001the order. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Mr. Balant here. Mr. Harris here. Dr. James, Dr. Speaker, Mrs. Bitter here. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. 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. At the beginning of each of our meetings, we like to go over our district's mission and vision. Our mission is to create a culture of academic excellence through innovative through inclusive and innovative learning for and opportunities for the whole child. And our vision is to empower all learners to reach their full potential in a globally competitive world. Could I please get a motion and a second for the approval of the agenda? So move. Second. Thank you, Dr.
002for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Don, for your second. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Dr. Seager, hi. Mr. Ballot, Mr. Harris, hi. Dr. James, hi. Mrs. Bidder, hi. Okay, we are now to have academic or excuse me, our financial retreat today, which will absolutely impact our absolutely intertwined. Um, welcome everyone. Good morning everyone. And I don't think we all got to say hello to each other and introduce ourselves. And I'm sure that Mrs. Logan will do that here today. Yes. So, thank you. So, I'm hoping this clicker I can't see. So, good morning. Thank you um for indulging us at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Um, Stacey is a We're gonna get it. Here we go. Okay. So, for our agenda, I have things grouped in these three buckets. So we're going to
003reflect and then after we we reflect we're going to review and consider some things and then my expectation is at the end of this meeting we are going to say we've got some action steps. Um so in reflecting I thought it would be important. So, the last time we gathered together to talk about a financial retreat, and you might remember this, we we I went up to the whiteboards and I I wrote and we we talked a lot and we reviewed a lot and then we went through that process of notice and wonder. And so these are our notes from that topic of looking at notice and wondering of everything that we reviewed during that financial retreat. So these are the questions. Are we investing enough in our facilities where how do new projects get
004added? How does the 7030 plan impact our budget? And that's when we have new projects and there's going to be 70% fundraising and we have to commit 30% to the plan. Why can't we have a balanced budget? How do we get there? What are best practices? When will we need additional revenue? And how levy options? And how do we prioritize all the needs? So, we're going to hit on all those topics. Okay. Um, and one of the first things that we're going to do is going back to this first notice and wonder, are we investing enough in our facilities? How and where do new projects get added? And what does the 7030 plan do to our overall budget? That's going to lead us right into this our first presentation that we're going to go through,
005which is our capital planning. You might remember um a few months ago we talked about how we were engaging with um a group and we going to look at all of our needs and really develop that budget to take a look at what are the dollars um on an annual basis overall and how close is that to what we have estimated and proposed and assumed in our five-year forecast. And so I'm going to quiz everybody. What are we assuming in our five-year forecast right now for capital expenditures on an annual basis? It's as a transfer from the general fund to our PI 4.1. There's if I had candy, I would throw it at you. I've had you get some breakfast. Um so we started there. Um and Dan Shaw with Bradley Payne is who we
006engaged with um to help us through this process. We also brought in Four Seasons. Is that right? It's been a long week and I wanted to make sure I had that name correct. So Four Seasons who has worked with us a lot. They know our buildings. um they also were part of this process. And so Brad and Dan are gonna walk through this capital plan. Um and I want to also say that when we say things are hot off the press, this is literally like um the timeline that I gave Dan was kind of a very short timeline to what it was used to. Um, so we're we're excited about it, but we also know it's a work in prog progress. So, thank you, Dan, for being here at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning
007as well. Thanks for having me. Um, so I think we're going to get things set up so that we can review. Denny, when you look at our five-year forecast of that $4.1 million, is it a flat 4.1 or do you adjust for a inflation? in the five-year forecast. Right now, it is just 4.1 million. Um, but we're going to talk about whether that's reasonable. Um, what should it look like? Thank you. I was trying to get a set up. This is what a work session is, right? It's gonna take me some time. While he's doing that, I Yeah. Okay. Yes. So, generally speaking, I would have some handouts for you on this, but this is still in draft form. And so, some of the numbers will be just a little bit small, but I think
008we can highlight everything. I do want to talk a little bit about the process and as Jenny said this was a little quicker turnaround than what we generally do but your team was up for the challenge and it was very very helpful. What we do is we sit down with each one of your administrative directors that has a piece of that capital budget and we make sure that what we're capturing from a financial standpoint captures what they see coming down the road over the next five 10 years. So it's not just the facilities piece that Four Seasons came in and does the assessment on. It's also capturing technology and network infrastructure. It's capturing what do we need in transportation and buses and making sure that we have all the capital components so we don't go
009forward with maintaining the facilities to the tune of $4.1 million only to find out we need another $2 million in technology. So, we spent time with with your folks making sure that we had those pieces and getting those pieces together as well. Uh, and they moved quickly to to help meet that timeline as well. So, we appreciate that. Uh, we will have uh some need to go back to them now, you know, as we develop this further, make sure that the pricing and the things that we have identified over the next five to 10 years are lined up and falling into place as we expected and as we captured in this first set of meetings. So that's why this gives it a little bit of a draft form, but we do have it does have
010a good we have a good sound starting point. I think we'll see here in a second of where we are with the capital needs in the district and what's what we're expecting to happen over the next five years. Seasons, the reason that name may sound familiar to some of you is they were our commissioning agent for our bond. Um, so we did a lot of work with them with not only the new buildings but the renovate buildings. So, we thought that that would be a great partner to leverage um because they already had a pretty decent running start and understand the equipment that went into the buildings. Yeah. When we were when we sat down with them to review everything, one of the gentlemen said, "My first day on the job was at Maple here
011in this district." So, they've been working with us for quite a while. Uh it's the there's like so many different things running right now between the Zoom powerpoints and now this I'm just give me Okay. Yes. Have a question. Are you talking about Wait, are you talking about the transfers about the 4.2 million 42? We're up. So 4.1 million goes to the permanent improvement fund. The remaining amounts go to our athletics. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. We're on. So this is just a front page, but it gives you kind of the overview of capital plan. Again, we won't spend we haven't words smmith any of this yet, but this is when you we do get to a final complete capital plan. ability to put something up here that says this
012is this is what's in entailed in the capital plan and the major items that we've identified. This is the timeline we're on so far. Uh looking at we met with the managers and started this process back in November, December and we're presenting and talking to you about it now May. You may I don't know if we'll get all the way to formal approval or not but often this gets approved. It's around the time your fiveyear forecast approvals and then we start with the implementation and updates right after the turn of the fiscal year. So that's that's the schedule right now again draft. So that may move a little bit. Can I touch this without messing it up? It's a little It's a little bit hard to see um the the words on the screen and
013that's okay. If you can just as long as you just say them to us, that would be helpful. Yeah, it's not letting me zoom in. So we'll help. I had to download it as a PowerPoint to get it to run. So, oh, this is a PowerPoint. That was the only way I could get it to work. So, okay. See how he was creative for that. The other option, Chad, is we could just run Zoom off of a computer and just have audio instead of video. I mean, if you just say it's okay. Hey, I mean, as long as you keep working on it while you're if if we can do if we can do it separate, it's helpful because uh this is all interactive and allows us to zoom into the pieces you're most interested
014in. Talk a little bit more about where we're going. Yeah. So, it's more of a integrated tool than a presentation. Okay. So, maybe you could while we're waiting, you could kind of give us a general summary of what you're going to talk with us about. That way, when we're seeing it, we Yeah. um know what we're seeing. Sure. So, what I'm going to show you is the capital plan allows us to go department by department and then building by building and program by program into seeing exactly what is scheduled for the next 10 years, right? And we're a little short of that. We're really on a seven-year schedule. And once we have all those capital pieces on the table, we kind of go through all that. We we take that $4.1 million that you have
015allocated from your general forecast, compare that against what we found and then look at financing options on the other side of it. So what happens if, right? So what happens if we add a new project or we we add some of the pieces that you have on the table right now that you're considering? How does that move the maintenance cost that you have already? Do you have enough funds for it? It's more of an interactive tool. So, it's helpful to kind of see that happen. Um, so we'll see if we can get it up here running. Thank you. Thank you. The punchline so you're not sitting there wondering, right, is that is that the four the 4.1 is is pretty good for the maintenance items that you have. like it does a good job of
016covering maintenance and replacement costs, but it's not really g it's not going to be enough to cover some of the new needs that the districts need down the road. And so that's really what we're ultimately going to see. But it but we can quantify that and turn that into real solutions and real ways of how you might get there to get those things done. And and what we've been able to do to like as an example, we've committed to phase one for baseball softball. So that will be included in this. What we haven't committed to is phase two and phase three. So we'll be able to see what would that look like if we put phase two and phase three in scene shop. What would it look like if we committed to to that? And
017then we also have a proposal on playgrounds. What would it look like if we included that? Um, and then there's some additional athletic things as well. And so what this interactive tool will allow us to do is it will allow us to um look at like Dan said, okay, here's all the current things we need to maintain what we have and here's how many mills that is. Um, and then if we want to layer in the additional things, what would that what would that look like? So, sorry Chad, that you're the technology person, too. Is it allowing it? That's the and then yeah we'll make um so what what we have here is kind is the overview of what we found. So the very first block here I don't know if you can see it
018or not but we've got total expense over five years. So this is a whole from 2025 to 2029, right? There's 20 about $25 million worth of maintenance and replacement needs. That cost and breaks down as we look across the categories. So after four seasons comes in, does the assessment looks at roofs, windows, doors, floors, make and looks at all the facility pieces, 14.4 of that 24.6 6 is going in facilities, right? Technology then has a little over four million, athletics 2.9, transportation and across the board. So that gives you the overview kind of the top level look of this is what's in the capital plan. Here's the pieces by category. Get a little more detail. We go to the districtwide details and this shows same categories. We're sticking with the same pieces but now we
019can see it on a yearby yearby-year basis going out 10 years. So facilities going across technology athletics. So we can really see where do we think what is going to be needed and how is that going to impact the budget. This is zoomed in so it's cutting off just a little bit but you can see we have a color coding you know at the bottom to give you that overview. Why do you have no facilities in the last three years to plant? Great question. So as they went through and did the assessment they really couldn't get to anything out here that they could give us good numbers on right now. So I would tell you 31's probably a little high because if it went out here they weren't sure. They weren't sure. So they just
020put it all in 31. So we're really out about seven. And you'll see when we look at the financing later, we just cut the we cut these three off for now from a planning purpose standpoint. But what we do know is anything large that they can see right now is in either in this number or it's not they're not sure of it being further out. So this is something generally speaking you'll update year by year by year. So as we go we'll kick out another year, another year, another year. Yep. So does that also that larger number also account for potential cost increases for facilities? So if something costs $10 today and then next month it cost 20 is that is that put it in our ability right to the best of our ability. The
021answer is yes they try to do that but if they try if they tried to do that three years ago they would have missed it because the inflation was higher than what they anticipated. But yeah, they try to capture the inflationary component. And if you can do that right now, if you you should probably get right. I'm not and I'm not I'm not suggesting that to be able to do that, but we probably have to budget for it, but we do have to budget for it, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, clearly we don't have a choice. And I will tell you I think in general for the particularly for the two and three years out this will probably be a hair high because we try to do this in assessment that if you get ready
022to do the project we didn't estimated at 20,000 and have it be a $30,000 project because that'll mess up the whole plan. So this will probably be just a little bit higher than what you would price it out at in most cases. Best best we can similar to a fiveyear forecast, right? things the things are always moving. So your device I just sent a link to the same presentation. Perfect. Thanks. So we'll do a couple of these categories but this is this is the facilities category. So going again at the top level total capital plan 24.6 we said 14.4 4 facilities. Now we have a breakdown to see what things inside of those facilities. So this is programmatically all the roofing 6.8 that has to be done or or worked on. So this could be
023done in uh we'll look here and see where it is specifically. But if they said, well, we really think this needs to be done by 2027. We say, well, we can't get to that. It needs to be 2028. Or, oh, it's worse than we thought. moves up to 2026. This is kind of the five-year look. Sure, we can push it back maybe, but you're going to have this expense inside that fiveyear window, right? Might be able to push it a little further, but you're going to have 6.9 that comes up somewhere over the next five years. And so, we got to got to make sure we got mechanical, electrical, and plumbing the same. And going across the different categories, you know, asphalt, interior. So it was a pretty comprehensive study to make sure we had
024all the pieces in there, but we're looking at 25 million divided by five, which is roughly 5 million. Yes. So you're already saying we're not planning enough in our fire. Yes. Right. And this is just facil this is just this is 15 of that 25. So the facilities piece is probably covered in it, but then you've got the others we got to look at too. Can I make two points? Um, one, so we talked about leveraging four seasons um, to help us grab some of these numbers. We also leverage current partners that we use as well. So Garland, who is doing our roofing currently, so they already do a five-year forecast with us. So we leverage their information as well because they have intimate knowledge of our roofs. We also um looked at our um,
025asphalt and paving and things like that for Kleinagers who also has helped us look at those forecasts. Um, so we feel, you know, that let's bring the experts in that have been working with our buildings and know them to help feed that information into it. The other thing I'd bring up too that I just think is a an important point of interest is that, you know, you might look at this and you might say, "But we just built a lot of brand new buildings." Um, our renovated buildings, our high school, um, Sims specifically, um, most of that was work that we did on the interior. Now, we did finish the roof at SIMS, but when you talk about mechanical systems and structures and things like that, those were not touched for the most part within
026the bond. So, if you look at the high school specifically, um we're talking we've been actively obviously working on the roof there. That's been a long long time, but windows, envelope, things like that that will need continually work and upgrade. We've got um the unit, the HVAC units on it that need to be replaced down the line. So, I just think it's important to note and as our community listens that yes, we pass the bond, yes, we build new buildings, but there's still a lot of mechanical needs across the district. I think I think the picture that people often don't see is, you know, when he's talking about an HVAC unit, it's not something you can drive down to Home Depot and pick up off the shelf. It's these are helicopter in hundreds of thousands
027of dollars of units and it's just one. It's the same thing with, you know, when I walk through the high school and somebody's like, "Yeah, this is ridiculous. This roof should be fixed." If you see what has to happen to fix the roof, um, I mean, we've had to crane and helicopter in roofing materials depending on where they are on the high school because it's such a massive structure. So, and it isn't just, again, it's not roofing materials you can just purchase down the street. These are customordered pieces that have to come in and get put onto the roof and done in a delicate way. So, you know, a section of roof at the high school could be a half million dollars. And people think it, oh, that should be easy. No, it I mean,
028I remember a summer of roofing where it was like a million dollars to just replace I think it was like two or three sections. I mean, so it's not just something like you re-roof your home, you know, for $10,000 or whatever. It's it's a big dollar amount that we have to consider every time we do it. So, I was actually surprised to see and maybe I I hope it's a good thing that the asphalt number is so low because um when you look around the district, we do have a lot of new asphalt because of the new projects. But I was actually surprised just based on costs and inflation that that's so low. And I think it's going to be really key to communicate this to the community because it that question is going to
029come up. We just spent all this money on new buildings. Why do you need more money for capital improvement now? So I think it's going to be very important that we uh message this properly get this out to the community really as soon as possible before we even go for a living. Well, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to go to this kind of detail is so that when we do identify our needs, it's an inclusive look at what are the needs. And if someone says, why is it five million? we can be able to dig into each one of those things and say, "Here's exactly what that number encompasses." Um, there shouldn't be anything like it working. That's what causing it to be. So the on like if somebody goes back
030and watches this I just took it off sharing because if somebody's wa watching a recording now they're all they're going to see is just a picture of us talking. So that was I'm sure the functionality of whatever this program is was being hindered by running through Zoom. So they just won't see the presentation. So if we can post we can take what he has put together and post it. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I think it's more important to your point that we are able to see it and then we can figure out how to share it. It's just sizing weird on the computer and it's probably because of the TV. There's nothing I can do about that. Okay. If we're not sharing, do you care if I just plug mine into the HDMI? Uh, or does
031that mess up? It'll mess up the recording. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Speaking of the high school. So again, what we can do this by location now too. So we've captured it so that you as a board or the administrative team can go in and look at these capital expenses and break it up any way you want to look at. So we can look at total roofing and then see which buildings are getting what roofs and when. Or we can go building by building and say all right by building how what is happening there. So, here's a here's a overview of the high school um showing that there's over the five years $4.8 million, right? Broken out by the building facade is the light blue, red is the mechanical, got the numbers across the top. So,
032we have an ability to really kind of see what's taking the funds in what year and and what do we need to be prepared for to have those finances put together. We've also, this is where we get to it. This then allows you to go right all the way into the exact detail. So to the asphalt point, we can go into the high school now and click asphalt and let's see what is all the asphalt that's happening and it'll sort that data out for us. So we can pull and see. All right, we've got a crack fency coat, sealed coat, um $40,000 needed by 2028 and we got water mitigation that needs to be done by 2027. And so we have these pieces that we can pull and see very quickly. It's not just, oh,
033we need $2 million and we've got it narrowed down to see these are the exact items and when we expect we're going to have to pay for them. Can you go to the um the main the the summary page just so we can kind of see um because I know you put something together like you've been showing the village I think we were Oh, you want the financing? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, when you were looking at when things needed to be replaced or maintained, were you trying to fit it into a budget by year or when is that when you think it'll need to be replaced? We we intentionally don't try to fit it into the budget to start with. Okay. We start with what actually what is the vision of the of the whole
034team. What does the um the assessment that's done by four seasons? what's it calling for? We start with a needsbased approach. What do we need to have? Then we come back and look at the budget and start saying, okay, what can fit? What can't? What do we have to what do we need to look at from a financing perspective in the levies, taxes, all being able to compare that against what we find from a needsbased approach. So oftent times when you start with just the budget, you start pushing things down the way that can't wait, right? So, it's like busing's always one that statewide busing is one that oh, we're going to wait to replace the bus because we need $200,000 somewhere else. And so, buses get pushed and what happens is you you create
035a pile. And so all of a sudden you wake up one day and it's five years later and you've got $10 million worth of maintenance items that you didn't know were there because good soldiers we stayed under the budget, stayed under the budget, stayed under the budget, but now we're here and all that stuff that had had to wait because we were under the budget is now more critical and more expensive than ever. So, we kind of flip that on its head and say, let's look at the needs and and the operation first and then come back and compare where we are from a budget standpoint. I I do think it's important for our community to hear this board's done a great job long-term and I've been here 13 years, all 13 years making sure
036that we had a capital investment that was appropriate. Um, we have our buses are in great shape, our asphalt's in great shape, our roofing with obviously minor issues in great shape. Like we're not in the, you know, what Dan's talking about is there are districts that are in catastrophic um, situations because they have deferred lots of maintenance and then you get into those situations. I think the tiein is to your point, Mr. It's great to have these new buildings, but you can't just go, "Well, they're brand new. We don't need to touch them for 15 years." That's not really true. There's always going to be upkeep and maintenance. Um, when you have, you know, just use our high school as an example, you probably have, you know, what almost 2,000 kids there every day with
037staff and or at least 2,000 people there every day. Then you think of the number of visitors that are there every day. it's going to get regular wear and tear that has to be addressed. So I think as much as yes, we spend all this money to build buildings or renovate buildings, you also have to keep them up. You know, an asset and I'll use the natitorium that's now an asset that costs money to keep up. The theaters, it's an asset. It costs money to keep up. So I think Dan's giving us that picture of hey longterm here are the costs that go associated with being able to keep that connection. And it doesn't surprise me that from our previous capital improvement allocation like when I first started we were in the two to three
038million range. You know with inflation it doesn't make it doesn't surprise me that we're in the four to five million range. But we probably have I'm guessing a number off the top of my head 400 plus million dollars in in buildings that we need to maintain. Might even be higher probably significantly higher. So I think that's you know I don't I don't know how we come up with that number but when we're communicating as to the community you know that's a real number $500 million of assets that we're trying to keep up. And when you look at it that way and say we're only putting only when we're putting $4 million into 500 million, right? It's a very small percentage. But look at the cost of the junior high when we build it. Yeah. And
039look at what the cost would be today. I mean, I think of Maple. I'm looking at Dr. James because she was superintendent then. It was $18 million to build that elementary school. I bet it'd be 36 now. I mean, easily. So, the other thing I want to remind the community of is when Mr. Levelville and Mr. Lewis are talking about doing a roof, they're talking about sections of the roof. They're not doing the whole roof. And that's that's why every year at the high school, you might see the roof come on as being approved. It's not just the whole roof. It's a part of the roof that's assessed by you guys. Well, I'm looking at him because when we see I'm I can remember the chart in my head. I don't know if Garland still
040uses the same one, but we're into the long end of the alphabet double letters when you're talking about sections of roof. So, it's a lot of sections. That's I think important for the community. When you say the roof year, it's like yes, the high school might need the roof every year, but it's not the whole roof. It's a part of the roof. Great point. Yeah. And the other thing we always talk about too is because we we'll talk with families and they'll we'll kind of equate it to the routine maintenance you're doing on your home, right? You're always doing things to keep it up. And then what you have to do is imagine that and a thousand kids walking through it every single day, right? Imagine a thousand kids, right? It's just a lot. It's
041it's a lot of movement, a lot of wear and tear. So, it takes a lot to keep the buildings in tip-top shape to the standard. Jumping to the end of this real quick. This is so we pulled out what we what we considered new. we might not have got all this right because by we I mean mostly me. Um so but I pulled out kind of the high dollar items that we saw come up in the capital plan that I I always classify capital needs as three ways. There's maintenance, replacement, and new. Right? So we pulled most of the new out. Um and but we left the maintenance and the replacement all in this core. And so we'll get to some of these new items here in a second. But with the maintenance and replacement
042in, if we started at zero and you don't have a PI levy, this is all the 4.1 coming out of the general fund. So there's no real cash balance to start with because that's part of your operation budget. starting at at zero and looking at okay if we move 4.1 4.1 4.1 every year and we compare that against the maintenance and replacement items that we found in in the process of this. This is essentially how your cash balance plays out. So you can see that you're going that it's going into the red. The red is the negative number and these are the fiscal years going across the top. So, it's not the point. It's not like you're up against an emergency. It's not like every nothing's been done. Things have been done, but by 27,
043you start to see a deficit. 4.1 isn't going to cover it all. This is again just with the maintenance and replacement items um across all departments, not just facilities, right? This across technology, all of it. So that we can we start there and we take a look and then we start looking at all right what about those new pieces that also came up. They're just it doesn't mean they're not critical because they're new. But we pull those out partially because they're big ticket items also. So you can kind of see this is the cost that when it's done right you're going to have whether you do it or not. These maintenance items are going to come up. So you may not do it this year planned in 26. it's going to be there in 27
044or it's going to show up again in 29 for more or right. So, those are items that are coming back. These new items maybe, maybe not. You might shift or do something different with them. So, I pulled out and this is again I think nine o'clock last night. So, so this is it wasn't Jenny. It was this was me. I just pulled out the big big items. And so I pulled out phase two and phase three um just to separate out and see all right if those weren't in there. So those are not in this number. I pulled out playgrounds at five and a half million. They're not in this number. I pulled out the ste scene shop additions uh 1.3 million. And then most of the stadium the visitor press box and the visitor
045side amenities that go with that. So that's about 2.4 4. So, sorry, but okay. But I I just wanted to see kind of what the starting point was before we started considering and then we can put them back in. I'll put them I can put them all back in unless somebody wants to talk first. I'll put them all back in right now. No, I'd like to see them in. Put them in. And just for clarification, too, the visitor press box, visitor site amenities at that stadium. Um, if you remember back when we invested in the stadium originally, we only did phase one. Phase one was the home fieldhouse, the concession, and we didn't build it out. It wasn't even a home field. It was a shell. Um, and so that represents the pull out. Actually,
046the shell was just the booster donation. It was literally field goal post stands and concession stand and restrooms. That was it. Remember the fieldhouse came later. Yeah. Yeah. So, these items are getting added back in at whatever year that they came up in the plan. And I don't remember all those years right now, but they're they're baked into the rest of it. And when you do that, you can see the deficit is is expanding quite a bit, right? So, we're going to now we're by 2028, it's 13.5 million beyond the $4.1 million investment. No, I think that's I think that's a very interesting number when you put all that back in there. I mean, it clearly shows that without a significant levy, you know, we can't do all these projects because that will eat our
047cash reserves down very low, which will then mean we need an even bigger operating levy to overcome it. Thanks for this interactive tool, by the way, because now I can put things in and take them out and see what that would h what would happen. That's great. As much as we want to do projects and be everything to everybody, there's just clearly not money in our budget. Not currently. Not currently. Um, but what this tool will allow us to do now is it will allow us to say, okay, here are the the current things that we know are needed um to maintain this investment that our community has made. And so it is amount of money which equates to this amount of mills. And then if we want to say okay and we know that
048I mean these are the projects we know of right now. We know there are other things that have not been brought up. Um the track is that in there? It should be. Yeah. But I'm just thinking of like other things because there will always be something else and something additional. Um and so the if we let's say if we did present an option to our community of a PI levy um we would not want a permanent improvement less if we would present that as an option to our community. The last thing we would want to do is say okay and I'm just going to throw this out. It's two two and a half mills and then that doesn't allow us to do anything for our theater program or for if we wanted to look at
049anything with our playgrounds. It just would really limit us. Um, and so we really need to look at what is that right balance with all of this and come up with what we believe that need truly is. And it also means that nothing else happened during the plan, right? Because just because plan for was it five and a half million for playgrounds. I can tell you if warm, safe, dry become an issue in one of our buildings, the money is going to get shifted because, you know, you can do without a new playground structure more than I can do without having heat in an area. So, just because we say that, he doesn't know, just because we plan and say, "Oh, you know what? That unit's 20 years old. It's we're going to replace it
050in 2027." It doesn't mean that the unit decides, "I'm going to stay until 2027. Don't worry. I'm going to keep working. So, it it just, you know, we have to make a plan, but be prepared to pivot. And I think that's what people don't understand, like, well, it's in your plan. You said you were going to do this. Well, yeah. Priorities shift. I mean, one of the issues that I'm concerned about is it's not in here. We can't I don't know that we're ready to even talk about it or predict it, but if our enrollment doesn't drop at the elementarymentaries, we're we're in a situation where, you know, we got to talk about what priorities are we making and, you know, we did it with our halfday kindergarten and talking about that and it, you
051know, obviously it's a it's a polarizing topic to the affected families and I understand that, but we don't have all this extra space at the four elementary sitting around. Now, I do believe in our enrollment forecast it's going to drop. But what if it doesn't? You know, you can forecast all you want. We can plan and predict all we want. But if it doesn't drop or some other factors come in, we're sitting here with some really tight buildings that we have to prioritize. What do we desire our elementaryaries to be? And if you remember, at one point we talked about, do we make an early childhood like a preschool building? I don't know. That may have to be a conversation at some point and that's why honestly this has to be a living breathing document.
052This has to be and Mark um and I talked about this yesterday Mark Zimmerly and he said this will now be my tool that I am working with all the time. If something changes, then this changes and we just continue to update it so that it isn't something that's printed out and put on a shelf. Um, it is our planning tool that helps guide us. This comes up a lot of places I go, but the community and you know others that may look at from the outside can relate because I I remember the first year I started doing these. We had a plan to do a kitchen at my house, right? And by we mostly my wife, right, had a plan like we were going to redo the kitchen, which is a major remodel. Was
053in the plan. We got been getting ready for it for several years. And I'm walking back to my house from taking the trash can out to the end of the drive and I look up and on the roof, which I have pretty level roof, I could see a low spot in the roof. So that wasn't in the plan, right? So the kitchen had to wait another year. But when we had to retool the plant, most people can understand that, right? So now you take that and you make it millions and millions of of square feet and dollars and pieces across all your buildings. It's the same thing over and over and over again. It's just bigger. And so lots of times I tell that story because oh yeah, of course it's it's a plant. We
054we want to get there. We need to do it. The kitchen's got to get remodeled at some point. But that doesn't mean something doesn't change inside the plant to the point. And you have to retool reshift where those allocations are going. I think just just being able to look at this year by year allows us to you know to look at these projects all nice to have but we have to you know remember what our core focus is here right you know we're educating kids we're keeping them warm safe dry we're keeping our facilities if we can work other things in great but not at the expense of what I just said but it also gives us if we are going to ask for a permanent improvement levy now we have something to talk about.
055Yes. Now, now we have a story to tell the community. Here's what we're going to do with our PI money and then it would be up to the community. Here's what we're going to plan. Correct. And as far as what we're going to plan on that subject, I mean, we are budgeting for those contingencies, aren't we? Like, yeah, we do. that the AC or you know HVAC system I mean we're not we should be able to say we're going to do these things and also set aside money for things that can happen which will happen right like maxing it out to the end we set aside about $200,000 each year in the capital PI from a contingency standpoint but to Mr. Louis's point. I mean, you you can never predict when a $500,000 HVAC unit,
056the high school's going to go out, we just budget for that for a little bit higher on the contingency fee. You can move things around. Yeah. I guess I'm just I want to be able to say when we make a commitment to the community that we we aren't at the same time saying as best we can because we want to stick true to our word, right? We don't I guess what that's what I'm trying to say. Like how do we because it's a little bit mixed messaging if we say we're going to plan for this, but you never know, we might not be able to do it. So perfect example is um five years ago when we did our capital plan we averaged 400,000 a year for transportation for bus replacement right because the buses
057were 90,000 we never expected a bus to go from 90,000 to 140 within a four or five year period so we had to adjust our entire replacement schedule which was at four buses a year down to two that's something where we just had to do that right now do we believe that two is appropriate probably not do we believe that we need to be doing four I mean we could have conversations about that but we can't go to for right because I can't take money from the HVAC systems or the security to say okay we need our cost sure so those are the things like that's an example of you just have to pivot you have to figure out where you're going to either take the money from or just reduce the capacity in that
058I guess what I'm trying to say is how do you manage expectations how do you make a commitment but also um make sure that we can cover all the bas the costs that we have the priorities I mean they're always going to priorities, but when we're communicating with the with the community, how do we do that? Like that's really what I'm trying to get and I know we can do it. It's just I think we need to think like that as well. So right now your contingency is all across all things general fund contingency, right? Right. So it's across all things. So your student programs are at risk if the HBAC goes correct. If you pass a permanent improvement, if you were to go that down that route, it separates out that contingency for facility
059needs. It makes the contingency you have for your student programs better because it now no longer has to pick up those HVAC and capital items and the contingency you have for your facilities and your HVAC and your roofing is now set aside to help cover that. So it actually provides more security for your students in the long run to make sure you're getting them the programs they need and that doesn't fall subject to busties or roof. I think the other thing that would help us is if we're going to go that route with a permanent improvement uh type levy, if you remember during the construction projects, we set a percentage aside versus like now they just set aside a dollar amount that they think they can stomach in the budget. So I think if we
060were planning for a a permanent improvement levy and then it's saying we want x percentage in let's say it's 7% 10% whatever it is then you just plan that into your millillage because then it gives you a a little more concrete of hey we already planned for that contingency and then I don't mean to like throw I don't mean to throw everybody off here but will this in any way connect with what like the legislative changes that we have potentially coming our way like with having to reduce our cash balance which is at 48% of expenditures to 30%. Which means we have to get rid of money. So does that factor in that? This absolutely would protect that. So it would say that your permanent and I also did a little bit of research. There's
061110 districts in the state that do not have a PI fund, a PI levy and a PI. How many did you say? 110 out of 611. So, we are one of the very few. It's a very common approach. Um, and we better start looking at it because the legislature is looking at our cash balances and they're saying they're too high around the state, which I believe is an inaccurate statement, but it doesn't matter. they're looking at it and this would protect our community's decision to protect our assets and to do the things that we want to do. So for all those reasons we need to absolutely yes I'm going to try to keep us on time. So um if you don't have any more questions for Dan thank you so much being here this morning.
062I think it is a powerful tool. I'm so thankful that we have it. Um, and Dan, how long does something like this normally take to pull together? Well, I've got several districts. It's been six months to almost a year. So, we did this in about three, two. So, um, so there's more to do. There's some things to polish up and we like to make sure that it's we're using the same vernacular one place to the next and those kinds of things. some of that still needs to happen. And how often does your firm re-evaluate to come in and take another look at make sure we're on track or we need to make adjustments and work with our team to to keep all this on track because I I think that's very important that we keep
063Yeah. doing. So, our recommendation is that we're coming in at least twice a year. Um, however, I'll tell you that the districts that use this the most that do what Mark was talking about, they they're the business managers using it just constantly all the time. And so that means they're calling us here or there, you know, as they're using it, you know, where where something comes up and it's a little different. You uh the building side of the the house runs on different calendar than the fiscal side of the house and that always causes, all right, where are we with this? because we planned for it in 25 and it's happening in 25 from the business manager's perspective. Well, we're not paying for it till fiscal year 26 or maybe we're right on the cusp.
064So, sometimes we help out with some of those adjustments, but definitely twice a year, you want to be looking at an overview of are we on track and are we are we needing to change the plan at all? Kind of like what we do with our fiveyear forecast. We're looking at it to be a very powerful tool. So I would encourage us to keep you. So Mrs. Logan and just trying to bring up the obvious here. So are you think like from your advice are you thinking that this is something that sick needs to start considering is switching into um this type of permanent improvement levy versus doing everything from our general fund and having a large savings right or for the district and switching over to this type of model which would be different
065for Sycamore. I believe that we need to give it serious consideration. It's always it's up to our community always, right? Um but my professional advice would be the ne the next request for additional revenue from this community. I believe that we need to look at permanent improvements. that revenue stream needs to be separated um and not risk our academics um they need to be separated. It's it's more transparent to our community. We have the data now to support it. Um and I think it will we will be able to show our community the why. We just have to educate them and communicate and I think our community will be very receptive to it. Yeah. Can I just ask one quick question? Was um full day kindergarten included in this? So because I know that that's
066still a topic that we've Yeah. wanted to consider. So So all day kindergarten um what I that topic really what I wanted to just explain to you is from a dollar-wise we receive about a million dollars a year from tuition for all day kindergarten. if it is a priority to this district to say we are going to move away from tuition and if you want to attend our schools um tuitionfree all day you can um we just need to be aware that our on our revenue side we would have a million dollars less um in a budget of a hundred million dollars for this district is that something that's going to um detrimental to our budget. No, but it's a shift and it's something that that we would need to discuss and make adjustments for
067as part of our budget. Um and on the academic side, we would want to know what the benefits would bring to the district. That's the piece that we've been discussing. um is, you know, we would want to do it if it if it made sense academically and it, you know, aligned with our strategic plan and all of those things. But from a financial standpoint, it's a million dollars. Got it. And for anybody watching, you always have to offer half day kindergarten. So, we will have a half day option for anyone should we ever consider to do that option. That doesn't take mean you can't go to half day kindergarten. If you want to send your child to half day, that's right. But I think they need to understand if we were to make that move,
068there will be one half day kindergarten. It won't be one at each one school. You mean one school? Yeah. There might be more than one class because we would have to fill whatever. Yeah. There might I mean what we see in most districts, even bigger districts than us, is that there is literally one classroom or half day once because people are preferring full day, of course. And there are reasons people don't prefer full day. Um, I had this conversation with a mom at a PTO meeting and she was like, I'm just so torn. And I'm like, look, educationally, we're always going to tell you send them to a full day kindergarten. But if you are doing things at home that really supports your child's learning and you're reading and you're teaching the alphabet and you're
069doing all the things then if you feel like half day is the right thing for your child and right thing for your family and right thing for you then you should do that because we can't we don't know your child yet unless they've been in our preschool. So you have to make the best decision for your child based on your knowledge. You are the expert of your child not us at this point. We don't know them that much. Um, so it it was more of a I think for her it was philosophical, but I think every parent has to kind of figure out what's right for their family and child. So, um, I don't think we push them towards full day. I think we believe educationally that it's the right thing to do. Um, but
070everybody has a choice. But as far as what Dr. Steer was just asking, so this wouldn't be in the in the PI. That's something different in the general. That's all I wanted to understand. It's been thrown out so many times in random board meetings that wanted to make sure we but the other consideration that we do have to have which Mr. Lewis brought up earlier is the impact on space, right? Enrollment. That's exactly right. There's enrollment, there's space. A half day kindergarten is one room could take 44 kids essentially. Full day kindergarten is one room. It takes 22 kids. Yes, there there's an equation of that exist we have to Montgomery Elementary is a good example because they were not built with a massive kindergarten wing was it three rooms so they have three rooms
071dedicated to full day that's 66 kids and then they tend to use I I would consider them more like an intervention type space to kind of fit in and wedge in like a half day kindergarten and it's it's not ideal. It works, but you know, when you think of other places that we've created space, um, we've been able to make it work for totality in the district. But I think that's what's hard. Um, and I we don't want to get off track with this conversation, but I'll just say for our kindergarten parents that are going through those decision like processes now based on our last board meeting, I think what's hard is they don't know what they don't know. They just know the impact to their family. And we're trying to make the best decisions.
072We we certainly don't want to impact our families negatively, but somewhere there has to be a a giving point of we can't we can't keep ignoring the problem. And I think the presentation that Mr. Love gave you was it's not ideal. It's not he doesn't love it, but it's the best scenario that we can come up with based on all the factors that we have coming at us right now. So, okay, I'm going to move us staffing. Dan, any famous last word? Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you, Dan. Okay, so we're going to move into staffing. Um, and we know that this is our when we look at our finances, um, we are a service business and so of course our staffing is going to be our largest expenditure on them. So, um, and that's
073roughly 85% of our total budget. And thanks, Stan. Safe travels. When I came to this district, one of the questions that I have had, and I think people got tired of me asking, how many people work here? How many people work here? Um, and we just really didn't have a great way to summarize all of that. um and to be able to communicate about it and to just really drill down and to see. So Brad started that work um even before he took on his new new role and actually visited all the buildings and you know um and started with this concept of a dashboard. how can we show this in a way that um is valuable to us internally? And so he's continued to work on that. Um and we want to kind of
074show that new dashboard. Now, I will also say the dashboard that we're going to be reviewing is still that internal dashboard, but we also believe that there's a way that pieces of this are going to be valuable for that um community view too. So, as we're talking about ways of communicating with our uh community on different things and if if we're communicating about our largest um expense for our district, I think this could be a valuable tool as well. So, Brad, I'm gonna hand it to you. Yeah. And so, I'm just going to give you a quick overview of the dashboard itself so you can see how we're leveraging and using it. Um to Jenny's point, you know, seemed like such a simple question. How many people actually work here? and most people in the
075community go, you don't know how many people actually work there. The reality is is that we have a lot of different types of employees at the district between certified, classified, administrative. Um, your certified or your classified employees rotate very quickly. Sometimes I'll tell you that we've hired people and the next day they're not showing up for work. And so there's always work that's getting done. You have um educators and um classified staff, exempt staff that are in FMLA. you have in the education business, that doesn't mean because somebody's out sick that another human doesn't have to come into that classroom to continue that work. And so there's a lot of um a lot of change and turnover and just dynamics when it comes to staffing. So um Jenny asked us that question and I took
076a step back and the best way to do it is to show up at every building and talk to every single person. And it's so funny, what would you say you do here? Right? And it's not lying, right? And it's it's sometimes like a threatening question like, "What do you mean?" And it's like, "No, no, no, no." Like, "I know you do really important work. I'm just trying to figure out like where would you go?" And what we did was we took that and we layered it against what we knew to be true in our database. And then the other thing that we really wanted to do is take our database, which is our HR HR software, and we wanted to closely align it with our finance software as well. And so that's one of
077those things in government probably that doesn't exist in the private sector is that there are certain programs the government requires us to use and then there's back-end systems we're using and so what we did was a lot of work to reconcile those things and so this is the baby that those two systems h make and so um but to Miss Logan's point this is an internal system um Brody and I have a lot of conversations around okay why do I have this and why do you have this and Let's try to figure out why that is the case. We use this because what we want to know and what we want to try to do is predict future trend staffing trends. We want to be able to report back to our board and say, "Okay,
078how many FTEEs do we actually have right now and what does that mean internally when we start looking at the enrollment shifts, right?" Um, you all know us well enough now or at least know me well enough that I try my best to land every decision based on data and what we know to be true. But we also know that education's messy sometimes because you're working with humans and there's a human factor in that. And sometimes the decision doesn't necessarily match what data might be saying you need to do. But what we want to try to get to the best that we can is that datadriven decision when it comes to staffing considering it's 85% of what we do or the money that we spend. Okay. Um what I wanted to show you here is
079just a few things. So this presents the overall view of our district. And so I've got a couple tabs up here I just want you to kind of focus on. Um, one of the things that we wanted to track is is the people exiting. People exiting is a real number of money potential money savings you have. Um, where that comes really into consideration is when we talk about staffing efficiency. Um, because again your staffing number should represent the enrollment number, the number of humans that we have in the system that we're educating and the number of people that we need to actually educate them. And layered in that is opportunities and programs. All right. So it's a it's a complicated long equation. When we talk about opportunities and programs, Megan and I, Miss Lawson, sorry,
080and I have this conversation all the time around um the the aviator way, right? What that's an aviator experience. That's the philosophical conversation that we all have to collectively have of what we believe is the experience that our community desires because that experience comes with a number which is associated to a staff person being in that space with those people. Okay. So you can see as we head into next school year um oh the other thing I want to mention really quick because we operate on school years and Miss Logan operates on fiscal years they're like this right? they kind of they're we have to mesh them. We are already our departments operationally while while the um kids are still coming and Mr. Maxwell is educating kids this year, our brains have shifted to next
081year already. Um and that seems very strange but we're working there and because of that we are already processing new hires. We've we're hiring new teachers. We're hiring all the things for next year. I had to freeze this in time. So, this dashboard is frozen in time on April 1st. If I were to click on this tab up here, it's going to show you now the moves and changes we've started to make. For example, if I have a first grade teacher that is moving to third grade, I have to process that now so I can start doing my staffing model for next year. So, this tab would represent that first grade teacher now in third grade in another building. This represents April 1. Okay? Now, I tell you that because right now based on April
0821, we have um we have about $450,000 in staffing for resignations, about 1.9 million in retirement, that includes all certified classified everybody administrative um and a total of $3.1 million um when we talk about all the folks that are going to be leaving the system into next year. I just ask a quick question. Is that just salary or is that everything? That's base salary. Just base salary. It's a really good question. This doesn't include benefits and things like that. So just strictly base salary. We have currently 835.27 FTE and we have 894 employees. Why are these numbers different? Say what if FTE is? Yep. Full-time equivalent. So why are these numbers different? Part time. That's right. We have some employees that work 0.5 FTE halftime. We've got some employees that are 0.2. Um and so
083that's the full-time equivalent employee that we have and that represents the pay that's going out. The number of people are just the number of people we're processing every day from a HR standpoint. Okay. What I want to show you though is um how we can kind of drill this information down a little bit more. So these are just graphs. I can click on any of these graphs and click on this right here and it'll show me just the high school numbers. Um and so if I were to go and click on that um you can see what that looks like from a high school perspective. You can see that we have 211 job FTE and 219 employees. Um, and the number the money related to the folks that were going to be leaving us. Um,
084I I'm focusing on the on the leaving us portion of it, but this actually tells us a lot of information all the time. I can search lure. I can do all that stuff because we start talking about moving people and things like that. It's a really complex web of who's actually licensed to do a thing, right? Um, and so we have to look at that. What I wanted to show you though um is just taking a quick snapshot and and Miss Logan, if there's something you want me to specifically do, I can do that as well. But I I will want Yes. Yeah. But you do that. And I just have one thing I want. Sure. So, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to um touch point on the job classification here.
085Um these right here represent all the different types of employees that we have in our system. We have our administrative certified. They're administrative classified. So when we talk about administrative certified, those are building administrators, district level administrators. Our admin classified are folks that work in the business department. People that aren't directly related to what I would say is the classroom. Um our certified, which is represented by our Sycamore Education Association, our SEA, our classified, which is our Oopsy employees, um represented by um Oopsy obviously. And then we have 53 exempt employees. These folks would be your um we have a secretary in each building. We have custodial supervisors. We have CNS supervisors. And then we have our district office individuals as well. So you can see how that breakdown is. I'm just for the sake
086of just showing how this works, I'm going to collect click just certified right now. Um then we have actual um job statuses. Now, this is important because when we start talking at the top about people that are leaving, why are they leaving? There's a lot of different reasons we have. Um, we obviously have the active employee status. So, those are the folks that are currently actively employees with the system. We have active replacement teachers. So, we have nine replacement teachers in the district. So, a replacement teacher, what is that? A replacement teacher is a teacher that we are bringing in on a temporary one-year basis. They might have been hired in June um because a section was added last minute. Um they also could be somebody's on FMLA. Um and so we have to find
087somebody, but we're not going to be attached to them year after year. It's a one-year contract. Um we have folks that are resigning. We have folks that are retiring. We have folks that we we just say are active leaving. And that's one we need to clean up. It's more of a resignation side of things. And then we have our retirey hires. Um and then the act inactive unknown are folks that are on leave. So we do have employees based on our contract uh CBA that are allowed to take a year leave sbatical and so those folks we are they we are not paying them um necessarily but they're in year right because we want to make sure we capture them because they will come back next year as well. So um you can kind of
088see from a certified standpoint how that breaks down in regards to how our employees are classified. So, I'm actually just going to click on just our retirees on this one. And um so you can kind of see what that looks like. So, from our certificated staff, this would be our teachers. Um we currently have 15 employees that are slated for retirement this year. Um and the high school, this is all overall. Sorry, I Yes, I went back to the district. Thank you for that. Um so, that's just one way I use the tool. Um, we also use it in ways when I'm having a staffing meeting with the junior high. I can just click on the junior high certificated staff. I can even bury down over here into the job title. I can click on
089there and go English teachers and pull up the English department. Um, I can know I I can actually look at the salary spend in each department. Um, we can drill down to what's the salary spent in the English department at the junior high versus the salary spent at the English department at the high school. A lot of that's years of experience and things like that, but it just gives you a lot of understanding around the data and when we start talking about transfers and things like that. So, this was exactly where I want where I was going to want you to go. Um, and here's why. So, in the five-year forecast, does anybody remember how many people we assumed would retire? 12. 12. You get breakfast, too. So, I've had we assumed 12 people would
090um retire and we've got 15. And so, we also assumed no additional staff, no additional FTEES going into next year, actually for the entirety of the forecast. Um, and we assumed that when someone retires, and we're just talking about certified, which is what we're looking at now. um when they retire we were going to assume what salary for the replacement um no more than five years in the masters. Okay. So it's like I'm going to tell you wrong but it's like 60,000 right right around 60,000 is what that replacement salary is. So there's savings there right when someone leaves us um they're at the top of of that salary schedule. And so then when you hire someone else in new um you you get to take advantage financially. It's just a financial savings um that
091you are saving money when someone leaves your system at the top of the schedule and they come in towards um the beginning of that schedule. So we assume that for 12 people and Mr. Level um I know we're early in the hiring um phase for next year. But of those 15, have we hired anyone yet to replace any of those 15? So, I'm not going to answer your question directly. I know what you're going to say because there we don't look at it from just a retirement perspective. We look at it from remember when I showed you all the classifications that could be leaving. So replacement teachers, resignations, retirements, we kind of look at them collectively. Of all of those positions right now, we are only believe what we need to replace nine of those.
092Okay. So there's also is have there is the deadline passed like 15 is the number or they still have time to put in? They still have time to put in. Most of the So there's a couple um big decision points. there's a decision point early in the fall, which was December 1st, that if they tell us they're going to retire, we won't evaluate them for that year. So, there's a kind of a rush to that date. Then the second most important date is January one because if they're eligible for an incentive through the collective bargain agreement, we have to know by that point. So, then you get the mad rush. Um, and then what we get from now to kind of the end of the year are the people that they're not incentive eligible. Um,
093and they just determine that it's time. I believe this number is higher this year than we anticipated it being because the STRS retirement system changed to 33 years. And so there's some folks that said sign me up, right? I'm I can I can now go and so it didn't incentiv it didn't financially make sense for them to linger another year if they were going to do that. When you and Mrs. Logan, when you came up with a 5-year forecast of 12, was that based on historical data? Yes. Okay. Yeah. We looked at trends what we had been seeing and we felt like 12 was um based on that but there are certainly years 12 that's correct which are going to impact the budget in the opposite direction. Mr. Balon I would say yes and no
094like yes it was based on past but I think Mr. Levelvel's work like this this did not exist before Mr. level came into this role and it was a constant question and it sounds ridiculous to be asking who works here but to build to be able to staff strategically you have to know all the moving pieces and parts and you have to have someone that's dedicated to the processes and procedures to keep up with it and he just loves processes and procedures. I'm so thankful that he loves them that much because in order to do the work that we need to do to be able to confidently say to you, hey, we think we're going to have 12 people retiring or we think we only need to replace nine people. It's because we're actually looking
095at the data. We're looking at the lensure of everyone who might be eligible. um we're looking at intervention numbers and deciding is that a a an appropriate use of our funds or should we utilize their teaching talents over here. So, um I think being able to strategically look at it with a global view versus I can justify every year to you I need more staff because I can always say it and be like, well, it's best for kids and here's all the good reasons I should do it. What I want to be able to justify to you and you've asked for this year-over-year and this is I think this is the year and going forward we can say to you strategically based on all the factors this is the staff number. No I would agree
096if you know being on the board for 10 years I I've never seen a tool like this. So congratulations and thank thanks to you Mr. Levelvel and your team that put this together I think this is incredible data to be able to to use in our forecast but how do you overlay enrollment trends with this? Yeah. So, um that's kind of moving on to the next looking forward, right? Um there's there's like I said earlier, it's it's a complicated equation. So, it's not just enrollment, right? And that plays a big piece into it. And you guys you all know that from the kindergarten conversations we constantly have, right? I can't we can't have a class of nine, right? So, there's got to be some play and give there and how we look at that. But,
097you know what we do is I could bring up another tool that I have. It's our enrollment trend tool that's layered over staffing. So, it's actually um consists of um it's basically a dashboard that looks at um specifically K4 and I can talk about 5 to 12 here shortly, but when you look at K4, it has every building. It has their current enrollment and then what we've done is we averaged out projections based on historical trends about where those would be. And then what that does is that then goes and divides by what we believe our target is in those spaces. And so that's a when I talk about philosophical decisions, we don't have class- size guidelines. Like we don't have anything in policy that says class sizes have to be this. We operate on
098what we call targets in the district that we believe our community tolerates, right? And so um we have our our target for K1 is 22, second through fourth is 25 in a row. Um, do we meet those every year? Um, not all the time. Um, we have classes that are under, we have a few classes that are over. It's just you can never predict how many kids are going to join that cla that um, grade level through the year. Like it's just a moving thing. So I to answer that question, that's how we look at the enrollment based on the staffing. So we can that's pretty simple. It's okay this many kids. This is what we believe to be true. Where it gets more challenging is when you start looking at the upper grades and
099the course offerings that we have. Um what do we believe to be true from a music program standpoint? Right? Do we believe we need four sections of music production and X Y or Z? That's just an example. Or are we okay saying that we're only going to offer three sections and if kids don't get that they have to then pivot to a different elective? Right now we have historically operated in everybody gets the things that they want. Um when we start having conversations around um around staffing efficiency, what I want to be really clear because we've been doing a lot of work around this. I'm going to pass to Megan just for a quick bit to have her kind of talk through kind of what we've how we've been thinking about scheduling and some training.
100But what I want to be really careful is that when we talk about staffing efficiency, we are not talking about taking opportunities away from kids and we're not talking about dismantling of programs because that's what people feel. What we're talking about is what do we believe to be true? Last year, this board had a conversation with me around half day kindergarten, and we all agreed that anything less than 15 in a room was not a viable path forward to offering that class because it just didn't make sense efficiently. Right. And financial what's and financial. Well, do we believe that same thing to be true for AP classes at the high school? Do we believe that same thing to be true about music production? Do we believe that same thing to be true? I could go
101on and on because there are a lot of classes in the secondary that have less that had less than 10 kids in it. That's when we're talking about, okay, if there's an efficiency standpoint to that, do we stack those classes? Do we provide a different opportunity here? Not changing the program, not changing the opportunity, but we shift the opportunity that they have. So that those are the things that when we really take a step back and talk about how do we think different about staffing so that we can be responsive to the fiscal constraints that are within the district but we want to maintain the aviator experience. It's having the hard conversation around how do we efficiently use our staff and do it in a way that is not counter to the collective bargaining agreement
102that we've agreed to with our staff and it doesn't severely impact the programmatic um commitment to our community. So um Lawson Oh sure. Yeah. I'm happy to share a little bit of the learning that we've engaged in this year. Um Chad had organized a great opportunity. I wouldn't call it a training. I would call it a learning um experience, a cohort that we were part of. um uh administrators from green the junior high and high school joined us uh for that experience. I think in general I would I would summarize um it was a training or learning experience with David James who's done a lot of work around schedules. Um it wasn't about how to schedule. It was about the kinds of things to think about when you look at how you spend your time
103because time is a very valuable asset that we have for teaching and learning. And so how do you um prioritize? And some of my best learning though comes from teachers and students. I just had the opportunity to talk to a teacher yesterday who said something so smart. I wrote it down. I even just read it because I was like I'm going to say that today um was a teacher at Green and he said, "There are no solutions. There's only tradeoffs." And I thought, "Okay, that's a really um wise statement. It's kind of like curriculum. It's the art of deciding where you spend more time and where you might spend less time." The same is true for schedules. And so that experience was about what are the kinds of things to be thinking about and what
104are the kinds of experiences and conversations that you want to engage in before you would ever make any kind of change um that impacts you know your community because we don't want to outpace the community's readiness for change that we might anticipate um that may or may not be coming according to the priorities. So I think um my biggest takeaway Chad was kind of chuckling because I wrote down you know defining the aviator experience that's going to require dialogue with internal and external stakeholders um because there's give and take any time you make decisions and so looking at ourselves as one big ecosystem versus um having conversations in isolation without realizing the impact that that you know ad or um shift could make on other parts of our ecosystem is really important as we work
105to protect the integ integrity of our um excellent academic programming that we have such a rich history of here and I think there's going to be a couple of opportunities like defining the aviator experience we've talked about the need to engage our community I think that's like a year-long process you know really defining and letting them be involved in and kind of see behind the curtains of what are those things that we consider while he's talking about yeah it's easy to sit here and say you know well if there's not 15 kids we're not going run that class. We we philosophically disagree when it comes to like let's say AP stats is 10 kids. Well, I still want to offer AP stats. So, I think there's some of that where there's a hard and fast
106rule. There's some of that is we're still going to be doing some things that would not meet that hard and fast rule, but I think letting our community in to see what are we talking about when we're talking about the aviator experience. Um, I think the other piece of what Megan said that was uh really great is just we went into that and if you remember it was one of the board goals and the superintendent goals that we talked about of I wanted to go through and and we always use the terrible word audit. We want to audit all the and people hate that. So, we agreed to let's do a review. Well, then we took a step back and said,"You know what? Maybe we're just trying to dive in too far in this and
107maybe we just need to really think about learning first." Because if you remember, we looked at review processes that were six figures. People wanted to spend a hundred grand to basically help us rebuild our schedules. What we found is spending five grand to learn really changed our mindset about what we were doing. Um, and it the best thing that I got from the learning was the the expert said to us, people go into this thinking they've got to just destroy and blow up their schedules. You don't go into it finding ways to make your schedule better first. You know, you may end up having to do that, but why not try to improve your schedule? um what I have seen and it's the I mean really it's an amazing feat when you get your seven
108principles in a room um all the assistant principles the district directors and you watch them collaborate connect and decide that we are all going to get behind this model and the day that it happened for us if you remember the snow day that we we were on the snow day and it finally started snowing at two um That was the day that was the day that we all came in at 7:30 and by 2:00 there was consensus of we are going to take a databased approach and everyone in this room is going to be on board with it. I mean we reached consensus of Mr. Levelvel presented some great data. Our Esau staff presented some great data of this is how we have to staff the district if we want to continue to make sure
109that we all get our needs met because it's easy to say like you know what Miss Lawson I need more staff and my building has the greatest challenges but when the data doesn't support it that's a challenge for me and the rest of the team saying do you really need staff and we would go through these inefficient time frames where we're just kind of arguing back and forth and everybody's disagreeing. I will say for the first time in a long time, I haven't had a principal reach out to me and say, "I need more staff." I haven't had anybody say that Mr. Levelvel's being uh irrational and not giving me what we need. All I've heard is this is a great process. Thank you for bringing clarity to the process and thank you for Miss
110Lawson helping the high school rebuild their master schedule. it. Again, it's it's just amazing when you get all the people together that want to see the changes that need to be made. And I think what you're going to see is I think we're going to beat the goal of, okay, what can we do to be more efficient but not affect anything, not affect any program. These are the things, you know, when we do go to the community and ask for a levy, these are the things we can talk about. you know, we've created efficiencies in our staffing without harming the aviators or without changing the aviator experience. And these are real things we can talk about. So, I think I think this is a phenomenal tool and there's going to be decision points that come
111that we're going to have to wrestle with where efficiency meets philosophy. And that's where the hard conversations happen. And I don't necessarily think it's philosophy. I think it's just that kids aren't efficient, right? students are students and human beings are very, you know, have challenges, they have needs, they change, they're growing, they're developing. So, I think when we use language, we're talking with our community, we can't talk about kids and then also say, well, we have to be efficient and we have to only use data. We do have to use data. We have to be efficient. We have to be careful with our budget. We have to meet our budget, but they're also children and they're kids people's kids, right? So, there's a balancing act that has to occur. And the staff are working one-on-one
112with children. Some of them are three years old. Some of them are 21 years old, right? It is such a complex human experience to teach children as you know, as everyone here knows. So, we just have to be careful about the words we use as we've been talking about for the last several weeks. Let me give an example that might help paint a picture. Um, so everybody is aware we have this innovation lab at the high school, right? Um, the way we've staffed that model is that those teachers are for the most part dedicated to that program within that arena. I'll just call it an arena, right? There's a ways to be efficient that doesn't touch the program, right? It doesn't change the way we what we believe to be true about this innovation lab,
113but we've never actually considered could a teacher actually leave this innovation lab for one period to teach a section of science over here. By doing that, it actually creates an efficiency on our end that we don't actually have to look at hiring an additional teacher to pick up whatever those sections would be. We're just saying we're now we now believe that we're not changing this innovation lab, but that because we've always just staffed it by this model, we're going to be a little bit more efficient on this end and we're going to bring that person out to teach a bell here or a bell there. So, um I hear what you're saying and I think I alluded to that at the beginning is that what we have to understand is data is data, but there's
114also human interaction and there's um things that come up. There's decisions that have to be made that I come to Miss Logan's office and say we just have to do this like it just makes sense to do this. And those are one-on-one. So, I just wanted that again that's just one example of efficiency. But there's a lot of those situations across the district that we just go, okay, we're not touching the program, but how might we? So, to to get back to what you were saying about the human center element, um in the learning that we went through, um we were encouraged to look at being responsible. So like the word was responsible was used not the word responsible staffing not words like efficiency or strategic because um in order to be responsive and responsible
115for the people in our care that's including teachers and students we have to look at our full system as a whole. Um, and so to to Brad's example, like I think um I would like to engage in a conversation with this innovation lab as an example to say like, okay, well, let's talk about what the impact would be on the program and a teacher leaving to teach a section versus kids coming in to have a learning section in there. Like those kind of nuances, right, to make sure that we're being responsive to the ecosystem that is that program. So, I just um I guess I want to kind of merge the two things that I'm hearing the two of you say. I think we're all saying the same things, but to your point, thinking really
116thought being really thoughtful about approach um dialogue and the words that we use will be critical so people can see um the voice that they've had um and that also the decisions that have been made um and why they've been made in the context of it. And these are great conversations, right? Because we're going to be having them with our community members, the people on our street. And so, um, it it's great to start thinking about the right words to use when we have these conversations. And I love that responsible staffing. I think we've talked about that before. And so, that's a part of our language that maybe we could start incorporating and using because there are trigger words for people. And so sometimes we're not talking about cuts. We're not talking about cuts and
117programs, but we don't want to trigger anyone to be going there. Yes. But we also have to remember we have a finite bucket of money. Yeah, we do. So we I there's all kinds of programs we could add and we expand and do all this, but where would that money come from? What what would we lose out on everything else by by doing that? So I I think this is fantastic discussion and I think it's going to lead into like one of the last slides um that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk a little bit about best practices and so the experience that you all went through with the whole um scheduling is one of those best practice models, right? And we're learning and I think we need to just continue that
118learning and get better and build upon what you guys have already done. So, we're gonna talk through some of those. And Mr. Lewis, do you do you recall the last time we actually looked at schedules at the high school? I mean, I'll say we look at schedules every year u to this level of detail. Um not in my 13 years here. Um not in my and and when I say that, it's not to say that people aren't looking. It's just been I think the individuals that are involved this year took a deep deep dive into the class offerings, the numbers, the the requests. They really kind of married all of the things and said with our new parameter of okay, we want you to look at classes that are below 15 and we really got
119to have some good dialogue around, okay, are we offering that, are we not? And I think instead of um you know we can't have classes of six sitting around a high school. That's that's that's not responsible. But um I just want to say there are special education classes that have six children and so people will hear that we're not talking about board meeting and this so I can appreciate that but we're talking about those are class. Is it okay? I understand that Mrs. Bidder. Is it okay to have a PE class with six kids in it? It's not. So, we're trying to be responsible. Um, what you're talking about, I think, is more of those are case loads and we haven't talked about case load classes at the high school. We haven't talked about case
120loads for classes. So, we're trying to talk it in bigger terms about the master schedule of the high school. Um, certainly that would be a separate conversation with lots of layers of details to it. Logan, can I ask you a question? Yes. Are there any projections on benefits packages like is health care how much is that going up? And so um so one of the things that I was going to say is we um we do have an ABC committee um that started this year. I think we're still um and I'm looking at Mr. Maxwell down there. We're still trying to figure out like, okay, we've got this committee and all let's try to figure out together all the things that we can do collaborative collaboratively um to solve problems. And so I think there's
121an opportunity as we continue talking about responsible scheduling and staffing to uh talk through things with our ABC committee. Um, one of the other things with that ABC committee which we want to also involve our classified folks is we want to take a look at um what are options and for health care and to really do a market study to see if um our current way that we are are doing uh health insurance for benefits for our uh district employees is the right approach. And we're in a consortium. We've been part of a consortium for a number of years. And so what we're going to do is partner with a a consultant who will go out to market and say if Sycamore was a standalone um group, what would insurance look like for them? And
122you know, anybody will want to buy your business, but it's not just about buying our business to get out, but it's really a an approach to take a look at. Would that be a better part? I know we did put health insurance. We I think we upped it to like 10 or 12% in our five-year forecast. So, we do have an increase. We did our assumption. We did increase our assumption up to 10%. So, we have that included in our assumptions. Um but beyond that we really did want to study it. Sure. No, I think it needs to be done. Yeah. Thank you. Can I just make one comment? Um I just want to clarify. um for uh students with disabilities in classes. There are um ratios that are mandated by the state operating standards
123for the education of students with disabilities that we have to look at um those students with disabilities and the number of students in a classroom based on those disabilities. When we are having these broader conversations, the assumption is being made that those are excluded from those kind of case or those um class caps if you will or any kind of conversation like that because we cannot go above uh ratios in in the in those classes. So just wanted to clarify that that component. I I appreciate that and I I would think that that falls under the category of responsible staff. Yes. Um, so I I like that that terminology and that includes, you know, programs outside of special education like ESOL that there are ratios and things that we and that's really good. I appreciate
124you bringing up the students at Sycamore, too. That's all I'm trying to say too. Like it's not like they're just some extra group like those over here. Like they're actually aviators. Yeah. And I could have done I hope that one feels I hope so too that I know you're not but I just don't and I could have done a better job of kind of articulating when we look at numbers and we're looking at classes. I think I use kind of like the general kind of how many kids are in first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade. Miss Spencer and I work separately. She works to really understand case loads and everything like that. And so that staffing model kind of sits over here. to your point saw an intervention I had um conversations uh
125with Miss Tomkins as well to really understand okay so based on this what's this over here so I should have bucketed that off that would have made it a little bit clear from the beginning but um we do look at those kind of in buckets and in isolation it just sometimes there's a word it I just know from community feedback that when we use the word efficiency for some children for some families that has a feeling that comes with it all right whether and no one in this room. Nobody in this room has that connotation. And I know that everyone in this room is an advocate for every single student in this school district. We care about every single kid and we will do everything we can to make sure that they feel safe and
126protected and well educated. And I know that Mr. Lewis, you have been excellent at that and I know that. I just want to make sure that because of the sensitivity of words and this kind of conversation that anyone who's hearing this doesn't think that we're not inclusive of that. That's what I'm trying to say. Thank you for doing that. Yep. Absolutely. Okay, I'm going to move us into um review and consider and we're going to look at the financial status of our district overall and the sustainability. You're probably tired of this chart, but I think this chart really um provides all the information um in one place and helps us look at what is happening currently and what are we predicting to happen in the future based on assumptions and we've talked about some of
127those assumptions um today. So the red line I just want to we talked a little bit about cash balance. Sycamore has a board policy on what we would believe to be our minimum cash balance. Um and that minimum cash balance is 25% of operating expenditures. And so that's what that red line is. And the way that a cash balance policy is supposed to work when you fall below that, it triggers action. And it triggers action to say we got to do something. We have to look at our expenditures. We have to look at additional revenue or we got to look at both. And so that's what we've been doing, right? We the first time I remember we did this when I came in before 2029 was on our five-year forecast and we only showed 2028
128and we said I think the term I used was 2029 is going to look ugly. Um, and that's not a you know a very big word but I think it's a a a pretty correct desript description. it's ugly in 2029. Um, so why is that? Um, and when we take a look at our operating revenues, when you look at 2026 through 2029 and you look at what additional revenues are we predicting moving forward, um, less than 1% annually is what we're predicting. Now, I know that's conservative, but why do we need to be conservative? Um, well, we don't know if we're going to get any more money from the state. We might get less. I mean, at this point, so we did not predict um the continuation of the phase in of the fair school
129funding plan. We basically said it's going to be flat. This is worst case scenario. This is worst case scenario. Um also with our our tax revenue remember um as our valuations increase um millillage will be rolled back we're not we don't get inflationary growth so that's why it looks this way and then when we look at our operating expenditures remember I said we're expecting less than 1% annually growth with our revenues on the expenditure side from 2026 to 2029 that average expenditure growth is 4%. So, just like at home, if your wages remain stagnant, well, it's kind of happening, right? You your your wages are stagnant, but your cost of living keeps going up. Eventually, the money that you've put away in your savings account is you're going to run out. That's what's happening to
130Sycamore is we are now getting to a point where we're spending more than our revenue and we are going through our cash balance. Mr. Le, can you go back for a second? Y so you know if I look at let's say 27 28 29 y you know you're showing six to seven and a half% growth but our fiveyear forecast doesn't show that we're growing at that percentage in expenditures. I thought we were around that 5%. In which years? 20, let's just say 27 through 29 or 26 through 29. Um, our five-year forecast shows 7% almost 8% growth. Any expenditures? So, that is total expenditures. Um, this is just looking at operating expenditures. Okay. Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, this is just operating expenditures, not total expenditures. I tried to take out um transfers
131or advances in or transfers out of what we're looking at. Like this is what it really takes to operate for district. So this is not including that 4.1 million for capital app. Correct. Or it's not including any transfers that we are um sending. We also transfer to our athletic fund. So, it's not including that as well. Okay. So, what what would I like us to consider? And we've talked about this. This district has a history of committing to our community. And I know Dr. James, I'm looking at you because I believe that you were part of the leadership when this happened and those commitments and promises to the community, but just for historical, we started that when we failed 11 and the board came back to the community and said moving forward because I was
132not on the board at the time, but speaking to board members who were, they were faced with some of the same scenarios where expenditures were growing exponentially and the community looked at it and said, No way. And they failed a levy significantly. And I don't remember the time frame. A year later. When was the year that so the board that was previous to Dr. James? Oh, okay. But the board came back and put, you know, a contract with the community together and one of it was limiting expenditures. And that that that resonated with our community and, you know, we've done it ever since I've been on the board. August the last two years August 3rd 2004 it was a 7.9 mil um new levy and it went down to defeat by uh 61% against healthy.
133So why are we now looking at it to your point? If we've done it after a levy defeat, why are we looking at it now? I'm looking at participation obviously. I mean, I think it shows transparency with the community. I think it shows that the board is committed to doing everything we just talked about, looking for efficiencies. Um, you know, being financially conservative with our community's investment that they've given us. Um, and and making a commitment. Are you asking us if we should get have another 4% expenditure growth uh cap? Is that what you're Is that your question? I want to I want us to consider I want us to consider a financial parameters resolution and commitment to this community before we go and ask for additional revenue and why would we want to do
134it? Do you feel that this is feasible? I do with the current I do and we're gonna we're gonna look at it and why I believe that. Um but I do I believe that this is feasible. I think this is doable. And if if this board of education says to Chad and I um expenditures are not going to grow any more than whatever, then we will get that job done. And this is based on the conversation that we just had about the aviator way and the words that we're not going to say. Instead, we're going to use the word responsible. Yes. That's right. Staffing. Is that what you're saying? That's right. Yes. So you believe that we can have a 4% expenditure cap growth cap and also have things done so that our children are
135educated in the aviator way and be responsible. I think we can do it I I think we can do it by less than 4,000 right 4%. Right now we are predicting 4%. I I believe Mr. ballot is growing out three and a half%. I am and actually that's going to be one of the scenarios that we're going to look at. Um, but I believe we can do less than 4%. So, what I want you to consider is saying we're going to cap the growth of our expenditures by something less than what we're predicting. And you're saying that's the average over the That's the average. So what we're predicting is but I I guess because Mr. Balon, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like in the past the financial parameter was a cap each
136year. No, it was an average. It was an average over a certain period of time. I think we started out each year and then when we were looking at at different uh contract commitments to the community, we changed the wording a little bit because there were years when we spent a little bit more, so we had to spend a little bit less. Yeah, I mean it is it is it is the board's responsibility to manage the fiscal commitment our community has given us. So I think it is the board's responsibility to to set a cap and that gives direction to our treasurer and our superintendent that this is the money we have to spend because if not you guys can just go spend anything you want and there's not a whole lot we can do
137with well I mean we're not going to do that but I know you're not but I mean yes they do have license and they have you know ethics. And just because you set the cap doesn't mean you're not going to spend below the cap. So yes, that is correct. We have a cap, you may spend 2% or 3%. That's right. That's right. That's just our cap. Um so and then I just wanted to review. So, I want us to consider a financial parameters um resolution and commitment to our community before we would go to our I want you to consider it for next fiscal year. And then I want us to start talking about a levy. We in the last five-year forecast presentation, we we talked through some scenarios, remember? and we said, "Well, looks
138like we're going to need to do a little bit of both. We're going to look we're going to need to look at our expenditure growth and we're going to need to look at additional revenues." And it's pretty responsible to say, "We're going to look at our expenditure growth and we're not going to just come back to the community and say, we're going to ask you for more than what we think we need." We really want to ask for what we think we need. So last operating levy was November of 2016. It was 6 and a half mills. We are collecting currently 4.35 mills. And remember we talked about that as valuation goes up they roll back that millillage. So effectively we don't collect more but the taxpayer is paying the same amount. Yes. So it's
139not saying the taxpayer is paying less than that is correct. And that's just for the last that's for that levy because they're paying more just that levy. We have other levies and bond issues just that levy. Good point. Yeah, because we're not at that level. Which by the way, Mrs. Logan did a phenomenal job at the auditor's conference explaining some of these military that was very helpful. Thank you for doing that. You had the most complicated part of the session. So I did. I did. But I was I felt privileged to be there. Um the last levy, my understanding is it was a five-year promise to the community. Um and so we need to celebrate because in 2026 that will be a decade. So it's double the time you've had it last operating. That's right.
140Less last operating lev. Um and for I do think it's important because we are our community is watching. That's for staffing, right? That is for running the district. That is correct. It's not for facilities but for it is for us. It is we are one of the 110 districts that actually does have a cash reserve. So therefore if we need to build something we would we've been using it we have been using it to do not only our operating needs but we've also been using that for our permanent improvement needs of our district. only 110 districts in the whole state of Ohio out of 610 that are actually able to do that that do not have a permanent which means these are districts that are saving money which is not well not necessarily so we're
141all saving money I will say that but these there are 110 districts in the state that are sharing their operating fund with their permanent improvement fund They don't have separate revenue streams. They don't have a commitment from their community for just permanent improvement items. They are annually taking a look at how much money do we have and we're going to spend this much on our instruction purposes and then we'll have this much left over. And has that changed a lot over the years? Like is that that number? more and more districts more and more districts have gone to um having a permanent improvement levy to just take care of theirs. And so there also are some pros to that. I mean we can shift money to operations. I mean if you have permanent improvement it
142has to be spent on improvement. That is correct. The way we're set up you can pull money if you needed to into operational temporarily and move money around. I'm not saying that's the way we want to go. There are reasons why this, you know, previous boards and previous treasurers decided to do that and that's probably why and it is gives more flexibility. Absolutely. And what we're seeing though in reading the tea leaves um our state legislature would like to take that flexibility away from you Paul and that's why it's now. Yes. But I think, you know, I think one of the just one of the issues is going to be this needs to be very clearly communicated to our community and educated why why we're doing because if if I understand correctly, they'll be voting
143on one levy. It'll be broken out into two. Yes. And I will say that the question that we get often from our, you know, from some members of our community is, you know, what's in your cash reserve? Like that's the most like that's one of the most important questions to many people in the school district who who are used to us having that cash reserve. Well, suddenly we have to keep it at 30 or 25 or well 30% sounds like that would hopefully be the worst that we would have to do. That's really close to our own crisis level like oh my god we better have a levy type thing. But what that does is that necess it requires that you go back to the community more often. Exactly. Which is not good. Which is
144which is not what our community wants. That's right. And which is I'm not going to get on the statement, but which is counterproductive to what they say their goals are. They say their goals are to not price people out of their homes due to real estate taxes. But what they're doing is forcing the burden back to the local tax share. So we would be going back to the community every two or three years. It might be a smaller amount, but you would get into levy fatigue where you're continually asking for a smaller amount and at some point the community says no. And the more levies that you pass, does that bring you down to that floor more often or more? The 20 mil floor, most districts who are at the 20 mil floor, um they
145have experienced levy loss. Um and so their community said no. And so their millillage just continues to be rolled back until they get to that four. And then you have this like but I mean one of the reasons there's a lot of reasons why our community supports us. One of the reasons is we're able to go we're able to make commitments exceed them and go a decade 10 years without asking. Yes. But if we're set right but if we're set because the way levies work you get you know get an influx of money at the beginning and then you spend down a little bit you get an influx of money. Well, that influx of money is going to put us above the amount. So, you're going to have to ask for less money, which will
146require us for asking more often. But I think the other piece that's going to have to be a part of this story, and I know we're not going to talk about it today, but if you look at the bonds that we have collect like passed and collected because I've heard you mention it, you've kind of slid it in there, but you haven't said it. 2016 we did pass a levy, but 2019 we passed a bond issue. Correct. But if you look at what we are collecting, we are exceeding the promises on that as well. And I don't think we've done a good enough job publicizing that so that people know that what you expected to pay is not what you're paying. I think we have to be careful because they're still paying the same amount.
147Yeah. We have just the way you message they're collecting. We're they're paying the same amount because if you say we're only collecting I can't read that far. 4.35 mills. I as a taxpayer immediately think, oh, I'm paying less. I'm not. I'm paying the same amount. Isn't our millage like 25 or something like that? When you add it all together, a great bargain. So, we have a lot higher than that. It's 25.5. But the problem is what if we get to the 20 mil floor, then the taxpayer may actually pay more. So, actually then we're really in trouble. So, we don't have much room to go down. We're like five away from going into the 20 mil floor, which is because the state legislature is formulating it like this. So, here we are there. And I
148will say all of the I'm going to show you some scenarios and I I just I just want to press pause and I want us to go back and talk about we have a two-year budget from the state every year. for every two years we have a a bianial budget that starts in February with the governor's budget. So in February we saw what the governor's budget is. Then it goes to the house of representatives and they debate it and they come up with their own budget which we just saw their the house's version this week. They voted it out. So we now have a modified version of that budget and it's the House's version. Next week it goes to the Senate and the Senate will debate and they'll come up with something and they'll have
149their own version. So then you'll have three different versions and the House and the Senate will not agree. They never do. And so then they'll have a conference committee where they will go in and they'll negotiate just like we do with they'll negotiate and then at the end they'll come out with okay we think we can agree and so now here is a fourth version of the budget and then they'll vote it in both of their houses and then it will go to the governor and the governor will have an ability to line item veto. So while I am very angry and I am very frustrated with some of the things that we are seeing in the House version, we still have a voice and we still have a long way to go. But the
150rhetoric coming out of the state house specifically against communities like Sycamore who only receive 10% of our money from the state and they're going to tell our community who pays 90% of the bill how we get to spend our money here and how much money we can collect from our community should anger our community members. Absolutely. Absolutely. And they need to listen to the community members because they are not listening to me. So I just want to say that Mrs. um sorry but it's something needs to change. So all of that to say that when we look at these scenarios I am still assuming that that 30% nonsense is not part of our equation. If it comes into play then we will deal with it at that time. But we that's what we have to
151do. We have to look at reality and we won't have until the summer time for that. Right. That's right. That does not finish up until end of June. So I know these are are small numbers here, but um I want to take us through a scenario. You're also going to notice that on this chart, what how far does our five-year forecast go? What's the fifth year of our fiveyear forecast? Ours right now is 2026. What's the last year of our current five-year forecast? 2022. Are you saying the one we have the last? Yeah. Our current now. So 2029 is the fifth year of our current 5-year forecast because it takes our current year 25 26 27 28 29. So there's our five years. So why on this sheet am I showing through 2031? Any ideas?
152We talked about a levy cycle so you can see when you need to go back on the ballot again. Correct. So yeah, we need to look at you know we what we talked about levy fatigue. Yes. Yes. We want to make sure that when we go to the community and ask for a levy, we're asking for enough to make it a certain period of time before we have to go at least five years. Yes. So, we do the 4% and then five years. That's how we've done it historically at Sikar%. 4%. Did we not have it? Isn't the cap? No. What was the cap? So, we've had it down as low as three. We've had it three and a half. What was the average? So, our average was four. So, here's here's the scenario I'm
153going to walk you through. So, our current five-year forecast shows an average growth of expenditures of 4%. What I would like you to consider is what if we put a cap in of three and a half%. We separated our PI. I'm assuming two and a half mills, but it it could be more. But that's not involved in this. It's taking PI expenditures off of our operating. That's how you're doing it. So PI is no longer part of this. And what would it look like if we went for a four mill operating and we assumed no additional money from the state. So this is like I'm gonna say the worst case scenario. Okay. So if we did that, can you talk about the assumptions you made around salaries because that is 85%. So part of our
154in our assumptions beyond the negotiated agreements, we have 3% included in there. What I will say to you is we can run as many scenarios as we want, but if we're putting in a growth cap of three and a half percent, then that is saying to Chad and I, make it work. We still want the aviator experience. We want to be able to do all the things. So figure it out. Put this puzzle together, but it cannot be more than three and a half% than you spent the previous year. Um, so if we did that, what I have done, I'm going to kind of walk you through. So total revenues remember I said 2029 is the last year of our 5-year forecast currently in 2030 and 2031 I am assuming a half a percent increase
155in revenues for purposes of assumptions that's what I'm doing for our expenditures I am just carrying forward that three and a half% so in 2030 and 2030 31 I am just assuming a 3 and a half% growth in our expenditures and I'm continuing and if you look at transfers and advances this is assuming that we would go to our community and they would say yes in calendar year 2026 which means you're collecting 27. That's right. and those transfers and advances would start going away. So you'd start getting additional revenue there. Um and so so that immediately puts $4.1 million back into That's right. That's right. And so at the end of 2031, which would be five years, so if we went to our community in calendar year 26, we would start collecting 27 28 29
15630 31. So that's why you see through 31, it would be saying to our community, we're going to commit to you that we would make this last for five years. At the end of that fifth year, if we did those things, um our cash balance at the end of June would be 34 million, which would still be above a little bit above our cash balance goal, but we are spending more than we're bringing in. And so, but it would still keep us above that mark. It does, but here's my concern. So, in 2031, you're now spending $8 million. That is correct. More than you're taking in, which means the next time you have to ask for money from the community, you have to ask for more potentially. Yes. If it's all built on assumptions. So
157if the revenue is at or below this, we're in trouble. Or if we don't continue with the that expenditure, if you look at the end of fiscal 26, it's 4 million. Now we're twice that in 31 of 8 million. Yes. So then my concern is you either ask for more money or the next levy doesn't last as long. Yes. It's always that dilemma. Correct. Are are you forecasting that we're going to Sycamore is going to become a district like other districts where we have to go on the ballot a lot like I'm not I am not predict I'm not predicting that right now until we know what happens at the state house. Um but but our goal would be um that I we would never want to go to the community and say that something's
158going to last less than five years. I just think that is just it's too frequent and it's but with this scenario there is no way it lasts more than five years. Yeah, that's what I guess but this the worst case one though, right? This is worst case scenario. Okay, this is worst case scenario. Okay, thanks for that reminder. I think something that we all have to remember from community roundt we're not the only ones asking for levies, right? police, fire, you know, all the like we all try to talk when we're planning those, but it's a real thing. So when when we talk about levy fatigue and just school levy fatigue, you know, my concern, and I voiced this several times, is not this levy cycle, it's the next leg. I agree. And this number
159here only solidifies my concern. And this is worst case scenario, but are you saying that we need to ask for more mills? Is that what you're Is that your That's one potential levy or lever. Yes. Either ask for more money or the community is going to have to realize that every five four years get another levy. Yes. But to not pass in 26 because you ask for too much is a problem. That's the problem. Especially if you're having two different levy requests, right? The last request that they approved was six and a half mills. And so if this is four, let's just say it's four and a half, then we've got to be careful on the PI side. And we've already seen what our needs are on the PI side. So we've got to balance
160all this. So Mr. Logan, help me understand. So the PI I don't know what the number is two and a half you're saying that's what I'm estimating but so that would continue on. So the next levy cycle instead of asking for six and a half you could potentially ask for less because it's only the operational point. Good point. Yes. Yes. See I like that. Yes. Yes. That eases my concern a little bit. Not not completely but a little bit. But the other thing with this too is this is making a lot of assumptions and it is so far out there and it allows us time to plan and to say okay if we don't want that levy millillage to be really high or we don't want to go back in every five years then what
161are we going to do in year three to make sure make some changes. So, it allows us time. The other thing I want to point out on this sheet is see that total reductions $3.7 million. That's over all of those years. So, that doesn't mean every year. I mean, let's say you reduce um you know, a million dollars in the first year. Well, then that's going to you know, help you. But it's it's over a four-year period of time. Um, so that's saying you're taking 800 you're finding $800,000 in a $100 million budget each year. Yes. Yes. Of efficiencies. Yes. Sounds doable. It's if you said that to Chad and I, we would be able to meet that. I We will find responsible staff. Yes. There you go. Oh, responsible opportunities. Yes, we'll just try
162to stop using those buzz words. How's that? Yes, because I could go I could go five meetings without hearing transparency. Logan, you don't you don't know this number. That's fine. The cash balance goal of 25%. That's that 30 million. So at the end of fiscal year 2031 that that 30.6 million is 25%. Yes, that's correct. So the next one I want us to look at um okay what if three and a half% is a little you're worried about that? I'm gonna say I'm not, but if you are, um, and then what if we looked at 3.75%. Um, and still went back to our community and calendar year 2026, same kind of of levy and still assuming no additional uh, state money. What would that look like? Um, it would be far less reductions. So, but
163now we're 9.7. 9.7. But look at the bottom line. Yes. And look at our Yes. So, help me understand this. If you cap it at a higher number, why do these numbers get worse? You should because you're saying that if you're capping it at 3.75% growth, then they can grow more. your expenditures can be higher. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you for pointing that out because Yes. So that just means our expenditures can grow more versus in So if you're confident at 3.5, what is 3.25? I can run those scenarios. I could run a million scenarios. Then we're going to do the scenarios that I felt the most comfortable with um in showing you. So, um, and I also, you know, went out to that fifth year just so you could kind of see that here's what
164it here's what it would look like. I would be very concerned at 3.75 just based on the $9.7 million expenditure differential and the cash balance only 83 days. Don't know that that's being fiscally conservative to our community. Fiscally responsible What does that do to the proposed state? I mean, if Jenny with 35, does it make sense to go to the 375? If you're confident with the 35 that we can do that why it was first. But I think is what it shows me though, the difference between the two. I mean, right now we're spending significantly more than 4%. We are. And if we continue that trend, your your levy cycle dramatically decreases and your your deficit and spending is going to be twice that. So the need to cap this, the need to do something
165about our expenditures, it's very evident to me. Yes. And the reason why though is because because of things like inflation, right? So our costs are going up. So you are saying that you have accounted for that version. Yes. You've actually accounted for the because yes, we are at almost a 10y year the end of 10 years before going to the district for uh operating levy. So we are we have really stretched this very very far. So costs are high and we are higher than 4%. But you're calculating that in for us now. Okay. There are inflationary increases in our expenditures in this in our current fiveyear forecast. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So this seems I mean but it also seems that there's not this I want to say excess money. I don't know what the right
166word to use is. there is not money to do every single project that everybody wants in our community. I wish I I don't we all I mean we all want to be able to do um all the things and meet all those needs. Um but with our current with our current um financial picture, we just can't. um our expenditures are without even layering in those additional projects, we're already our expenditures are exceeding our revenue. Um and so before we would commit to do those things, we just need to we need to have more conversations with our communities and say it's time about a permanent privilege. Yeah. And it's it's time. It's been a decade and we need we need to talk. And I do think it would be really helpful to like you said have
167like aviate talking with the aviators like people who are going to send their kids to the district people who are in the district. Obviously people who don't have kids in the district are voting on the levies too. Yes. So like people need to understand like what I do think we need to really focus a lot on what families the families who are using the schools are are wanting and needing. But also having that conversation like we have to balance what we have to balance our budget. Yeah. How do we do that in balance our budget? Let's not use that word. Okay. What's the right word to use responsibly? Thank you doctor fiscally responsible. But either way we have clearly have Okay, fine. But some for all of our sake right here, we just have to
168have that conversation so that the it's balanced to for us to communicate to them. But also, we need to hear from them as well because education is changing. People have different expectations than they did 10 years ago, right? But Mrs. Better, I I agree with what you're saying. Only 30% of our community has people in school. Right. That's why so we also have to have a story to go to the 70%. And those are things like capping our expenditures, limiting our levy cycle, maximizing our levy cycles so we don't get into levy fatigue. We can't just focus on the 30% of families that have kids in the district. That's exactly right. I guess could we I would ask could we also leverage the you know retired parents of alums in the district and to help
169them you know with the aviator experience like this is what your child did but look we've grown to be this also and here's what we're doing I think that's part of the we need to do the heart strength you got to make sure is a good example of what are we producing here I mean it's just one of the many things like I could think of all the things that we do better than everyone else. And you know, we've talked about some of the programming. People come here because of the programming that Mrs. Spencer and her team provide to so many students. People come here because they know uh we are accepting of all types of students, people um and we can help them get to where they want to be. We got kids going
170to the United Nations to, you know, demonstrate their talents. I mean this is not uh your average you know education. So, I think part of the aviator experience is explaining what does that mean? But getting people to buy into what do they want the aviator experience to be and how is it how has it grown over time? And I think your your next Well, not to and I'm not trying to rush as long the next slide I think is the why. Like when you look at the next slide that she's gonna show. Yeah. Like when I saw it and I started reading it and I saw it's a trap. it, you know, it's that's what we have to like give our communities ask you. Yeah. You know, but at the same time, I agree with
171what everybody's saying, but you know, if you look at the 70%. You know, they're experiencing increased costs in every part of living. Yes. And although it might be nice, they support the schools, there's still a finite bucket of money that families have to spend. Yes. And unless we communicate all of everything we've just said, the why to this community. Um it's going to be difficult to pass. And Paul, that's why I think some of what we heard the auditors are working on is the right things that they should be that's what the legislator should be working on is how do we protect those people that are above 65 that are on fixed incomes that you know have the finite amount of money um homestead. So by the way if anyone's watching call your legislator and
172ask for that. Yeah that's that's the answer. Big answer. Okay. So, um, what what does the House version of the budget say? Um, every district receives a small increase in Pycamore, it would be about a million dollars a year more. So, we'd get $2 million more over the bianium, but and the fair school funding plan, the new funding model is out. It still says it's in there, but then it says ODU is not allowed to use it to fund us. So, really, it's a trap. Um what they're trying to do is they're trying to they're trying to bait you. Look, we're gonna give you a little bit more money. Everybody gets more money, right? Do we really? Because then this 30% maximum for us in fiscal year 25, we are predicting that our cash balance
173will be 44.8 million. this 30% maximum that they are they have in their version would mean that we could only carry over $31.2 million. So what does that mean? That means over the next the our taxpayers they would reduce $13.6 million from us. the county budget commission. Even though our community has said, "We've approved these levies, we have a structure in place, because of this 30% maximum, they would be taking $13.6 million away from our school district, taking the voice away from our community." But then the next year, even with that money taken away, so we would go through two years them saying, "Oh, we're going to have to reduce it down. Reduce it down." Which means that then we're going to have to ask for more money from our community more frequently because we
174can't ask above that cap, right? And so even if our community would say, let's just say it's a four mil, but if maybe we wouldn't even be able to collect all of it in year one. I have no idea how this is supposed to be implemented. I have tried and you know, I've been doing this a long time and I have tried to to model how this is going to work. I can't figure it out. I I really can't figure out how this is supposed to work because if I'm modeling this correctly and they're saying, well, that 30% maximum, if you fall below, then the county budget commission is is supposed to increase the millillage. Well, that'll make our residents happy. Get a big cut on your tax bill this year, but next year it's
175going to be doubled. That makes no sense whatsoever. And they will see that as a tax increase, which it is. Yes. Yes. Um and and there it's taking our cash balances down so low that now our cash flow we're going to have problems with cash flow. We might have to look at cash flow borrowing. It is a disaster. Um and I'm not sure even how they would even implement it. Um and like I said any reason they came up with 30%. Like is that they had a a reason for that number? They said we told them that it was nice said well you missed the word minimum we didn't say maximum we said minimums a lot of us are using 25 30% as minimums not using that for maximums so I think there's lots of
176what can we do what we can do is um I I'm I'm looking someone who is very connected to PTO's what we can do is our PTO's, our community members and their voice, talking to senators and your representatives, not just ours, because ours are friendly. They understand this. They get it. But there are other legislators who are on committees who make decisions that are not legislators vote for this. Yes. Well, ours did. No, ours did not. House passed, but the house did. I was far particular. No, they don't no what how what were the numbers like how how much did this pass? I don't remember what the numbers are but and I can even like if there is if we want to from a cra gr grassroots effort try to get together and like send
177letters, emails or whatever we can draft our senators. Um but they they need to hear they need to hear from us. Um and then one other thing that I my understanding is like so if money goes in there um like my understanding is we get districts get um state funding two times a month and we get money from the county which would be Hamilton County. So the actual tax taxes from property taxes, which is why we have this conversation regularly at our board meeting because you'll see the numbers pop in and they get really high and tell us, oh well, they're going to get lower later, but we get two times a year. So we have this massive amount of money that comes in and just sitting there that could they would have say, okay,
17830% months, right, it's supposed to last, but instead they're saying we can't have it. So what are they what would they do? Just Yeah. What's that's going to happen to every school district as they get paid twice a year. Disastrous in a massive amount of money. It's disastrous. So, okay. Sorry. I need to really It is really important though. This is really important because this is it goes at the fabric of how the entire district is funded. And it's not just us. It's every single school district. But the 110 districts like Sycamore that actually are able to This is the way we've done it. you know, we've been able to have that cash balance so that we could protect for future if we need we have an expense and then we were able to keep
179our levies cycle much longer. Like we're getting 10 years out of this. We're doing the fiscally responsible thing and we're getting penalized for it. That's correct. So, if we go back to our community, what what would it look like? I am I keep assuming calendar year 26. I'm just going to be honest. I think 2025 is out. I agree. There's so many unknowns right now with this budget. I It's just I think it's 2026. I think it has to be because if we were to pass this now and then it all changes in July, that's irresponsible. It's irresponsible and it could even be more disastrous. Yes. Because then we would be giving money back and then we would be increasing money. Agreed. Yes. So I I agree. So what are our options in 2026 May
180and November? And so I've highlighted in red those deadlines. Um so if we went in May, we would be talking uh our first resolution would need to be done in January of 2026, which is May or November. Does it change when we collect the money? No. And I don't see why we do it May. I think May is a hard time to get volunteers to the to the six months leading up to it. You know, I I think there's so much going on in the schools. I think it would be very hard. I think we have traditionally always been a November. You have district and I think we just stick with November. Okay. Unless somebody has some reason why we have to be May. If it doesn't change the collection, I see no reason it
181doesn't. Um and the only reason that you would go in May is if you're thinking that if it fails, you have at least one more time that year. Yes. to go to the public. Yes. To return to the public. But looking at your timeline, 27 is not the disastrous year. It's not the disastrous year. You are correct. And then we may have to do it to May if it didn't work in November, but it wouldn't matter. May would still not collect till 20 till 28th. Till 28. May 27th, we collected 28. Right. All I'm saying is if we did is because we said if we went in November and for some reason it didn't pass still go in May and it because that's not the disastrous it would still be okay right or not. The
182only thing is if we move to 2027 let's say 2027 if we I'm just saying we back clearly we need to do November if we were choosing November but yes we could do May as saying we needed a backup plan. Yes. No, if we weren't successful in 2026, we would choose May. Okay. Okay. Yes. So, we'd have two shots at I just think based on the new legislation around who can lead a levy and what we can participate and can't participate in, I think asking the community to do this during winter months, during the spring months when there's a lot going on in the schools, I think would be much more difficult. Well, we have more time to talk about, but th those are deadlines. Um so if we want to do it in November
183we have to we have time. Okay. And those are and those are the steps that we have to take resolutions. And when would we like are you is this you how does this process work? Like do you have to come to us and say we we recommend that you choose that that we do this and then you come to a board meeting and then vote on a register. we would need to engage with our community, figure out exactly what is the right option um and and estimate the right millillage. Um we would pass that first resolution would be done in I'll just go with May. The first resolution would come before you in in January. You'd pass that. It goes to the county auditor to estimate the millillage, certify the millillage. Then it comes back
184to us and then and then no later than February 6th, you would need to adopt that resolution and I have to file it with the county board of elections. So that's like the last day. Okay. Um so two resolutions and a certification from the county auditor. And I say historically we have not waited until close to these deadlines. Like we've done the April May for the 100 day deadline, the first one. Yeah. Just in case something's not filed correctly and we have to Yes, that's what I was going to ask. Yeah. You don't wait till August. I was going to say, do they last minute or do they give you a response? You're probably looking April or May. If you look at the November, you're probably looking April or May for the first. And the
185same would be true, I'm assuming, then um Paul, for the other Mr. Sorry, for the other ones, too. So if we were going to do May, we would need to probably do it before January 25th late 25th, right? And we do need time. We need time to talk to the community about the needs of the district is another reason why I would say November. So if we wanted to do Yeah. And and typically um like are there is there anything we're not asking you that we should be asking you? Like are we missing anything here like timing wise? Not that I can think of. I mean, just from the perspective as of as treasurer and as a superintendent, do you have are we are we not are there any pros and cons we haven't considered
186at this juncture for timing like do you have a recommendation on this for us? Like if you were going to tell us what to do like based on what you know of the district, I would say based on all the factors what I just heard from Mr. balance and I would agree with the assessment like to to try to get people rallied during cold months and you know out you know kind of hitting the pavement there's so much so you're looking more from us as board members to get that feedback is what you're saying I I think that's we we needed to give you information yeah um so that I mean because essentially this is your decision um I think we the team would probably recommend November number I see some the only benefit was
187some of the benefits that I heard which is it fails but you also have lower turnout in Americanly lower turnout and either way I don't know you know who knows what voice is going to be in the community you know if there's you know you could get a higher turnout of people against it in May because a lot of people just don't show up in in a May election that are traditionally supporters of a disput I mean being able to get to a point where it's exactly 10 years. I mean, it says something. That's that's a chance. The other either either one is going to be 10 years because collection is in January. I know, but it's still when it goes to voting, it's been 10 years since you've had to vote on an operating
188and what if you're what? Go ahead. Okay. Um, yeah, I mean lost my thought. I guess I've had some of my questions, too. I mean, I I think that I mean, generally speaking, I agree with everything everyone has said. I mean, I think when you're in a November election, that's when there's momentum where people are coming out. Like, people are used to voting. They're going to see all this other stuff on the ballot and then they're going to go, "Oh, okay." And Sycamore can be there, too. You know, like I get that. that makes more sense to me. But I just want to make sure that we're not in any way slowing down the district or putting any roadblocks up to to all of you as far as running the day-to-day of the district. So
189November of 26, you'll have much higher turnout because it's also your federal election. And and if we have other factors that come up between now and when we have to make these votes and we'll come back to you with updated information with here's here are things that might change our recommendation decision. I think sitting here right now, I think all the things we've discussed are appropriate and on point. An example would be if the legislature does something that warrants us to have to go sooner rather than later because you don't know what's going to happen after that budget is passed. You don't know. So you have to adjust. No. Sitting here April 12th, 2025, we believe November is the right time. But sooner doesn't change correction. No, I mean when I saw Miss Logan after
190they just went to a conference and you know heard some of these things and I'm sure she was engaged in a lot of treasures I think were probably engaged deeply in conversation about they haven't seen something like this in their careers. Yeah. Um and I just asked Mrs. Logan I I am so perplexed at how they think they're not going to get sued. Um the DOL case in Ohio has been and funding in Ohio has been found unconstitutional. numerous times and you just made it worse. You just funded schools worse. And like I don't know about you guys, but I pride myself on being in a state that wants to be in the top of the nation. And we're I heard a legislator say this. We're like at 45th in the in the amount of
191funding our state provides to our students. We're 45th in the nation. Like that's that's ex that is so poor. And it's like you can't say you're not you don't you you haven't been presented the problems. You've been presented all the problems. You it's there. What are you doing like find a way find a path? Like I understand it's a big expenditure for our state. But man 45th I don't know about you but if I'm I'm a legislator 45th out of 50 and if you count the territories I'm I'm not feeling too good about being 45th if I'm a legislator. I have a quick question for both of you, Mr. Lewis and M. Logan. Would it be something we might want to consider as a board to write a letter as the board from the district
192to the committee or to I think so. Okay. Would that be passing a resolution? Yes. How would we I I wouldn't wait for that. Um I think um I think you all have individual stories that are I'm look I'm looking at you Dr. Seer and the I think one of the pieces that um has has been hurtful to all of us is this um this fight that that seems that some legislators believe is happening between private and public schools in our community. We believe in that choice. We believe that, you know, we don't think bad against our private schools. We believe that we all work together for the benefits of our kids. Correct. And so I feel like your your story with that you're a business person like we all have individual stories that I
193think is compelling and important while the board voice is great. Okay. Your individual stories. Okay. are better. I agree 100% with that. But a resolution is then more public to our community. It is. And it shows the community what is going on. So I think you need both. I think you But I I'm not kidding. Next week your personal story, your personal connection needs to go. And then at the next board meeting, I absolutely agree. A resolution from our board. It's a statement to our community. I think that is strong. But I would not wait to on those personal send us the address. Yeah. But also getting the community I think the community also would want to if they knew about this would want to do something and in fact would look at us and
194say why didn't you tell us? Yeah. Um, so timing is an is crucial. How do we get that word out to the PTO's to sack to different organizations now because timing is of the essence. So there are some resources um from some other school districts who have been doing this and so we can share some of those ideas with our PTOs and um boosters groups and maybe they can use some of those ideas and sycamorize it and use that. Can you also send it to us so that we Yep. And I would say you put this as a topic on our next Absolutely. Yeah. What we can do, what we can do too is when we share our stories, um, people can use like copy and paste or use our information and and also tell
195their own personal story, right? So, just reminding it's not just the board members that say tell their personal story. It's every community member, anybody who would like to talk about public education and your school and your story for your students, our students and what our students need and how this is not going to be helpful for Sycamore. Yeah. If this passes, we need to and we need to talk to our legislators and now senators because that's who it's going to. Um, but we can't forget about the House members members and the governors too because the governor and I veto it and get it out of there. But the senators are the urgent right now. It's you just have to hurry up because they're going to create their everything's been sped up so much. In a
196few weeks, you're gonna start. Yeah. So, I have a question just so I know that we're on recording or whatnot right now. If students wanted to instead of writing a letter do a video, would anybody actually watch it is my question. I don't know. Uh because a lot of kids do like prefer that genre. Um I will so I just ask every legislator ha they have an aid or more aids that work in their office and they are the ones who are dealing with this communication piece and then um I I think there's a a good chance that um if our students sent something their voice in a a video type of format I think there's a good chance that those aids for that our legislators would listen to that as well. I just want
197to put that out. That's the way they communicate. That's how that's why I wanted to ask the question. So if they're watching or parents are watching, they can you know their kids really feel compelled and you can also call you can make phone calls. There's you can go on the website and find out how to reach your senator and you can they tell you how you can reach them. also wondering if like okay it would be powerful from Sycamore but it'd be nice to have like a I don't know a group of students from our local area schools that you know I'm just looking at Megan because she connects with like the people in her role from teaching and learning and like to me having one student from each district locally talk about the impact
198and if they understand it I don't want to put our students on a spectacle that was the students are not going to understand not a lot of education though. I'll be honest with you, they I think our students do want to advocate for their schools and we would just have to give them talking points. But I think they could also talk passionately about what are you doing what are what what would your decisions do and how would they impact my school? But really, I think it's parents, it's the community members and the parents, too. Because at the end of the day, these are our kids schools, right? Our kids go to school in Sycamore and we need to um this would devastate Sycamore. This would absolutely devastate our school district. And there's no question about
199it. So, how what can we say? And think about how fortunate we are. Think about some of the schools that would absolutely torpedo. I mean it's devastating for us but there are other colleagues in our state that I mean you will be sending out some resources resources and talking points to include in a letter because community people will say I want to do this but I don't even know what to say. Yes. And I I am looking at Brody at our one of our last sessions. We literally one of our members stood up in front of all of us and she went into chat GPT and real time we watched and it we designed a communication to our legislators and the points that need to be um made and it was it was awesome. So,
200um, there's there's ways we can help, but it's everybody's looking for ways to connect with them the right way. So, okay. Well, I'm going to move us into best practices. Um, there is something called um the Alliance for Smarter School Spending with GFLA, which the go is the Government Finance Officers Association. and I have been part of this and I would recommend that um Brody, Brad, Megan, Chad and I do this training next year and it's called it's smarter school spending and their their roadmap is plan and prepare set instructional priorities pay for the priorities implement the plan and ensure sustainability. There's way more than that, but that is that five five-step approach. The other piece to all of this is academic return on investment. We've talked about this a lot today and we just
201haven't used this term. Um it's that you know responsible staffing and respon it's it's this academic return on investment and to practice. It's the practice of evaluating how effectively financial resources are being used to improve student outcomes. Um, so I just want to us us to commit to continue that learning that Megan talked about and I think these are two ways that we could do this. Would you would you include your communication trainer in this because I think that last piece to learn how to speak that language and then communicate it to our community would be super beneficial. I believe that I first of all when I said that small group do this training I believe in train the trainer like so it would not stop with us. We would get the training we would
202learn it and then we would continue the training of other people. The academic return on investment is something you could take to the entire community. Yes. And it would it would you know help on our legacy. It and our communication making this decisions. I might be missing I'm sorry that I I'm gonna have you go back. You're saying considering best practices. Are you Is this something? Is this a program? Can you explain what this is? Are you saying you're going to So there's some type of training? Yes. Okay, there's an actual program um and lots of different trainings to and um to help you work through that fivestep fivestep approach and um the academic return on investment the same thing like there's training on how to do it and what they usually recommend is to
203take like one or two things that you want to work through uh with the academic return on investment and then you just continue that work, but you got to do the training first um to understand and to learn how to to do it. So, yes. And you're going to do this before you come to the board to submit to us a plan for financing the district. Is that what you're saying? Or just in general, you're just going to do this? We we believe we are utilizing best practices already, but this is just to strengthen that and to and honestly this is an alliance with other school districts around the nation and we learn from one another. Um and we're not recreating the wheel like it's like I talked about there's resources on advocacy. There's lots
204of resources on how other school districts have made this happen and it's worked for them. And so it's examples and we can learn from each other. So yeah, that's great. Thank you. So, um, next steps, this is the action, um, the timing of the financial parameters I have on here for our next board meeting. But I would also say that maybe it makes more sense we do it when we we adopt the next five-year forecast, which is beginning of May, in May, the second board meeting in May. So maybe it makes more sense to do it then like okay here's our um revised five-year forecast and we're gonna adopt the financial parameters at that same financials. Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying change this instead of April 23rd we change it to the May second board
205meeting. What date does anyone know what that date is off my head? I can look on my calendar. Yeah. for the second board meeting. I just and then we've kind of we've talked through um the others, but I just, you know, I don't want us to just get in a room and have this time together on Saturday and then not and then it goes away and we forget about it and there's no action. So, we've definitely talked about some action steps in this. How do we communicate those action steps to the community? Obviously, part of it is the fin the financial parameters resolution in the May second. Um, one of our goals is to increase communication, right? Well, you know, do we do we do something on do we do a town hall on this?
206Do we do a a presentation by our wonderful treasurer? Is there something you could do for sack? Because we do we do have a meeting on Monday. But yeah, I think it needs to be bigger than sack. I I I don't disagree with sack. I'm just saying bigger definitely start. Why don't um why don't I talk to Meg? Yeah. And see what her ideas would be. Um I have met with Meg. Brody and I met with her to talk about um I I'm going to call it a financial perspectus, but it doesn't have to be called that. It can be called it's an annual report to our community members. Um and we are working with her on putting together a a financial an annual report that would go to our community members. our entire community,
207our entire community reaching that 70% and it would be a printed document that is mailed to every household. I agree with Dr. James. I really like that. So, we are we are we've already met we're working on on that. Um will that be used in social media too because for people who don't like can we on multiple platforms? Absolutely. It would be an could have an electronic version as well as something a little different. I think something I I agree use everything but mailing is you're more likely to reach the 70% through mailing than it is and I think you know if there's room in the mailing you know on the last if you're doing some kind of trifold you can put some of what we just talked about today yes in it as well
208here's the things the board's committed to y so I would just if we're not going to do this till May I don't know what the timing of your release of this is let's make sure that it's after Well, what Meg and I and Brody talked about was it makes sense to do it at the end when we finish this fiscal year. Okay. And so we would be looking at next fall to go be mailed out to everybody. So, okay, I just want to thank everybody for your time. This is I mean this is a long time to be talking. Um but I appreciate your time. Um, and you know, there's a lot going on. Um, and a lot of decisions being made that are outside of decisions we can even make. So, um, we'll just
209keep we'll just keep working, keep fighting the good fight. I appreciate everything you did putting all this information and I think your voice at the state level is a strong voice, not just for us, but any school district. So, I appreciate your advocacy um to legislators. You are a a voice they listen to hopefully. Well, I keep trying. So, thank you for thank you for this. Thank you for you've been doing this for as long as you've been in our district and this has led up to this point and we you have given us a road map from from the day you started to now and I appreciate you continuing on that path. And I will say I know we talked about the auditors meeting. There was an auditor's meeting just for anyone listening uh
210where the auditors of Hamilton County, Warren County um and Montgomery County came together and they presented um they presented information on how to hopefully sort of tackle some of the um crisis that's going on in property tax rises which is all over the states all over the country and Mrs. Logan was the uh voice of school district. So she actually explained the 20 mil floor which is a very complicated challenging thing to explain and even I had to go home and like reread about it and try to understand it even better because it's tough and the impacts that it has on taxpayers and it does have a major attack impact on taxpayers. It does and it's hard and it's not pitting taxpayers against school districts and then causing people to have to go back to
211levies and then who wants to put on walking shoes and knock on doors every two years? Not most people, right? So, it's a tough tough situation and thank you for being a voice that was there and you're you're just explaining it. You're an educator, which is wonderful. And now, as a school board, we just have to keep educating ourselves and following this process. We will get things thrown at us. And I like that we're going through actual steps, right? We're meeting, we're talking about it. We don't know all the answers. We do not know what will come, but we will absolutely follow steps. We will listen to the professionals. We will advocate for our district. we will communicate with our district and if we don't know an answer, we're going to figure it out. Right.
212That's I appreciate that. I mean, it's a good point that you brought up that it's we didn't just start advocating. We've had u our superintendent, our treasurer at the table constantly and meeting with our legislators and senators, etc. So, thank you very much. But this wasn't just something that started happening. That's right. for for months for years really. Well, and the other thing I want to say too is you know we just talked about November 2026 levy. We just talked about it and but it's not the first time we've talked about this. We have been talking about it um and we'll continue to talk about it. Um you can find it on our board meetings as well because you've held many retreats many meetings on finances throughout they are within our board you know videos
213you can see them in the meeting minutes they are there and we've been talking about this for months and I I just want to say though too um kudos to all of you because not many school boards will sit for this long on a Saturday to talk about finances and since I've been here this is our third financial retreat. We had a town hall like the financial stability of this district is important to you and you are committed to it. So, thank you for that. I appreciate it. So, I just have a quick question before the end of the meeting. Um, last week you mentioned a possibility of having a special board meeting next week. Is there an update on that? I was just I was I would say we'll get back to you because
214we got some more new information from Dave Lampy, our attorney, just saying u I don't think it's as critical mass as we thought it was just as he dug into it, looked at our policies, looked at kind of the things we need to certify. It might just be some minimal things. So, we'll get back to you, but I don't think it's as critical mass as we thought it was. And the timing changed as well. Yes. Okay. Okay. Push back. I think you got more time. Well, we'll take a week. Thank you. Is ajourned. Thank you.