001hey welcome stakeholder staff uh community members and parents of USD 264 to our clear waterer Clarity volume 6 update for February of 2024 I just hope everyone had a a great start to the uh New Year in 2024 excited to already have the first semester done and be rocking and rolling through the second semester and hope everybody enjoyed those snow days uh we had there in January so our strategic plan really drives a little everything that we do at USD 264 making sure that we are um Meeting those goals so as we look at our strategic plan we always want to focus on why are we doing this uh what are we going to do and how are we going to achieve it so if we can answer those three questions with everything that we're
002uh doing within our strategic plan we're going to make sure that we're going to be successful today we're going to really focus on special ed funding that's kind of a Hot Topic that's in the legislature right now is also something that's very important for us at USD 264 what I want to be able to do is just give you straight information and straight facts um information that comes directly from our budget and from our Ledger in terms of how much money we get from the state for special ed funding that is then uh sent to our specialed Co-op and gard and how much is the actual cost that we have to pay for the entire year uh for special ed services so this really impacts our strategic plan goal number two implementing student centered whole
003child programming because we want to ensure that all students uh whether they have a disability or not uh whether they want to be F uh functioning in uh uh CTE class classes whether they want to be part of extracurriculars that we're able to provide that support for all of our students and part of that is understanding the impact I want to make sure very clearly that we do not limit or not provide uh services for our special ed uh students at USD 264 all students that have an IEP receive the services within that IEP those Services cost money and this is the breakdown that we have uh for fiscal year 2023 which would have have been last year we're currently in fiscal year 24 so state aid that's how much money came to USD 264
004from the state of Kansas was $1,335 n28 upon receiving that money we directly give that to the Gard Co-op um that helps them build the services or build their Foundation of their budgets to be able to provide the services during the fiscal year they keep letting us know how much more money they need from us to make sure that their budget balance meaning all of the expenses are covered during that time so for fiscal year 2023 the total cost of money that we had to pay towards um the Gard Co-op was $2,365 1849 so that was a general fund excess cost meaning out of our general fund that we get to fund General instruction here at USD 264 was 1, 29,9 121 what we ended up doing is that because the state is not funding
005special ed uh at the 92% of those excess costs it cost our general fund $840,000 in fiscal year 23 $840,000 is approximately about 10% of our general fund uh budget so 10% we start the year operating with 10% less of our budget due to the lack of full funding that comes from the Kansas legislature based on their statute if we were to look at if it was funded at 92% like it would our cost would be $189,600 not over 1 million so what happened is that there's $840,000 that should should still be in our general fund budget that isn't because it's going to serve a special ed so I want to be very careful in making sure we understand that we are fully funding special ed but it's coming at the local taxpayer responsibility versus
006coming from the state legislature so the locals stakeholders community members taxpayers of USD 264 through our general fund property taxes and uh other recreational vehicle taxes and and um vehicle taxes are paying for the difference in special ed funding that is needed that is not being covered by the state statute um for the state of Kansas so if we were to be able to understand this a little bit deeper is that there is actually a state statute that was written that requires that 92% of those excess cost um be covered by spe by the funding from the state department uh and that is not happening it is not an arbitrary number uh that someone just says we should be doing is they actually put it into state law um back in 2017 somewhere in that
007neighborhood also part of it that you'll hear from some legislators is that the federal government um is not supplying enough funds to say that they are um wanting to fund around 40% um but they do not have it as a law so the federal government does not have a law to fund it at 40% that is their goal so there's a little bit of difference of where the legislature put theirs in as a law and so we are short that that money what are excess costs so some of those where you have students not only receiving general education services which all students get general education services some of those excess costs comes from things such as speech or physical therapy or occupational therapy um those are specialized services to help those students with their needs
008and those come at an extra cost to a district or to a Cooperative when you have to hire those staff uh to meet those needs also we are not reimbursed first on a per student basis like the general fund is uh or the money that we get regularly in our budget the funding comes at the end of the year and it goes on a per teacher basis so we get re reimbursed from the state at around $30,000 for each full-time teacher that the Gard Co-op has employed it takes more than $30,000 um to pay a teacher an average teacher at a base salary with insurance benefits and all other tax taxes applicable comes to around $70,000 so the state is not meeting about half of the cost of a of a teacher when it does
009the reimbursement so what does that do for us how does that short Change USD 264 well in the PDF that will also be sent out uh in accordance with this video I lay out three specific things that we could be doing with General more general fund dollars the number one thing we could do is we could expand our CTE programming uh we were able to add FFA and a education uh this year through a hiring of another staff member if we had more funding we could expand our CTE programs we could have more um opportunities to hire more staff that would be able to fund those programs we'd also be able to give all staff raises with that money um so we know that part of recruiting and retaining highly qualified staff is having a
010good uh livable wage whether you are a certified teacher or a classified building Aid uh custodian uh bus driver could or server and so we know that that money could go towards adding more money to teacher salaries and then finally I think it's something that we all know is um we have an uptick in mental health issues within our district and within the state of Kansas uh as a whole and we would be able to potentially hire um or contract with being able to have mental health resources available in our um day for our students and even potentially for our staff uh to help them with having some Clinical Psychology Services uh with us so those are three things we could do with that $840,000 that we're having to spend that number is only going
011to go up uh because the cost of uh inflation is causing expenses to go up for the operations within the co-op in terms of Transportation uh operating Vehicles hiring teachers um hiring paers those expenses are always going up so we're not going to dip below 840 840,000 of our um required excess spending that we're going to to do from our general fund unless the state starts uh securing that funding so at the end of the day what can stakeholders and staff and community members do about this is well it's following up with our theme we can be the one and that be the one is reach out to your local representative your local Senator and let them know what Clearwater USD 264 is not able to do for all students because of the funding that
012has to go to make sure that we're prepare PR providing for all of our special uh education uh needs and all of our special education students so again I want to thank you for the opportunity and listening to this video again anytime you need to reach out or contact me here's my contact information I look forward to next month and being able to kind of start thinking about what next year looks like and some of the great things we're going to do to share some data around some of the success with our strategic plan this year so again be the one and every day is a good day to be an Indian thank you and have a great day