001Welcome. This is the School District of Prescott Board of Education annual meeting. The Board of Education and School District Administration welcome our residents to this budget hearing an annual meeting on Wednesday, September 24th. During the budget hearing, you'll be informed of the proposed budget, which is based on estimated costs and budgetary changes that either have or will take place during the next year during the Bing budget passed by the Wisconsin legislature. And just so this is not a regular meeting. It's it's run by the people and it's for the people. So I'm going to go through the guidelines for addressing the assembly and the chair. If you're if you want to address the the assembly, please just raise your hand. It says please stand. Just raise your hand uh and wait for the chair to
002call on you. Then identify yourself and the name including the municipality in which you reside. If you're making a motion, ensure that the clerk has the motion correct. Once the motion has been made and seconded, we request that whoever speaks in favor of the motion be followed by someone who is opposed and vice versa as we talk through it. If there's any it doesn't I don't think we're going to have that problem tonight, but I'm I'm just speaking it in case in case others join. Votes will be decided by voice vote and matters pertaining to specific individuals or sensitive subjects may be tabled. So, thank you. And at this time, let we can we can move forward to uh select the chair. The guidelines for selecting the chair. >> Oh, right, right, right. Let's do
003that first. Um, let's go to the pledge of allegiance and then we'll get into the uh electing a chairperson. Uh, Helen, would you care? I pledge allegiance >> to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. So, we will now elect a chair and any voting member of the audience can make a nomination. Nominations do not require a second. I will ask three times for additional nominations and then close the nominations. Uh you will then vote on the person nominated. Any if there's any anybody have any questions on this I think we'll just you know you nominate somebody second it there is no there is no second I'm sorry just nominate somebody and
004then I'll ask for other nominations close it and then we'll have a vote any other nominations there we go all right uh voting for Mike Massik as chair of the annual electors meeting all in favor say I raise your hand. >> I >> oppose. All right, I'll thank I will uh gladly chair the meeting. Thank you, Josh. And let's move into the agenda. We are on item four, adopt the agenda. Uh anything that we need to add? Does everybody have a copy of the agenda? If if not, you can go request one from from Courtney over there. We would after you're done reviewing it, just make a motion to adopt it or ask for modifications. Anybody care to make a a motion to adopt the agenda as presented? So move small. >> Okay, we have
005a motion and a second. Any other dialogue? All in favor raise your hand. >> Opposed? That carries. Thank you. We'll move on to item five is review the 2024 annual meeting minutes. And I don't know if we can if people have copies of that. I'm working on projecting it. >> Okay. [Music] this. >> No, just um if we won't read the minutes out loud, just review them and then when when somebody when we're ready to make a motion, please make a motion to adopt or to to approve the minutes from the 2024 annual school meeting. No, I don't. You don't approve them. >> We don't have to approve them >> cuz they're a year old. They just get published. >> Okay. >> Any questions on the minutes from from last year? We we don't need
006to make a motion to approve the minutes. If not, I'll move on. Okay, we're going to move on. Uh we are now on item six, reports, and we will do an update on the district progress. And I'll turn it over to you, Michael. Good evening everyone. Just wanted to uh come in and give a little or short version of what I've been talking about over the last couple of schoolboard meetings, but just the annual progress of the school district. Um, one of the big things that we enacted last year was connectivity. Let me recycle my engineering note here. There we go. All right. One of the big things that we looked at last year was building thinking classrooms. That was an initiative that we kicked off last year with our K12 staff. Uh we're in
007year two of that. And one of the reasons how we got to uh building thinking classrooms and talking about the thinking that's going on in in our classroom is over the last decade we've been working uh through the teaching and learning department on what is the daily desired experience we want both for our students and for our staff. Um we've worked with our PLC leaders and with all of our staff to better define and refine what would that look like. and we've landed on a visible learning experience that we want to have where we can we can see, we can hear, and we can feel the learning that's going on in our classrooms. So, building thinking classrooms, what this does for us is it gets kids thinking more. Research shows about 20% of the students
008are thinking 20% of the time in in a traditional classroom. And it's not to say kids aren't thinking more than that, but the deep thinking that is needed in order to build their own knowledge. So these practices that we are looking at and investing in and um practicing within our classrooms get more kids thinking. They think deeper and they think longer. And that's really what what we're focusing on. And it looks a little different in every classroom because of the thinking that is required. Uh we have a great building thinking classroom team. Jen Linger at the first grade level. Sarah Score at grade four. Nathan Mcers is a math teacher at the middle school. Justice Layman is a English teacher at the middle school. Kayla Kinnman is a high school math teacher. And Cam Meyers
009is a high school science teacher. So, as you can see, this isn't just um the resource that we're using is building the classrooms in a mathematics classroom. Um but this isn't just mathematics. It really appeals to all of our classrooms. And again, it doesn't always fit everything that we do. Um, and that we're not trying to make it fit either. We're trying to look at what's the thinking. So, over the last two summers, we've been blessed that the school board has supported sending people to the National Building Thinking Classroom Conference where the entire conference is all about thinking in the classroom. And this last year was in July um of 2025 and appreciate that we were able to send staff to that and they're willing to give up their summer to go and do some
010learning and then bring that learning back um to us here at Prescott. And with the light here, it's a little hard to see, but here is the Prescott School District staff working on a building thinking classroom task. Something similar that we ask kids to do. We have staff going through the same routines and repertoires and learning how it impacts them as a learner, so that way they can relate it better to the students in their classroom. So, these pictures are from this summer's professional development. Here we have a group around the whiteboard working together. Here we have a large group and Kayla Kenman is in the middle here. um leading a think think about of the task that we had just completed and how we might use this within our classrooms. So that distributed leadership
011one of the biggest things is collaboration Mondays and how that comes into play for us. There's one Monday a month that we dedicate to nothing but talking about thinking classrooms. So when I get calls from other school districts, what are you doing differently in Prescott to be able to get the academic and growth results that we see? One, it's collaboration Monday, but two, even more deeper than that, is how are we using collaboration Monday? And the fact that we pause the district every Monday for 90 minutes to allow our staff, K12, to be able to work together on things such as thinking classrooms is amazing. We are in I believe it's year five now of doing that. It's become standard practice for us. And and we're not the only district that does this. There's a
012number of districts um on the east coast of Wisconsin that do this. Um, but it's it's new to Western Wisconsin. We're one of the leaders in this of having a 90minute everyone out of the building. So that way we as the adults can focus on the learning of the adults as well. We spend so much time in education talking about the learning of the students, but that is um second to the learning of the adults so they can change that learning experience for our students. So appreciate the community for supporting that. Um, we know it's a hardship on families to have that early 90 minutes out every week, but the benefits that we see from it um far out outweigh those. And we work always work with families to help problem solve uh issues we
013may have with daycare and things like that. Um, these are some of the quotes from our actual teachers um in the Prescott School District about using thinking classrooms in um those practices within their classroom. Here's um and the picture doesn't necessarily match who the level where the quote came from, but here a teacher talking about how they can see um where students were getting stuck in their thinking a lot easier than in a traditional classroom. And again, part of that is because they're collaborating in small groups, you can hear the thinking, that visible learning that we're looking for. So that way that informs the teacher of what to do next. And we're not waiting to the end of a class and doing an exit ticket or even the next day when they bring in their
014homework and geez half the class didn't understand what I taught yesterday. Now I have to scramble to redesign my lesson. It's in the moment we're redesigning our lesson and the students are really driving where the learning is going. Uh another one here there's uh no students opting out of instruction. A lot of the research shows how much students how much time students spend mimicking the teacher, right? We're doing off off thinking tasks when again teacher turns their back and we're passing notes. We're getting up to sharpen our pencils. We're getting up to go use the the restroom. We're not seeing that when we get kids up to the whiteboards and working together in a group. They they're engaged. They're there. they're they're talking about um whatever the the task is for maybe 10, 15, 20
015minutes that they are truly engaging in that uh learning where that may not have been the case in a traditional classroom and it was hard to tell. Um conversations that flow are incredible. Um was one of the comments that we had another one and I think this was this one I pulled out because it spoke to me as well is that building thinking classrooms has brought back life into my classroom and into me. So, we're changing um the experience of our teachers as well by diving into thinking classrooms and having more of the onus, more of that um cognitive load on the students versus always on the teachers. What that then leads to is our academic success. Right? We're small in size, but we're big in achievement. Um over the years, uh we've been number
016one now. This was last year's results. We are number one in the middle board conference of achievement and target growth out outcomes and that's our bottom cortile of students. So our lowest 25th percentile of performing students from the previous year gets tracked and then what did they do compared to their peers. Um so we're number one in that group. Um and then we're number one in overall student growth as well. So it's really difficult to be a triple threat district where sometimes you're really high in achievement but you don't have that growth. So, we're high achievement and we're closing the gaps that we do have and we're not forgetting our lowest kids. It's not the halves and the have nots. It's the we are putting the fire trucks in the right place and we're getting
017the support we need to those lower kids and they might not be on track this year, but they're on a trajectory to get them there over multiple years in some cases. So, number one, middle board conference. We look broader. We look at the state. We're top 10 in overall academic achievement as a school district in the state of Wisconsin. Last year we were top eight in that student growth category. So again the overall growth we're better than 92% of school districts in in the state. And then that lowest cortile of kids top 6%. So 94% of districts in the state their lowest kids um are not growing as quickly as they are here in Prescott. So that speaks a lot to the health of the overall system, but then also the fact that in Prescott,
018we care about the whole child. A student who is in crisis, a student who does not have nutrition at home or food insecurities are not going to be able to perform at these levels. So kids are getting supported um in many different ways and most of the needs are getting met. Doesn't mean that we don't have work to do. We definitely do. Um, but it's just reaffirming of all the work that we have done here in Prescott and some of the things that that we have done, including the sacrifice of our community of that early out 90 minutes on Mondays. Here are the results. This is what you're getting for that investment. That's all I have on that unless we have some questions. Anybody have any questions for Michael? Excellent job, Michael. Thank you. Okay,
019we're going to move on to facilities. We have a referendum update. One sec as I change over here. Um, so as you know, in 2022, the school district passed a referendum. Um, and this year we've kind of wrapped up a lot of that work. Malone Elementary had the HVAC vestable unit installed for heating and cooling the vestable. Um, numerous uh, faucets and shut off valves were replaced in classrooms. Um, some of our near future needs um, there are two outside doors that are frankly um, old enough that they're starting to rust that we need to replace. Uh it would be good to replace the flooring in five of our classrooms at Malone Elementary. And eventually somewhere between 2029 and 2020 or 2034, sorry. Um we'll need to replace the roof on the gym and the
0201988 classroom wing. That's looking at roughly $400,000 in cost. at the intermediate school. Uh this summer we had restroom exhaust fans replaced and the gym ceiling fans installed. Uh future needs a little bit closer as early as next year, 2026. Uh or between then and 2031, we need to replace a large section of the main roof, which would cost around $550,000 in today's money. Also, the gym really needs to be stripped down, sanded to bare wood, and repainted. That's roughly $25,000 for a gym of that size. At the middle school, um we did quite a bit more work. The restroom partitions were replaced in five of the bathrooms. Um updated, uh the kitchen grease trap and stream steam drain line were replaced. This doesn't seem like a big thing, but uh the kitchen is kind
021of near the middle of the building and without uh replacing that uh we weren't going to have any food. Required quite a bit of concrete floor demo, plumbing and tile replacement. The main line to the chiller unit uh piping was replaced. A chiller unit is basically our air conditioner. Um the gym divider curtain was replaced with a power curtain. And coming up here in the next month, we're going to replace the existing gym bleachers and salvage the wood from the old bleachers. And R5 is going to use that for some of their projects. Uh the future need there um is seal coating the parking lot. After we install the new bleachers, we're going to have 629 around $620,000. Um that's going to remain in fund 49. Um these are it's approximate because some of our
022bills are still being settled. Some of the work was done as you know recently as three weeks ago. But this $620,000 uh from the 2022 referendum, most of that is interest that we earned on the referendum. And then that would be spent on these projects at any of these three buildings. Does not include the high school. Uh cuz the high school was new in 2016. Um, we are in the process of upgrading our weight room equipment through fund 21. Matt Smith is working on that. Couple future needs coming up in the next couple years. Uh, the four domestic water heaters that are in the building um are set to come due for replacement between 2026 and 2029 and also reseal the coat the parking lot uh probably in 2028. Um, the other thing we're doing
023with our facilities as part of a facility update, and we talked about this a lot at the last school board meeting, um, we're looking at possibly consolidating one of our schools. Uh, in Wisconsin, schools have had declining enrollment of over 6.1% over the last four years. Uh, this is our enrollment uh, from 2021. We had 1349 students. 2022, we had 1305. 2023 we had 1310. 2024 we had 1254 and 2025 this is unofficial we have we're down to that is not exactly the same as seats in or children in seats because we include summer school in that we include partial open enrollment 4K kids only count as 6 of a kid. If you ever want details on that, stop by my office and it'll take me a good 20 minutes to explain it to you
024in detail. Um, but these are the numbers that count for our uh our enrollment as far as the DPI is concerned. Um, as we presented at the last board meeting September October, um, we're going to get input from the district, from the administrative team. We're going to start looking at what the savings would be for closing a building. We're going to uh consult with the board about options for public input. We will have a couple couple public input ideas. Um you're going to see uh possible consolidation on the next several uh board agendas. November and December, we're going to start presenting plans to the board and the community. We'll get feedback from the board, from stakeholders, community workshops, surveys, etc. and we'll start as we gather the cost savings study um we'll start sharing those
025out and then after that as we get through that and we start finding a direction if we're going to go in any direction at all um what the remodeling and moving costs would be the big thing that we have to decide as a district is how much savings is worth closing a building and even more importantly that what's the impact on student learning going to be um the impact on the other buildings. What's our classroom space like? Gym space like if we do close a building, what do we do with it? Do we sell it? If we sell it, do we lease the gym a gym back to us? Um because our gyms are used for community ed. Um could we use it as district office space, rent it out to a different organization? Could
026we mothball it or partially mothball it? um you know what's their flexibility going to be for space if our enrollment increases etc. Um and we're also going to have to do a staffing savings study. We already have uh one contracted custodian that has uh been sourced outsourced to a different uh company. Um what are some other things we could possibly save? So, and finally, what types of, if any, outside consultants do we bring in? Questions on our facility updates? >> Does anybody have any questions here for Jim? And it includes board members, too, by the way. Any board member can ask questions, too, at this point. Does anybody have any questions? It's a quiet crowd tonight. Hopefully we have a a lot of people watching online when the recording comes out. All right, that's an
027important topic. We'll we'll we'll have more on that in the up and cominging months in our regular board meetings. We're going to move on to item seven, the presentation of the budget and budget hearing. So Karen and I have worked together um with cons consultation with Baird and our staff um to present a balanced budget to the school board. Um again, our funding is um this year $12,654 per pupil. Um and that's based on a three-year rolling average. Funding in Wisconsin is set by where what school districts were send spending in 1993. In 1994, the Wisconsin legislature decided that all funding would be based upon um and only be able to increase based upon last year's numbers. Instead of coming up with an average, they just figured every school district in the state was full
028and appropriate with their last uh year's numbers. and that has been locked in place for 30 years now. Um, Prescott in 2024 received $11,399 per student. Hudson receives $12,673 in per student. Jialter and Washurn both had very large um expenditures in 1993. So, a student at the Jibralter Area School District was worth 12 thou 24,657. Washurn, they're worth $28,818. So, basically, if all the Prescott students got the Washurn money, we would have uh roughly 2.25 times the amount of money we currently have given to us from the state of Wisconsin. So, all those school districts out there in black on that map, which you can get from the American Association of Equity and Funding, um, go to their website, has a great advantage over everybody else. The blues have a significant advantage. The dark greens,
029which is what Prescott is, um, have a slight advantage over the light greens, which are at the limit. So, this is a major challenge for us. Um, we receive only $74 more than the lowest funded district in the state of Wisconsin. That's 12,000 or $1,274 less than Hudson. I didn't update my numbers on this. I apologize, but it's roughly $1.6 million more if we just had the per pupil revenue that uh Hudson got. If you remember, uh there was a wonderful support of $1.2 2 million referendum that the local taxpayers passed. Um if we had I wasn't here then, but I'm pretty sure that if we had had this extra $1.6 million, that referendum never would have been brought up. Again, like uh Mr. Cosmolski talked about, despite the financial inequity, we're the highest academic
030performing district in the Middle Borders Conference. We regularly outperform Hudson and River Falls um on statewide exams. Another thing the state did in its um to try to balance out and provide some type of equity um is that they in uh as inflation was going up they decided to decouple our state aid from inflation. So uh since 2008 school spending has not been allowed to increase with inflation. As you know, our buses run on diesel. Our building gets heated with gas. We use electricity. Salaries go up by inflation. Um the current number is as of 2026, the graph only goes through 2024, but through 202526, um $3,573 behind per student. So we're roughly $4.4 $4 million behind in inflation since 2009. It's led to a lot of cuts in the district, but at the same
031time, we're still uh doing a great job educating our students, but that's another $4.4 million that the district would have to spend and not have to go to taxpayers if we just kept up with inflation. All this leads to the state of Wisconsin in 2015 starting to fall behind the national average. Uh that light blue line there is Wisconsin. We used to in 2004 spend $15,200 per student. The US average was 13,575. Those numbers have now switched. The US average is 16,526. Wisconsin is below average at 14,282. Again, those are 2023 numbers. Well, what about this current uh budget that was just passed? There is one budget for the whole state for general aid. So, we compete with Rine, we compete with Madison, we compete with Green Bay, Milwaukee, Rine and Madison both passed very
032large referendums, which means they take extra money out of the general state aid. For the first time in 20 plus years this summer, the state did not add money to the general aid. Uh the state has an estimated $5 billion in surplus right now. In 2024 2025, the fiscal year we just got done with, Prescott received $8.7 million in state aid. And next year we are predicted, again, everything doesn't come in until October 15th to receive $7.8 8 million in state aid, which means the local taxpayers in Prescott are seeing a 9,00 964,317 cut in state aid or an 11% cut. Again, all this is passed on to local taxpayers by the state legislature and Governor Ivers. You hear a lot about uh Governor Iver's veto of $325 per pupil for 400 years. That does
033not mean we get extra money from the state. That means that we increase our spending authority. That kind of keeps us close to inflation. And you'll see in the next slide, it doesn't keep us all the way up to inflation. And again, for the first time in 20 years, there was no matching state funds. So, if you look at our number of per pupils, all that $412,100 is passed on to local taxpayers by the state legislature and Governor Ivers. So, when you hear them report $1.4 $4 billion in increased money for students. It's all coming from local taxpayers around the state. Additionally, private school vouchers are funded by our taxpayers before any public school money district receives any money. It depends upon the number of students in Prescott who live in Prescott who go to
034private schools and get vouchers. Uh you notice that uh we went up $325 for public schools. It went up over $1,000 per student for voucher schools. This year in 2025, we will have a voucher hit of $53,679. That will be money taken away from Prescott School District to be sent to private schools. The inflationary increase last year, we get the 325. It would be 3. it would need to be 390 for uh two years ago, 404 for next for last year. Again, our base wages um around the state of Wisconsin have gone up 8% and 4.2%. So, the 325 is barely keeping us afloat. It is not saving us. And the way to think of taxes is think of it as a total bucket that can't get too high or can't get overfilled. If the
035state aid decreases, like ours decrease by almost a million dollars, the only way for the school district to keep all its programs is to not is to tax that money locally and then add on top of that the $325 per student for an annual increase. Again, this is how the state has decided to fund school funding, uh, including, um, not keeping up with inflation, not adding money to the general aid while sitting on a multi-billion dollar surplus of taxpayer money that they've been sitting on for a long time. Um, this is voted on by our local legislature, Senator Rob Strasfold, Representative Trigg Pashnooki. I got to work on that name. And all signed into law by Governor, uh, Tony Ivers. But, uh, this is the hand that the school district has been dealt and we're
036going to use the hand we have to educate our students as best as possible. Long way of saying all this is passing on um, to the local taxpayers. We are projecting a mil our mill rate to be $8.15 per $1,000. That is a $38 per increase up from $777 per,000. If you have a $200,000 house, you will um have a tax increase of $76, a $300,000 house of $114, 400,152, 500,190. But that is all based on equalized state aid. Counties, CVTC, uh, school districts have to work by law on equalized state aid. But that's not what your bill is going to look like. Okay. The theory behind that is equalized value ensures fairness fairness between municipalities. And again, it's used for those shared taxes. Okay? It's the state adjusted value minus the tax aortionate amounts.
037But the city of Prescott, all the townships, they use assessed value. So things are going to change depending upon where your value is and where you live. The local assessor sets the value. It varies by municipality and that's what's used to calculate your local taxes. So for the school district based in 2024, Prescott City, uh the city of Prescott paid about 40% of this uh school district taxes. Oak Grove paid had about 34.7%. Clifton 19.45. There's not much of Trimble in our school district, 1.9 and Diamond Bluff 3.2. When you combine those all up, they're all going to get slightly different mill rates. Um, so the mill rate again is based on how much value is in your house, how much value is in property value is in your specific district. Um, Trimble and Clifton
038um end up with higher assessed values versus the equalized values. So if you notice the equalized value is technically the same for every single person but um there's going to be an added assessment amount for each individual township, municipality, city, etc. Um which is going to end up with a slight difference. Prescott would have a difference an increase of $52.17. Um, Oak Grove $128, Clifton $458, Trimble 530, and Diamond Bluff $19. A lot of that is in the city of Prescott is due to the tax increment districts. Um, so they're all going to vary. That's nothing that the city is doing different or your township is doing different. It's just basically the way the law is written um and how we can't directly translate equalized values to what your tax bill is actually going to
039see. If anybody in the audience or um watching on Friday has questions and wants to sit down with me or somebody from the city and we can run your specific numbers um as we need to. The other thing is everything we're giving you is an estimate. We've gotten our third Friday count estimated. The equalized property value doesn't get to the municipalities until October 1st, which allows us to start really uh finalizing that mill rate and levy. October 15th is when the voucher exemptions and the equalized aid is passed on to us. So, we don't we can't finalize these numbers till October 15th when we get everything from the state. um which is why our October school board meeting will be on the 29th of October um where we'll adopt the final budget and approve the
040final levy and then we report it to um the DPI before November 4th and we send the certified levy to the municipalities by the 10th. Couple noteworthy items in the budget that Car's going to talk about. Um, we have set aside $60,000 for a six-month training period for a new director of building grounds with the goal to hire that person in January and let them work alongside of Mike Hoya for the for 6 months. We have an estimated $1.8 million uh that we're going to transfer to special education which comes from our general education fund 10 and goes to special education which is fund 27. All this money is based on student IEP needs which are uh federally insured and we are locked in on and we can't just cut any of these programs. The
041state promised us 40%. Uh we're looking at when it's all said and done we'll probably get between 30 to 35% of our special education funding reimbured. Educator lobbies uh before the last bium were lobbying hard for 60% plus. Um, people told us to be happy at 40%, right now we're hearing predictions of right around 32% is what we'll actually be reimbursed, which is a step up from our 28%, but still not nearly enough to help us support our students who need the most help. Um, we're going to have a contribution to fund 46 to potentially set offset construction sites uh or construction costs. This could be due to school closures, but it's also going to cover a lot of that stuff we talked about, especially the roofs that are never cheap. Um, we have $50,000
042earmarked for moving costs if we do end up closing a school as well as a salary for the director of business services um accounted for in that money. You ready, Cara? Okay. So, this is the budget that was published uh the 3-year comparison proposed for 2526. You can see the audited numbers for 2324 um general fund and total school levy was a total of 10,000 or 10,350,998 unudited for 2425 which I believe is um potentially wrapped up now at this point it won't be completely 100% approved with DPI until December but those numbers were 11,488711 And for the budget for this year, we've gone through and identified the numbers that we can estimate at this point. Still have numbers coming in that are changing and being updated daily. Um, but right at this point, we
043estimate general fund budget for 8.49004. Referendum debt service fund is 3,426,553. uh non-re non-referendum debt service fund is $390,125 and community service fund is $225,000 which is the same as it was last year. We estimate the budget to be um stable from last year to this year and that would be a total school levy of 12,531682. And this one here again shows that um DPI requires districts use equalized property value. The city uses assessed property values. Um this means that each property by township will see a different taxed impact. And that's something that Jim had covered a little bit earlier here. And so you can see the percentages there of the increases um that we we are projecting at this point with the numbers that we currently have. So again, a lot of that comes
044down to which municipalities have seen the most growth in the last year, um, and what their tax base is. Um, we could be here for 6 hours if we wanted to break down every township. If anybody has any questions, um, call the school district. Karen and I will sit down uh, with you and explain it. If we need to, we'll bring in Beth from the city to have a conversation with you. So the levy for Prescott School District is estimated at 12,531682. Operation fund 10 would be 8,490,4 property char uh property tax chargebacks are unknown at this time. They typically come in um after January tax rules go out. Um, non-referendum debt fund 38 is 390,125. Referendum debt service fund 3.426553 million. Community service fund, that's the 80s, is $225,000. >> So that community service
045fund is the PCR and the community ed. Then again, this shows the numbers that roll into the um 2526 school tax levy final numbers or what we propose will be the final numbers. The total tax levy is 12,531,682. [Music] >> Any questions from anybody? >> Any questions? Anyone? Can I bring up one point I want to make on the record here? If you go back, so go back to slide seven >> that had tax on Prescott funding and it had the big number of 964,000 on it >> right there. So that number, that 964 that was cut in state aid was added to the local taxpayer general fund that Cara just pointed out on on one of the first slides. Now, if you go back to the slide that compared the the 3 years, the
0463-year comparison, this slide right here from 20 24 25 26 is that fair to say that that that was where the increase cuz people are going to look at this and be like, why are we spending more money, >> right? It's a It's the bulk of the >> It's because the state dropped funding by almost a million dollars. Yes. >> That we are now asking the taxpayers locally in the Prescott School District to pick up. >> That's correct. >> It's not because we increased our spend by a million dollar. It's because the state is taking away almost a million dollars of the money that we had from last year. >> And that's that's exactly what it is. It's a $940ome,000 cut. our total levy is going up by just over $1 million1 million60,00056,000. So yeah,
047that little bit of difference is the uh 325 increase. Um but yeah, it's it's directly related to the cut in state aid and that's a combination of declining enrollment and increased property values. If you want to lower the lowest tax levy limit in the state of Wisconsin is bloit because their property values are so low and their poverty is so high. So >> anybody have any questions or comments on this? >> So when we talk about the the bucket can only be so full that bucket is still at that same level. We've just kind of shifted where who's who's got the bigger chunk. >> The state. Yep. The state took a million dollars out of the bucket. So, we had to put a million dollars back in the bucket from local taxpayers. >> Okay. >>
048Or significantly cut programming. >> All right. That was the point I want to make. Thanks, Cara. Anybody else have anything on this before we move on? That'll wrap up the presentation part of the meeting and we're going to move into resolutions. So the first resolution is resolution A to adopt a tax levy. I think that if you want to go back to line, come on. I clicked on actually clicked on the thing. So this is our first resolution to adopt the tax levy as presented on this screen for 12,531,682 as an estimate. It's not finalized, but as as of now and it'll be finalized in October. >> And that 12 the 12,531,000 comes from the money broken down below. If you add up those one through five, you get the top number. So at this
049time, we can entertain a motion to accept a preliminary tax levy for 2526 academic year. So, we got one motion. We need a second. The board can second. >> I'll second. >> Vicki second it. Courtney. So, we have a motion and a second. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Opposed. That one carries. Thank you. Resolution A. Now we're on to resolution B. Do you want me to cover B and C? >> Yes, please. >> So, by state law, uh the board members cannot vote on resolution B. Uh salaries for the school board members. Uh so, last year the salaries were as follows. The board president received $2,500. The vice president, clerk, treasurer, and member each received $2,200. Um, so at this time, um, it is up to the people in the audience who
050are taxpayers of the Prescott School District to, uh, make a motion on how much they think the board president and members should make next year. >> Board president is $2,500. Vice President is 2,200. clerk, treasur, and member also 2,200. Those were increased last year, I believe. Right, Courtney? >> Okay. I move that the school board salaries for school members stay the same as last year for chair 2200 for everybody else. Yes. >> Second. Josh seconds. All in favor say I. opposed. Motion carries. Resolution C is recommended that board members be in reimbursed for actual expenses for out of district travel and conducting the business of the board of education. Um for clarification, the big expense for this is the Wisconsin Association of School Board uh conference which is held every January and is highly valuable.
051that is the vast majority if not all of these expenses and it's um not a significant amount. So if there's no questions we entertain a motion to reimburse them for the actual expenses for traveling out of district and conducting the business of the school board. Motion by Josh. Second. Second. Any comments? All in favor? >> I >> opposed. Motion carries. >> Lastly, we have a resolution D for setting the annual meeting date. Usually, we what we've done in the past is allow the school board to set that date and time and a later date when when we have a clearer picture of what the audit of what the budget's going to look like following the audit. Right. So, if if one were to make a motion to allow it, it would be to allow the
052school board to set a date and time for the 2026 annual board meeting before the 3rd Wednesday of October. I vote to give the board commission a set the date to the annual meeting um when they but before the statuto requirement of the third Wednesday. [Music] >> All right, we have a motion to second. Courtney, you got all that? All in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. That motion carries as well. Thank you. And I think we are now on motion to adjurnn. >> You want to put that? Let them know that note. >> Okay. Uh yes. Just as a side note, the next board meeting is scheduled uh the regular the regular October board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 29th. So, we're pushing it back a couple of weeks uh in in honor
053of trying to make sure that we have everything buttoned up for the annual budget uh to present the final numbers. So, that that's all I say about that. So, we can take a motion to adjourn the meeting. Come on. Don't don't all jump at once. >> Motion to second. All we have a motion and a second. All in favor say I. >> I oppose. That carries. We are journed. Thank you everyone.