budget, the bond bill, uh and the tax data from Newcastle County. So this next slide we talk about the factors and assumptions. Um as we talked about the the the reassessment is the big the big thing this year. U this year was $15.2 billion versus $2.7 billion last
021year. And that's that's the difference between 1983 uh uh assessments and 20 thou uh 2026 assessments. So, um we also have the uh 2 we we use 2% for delinquencies and that amount came up to 304 million and we uh the law allows for up to 10%. We did 2%. And the uh Newcastle County reported the value of the assessments that are at risk are $245 million. Next slide. So after taking that all into account, when you take out the 2% and the at risk, the value of one penny is $1.4 million. That number up there on the slide. You said 245 million is at risk. Is that just or is that that's app? That's APO. Yeah. So go ahead. Sorry. Are there numbers about what other districts look like per penny? Because We normally
022are per penny lower than everybody else. We We still are lower than everyone else, but there numbers are out there. I think Eric, I think that was shown in our May workshop. Yeah. And I think the um equalization has an impact on on that for counties. That's a that's a whole other conversation. The penny down south is a lot a lot less. So, you want to take tax rate components? Richard went through these, but um just I think you did a good job covering them. Is there any question on the four tax rates and what they mean? All right. So, I added uh the rate calculations in here on the next slide. We start with the the general operations and the recommendation uh the tenative recommendation for the current expense rate is 35 35 cents.3573.
023We have a 10% allowance included in that rate to uh to compensate for any any problems we have with the the uh reassessment. And the equation for that is right below that. It's the 15.2 2 uh billion assessed value divided by 100 and uh times the uh 3573 and that gives us 54 um million in current expense. The debt the that's that is just for the current current operations um tax calculation. The rest of them follow the format of the 2% delinquencies and the um at risk assessments. So that equation FL we'll start with debt service is uh we're recommending 7 uh 7.53 cents and we take the 15.2 billion subtract out the 304 million for the 2% delinquency allowance and take out the assessments at risk divide by 100 multiply by the rate and
024we get 11 $11 million for debt service. So um the and the way we do that we kind we kind of we know what we need to get for that rate each year that that that uh debt service rate varies a little bit depending on uh bonds you know being paid off and some being added on. So that's what it came out to. If we go to the next slide. Oh, did you have any anybody have any questions about this? [Music] 245. There's two. There's one at 304 and then one is one is the 304 is the 2% and the 245 is the at risk assessment. You good? Okay. Thank you. So, moving on to the tuition tax. We talked a little bit about that already. That's our special education population and we set that
025rate based on what we need. And uh so we had to go through a conversion process just like all all the other ones to to get the rate to uh uh what it was last year to bring in what we what we needed to bring in last year. And then we added in uh uh increases for salaries and and some inflation factors for you know the rise in the special ed population uh special education population. So what with that we we try to get it to about 25.8 million and to do that it's to 15.2 2 taking out the 2% and the at risk divided by 100 times the 17.59 cents and that gave us the 25.8 million. So move on to the match tax done done very similarly. Um we figure out what we
026need for each of those match those matches and we'll look at those in a minute about what those are but it's the calculation is pretty much the same but we go back. Sure. So for the debt service subsition tax and match tax, you took the total assessed value and you subtracted out a 2% delinquency allowance and the assessment at risk, but you didn't make those subtractions on the general operations, right? And it's kind of the way the the code was written for this and and the allowance and and some of the guidance that we were given. And I talked to Chuck about this like right before we before we came in here cuz I kind of had the same thought. Why wouldn't we do that? And he kind of thought of it as kind of
027like double dipping. If you if you if you're gonna take this temp this 10% here, adding that on is is like being even. You're you're you're like taking more than what the 10% is. So they give us a maximum of 10%. Well, I mean, I understand why we would build in a delinquency rate because not everybody pays their property taxes and so I mean I mean if we're trying to figure out what our operating revenue is going to be, I'm just surprised we're not making that same adjustment, but that's okay. And then on the assessment at risk for all of these, I mean, you know, I don't think that you'll get full relief. I mean, I don't think that the overall assessment rate will or assessment base will be reduced by that full $245 million.
028Um, so we would benefit. Yeah. My my my guess is we might see half that. Um so at some point do we go back and adjust the rate to account for the fact that um not all of the uh at risk number the these from year to year it would it wouldn't be like it would accumulate because we take that we take that carry forward into account so it is about the same. So we we account for that each year so it won't go up and up. No, no, no, no. My point is right now there's $245 million worth of appeals pending in Amo, right? That's the point of this. Strikes me as a lot, but that's okay. Um, the county is going to take a long time to work through its backlog of all
029the appeals that it has. But when it's done dealing with all these appeals, rather than a full $245 million reduction, it might only be a hund00 million reduction or $150 million reduction. Do we ever go back to account for the fact that we subtracted it here and that led to I think a slightly higher rate um than it would have been if we didn't factor that in at all. So So I think what you're saying is is that at the end of say that at the end of this year that we got extra money is what you're what you're you're saying basically we got we got more because the total assessed wasn't that risk wasn't done. So that amount of money goes back into the calculation. That extra money we're still going we still say
030we need $300,000 to roll over in debt service. We're still going to need $300,000. So we'll just do we'll lower the rate. That's that's my point. So we will adjust the rates as that number. Yeah, that's what I want. Okay. Yeah. But we still have one year on the the 10%. No. So they either have the option to pay or delay to pay, right? That's that's the option. They can pay right away now till their thing is heard or acrew interest. We're just approve you're just accounting that everything's off the table here in in this rate base. Right. So if it does turn out to be that it's onlyund$100 million less adjust in July. Okay. So we're going to adjust it in July. than me taking extra money in this year. We do the rate
031option to decrease tax rates, right? The rate the rate will be set lower because we won't we won't need as much tax across this rate. It's going to be the increase and that's one that we can adjust be because it's debt service. It's based on what we owe. We've done that. We've done that a couple times over the years. We decreased the rate. To Richard's point on general operations, you're assuming on the PowerPoint that we're going to take the full 10%. Correct. Part of that 10% will be the uh debt service revenue and the assessment risk baked into that number. So that full 10% maybe two or 3% of of correct margin of error. Correct. Yeah. You good? Uh, I think we just finished this. You can go to the next slide. Operating text. All
032right. On this this slide, we start we go into uh the recommendations for each of the the tax types and this the operating tax. it includes the um April 23rd refer uh 24 2024 referendum is is is in that and that when we made the conversion it would be converted on last year's tax rate and uh so here we're recommending that we take the uh that converted rate and add the 10% allowance for reassessment. Um that'll produce about $5.2 million in additional revenue. If you you're doing ballpark, we're getting 50 million. 10% is 5 million. Um so the tenative recommendation is the 35.73 cents to produce the revenue 54 million. Questions there next slide please. Uh so the tenative recommendation for um debt service this is the one where I say that we we know
033how much we owe. So, we set the rate uh multiplied by the um the assessed value to get what we need and that came out to 7.53 cents. Uh so, we're recommending that as the as the rate for debt service. And as we said, these are for all the capital, the new buildings and the renovations, the big big ticket items. Sure. Sure. Yep. I mean, I just want to make this point because I I think it's implicit in my earlier remarks and we're going to get updated data on July 1st. Correct. And that updated data should I just want to say we often are told when we will get stuff and then we don't. So, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Wall reminds me that not all the promises that are made to us are
034kept, but we are told by Newcastle County they will get us updated information on July 1st. And by the way, they they're the ones who set the July 10 date, so they know we need this information. Um that data, whether we get it the 1st, the second, the third, as long as we get it before the 8th, should show an increase in the assessment base above the number they've told us so far. And so assuming that that is correct that there is an increase in the assessment base then that 0.3573 number will will be shifted downward some percent. It might might not be very much. It could be more. We don't know until we see the new number. Right. But so this assessment right now or this recommendation right now really all of these recommendations
035are based on the current assessment base that we've been told of which is I think it's 15.2 2 billion, right? That could go up to 16 billion or 16.5 billion or it could be 15.7 billion. We just don't know. But once we get that new number, then that will adjust your recommendations, I presume. And we'll get a refined recommendation at our July 8 meeting. Correct. That's what Yeah, that I would suspect that's what we would do, right? soon as we get that. I I know I have a meeting I'm supposed to I'm in a meeting on Monday with them, so I have I guess maybe we'll find out more there. Yeah, I was told today we'd get the numbers on July 1st. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry I interrupted. That's okay. No, no, that's what we're
036here for. Some dialogue. Um All right. That was that service. We can move to the next. So here's uh we're talking about the uh match tax and this is the ones that we were this this is the detail of what the match tax covers. Uh we have minor capital improvements. This is where state gives us a pot of money and we have 40% we can raise 40% to match that. Uh that number came out to 1.09 cents. uh the technology extra time and math reading specialists uh match taxes. Those are from former state appropriations that they got rid of, but they allow us to still match for it. And if we were matching for it back then, we still match for it. And those are the amounts next to it that that um we charge
037for each of those. Uh the athletic trainer is a new one. I hadn't seen that one before, but that's that's uh another match. And then the opportunity fund we would be matching that and I believe that's a 30% match on that. Um but that's what the amounts come come out to and it's overall it's 3.36 cents. So that's what if uh if you move to the next slide that's uh where we're making the the tenative recommendation for the 3.36 cents which would add up to the almost $5 million in match. Any questions there? move to the next slide. So the next one is the uh recommendations for tuition tax. So the way we do that, we said it a couple times here, but reiterate that, you know, we use projected spends for the, you know,
038what happened last year and what we project is going to happen next year along with the transfers for our students that go uh to instate placements, out of state placements, and all the intense and complex uh students that are treat are are um educated here in the district as well. That's what this pays for. So we estimated that to come to uh about 25.8 million is what we would need including a rollover whatever what the rollover is I think we have some detail on that. Uh so the recommendation when we when we uh come up with the calculation it was 17.59 which would produce the 25.8 million. Anybody have any questions about the tuition? So, my only question, but it's more I think a question for Matt and your team. We had that presentation that
039talked about special education costs rising so dramatically year-over-year over year, that $26.8 million figure we says which we say is our projected spend on special education. I mean, are we confident in that number? Have we built in enough for projected increases in special education? I don't want to get in to next year and then suddenly find that like we saw this past year that there's a lot more in special education spending than we budgeted. So I I sure it's a good number and that's why you're giving it to us, but I would just maybe ask that you guys triple check that. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, I think probably would be advisable. We we'll talk about that one. All right. So, now we're here at the summary. The total uh tenative recommended tax rate of 64.21
040cents uh per 100 assessed value. Um comes out to this chart right here. Uh you can see the first column is the last year's rate and the total was $3.14. Now we're down to 64 cents just like you said in the introduction. High down to low. And uh total change in dollars. You see it by category there. Total would be an increase of 8.7 million in our uh local funds. And you see the reasons for the increases on the right. 10% re reassessment allowance. The debt service is pretty much even. We owe about the same as we did last year. um opportunity fund match added is what increased that and then we have a increased cost for salaries and inflation for tuition. Then the next slide is just uh kind of a this is this
041is where guys like me love these kind of slides because we like all these numbers and and this is where all the details are. So the first two columns are are what was produced by last year's um the tax warrant. It's not what we actually received. So what we actually received is what we did the conversion on. And that's the the rest of these columns show that the change in the change in revenue. You see the 8.6 that was on the last slide down in the bottom right here. Can I go back to the tuition tax piece? Sure. We made the comment, Richard made Mr. Fa made the comment about stress testing it um that Dr. Bros just agreed to. But I guess I'm just trying to get an idea of what that entails because
042the growth that we see is pretty significant. I know that we quote um the team did the presentation maybe two months ago and we talked about the 400% I think increase in the autism diagnosis if my memory serves me correctly and Dr. Rose, you you quoted earlier just um in general with with the RISE program. And so when we start to talk about stress testing and the propensity perhaps for that number to increase, what does that like what does that look like for you guys, for you and your team? Like what does that stress test entail that could swing that number one way or the other, especially as it tied to growth, right? Because that's the some that's something that you can't really quantify. right now. Absolutely. So looking at what the projected growth is
043for next year, we have to take that into account. We also I didn't mention this. So part of tuition taxes, our tuition bill to other districts. So like us, they're experiencing rising cost and things like that. So those bills like have gone up as well. And so taking into account um the additional costs that we're getting from their programs uh where we have to send kids to and then the rising the rising cost along with that, the compensation pieces that go along with trying to recruit teachers into these high needs areas. Dr. Bros, could you explain um to the public and to our new board member what one of those placement examples would be? Sure. Um so one could be like Del School for the Death, which is in the Christina School District, and that's
044the state um program for school death. Um then we have the uh Brennan school which is uh students with autism um st students are placed into that program. So those are just some examples of programs and then we have students are in other district um programs and things like that that we have to pay for and we're not in control of what they charge us. And then from a from a cost containment, I I don't know if this is an area that you guys are looking at as it relates to expense reduction. I'm just thinking about um like when I do my um school tours like I've seen external partners in the building providing support, you know, not just like within the RISE program, but just in like um general setting like classrooms um and
045just those what I would probably classify as like I said the external supports that push into the school um for our students with special education needs. And so when you're stress testing it, that also ties to growth and all of that. So I'm just trying to get an idea of how that kind of plays into the numbers from the perspective of what we know today is the need, right? Like I think about just for example when I did uh I was touring Kwell I think it was uh in the spring and just being in different classrooms you see the different supports for certain students and things of that sort that are not APO staff right and they push in I forget where else I was at I was at another campus and observed some of
046that. So when I think about the external supports that push into the school I'm just wondering like how does that where does that come into play for you from a budgetary perspective? Yeah, contracted services is another area where we've seen an increase partly because we can't find for example psychologists like that's a huge contracted service at this point. Um but additional supports and I mean that all has to come in as we look at the number. I we'll go back we'll talk with um Dr. Peters and Dr. Ger as well just to make sure that they're part of this as they're looking at the numbers to make sure that our numbers are stress tested and that um we're confident in those as we look at the rising cost and rising population. Yeah, absolutely. I recognize
047that we're in a tough situation and obviously we don't want to cut um any program but we have to be realistic and so just wondering from a special education lens where does that fall in line? So I'll be eager to hear your your feedback. Thank you guys in advance. And this is an area where we we make the projection and we set the rate. So [Music] So I guess we can move on to the last slide is the is the next steps. So, as I mentioned um in my opening comments, our commitment in next year is uh in addition to the proposed tenative recommendations, we're also looking to uh we have identified $2.5 million in cost cutting measures as we entered into next school year and are starting to enact them currently. So, the next
048steps in this is as we have stated um and thank you Scott very much for the presentation. Um as we've stated, we're still waiting on data from the county. Um so when we come back in on July 8th at our board meeting where we have to set the tax rate. Um the information could change slightly depending on the information that we get from the county. I like Mr. Forston, I would like to have it by July 1st at the latest. um the closer we get to July 8th, the harder it is uh to turn that around. So, we'd like to have that information sooner rather than later. Um but once we get that information, we'll update our presentation and uh so stay tuned till July 8th. Any additional questions? Mr. Dit any any comments before
049we adjourn? Mr. Abrams Wall, I will say I'm sorry this had to be your very last official meeting as a board member. I wish there were some happier topics, but we did have a very nice, I thought, and well-deserved tribute for you at our uh last regular board meeting. We will miss you greatly. Uh with us here tonight we have uh our newest board member who will actually get sworn in at our July meeting, uh Tim Higgins. Um I think he's going to be a terrific uh addition to the board. We'll swear you in then. Welcome aboard. Be careful what you wish for. Um Dr. Grant, did you have any other comments or questions you wanted to make? Thank you. I'm good. All right. All right. Well, I'm just going to say that, you know,
050March when we had did our financial position report on for March 31st, everything looked fine. And I never thought that our typical June meeting where we just kind of talk about next year's budget and what the tuition tax rate maybe should be and bemoone the fact that special education costs keep rising so dramatically. But you got to do what you got to do. I mean, I thought that was going to be our typical June meeting. it hasn't turned out that way. Um there were obviously some uh some errors made in the financial reporting that we didn't discover until fairly recently. Um and you know we have our former um CFO Chuck Longfellow who couldn't be here tonight has been advising us and we have Scott Kesler. Pardon? Scott Kesler. Yeah, Scott is it Kessle? Kesler
051Keslo who has also uh been very generous in helping us dig out of this. um our former financial director um resigned June 2nd and so um so we are uh working to get fill that position and we're going to obviously we've all been working hard the last couple weeks and we're going to work hard the next two weeks and we will see everybody on July 8th. So uh thank you very much for attending the workshop everybody and thank you those who have tuned in and we will see you in two weeks. We are adjourned