001[Music] Welcome everybody to our to our special workshop Friday June 6 2025 12:30 uh call to order declaration from quorum seven members present. Welcome everybody. Thank you' all for being here. Um this is the calendar. this is the only day in June that we would all be here in June on the same day. So, I appreciate it. Um, and to y'all that have to work on Friday, I know it's the first Friday off, so I apologize, but thank y'all for being here. Um, brings us to item C, hearing assistance. We don't have any on the docket for today. And then D, workshop session discussion of the 2526 budget. Miss Wilson. Good afternoon, Mr. Hor, Dr. Hark Rider, and board of trustees. Thank you for coming here on Friday as well. Uh there are a lot
002of slides in here, but guess what? This will be the last time I'll talk about the legislative session, well, in this much detail. Um, okay. So, we're going to go ahead and get started. We're going to cover a legislative update. We're going to talk about the 2526 budget. We're going to look at some compensation. and then we're going to talk about next steps. Um, I've got a lot of detail in here, but if I if you have any questions, just let me know. So, starting with the legislative session. So, as you know, uh, send dive was June 2nd, and then the governor has to sign all bills in by the 22nd. The one that we were really kind of wanting to Okay, sorry. The one that we were really watching for is if he would
003sign House Bill Two. And so, as you can kind of see, he did that on Wednesday as last week. So, it's it's ready to go. So, the basic allotment provides $55 increase to our uh total funding mechanism. So, that brings the basic aotment to 6,215. We were excited about that. They repealed the 30 30% compensation increase. So, if you remember, anytime they increased the basic aotment before, a percentage of those funds had to be spent on salaries. So, they repealed that. That's no longer in the in the language. Uh they also have kind of worked a few things and you're going to see that through the aotments that we receive and some other things where they're really taking a shift and taking things out of WADA. And so where we use the Wada is when
004we figure our tier 2 funding and they're kind of removing some of that mechanism. So our WA will kind of gradually go down which is how they're funding some of the things that are going in tier one. Okay. So this is another example. So what they did is our guaranteed yield used to go up with property values and so it would go up a little every year. So they took that out, they froze it and then they moved this $55 per basic aotment over to the basic aotment funding. So they're kind of working things so that they're funding within the formula on some of those things if that makes sense. We have another aotment. This is the ABC allotment. You're probably going to see it listed as that. The positive is this is based on
005enrollment. So, what they've done here is given us $106 per enrolled student that we're going to be able to spend on transportation, employee health insurance, retirement and benefits, and some of those property and casualty insurance. And so, this brings about a million5 to our school district. This was something that was added in the last on uh May 22nd. So, this is something you didn't see before that's in the bill now that was approved. I want to bring this slide back up because it kind of just kind of talks about really yes we got a million five but we still had an increase in property and cuy casualty insurance of 2,196 since 2019. So if you think about it those funds are really kind of already spent. So they're really not new money but they do
006help kind of fund the deficit. Sorry say that one more time. I we just it's very fast just summarize I mean how much we're getting and how much we I mean sure this aotment right here brings about 1,516,000 in that ballp park park it's based on enrolled student okay so it's based on enrollment right now and I'm we're considering that our our preks are only enrolled halftime at this point as enrolled membership okay uh it's $106 per enrolled student and it can go to so they didn't put things in the basic aotment because they wanted to have a little bit of control how we spent it. So they're calling this an aotment of basic cost and so we get the additional money. However, what I'm just trying to point out here is since 2019 when
007the last time we really kind of saw an increase, these are the increases that our district has experienced since 2019. So when you look at that new money, we've really kind of already spent that. That was part of our deficit that we were seeing before. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I was just looking at some of those numbers. 1.5 million new and I mean that doesn't get close to any of those. No ma'am. Right. Okay. Um so the teacher retention aotment is a new one as well. So this is really exciting for our teachers. I'm not going to lie. Uh provides 2500 for teachers for classroom in the classroom three to four years experience and 5,000 for teachers five plus years. So, this is really kind of going on because the one I think
008it's a positive that we adopt a July budget because I think it really helps our school district. It helps our campuses and that's what we're here for. Uh it gets a little harder when you're adopting a July 1st when you've had a legislative session with this much change and trying to interpret the laws before you really have final interpretation. Does that make sense? So, they are saying in the law that it's based on TEC 5.01 O1 in that legislation, Texas Education Code, it says that means a classroom teacher that teaches three to four hours a day in instructional setting or CTE. Okay, so we have some dyslexia teachers, we have some ESL. We would think that could fall under that legal rules. However, when I pulled the file that TEA was using to make our
009runs to legislators, it had listed those positions as nonapplicable. So, at this time, that's how we're standing it. Classroom teachers only. If you want to talk PES code, that's like an 087 record. It's a classroom teacher. Okay? And there's a lot of other rules that they put in. So, a little bit you're going to hear me say something about uh prek eligible students for all classroom teachers. And so we're going to have to put teachers kids in prek. They're going to be eligible no cost to the teacher if you're a classroom teacher. Does that make sense? Um and then it's even been posed in legislation to legislators in TEA. What if you don't have capacity? And they said like when we did this before you could opt out until you had capacity to go to
010full day prek. They said there's not an option. So that's where we are right now. So it has to fall under that definition for prek. We're thinking because they use the same. Yes. Yes, sir. Okay. And quick question just because we get questions on it. The zero to two teachers uh were excluded because this is retention, right? Yes, sir. Those are our new teachers. They haven't they're either haven't gotten experience, they only have one or two. Okay. Can I ask and and tell me if we're going to talk about this later? I know that some other districts because of that uncertainty on that definition have have discussed not approving even though hospital 2 is assigned they've discussed not approving their budget based on that because it's so unknown and still a question. I don't know
011if that I mean if you're going to talk about that at all. We're going to talk about it later and I think it's just the stance our district wants to have. And so do we want two salary scales? Those are the decisions we're going to make because it there are people that are excluded on that scale. That doesn't have to do with the ELC and dyslexia. We know for sure our instructional coaches are on that scale. Our uh excluded are sorry, what they're on our teacher pay scale and so are our enrichment specialists. our um MTSS, our so there's a lot of other pay families just on the other than the ESL and the dyslexia teacher that are on that teacher pay scale. On that teacher pay scale are also nurses and librarians and we
012know those are excluded. So it's a decision of the district. Do you exclude those from the raise and give them a different raise and build two salary schedules from now on or do you put them on? So I think it's a it's something to look at. I've got it run both ways and then it's a decision of the district. Now, we can hold off, but we're talking the only ones we'd have question on are less than 30 teachers. What about counselors? Counselors on the or the administrative pay scale, but you're exactly right. We're going to talk about that too because yes, with counselors, the they're not going to see that type of a raise as well as well. Okay. So when you're looking at another allotment they gave us on May 22nd is $45 per
013regular program allotment or ADA. So that money goes to funding raises for these. So it can fund the raises for those other people that were left off the schedule, counselors, librarians, nurses, teachers assistants, custodian staff, food service, bus drivers, administrative. It's basically everybody in the district except for administrators. Administrators cannot be utilized with this money. So, this is a little over 500,000 for our school district. Uh, and it is another aotment. Now, they think these allotments are permanent, but as you see with the 30% being repealed, we know at any time they can repeal the allotments or move the money around. Same thing that we're going to talk about ed early education because that's exactly what's happening there. Uh, special education aotment, they're going to do a lot. It's going to be based on the
014commissioner's development of intensity and deciding how much money gets funded for those. So, they've set aside money for sped increases, but we're not going to see that until 2627, okay? Because it's going to take a while for him to make those decisions and then we've got to back that into our software program so that we can track the students a different way. It's also going to give us $1,000 per special education evaluations. So if we have, you know, a 500 evaluations, that money will go to that. We'll turn those in. We'll get reimbursed for those evaluations. Now, please understand what it says next to that students student does not have to be enrolled with our school district. So if if that student's going to a charter, a private school, home school, we still have to
015do the evaluations. They think we're still going to get the $1,000 for that. It's red. It's basically said per child. It doesn't say enrolled child. Okay. So, we're hoping we'll still get that. Uh, the dyslexia aotment, it's going to make it where we don't have we can include the kids that don't have if they're not if they don't have it listed on their IEP, we'll still be able to get the funding on that. So, you we hope to see a little bit of increase in dyslexia a lotment as well. 267 either. Um, I think it's current goes in this one. Okay. So, compensatory education, nothing moved really on that one, but a big big big thing happened here. We have to we get an aotment based on our free and reduced students and then uh
016we have to spend 55% of that on low social and economical, but it has to meet these guidelines. They've repealed that. So, basically, you get the additional money. the requirements to spend 55% of that money on those top students is gone. Which kind of is not going to make it very equitable per school districts because some school districts are getting a lot of this money that they are not going to have to spend in those mechanisms. And then some of us like we're a lower social economical district and so we're going to get a little less money. But those requirements to spend the money that way have been removed from legislation and that's that's pretty big. Uh bilingual education aotment, nothing's really moved in the weights. However, they put they've allowed us to spend the
017money on teachers. Before we couldn't spend it on bilingual teachers, certified teachers. Now we're allowed to spend that money that away. And then there's this little caveat that they're doing. They have 10 million set aside where they're going to look at um TEA approved alternative leg legislation, language education, excuse me, and uh they're going to redistribute that money. Uh I've worked I've talked to our school district and they feel like our program qualifies. So that is unknown at this time, but that's something that we'll watch for in the future. uh career and technology. They're going to start funding JOTC courses and then they're going to move the PEC funding from $50 per student to 150 per student. And so we'll we'll generate a little bit of money. Some school districts, they did the new tech
018campuses a few years ago. They've repealed that. They no longer fund for that. CCMR, this is not going to be a lot of money for our district, but it did move it if we qualify for special education amount. moves from 2,000 to $4,000. Early education, this is a big one that we're really going to have to watch because we received this money back in House Bill 3 and then when they said we're going to move prek from half day to full day, you can use this money for that, but you can also use it for readingmies and anything for K through three. Okay. So, we have this money that we've been kind of using to help fund the second half of the prek program. They're now going to we're going to generate the money like
019we had before, but the state's going to pick it up and take it away from the district and then redistribute the money ba back to the district based on how many kids you have in your pre-K program. So, the runs right now show that we'll still be able to keep all of our money. Some school districts are going to be upside down on this aotment. So, they're going to actually lose some of their their early ed money. Looks like we're going to have about 221,000 left over when they reallocate based on our estimates. However, they added mathmies and so where we had readingmies before, now we have mathmies that we're now going to have to go through and then we're required to pay stipens on those. And there's some other kind of caveats that are
020going to be a cost of that additional money. Uh safety aotment, we're excited about that. U per campus moved from 15,000 to 33 540. If you remember last time that was 34,000, they saved a little money. They moved it to 33,540, but they left per student 10 to 20. So, we we pretty well doubled on our safety aotment. So, that's exciting. Uh the additional days, they corrected something in the rule where they really thought if we go into summer school, they'll help us with some of those costs through a funding mechanism, but we had to go 180 days. Most school districts in the state of Texas don't go to school that long anymore. So, they made it right. They moved it back to 175 days so that you could start receiving that money. So, we'll
021kind of watch and see what that means for our school district. Of course, I've already touched on pre kindergarten. U a classroom teacher's kid may send their school their kid to for free to pre kindergarten. Um there's some other things in there where we can't allow or can't charge other people that are not eligible unless there are not seats in other prek programs, but I don't think we do that. So, we don't have to worry about it. Uh certification exam reimbursement. We used to get one reimbursement, now we get two. So, that's a positive. And then transportation aotment went from a$18 for sped students to $1.13. So that brings in a couple 10,000 only for only for sped. Interesting. Is the um prek going into effect in in the fall? It's supposed to as far
022as I know for teachers. Uh there's some other things out there that you can kind of watch. Teacher certification incentive. That's really kind of weird. It talks like if you uh the one rule I read where if you were non-certified in 22 23 or 23 24 and you were certified by January 1st of 2025, you receive $1,000, but it's not going to fit the mode for a lot of people. So, and then preparing for retaining educators through a partnership program. We're starting that here in College Station this next school year. So, we'll kind of watch that and see if we can get a little bit of additional funding. And it's capped at 40 participants per district. Um, these are some really big ones that affect what we're going to talk about when we talk about
023um, truth and taxation rules and other things. The homestead exemption is has increased from a 100,000 to 140,000. Okay. Uh, in addition on the ballot in November, um, there's going to be there where we can increase the home the exemption for homeowners over 65 or disabled from 10,000 to 65. So that's a 50,000. so they could get a $90,000 homestead exemption. Okay. Um the positive is so when this happens technically we'll we'll look at the cups later but it they'll what they take from our local they'll fund with the state where it catches you when you go into your INS funding. So you're looking at that tax rate and now you've got less value. So that means you have to increase your tax rate. The positive is we just sold our $150 million. We're going
024to make a payment before September 1, so it's going to be held harmless. So, that's a positive. We just have a little bit more to sell on our bond program. Uh, that will not be held harmless. That will this will come into effect where we'll have less property value to tax on. So, it could increase your tax rate. We still have money in our tax rate. We're going to hold our tax rate the same for this school year. And I think we'll be fine. And the hold harmless is just for a year or for ongoing until the legislation changed their mind again. Yes. but it's in there. All right, we'll kind of get into the budget. So, so these are some of the things that we did. We relocated funds to campus. And what that
025really kind of meant is um when you look at our formulas, we were funding some of the money out for low socioeconomic and giving some of those campuses additional funds. However, they get that money for title one. We were giving them some of that state comped money and then we started making a shift. So, some money went to the central office for campuses. Might be sped, might be instructional technology, might be science programs, might be just your um prek programs and other things like that. So, it would come here so a teacher on the campus could get money from their campus, but then we would for enrichment for other things, we would take dollars and put it there. So, we were in sense kind of double dipping. And so what we're trying to do is
026put that money back on a campus and then allow them to prioritize their needs based on their dollars. Now they still have to do the set aside and so we still have to set aside so much money for prek programs and GT programs but that money instead of being housed at central is housed on the campus. Okay. So we really kind of looked at that. We reestablished the staffing models and went through that. So you're going to kind of see where there's some shifts where we looked at instructional aids. We looked at the 22 to1. We looked at the 25 at our uh intermediate and up as well as when do you add a intermediate when when do you add a principal a counselor things like that. So we kind of looked at all of
027those things and we did that through our staffing models. Uh we studied everything. We got together and we kind of looked where we were and we were ma made sure we were equitable between campuses. Uh we reviewed departments based on in essential achievement and enhancement. So if you had a department budget, you really had to do a lot more work this year and build your budget based on essential achievement and enhancement. And then uh staff went through every one of those budgets line item by line item. We work with departments to reduce expenditures. And so there was a lot of information where uh multiple I pulled a lot of data from a lot of different school districts just to show kind of where we are cost per student based on where our district was cost
028per student because you remember when we look at supplies and stuff like that, we were extremely high there, but we might be on the lower end on salaries. And so we really took a deep dive into what that looked like and pulled it back a little. Now, we did not pull it back to where the averages in the state of Texas per dollar per spend in those departments, but we did pull it back a large amount. Okay? So, I feel good about where we're at. We could move more. Um, we worked with those departments and then we trained staff on effective budgeting. I know I think accounting can be fun, um, but I don't know if everybody else can. Uh but anyway, we spent a lot of time training on what it looks like to
029build your budget, what it looks like um for effective budgeting, how you best spend your budget. Uh we talked about different types of budgeting. We talked about how to count code. So what h what's going on in the district and that is districts can be run different ways, but where my comfort level is is not maybe to the same as some others. Um I feel like the campus should build a a sound budget, department build a sound budget, put your money based on your plan. And so we talked a lot of that. what was happening before is um and which has caused some heartache this year. I'm not going to lie. But I when I visited with principles at the end of the year, they were really excited about the process. They really liked p
030purchase order cut offs because and honestly their p purchase orders are cut off in April and their busiest time that's somewhat crazy is May and they don't even have to worry about that. They can pick it back up, look at capital item apple out capital outlay items and make those final purchases. But they were really excited about how it went. it was just about building some procedures. Uh, but we were allowed to spend when there wasn't money in the budget account. And so we've kind of moved that around. Like for example, some departments might not have had any money for certain things and other departments had money and so they were just sharing, you know, like I I'll I'll send you on a training, you know, and stuff like that. But um, but so we've
031kind of worked really hard and the the district has worked extremely hard and they have been kind to this a county can be fun person. though. Um, but it's been it's been a hard process. Uh, we increased campus budgets even though we went down on enrollment by 75,640. A lot of that is just reallocating those funds back to the campus. Uh, we also made them equitable. So, they were based on the type of students they were serving on their campus. And so, some campuses went up, some went down. Okay. Um, so that's kind of where we're at there. Is that a total number or an average number? Nope. That's the total number. Total. Okay. Yes. Yes, ma'am. So if you take all of my campus, that's the total number that we increased their budgets even
032though enrollment went down, but we now have baselines and we can see how it works for them this next coming year and then know if we need to move the mark or we're good to go. So uh we set them at this, but we're going to monitor and make sure that they have what they need. Let me mention briefly of why this money is going back to the campus level. So, for some reason, money here had been earmarked at the district level for campuses to use, which is kind of odd to me because that's the campus's job. So, we would have money earmarked in a particular category that we would ration out to campuses. Some campuses had a need for that expenditure. Other campuses did not have a need for that expenditure. So, whether they
033had a need or not, they would spend the money so they didn't lose the money. So in this case, it's going back to the campuses and principles and their teams can decide where the money's needed versus it's in one little silo that's got to be spent there. It's not efficient. It's not effective. So the money is going back to them to use as they see fit because every year needs will vary based on what's going on during that particular school year. Okay. So when you look at this uh there are two slides here, but the total savings in salaries is 890,000. And so basically, we didn't really cut anything. It's just we're losing students. So it's really an efficient. It's just making sure we're staying efficient. So it's keeping those ratios 22:1. By keeping them
034at 22 to1, we were able to reduce seven teachers. Uh we looked at efficiencies on aids when we went through that staffing model and we reduced instructional aids by six. I'm not going to lie, that's kind of hard for some campuses and it's been a lot of discussion, but it's where we need to be. uh intermediate counselors. When we looked at our staffing model, we needed another counselor at one of our intermediate campuses. Uh we had a reduction of a counselor here at the district office and so that position was actually moved to the campus. So that's a net zero wash there. Uh we established 25 class constants at middle schools and high schools. That's been the case. That was the case last year, but it's just looking at that making sure we don't have
035inefficiencies. and Paneet and her group really kind of looked at that and we were able to save one middle school teacher and seven high school teachers. Um, however, we do have ads. Uh, when we look at SPED and we look at the minutes, we needed an additional six instructional aids. And so what we save, we just add it back. And then we increased two resource teachers, one life skills teacher and then we moved the sped instructional coach to homebound teacher. So we covered the need there within. And then we reduced the sped coordinator. Uh we also increased a diag. However, we had to have those services and so we were consulting out for those services. So we're going to be able to decrease that budget item and then put it back in a salaried position.
036That means that we have control on how they're they're doing their jobs. So uh that's a lot what's going on there. We saved and if you add all these numbers up, you're not going to get to this number, but when I look at everything, this is a total save. Okay? Okay. So, when you look at the departments, not in not considering our fine arts, our athletics, and our CTE, but maybe mainly our central office departments, we saved $799,441 out of the budget. Now, that's total because I've got a lot of ads that had to go back in here, too. So, you have your attorney fees, and what was going on here is there was attorney fees on multiple different budgets. So, you've got a budget based on worst case here. You've got a budget worst
037case here. I mean, some people were putting 25,000 to increase attorney fees. What that needs to happen is a central budget that we know worst case scenario and we'll control that. And so, it could be increase or decrease. No stress to you. We've got it and we've got it covered. So, we move those all to a central budget. We did the same thing for insurance. And so, if you had a vehicle, you had an insurance and your budget, you had an insurance in your budget. So, we had them across the board. And so, it's basically trying to maintain that. it might go up 10% every year and then when we get ready to pay the bill they might not have money in the budget. So now they got to stop move the money and do
038all that. So we centralized insurance as well and then we know when it increases we keep it in one bucket and then we can be more efficient. Uh departments and campuses we've kind of just talked about that eliminating the duplicate budgets. That's where sometimes they were budgeting on campus and then budgeted up here. We moved that back and so that was some of our savings as well. uh the district this entire year and it's nothing that I have done. It's what they did before I got here. They really worked hard on overtime pay. They worked hard on extra duty pay. And then we're going to continue to work hard on substitutes. And so we've got a dis uh we have a discretionary sub account that's going to be allocated to every campus. And then um
039we'll kind of monitor that. And then our curriculum departments have subs. Everybody has subs for their training, but this kind of keeps our subs down as well. So, we're going to be able to incre decrease our sub fine art I mean our sub tent budgets and things like that about $440,000. Uh and then evaluating health insurance every year is just I think we had a little bit too much in that budget and so I was able to decrease that budget based on historical cost. Just real quickly on the previous one. So really the on the pre the previous to that the new positions added I mean is it every everything is basically sped is that if we're for new every new position sped only there are no other new positions and that is um primarily
040based on the need or or based on completely based on the need we budget or accommodation Miss Grande did an amazing job of looking at every campus some moved positions around and then when we got through everything we needed additional staff have to make up the minutes. Yeah. And so that's where the ads came in. It's only sped. Uh there is another need out there. It's just a little one. It's where when you look at our staffing model, we said you have to have 550 students before you get a receptionist. We have a campus that has does not have one and they have 700 students. However, we were trying to wait for some of those campuses that don't have 550 to leave and then we would take that position. But we didn't want to do
041it through attrition. So right now they don't have one. But there's a need by based on our staffing models that we have now to add additional staff. Some of the sped positions also were temporary hires last year in order to meet the minutes. So there's six instructional aids. I believe last year, Blair, we had four temporary positions that served in that role. So they were already technically part of our budget. So now they're coming full-time employees. And these are minutes that without these new positions, we could not serve the minutes as required by the AR meeting. And so we don't we don't have a choice. I mean, we've got to be able to serve those minutes. And then you could kind of see that's probably reflected a little bit in that 439,000 that we're reducing
042for subs because we can't double count those positions. Build a full-time position and then pay a sub. Got it. Well, good. Thank you. And um so really you are kind of saying otherwise based on your staffing models is across the district that's pretty much the only real needs. I mean I know we've heard a few others recently. I was just um but these are or is this just the priority needs based on this is priority needs. Yeah. Yeah. And then realize too sped's a moving target. So based on students potentially leaving us students moving in uh requiring more minutes then you know we're potentially staffed to give a student moves in requires a one-on-one uh pair professional. So that that number changes throughout the entire school year and we just have to adapt and adjust.
043And again, I'm not questioning the spad ones. Obviously, I meant that not at all. I just clarify it's more are there others out there that we're not able to fill because of where we are, you know, with with the budget. That's really the question. And we looked at needs and for example, there was a definite need to add another person to Oakwood Intermediate School and that was that we repurposed that position to that campus. And so there were some needs that we covered. It was just we try to do it. If we could find something to be more efficient, we would move that position. So, we wouldn't increase the bottom line. Okay. So, here are some of the increases to that budget. So, it's reflected on that savings, but we even saved more if you
044want to get technical because these are large increases. For example, we we set aside 200,000. We're doing a curriculum audit right now, but we needed to prepare for what we want to do with curriculum and curriculum writing. So, we set aside some money there. Uh the attendance incentive, we want to continue that into the new year. And so we had to set aside money for the intendance incentive. So there's 150,000 set aside there. We are still working on ESSER and rolling that back. So last year we bought custodial supplies about 200 and 200,000 I think is about where it was in custodial supplies out of ESSER funds that we've got to put that back into the custodial budget. And so that we've got to put that money back. Another one that was caught with ESER
045is uh Microsoft program that's got to be back moved back into the general fund. That was technically paid out of IMA, but when we moved stuff from ESSER back into IMA, that was the one we had to push back to the general fund. So, that's an increase in the general fund. In addition, and I don't have the final quote, but we're looking at a f financial software uh replacement system here just to make us more efficient and to be able to do our jobs more effectively. IMA is instructional materials. Yes, sir. Okay. In structural materials a lotment. Thank you. And sometimes they even put a T in there. Structural materials and tech. And for the curriculum development, is that like the stuff that happens in the summer? Is that Well, what they're going to do
046is spend the year trying to research what they need based on their audit. And then a lot of times when you roll a curriculum out, you're going to have to buy it in the spring. So you'll buy it in the spring, train on it so that it'll be ready for next school year. So, it's really kind of set aside when we make our final decisions. We have money to go ahead and get that curriculum, get it in place. Thank you, Darren. That'll be a big focus for us next year with um multiple committees, input from teachers at all grade levels of curriculum. We've had a lot of complaints that curriculum at different levels. It's not satisfactory to meet their needs. Uh holes in it, whatever that is. So, we're going to come through, get the
047audit, do a report to you guys, maybe at an August workshop or at some point in time to kind of give you the the higharching themes of what that audit's about, and then build uh some committees at different levels uh to kind of research, have some thoughts, figure out where the holes are, what's missing. Uh and then there's a plethora of things out there. It's been uh I think overarching ineffective to try to build that ourselves. It's a lot of money we're spending. It has nothing to do with our teachers and their work. They work hard, but it's a uh it's an almost an impossible task for a district our size for our staff to be able to write a curriculum, adjust and stay on top of everything versus going out and looking at different
048curriculums that uh come ready to go and that our staff's not has the burden of of keeping up with everything. So, that will be the discussions next year. That's great to hear because I know that again married to a teacher uh talking about when you can do things trying to do it in the summer who can be there who can't be there's vacations pay limitations all this stuff and then uh you've got both high schools doing things entirely differently maybe same context but how now again you want to give the teachers the freedom to do what they want but everyone should be getting the same thing for the students so um that's that's great to hear I'm glad you guys saw that and identified that great job all right and then We work with the
049department. So this is where we work with the athletic department, the CTE budget, and then the fine arts. And those are the percentages that we decrease their budgets. And that's the savings. Okay. So back to this slide that I showed you the first time we looked at budget and kind of where we were kind of had some outliers based on uh comparative school districts. And of course we looked at general supplies that group life insurance where we were really outspending our peer districts uh on professional like your paras were outspending our school districts there and then of course food makes sense because we're not contracting out our food service department that's internal and so that would be a normal thing you would see on things like that. Okay so to break it down this is
050kind of where we're at at this point. So contracted services moved a lot what you're seeing there. However, if you look at supplies, which moved a lot as well, over a million dollar decrease in supplies, 800,000, it was really recoding items. And so, we caught where we were re we were coding supp um software programs incorrectly. We moved that to contracted services where it needed to go. So, you're just seeing a shift. But even without that shift in place, we still decreased supplies a large total. Uh the other ones is miscellaneous expenditures. That's really your 6,400s. And so you can kind of see where we move the mark a lot in those categories. So do you have a summary for that slide? Like what what does all that math reduction turn out to be? I
051don't. I wish I did, but I'll get you one. I can tell you. I think it's 750,000, but you know, I look so many times and so I hate to tell you that. Um, okay. So, I just want to get back to the basics where even with all of this increases, even though property values might go up, property values might go down, we get the same bucket. Okay. Our district is not in recapture with the compression and then the increase in homestead exemption. That will hold College Station ISD out of recapture even longer. Okay. But we do have a blessing that we are high property values. So, that helps us with our INS tax rate. I Yeah, but yes, I guess I shouldn't have said that. Uh um the maintenance tax operation, I just want
052to put this up again because I wanted to talk back through a lot of the shifts going on in legislation is where they're putting their pockets of funds. So, you're going to see where tier one, where we're being supported by our maintenance compressed rate. Well, that's like your base tax rate. We'll go over that in a second. Don't worry about that word. And then, uh you add your golden pennies to that. And your golden pennies are funded based on your water. So one's funded based on your tier one where you're just saying transportation a lotment this this and all of the weights typically when you're doing a per student weight that goes to tier two and so that's really kind of been like I think subchapter D of the Texas Education Code 4800 but what's
053going on there is they're doing a shift and where that's not going to be held the same anymore because now they're putting more items in that sub chapter that are exempt from WADA. So that's something to I mean there's just some a little bit of manipulation going behind the scenes to see some of Yeah. So the bottom line is we're getting less money for each of those golden pennies that we have, right? Because we have the eight. Yes. I I just a quick comment on do we ever have any thought of looking at our copper pennies or um I think it's a discussion that we could have. I think we've kind of gone back and forth about building a committee to look at some of the in the future and that might be a discussion.
054Do you want to elaborate on that, Dr. Hark Rider? Yeah, I mean with us just going out for two bond elections, I it's not anything that I have the appetite uh to bring up right now. I think it's 100% a discussion point. I think probably becomes a bigger discussion point after the session in 27 of what it looks like. Are we in a similar boat? Do they step up and do a little bit more? If not, then I think the conversation becomes a little bit more serious. No, and I appreciate that. I mean, I think it's um some people ask why do other districts do that, right? But with the co and we could go out to the voters and ask them to um to increase the tax rate so we can bring in some
055extra money, but one of the really painful things about the copper pennies is we don't get to keep all of that money. A big chunk of that would go back to the state. So, not only are we te taxing our, you know, local folks more, then we have to send more back. So I mean I I just wanted to have mention that but some that's where some districts have to end up because they are in even worse situations than we are. Yes sir. Thanks. So just to look at kind of what happened here the effects of it is yes we got 630,000 in the increase in basic aotment but we lost 210,000 in tier 2 funding. That's even going to be worse in the second bienium part of the bienium because they upfronted our money
056and then we'll see field the effects more uh the second bienium. Uh these pretty much said stayed the same but I wanted to put it in your spreadsheet so that you have them or your PowerPoint so that you have them. Uh your house your house bill 2 teacher compensation did decrease to from 5500 to 5,000. Still the funding is 3,612,000. It's going to cost us over4 million to do that because we have to pick up the benefits on that which is adding up to about 423,000. On the flip side to add those additional positions, it's $46,000 to do that. So, I saw other districts um take that 406 and the 210 you just had on the other, right? That extra money that we have to to to pay, that's almost exactly that $55 increase. The
057six the six. Oh, yeah. That's really,000 I think. So, just to be clear, I mean, even that small basic aotment increase to $55 is really no turns out to be no added funds for Well, when you is that a good way kind of a way to look at it, right? Yeah. And don't forget to prior to the session uh ran numbers and to get us to $29, that basic allotment should have been increased about $1,340. And so, we're at 55. the 106 ABC. So, you're at, you know, you're not, you didn't touch the bottom line, per se. It's better than nothing. Obviously, it's better than it was at our May uh workshop where we took a deeper dive. It is, it's where we are right now, and we've just got to try to make the
058most of it. Uh, another thing is the $45. So, if you take the $45, the new aotment for other but including the teachers and then the retention, it is about washes. Um, so this is where we're at. So I know this is a confus confusing slide, but I just want to put up where we were in 2425 current law because we're losing students. Uh, we would have decreased the budget 2 million. The difference between this side and what we I showed you last month is we did have to add an additional sped in a few pair paraprofessional positions which kind of moved that mark a little. Uh, and then I wanted to I thought the easiest way to look at this is to say, okay, if we had no raises, and we know we have
059required raises, but if we have no raises, we would have a surplus of $4.5 million so that when we get to that compensation slide, you can really see what the effect of the raises are. Okay. Okay. So, let's talk compensation. Uh, I wanted to put this slide in your slide deck because I had some questions about this at the board meeting. That final column are the increases on a monthly basis for health insurance in our school district. Uh, another thing when we looked at how we compared to other school districts, we outspent our other school districts and health insurance. And that's really kind of we were looking at taking those monies instead of paying additional on the health insurance, hoping to reroute that sum to salaries. And so I just want to kind of bring
060that up as well. And I also want to bring this back to the forefront because this is where we are at College Station ISD and we aren't the highest paying school district in our area. This isn't the first time we've showed this. We've known this is something that we've got to tackle and look into, but I wanted to bring it to your attention again. Uh and then we've gotten some questions about the administrative uh on the taper administrative salaries at Central and how we uh how we're above state average. And so I wanted just to take a little bit of time to just explain a few things here. Um, and then Dr. Hark Rider might want to step in. But if you look, I've kind of marked that red line is the state average. And
061so what really kind of happens, and you can kind of look at the larger school districts are on your high end. Some of your lower school districts are on your low end. But then what you also have to understand is Texas is a very large state. And so if you kind of look on the low end, you're going to see the friendship in the canyon because they're in the panhandle and that's their pay scales. But then also look at uh when you but when you look at rural districts, you're going to see where we're a large rural district. And so where we're high in our ADA, uh we kind of stand alone. So we've got to recruit to a rural district. And that's some of the factors. The other factors in are how you code
062this. So when you look at the state average, what they're going to do is pick up all your central staff in ex for example. So they they might pick up an ad, uh some chief officers, your CFO, your superintendent, and things like that. So they're going to take, okay, that's how much your district costs, but they're also going to take a district that only has th a thousand students in it, and they're going to pick up those cost. And if you look at Texas, we have a lot of those. There's not a lot of large districts. And then they're going to take that district, big districts, middlesized districts, and they're going to put them all together, and they're going to come out with an average. And so when you kind of look at our peer
063district, I think it's explanatory where we're at. We've been here for about 12 years now. It could have been further, but that's how much data we have. Uh but that's what we're looking at. Do you want to add to that? I have any questions on that? Just clarify. When you say state average, state average of what? State of Texas when it comes to central staff. So they've kind of got it broken out like central administration salaries Josh of all school districts in Texas. Okay. But so that doesn't take into account say for example we're close to Belton. So the number of people at central office it can so it could work in the number. So like if I coded in my PES like 50 positions, I would have a high range to a low range.
064And if I coded 50 positions, that would bring my average down. So I kind of think that's what's happening with Brian, why they're so low low, is they have a lot more coded as their administrative staff and a wider range of the average. You know what I'm saying? So it brings their average down. If I code less people for peeps as a central administration, that's going to bring my average up. So you've got some of that playing in as well. It depends on how you code it in teams. Yeah. So, but if we have a central office staff of 20 people, we have 15. I have it right here. We have 15. 15. Belton Beldon has 21.9. Okay. Um, so that's a good question. Okay. So, they have six more people that are classified. So,
065they're spending more on central office even though the average is very similar. Correct. Okay. And that goes back to that slide and I should have put it in here again where when you look at how much we spend on administration, we're on the lower end. Yeah, that's what I just wanted to clarify. Okay. Yeah, I think that is important to have too that that slide where we've seen before that our total average or sorry, our percent of our overall budget than in central admin is is lower is lower. I believe that's part of our first rating and we're below that average and get 10 points for it, right? And a half. Yes, ma'am. So, they're really not comparing apples to apples. And so, people really when they go out and just look at the one
066piece of data, it's not representative. TASBY will tell you if you really want to get an accurate comparison, you've got to compare like size districts or you're comparing apples and oranges and it does. I pulled I pulled this week I pulled college station, Brian, Tombball, Magnolia, Belton. We had 15 classified as central administration. Brian has 39. Tombball has 27.7, Magnolia has 38.6, and Belton has 21.9. And we are middle of the road of those five districts comparatively speaking as far as our 129 number, whatever that is. And historically, we've had the smallest since 2012, we've had the smallest central administration. And since 2012, we've always been above the state average. And uh I never thought to ask about it. I guess that's my fault. But just to be clear, because we've had a lot of
067questions on this, what we're saying is we have 15 times our average is what we're spending on central admin. Somebody else may have a lower average, but they could have 39 people. And so really, they're spending more on their admin than we are. So it's very um hard to just look at an average in a chart like that and be able to tell what each district is doing. Yeah. You have to like MADAM said, you have to have both those data points for it to be even. Yeah. Okay. I really appreciate showing this data and especially I mean explaining why you know College Station is where we are and Brian is where you know particularly Brian stands out as in the low end there but yeah they have more than twice as many people that
068they're counting in that in that bring their I wouldn't say on the low end question. I wouldn't say on the low end I would just say less. I wouldn't consider that necessarily low. That's below the state. It's below state average. So, yeah. But yeah, it's just that there's more to the story than those numbers tell. I don't know what Brian's numbers are doing, but they may have more people coded. So, they have some that are on a lower salary and some that are on a higher and it's just being brought down. how you well and I don't even know that if it's manipulated but I do think um it seems like should be more clear about how to I don't know if that's just a problem in general that there should be some more clarity
069about how things should be coded so you are comparing apples to apples like like you said okay awesome thank you uh okay so here is the compensation how it works out so I've got two slides here I'm going to go between this slide and this slide and to make it as easy as possible because I know there's a lot of numbers on here. Let me explain what I did here. So, this slide when you look at teachers, librarians, and nurses, that includes everyone that is on our current teacher pay scale. Okay? And what I did with this number is I gave them the same salary across the board that the other everyone qualified. So, if you were uh had three or four years experience, you got 2500. If you had five and above, you got
070the 5,000. If you had less, you got a less percentage. Okay? And so that was included on the top line. And then I looked at 2, three, four, and five. And something else that I did on a couple of these pay scales, especially the administrative professional and the clerical, is we walked the salary table up. We only walked the salary table up 3%. But what happened with the law is now our daily rate of our teachers are $27 more per day. So when you compare the daily rate to a teacher with zero years of experience, when you went to the administrative pay scale, the zero years of experience was making more than my zero years of experience as a counselor. It was making more. It was making about the same amount as my zero years
071experience as AP. So we needed to move those just a little. We move them 3%. It could be as much as $20 a day. Uh it doesn't really drive a lot of the increase. It it only takes your mid, min, and max. We give raises on minimum and you just now have a little bit higher minimum salary scale that you're giving. But then hopefully we'll we'll give enough raise that it'll all flush out. But we've got to be able to hire for these positions. And a lot of times you have to take a pay cut to become a AP per day or a counselor. Okay? And those people are on the administrative pay scale. That goes with our art facilitators too. When they move the art facilitators, they took them off the teacher pay scale,
072put them on an administrative pay scale. So they're not going to experience the same raises our classroom teachers are going to experience. Okay. Uh so you've got a two, three, four, and 5%. So this is the new rates. We also moved I moved clerical positions as well, but this is the new rates. If you look at the very bottom, because I didn't I just said we had a 4 million 4.5 million surplus. I just then took each category off that surplus. And so if you gave a 2% raise across the board, you're looking at a $1.1 million deficit, 3% 1.6, 4% 2.1, and 5% 2.6 for the most part. And to reiterate that, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. To reiterate, that puts everybody on that top line. every single person that's on our
073teacher pay scale, even the ones that did not qualify technically under House Bill 2 get the exact same raise. And now she'll show you the next slide a little bit different. You're still going to have a deficit. It's going to be less. Uh, in our opinion, as an administrative team, uh, all of the folks on that teacher pay scale work with kids. All of them. And it's hard for me to justify not giving everyone the same raise and benefit regardless of what the state's intent was. Uh because they all do the same work. And so it's tough for me. I can't recommend having multiple scales. To me, it should be one. They all work with kids. We should all treat them the same. This is the same information. However, it it gave different raises to
074our teachers. based on the percentage. So for example, two 2% would be about a,225 for all the teachers that didn't qualify. 3% would be 1825, 4% 2,425, and 5% 3,35. So that would be their raises based on these scales if we didn't put them all on the teacher scale. Then the district would have two different teacher pay scales, one with teacher retention, one without. you're looking at about a $300,000 difference between everybody getting the same and not in the grand scheme of things in my opinion. It's a it's a win-win from a morale standpoint and money well spent. It also this is our chance cuz a lot of things that we heard during our cabinet uh visits were compensation. You know, obviously our team has been in place now for two years. Uh I can't
075fix compensation scales uh in a year. However, this is an opportunity for us to get super competitive because everybody's not going to do this. If you've got a leeway as a as a district, you've got to decide, does everybody get that 2500 or 5,000? If you've got the funds to do it, absolutely. If you don't, you're not going to be able to do it. Same thing with administrative, clerical, and auxiliary. Everybody's on their own as far as that goes of what they're going to do because you're coming up with your own money, per se, to make that happen. Uh to me, it's our chance for our hourly folks, uh clerical, admin, for everybody for us to take a step up and get higher up on that food chain versus trying to hang around in the
076middle. I know it's totally honest, a little bit of a gamble. We know what things are going to look like for a couple years. We don't know what 27 looks like, but guys, funding in Texas hasn't been right in a hundred years. It's not going to get fixed in the next hundred. To me, we deal with the here and now and and get aggressive when we can be aggressive. Yes, sir. And can I ask a thought? Um, so make you're saying like again everybody on that pay scale for the teacher specifically would um on that top line would get the 5,000 and no or they'd get these percentages if you're a teacher under HB2 you get your five or your 25 if you again if by TA's definition correct and then we have this other
077group of folks that are we're having to pick up the rest and they but they would I just want to clarify they're not getting the 2, three, four. They would be getting correct 5,000 and 2500 like that's why I just want to make sure that's except for 0 1 and two because then they would get the 5% the 4% three or two. Does that make sense? Okay. So really one and two and I think mathematically the $5,000 raise. Yeah. Or it depends on where you are. Depending where you are depending on where you are, but you're somewhere between potentially Yeah. Seven to almost 10%. Yeah, you're higher than the five. Correct. We would be filling the gap to put all those that didn't teacher, librarian, instructional aids, all of those folks. We would be picking
078up the tab for that. So there's no money coming for that. I think that I just want to clarify. Okay. So, so what it would look like, like for example, if you gave a 4% to the non required versus giving them the full amount, uh, it'd be 2,425. So, maybe your one and two would get 2,425. You get 2500 for three and four and then 5,000 for the rest. So, that's kind of how it would wash out. If you gave a 5%, then you're going to give a little bit more to your one and two because they're going to get 3,000. So, one, two, three, and four are going to get 3,000. So they'll get a little bit more than what the state would have done. 2500 is not. Do we have any questions or
079do you guys can you kind of give us a little bit of a direction kind of where you're you're feeling because um we've got to build you a budget for Yeah, this is not a a vote just as a reminder, but you feel free to share your thoughts. So, how do we how do we maintain like we adopt this? Let's say we go with the 5%. How do we how do we make this work? Two and a half million dollars. Where's that money? Are we just hoping we fund balance? Fun balance. Yeah. Okay. Balance. Oh, it's fund balance, but then it just means coming into next year, we're going to continue to look hard and make sure there's not any more efficiencies that we can we can gain. You could take for instance as well
080last year and this year going through this budget process we as a district have saved somewhere between two and a half and $3 million. Okay. So there's your 3% raise. It's about one percentage point for a million dollars. So there's $3 million right now. By us becoming more efficient, we could pass along in addition to more if that's what you guys want to do to our employees versus that whole being $5 million by not making any decisions to reduce spending. What is our fund balance right now? Right here. Uh so we ended the year with 43.9 million. That's total unassigned was 38 million. We need to keep a threemonth balance. So, uh, we will add to that fund balance because we're doing the 10 versus 12. So, it'll be a one time infusion to our
081fund balance. Of how much again? Because I I mean I do think that's important. We I expect it to be close to six million. Six. So, are you comfortable if we wanted to do the 5%. You're asking a CFO if she's I know that's a hard question, but she's not sweating when you ask that. No, no, I'm joking. She is sweating, but she's going to be sweating profusely, but uh but there there's there's a thing with I know it's right and yes, I'm not comfortable with it. No, but Okay, that makes sense. That's that's that's valid. And I and I tell you what, but before we get into that discussion, and I'm just one of seven, but can I think first we ought to decide if we're going to do like Dr. Hark Rider suggested,
082which is everybody gets the same raise as opposed to this two-tier system where some teachers are getting the HB2 money and some aren't and so forth. And it looks like that big of a difference is the reality. Like I I mean it doesn't having looked at this um and and sat on the board in my sixth year now, we've adopted a whole lot worse deficits than 2.6. We just have. I know us three for sure. Um going back slides, I mean we're we're we're we're more at not this and at this. Yeah. Correct. Okay. I that's where I mean so I'll speak on my behalf of where I'm at. The 5% 2.6 million deficit doesn't doesn't scare me because I know what we're going through. Um I know what this year's been like. Having to
083sit and watch the legislation, having to go through the last bienium. I mean there's there's no easy way to make it. You hit it right. Does it scare you? Heck yeah, it should. But is it the right thing to do? 100%. Because now it's four or five percent. Yeah, I get it. You, you know, you're looking at pennies on the dollar there. I hate to say that, but that's what it is. But I'm for this type of scale because I don't agree with HB2 that you basically excluded XYZ and that's not right. And Dr. Harker said it right. Every person that's an employee of this district is involved in the kid's life. some facet or form. And I'm going to sit here all day and tell I'm here to do whatever we can as long
084as visiting with you, visiting with you, all of us, talking to administration, as long as everybody's on a comfort level that yeah, it makes us nervous, but yes, we can do that. Okay, that's where I'm at. Remember, too, uh, starting in the 26 27 school year, vouchers are going to be in play. And I think it's imperative that we are aggressive with keeping great staff members here to continue to be able to lead to the success that we have because competition is on. I mean it is wide open across the state starting in 2627 and if we're not taking care of our business we're going to lose kids at a faster rate and then it becomes even more problematic from a budgeting standpoint. Well and you and you mentioned in the last two years we've
085saved about $2 to3 million. Now, I'm not saying that's where this that's how I'm going to justify it, but y'all have worked hard to find that and have proven that to us so that we can understand and feel comfortable with whatever decision does get made. And so, um, that that was just kind of a warm and fuzzy feeling of, hey, y'all y'all done the work to help us to at least consider these four options here or eight, I guess. And it's not as I'm with you. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I mean, it's not great. I think we're all No one's really thrilled about what happened, but I think this would send a message that we do want to support our teachers. They are so important to us
086and I I would like to see us give the most we can get because if like I said that you're not comfortable, but it is the right thing to do and and I'm like Dr. Hark Rider said, we don't want to lose those teachers. No. And then something else I do want to bring up because it is a hardship on our administrative staff in a sense because usually you find the best teachers become the best APS become the best principles become the best counselors. Your best teachers are getting your teacher incentive aotment. And so that's another cost that we're not considering. So when you look at the staff that we're excluding, we would be excluding from the raise our instructional coaches that are in implementing our curriculum in our on our campuses. There are enrichment
087specialists. There are uh ESL dyslexia or MTSS. Those are excluded. But guess what? Our counselors, our nurses, those people are excluded from TIA as well. And so it's going to make it even harder to recruit amazing people to lead our teachers if we continue to exclude them. That's a great point. Although I was I'm sorry. I thought um I know you list up here teachers, librarians, and nurses in that first bucket of but I thought we counselors are an administrative pay. Okay. But then there was some of those others that you just listed like ESL, dyslexia, and rich. They don't qualify. I I know they don't under house bill two, but I thought that extra money could be spent towards that, but it can be spent towards bus drivers, counselors, everybody. So, but it's not
088in that first line. And that's what I was trying to clarify earlier. They're in the first line. They are in the first line. Okay. Got it. Sorry. Okay. They're just not all listed there, Kimberly. Yes. Yeah. So, we're all on the same page with with this type of scale as opposed to this page is to the next this page as opposed to the second. I think that's the first question too. I I am too. So, yes. Okay. I know we can't vote. I think the next question though. Yeah. That kind of gives yall some direction unless anybody has anything Beyond that, so we'll also go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, you go. Um, just next step. So, we'll kind of play take those numbers and put them into our accounting system and then rerun everything. Okay.
089Then we would come in June and you guys would approve the compensation scale and then you would improve the entire budget. I I think the second question here is the I I hadn't really addressed the the 3, four, 5% part of it. I mean I agree with um this page word versus the second one right then but then the second question is how how much of a deficit are we willing you know to to have and so you asked the right to me the right question we have to start with our what we have in our fund balance and that that number is um to correct me if I'm wrong I'm thinking basically once you put that extra six in there it'll be like 50 right it's the 38 or yeah or 43 plus that's
090your total fund balance. I'm going to go back to the page because you've got to take into account that you're really looking at the 38. So we put the six with the 38. So I mean so extra over what we need to keep in there is how much? 10 12 I mean that we will yeah not a lot but yes we're getting close. Um, and I'm just so I'm in my brain thinking if we will have that extra in our savings and if we you know so however many years that could could last us to you know to spend a deficit right but we have a few years we have it would you're right no because you there are so many unknowns going forward you don't know if we'll ever get any more money I
091mean I certainly appreciate the savings the districts had but I mean how much more can that you know you you can't get two three million dollar savings every every year for forever, right? It's just there's you can't keep squeezing it. So, no, we can't. But if we're losing kids, you're going to have to you're going to reduce the bottom line because you're going to have to lose staff members because we're not going to you wouldn't need them all. Yeah. That's the that's the rub, you know. To me, I think we've got the best product in town and I think we've got to step up and like I said, it's just a matter of not to put any pressure on you guys. I think we're all kind of speaking the same language is to be aggressive.
092Um, and I think it's a shot in the arm for our staff and and does nothing but motivate them to continue to do great stuff and, you know, to showcase the great work from our kids is from the staff that works with them. And, uh, you know, we need to continue to establish with choice out there and maybe some folks go and and try something else, but that we continue to entice them to come back to us. Can I have one other thing? I think one other thing you've been talking about through all this some of the other savings you talked about about um in increasing class sizes and some of those things streamlining saving some money there, right? I mean I I said I'm not really a a fan of it. I think it
093is it is, you know, by definition a little more on a teacher's plate, but the whole idea that we've been talking about is having some of that savings available to give back to the teachers. It really is why when you go back and look at that comparison between why our start our our average salaries are lower than you know some of the other districts it's because we have had you know smaller class size. So it's a trade-off and I just want people I mean I recognize that and I I do also support it going back that money going back to the teachers as much as we can. So it's part of my rationale. you touched on something uh when you said it's the right thing to do and then Dr. Hark Rider brought up that
094vouchers are coming. So if you look historically at what we have, we have some great ideas in this country. You know, creating national parks and infrastructure. One of the great ideas we've had in this country is public education is creating the opportunity for everybody to attend school to get an education to create opportunity for a better life. What the governor and these legislators have done has not helped that by they said the average rate since 2019. They didn't give us any new funding. We should got about $1,300 per kid. They give us 55 bucks per kid and then some additional with restrictions. Okay, that's helpful. What the district here has done is say, "Okay, how can we maximize this?" And I think you guys have done a tremendous job in trying to keep everyone employed,
095trying to figure out how we can give raises, trying to keep all the campuses open cuz the dire straits are I mean, we had some cuts in there with some other things. you're looking at significant cuts. You're looking at significant problems if you can't cover this with general fund um and being able to make this work with a deficit budget based on what we hope happens for the future. And then let's say the voucher, I don't even know what it ended at. Um it'll become billions of dollars that American Texas taxpayers will put towards private schools. So we're going to give you a voucher to send your kid to a private school. Let's say the private school is charging $30,000 a year. Well, I'm just going to increase my rate by another 10,000 and make
096it 40,000 a year because I just got a free $10,000 from the government. So, if I'm single parent who says, "Oh, I have $10,000. I can send my kid to private school." Well, no, you can't cuz you can't afford the other 30. And, oh, by the way, you're going to take public tax dollars, put them in a private organization, no responsibility to uh do accommodations. They're not required to do sped. They're not even required to take your kid. There's no uh state testing that comes with it. There's no reporting out that comes with it. So again, the larger picture of what our governor pushed um and what these legislators have done has not favored public education. Um and I think it's a complete disservice and a disgrace to try and present it as such. Just
097my two cents. I commend the district on what you guys are doing and making the most of this. How excited you get talking numbers and saying like, "Look, I found some money. That's great." Um and I commend you guys and all of our staff for what what you guys are doing. So thank you. U but our legislators are not supporting public education. Well, not when 90 something% of kids in Texas go to public school. They sure aren't. It's It's And there's not private schools in every district. Yeah. There's there there's not readily available private schools for rural Texas. Yep. And I like to to stay positive on what we're doing in this room and in this district for students. But I agree because I have gotten, you know, text messages from people that have said,
098"Oh, look. So, this is great news for us, right?" and it's some, you know, thing that's been put out by the governor's office talking about what they're doing for public education. And I have to say, well, um, it's easy to throw some numbers around and not really say what's behind them, um, and make it look really good and it may not be as great of news for public education as you think that it is. So, it is important, I think, for us to be saying, "Hey, um, look behind some of that to know what's really going on, but at the same time, to also say, hey, within this room, within this district, um, we're going to do everything we can to still serve students and um, and help our teachers, too." And I appreciate, um,
099I know there's other districts that are cutting programs, shutting schools. Y'all are just tightening the belt. And I I I think it's I thank you again to your staff because I I hope we do give a big raise or the biggest we can give and we're still not students are not going to see a difference. They're going to see actually a teacher that's maybe energized getting paid a little bit more and they're still going to have all the opportunities in our district that they have now um to go out and achieve. Yeah, super great discussion, presentation information here. And I do hope people just um take the time to understand that because I've heard the same things. It's so much money, but um when you look into the details, it really isn't. It's so far
100behind where we were. So, I really appreciate all the all the all the comments, all the work behind. Sorry. No, the governor the governor is u become a master at the concept of lies, damn lies, and statistics. So, it's easy to easy to give a big raise when you haven't given one in six. What's the saying about statistics? It's the way to tell a uh halftruth and accurately. Yeah, it's what you can do with statistics. You're going to make me worry about my numbers. Yeah. But speaking of numbers, speaking of numbers, um, and I know until we have a exact budget, there's not an exact number, but to meet our requirement as far as the fund balance, usable non-desated fund balance, what do we have to keep? Okay, so you keep three months. It's a
101suggested three months. So, what's that number? And so if you take um I'm going to back up to this slide right here because I'm sorry I did not calculate that before I got here. Um so we're going to take the 151. We need about 38.5 and our fund balance is 38.5 plus the 6 million that we're going to add to it at the end of this school year. Okay? And that is undesated fund balance. But you've kind of got to keep it about that level because when you look at some of this here that you've got committed fund balance 3.7 and as we kind of work our way out of this deficit, we probably need to put a little bit more in committed because what's going on right now when you think about insurance and
102what it's a percentage of a building if it gets hit by hell, we've got to have fund balance set aside to be able to cover some of those costs. So that's why it's good to have a three months but then set sign aside for committed fund balance. So you're looking at 6 million. Uhhuh. All right. This Okay. Well, next steps. Let's go quickly through uh so there's a lot of moving parts with this budget. Um like I said before, six months. Um July 1 is great for campuses and stuff. It gets a little hard when you have a crazy legislative session like we just went through. So on Tuesday, I had to send the information to the newspaper to post our hearing for our budget. So I kind of put this on your desk so
103that when you see this in the paper tomorrow, you understand what's going on. Uh Saturday. Okay. So the paper will come out tomorrow and it'll do our public notice for our budget. This number is what it is right now because we will not adopt our tax rate to until August as long as my MCR that's approved by TEA in the month uh beginning in August is is um is less than the 6822 then I will not have to post this in the paper again. Okay. If it's more than 6822 I'll have to post again to adopt a tax rate. Uh we're all working on maximum compressed rates right now based on values that we're receiving preliminary. Not only are we receiving our values preliminary, they moved our homestead from 100 to 140,000 which are not
104in our preliminary values. And so there's a lot of estimation going on behind the scene to try to come up with a T2 value because remember we don't have a lag effect anymore. we estimate our T2 values to get our MCRS to get our to to to make our tax rate. Uh all of that plays into these numbers, but I wanted you to kind of see where it looks like. Uh the latest run I did even with estimating 140,000 homestead on the newest template from template from Omar still has its 622 plus our 8 pitting 6822. So that's where we're sitting right now. However, when the dust settles and we get our actual certified values and we send those into TEA, they actually set our tax rate. We're just having to go early because this
105is the required notice to have a budget and adopt a budget. Um, so you'll kind of see and then when you look at one and a half% decrease in maintenance and operation, that is without House Bill 2, we would have had a decrease in our budget. And so that's what that reflect. So, this is based on current law and you can you can post based on current law as we're consistent. So, just wanted to kind of let you know if you had any questions from people when it hit the paper. Uh, typically you see a larger decrease in the compression and you're not seeing that this year. So, the values had to really grow closer to 11% to compress to the floor and um and that's unusual because it hasn't been that way. It's usually
106if you grow a lot less, even 7%, you get compressed to the floor. But right now, the compressions are running differently before, which throws another kink into it. So, does anybody have any questions about the tax notice? Okay. So, uh our next steps other than the tax notice is we'll go back and we're going to apply all those uh we're going to apply an anticipated raise to our budgets to come up with actual numbers. I will reodit all of our staffing and then we will bring you the numbers on Tuesday night. We'll adopt the budget on June 17th. However, we will not do the tax rate until August. Does anybody have any questions? All right, that's all I have. Great job, Heather. Appreciate you. All right, that will bring us to executive session. [Music] back
107in open session at 3:28 finishing up exact session. Um Mr. Mr. Horac, after our uh executive session evaluation of the superintendent, I would move that um we extend uh Dr. Hark Rider's contract uh two additional years. Um and um yeah, I'll second motion by Mr. Ben, a second by Miss Sim. Any further discussion or questions? Yeah, I just want to make a quick comment that um while I I think there's a lot of u positive change that's been happening, especially over the the the last year, um that I will um I'm personally am in support of adding only one year to the contract as we normally do with the district. And so I will I'll be voting no on on this. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed say Nate. Nay. What
108do I say here? I forget. Oh my god, my motion passes 61. Sorry about that, y'all. Uh, that will bring us to a journ. Thank you.