001I would like to call to order the special meeting of the Newport News School Board for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026. On behalf of the members of the school board and the superintendent, I want to welcome each of you present and those who are watching. A quorum is present to transact the business of the school division. And we're going to begin tonight with the pledge of our flag. Mr. Hunter? Yes. Will you please lead us? Will we please rise? i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god invisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated thank you so much uh we will now move on to 4.01 appointments uh appointment of agents oh we need a motion at this
002time uh we need a motion uh for For the appointment, I'll make the motion. I'm able to approve the recommendation for appointment of agents Okay, and deputy agents Okay second any discussion. All right, please call the roll Searle's law Harris for Alger for a man or brown for hunter for best or Motion passes 7-0 and now we will move on to five point one is that correct okay good good evening madam vice chair and members of the board tonight you will be provided with a presentation of the proposed fy 2027 budget This budget is designed with a focus on the goals that have been set forth by the board in the strategic plan while also maintaining fiscal discipline in a time when enrollment shifts and potential changing state revenue assumptions are looming. At this time,
003I am very pleased to turn the presentation over to Mr. Fairhart, who will walk us through the details of the proposed budget. Mr. Mitchell. My pleasure. Good evening, Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of the board. It gives me great pleasure to be here before you to present the FY27 operating budget. Before I do so, I would like to recognize a few folks from the business and finance team that have been instrumental during our current leadership transition. First, I'd like to start with Leslie. She's our senior budget analyst. Kimberly Powell is our supervisor for accounting and risk management. I'd also like to recognize Dwight Duren. He's our Director of Finance and Accounting. And also Irene Cooper, who cannot be with us this morning. She's our Supervisor of Budget. She's supporting her daughter in regional basketball
004games. That's right. I'm just the messenger. They did the work. So we'll get started. You guys are aware of the five goals that you set forth, culture of advancement, academic literacy, workforce readiness, civic and business partnerships, and then elevating our identity. I think you'll see that our budget priorities are aligned to our strategic plan very nicely. Certainly academic literacy takes a priority for most of the folks that are in today, with 90% of our students in grades three through five being at 90% proficiency in reading and math by 2030. These are just a few, but certainly we have many. The city, of course, a funding partner. Our community partners, faith-based organizations, our advisory groups, our students, staff, and, effectively, our most important stakeholders. This has been the process thus far. We started back in November,
005budget, staff level input. You all were met with during the work session in December, then again in January. We had work priority sessions during February, and here we are in March to present. the proposed budget we'll have our public hearing next Tuesday and then we'll seek approval of the budget on the 17th once again these are the drivers of the budget they're all linked to one of the five goals in the strategic plan academic success student and staff supports leadership and instruction professional development family and community engagement which is critical recruitment and retention school and building safety technology supports and then operation and maintenance my favorite so Here are the changes from FY 26 to 27 and of course as you are aware we're working off of the governor's proposed budget General Assembly is still
006in session. So we expect some changes So at this point we're expecting about nine point six million dollars in new revenue from the state and what I'll echo to you throughout the presentation is that's probably a worst-case scenario because I'll show you later that The House and the Senate have more money towards education if approved So I think this is our starting point and hopefully only gets better from there So this is what's currently proposed you can see that the governor proposed a 2% raise for each year in the biennium The house said 2% as well and then a 3% in the side The house also included a one-time $1,500 bonus for our staff. And then you can see the VRS rate is decreased about 2%. So it's going from 14.21 to 12.2. And that's
007common throughout the three budget proposals. So we anticipate that as a savings for the school division. That's obviously the employer's cost. special education the governor's proposal maintains a formula as it does with add-on at-risk add-on but you can see that the other two proposals would provide more funding to us as a school division hence my suggestion that this is a worst-case scenario our nine point six million dollar increase and then you can see the school construction the house did provide a number Dollar number to each school division about the increase and that's twenty three point five million if approved The Senate did not so we did not try to calculate one on their behalf So state revenue trend again. This is the plus nine point six million. We're anticipating. Hopefully that spikes a little bit
008Yet to be determined but you can see that's an increase from the prior physical year as well so Here we have our proposed budget You can see that the total is four hundred and twenty nine million point two You can see where the change from FY 26 ours nine point six again from the state Currently, we're seeking eight point two million from the city and that would be a six point five percent increase Zero change with federal and our other revenue remains flat as well. So overall it's about a four point three percent increase in our budget seventeen point eight million dollars and actual dollars Here you can see the city's contribution that we're requesting again the 8.2 million dollars and you can see the difference between what was provided in 26 versus what we're
009currently asking for in 27 Should that change with state revenue? Obviously we can alter our request from the city This is their contribution with debt service and you can see that debt service went up Are just going up a little bit less than five million dollars and that's obviously huntington middle school This is our enrollment trend and you can see we're projecting a slight decrease in our enrollment for next year. Not very substantial but you can certainly see the trend and I don't think that we're alone there not only in Commonwealth but across the country. There's been great discussion about enrollment loss in school divisions. This is our pre-K enrollment. We're anticipating about 30 more pre-K kids for next year. So that's a good sign. Our early learners are growing and that will benefit us
010down the road. And then we also have a slight uptick in our English language learner population, about five or six kids as we speak. Certainly, I think everybody understands that's a fluid number. Our number is, as of today, the FY26 current, and that's what we're projecting for FY27. But certainly, given the state of affairs, that number continues to fluctuate daily. Our military connected students. This is flat as well and that's Typical for where we are at this time of the year. It's difficult for us to project Arrivals departures etc. So we pretty much flatline that number throughout the budget process historically again 420 my 429 million $200,000 is the budget request as we speak today This is how it's being spent and this is aligned to our five goals and I think what's critical to
011me in my eyes is if you combine academic literacy and workforce readiness that's about 80 percent of our spending efforts and that's clearly instructional opportunities for our kids be it CTE, work based credentials, etc. or just straight instruction in the academic literacy piece. These are some of the initiatives that we're funding with our academic literacy dollars. You can see English and then literacy. I think you all are familiar with most of these programs through previous presentations, but that's how we're investing our resources as we try to achieve our goal of 90% grades three through five by 2030. Culture of advancement. These are a magnet and specialty programs. You all are well aware of those communications art at Hilton environmental science at Deer Park Global Studies at Dutro and then we have our two stem sites
012on Newsome Park DSA And then we have our middle school program STEM at Crittenton. And then we have Booker T. Washington with the Marine Science program. We also have our high school magnets, Aviation at Denbigh. Our two programs at Heritage High School, Governor's STEM and University Magnet. We have the Governor's Health Science Academy at Warwick. And then we have Arts and Communication at Woodside High School. And as we speak, Mesa is standalone. And then you're well aware of our dual enrollment opportunities and our specialty programs as well. Workforce readiness. These are the opportunities that we provide our students in regards to high quality learning experience work based learning experiences industry certifications which lead to high demand and employment opportunities which is critical in the 3E model in the new accountability framework. And you can see
013the courses that are offered at the high school level and also those that are offered at the middle school level in regards to CTE. Also the dual enrollment opportunities, one at Aviation Academy at Denbigh High School and also the telecom program, which we get dual enrollment credit from ODU. Elevating our identity. You can see the strategic plan is obvious to you all. Thanks for your participation there. We've rebranded that. Launching new social media campaigns. Mr. White and his team have been, we've seen an uptick in our actions there, marketing, et cetera. Two-way communications with our families. Branding marketing with schools and other initiatives. And then we have our division-wide professional development. Our senior rally, which is actually tomorrow morning. Hopefully you can join us. And then we still strive to provide extraordinary customer service to
014our constituents. Some of our business and civic partners, these are not, it's not comprehensive. Virginia Living Museum, Mariners Lake, Virginia Peninsula Community College and Christopher Newport University has been a strong partner with us. And then our public libraries, Riverside Hospital, Old Dominion University. And then obviously you guys were very active in our Take Your Legislator to School Day. So employee compensation remains a top priority so in order to you know, it's our goal to Attract and retain the best staff and I think that's important It's not only the attraction but it's our ability to retain as you all know retraining stuff is costly for us as a school division So what's included in the current proposed budget is a general 3% salary increase for employees We're increasing our starting teacher salary and associate teacher salary
015by $1,000. And then we're maintaining competitive compensation for all staff and providing sign-on bonuses for our high-need positions. Here you can see our pay scales. On the top is the bachelor's. The bottom half is the master scale. And you can see on the peninsula, we trail Hampton and York County in regards to the starting salary. And then from there, it's pretty much Hampton on this side of the water that we lag behind. Our master scale, I think we fare a little bit better on this side of the water. Specifically, at the starting level, we're highest on the peninsula. Trail and Hampton again as we move through the chart. But other than that on the peninsula, we're in pretty good standing in regards to our master's scale. So this is bus drivers. So you can see
016from March or from FY21 to FY26, we increased bus driver pay by almost 33%. went from $15.04 in FY21 to $22.76 in FY26. So that's a fairly significant increase for our drivers. And we appreciate your support in trying to retain bus drivers. As you know, that continues to be a need for the school division. Our support staff salary comparisons, where we actually fare very well, slightly behind. several school districts for custodians and then on the peninsula in regards to school nutrition instructional assistants security officers and school nurses were right at the top so our compensation for our support staff continues to be solid Our staffing request, I want to emphasize that this doesn't increase our overall FTEs for the next fiscal year as proposed. We've repurposed some vacant or underutilized FTEs to offset that cost,
017and we're aligning our teaching positions with our enrollment, and then obviously we have the opening of Huntington Middle School, which is going to create some staff demands. So staffing considerations, I'll start with Huntington Middle School, two security officers. As you recall, when we closed Huntington, we didn't have security officers in the middle school. We have two that are currently assigned there. Typically our high schools are staffed with four. So we were proposing to add two to the budget. Custodians, we eliminated five custodians when we shut down Huntington High School. So we're requesting to add those back into the budget. And then we have a media specialist that was repurposed as well. actually reassigned at the time but the school increased enrollment so they have a staffing need there so we're going to request that we
018hire an additional media specialist as well we're also going to add to mr tobin's team we're requesting a position of social studies and science specialist and then all of the other positions below that total 12.4 our positions were transitioning from grant funds to the operating budget and those were grants that were either discontinued or eliminated so we would like to retain those positions We find value in the they add value to the school division and we want to slide those into operating if at all possible Health insurance you can see that the claims per employee went up about five hundred and sixty dollars on average and That's based on the members participating obviously, but you can see that the trend is clear Cost of health insurance is going up and the health cost of health
019care is increasing as I'm sure everybody feels at home, too So what we're proposing the current budget is an increase of 1.75 million or 1.7 million, excuse me. The school division will carry $1.5 million and then we're gonna ask the employees to share the cost in the pool of $200,000. And you can see that the increase ranges from an individual increase of $1.50 a month to $7.47 per month. And then if you have a family plan, the increase could be $3.36 to $18.45 per month. So the school division is bearing most of the burden in regards to the increase in health care, but there is going to be some additional contribution from our employees. This is how we're funded as we're proposing the budget again 429 million in total The city's about 31% of that
020as we speak today federal governments Less than a percent other sources of revenue less than the percent as well And then the Commonwealth of Virginia is about sixty seven point six percent of our budget Again, you can see Operating budget by function and this is instructional services is about 68% technology about 5.4% debt service. We don't have included because it's outside the operating budget operations and maintenance about 12.8% transportation 6.5 Attendance administration and health about 6.5% as well This is how we're staffed. You can see teachers make up about 50% of our workforce. Administrators about 4%. Other professionals, which is defined here on your slide, nurses, school counselors, media specialists, psychologists, technology and ITCs, instructional specialists, coaches, administrators and supervisors, coordinators, et cetera. Custodial maintenance is about 11% of our staffing. Other support which includes
021clerical, nurses' aides, and TSSs. They make up about 7% of our budget. Instructional assistance make up about the same. And then transportation is about 11% of our budget. And we have 3,883.8 FTEs in our current proposed budget. This is how we balance the budget. You can see where the increases and decreases came. In general, the 3% compensation increase is a little under $6 million. So the rough math there is for every percent, it costs the school division about $2 million. You can see that the about a half a million dollars for increasing the starting salary, additional positions, about $1.8 million. That's offset by the elimination of positions as well. And then you can see the $1.1 million we will save in the reduction in the VRS rate. And then you can see the $200,000 that
022we're decreasing for health insurance premiums. In total, you can see that the state revenue has increased by 9.6. We're asking the city for 8.2. So the total increase in our budget as we started is $17.8 million. So next steps obviously we have the public hearing next Tuesday We'll seek your approval based on your feedback and feedback from the community for the For the FY 27 budget March 17th And there's the QR code where the public can provide feedback if they're not able to make it out next Tuesday evening And with that I will certainly take your questions Thank you so much any questions at this time So I do, I have actually two that I thought about when I was looking at the slides. One is, Mr. Brown has also mentioned this frequently, our operational
023budget reflects like approximately what 68.8%, I guess that's not approximate, that's what it is there. for instructional services Can you help clarify to the public? What might not be captured in that six? That's 68.8 And it's kind of complex Some of it is there whether we code things internally The other thing the other one of the other reasons that it's down from last year by I think a percent a half or so is cash capital which the city gave us to support a one-to-one initiative that's outside of the operating budget. So that's not able to be factored into our instructional services. We don't include one-to-one in our instructional budget. That's House of Technology, but clearly that's an instructional initiative. We give kids devices to learn. So I think we have some things that we can
024probably do internally to make that number a little bit higher, but certainly the cash capital is one of the pieces that brought that down from the prior year. And if that money was infused into the operating budget and is a standing contribution in the operating budget, then it would be documented as instructional services. Any other questions? I've got one more, but I can let... Oh, I'm sorry. My other one is just for Huntington, and I know you'll enjoy talking about this one. What enrollment and operational assumptions did you use for the staffing and to put them in the budget? So we have, we currently have three grade levels of students that are technically in the Huntington zone. So basically that's our budget number. It's a little over 400 and actually. Let me step that back.
025Actually, there's closer to 600 kids that actually live in the zone. So there's over 120 that go to either Crittenton or Booker T. Washington, one of our MACCA programs. So we base that number based on the current three grade levels and those that may opt out to go to either Booker T. or to Crittenton. And we're also looking at some slight tweaks to the boundaries because we have... We have a housing development that's basically right across the street where kids could walk to the brand new school and currently their zone for treatment so our assumption there is We don't want to be over We don't want to be too far under so we're trying to land in that sweet spot around 550 to 560 kids and so we're gonna do our best there and it's
026yet to be determined if students will opt to go to Huntington when they see that it's brand new and shiny You may have said it already, but the VRS rate reduction, what was the genesis of that? The General Assembly says that, and that's based on the performance of the fund. So I won't say it's overperforming, but it's at a balance that they're comfortable with. Correct and as you're aware employees contribute 5% and then there's an employer rate as well and there's a different rate for teachers So what I'm quoting you is the teacher rate It's different for some of our classification of employees, but that's the teacher rate, which is the primary driver of our budget And then I want to go to some of the bar graphs Like sometimes as far as it and
027this is just thoughts for the future it may make sense when we get to like numbers of students and increases and Decreases kind of what we should the range we show on our bar graph. I think can be somewhat Deceptive it might seem like a much greater increase or decrease whereas if we did it on a 1 to 23,000 scale we might Seem more of just little adjustments So just suggestions and then I had a question on just looking at over the years We've asked, you know, the city has generally asked us, you know, provided what we've asked for. I think the last couple years, did we get, like, what our requests were? And then I had a question. We were looking for $8.2 million extra from the city, the state, theoretically, this year, coming
028year. And our prior increases have been... Maybe it was last year was just not as big an increase but I was just kind of if you could say a little bit more about Driving that particular increase versus our increased requests before the city in prior years Seemed to be a bit more this year. I'm sure there's reasons for that. Yes, and I would be remiss miss a man to talk about previous years Because I really wasn't that involved in the process But I think the drivers of our budget here, the main one being compensation, that's $6 million off the top. So of our requests from the city at this point, if you take compensation out, it's $2.2 million. So I don't know that it's as far away as people think it is or that it
029might appear. And I think that's the way we should present it. And we went on the high end for our staff. As you can see, the House proposed 2%. We went with the Senate proposal of 3%. So if that lands somewhere in between, that'll reduce our ask as well. And if we get additional state funds, as I stated earlier, I think that will help offset some of the requests for the city also. case the last two years is that when we had this presentation there was a larger gap or a greater amount we were asking the city for and then when um it actually came through the legislature then we were we were able to back off on that number unfortunately you all have to you know present your budget to the city council by
030march 31st which puts the board and our team in a little bit of a mind because all we can go with is what's been presented we don't know how that's going to flush out once the session ends And one last question, looking at the side of the, I guess, not the city, the state fiscal year, school board approved and the governor proposed, the increases and decreases, are they kind of reallocating how they're doing some of this? Because I noticed like special education goes up, but then the regional tuition goes down, English learners goes down, but you've got increases in the special education or at-risk split funded. So I just was curious if there was any insights on. Correct. The at-risk funding is split funded between the lottery and incentive funds, and they are adding in
031basic aid. They're taking a little bit away in regional special education tuition, so it's kind of like a push and pull because they don't necessarily generate new revenue all the time, but they just shuffle around how they provide it. You can see also that we're going to lose a little bit of funding for our English language learners when our enrollment is not really going down. So that's something that we're going to have to absorb that as a locality. And then the remedial summer school is where we're taking a pretty big hit there as well. $600,000, which that's basically personnel. So that's an offset that we're going to have to contend with as we provide summer opportunities for our students. What was the philosophy behind that? Not as much as needed because we're further out from
032COVID? I don't, I can't speak to. governor's proposal I don't know what the I don't know what the philosophy was there but I think everybody would we share the same view that we can always need to use summer school resources Thank you. Thank you so much for your time and for all the work that the department has done Behind the scenes. So thank you so much. Thank you. All right Before we move on, I neglected to indicate that Dr. Terry Best is online. She was unable to join us today due to personal illness. So just to let you know, she is online with us. So Dr. Best, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Yes. And we hope you feel better. Thank you, so do I. Okay, we're gonna move on
033to item 6.01, comments by the superintendent, Dr. Mitchell. Thank you very much, Madam Vice Chair. I just want to take a moment to thank Mr. Fairhart and the budget and finance departments for all their extremely hard work. as Mr. Fairhart said, in the midst of the transition in leadership for the department. I do want to say to the board as well as to the public that there was a lot of reflection on this budget. This is not an easy time for anyone. It's not an easy task for us, but we did want to make sure that the goal was to sustain the... academic programs that were in place that had been showing some gains for our students, but also keeping in mind the challenges that we have with healthcare costs increasing, with maintenance costs increasing,
034as well as contractual services increasing when we have to go outside. So we do feel like This is a budget that we have taken some serious consideration and looking at things in terms of stability and strategic investment, always with the goal of doing what's right and making decisions that are going to help support our students and our staff. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Mitchell. We will move on to item six, and that is comments by the school board. And let's begin with Mr. Brown. So good evening, everyone. March is a busy month, and of course there's going to be the national conference that's going to occur. So between now, well, actually we're going to have some public hearings, so there will be some time between there for some additional comments. But March is
035a busy month, a lot of things going on. One thing I want to highlight for the board is there is a tour of what's called the Shahida, Shahad, okay, I'm not going to try to pronounce it, but a tour of a CTE center. in Winchester and everyone is invited. It's going to occur on March 26 and it's a great opportunity to see a career and technical education tour. There's going to be several dignitaries and state leaders that will be there as well. So if anyone is interested, there's still time for you to RSVP and head over to Winchester on March 26. Thank you for the invitation. I think the one thing I just want to comment on that I. was amazed with our budget is just the alignment with our strategic plan, primarily with the
036literacy and workforce. It wasn't a hard fit. It was what we were doing. And it was just really great to see it in writing, supporting the plan and the plan supporting the budget. So hats off to the team and you, Dr. Mitchell, for that vision and helping articulate it for us. Don't have much I just wanted to thank those who came out tonight and also rusty and the team for working so diligently on the budget well then I Also want to say thank you. It's it does not it's not lost on us. It is very difficult Try to plan a budget with moving targets What I do day to day is trying to plan with moving targets We don't know what we're gonna end up with and how things are gonna exactly work out So
037it is it is very difficult and I greatly appreciate y'all's efforts I know we have to go back to the drawing board a few times as things come out of Richmond But thank you very much for all that you've done a job. Well done doing your team back there thanks for jumping and Keeping us moving forward great things are happening in Newport News Public Schools. All right. And Dr. Best, I would ask for you to make comments, but I think it's better for you to just hang back. I'm good. I'm good. Okay. I just wanted to say just a few things. Just want to thank the schools for all their work behind the push for literacy, the Read Across America. I thought that was really awesome. We were invited. myself and Dr. Best showed up
038to read to second graders and first graders at Dutro and it was really amazing to see so many students involved with literacy and reading. Also, Carl Daniels, a gentleman who's teaching and working on the Focus Show, he's invited a couple of us to go in and interview and talk with students. And so, Jace Wright, who's... One of the football players from Menchville had developed all these tough questions for me. I was like, what? It was amazing. And it was a great, great opportunity to see the kids, the students in action as far as, you know, operating the camera, putting, they were putting the mic on me. They were doing, I mean, it was really great. And thank you to the team for making that happen for our students. And I think that's it for this
039evening. So at this time, we are going to adjourn. Thank you. Goodbye.