001Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand as you're able and face the American flag. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with peace and justice for all. Tonight's agenda has previously been distributed to the board. I would entertain at this time a motion with a second to approve the agenda as submitted unless there is a motion to amend. I'd like to make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. I'll second. I'll give it to Dr. Garcia. With a motion and a second, is there any discussion? All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Okay. Public speakers tonight, we have no one registered to speak unless there was a late addition. So we'll move
002right ahead to the superintendent's consent agenda. The consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that must come before the body. Are there any items that the members want to remove from the consent agenda? We would supplement the consent agenda. We have a motion and a second. A motion and a second. All in favor of the agenda, if there is a consent, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? Same sign. Motion carries. Moving into the board consent agenda. So again, the consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that must come before the body. Are there any items that the members want to remove from the board's consent agenda? Please be seated. agenda hearing none I'll look for a motion I'll make a motion
003to approve the consent the board consent agenda second second by mr. Alberts okay we have a motion in a second to approve the board consent agenda all in favor of the motion please say aye aye all opposed motion carries it's a barn burner tonight you guys this is great all right moving into matters reserved for board action we have three things on the list for tonight first up is the operational expectation monitoring report oe2 emergency superintendent succession it's an opportunity for the administration to present any recommended changes to the monitoring report template such as interpretations or indicators as well as to discuss any changes board members may suggest template with recommended changes will be placed in the board's consent agenda at the following meeting dr. Engel any notes um no the policy seems to meet
004our needs and there are no changes recommended so this is to approve the policy you to guide us through the coming year if a meteor falls on the superintendent's office okay we got a motion and a second all in favor of the motion aye aye all opposed motion carries okay we have today the 2025 2026 budget amendment miss spring I assume for her last meeting yes can you hear me okay so if you wanna bring up the budget amendment so this is something that the board is responsible for every year when we estimate budget at the beginning of the year there's many unknowns and things change during the years for example maybe something is going to be budgeted in an instructional function and it's spent out of a support function so we have to adjust
005the budget for the most part all of these budget adjustments in fund 10 the general fund have to do with grants so they either are estimated to be more or less than we had budgeted for before these are not displaying that the expenditures or the revenues associated with those budget line items at this point it's just the budget itself so what we're looking for is if anything is changing the projected fund balance at the end of the year so we would take the beginning balance plus any revenues for the year minus the expenditures that would give the fund balance at the end of the year we don't really know that right this minute because we haven't finished our fiscal year so this is just the budget adjustment we you , projected a fund balance in
006fund 10 of 39 million 658 752 but with these budget adjustments there might be a slight increase to that fund balance of 159,340 any questions on the general fund actually I am skipping ahead this is later on towards the other total expenditures I had I'll let you go continue through that if you have so that's when I'm Blackpool don't forget to submit your Arabic sitting card so this is really only being summary today to Comcast. I have um you know I'm fishing for the link to my other Powerpoint video page where you can look at that if you don't mind I would have no other options and some other data which was not even on the budget left so is asking made an expenditures for the budget any questions on that okay debt service referendum
007so this is paying the debt that we owe on our referendum the revenue and other financing sources so when we went out for the budget at the beginning of the year we were unsure of what kind of premium or discount we might have from the borrowing of the thirty million dollars so we were able to increase actually our revenues by the premium of 1.4 million that 1.4 million is going to be used against your levy for that debt in the first fiscal year or so we would more likely paying that is the definition of out of any preference following year so that is a reduction to the levy for our taxpayers because of that premium so the fund balance will increase by that 1.4 million and used in the next year capital improvements fund 41
00842 and 49 fund 41 is the capital improvements that mr. Levina brings to you fund 42 is our donations and our sale of property and then fund 49 is all of our referendum dollars flow through that our projects that we're doing now State Road and Hogan so anyways we had predicted we we didn't predict what we would borrow in two thousand twenty five twenty six because we didn't know at that point if we were going to borrow the whole remaining amount of the fifty three point nine or if a smaller amount and we did end up borrowing a smaller amount so the thirty million so that's a change in the revenue that we didn't budget for that at the beginning of the year because we weren't sure of how much we would bring in the
009expenditures have changed a little bit but that is not really impacting the fund balance as much as the revenue that we are taking in and then the last one is fund 80 and that is our community service fund and the changes there have to do with the food pantry donations that run through fund 80 because they are available to the community but we do not levy for those funds so those are my real thoughts about that budget but we do not levy for those funds so those are the opportunities we have right now. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. I did have more questions. Thank you for your questions. Mayor�and.fromthebrit.com donations that came in during the year that increased our budget for revenues and for expenditures we do not really have
010to have the board approve any of the funds changes except for fund 10 and fund 27 but we do bring it to the board in an effort to be transparent to our public to let them know how our budgets may have changed over the years remember these are the budgets these are not the expenditures or the actual revenues that came in any questions most of those answered there I was curious like just get some clarification on the revenue and other financing sources you said that was from what we received from the grant that was allocated that 980% increase no the debt referendum are you talking about that so that means that when we borrowed the 30 million for a referendum we were actually received more because they were they were bought at a premium so
011so we had a little bit more than the 30 million and that 1.4 million that we got more we are able to reduce our debt levy in the next year okay saving our tax now I click thank you very much again Patty other questions from the board this does require role combine vote ok hearing no other questions then roll call vote oh yeah we need a motion for make a motion to approve the 2025 26 budget a budget amendment as presented full second motion in a second a roll call vote please hi hi hi hi motion carries okay thank you very much patty next item up on the matter's reserve for board action is to consider the appetizer and approval of each study ballet in the district letzte of proposed preliminary 2026 2027 community service
012fund budgets this is our fund 80 budget we received this as an information item at our last meeting a couple of proposals for consideration tonight I'll turn it over to dr. Engel yeah we listened to the discussion at the board table we had identified a number of potential opportunities the areas where we have proposed changes for this next year there's two potential options that we've proposed here one includes an additional budget for high school co-curriculars and the other does not the other primary area of change is for the community family cultural leadership program which adds two more FTE to that program and that's in response to what we've been hearing at school board linkages and what we've been hearing internally amongst our own staff and so you'll see two different proposals there one with academic
013high school co-curriculars as a transfer from fun tend to fund 80 and one without going to add that this is very preliminary because what we levy for is what is still needed to fund that in the next year so at the end of the fiscal year if there's any dollars left in any of these areas that we haven't spent we transfer them to the to be used in the next fiscal year and then we do not have to levy as much but not as much as we would have to if we were to fund it in the next fiscal year not knowing what the final I'm a little concerned about the middle school as you can see because we haven't gotten a lot of the transportation costs in and I think they're going to be
014high and that's why there's two different proposals there one with only 50,000 one with 150,000 depending on how much of those funds are used by the end of this year so so this is very preliminary in closer to August we probably have Brandon come and propose what's more realistic as far as the levy including these things but then also taking into consideration what's left over in any of this area for the next year these do include increases cost of living increases for the Boys and Girls Club as a mr. tough had presented to you last meeting but the biggest in change is those cultural liaisons adding those two positions any questions for miss spraying so just so I'm understanding you correctly to clarify for myself the difference between the proposed estimate number one and number
015two in terms of the middle school extracurriculars is if busing ended up costing us an extra house hundred thousand dollars and so estimate two is optimistic yes okay I think there was another expenditure made towards the end of the year for volleyball I believe so that has not hit our books yet either currently two we're adding two more that's correct Scott make sure your mic is on sorry Tony Alora yeah yeah so as dr. Angle said the proposed increase in those two positions is in response to what we've been hearing people are happy with the work that Laura and Tony are doing that the programming the impact that they're having for the students for the parents for the community members these roles are by definition ones that have to be broadly accessible to the community
016so the work they do is is in and outside of the schools so for one I think there's there's value in that and this is a way of responding to it but other questions for miss Sprang I will also mention that there's a reduction in some of these lines that was also given to you so that's why the impact is not as much as it could have been so the reduction that I see in the community partnership programs we had talked about the the YWCA restorative justice programs and can we talk about that? we had talked about the the YWCA restorative justice programs and can we talk about that? we have a lot of questions about that. we have a lot of questions about that. we have a lot of questions about that. can you
017talk a little more about that? yeah we partnered with the YWCA for many years to provide restorative justice training and delivery of circles and services with our students what we're finding is that now we would like to build that capacity internally and so part of the increase in our family cultural liaison program is to also absorb some of the restorative justice work we believe it fits nicely in there with our culture and our belonging work and is a good fit and so as a result we can scale back the the need for contracting some of those services and so our proposal is to cut that contract in half for this next year and then assess as we move forward we think eventually we'll get to a point where we just need to you know partner
018on some professional development annually but we wouldn't need to contract out for delivery of all those services and so we think this is a good fit upon that. responsible use of building up our internal capacity while bringing down our external contracting in these proposed levies so is there is there any reason why we couldn't take the $75,000 academic high school co-curricular estimates and put it into estimate one hoping that busing is cheaper absolutely actually that would be accounting for more of us so again just checking my understanding the $300,000 that we we levied for the middle school extra co-curriculars excuse me last year the the reason for the difference here also accounts for money we didn't spend last year okay and so if busing is more expensive we need to make up some of that
019to get back to that original budget right and we expect to have more expenses in the next year some of it wasn't applied to like the academic budget co-curriculars which we will do in the next year okay if board members want to share perspective on one or the other and get a sense of where everybody's at it would be it would I'm sorry it'd be nice to know so we can share with the public and whatever we're going with the additional community liaisons and they are gonna pick up part of our outsourcing conversation as we move forward org you me you've discussed that with the YWCA yep we've been in conversation all along you know we've appreciated their partnership and they enjoy working with us they also understand our desire to build internal capacity as
020opposed to continuing to contract out um if I remember correctly from that linkage one of the ideas was that we wanted to build in-house programs for those practices at the elementary level which the Y doesn't exactly have yet so it's also bringing something in that we the community members have asked for that doesn't currently exist in the program is that right I think that is correct yes from that those conversations they were hoping to start those restorative practices and mediation kind of things earlier in children's intervention you know it's a journey right through the school so that it wasn't like a new system at the middle or high school level and one way to do that is to build it in-house with our own community liaisons you are we looking now for a motion for
021one of these two we could be I want to I want to keep the floor open for discussion because you can see the the additional you know the additional money is levied in both estimates there's a significant difference so I just want to give everybody a chance to parse what that means and ask any questions so I think I am more than likely going to abstain on this vote mostly because I missed out the last being even though I watched it online for there I think I have way to make questions make a decision today thank you looks like we would retain a quorum so do we imagine the budget for the high school co-curriculars to be programs that would like increase student belonging and they're like clubs and stuff like that is that what
022we're yes that's correct w-i-a a-athletics they cannot be in it but it would be the other things that speech and debate forensics those sorts of things black student unions on tab bat but it would be the other things that speech and debate forensics those sorts of things black meetings or Rhodes College meetings on time thoughts perring this stay focused sure if somebody wants to jump right about the writing that you you to do that now make sure I have some questions 제�b Gay with the email and thank you Judy need helping them this Saturday black Student Union Southeast Asian Club some club knitting club you know the sorts of things that create belonging among students that are often student generated and including things like show choir you know that have a cost to them that's
023pretty high and so it make things more accessible as well as continuing to reinforce that sense of belonging and connection to our schools which we know has an impact on attendance and student achievement if kids want to be here they do better I remember mr. Jackson at the last meeting brought up the the attraction of those programs and by opening them up broadly to community members there's there's perhaps an opportunity to recapture or capture students who have not been attending our schools as we're thinking about ways of moving that needle that's something to consider I agree 100% but I also believe that we've got to look at our athletic departments as well because some of the budgets for them are insanely low and it cannot function at that level so there's got to be some
024sort of happy medium there I think we better is it safe to say we're better off with the higher amount to be safe and then go with a lower amount to be fearful of not hitting that or we prefer to budget conservatively and so I think we're in alignment with what your thoughts are mr. newmeister to budget a little bit higher to make sure that we can cover our curriculum and we're in alignment with what your thoughts are mr. newmeister to budget a little bit higher to make sure that we can cover our costs and so I think mr. sprague's thought of estimate number one with the 75,000 for high school co-curriculars would be the most conservative budget so we would need a motion to amend any other thoughts on that before we get to
025in the weeds I know I mentioned it but I'm not really supposed to make the motions I'll move to amend estimate one to include the 75,000 for academic high school co-curriculars I'll second okay with a motion and a second to amend we don't need a roll call vote for that okay all in facian all in favor of the motion to amend preliminary proposed levy estimate number one with the inclusion of the $75,000 academic high school co-curriculars also please say aye aye all opposed abstention abstain all right motion carries all right motion carries all right thanks everybody so that was not yet a motion to adopt so if we if we're happy with that or if people have other questions we will keep going otherwise I would look for a motion I'll make a motion to
026adopt okay with a motion by mr. newmeister a second and a second by dr. Garcia all in favor of adopting preliminary proposed levy estimate number one as amended please say aye hi all opposed abstained motion carries all right thanks everybody moving on to our information items for tonight the 2026 2027 proposed budget plan draft I'll turn that right over to you yeah so this is the first time we've done this in June you know it's a recommended practice by WASB and so we're you know feel it's a great time to implement this process here it is a super preliminary proposed budget we don't have a lot of the numbers that the state gives us until October But at the same time, we need to start spending money on July 1. So we want to make
027sure the board has in front of it our best guess at this point, based on some rigorous work up to this point through our zero-based budgeting process, what our preliminary budget is. And I'll turn it over to Ms. Sprang, as she is the expert here. Okay, so this is very, very preliminary. This format is the budget hearing format that usually will be published before you set the actual levy. And that also will be preliminary, because at that point, you will not know the final numbers until after October 15th. But we will have to have the budget hearing prior to that. Okay. So when you see this going forward, the second column will not be the budget for this year. It will be the unaudited final numbers as of 6-30. And that will determine that fund
028balance that you're going to start with for the next year, for 26-27. But at this time, we are just putting in the revised budget that you just approved by fund, and we're going to start with the budget for the next year. And then you'll be able to get some comparison of budget to budget. This is the preliminary budget for 26-27 is a balanced budget, with the assumptions as follows, that we only expect to get maybe $650,000 more within the revenue limit. We expect to have about $97,000. We expect to have about $8,000 more within the revenue limit. So this is the budget that we have set aside for the next year. And then you'll see that in the second column, we're going to be looking at the budget for the next year. And you'll see
029that in the first column, we'll be looking at the budget for the next year. And then in the third column, we're looking at the budget for this year. budget we have made lots of adjustments as far as we are having savings as far as our health insurance premiums but we're turning around with those savings and putting those increases to the employee HSA accounts so that's pretty much a wash but that is beneficial for our employees for and that's just the general fund so that one is at this point a balanced budget and as you can see because it is a balanced budget with revenues and expenditures are it does not affect the fund balance questions on the general fund we don't have to make a motion or anything on this right because it's so preliminary
030this is just information tonight mm-hmm I really didn't feel comfortable with this that's a lot that's big numbers no we just want to make sure that we're making sure that we're making sure that we're making sure that we're making sure that we're making sure that we're making sure that we're presenting to you kind of what our initial assumptions are so that you can feel comfortable that we've got some solid financial planning in place leading into the school year yeah and I would also add that this again for the second year we are not making the 2.2 million dollar contribution to post employment benefits in order to balance the budget so there's two point two million dollars that we were reducing our expenses this year the special projects fund fund 21 27 and 29 fund 21
031and fund 29 are pretty much always going to be presented as the revenues matching the expenditures fund 27 does have to have a balanced budget but that takes into consideration that a state funding and that's where we are estimating only a 38% increase or a 38% reimbursement rate for special ed although the second year of the biennial budget said we were going to get 42% we are not getting what we expected this year so we are conservative and using 38% maybe the state not going to get that we are not getting what we expected this year so we are conservative and using 38% maybe the state not going to get that and it's good graces we'll find more money to give us for special ed but what that does is it reduces the cost to
032our general fund because what's ever not covered by that state aid in fund 27 we transfer from the general fund so that fund 27 revenue and expenditures balance out questions about the special education or special projects so just so the community understand we've been or the community understand we've been paid 62% of the cost ourselves right as a as a school district latest paid 62% of the cost ourselves right as a as a school district latest that is correct for 33 picks up 38 percent and we were hoping and praying that is correct for 33 picks up 38 percent and we were hoping and praying that would be a little more of this year but it's a significant hit yet while that would be a little more of this year but it's a significant hit
033yet while we're sitting on a surplus well the state is sitting on a surplus so the capital I'm sorry the debt Service Fund is next and that's Eddie Maye that's a question for you under so we talked about how the state has been picking up up there was that proposal I believe a month or two how would that have changed some things since there was some talks about that going through the state I can from my understanding I kind of doubt we'd see a proposal like that again but do we know how that would have impacted that yeah absolutely so the proposal was to increase special education reimbursement to essentially some sufficient 42% and 45% that would have added you know maybe a million dollars this year and maybe twice that in the following year
034to our anticipated revenues it would have offset those special education costs further and it would have freed up money and fun 10 for all students to benefit we I advocated for that you know I think that's a really good point and I think that's a really good point that bill to pass it would have benefited our kids pretty substantially here in lacrosse you know for reasons I'm uncertain of it it did not pass in the legislature that helped all right so the debt service fund that is the debt that we owe as you can see with that the revenues and other financing sources that we owe to the state is the levy that we will set the 4.6 million dollars the expenditures however what we owe for principal and interest for our debt for the
035new referendum and still paying on the north side is almost six million so 5.9 but as you can see the ending fund balance is not balanced we're still in that $1.4 million that we talked about with premium in there and also has some rebates that we receive from the federal government for the loan we took out on north side so that sitting in fund balance and able to use those dollars to pay down that debt instead of additional levy and that's that's the reason it's not balanced in other words okay so we'll continue to use that fund balance until probably pretty much so for the rest of the north side debt and no longer have to levy for that north side debt and we would pay it off sooner but it's not callable is that
036correct it'll be callable in 2029 so we can only make so large of payments until then because otherwise how do they get their interest exactly terms of the deal and then also the revenue so that includes that I'm sorry that's not where I want to talk about that that's just the debt okay capital anything about debt okay capital projects funds those are the fund 41 again the fund 42 and the fund 49 so the fund 41 is the capital improvements fund that the is the 2.7 million and then the fund 42 would include the revenue received from the sale of Lincoln plus or and then the expenditure for any capital projects you would use for one-time money so the sale of Lincoln is one-time money you would not want to use that for ongoing operating
037expenditures you only want to use that for one-time capital expenditures then of course the remaining amount is the referendum it's part of that revenue will be the remaining nine point five million that you will borrow in March of 2026 and then we will have substantial expenditures because of all the referendum projects being completed within the next year and then there'll a little bit left over at the end of June 2027 to cover the remaining expenditures from that construction that will come after the year ends capital project questions okay food service is a balanced budget we estimate always that the revenues will meet the expenditures what's important about fund 50 it has to be self-sustaining so you always want to make sure that you have a fund balance we are allowed by the state to have
038three months worth of expenditures within fund balance for fund 50 and we can also use that money to buy equipment that for its school nutrition that of course anybody knows who who has a commercial kitchen that that those appliances you know that that those appliances that that those appliances that that those and equipment do wear out and need to be they need to have more so and be replaced so then fund 80 so this is this is based on that first column as far as the budget was concerned I just used those numbers in anticipation of what the budgets would be with the inclusion of the two new positions and adding on the costs for the co-curriculars so this is of course a preliminary budget the expenditures I did not use the budget because I
039know that we will underspend that those dollar amounts and the fund balance will is estimated to be about six hundred thousand right now but I think it might be a little less and then course the ending fund balance will probably have something left after the end of the next year also so then all of these expenditures these are all of your funds except the fund 73 which is the considered a trust fund and that is your post employment trust fund which those numbers are brought to the board in October so you can see where we're at at the end of a year so because we're not putting any more money into it we're still paying out benefits to our retirees so we want to make sure that those balances are keeping up with our expenditures
040so we don't want to wait too many more years before we start contributing to those benefits. So here is a good example when you do all funds and you look at those interfund transfers that is a the transfer from fund 20 from fund 10 to fund 27 to cover those expenditures not covered by state aid so as you can see we expect it to maybe decrease a little bit from this current year estimate but we will see how that all works out fund 27 is the special projects fund we discussed and so the major increase so we look at the total expenditures the majority of that has to do with our referendum costs questions about the preliminary budgets you said that this accounted for a three point eleven percent but I know that the union
041had asked for a three point seven six is there a way like at what point do we see how that would change the budget if we were to try to account for that that would that would put a deficit put us at a deficit right we would either need to if we were looking for a balanced budget we would have to find costs somewhere else to cut right so where would we do that or when would we discuss that like in a workshop if we wanted to see what the possibilities were there I'm just wondering with the point of process yeah we're continuing our negotiations with the union so we'll see you know how that plays out if we wanted to pursue you know the the cost-cutting measures that would be necessary we would have
042to look around there's you know as mr. Neumeister has suggested there's plenty of places where we're not spending enough money already so it's hard to take from our building budgets or extracurricular budgets there's very little money there very few increases over the last five six years you know we are an organization run by people and that you know seventy five eighty percent of our expenses are human resources the benefits you know in health insurance would have been a good way to to find some savings we chose this year to reinvest back in our employees by contributing more to HSA contributions and reducing premiums and so you know by insuring that our staff are taken care of there it's left us a little less wiggle room on salaries and so you know know we feel like
043we're still in the process of negotiating with our Union and so we'll see where that leads us do you have any any estimates on the savings for from the perspective of an individual teacher the savings that we did realize on insurance premiums yes so it's a it was a well 11 12 11 percent decrease in costs let me pull that up specifically so for those that take the district's health insurance the combined impact of reduced premiums and the increased HSA contributions they increase the average teachers net compensation by about three thousand seven hundred dollars it's about one point two eight million dollars that we invested back into our staff in order to you know to get the money back and to get the money back and to get the money back right so we're planning
044to get the money back in order to ensure that our health insurance plans are competitive and it benefits our ability to attract to retain do you know what percentage of the staff to participate in our insurance it's the majority I know but there are spouses and we have two hundred and sixty six individual plans three hundred and twelve family plans so it's five zier 578 plans out of about a thousand employees you know it's about 60% when it comes down to it and am i right in remembering the closing that gap is about like a three hundred thousand dollar base to go up from three at 11 point 11 percent to three point seven six plus maybe some changes some knock-on effects for other staff that is correct so somewhere around three hundred thousand dollars
045for a teaching staff alone we try and you know provide compensation increases that are similar to other employees it's about four hundred and fifty thousand dollar increase to our expenses if we were to get to that point just to get a sense of the weight of what would need to be cut in order to close that gap between what they're asking what the union is asking and what we're yeah it's nine to ten nine to ten staff positions depending on how you cut it with this budget in total you know if somebody just looked at the bottom line and saw a 26% increase in our expenditures they might be concerned one way that I think about it is fund 10 and fund 27 you know those top two blocks there those are our primary costs
046for running our schools you know the others are some self-contained funds capital projects debt levying that's already been you know approved by our voters and so I looked at just fund 10 and fund 27 the general fund and special projects fund and what I saw there was a reduction in our expenditures by two hundred ninety eight thousand two hundred and fifty three dollars or a minus two point five percent in expect percent in expenditures and that's reflective of declining enrollment of less revenue and so it's us being frugal and tightening our wallet as we move forward and that's a big part of our budget. shifting costs where we can so that we can continue to benefit students and so at least right now with this preliminary budget you know it shows kind of declining expenses
047for our school district as we have fewer students present. yeah I think as Patty pointed out like the big jump in percentages because of the capital project where that money is coming out but then it's being spent immediately on the building of the new school so next year we would look more like we have before it'll return back to that because we will be pulling that out. um. would it be right to think about that eleven million from the inter fund transfers I'm not sure I understood what you asked earlier but it would it be right to think about that as what the state is not covering for special ed that we're pulling out of general funds so if the state were to fully if the legislature were to fully fund special education that would
048be twelve million dollars back into our general fund is that right. that's correct for yeah for this current school year eleven million for next year. right so if they funded. then that would be. excellent being political stop. that's not about decisions I can make but maybe pressure we can apply as a community. yeah I I agree with you and this is this is a lot of big numbers in a lot of different ways that is difficult to try to understand so trying to connect yeah think about what moving pieces move what levers for us in terms of the experience of our students in the ability of our district to. to do the things that the community expects us to do and expense to our local tax base right. yeah initially when special education law came
049into place the state committed around sixty percent seventy percent maybe of the total cost at that time. and the cost was substantially smaller at that point to the students had been identified yet for special education the processes hadn't been figured out. and you know four and a half decades later you know much different landscape. and unfortunately. the state's contribution didn't keep up with that sixty seventy percent it consistently declined is down to I think a nadir of about twenty three percent and has climbed up a little bit in recent years but even still it's a you know the number they give us isn't the number that we receive because it's based on historical estimates of what we'll need in the future not future estimates of what we'll need in the future and nor is it
050some sufficient it won't cover the cost and so. that's our best estimate at this point. and we think it's. it's right on it's not very conservative but it's a reasonable estimate based on what we're seeing from this year so again this was just for information sell any other questions from the board thank you very much but move on to you. next item of the annual academic standards so there's a some things that we do as a matter of coherent governance the policies that we approve the monitoring reports there's a handful of. there's a handful of. that we do because they are explicitly articulated in state laws the school board's responsibility this is one of those requirements the approval of annual academic standards and I'll turn it over to miss Carrie Huth our director of curriculum
051instruction and assessment to discuss these thank you as dr. Engel said we come to you every year with our academic standards notice and notice it is required for us to share what we believe in our recommending for the use of our state standards in the district thus far we have used the state of Wisconsin standards each content area in the has identified state standards we use these standards to drive our teaching as well as our students learning what our expectations are we have a seven-year cycle just as the state reviews the state standards every seven years we follow a similar process in reviewing our curriculum content areas the standards we use as well as the resources that help us teach those standards so we are recommending that we continue to use the Wisconsin State Standards
052that's for information tonight they require to be approved the first meeting in July that we meet any questions well we could deny it wouldn't be very smart we'd have to come up with our own yeah the state requires a commitment from a state that we adopt and so we can adopt the state standards or we can make our own the only time I've seen alternate standards adopted was for science when the national NSS science standards are coming out next gen thank you standards were coming out and we were kind of ahead of the game there and adopting those before the state adopted theirs you know there may be situations like that in the future but right now we feel comfortable and confident with the dpi standards and I think the one thing that we want
053to be sure of is that we are following up with our state standards standards that we belong to and I think we're all committed to and that we are in agreement with some of our responsibilities in the existing lifecycle and we'll make sure that we're going to follow this And I think, too, didn't we have Common Core standards for a little while before the state standards? We may have. That would have been before my time here at La Crosse. It would have been like a decade or more ago. 2010 is about when those came out. So, I mean, it is possible to adopt something other than the DPI, but usually there's, yeah, it's an entity that's created, that's generated the standards, a professional entity that's created the standards that we adopt. And there's a value
054to using the state standards in our ability to benchmark ourselves against others in the state and to see, you know, how things that we are doing differently match up when we're measuring the same way. And they're not very different from the Common Core or state standards anywhere else, at least in the English language arts. So, as you see in the attached letter, the academic standards themselves are available online through the DPI website. I would encourage everybody to review them. And this will come up as action item in two weeks. Okay. Oh, three weeks with the holiday, right. Okay. Okay. Other questions for Ms. Huth? Okay. Moving right along. Reviewing the pool survey results. Dr. Engel. I'll let Dan get the presentation up. Excellent. So, just kind of review. We've had a school-city collaboration group that
055has been muted. We've had a meeting for, gosh, maybe 12 months now, maybe eight months. Mr. Alberts and Mr. Neumeister are on that committee, as well as members from the Parks and Rec at the city and some community members as well. We pursued a number of different ideas. We identified an indoor pool on the north side as a potential solution to some of our collective challenges around swimming access, both in the summer. And year-round, both the city and the school district have aging pools. And we got to a point where we wanted to survey the community to understand what the community's views on this proposal might be. We put out a survey at the beginning of May. It was open for about a month. And we have the survey back and here to present the
056results and engender some discussion amongst board members. Next slide, please. All right. Next slide, please. We worked with School Perceptions. They have been providing independent research and surveys to schools since 2002. They've conducted over 3 million surveys and helped more than 1,400 school districts navigate strategic planning and referendum process. So we felt very comfortable working with them. Next slide, please. With the June 1 survey deadline, we had 4,140 respondents. About a 14.5% response rate. So a good response rate for a school district our size on an issue that's not a pending matter. If it was a pending referendum of more significance, we would have seen more responses. And a plus or minus 1.5% statistical margin of error. So we can trust that the results would be similar regardless of if more people filled out this
057survey. So similar, likely to have similar results. So similar, likely to have similar results. So similar, likely to have similar results. Even with more respondents. Next slide, please. The age of the respondents trended a little bit older. 43% were 65 plus. 55 to 64, 15%. 54 to 54, 14%. 35 to 44, 17%. And then it drops off from there. Initially, when you look at this, it might be a little concerning. You'd want maybe more a representative sample. However, when you look at... Who shows up to the polls and votes in referenda and election, this is representative of the voting public. And so since we're thinking through this as like a referendum through a political lens and who shows up at the voting booth, having this kind of a demographic composition is more reflective of what
058you might see on election day. And so for that reason, it's helpful to have this sort of distribution. That said, we do weight things a little bit later. We're on for perspective. Next slide, please. 95% of the respondents' residence was in the school district of La Crosse. 4% were not. We sent this out to parents and staff members that were in our address list. And so some of those who open enroll their children into our school district may have filled out this survey. And then 1% were not sure. There's some spots we might not know in some of our townships. Next slide, please. In which municipality do you live? 75% were in the city of La Crosse, 12% in the town of Shelby, 7% in the town of Campbell, 2% in the townships of Medary,
059Greenfield, and Bergen. And this is representative of our school district in terms of where our population lives. So that was nice to see. Next slide, please. Are you an employee of the school district of La Crosse? 10% were yes. And 2% were no. Okay. And do you have children attending the school district? 23% were yes. So those are good. The employee piece, a little over representative. Do you have school children attending in our school district? That's approximately representative. Maybe just a little weighted more than is typical. Next slide, please. A little background on the swimming pool survey itself. It talks about the Northside Community Pool and the Logan High School Pool. This was from the survey. Next slide, please. The first question that the survey asked was how important is it to have a swimming
060pool on La Crosse's north side? It's broken down into three different groups. The dark blue column represents staff. So the staff of the school district. The light blue column represents our parents. And the purple column represents non-parents, non-staff. So community members that have a little less connection with the school district. One way to kind of gauge support is to look at the not important group. Just to kind of get a sense where folks are at. And at 21% of the non-parents, non-staff, that leaves 80-ish percent that are open to the idea. So that's a pretty strong showing for finding swimming pool important on La Crosse's north side. And stronger support for parents. And for parents and staff. Next slide, please. A little description on the swimming pool. What it would look like. This is from
061the survey. Next slide, please. A diagram of a basic schematic of what it would look like. Thank you to Bray Architects for providing this for us. Next slide, please. It talks about how the funding support would be provided. And then next slide, please. Here's the results for would you support a $33 million referendum to fund the pool plan. And we explicitly stated a 36 cent mill rate increase. So trying to give the voter or the survey respondent as much information as possible. This is our staff residence. So staff who live in the school district. So they would be voters. 62% were in the yes column. And 25% were in the no column. So about 2.5%. Next slide, please. Our parent residence. So parents who live in the school district. So they would be voters. 60%
062yes columns. And 31% in the no column. So about 2 to 1 support from that group. Next slide, please. And then for the non-parent, non-staff residence. So folks that don't have an explicit connection to our schools right now. About 50% said yes. And 50% said no. And then for the non-parent, non-staff residence. 30% said no. So getting a little tighter as you get further away from the school. And then there's some additional analysis. Kind of a weighted support. So if you think about how many of our residents are parents versus those that are not. Using our current demographics. It's about 20-80. Parents to non-parents. Next slide, please. It shows weighted support for the definitely yes and probably yes groups. And that shows 52% support for the project as presented here. And that's where our survey
063ends. So that's the analysis provided by School Perceptions. There's lots of things to kind of pick through. To ask questions about. I've got some wonderings myself. But that is where we're left. And so excited to hear discussion about that. What do you think this represents? Questions you might have that we can follow up on. Etc. So I know we'll. We have been getting and will continue to get updates from Scott and Tim on the workings of the collaboration and the consortium. For me, this is not that exciting to see 52% as kind of that headline number. And survey response rate of 14. And that's a lot of work. And so if I had to give a good example, I would say, you know, I think for a month that we've had a response rate of
06414. And a half percent. I would really hope for more. Just to get a sense. It's nice to know there are reasons why we can look at that. That number as broadly representative. If you know, if the number were increased and followed the same trends, that's helpful to know they're using good statistical models for that to guide our perceptions. But for me, it comes down to when we're looking at. Collaborating with the city on this project. on a lot of the legwork. And since we would be the ones posing the referendum question and essentially taking that risk, knowing also that we're limited in the number of referendum questions that we can ask, we also just asked a rather large one, I would kind of be hoping to see a little more definite indication of which
065way we should head from the survey results. Other thoughts? I kind of want to hear some arguments for this here, because when this first came up over to the board agenda, very similar to you, I was very surprised we were, in fact, talking about this. My understanding is the city school district consoladorium or the committee about that was mostly going to be on the hands of the city. What's that? Because we have different taxing authority, and so how it ended up getting funded was kind of always part of the question. And this is even more preliminary. This is, should we do this? Right. And what I understood about this is upon attending the meetings or anything, La Crosse School District was chosen because we have a larger population of tax, so it's going to be
066less of a burden upon taxpayers than it was to be a city referendum that's going on here. For me, the biggest problem I see with this here is that in terms of what's a need and a want for the city, this could be a very good need. You could argue that. For the school district, I don't see it as a need. I see it as a very big want. We talk a lot about facilities. It's a very big, important question in terms of what we've talked about up here. We talked about enclosed sessions. We've had a lot of sessions about facilities. We've had a lot of workshops on it, too. And we have a lot of aging buildings. And as you said, we're going through a very expensive referendum. I've been eyeing the middle schools
067quite a bit right there. That's something that's going to probably need to be addressed within a 20-year plan. And if this is going to be 20 years, that puts a huge chunk on there. We also have operating referendums that are going to be expiring soon just to operate under our current expenses. We can't exactly ask too much without being able to supply for ourselves. And what that goes is the teachers' salaries, everything with that, just makes sure we're able to maintain ourselves, which could be instead going to a project like this here. And the other concern I kind of have right there is a million dollars in maintenance after so long in the city is a lot of money. That would it be us going through in the future asking not only managing the operating
068referendums we have to do in the support, but also when this does eventually get older and we do need repairs, that's a lot to ask taxpayers just to support a couple of pools when we have so many buildings there. So I see this as more of a citywide issue to begin with. And again, I don't want to just throw it under the bus right away. I kind of want to hear arguments for it there. But I kind of come in here a little bit more surprised that if this is something we're looking at things to do versus what else to do, I don't see it as a need for the school district. I see it as a want. And I want to be convinced otherwise, I'd say, first, before committing on it. SPEAKER 1. Well,
069I think we can comment a little bit on it. This came about when the notification that the north side pool was closing, right? And everyone was in uproar. And I think that's a little bit of a surprise. I think we shaped it a little bit, as you said. They wanted it saved. They wanted a place for the children to be able to swim. Safety is important. And we don't have a beach that's open anymore. So there's really no spot for them to swim. So it was brought to our attention that we also have major issues at Logan High School pool. Thing leaks like a . You can't even use it any longer. I mean, you can use it for swim lessons and stuff, but not competing. that's where this all came about and then preliminary
070meetings and a few meetings with the city to make a joint venture and work together on hopefully achieving something that would give our children a safe place a safe haven and a place to be able to swim year-round instead of a hundred and some days a month a year so this was just an idea people had brought it up we thought well let's get together talk with each other as a team the city in the school district and bring it out to the voters and that's what we did so you know it's it we're not selling ourselves on it we it was we knew what we were getting into we just wanted to get the thoughts of up taxpayers and our constituents because ultimately they are the ones that are paying for it but we
071we just answered a calling more or less than anything and that's where that's where we started this yeah I mean when we started this it wasn't necessarily about a pool it was just about something that we could collaborate on and needs of both I mean we can argue about needs and wants all you want but it's also like looking at the long-term version our vision of our you know our district and what's gonna attract people to it yes people like shiny new things obviously they passed a referendum for a new elementary school so you could argue wants and needs all day long but again it was just about a collaboration of things between the city and the school district and this is what came forward and at the end of the day it's you know
072I wish the results were a little bit different but they are what they are and like dr. Sprague said we can only you know take things to referendum that we think are are important and what the what the community you know is going to support so with these results I'm not necessarily sure how I feel about it yet kind of processing the whole thing but yeah I mean the this collaboration between the school district and the city isn't gonna stop so I think that that's one of the best things that we've been talking about for a pretty long time right the new school district has been one of the best things that we've been it has very good relationships with the city and the system has very good relationships with the City Council so again
073it's you know it's it's it's something that's something that needs to be touched both at the city and at the other side but I think I would hope whether whether or not we decide to pursue this right now right we can continue working on that right and should right not just on the pool question I think that if if there's a sense that this is something you know that that this is wrong that fifty-two percent is actually an under estimate of around the Northside Library, the Northside Pool. Amenities make a community livable and strong and vibrant, and we absolutely want that. The question always comes then is how do we make it happen, right? What's the city that we want to have, and how do we find ways to pay for it? And that's just
074the challenging thing about it. Was there discussion in the joint meetings about, like, would the city, is the city's responsibility then paying for, like, lifeguards through the summer? So we might put the referendum through the school board in order to get the facility up to code for our students to be able to participate, or even for our school district to host competitions and tournaments, right? Because that's what we can't do right now. But then is the city's financial contribution then staffing it with lifeguards and things like that? Or I don't know. Has that been worked out? We haven't ironed out the details, but it was discussed. It was shared costs, right? You know, we would have equal partnership in this endeavor, you know. Because it doesn't feel like shared costs when our referendum, that's what
075I'm saying, right? Right, right. It's our pool. But there are ongoing, as Mr. Manka, as I mentioned, like there's ongoing pools are just money pits. They're expensive. Outdoor ones. That's just what they are, right? Outdoor pools, yes. Outdoor pools. In the Midwest. I mean, that's not to say we shouldn't have them, because for all the good reasons that we want community pools. But they do need ongoing care. So I just wondered where the partnership or where the shared costs, where the city picks up their share of the costs. Wasn't there also talk about partnering with other nonprofits in the community to help with that as well? The YMCA. Yeah, we would have worked with the YMCA to help run the pool. You know, they're experts in pool operation and some of those sorts of things.
076You know, the odd thing is, like, to the average, to the average taxpayer, there's, like, the perception of who's paying for something, the city or the school district. But when you get your tax bill, a tax is a tax, right? And so by distributing it over more residents across the school district, you lower the cost to everyone and provide access to more people. And so it's one of those weird, like, perception versus, you know, reality sorts of situations. And so sharing the costs is certainly something we would want to be doing on the pool operation. And as Mr. Albert said, you know, operating an indoor pool is much more efficient than an outdoor pool. What we have found is that our indoor pool at Logan High School, the cost to operate it annually for 12
077months is the same as operating the outdoor pool for 80 days. It's just much easier on a pool to be indoors. And that pool has been there without significant repair since 1979. And the north side pool, 20 years later, needs significant repair. It's just the nature, literally, like, just ruined. It ruins things. Entropy. You know, so it's just a matter of accommodating the different types of situations. Yeah. In the end, like, the taxpayer pays for it either way. But there is a perception that, you know, we have to have continuing operating referenda because the state legislature doesn't fund special ed at 100%. And so in addition to that, we're going out for capital referenda for things. You know, there is a perception that we're continually asking for money. And there are reasons for it. But
078I don't know. Is this something we would want to spend our social capital on? Yeah. And I think maybe. Yeah, maybe. There could be reasons. It's like a 52%, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, in these kind of surveys, like, that's good, I think. You know, you want it to be higher, but I don't know. Maybe not good enough to pass. Oh, sorry. No, no. Just that social capital is, like, is this important enough for students and community members? Or from the school district's perspective, like, for students to be able to compete on swim teams and for us to be able to host tournaments, which does bring in some revenue, I think. Small. Small. Dr. Engel and I talked about that. But, like, is it worth spending our sort of social capital and goodwill and trust
079on creating something like that? Because if you go to referendum. And it passes. And it passes by 60%, then, you know, 40% of the community is like, I didn't want that. Why am I being taxed? So you've got to decide if it's worth that, worth spending that sort of goodwill on. That's well said. I would also argue that it's not just about competition. It's also about water safety. We live in a community that has rivers and lakes, and kids and adults both need to know how to swim here. Adam? Talk about it. I just went bridge jumping there today. Not safe. I think you're supposed to do that. Don't recommend doing that. So I have two questions following up from this. My first one is, has the city gotten the same information? Had they reviewed
080for them? Is that something that the group has discussed as it went to the full city council? The Parks and Rec board meets on Thursday, and they'll discuss the results there. We have another school district city pool collaboration meeting scheduled tentatively. For the following Monday. The Parks board may or may not refer it or send it up to the city for review. Kind of sits at the Parks and Rec board first to kind of discuss. Okay. Then my second question is, is that this is just information item. I have a lot of questions, and I still have a lot of them over there too. And I see one, the north side advocated me. It's kind of separating and fighting the school board side me right here too when it comes to this. But would it
081be helpful to push the needle forward about deciding if this is something worthwhile? Or not? Would it be helpful to have a workshop with the city to help digest this in one approach? Is this something better to leave for? So you can be having someone from Parks? Well, I mean, I think when we meet next Monday, we'll have a better sense of where the Parks and Rec board and the school district sit. You know, we'll have some feedback to discuss. And, you know, we've got a process in place to kind of see what happens next. If it seems like a joint meeting would be a good idea, that's absolutely. Something that can happen. It's happened before. I think the public meetings that were completed, it was a joint effort there for sure. And they all
082did a wonderful job. Again, whatever is decided is decided, right? But I am going to say that, especially in the Midwest, towns are looking at indoor pools. The outdoor pools are obsolete. They're, you know, disposed. You know, you could spend 60-some days in a pool where you could spend that money and turn it into year-round is a major benefit. And if you're driving children to our city, you know, they want to go to school here, that's a benefit as well. Yes. Do we figure out the cost? Is it worth the referendum? I don't know. That stuff we'll have to decide. But I think it's important for everyone to realize that, you know, we're not the inventors of an indoor aquatic center. And a pool here. It's going around and it's going around heavy. And somebody
083in our area is going to have one. I can guarantee you that somebody will. And whether it's us or not, that will be determined. Yeah. I mean, I, for the first time, was just at the Onalaska Aquatic Center. It's a great facility. It's outdoor. I can imagine lots of costs that they are shouldering. And that's the thing, is I think you're exactly right, Scott. I mean, if it's... If it's something that you want, if the amenity is important for the area, like, yeah, hopefully somebody will make it happen. And being a part of it and, you know, and at the end of the day, we still have the Logan pool. We still have a pool on our books to be thinking about and reckoning with, right, going forward. So it's tricky. Ms. Haas, do you
084have anything you wanted to add? Everyone's going to kind of disagree. But in all honesty, for me, it is that outdoor space. When I think about going to the pool, I want to go outside. I want to sit in the sun. I want to be able to go over in the grass and have a picnic, you know. So, and as a member of the community who used both pools when they were open, I love the idea of an outdoor pool. You know, indoors, you get, you know, the smell of the chlorine, of the water. There could be an accident. You can't use the pool like most times at the Y there is. And you can't use the pool then. So, yeah, there's just the nostalgia of an outdoor pool. I agree. I grew up at
085Erickson, you know. Yeah. So, and I get the cost of it and all of that. But, and I get the year-round use. I get the cost of the outdoor facility. But, again, when I think about going. When I think about going swimming, it's outdoors. So, I think since this is just information, one thing that we can do to be proactive is maybe think about an information item on, just for everybody's benefit, on the referenda process. Because there are some deadlines that we have to meet in terms of structuring a question, submitting it to, you know, to have it on the ballot and those things. And I think having that in the back of our minds will be important if we do decide. We want to move forward. And to that end, also procedural then. If
086there is something that board members want to move forward on as an action item, remember, we have the agenda planning portion of our agenda for that reason. So, if there are things that, you know, people want to take up in that way, we are absolutely able to do so. All right. And we can certainly bring this back as an agenda item in a few weeks or a month, you know, after there's been some time for some community conversation. You know, the news was here for a reason. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Parks and Rec will have a conversation and the city will discuss it. And, you know, I think we'll have a better sense a month from now about how things are perceived in the community and what sense of support is as you talk
087to people. Think about maybe an update at least after the Parks Board is able to review the survey results and you are able to have your collaborative meeting again, which our next meeting would cover that, right? Absolutely. Okay. All right. We can certainly think about that. Well, let's move on then to the referendum. Construction plan update. The building continues apace at Hogan Elementary. They're putting up masonry walls around the kitchen area. So you'll see the scaffolding going up around there. So that's exciting to see. They continue to work on structural steel on the north side. A lot of welding going on up in the air. Pretty neat to see them at work. More structural steel will be coming in this week so they can continue to work around the edges of the building. Looks like
088they're going to delay the precast concrete for the gymnasium for a little while. They want to keep that space free to be able to work kind of in the interior of the building. They feel like they'll be able to make quicker progress by having more access. Once you put up those precast walls, you kind of block off a large avenue of access for the rest of the building. And so good thing we hire experts to do that. I wouldn't have thought about that. I think they're working on some utilities and other things. I think they're working on some utilities and other things. I think they're working on some utilities and other things. Some anfiph zona buildings there at the building as well. Just about wrapped up with the well drilling for the geothermal there. They'll
089be putting in lateral lines soon. There's a big hole on one side, the west side of the lot, southwest side of the lot. That will be for water retention for drainage and stormwater. They put a big tank underneath the the ground essentially to capture that so that it can disperse naturally back into the ground. They put a big tank underneath the ground essentially to capture that so that it can disperse naturally back into the ground. So as opposed to kind of surface level, it's underground. It'll be under the parking lot. So that'll be a nice addition there. Over at State Road Elementary, they're working on concrete on the floors in the second story in the new build. Paint and flooring is already going in. A lot of activity over there, masonry, like finished masonry, around
090the edges of the building. And then there's an opportunity next week, Wednesday, to do a building tour at State Road. Working around their schedules and some other things, but next week, Wednesday at 4 p.m. If you're available and want to stop by at State Road, we'll meet in the parking lot there, and Joe will be able to give a tour of the interior to see what's going on. So next week, Wednesday. Wednesday, 4 p.m. Laura will send out an invite to everybody, and we'll try and get some confirmations from folks, just so you know how many hard hats to pull out and other things. All right. Thank you very much. We'll move into announcements. We don't have Mr. Bagnefsky this evening, so we'll go right to Dr. Garcia. We're quiet at LPEF. We're doing the
091same sort of end-of-year financials review and sort of development planning for activities for next year. So nothing really to report. Okay. Back over to Mr. Alberts and Mr. Neumeister on the thing we just talked about. I think we covered off. Anything else? No, yeah. Dr. Engel said they'll present to the Parks Board on Thursday, which I'm part of also. So, I mean, a couple of things they probably will bring up are the same things that we had in terms of cost and who's paying for what, probably, just knowing some of the numbers. All right. Mr. Neumeister, anything to add? No, thank you. Thanks. Announcements? No. Okay, thanks. A couple of quick announcements from me. I had my first meeting with the collaborative area board execs, so the school board presidents and vice presidents from the
092surrounding districts around us. Big topic of conversation was there, and this was the group that President Sukla, before me, had attended the first meeting, kind of just getting off the ground with this sort of effort with the districts in our area. Mm-hmm. And we're all talking about the resolutions that we've all passed on the voucher costs and the property tax bills and thinking about what are the next steps in pushing those forward to the municipalities and sort of lobbying at the county to have that change made, since they're the ones that actually generate the tax bills and would have control over that. It's nice that we're unified in our area around wanting that information. All of the surrounding districts, that's Holmen, West Salem, Onalaska, right? Yeah. And Bangor as well, have all passed similar resolutions
093to us, if you recall from when we saw some of that language. So that's really helpful, I think. In addition, the group is considering and is, in fact, proposing a conference presentation at the state education conference in January, which I'm looking forward to probably attending and being part of that panel discussion on what does this collaboration between our districts look like and some actionable steps that others might emulate. All right. Thank you. Thank you. As we got in a board update email from Dr. Engel, of course, you saw that myself, Dr. Engel, Mr. Ledvina, and a community member as well spoke on behalf of our appeal of the Historic Preservation Committee's landmark status designation for Emerson, and the City Council did accept that appeal. So we do not have to work under the landmark process
094as we consider next steps for that property. So that's hopefully freezable. All right. So that brings us up to explore some good options as we go into the next year or so. I would also just note July is results month. Our next meeting we're looking at, so reviewing the annual work plan I think would be handy. That was on one of the consent agendas for tonight. So that work plan gives you a sense of when we're getting into the big operating expectation reports as well as those results reports. And in July, we see the involved citizenship, the full report on that one that we've had a conversation about in past years and I hope to see again, as well as the achievement gap reduction efforts, which is a pretty important one for our efforts and
095our mission for educational equity. So that's it for me. I don't have much to announce other than I would like to thank Ms. Patty Sprang for all of her years of service. She rejects any sort of acknowledgement of this, but I was just kind of running the numbers. And I think Patty's probably attended over. 600 school board meetings in her years of service. Everyone should be acknowledged when they've done something like that. You should get an award. I'm going to print you a certificate. Since my time here, Patty has been instrumental in ensuring we have a balanced budget every year. We have not run deficits. When I look at the news articles across the state and I see staff layoffs and unplanned closures of buildings, that hasn't been our experience. It's been Patty's careful budgeting
096that has put us in a really good place to thoughtfully reduce our buildings, to reduce our expenses where necessary. We were able to dramatically increase our operating referendum because of the support that we have in our community. That doesn't happen by accident. When I started here, we were in the midst of a pandemic and figuring everything out. Patty was our Esser czar. She helped ensure that we spent $10, $12 million of our budget. We had $10 million of federal funds appropriately in account for them. That was a lot of extra work that Patty took on herself so that the rest of our business office did not have to suffer. We got 0% increases in those years and we still figured it out. It was just incredible. We went to learning from home. Patty oversaw facilities
097during that period of time, food service. We were delivering meals to homes every week. We were delivering meals to homes every week. We were delivering meals to homes every week for almost a year. That's difficult to do. Patty led that team. I never thought about it. It just happened. I'm so thankful for that. We've really been able to improve in a number of areas, whether it's staff morale, our culture, our compensation is as good as you can get in this area of the state. Our health insurance benefits went from a very difficult position and now our health benefits are well above average. That happened under Patty's guiding hand. I'm incredibly thankful for all she's done for me, for the school district, and for our students. The most important thing you should know about Patty is
098that she has always put kids front and center. If it's good for kids, she'll find a way to make the budget work. You might have to convince her it's good for kids, but she will find a way to make the budget work. In all of our discussions, it wasn't about the dollars and cents. It was about the students that were at the other end of that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Patty. Patty, I would add, as a board member of three years going on four now, that your efforts at educating me and helping all of us hopefully understand the complicated nature of school financing and make sense of the magic that you are brewing in your office and bringing it before us has been fascinating, actually. I never thought organizational accounting would be something
099I became more interested in later in life. But you have definitely piqued my interest in that. Thank you for all the work that you do for us, being so responsive to our requests for information, being so clear in your presentation. I look forward to seeing how Mr. Munson takes on the task of educating elected board members over time. Thank you again very much, Patty. Anybody else have some words for Patty? Thank you all. Thanks again, Patty, and happy retirement. Okay. That will bring us to our agenda planning for the July, not the July 6th. It will be the, I don't know what is the July 6th, but that's three weeks away because there's five Mondays. That's right. The July 6th, 2026 Board of Agenda Education, Board of Education Agenda. We'll be looking for a motion
100with any additions or corrections. I'd like to add the addition of an information item on the school pool, city school consortium. May I second that? Yeah. Okay. Tim and Scott, if I can sort of task you with good note taking of your next meeting in particular. I know you always do a good job, but it would be good to hear how the discussion went after the parks board gets the information. Anything else that members would like to have added to the agenda? Okay. Hearing none, I'd look for a motion to approve the agenda with the addition. So moved. I'll second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. We'll go quickly into our board debriefing. Tonight is Dr. Garcia. Yeah. It was
101good. We had a lot of good information and good questions, I think, brought by board members for all the different views we might have on these issues. So. Okay. All right. Anything else for the good of the order? Yay for a summer meeting. Okay. We do have what I hope will be a relatively brief workshop. We have a couple of questions. We have a couple of questions. We have a relatively brief workshop and then a real quick closed session. So we'll take about a five minute break and then we'll get started. Okay. We are adjourned.