001There we go. Good evening. Welcome to the Gresian Barllo Board of Education budget hearing. Um, we will do roll call for this. Um, I see Shan Barnes. I see Blake Peterson, Myra Gomez, myself, Chris Howitt, Holly Regalman, and David Ligic. With that, we do have a quorum for the budget hearing. The budget hearing, I will give a quick purpose for that. Um, let's see. I'm trying to get to it, Sarah. Okay. So, I'm go back to this page. So on April 9, 2025, the superintendent director of finance presented the district's 202526 proposed budget for the 14 member budget committee. The committee approved the proposed budget at that time. District policy DBG/DBH budget hearing and adoption procedures and RS294.453 requires a public hearing prior to board adoption of the next year's budget. That is this hearing.
002And what we have right now is I do have one person that submitted a comment for the budget hearing and that is Samantha McWills. And uh yes, if you would go ahead and come down here to this front um desk and I see that you have written some things for us and you can do your your comments. Welcome this evening. Thank you. I've never done this before. Do I just start asking questions? So, go ahead and um I see that you have some questions on here and I need for you to make sure that the microphone is right close to you so that it picks up and it can be heard by by Sarah in particular and people who are watching. So, okay. Um I'll just tell you historically we don't get people who generally
003come to this hearing. We usually sit here for 15 minutes and just wait. So, I am not entirely sure of the process other than um I'll just read if you want to read your questions or do you want me to read them? Um I can read them. Why don't you go ahead and read? Okay. All right. So, I did I have looked through the budget somewhat. Um my husband Nick was on the the budget committee is still on the budget committee. Um and so I did attend and observe um the meeting where the budget was approved in amount. Um as as I'm a parent, I'm a volunteer and a substitute teacher here in the district. I've met some of you before at the safety summit um and in other capacities. Um, one of my concerns
004is wanting to know how the budget is supporting the new safety plan that the district has already started implementing um, and plans to continue to implement during the next school year. Um, so I would like to know some more specifics of how the budget is supporting that process. um as well as the MTSS, the multi-system or multi-tered systems of support for student behavior. Um so that's one of my questions. Should I ask the next one or So I think as I'm looking through this, I believe and and our board secretary will always correct me if I'm incorrect. Um I believe what we would get is this right now and then on our agenda we have a section where we actually approve the budget and I believe at that time I'm going to hand this piece
005of paper to the to the superintendent and so we will have the discussion about your questions during that time. So go ahead and read um your other questions. Uh my second question is regarding um the admin area of the budget. Um at the the meeting where the budget was approved, there was a question at the end regarding the increase um in three FTEES um for admin personnel. And at that time uh the district was going to investigate why the budget was showing that increase. Um, and so I wanted to follow up on that just to make sure that um, that does get answered and clarified. And then you have one more question. Oh, yes. Um, are there any areas of the budget that the board has considered reallocating um, considering the cuts that have been
006made to FTEES for next year? Um, one example, um, that I'm curious about is we are saving I think it's around $500,000 a year for the turf fields. And I know that is something that is planning for the future to ensure that we don't have a huge expense when those fields do need to be replaced. Um, but I'm curious if the board has considered maybe reducing some of that savings um with planning for a potential future bond in a few years when those turf fields are needed. Um, and my reason for asking that is because I feel that the money is needed for other things now and that the turf fields could potentially be funded by another source later. Okay. So, thank you. I appreciate that. And like I said, I will hand this to
007the superintendent. I keep looking at something that's not a watch. Um, and we will discuss it then when we get to that. And I was looking to see when that item comes up on here. It is after the recognitions. And I know we have a number of students and things that are here. It is one of our first action items um after a recess. So, I don't know if you want to stay that long or you were hoping to kind of be here and then answer your questions. But yeah, so it's it's going to be um after we have the recognitions um a brief recess and then um the budget adoption is our first action item. So um so that should give the superintendent time to review your questions and I know some of these
008have been brought up previously as well. So um anything further that you want to add to that? No, that's everything. Thank you. All right, go ahead and turn the microphone off down there. Thank you. Um, was there anyone else that wanted to speak to the budget hearing which is the portion that we're in right now? Um, if you have anything, they go on the same yellow speaking to the uh, citizens comments to the board. And I don't see anyone else doing that. So, we have five more minutes that we're in the budget hearing and then we will start our business meeting. And we have another full agenda that we're doing with the business meeting. Number of students that are here tonight for recognition. So, we will have that going in just a few minutes. I'm
009going to turn my microphone off. And while people are waiting, I'll just remind them that during our regular business meeting, we do have a section for uh public comment. So, if you were wanting to do that later in our business meeting, now would be the time to turn those in. Chair Howit, do we want to go ahead and close the hearing and then we can start the business meeting? So the Sorry, wow, that's so loud. Um the um budget hearing is now closed. We will move into our regular board business meeting. Welcome to the Gresian Braard of Education. Sher Howitt, I need to end this Zoom. Oh, just end it. Just I thought I said 30 seconds really quick. Oh, okay. Okay. All right. Ending. Well, it says 7 o'clock. Yep. All right. Ending the
010budget hearing.