001You ready? All right. Well, good evening. Um, and welcome to our budget workshop. Uh, to get things started, since I don't know everybody yet, uh, we thought we'd do introductions and we're going to go around this way and then we'll we'll finish with Linda who then can kind of get us started through the process. So, I'm Dan Bush. I'm the superintendent. I started here on July 1st and maybe uh briefly your connection or affiliation to the district as you go around so that I can that will help me remember who you are and your names and whatnot. So we'll go around the room this way. Diane. Um I'm Diane Loch. I am the school board secretary and the assistant to Dan superintendent. I'm Jenny Scott. I'm a board member. Heidi Torian, board member. And I
002I just was think Kelsey and I were just talking about how it's been a year since we were sitting here interviewing you. Oh, wow. And I I just thought of that when I put this shirt on because I wore this shirt last year. Actually, I may have worn this shirt for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, it's gone fast and I just can say I'm I'm more than pleased about everything. Oh, well, thank you. Uh Kelsey Newkerk, board member. I've got three kiddos in the high school and graduated from North as my parents and my grandparents. Uh Glenn Holm, uh board member since 17 maybe 2017. Um former alumni, graduated 91. Um have four kids that graduated from here. Merl Stzman, board of directors, longtime resident of the district going on SP. Uh Jimmy, I'm
003currently have uh two grandchildren in the North Gra school system. Um I myself went through fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades here many years ago. Um, and I've worked with various uh fire districts, city of Hover in various positions also uh on budget committees and uh it's my connection. I'm James Jones. I have four children in the school district and I love serving our school. I think it's a wonderful place for our kids to be. Mike Williams, neighbor for 30 years. I live down Fry Road. No kids, no relatives. Everyone's school here, so I'm unaccompanied. Uh, I'm Jill Schauer. My I grew up on Fry Road. My parents have lived there for 39 years. Um, I am a K12 alumni of the district as are my parents. Um, I have a son in the district,
004a new daughter in the district, and I'm a spouse to an educator in the district. Jill, what's your parents' last name? Leier. Oh, I went to school with Danny. Not Danny. Um, Trac Terry. Terry. Terry. My mom. Terry. What's she? She's married to Ken. And she worked here for a while. Yeah. We're just doing introductions. Okay. Um, I'm Stacy Miller. I've got um two kids in the high school and I'm a business owner. We farm hazelnuts just down the road and yeah, sorry, sorry for being late. No problem. It's a busy time of year for everyone. I'm Linda Murray. I'm the business manager here. Been here for about 24 years. This is my last year. So, I will be retiring June 30th. I have two boys that graduated from here. One is a teacher at
005the high school and I have two grandchildren. That's the district. We've lived in this area for a long, long time. It's in my blood, that's for sure. Just also to note that uh Emily Hammock is trying to get on the Zoom, so we're trying to kind of communicate that to her. Okay. I can't So I am Dian. Okay. All right. Um do we want to give it a minute or shall we just go? Um, I think I would just go ahead and get started because it's recorded. She can catch up and she got this earlier. So, um, so as many of you know, this has been a very challenging year for putting a budget together. Um we at North Marian along with many districts in the state have had to do reduction tightening and cuts
006and looked at ways to save money to present a balanced budget which we'll do next week. Um, so I wanted to walk you through, this is a little bit different format than what I've done in the past, but I kind of wanted to walk through how they started with a punch hole in these because you'll get a binder and if you want to keep them, you can put them in the binder. So, um, the very first uh bullet point is on page Oh, I punched holes in the pages. page one um is enrollment trends and uh Jay was nice enough to point out that I have a problem already since 2015 16 is what it should read enrollment has dropped by 427 students um we are graduating 135 and only 90 incoming kindergarteners are what
007we're estimating though that's where most of our problem is coming from for funding because we continue to go down. We get about $11,000 a student. So for every 45 students, it's about a half a million dollars. So we've been looking at that and it's been trending that way for a while. We have a fail safe built into the way they fund school. So you get the higher of your prior year ADMW, which is average daily membership weighted or the current, whichever is higher. That fail safe has been keeping us going for a while, but our fail safe between um this current year and next year is only 10 students. So that's $100,000. That's not going to get us there. So we need to be thinking about that as we go through this budget process. And
008our budget two years and uh we have been thinking about this since I've been thinking about this since at least December and with us since January. So, it's it's um heavy on our minds. Um you know, this is a trend that's happening. We have fewer children being born, fewer kindergarteners coming in. It's it's happening across the state and the country. It's it's where we're at. So, we have to look at a little longer term of how we're going to take care of this. Um the funding challenges we're having uh the 11.359 billion which is what we have allocated at the moment and that's what our um state school fund estimates have been based on are we are being told are all we're going to get in that bucket. We have a revenue forecast coming out
009May 14th for the state. Um there's been no movement at the legislature with any bills that had had any funding tied to it for about 10 days because they're waiting for that court pass. We have a lot of federal uncertainty and whether or not that funding will come in or not makes a big difference statewide. So we have to watch all these little different pieces, some little, some big. And um it makes it hard to budget, but we all have to have one done approved and adopted by June 30th. So, we we keep moving forward and do our best. Um, a good friend of mine has always said a budget is good for about one day and then something changes. For me, it's as good as the day you maybe print it, but something has
010already changed and some things have already changed. Yeah. So, we'll we'll do the best we can with what we at the moment. Um, so, as all of you know, we've made some staff reductions. Um this uh spreadsheet says how you have 32 physicians reduced um including three administrative 18 licensed and 11 classified physicians. We that's a combination of risks uh retirements attrition type stuff resignations and we had had some uh staff that were contracted employees because we couldn't get anyone to apply for certain jobs mostly IAS uh throughout the district. So those will not be brought back unless we have an opening or two. We when we got when everything was said and done, we do have one or two openings. So there will be a couple positions posted. Um the reduction in force um
011was not did not hit the classified because of those contracted employees basically. So they did not have any reductions as far as current people. They may have a different position, but they're still here. um program cuts that are happening for next year. Um our cross country swimming, the awesome program, uh changes to the instructional leadership and the way we uh do that tag implementation will be changing. um the OBOP coordinator at the grades three through five and some electives including middle school arts, high school arts and computer science programs are also affected by this. Uh this budget is being built with a 3% contingency which is way down from the 4 and a half figure before and the 6% that the board would like but in these times it's hard to budget with a little
012more than that. what you'll see from me when I bring it to you Monday the 19th might be a little bit different. Um, and you'll hear why as we go down this. Um, we don't want to not mention that our unions made concessions um by foregoing tuition reimbursement and personal leave buyback and two for furlow days in this current year. Those were things that did help um balance the budget as to where we're at. Um to continue with this, I gave you some more numbers. The financial impact and what that could do because of our enrollment. If you're going down 45 to 65 kids in 2627, that's 495 to $700,000. If you add that to 2728 with which also looks like we're going down, that's almost a million to a million.4,000. So a million dollars.
013So, it's this is a problem that's going to continue. This is not unless we can turn it around and find ways to bring kids back, maybe an online program or a charter school or something like that. This is going to continue here and in many districts across this state. Um, it's something that I hear from all of my peers right now. There's about four that say, "Sorry, I don't have your problem." The rest are all in this boat. So, we we're going to work as hard as we can to make it the best we can and the least impactful to our students and our staff. Um, I don't think I need to uh read everything here. Um, the potential funding sources that may be coming in are things that I really I want to um
014talk about tonight. When we got our PERS estimates for this spe for this bianium they they went up about 10%. We have um a couple buckets for PERS tier one and tier two people and observe people we sometimes refer to as tier three. Those percentage have percentages have been very low. our observe actually was zero because we have some side accounts that went up to 8.79% and our um tier one and tier two was about 1.38% and went up to 12%. So when you put that together that was about $1.4 million um cost to the district without changing anything. Now that was based on the staff we had at the time. We're not funding that many staff. So the cost is not going to be quite as great, but it's still a big a big
015deal for North Mar. So they have there's a bill in the legislature that I believe the governor just signed, but the actuarial for PERS has to run the numbers. So we should find out any day, maybe by the end of this week, what our numbers actually will change to and what that might save us. I believe it's going to be around $230,000. that will save us districtwide. The other um piece is because of everything we've done and you'll see that on on um a few pages in uh with our we we closed off purchase orders early. We asked staff to not spend any money if they could help it. We got those two furlow days and we made all those reductions in staff. with that the the budget at the moment is balanced with about
016300,000 more than the 3% contingency. So keep keep these numbers. They're going to keep building until I get to the end. Um there's a potential for some changes in um sped costs or sped funding from the state highost disability which is now funded at maybe 40% of what you spend. So, we get money for every $30,000 over that a student ask costs us. And we have students that cost us 80 and $90,000. Okay? But the difference, say it's 80,000, that difference of 50,000, we might only get 40% of that 50,000. So, we might get 20,000 more for that student instead of, but they've already cost us 30 and we get about 11,000 per student. Now, there might be another weight in there. The other thing is there's a uh an IEP weight of 11% that's
017been with the state for forever. That's what every district gets. Most people have around 15% um sped student populations and so we're not getting the full weight anyway to begin with and then you have all these high cost students that cost a lot more. So they're looking at ways to help that. There's been talk um that maybe that'll be about 200 million for the bianium. So 100 million or if they do it 4951 we really don't know how they'll split it but that could mean I'm thinking about 130 to 1360,000 for me. Don't know for sure. We may not have these answers till way late in June. We're going to have to adopt a budget knowing we don't have the all the answers. I I always say put the numbers in, but you're not spending
018till you see it. That way, your appropriations are there so you can spend it if they do come in. So, what we're watching and considering are any other cost cutting measures we can come up with. I mean, we'll be looking at or maybe not we, the district. How's that? I'm not going to be I will encourage the district to look at transportation. We can cut a route or two. Um routes cost us quite a bit a year. We spend over $2 million on busing um for special education and the regular routes. Um, and we do get 70% of that back, but we're still spending about 30 30%. And that's all part of your state school. So, it just gets baked in there. It isn't like somebody gives me a check for 70% of $2 million.
019So, um, we're continuing to align staffing to enrollment and we have to continue to do that. Um, we're thinking of maybe considering developing targeted programs to attract and retain students. Um, we're worried about the federal uncertainty and what will happen there. The latest we heard is that we should be quat funded for our title one and IDA funding. Um, IDEIDA has to do with special education. We fund about 12 to 16 staff with that money. If it's flat funded, okay, at least I can maybe do 10 to 14. So if it's flat, that doesn't account for the purse increase. It doesn't account for the cost of living increases we've given. It doesn't account for the staff increases that on all of our students or all of our staff. So those are those are big things.
020The biggest thing that everyone at the state level is waiting for and all of my counterparts is the state school fund or the revenue forecast coming out on the 14th. So whether that's going to be positive, flat, or negative is going to make a difference as to what we get in maybe some of these other pockets I've talked about like the high cost disability and the 11% rate. So we'll see where that goes. The next spreadsheet is just a graph, but I want you to see that the difference in our enrollment. Now, this is just enrollment. This isn't with weights or anything. This is where the number of students official enrollment October one of any given year. So I think some might be looking at this page. Did I not get that page myself? Oh,
021I didn't flip it. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. We are to this one. Um so the this is how we develop the general plan budget and that's the fund we we are worried about the most uh because it funds most things at the district. So in January when I came to um the boards, the administrators and when Dan and I went to all the staff, we were 2.8 million in the whole with the current staff that we had and all of the things that I've already talked about. So with what we thought enrollment would be and everything, we were 2.8. So then if you go over to the kind of the tannanish I don't know orang-ish salmony color the estimated budget for February March of 2025 that's after our staff said yes we'll give you two furlow
022days we won't ask for purse um or for personal buyback we did all the riffs we're not adding back all this staff then we're at about $255,000 ahead of the game that feels better things keep moving things keep changing At that time I thought that our beginning fund balance would be 2.1 million which will be it means that's this year's ending fund balance 4.5 rolls into next year as money. Okay. Then we got some bad news from the state and things got ugly and I thought well we're probably only going to have 1.7 million. But we had other changes other things came on. uh less less more savings throughout the district in um cost cutting measures, those sorts of things, more changes with with staff. So then at late April, I was thinking we were
023about $400,000 ahead of ourselves. We had some more changes. So now I'm saying we have about $682,000. That's with that um 300,000 I already talked about and this 800 is there. We had some more changes that cost us more money. Oh, that would have been more like a 725,000. Um, basically everything on this page will change by the time you see it next Monday. That's just how it goes. Um, we were given another grant um for $300,000 just this last week. Um, and we just basically heard about it Thursday or Friday of last week. So that will change the number of FTE. We will we will probably hire one person for that. We haven't looked at exactly how that's going to work out, but those are the things that just changed just when you open
024your email. So that's that's where we're at. So now we are to the enrollment page. So this is what I'm trying to hammer home, I guess. um is the enrollment expected from 2025, which would be October 1, through 2029. If it continues the way it is, we're just going to keep going. So, what can we do to change that or um I'm not going to go through the official enrollment. This is my grade level if anybody is interested. But it gives you a good idea of how you can see where um in 2024 we had 89 kindergarteners and 135 seniors. You're going to you're not not going to bring in the same amount of money every year if that keeps happening. And we're expecting that. Um right now the enrollment for kindergarten is one more
025than last year this month. So looks like it will be about 90 again. the same idea where you're going to have a senior flax of 152. So that's going to again that's going to be even higher next time you're like 60 from year to year unless we can figure out something. Um we've done a lot of staffing work and I think I pretty much summarized it in the beginning of this um you know we take the staff that we had at a certain point in time. and I took December, rolled it forward, and that's how I came up with the only worse. That's when we said, "We can't do this. We're going to be broke. We are broke. Let's do something about it." And so that's when we started all of this um um work
026with the administrators and talking to the buildings and all of the sorts of things. Um we do have under that section that says what this looks like for North Marian. So, we're budgeting 32 less. Now, tomorrow or when you see this next week, it might be 31 less because I'm going to have one more because of that grant. Um, we have prioritization lists um created to for staff advaxs. Um, Dan worked really hard with the administrators to see, okay, these are the cuts we've made. What would you prefer in your building to have added back? First and second and third and fourth and on so on. So if we can get to a point where we believe we can add one or two people back that those priorities will be taken into consideration. And as
027Linda said earlier, we also keep a really close eye on our enrollment. We know we have some pockets in other places. And sometimes it's it's wise to hold off until it's not always easy, but sometimes it's wiser to hold off until August when you actually start when people, you know, start paying attention to enrolling their kids if they've moved here or have a kindergarter. So sometimes it's not great for planning, but it's better to apply that FTE or that person where you know you have a bubble at a at a grade level. So that might be something you hear later. The next graph is just a comparison of um yeah a comparison of the our enrollment since 1516 which was our highest enrollment and then your staffing and then the change and then basically the
028staffing ratio. This is all staff to our students and the fact that it was 9.35 back then went down to 772 and now we're looking at 774. It's just information for you guys. Um, the next page is is the staff reduction of those 32 I talked about and where they came from and how that looks and what kind of percentage that was bridge, but no need to go into any more detail on that. Um, the following graph is associated payroll costs. I'm sorry the plots's not the same, but life fell in my way to get this perfect. Um, and I wanted to get enough years on here to to show the when the associated payroll costs go up, it's usually due to PERS. Everything else doesn't fluctuate that much, but PERS is what hurts every
029time it hits. And we're at a hit stage for a few years now, according to PERS. So, we're at this um projecting to be 43 and 40%. It may go down both of those numbers. Um, that includes everything. That's spurs and social security and unemployment and paid leave organ and all those things. But it may go down each of those by 1.68%. That's something. So you'll see it down. Where would that 1.68% come from? Where does it come from? Yeah, you said that might be 1.68% less. Um, every staff member that's a PERS member, the cost to us would be 1.6. 68 less for their PERS portion. That's a number given to you by PERS. That's the number that the legislature and their PERS people put out right now. That's the bill that just got
030signed and we're waiting to see if it's really going to be the last state. that um one of the things that makes it harder for North Marian and anybody else that has a first side account, which is a bond we took out to pay off the unfunded liability, sometimes that side account always, not sometimes, affects the numbers. So where somebody else might be paying 48% because of our side account, we're paying 83 total social cost. So that savings will be there. That might be a place that we hold off because of our declining enrollment and just hold on to it and say, you know what, we budgeted for this. We know it's not going to happen, but we're not going to spend it either because of our declining enrollment and the fact that we believe
031we'll be at least 500,000 half a million shortage. vegetables. Um there were other there was other budget work that you guys um if you saw this earlier I've reviewed this already but um you know some of the criteria we use for extracurricular was what kind of enrollment what kind of numbers do we have what kind of participation um how how many students would it affect if we cut this program um and title n considerations um is participation maybe trending up and so maybe we wouldn't cut that program but the on we've listed are the ones that we um were very very low open and made sense to say we're not paying a stipen for that. We're not going to run that program next year. Not saying that it can't change the following year, but it's
032something that we work we worked on and have out of the budget from health. Um I've already mentioned uh I believe all the rest of that page. Um the next two pages are the state school fund estimates for 2324 which we just got the final number on April 29th for that. So I actually wouldn't mind you looking at just the little page. So it tells you when we first get our first estate in February of 2023. So a hold two years plus earlier. They're using estimated numbers. They're using the teacher experience that's wrong. everything on it is basically wrong. And then you get to your actual numbers when everybody gets done with all their reporting and then you can see what those numbers might be. The ADMR for the state was lower than they expected.
033The weight was lower than they expected which means that your funding ratio is going to go up because it's still the same bucket of money they're they're putting out for all those 600 or 530,000 kids. So the next page is a a graph that shows you what our estate school fund was going to be for 23 24 over that two-year period. And you can see it's crazy. North Marian has about a third of the state school funding. Some of these numbers when they gave them to us were wrong and they told us that right away. Some of them were correct. But then a big district went, "Oh, I made a big mistake." and then that affects Montre because we're just a third of a percent. So, um just I thought it would be interesting for
034you guys to see it and have that to look at. Uh the next page is similar. It's the 2425 and where we're at so far. So, I haven't built a graph, but that's just figuring you can see there's fluctuation all the time. This is where I wanted to talk about the fail safe though. If you look at the estimate under um April 29th, 2025, the uh blue section where greater of current or prior year, well, that difference is only six kids. That's not much money. 60 $70,000 where before we've had a difference of 40 and 50, that's big money that they're still letting you work off of. And now now that has changed quite a bit. Sorry. Um I like to keep this page in here. It's the contingency um and ending fund balance history
035because it's it's been going for a long time how much this has fluctuated. um OSBA, uh different boards all want a different amount, but it's it's always been a hope of mine to have one month's worth of bills in contingency. We do we're not anywhere close. We're uh our one month's bills right now, I think, is 2.2, probably be a little less next year because of all the staff reductions, but we're at about $77,000. So that's not even close. One or two bad things happen and you're going to be really tight with your money. Sorry. But I also don't think that it's appropriate to say we need to keep a six or a 10% or that 1% or that one month contingency when we're making cuts to spend. So I think you know the board
036agreed with that that we will build our budget on the 3% and so that's what we did. Uh just so you know the numbers at the bottom half are um an estimate and if our budget was 25 million it's not going to be exact 25 million but that 3% will be at least that when I put the budget out. Uh this is just information that at some point the state asked me if I included this in any budget workshops or meetings and I'm going to say yes I did. It kind of gives you an idea though years ago we did not have that many um staff members budgeted out of grants whether they were state or federal and now we're up to 47 total that we are budgeted for those grants. Um you used to
037kind of go it's only 10 or 15 people if we're okay we'll just worry about general fund. You don't have to worry about it all because it's it's a big one. Um, then there's information about high school success that is trending down moneywise because that's based on enrollment. So, we'll see how that holds up. Um, student investment account is still a a good size one. Um, it is uh probably going to be less, but there's a couple of numbers out there for most of these, and that's the um governor's budget and the ways and means committee. Okay. Ways and unities are and they don't they're not the same right now. So, we're just waiting until May 14th basically what's going to happen. We once May 14th hits does not mean we'll get an answer on
038May 15th. They have to do a lot of work. So hopefully by June 1st we might know that. We'll see. That's pretty hopeful. Okay. How about June 15th? About it will come. Um the final page that's got a lot on it is the ESSER funds, the ESSER summary. Um this is something that we have to have in our document um to show where our ESSER funds were spent over the years. You can see this began in 2020 and went through September of 2024, but it just is the balance of what was spent and how it was spent and all of that. I want to point out that we did the HVAC project at the intermediate school to a tune of about a little over a million dollars, but that has um been um really good
039for us. Uh we we were fixing one, two, and three units every time the electricity went off. So we were spending a lot of money. So hopefully with that extra money, we're in good shape. So, our next steps, we're going to complete the budget document or I am um and this page didn't I have a different page that didn't get printed, but okay. Let's see if I can remember all that I'm going to say. Um no, no, I just have three bullet points for the budget. Um again, the revenue forecast is coming out. We may get the purse relief. We may get some progress on high cost disability appropriations and the IEP cap percentage and then the federal uncertainty is starting to clear up. It was really the move to get the title one and
040IDA because those as you saw in the earlier draft are already funded on the staff. So nice to know they're not going to cut it because originally they said they would cut that 20%. So that would have even lower. Um, I believe it would be prudent for us to put a reserve for next year in our budget of about a half a million dollars because with our declining enrollment, if we don't, we'll be right back in the same position next year where we'll be cutting staff. I don't think our staff wants to do that. I think we want to be as prepared as we can for that. So, if any of these things come through, the first relief, which we know is coming through, we just don't know what the amount is from. arian the
041high cost disability the IEP cap and the the extra about 300,000 that I have above the 3% I think with all of that that could be 650 700 I think the half a million of that should be in a reserve invest go into a contingency or could be budgeted a couple staff where thinks might be the best place so that's what I'll propose to you on next Monday night so that we are in a better situation next year and not leaving again like some districts who did this last year and are doing it again this year. That's not the situation we want to be. So, I've talked a long time. I'll take any questions. I have a question. That's um so just to be clear that reserve reserve that you're talking about would be separate
042from our contingency and that percentage and how would you designate that? There's a totally different account number for that and you can't spend it if you put it in reserve. Okay. Can't spend it. Can't spend. Um could you spend it if you had an action by the board? not the reserve but you can spend the contingency even that 3% you have the 766 or more wherever that ends that you can thank this uh definitions essenti Six steps. No, there's more. That was no elementary. Dave's got it. Elementary secondary success. Yeah. Something something. Okay. So, it was the COVID relief money that came in three different phases. Okay. And uh so the idea was to um take our students and um kind of bring them back in the school system and educate them with the extra
043money to get their scores back up. It was a mixture of a lot of different things. So it came out even while we were in distance. Sorry, I'm assuming that was the purpose of it. It was it was a variety of different purposes in each phase of that. So So some of the earlier phases were to do some HVAC. So part of it was getting ventilation so so buildings would be safer so you'd have better some of it was for all the PPE all the air purifiers and then as the different phases came through and you got to like SR3 then it started becoming how do we how do we get kids back from being out of school for so long but the bulk of it early on was really about uh your infrastructure and
044trying to improve the air quality. Is that your recollection somewhat? Yeah. close. Yeah. Uh the SR3 could be used for anything to continue education in any way, shape or form that was normal. So that opened up the world and then you had to spend it by September 30th of 2024. And so therefore, last year, those that were on the board remember me talking about the fact that we shifted some of the cost of some of our staff to ESRE to spend it out in time, leaving enough to finish that HVAC project. So, but that money is all gone. And that that's part of the issue for a lot of school district. We didn't rely on it to fund the staff on a regular year basis similar to the funds. Mhm. So, um, and some of
045these program awesome program safety on. There you go. And that was for is that you're cutting it out. What What was the students doing that? Very low enrollment at the high school. I know. But so the So, but what was this funds being spent on? I mean, was it like a advanced education or No, a stipen for a staff member to run the program. Okay. So, and I I would say that it was um in the 5,000 or under range as far as that would um I I don't have the numbers off top of my head, but it was it's not a lot after school program that so the reduction was for a stipen to pay a staff member to run the program. And the program was for I believe it was it was it
046high school and just high school? Just high school. Yeah. for drug awareness and um healthy awareness for students. I wonder health insurance not including payroll. Yeah, those associated payroll costs that are 40ish% don't include what we pay on a monthly basis for health insurance which next year will be $1,590 per person per month if they take it. And is that in here somewhere? it will be when you see your numbers on salaries and benefits. So, it has to be fair. Okay. So, that's why a lot of times you'll see uh the cost of a classified staff member, maybe they only work six hours, but they get full insurance when that you put their associated payroll cost. It's almost as much or is as much as the salary or the wage that they make because health
047insurance controlled by the state? No. Um well it's a state program or but the the amount is negotiated the the the amount the district pays is negotiated with each group with each group union group union group union group yes we negotiate but that is typically one and in most districts you'll see the rates usually pretty consistent for both groups and that's how it is here and we expect that to be stable for this next year $70 a month. So it was 1520. Yes, you're right. Sound right. 1520 and it's going up to 159 2526. And our transportation cost is a reimbursement from the feds state level from the state which gets their money from the feds. A lot of their money. Yes. Um the TRA So North Baron's reimbursement rate is 70% which is what
048most districts in the state are. But the outliers like Joseph and those that bust their kids forever, they might get 90% being nursed because their cost is outrageous compared to ours as far as first food if you broke that. So everybody's a little bit different, but I believe the lowest is 70% that is it could be 60. I I don't know how. Since the Department of Education is eliminated, can we expect the transportation reimbursement to continue or are we concerned? I'm not concerned about transportation because it's all tied into the state school funding. They've sat that at 11.356. Okay. I don't see the transportation funds are not coming from the federal level. So any federal cuts would not be coming hitting transportation. So the state's got covered. The state is currently covering it and would
049need to continue to cover that. Okay. And there only a few million in a home. Uh your fail safe I agreed six students is nothing. This half million and talked about setting aside for next year. Will that be in the fail safe category? It'll be in a category called reserve for next year. And like I said, we can't spend it. But the contingency that 3% or whatever that number turns out to be, let's say it's $750,000, it can be sent if something changes or happens. We're only allowed to save so much money on a budget filled by the state, aren't we? No. We can save more than the state. There's certain we have certain programs like our food service who don't like you to have more than three months worth of the cost of doing
050that running that program but they you you can explain why you do like maybe you needed to replace four ovens and so we have a little more or whatever it is but that because that's a federal grant you can't with you can't hold on to that for longer periods of time and you can't make redu reductions in special education to to for the most part you have something that's called maintenance of effort that you have to maintain. So if you're looking at making across the board reductions, you you don't really look at special education very closely because of the requirements that are what's called maintenance of effort, which our team's done a really good job of of making sure we're we're within that. And u what is there ratio now between student teachers? I didn't
051understand. That's so this isn't student to teachers, this is student to staff. I would have to look at the student to teacher, but I'd say that um um Dave, I think you're thinking around 28 to 30 for grade level next year. Got a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. And this year it was um between 19 and 21. Yeah. So, we're going to go up. They reduced a staff member at each grade. Um, what what determines by the name of a fund whether it can be spent or not spent? Who determines or what determines? You said budget reserve for next year you could not spend that will be in the general fund in an account code that is not spendable. Is that the district's decision that it's not spendable? Well, I think it ultimately would be
052the board, you know, the the budget committee will approve a budget that the board will then vote on. And so that is would be the recommendation that we would be coming with to have uh an amount set aside in account that cannot be spent. But ultimately determined the general fund you you can reserve in other funds, but the other funds pretty much are spoken for. You know, there's a reason there's a fund for food service. There's a reason there's a fund for title one and IDA. And you can only spend it on certain things. So, you would never have a reserve in title one or IDA. That's it's they don't allow that. What happens if you do not need to spend some of those designated funds carried over? You mentioned title one. Some some grants
053are have a carryover for a whole year. Um, IDA does, Title One does, um, most of the title grants usually. Um, with the federal uncertainty that we have, I have no idea if that'll continue, but let's just say that out loud. I have no idea. It's been allocated to the states now, so I believe we'll still have a carryover next year at least. I have a question. Um ear um earlier this year there was talk about reduction not reductions in staff but not too but um um concessions I suppose by the union um to aid the budget for this year and I was thinking next year too and I remember some conversation about those conversations for next year as far as maybe additional furlows or additional have those been considered yet or Is that next
054year's budget, next year's problem? And when do you know when new contract negotiations are or when that would be? Um the license negotiations will start next spring. Okay. And the classified just ended and we have a three-year contract. Okay. Um that you can always open a contract if you're having financial waves and talk about those things. Those are not things we're talking about right now. We have not talked about any of those things like Linda just said for 25 26 except what has already been agreed upon which is uh freezing the tuition reimbursement and the no buyback of personal days but those other aspects that we talked about maybe January February we have not been discussing with either union since. Are you concerned about measure 98 money since Oh yeah they fund so much. So
055like because that's that's state, right? Mhm. Yeah. And it's based on your enrollment and right next year your enrollment at the high school looks good. The following years it's going to start to triple down. So it's based on your enrollment at that grade level. This high school success measurement. So you if your enrollment holds steady, it shouldn't go down too much. But it's also funded through uh a tax. I can't think of that right now. The cat tax, the corporate activity corporate activity tax. So depending on where that lands, that can change. If we go into recession, the amount available for those funds might not be the same. When is the next contracts due for both our union? Well, um the the license goes through June of 2026 and the classified goes through June of
0562028. So, yeah. So, so we'll start bargaining next spring with the teachers. Um and then not for a couple more years with the classified, right? Yeah. At least they're not the same time. We try for that. We really do. Yeah. Now, we do have a reopener for the classified in the third year of the contract um to do with salaries and two articles of choice by each group. So, so there'll be some negotiating that third year. It just um but the classified is a small comparison to to the not that small. Not that small. 80 something people. Yeah. licensed are now 105 right here. Um looks like we're estimating 97 licensed and 89 classified. So the difference is not average categories. Yeah. Are we over spending on classifying those? I don't think so, Brad. No.
057No. We I mean we we need our secretaries to keep the front office welcoming and helping students, custodians, and then food service. Food service staff. Um and then we have a lot of those raas work with our special needs students and and perform a lot of different functions. So, and that's it's not uncommon to almost have a 50/50 in terms, you know, percentage of license and classify. That's not altogether uncommon since we're we're pretty close to that. Sure. Anybody else? One more definition. Sure. Yeah. OB Oregon Battle of the Books. So another afterchool club does a lot of different competitions, a lot of competitions within their school and then can go to some more regional or state competitions. And so that was just an area at that particular grade level where participation wasn't wasn't as
058high. So again, another after school stipen that was reduced. Um, yeah. I just have a quick question on like when it comes to sports or activities, is there a minimum student engagement required or like kind of what you're thinking? Like swimming and cross country were cut because I don't know how many students were in there, but I think we kind of looked at 10 students. We looked at 10 and under and then looked at title nine considerations and is the enrollment going up now or is it trending down? any of those that's how we would put it for not just athletics but for all the activities and if we find that something actually come like for next year if we actually have a lot of interest in an activity or sport we would implement that
059again or if there's not as much as we thought there would would be we be cutting or looking at reducing that I don't know those are just I think I think those are all good questions that we would have to look as it comes. Yeah, I think if there's a little bit more healthier contingency, could we look at an interest to these programs that we've reduced? I think that's a fair question. I think eliminating programs midyear is hard for kids. We've made commitments to leagues. There's other other factors to take into consideration before just just removing something. Yeah. Um but I think that, you know, our decisions that we've made for right now that we've been making for the last 3 months were the right decisions. Yeah. And if we can build up that contingency
060to, you know, could we assess the interest level, let's say, in cross country and could we get into league competitions and things like that, we could we could examine that if we if we feel like we have a contingency that can support that statement. Yeah. Okay. Anything else? Okay. I need at least eight of you that want to vote yes on a budget on May 19th to show up here. So, let's hope you guys are going to make it. Um, in the meantime, I'll be putting the budget book together. I will probably send it to you electronically. You won't get a hard copy probably until the day of the meeting unless I get it done early Thursday. Then I'll probably get it to you. But we'll see. Okay. Um, what I've done in the past
061is if they are ready, I'll send out an email and say stop by that district office and pick it up if you would like. For me, a hard copy is easier to read. Then, uh, that the budget for those that haven't been on my budget committee is about 150 pages or long. So, it's not something that you want to keep pouring over. I would say usually the first 30 pages are the most important. All right. Thank you, Linda. Yes, we want to 75. Yeah, can we take a break? Well, the board meeting will start at 7 o'clock. Shoot for that. Dan, can we paint on sports with other districts? So say you've got somebody who has swam a