001Coulder. Acting clerk I should say. Dennis here. Sherry Jasper absent. Dave Martino here. Sharon Mam here. Phillip here. Steve Olsen here. Dave Czech absent. All right. Uh, next on the agenda 1.03 is approval of the agenda. I would entertain a motion to approve our agenda for the annual budget hearing. Motion. Thank you. Motion by Martin. Is there a second? Second. Second by Olsen. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Agenda is approved. I will um call to order the budget hearing. Um and the first on the agenda is 2.01. 1. Welcome. And I'm supposed to turn it over to you. See, this was the easiest meeting I ever started. Thank you, Vice President Michael. Good evening, board members and community members. Thank you for joining us tonight as we review our district's
0022024 2025 budget proposal. As superintendent of the Chipoa Falls Area Unified School District, I'm proud to report that we continue to be a vibrant educational community serving approximately 4,900 students across 12 municipalities and covering 230 square miles. The successful passage of last year's referendum has provided crucial support for maintaining and enhancing our educational services. However, we continue to face both opportunities and challenges. We active we are actively working to implement the unfunded mandate of Wisconsin Act 20 legislation addressing the impact of declining enrollment on our state aid and managing rising utility and fuel costs. Despite these challenges, our commitment to our core mission remains unwavering. This budget reflects strategic investments in key areas including our exemplary fine arts programming, strengthening partnerships with local businesses and post-secondary institutions, enhancing support for personal and mental health needs,
003increasing participation in co-curricular activities, advancing classroom technology, and expanding opportunities in technical education. Every decision we make is guided by our mega result. Ensuring all students graduate prepared with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to achieve their personal goals and make a positive impact in the world. With that, I now turn the budget presentation over to our business manager, Mr. Chad. Thank you, Mr. Holmes. Uh we'll kind of just kind of go through this packet. Have some commentary about uh some of the pages that are included. Uh some are just included for information not only for the board but for our public uh if you will. Uh first is a several pages of fund definition. This is something that we added a few years ago. What it does is it helps define what the
004funds are and what they are used for. So if uh a person was to pick up this book, they'd be able to kind of discern what does all of this mean. Um, also it does uh kind of describe what activity runs through them and this is information that comes from DPI but just thought it'd be helpful to have in the budget book as well. Uh, the next set of uh worksheets is a a summary of our district budget uh for the past four years and also the current proposed budget. This too was uh something that you go to things and you learn from other opportunities and this is something that a number of us saw and thought might be helpful for our book as well. Uh so we added this a few years ago as
005well and it's really just a financial snapshot. So if somebody was looking for a historic uh somewhat comprehensive but high level look uh at fiscal activity in our school district, this would be a a place that they could go for that. Uh, we've got some information here as well. Uh, Mr. Holmes, I don't know if you want to go through some of the provided information or if you want me to keep going. Just go ahead and keep going. Sounds good. Great. We got some information about our schools, uh, numbers of students enrolled and then some information about our our teaching staff related to bachelor degrees, PhD degrees, some information about our Chipo Falls 4K Cardinals, our four-year-old kindergarten program. Uh we have uh six partner sites now. Uh we had more uh in years past,
006but we have lost a few sites over the years, but you have some information about our partner sites as well. Then we've got some information about our schools, starting first with our elementary and moving on to our secondary schools and then some information about the our administrative offices and and other buildings uh within the district. uh an introduction of all of you, our school board, information about our administrative team, information about our strategic plan. Uh we did update our strategic plan last year. Uh so we're in beginning year two of a three-year plan, which is kind of exciting. Uh Mr. Mr. Holmes had highlighted a little bit about our mega result in his opening remarks, but all students will graduate prepared with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to achieve their personal goals and
007make a positive impact in the world. Uh this is a a visual that actually Mr. homes created to kind of show the interaction between uh the school board as a governing body, all of our stakeholders and how our operational expectations and results policies kind of fit into the structure of how we operate as a school district. So, it's that interaction between uh you uh us as an administrative team and also our community. Uh when we look at leadership uh this began for us uh back in 2014. So we had community conversations starting in 2014, another one in 2020, one in 2023, and then an annual update. This was the first annual update that we had uh most recently here in May of 2024. um kind of explain this continuum. You know, what the community expects,
008what the board governing, what what the board monitors for aligns with our strategic plan, our district goals, and our building goals. So for us, um coherent governance began also in 2014. Uh that's when our OE and results policies reports began. Uh so again, we're we're now on our fourth variation of our strategic plan and that kind of leads us to where we are today. We have representatives from each of our pillars here this evening. Uh in student success, we have Mr. Scott Marty and Sue Kern. Thank you very much. Just describe if you will success pillar. Happy to do so. Um so with the new community conversation, we made a shift from academic achievement pillar to student success pillar aligning our commitments for um our students um based on redefining ready metrics that we have
009reported to the board on. Um our commitment is to asssure that we are providing the re necessary resources and supports for our students um to be successful and meet that mega result that we've developed based on the community conversation. Um the way that we're measuring that success is by using our student success dashboard and student success individual profiles that embed um the various metrics from not only the academic side of things but also on career readiness standards as well. Um, our strategies for success over the course of the three years that cascade to each of the buildings and eventually to the classroom is that we're looking to continue to increase the college and career ready scorecard indicators. Um, and monitor progress toward that three-year measure of success, which is 100% of our students being college
010or career ready by that point. Um, we started um measuring uh redefining ready metrics in 2021. At that time we had 71% of our students who were meeting college or career ready readiness standards. Um moving to 2024 we have 80% of our students. So we're making continual growth. Um the uh metric that we have for this next year is 90% of our students meeting college or career readyess standards and in year three 100%. Um we will continue to build connections and community um partnerships through curriculum connected learning uh experiences andor volunteer experiences across the K12 system. And we will also uh assure that we're providing our educational staff with the necessary uh professional development support and coaching that they need in order to be uh successful with their students in the classroom as they're working
011toward all of those various metrics um in our pillar. Scott, I don't know if you have anything you'd like to add. We did really good. All right. And I'll turn it over to Chris who's going to speak about caring culture. Yes, caring culture pillars. So, our commitment is cultivating an environment where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. If you remember in the past, we focused on sense of belonging and emotional regulation. And in this go round, we really felt like we needed to dig down a little deeper and get a little more specific on what that is and what we're looking at. And we also felt we were really looking mostly at students and we wanted to be able to also focus on staff and parents. Um, so our indicators of success for this
012school year that will increase the percent of students engaged in activities, teams, and clubs. We know that when students are engaged in those things, they feel more a sense of belonging um and are more connected to school, to staff, um, to other students in the building. Um, we want to increase a percent of students who answer, "How connected do you feel to adults in our schools?" We only have that question at 612. That's why it says 612. It's on our panorama survey. Um we will increase the percent of staff who answer how connected do you feel um to your colleagues? We have that question on our cardinal care survey. I will say that um I sat in a lot of interviews and one of the things the teams usually say is when the interviewee asks
013about the culture they say we're a family here and I think that we want to keep continue to support that that connection of our colleagues makes for a better place for them to work makes for a better classroom environment and overall um supportive environment. So we want to keep that going. Um we want to increase the number of parents who answer I receive positive phone calls, emails or notes about my child from school. We get that from our student survey. Some of the strategies um that we will be doing at the district level is our school schools and departments will create regular opportunities for our staff to gather. We know that when they have opportunities outside of work or even during the school day that are more informal, they have the ability to connect more
014and um feel more connected to each other. Our central office admin are going to visit each school one to two times per year. It's not that we don't visit schools. I want to be clear on what this sounds like. Um this is a uh we visit all the time, but usually we have a purpose. We're going there for a meeting and for other things. This is more of an a visit where we are not tied to some other reason to be there, that we are there and staff know that we are there and they can come um and see us. Uh staff will support connections among students through school activities, clubs, and extracurriculars. So, we're looking at ways to get more kids involved. And then staff will make those positive emails, phone calls, and notes
015home for each student. And our buildings have put plans in place for how teachers will um and staff will continue to monitor that and increase that in their buildings. Next, we'll hear from our people pillar. So in the our people pillar, we are still working to empower a dedicated and talented team of employees who want to serve our students um our families and our community. And this year um our results measures will be around retention rates and we broke those into classified staff and certified staff. Um currently our retention rates are um at about 84% for our certified staff and 61% for our classified or hourly staff. Um and so each department and building was given their own data um to help monitor um those retention rates. But throughout the year um obviously we hope
016that we are able to maintain our staff throughout the whole entire school year. So um in order to better kind of gauge the experience of our staff members, we want to u be monitoring our staff attendance rates um our subfill rates, the office discipline referrals um that are entered by our staff members for our students. Um and all of those uh pieces of data will be shared with the teams at each building or department um on a monthly basis getting their October or their September data soon. We're a little bit behind there. Um but this year we are focusing on um the develop implement and reinforce protocols to engage staff in problem solving around pressing issues. That's probably the biggest strategy this year. um and focusing in on sub shortages, uh the compensation process that
017we uh follow as a district and then also talking about student behavior. And um we will be overlapping our student behavior work with the caring culture pillar as well and using some of the data that the caring culture pillar will get from the audit um that all of our schools are going through to start that work um and to be able to bring many different people together uh to complete that work. So, we've we've started it. We've had some uh time together for our subcommittee uh sub shortage group. We'll be meeting this Friday around our compensation process. And then uh once we have our audit data back, we'll get our student behavior meetings up and going. And from finance, facilities, and operations, it's going to be a very active year for this group. Uh there's
018a lot going on in here. uh we want to make sure and the commitment is advancing a strong financial foundation and the facilities to support our community. Uh so not only making sure that we have adequate resources but that we have the right facilities for our educational process to uh work in uh uh day in and day out. So this year will be a year that our master facility study will be updated. Uh that's something we do every five years and it's always a 30-year look. So, kind of reflecting on the changes over the past five years, uh we've had some success in upgrading facilities in the past decade, uh but we do have some facilities that do have some s significant improvement needs. Um a couple areas that we've scored very well in, uh
019on parent survey, we want we're not leaving well enough alone. We'd like to see those results uh continue to grow. Um since we've had a slight decline in enrollment, we are going to look at a long-term enrollment projection from applied population labs. So the a lot of these things are underway. Um hopefully for us, one thing we want to do is maintain our our pupil count from September to January. But uh we can't necessarily control September to September because we're graduating more kids than we're bringing in. uh trying to make the experience here for for everybody who attends one that wants to keep them here. Um so ATSNR is uh who's doing our facility assessment. This is the third generation that they have worked on as well. And I mentioned applied population labs. So we'll
020see some recommendations not only with those population projections but also what our current uh enrollment pro enrollments are and then looking at the available space uh within our our district and if if and when right size to be modernized to educational our current educational delivery may or may not require some additions to plan for in the future. a district committee is going to be studying our elementary attendance boundaries. Uh that has the last time that occurred was in 2005. It's time for us to do that again which is going to be underway here. The planning for it has begun. I think the first meeting is November and then all of our buildings and departments are going to talk about successes and surveys that from the parent experience sharing those positive things that come away from
021that. Uh next we have just a reflection of our annual scorecard. This everything that we've just talked about is kind of packaged into uh this scorecard look. This is something that we do annually. So for me district, I think it's really neat how we do our our three-year strategic plan, but each year we develop a new scorecard. So it's not a plan that sits on a shelf. It is very active uh and one that we like to work on continuously and also report on our success or where we're struggling. is page two of the scorecard. Uh this uh budget development process chart really is a uh is a result of strategic planning really. Um but it's it's really now. Um I think you've heard me say before it's a little ironic. We get to our
022budget hearing and we're already four months into our fiscal year. Um but really it's now to one year from now. So I like to look at this as a year of reflection. uh how we got to this point, but also what the next year is going to look like in terms of planning. We're already beginning our enrollment projections and our five-year budget forecast. We then move into our our internal process for how we develop our budget and staffing plans. Work on hiring throughout the spring, seeing how we're going to respond to all of the changes that we may see, uh both positive and negative. There will be a new bianial budget. So we'll try to make sure that we monitor that process probably beginning sometime after the first of the year and then make sure
023when we get to this point next year uh we have the most reflective budget that reflects our priorities and our goals for the year and we have the resources to support some different timelines. you just mentioned here we are in October um and we're just finalizing third of our budget year with twothirds remaining a couple dates um that all come after our preliminary budget uh we get our state aid estimate on July 1st our pupil count date for revenue limit purposes was on September 20th October 1st we got our certified values of our properties within our district need that in order to determine our property tax levy. Uh we got our state aid figure last Tuesday, October 15th. Tonight we're conducting our budget hearing and then we have until the I think it's the first
024Tuesday uh which is November 4th uh to certify our tax levy to our municipal clerks. And then January 10th will be the next pupil count opportunity for us uh which is used for a purposes. So, I bring this up just because it makes planning all that much more important for us. So, even though even though forecasting and planning is a best guess, if you will, um it's better to at least have a best guess than wait until now to try to determine what what our process might look like. We'll roll into the budget proposal here. Uh this is a in summary format. This is the one that gets published within the newspaper. Uh, and I'll just I'll kind of highlight some things in each of the funds uh just to kind of make sure we're
025just sharing a flavor of what's included in this kind of condensed version. In fund 10, top portion is revenues and broke apart by by major area. State aid and property taxes are certainly the the two largest and then expenses below that uh by major function. So, it's really just kind of condensed into instruction support, uh, special projects fund, uh, mostly fund 21 and fund 27. Fund 21 is gifts. Uh, fund 27 is our special education fund. So, all of our special ed activity runs through that that fund. Uh, fund 39 is our debt service activity. Fund 49, uh, for building capital from 2018 from the 2018 referendum and you'll start to see that kind of filter off here. Uh probably one more year of reporting and unless something changes will fall off the books here.
026Fund 50 is our food service fund. So all of our pupil and adult meals uh the national school lunch program that all filters through fund 50. Uh this just reflects the activity of that uh our for the past two years in our planning for this current year. Fund 73 is our postemployment benefit trust just recording the trust activity uh that runs through there. Fund 80 is our community service fund. Biggest programs that run through fund 80 community ed our school resource officer program at both the high school and the middle school. We have mentor Chipua, protective behaviors program, our family support and resource coordinator, ATOD prevention, family crisis support specialist, our mental health navigator, all run through fund 80. So when we kind of package that all together, all spending is down slightly over our
027prior year. um federal revenues skew that a bit and also as some of that referendum uh planning from 2018 falls off the books too. So, but generally speaking uh our our spending is down from prior year. The tax levy uh which is the next category here is up 2.8 million. As you recall, we did pass a referendum for 2.5 million. um we used up all of our ESSER funding and then some factors too that also influence this are the voucher aid deductions uh that affect the revenue limit. Next we have a budget adoption format. This is kind of a a more expanded or a little little deeper dive into the budget. And this is really just for reflective purposes. Uh but again I'll just kind of highlight some some things here as well. In fund
02810, it's revenue by source. So, you're probably used to seeing this, but just in a different format in our our monthly reporting. Local sources, obviously, our tax levy is the largest part of that. But this is also where we record interest income, gate receipts, we have a game or a contest that we charge admission to. uh things that students rent. Uh if there are any fees or fines that go along with student activity, uh that is recorded in there as well. In the 300 level, uh payments to other Wisconsin school districts. That's where we record our open enrollment expenses uh for pupils open enrolled out of our district. Um state aid is the next category or state sources. State aid being the largest one. State aid was also up this year, $945,683. And then I
029just want to highlight the categorical aid source 690 that remains at $742 a pupil. It has been that way now for I think this is the fourth that has been as well. Moving into federal sources that contains all of our title programs Perkins, we've had some things fall off in federal sources. We had a mental health grant uh for five years that is over and done with in terms of the grant and our ESSER funding SR1, SR 2, SR 3 was completed as of September 30th. So we have a little bit of that remaining in this fiscal year but will not continue into next year. Some things that that Esther money even though uh was through September 30th supported was our virtual learning platform and support technology curriculum uh purchases and implementation staffing. Uh it
030was used to kind of stabilize our staffing in in years past. We were able to finish that out here this year. So that leads us to a total revenue in fund 107,327,380 and I'm not leaving out the cents. On the expense side of things, uh again these are by major program category in the 100,000 level of instruction. It's mostly salaries and fringes and support services. That's all of our instructional support, maintenance and operations and transportation also run through that as well. And then our non-program transactions included in this are specialed transfers. All the activity running through 27 revenues don't support expenses there. The general fund has to make a transfer to cover that amount. It's no different here than it is in any other school district. Everybody has that occur. and then our open enrolled
031expenses pupils open enrolled out. So all told our expenditures and revenues are balanced. So you'll see that those two do tie out. When we get to the other funds, it's the same format as fund 10. Um special ed, uh fund 27, I did mention that transfer in that is a big part. uh activity that runs through special ed. In state sources, we do get some state and federal grant dollars. Regarding special ed, those are very helpful. Uh so we don't want to minimize uh the impact of those on the expense side of special ed. All the expenses related to instruction and support and any other kind of nonprogram transactions. Uh in debt service fund 39, uh this I guess surprised me in when I wrote it down, but when I did the math on the
032years, it makes sense. This will be this will be our seventh debt payment already on our 2018 referendum. So, I don't know, maybe I maybe I have COVID fog or something some period of time. That was a 20 year capital projects fund 49. I guess I've talked about that enough. uh that's something that will fall off the books here is as uh from a reporting standpoint as we phase out of that 150 is our food service operation again um 173 our postemployment benefit trust and all those services I mentioned when we look at that in a distribution we look at our revenues it's a fairly normal distribution uh big portions of the pie here obviously are state aid and property taxes state aid number includes some other types of aid uh other than equalization aid.
033It does include categorical aid as well. Uh in our federal aid mentioned those two grants uh both ESSER and mental health that were falling off. So you would have seen a higher percentage in that amount in years past and just a small amount in the other category. On the expense side, again from my analysis, this is a fairly normal distribution that we would see in a school district. Salaries and fringes are people make up a lot of uh who we are and what we spend our dollars on. Those two combined are 59% for salaries and fringe. If we owned our own transportation fleet, be in the 75 to 80% range like most Wisconsin school districts are. uh in purchase services. Uh that's where we see a higher amount contract out for transportation, but that also
034covers services and repairs and expenses related to open enrollment. Non- capital is a very fancy name for uh supplies and materials and things that make us hum on a daily basis. Mentioned that special ed transfer before to fund 127. And then that small category of other is what we spend on capital and any other kind of normal non-program transactions. Uh this chart is actually one of my favorite. I think I think it describes uh we're putting our money where we're supposed to and aligns with our strategic plan. No surprise. We're putting a bulk of our dollars into our instruction and support areas uh in student success. In caring culture, it's our pupil services activity. In our people, it's our professional development. In finance, facilities and operations, it's transportation, capital improvements, operations, and maintenance. So, our
035people delivering instruction in the facilities that we provide for them. I'm guessing would be a fairly high area for most school districts. Fiscal points of pride. Um, we are considered a a very financially healthy district. We do carry an AA2 bond rating which is considered excellent. That was very beneficial for us in 2018. Will be beneficial for us if there is any future borrowing um at some point down the road. Um even though we've declined a little bit of enrollment, um it is a relatively stable decline, if you will. Comparatively speaking, there are a lot of school districts that are drastically declining in enrollment. We've been able to hang in there, I guess, if you will. Uh again, back to that strategic planning process. We're able to put our resources where they're needed. Uh we
036have a we've we've addressed our OPED liability uh going all the way back to 2005. Uh so almost 20 years ago, uh we started working on that. Uh and we're in a healthy place related to that. Our goal was sustainability. Think we got there. Last amount of debt issued was 18 $65 million referendum. Uh we actually have $431 million worth of debt capacity. So if you want to go to referendum for that in in April, you could certainly do that. I wouldn't recommend. But the the point here is that if there's ever a need to issue debt, the district has has a lot of capacity to be able to allow to issue debt. Financial quick facts. U this is something that I guess I find extremely helpful uh certainly for the board and for the
037community and for media as well. So the eight key some data that compares last year to this year. Uh when we look at enrollment down 34, this is on an FTE basis. I thought that was just the best way to include it in here. Most of this relates to graduating a larger senior class, bringing in a smaller 4K and kindergarten class. Expenditures are up three and a half% mostly related to staffing and inflation. Revenues are up 2.61%. Uh the we are at the low revenue limit ceiling of 11,325. State aid is up 2.98%. Uh there was more money put into the aid pot the second year of the bianium. I think due in part to an awareness that some of the federal dollars were going to expire that there would be a need to backfill
038that with something. Uh tax levy up 9.73%. Uh most of this due is in due in uh in shift in our federal funding from master funding to local funding. Then obviously the passing of the referendum revenue limit is up 6.41% mostly legislative. Our equalized value this is one I didn't wasn't quite sure where this was going to end up this year but our property value growth was 8.16%. Uh we continue to be above the state average in property growth. Um, and that surprises me, I guess, but when you look around at home prices and property values, it doesn't really surprise me. I just didn't know how sustainable that would be long term. I just thought of this. You and I have had this conversation and maybe one the board should be very aware of that
039as membership declines in relation to those manufacturing property values going up the district. How far away do you think we are from negative tertiary? Couple years. Is the board aware of negative tertiary and how that works? Half of it. You want to give them a quick rundown on negative tertiary? Essentially, the state takes our expenses and they put them in three different buckets. They say, "We're going to give you primary aid. Every district gets it. We'll give you secondary aid. That's where the bulk of the money is. And then there's tertiary aid. And those are each funded at a different amount. But if you have a high property value, low student population, your tertiary aid figure will be negative and it will take money from the secondary pot to the point where it could take
040all of the secondary dollars and you uh you there are school districts a handful of school districts in the state that do not get any state aid at all. I think we're a long ways away from we're a long ways from that one. We are certainly but it is one where I do worry about that. I I keep watching the manufacturing park is growing again. I I've seen a couple of sites that more bring in more business. And the thing is we need membership to come into the district along with that to avoid the negative. Whenever there's an inverse relationship between the two, that's when this negative tertiary happens. Was reassessment when they reassessed it that have an impact on this too? I know a lot of people it's hard to say that it doesn't
041but it really just depends on the size of the minur goes through the reassessment but technically it's supposed to be done every five years. Our our rates are equalized. So I always think I always think of it this way. If you're suspended above a body of water and you drop a rock into the water you have this ripple effect that starts from the center. equalization process is intended to not have any disparity between the municipality going through a reassessment and one that hasn't. Chad, what happens if we get like a multi-million dollar tiff district? Does that count as the equalized value even though we're not getting taxes? it comes out. But it's it's when that value comes back on the property that actually is when it can be the most harmful just depending on because
042you might have an a unreasonable spike in property values in any given year. But I think we're large enough, we have enough we have enough property value within our district that there's likely to never be a tiff that's going to cause an unreasonable spike for us. And the last is mill rate. um a 1.45%. I'm proud to say that's right where we expected it to be. Uh even with the passage of a so that's about as spot on as we can get in terms of mill rate impact. Um and I'm glad to see that it's it's a relief actually. Um but it was you know the best planning we had at the time not knowing what those factors were but they did come to fruition as expected. Next few charts are really just uh a
043little bit historic and a little bit of information. First is property valuation per people. Green is the state average. Uh and we are in blue. Uh and I guess the the story I like to tell this this is this is why we're funded like we are. Uh we do have a high property value, but we do have a relatively high student enrollment comparatively speaking. Again, that's us to the state average. These are our property values throughout all of our municipalities. Uh city of Chipo Falls remains the largest, almost 30% of our property value. Uh followed by the town of Lafayette at 22.5%. Lake Halley comes in third, 16.85, and the town of Eagle Point, uh 12.24. Those four municipalities make up 82% of our property value. So there are lot there's lots of other property
044within our district. Um but those are the four that make up a big portion of our property. We look at property tax levies. Uh this is a historical view going back to 2003 2004. We we have seen some fluctuation from year to year but on average they're pretty stable. Um they're very aid and legislative legislatively dependent. So they're very reflective of what we see in terms of a a legislative process. Next is our district equalized mill rate. Again going back to 2003 2004. Uh if I look back at the last 12 years, all those numbers are negative except for the two years that we passed referendums in 1819. We've been driving our mill rate down asking for support. needed it for specific things, but ultimately still relatively stable over time. When we look at us
045compared to state averages and the surrounding communities and our surrounding communities in the Big Rivers Conference, this data is a little bit aged, but this goes back to 22 23. You look at the educational cost in the state average, you look at Chipo Falls, and you look at the rest of our areas. Um, I guess this just tells us that, you know, I think our our community gets a good value in the education for the dollars that we spend. We're not a high spending district. We're not a low spending district either. Uh, very close to the state average. When we look at mill rates, again, this is our surrounding communities in the Big Rivers Conference compared to the state average. Again, this is last year. Um most uh most people just like us are setting
046this year's luggies now. So that data is just not yet available. But it gives you a chance to look back at last year to see how we fared, I guess. Next, we have some historical looks uh at equalized values and mill rates goes back to 1984. U I have a hard time removing this chart just because it it's pre-revenue limit. Um, and it it's kind of neat to look back at where property values were compared to now, uh, and where tax rates were then versus now last year, but this year's as well. Um, a little bit fascinating. When we look at tax rates, uh, again, the state is in red, the district is in blue. uh we do mirror the state budget process again but that's it's pretty amazing how close we are the the
047state average. Next we just have some uh components of the revenue limit. Uh upper left chart is our revenue uh with any exemptions per pupil. And what you see here is a small amount of growth from historic per pupil increases, but it seems that the gap is getting wider. I would attribute most of this to inflation uh but also legislative process. Upper right corner is our maximum revenue limit with all exceptions with any exemptions. Again, pretty flat until last year. That was really the first bump in the revenue limit of any significance that we've seen in quite a while. Line six is our current year membership. Um, looking back, you'll see that's kind of reflective of our most recent enrollment declines. The the charts a little bit skewed uh depend on where the legends are
048there, but not not nearly as significant as what it looks like on the chart. And levy rate, again, we mirror that state average, and we've always been slightly below uh even with the passages of our referendum. I think that's a good story to tell our community. When we look at the revenue limit from a historical perspective, again, that's just us compared to state averages. Uh I don't know that it's ever great to be average, but maybe when it comes to financial things, it's good to be average. We look at our aid membership from an equalized aid perspective. Again, this follows our enrollment is really trending downward. So, we're seeing less pup less pupils in our eight. That's one of the things that Jeff had mentioned earlier. And then this is just a visual representation of
049that same thing. Uh, traditionally, we've had an upward growth trend over time, but you'll see some flattening out here as we uh do see some decline in enrollment. Then the last bits of information here are just for reference. It would be helpful if somebody were reading this book and they wanted to know what some of these terms meant. We included some of our school finance terms in here as well. This point turn this back over to Mr. Holmes. President has joined us now for answer any questions and move on to the next part of the process. Thank you. As we conclude tonight's budget presentation, I want to express my gratitude to everyone who contributed to this year's budget development process. Our district continues to demonstrate fiscal responsibility while maintaining our commitment to educational excellence. This
050is evidenced by our AA2 bond rating, stable enrollment projections, and our strategic allocation of resources to support student achievement. I'd also like to extend special thank yous to our business manager, Jed Trobridge, and our district accountant, Jessica Miller, for their exceptional work in developing yet another balanced budget. Their meticulous attention to detail and strategic financial planning have been instrumental in maintaining our district's strong fiscal foundation while supporting our educational priorities. Our success as a district is built on the collaborative efforts of our board members, administrators, staff, and community. Together, we continue to pursue our vision of educational excellence for a changing tomorrow where we inspire, support, and learn. Thank you all for your ongoing support and dedication to our students success. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Check. So, you're turning it over
051to me. Uh budget's all yours now. Okay. Uh what are we supposed to do with it from here? Is this uh I didn't have any prepared remarks or something. I don't think so. It's just I think you'll hopefully you adopt the budget. Okay. So board I'll give Angela control of the she can show you what's next. So we don't have uh anything on the agenda here. No, you do. So next would be the um agenda related public forum. You don't have anyone here. So then the next agenda item would be consideration of the final budget and adoption of the levy because you wouldn't let the public make comments if they were here. But they're not we're not public. So I guess I have a couple questions. Is that okay? That's perfectly fine with me. Thanks.
052Yeah. I guess help me out. Where are we at? Where's our fund balance? So, if you What do we have in there? So, if you go to the budget publication format, I'll get you a page number here. Which page? I'll get you one. Page 31. 8.8 million. 8,800 balance. Okay. And is that remained fairly stable? It did. We did. We'll talk about that actually in the open session meeting. Um just upped slightly this year. Which which should be as our budgets rise, we should be increasing fund balance. Sure. At the same time, and I noticed that our investment money increased. Is that because of interest rates or what what caused that to increase? Solely because of interest rates. Is that primarily the fund balance and the referendum money that we have yet to spend? Is
053primarily when we have available cash that we are at wisely. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So we are at uh 4.01 one right now. Correct. Subject to any questions, we would be looking for a board member to make a motion to approve the final 2024 2025 budget and adopt the levy pursuant to OE6 and OE7. So moved. Motion by fear. Is there a second? Second by Mawam. Any further discussion or motion from this? Okay. Hearing none. Uh, can we have any roll? I I should have I should have asked because I gave you five minutes to act as president. Yes. So, okay. Peggy is our Dennis Fair. Hi. Jasper absent. Dave Martin. Hi Sharon McGum. Hi. Sorry about that. Peggy McKillb. I Steve Olsen. Hi. Dave check. I motion carries. The board has approved the final
0542024 2025 budget and adoption of levy as presented pursuant to OE or OA6 and OA7. Thank you all for your presentations on that tonight. We need a motion to adjourn. Motion by M. Is there a second? Second. Second by Martin. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. We stand adjourned until 6:20